Tropic of Kansas author Christopher Brown says heroic paramilities may be Hollywood’s latest trend, and he’s got five action-packed trailers to back him up.
About ‘Tropic of Kansas’
The United States of America is no more. Broken into warring territories, its center has become a wasteland DMZ known as “the Tropic of Kansas.” Though this gaping geographic hole has no clear boundaries, everyone knows it’s out there–that once-bountiful part of the heartland, broken by greed and exploitation, where neglect now breeds unrest. Two travelers appear in this arid American wilderness: Sig, the fugitive orphan of political dissidents, and his foster sister Tania, a government investigator whose search for Sig leads her into her own past–and towards an unexpected future.
Sig promised those he loves that he would make it to the revolutionary redoubt of occupied New Orleans. But first he must survive the wild edgelands of a barren mid-America policed by citizen militias and autonomous drones, where one wrong move can mean capture . . . or death. One step behind, undercover in the underground, is Tania. Her infiltration of clandestine networks made of old technology and new politics soon transforms her into the hunted one, and gives her a shot at being the agent of real change — if she is willing to give up the explosive government secrets she has sworn to protect.
As brother and sister traverse these vast and dangerous badlands, their paths will eventually intersect on the front lines of a revolution whose fuse they are about to light.
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4 TV action trailers and 1 movie about hipster revolutionaries by Christopher Brown
What if the insurgents were the good guys?
I’ve always loved American action movies and TV shows, for their kinetic ballet and sense of adventure, but I’ve never bought their politics. I often feel like the hero is on the wrong side and is the only one who doesn’t know it — or knows it and does it anyway, self-medicating the consequent internal struggles away during the commercial breaks.
In my new novel Tropic of Kansas, I decided to turn that paradigm on its head, and write an all-American action-adventure story in which the urban guerrillas are freedom fighters and the U.S. government’s counter-terrorist forces are the occupying army — in their own country. To make that work, I set the story in a mirror America, one where 9/11 never happened, Ronald Reagan didn’t survive the assassination attempt, the landscape is ravaged by climate disasters, and a charismatic CEO presides over a country under martial law.
That seemed implausible when I finished the manuscript in 2014, but the world has a way of catching up with our imagined dystopias, especially when they just remix things from the real world. And stories like these tend to come in flocks. While I was working on the book, three different movies came out in the same season about bad guys taking over The White House — and in one of those stories, it was a malevolent imposter president. So when I read that the big networks have several new shows about heroic paramilitaries on deck for the fall, I decided to take a closer look. Here’s what I found from four TV trailers and a laptop movie screening.
‘SEAL Team’
“SOME WOUNDS NEVER HEAL.” That’s the message blasted in the trailer for CBS’s SEAL Team, as grizzled squad leader David Boreanaz chats with his therapist. The camera lets us know the chief is working hard to hide his own wounds, and maybe ours. He’s just infiltrated a faraway city that his translator warns is “still a little Mad Max,” traveled those dangerous streets in hijab-veiled drag, and saved an American woman from being tortured live on the ‘net by one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists–while still making it home in time for his daughter’s recital.
Boreanaz’s crew is presented as freshly diverse and charismatic, but we’ve been on this imaginary mission before. As another one of the titles hammers, “SOME BATTLES NEVER END.” Just one winking Easter egg: the therapist is played by Reiko Aylesworth, aka Jack Bauer’s teammate Michelle Dressler in 24–bookending a small screen version of the Long War that has been going on since the fall of 2001. Too bad they can’t bring back CTU Michelle’s former nemesis, Mia Kirshner’s Mandy, the Abercrombie terrorist of 24’s early seasons who still boasts her own fan reels.
‘The Brave’
NBC’s trailer for The Brave shares the same basic PG-13 hostage video plot as SEAL Team–rescuing an archetypal blonde from some ISIS analog. The team’s civilian leader, Deputy DIA Director Anne Heche, sternly explains the core principle: “No attack on an American civilian will be tolerated.” While the field ops are led by a hunky bro, Heche’s team seems even more diverse than Boreanaz’s, held together by “their unbreakable [and unironically declared] bond and commitment to freedom.” But the real hero looks to be the omniscient computers at Heche’s disposal–“the world’s most advanced surveillance technology.” No fighting in the war room, unless it’s by remote control.
‘Valor’
The CW’s trailer for Valor provides some relief from the Spartan gravity, with special ops chopper pilot Christina Ochoa snorting the scenery–or at least the prescription pills we watch her crush and hoover between making out with her co-stars and blowing shit up. The plot is more cryptically conveyed in this trailer, but yes, there are hostages — some of Ochoa’s fellow purple berets–and a suggestion that the real bad guys may be Americans.
‘S.W.A.T.’
The CBS trailer for Justin Lin’s remix of S.W.A.T. starts with a funky riff from the epic theme song of its 1970s forbear, and has some of the same character names–but makes them deal with the social problems of today. Hondo is now a black cop who takes over the team after one of his white colleagues shoots an innocent black kid during a raid on South Central. The unit still takes military gear, vehicles, and door-busting attitude, aka “special weapons and tactics,” into the heart of the American city, and breaks other rules along the way. But it professes to at least be making an effort to address some of the moral ambiguities, including the possibility that the heroes may not always be the good guys.
‘Bushwick’
In this Long War-worn media environment appears the just-released Bushwick, an independent feature directed by Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion in which the men in special ops body armor really are the bad guys. The movie opens when Brittany Snow steps off the L train with her boyfriend, en route to meet her family, only to hear a curfew warning over the intercom, and then see a man on fire run down the stairs. Sweet boyfriend steps out to clear the way, only to be fragged, and from there Snow is on the run — aided by hulking ex-soldier Dave Bautista–through NYC streets in which martial law is being violently imposed by Texas-led forces seeking a new order. It’s the Iraq War turned upside down, with Brooklyn as Sadr City and hipsters getting their armed insurgency on. The pacing is relentless and the story merciless in the sacrifices it demands of the characters. An imperfect work, but one that grabs the third rail of our political moment, with just enough irony. Maybe the networks can take some notes for next season, in time for the midterms.
About the author
Christopher Brown is the author of Tropic of Kansas, a novel forthcoming in 2017 from Harper Voyager. He was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for the anthology Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including MIT Technology Review’s Twelve Tomorrows, The Baffler, and Stories for Chip. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he also practices technology law.