‘Top Gun: Maverick’ — A Boomer Fantasy of Colorblind America, Without Anti-White Prejudice. By Michael Anton.
Many have noted that “Top Gun: Maverick” is not politically correct and have made the case that this explains its success. While there is some truth to this explanation, I don’t think that it quite captures the full significance of the point.
The closest we get to any hint of political correctness in this film is the introduction of the new crew of naval aviators. Unlike the nearly all white squad in the first film — only “Sundown,” Maverick’s second backseater or “radio intercept officer” (RIO), was black — the new bunch is diverse.
When you first see them gather around the pool table at the Hard Deck bar in North Island, San Diego — or at least when I did — my gut response was, “Oh, no! Here comes a lecture on diversity!” It’s a conditioned response to so many ham-fisted Hollywood propaganda fusillades.
Except this time the lecture never comes. No mention of the pilots’ race or sex is ever made, either in the dialogue or implicitly in the story. The filmmakers and the various ex-Navy consultants they hired to give the movie a degree of verisimilitude have all said that the diverse cast is realistic. That’s the way the Navy looks now. …
The issue is not the depiction but its implications. In the movie, everyone is treated as an individual. Each officer is there because he (or she) graduated from the Navy’s Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (a.k.a. “TOPGUN”) at the top of the class. …
No one is punished or overpromoted for diversity, or elevated or held back because of paleness. …
It depicts a fantasy 2022 America as tens of millions of us would like our country to be. The promise of the civil rights movement was that all would be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. The film shows what the world would have looked like if we had kept that promise. Nonwhites are not discriminated against — but neither are whites. Nor are nonwhites favored simply for not being white. Every place is earned. Everyone respects one another and gets along.
“Top Gun: Maverick,” in other words, is a Boomer wet dream. It shows the America that the Boomer supporters of the 1964 Civil Rights Act thought they were getting. That future never really came to pass, and after 2020 especially, seems more distant than ever. …
What “Top Gun: Maverick” depicts is what the majority of Americans, and virtually all white Americans, have always wanted: a true meritocracy in which talent and virtue are rewarded, regardless of race or sex, and in which all Americans respect excellence, respect one another, come together as a team, love their country, and fight for it.
We don’t have that country today. But the success of this movie shows that millions of Americans still want it.
Without trying or intending to be, the box-office triumph of “Top Gun: Maverick” is the strongest possible proof that America is not afflicted by “systemic racism.” Audiences root — and cheer — for those 12 aviators not in spite of their race and sex but because of them. American audiences want to see minorities succeeding, and they want to see whites and nonwhites working together, bonding together, winning together. The vision shown is the country they were promised and the country they want to live in.
It’s what it doesn’t say that is important.
Until the left with their identity politics came along, seeking to buy votes. Probably not coincidentally, they also divided the population and diverted attention while the ruling class and their connected buddies got much richer at the expense of the rest of us in the asset markets.
