On a Sunday last May, while Minneapolis burned, my Yankee sweetheart and I indulged in a double helping of nostalgia. The engine that propelled us along this journey down memory lane was Blast from the Past, an American romantic comedy, now a little more than twenty years old, that celebrated the morals, manners, and milieux of an even earlier time and place, the America sacrificed on the altar of equality of opportunity in the annus mirabilis of 1965.
The plot is simple enough. In the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, a scientist and his wife take refuge in their capacious fallout shelter. A few minutes later, a malfunctioning Sabre jet crashes into their house, creating an explosion large enough to convince them that an atomic armageddon had taken place above their heads. The couple therefore remains underground for 35 years, during which time they raise a son, with the appropriately hopeful name of Adam. Soon after attaining full manhood, Adam ascends to the world above, with the twin mission of acquiring supplies for his parents and a wife for himself.
As anyone familiar with romcoms of the 1990s might easily predict, Adam finds, woos, and, in the end, wins, his Eve. What is somewhat surprising, however, is the degree to which Adam’s success in Cupid’s quest is depicted as a function of the old-fashioned virtues, skills, and attitudes he learned in the time capsule in which he grew up. He triumphs because he is an old-fashioned gentleman, the sort of fellow who, depending on the needs of the moment, can either deliver a condign thrashing to a cad who stepped out of line or stun a pair of jaded Jezebels with his prowess on the dance floor.
In addition to serving as a paean to retro-culture, Blast from the Past handles ethnicity in a way that most readers of this journal would find congenial. With two exceptions, all of the indispensable secondary characters in any romantic comedy — the boorish ex-boyfriend of the heroine, her supportive best friend, and the aforementioned Jezebels — exude the generic whiteness of the California of the middle years of the twentieth century. Indeed, if I were to give in to the temptation to read too deeply into the film, I might even say that they are as much a “blast from the past” as Adam himself.

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Adam, the son of Calvin and Helen Webber, gives no indication of being anything other than an Old Stock American. (“Webber” was a reasonably common surname in old New England. “Calvin” speaks for itself.) Eve bears the unmistakably Slavic surname of “Rustikov,” but makes no mention of babushkas, balalaikas, or borscht. She is thus the avatar of the “Heinz 57” people of European ancestry who, in the course of the century that ended in 1965, fully (if slowly) embraced the values and customs of the folks who founded the United States. (At the very end of the film, Adam reveals that Eve’s grandparents had immigrated from Ukraine.)
The only unalloyed villain in Blast from the Past is Jerry, the proprietor of the collectibles shop where Eve is working at the start of the film. Portrayed by a retired professional hockey player, Jerry is far too muscular to fill the shoes of a stereotypical storefront Shylock. Nonetheless, Jerry’s attempt to cheat Adam out out of his extraordinarily valuable baseball card collection, his mockery of the Biblical echo of the Christian names of the protagonists, and the sarcastic benediction of “mazel-fucking-tov,” deprive the viewer of any and all doubt on the matter of his tribal affiliation. (The only other unmistakably Jewish character in the film is an old man who, after observing a bizarre conversation between Adam and an obvious schizophrenic, exclaims, “Can’t you see he’s meshugina!”) [1]
The one black character with a substantial speaking part is Dr. Nina Aron, a well-groomed, well-spoken, well-meaning social worker who, in response to a call from Eve, attempts to take Adam into custody. Movie mavens who like to read deeply into the casting of minor characters may uncover a tale about a black woman who sacrificed her authentic negritude for the sake of a place on the middle rungs of the civil service. (Champions of this theory will, no doubt, point to the obvious homage to baseball legend Henry Aaron in Dr. Aron’s name.) In all likelihood, however, Dr. Aron, who is described in the script as “a kind-looking professional woman,” need not have been black at all.
The remaining BIPOC characters in Blast from the Past — a Pakistani purveyor of pornography, mestizo motorcycle enthusiasts, and a particularly repulsive streetwalker — serve chiefly to underscore the seediness of the Los Angeles neighborhood that had been built over the bunker where Adam had been born and raised. They thus reinforce the message sent by the time-lapse sequence that chronicles the changes experienced by that particular corner of the City of Angels between the early 1960s and late 1990s.
