The Fourth of July is a great opportunity to reflect on what it means to be an American. And what more patriotic place to start our reflection than a movie called Stripes1? In the film, Bill Murray’s character gives a pep talk to his fellow Army recruits:
“We’re all very different people. We’re not Watusi. We’re not Spartans. We’re Americans, with a capital ‘A’, huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We’re the underdog. We’re mutts!”
That tongue-in-cheek speech has always resonated with me because of the kernel of truth in it. To a large degree, America was founded and initially populated by people who didn’t fit in anywhere else. The Pilgrims and their spiritual brethren came here because they wanted to worship and express beliefs in religions that were outside the mainstream (and frequently outside the law in their native European countries). Others with strong streaks of individualism came here seeking riches or adventure — things that were increasingly tough to find in the more developed and more tightly governed nations they left behind. These were the individuals who would develop into everything from cowboys to industrialists. Read the rest of this entry »
- Director Ivan Reitman originally thought up the idea for Stripes as “Cheech and Chong Join the Army”. Cheech and Chong, however, didn’t buy in to that idea. Source: Stripes Special Edition DVD, 2006. [↩]
