NOT TOP GUN: Chip Lorde Looks at the Hollywood Version of the Air Force

From a Carl’s Jr. Parking Lot across the street from Miramar Naval Air Station, where the film was shot, Chip Lorde, video artist and professor of Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz, examines the cultural phenomenon that was Top Gun. According to Lorde, Top Gun is a “slick, fragmentary, superficial, shallow movie made for teenage boys,” and he looks at how the world view of the film is adolescent, “constantly jerking itself off, like a teenage boy.” Lorde gives a critical analysis of not only the film, but also its publicity materials and advertising strategies. He discusses the real-life weaponry in which the film finds its basis, the background for the production of the film, and the effect of all this on Navy recruitment. Lorde puts forward an in-depth and well-constructed analysis of the cultural symptoms, representations, and effects of the film. The hyper-adolescence of the film is contrasted in the final scenes of this program as Lorde, while constructing a model of the jet, explains the details of the F-14 Tomcat to a young boy. In closing, Lorde points out the contrast between the F-14 with a cultural standing in the 1960s and the film itself, the corporate-propagandistic nature of which places it firmly in the culture of the 90s. Veteran video guerilla Chip Lorde looks at the Hollywood version of the Air Force.
1987 TRT: 28 minutes #122