Sadly, the performances of the two most celebrated actors in the film, Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek, undermine what would otherwise have been a splendid celebration of both cultural conservatism and the white-California-that-was. Mr. Walken, who plays Adam’s father, portrays the anti-communism of the Kennedy years as a tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory, more Alex Jones than Whitaker Chambers. Miss Spacek, in the role of Adam’s mother, presents us with the caricature, beloved of second-wave feminists, of a stay-at-home mom who consumed far too many cocktails in order to compensate for the absence of “fulfillment.”
That said, Blast from the Past is a fine film for a rainy afternoon. For those already in possession of a solid base of sub-special self-respect, it is a pleasant fantasy. For men in the process of serving up red-pills to potential partners, it provides a great way to spark a conversation about issues of importance to the well-being of white people.
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Notes
[1] I would think that that line should either read “he’s a meshugina” or “he’s meshuga.” (The former is a noun that means “mad man,” the latter an adjective that is usually translated as “crazy.”) Who am I, however, to correct the Yiddish of a Hollywood scriptwriter?
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3 comments
I saw that one a little while ago. Cute movie there, I’d recommend it.
Other than that, thanks for taking time off to write for us; I know it must be busy as Mayor of Chicago.
Thank you, Mr. Albrecht, I’m glad that you liked my first foray into the rarified realm of the movie review. As for Chicago, I hope to run it as well as Tito (you know, from the Jackson Five) ran Yugoslavia.
Mr. Lightfoot, a very belated thank you for your thoughtful and entertaining review of Blast From The Past. This has been one of our favorite movies as well. We found it solely based on Christopher Walken, had he not been in this movie, we wouldn’t have watched it. Anything he is in is fair game in our house and I mean anything. Rarely have we been disappointed by his acting and unique mannerisms. He was the Headless Horseman in the 1999 Tim Burton version of Sleepy Hollow and did not say a single word yet he very aptly conveyed terror. His role in Blast was perfect Walken. How he teaches young Adam to dance, their German conversation, and the funny Walken wink-with-finger-point seemed to be scripted with him in mind for the role.
We lived in two suburbs of Southern California in the late 1980’s and while this time period was not the movie’s beginning time period of 1965, it was clear in the late ’80’s that the once beautiful, organized world of Los Angeles suburbia had a creeping case of blight. Being the only Whites in a neighborhood park was a real eye-opener and seemed to happen overnight. Having the real possibility of speaking to someone who didn’t speak English was also present. Homes were still well kept but the amount of cars parked everywhere on a street or cul-de-sac was a sign of decay.
Another aspect of this movie that we liked was the amount of preparation that Adam’s parents did for the nuclear threat. Being prepared is another lesson that our White ancestors fiercely believed in. No total reliance on government was practiced. I learned “prepping” from my Dad as we built shelves in the basement to store provisions in case of what we are seeing now: demented Biden’s supply chain crisis and resulting empty store shelves. Calvin Webber’s vast food and water supply are admirable and you can tell how pleased he is with not only knowing that he can care for his family but also that he was right: a Cuban missle did hit the United States.
Blast From The Past is also yet another movie that can never be made again. Hollywood constantly now brays on how any movie will now be made with X% of people of color and Y% of women and Z% of disabled people and LGBT% of LGBT people. So, in other words the only way to make a movie showing the history of anything will now be altered to show that all of these wonderful people really did create England, were on the Mayflower, were there at the founding of this great country, were large part of the old West, fought and strategized in World Wars 1 and 2. In other words, bend history that they so despise to fit their narrative or destroy history completely. The upcoming Amazon Studios production of The Lord Of The Rings Original Series has crammed so many people of color into a plot that is supposed to take place “thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.”
Well, perfect. If this happened thousands of years before, I guess you can write all sorts of crazy make-’em-ups and portray blacks as noble kingdom makers, just as they have been in numerous, er, some, um, a few places, I guess the only successful black-created county is the crazy-made-up Wakanda. But no, they will be the noble ones I’m sure. But explain this: if this LOTR series takes place thousands of years before The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, what happened to the blacks in the ensuing years? Why don’t they appear in the first-filmed Lord Of The Rings trilogy, or were hastily crammed into the Lake City in one installment of The Hobbit? Never mind, the important thing is that blacks were there at the beginning showing leadership and living in grace that has eluded the White race even up to our present day. Blast From The Past can’t be made again unless it stars blacks so that we can be illumimated as to how they would do it.
More than anything I wanted to thank you for bringing this wonderful movie to our attention and giving it the review it deserves.
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