This Week In Retro: G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero [1983] (Patreon)

September 12, 1983: Yo Joe!

by Diamond Feit

Years before I grew wise to the meaninglessness of schoolwork outside of school itself, my first clue that I didn't jive with the American education system was when I attended my first pep rally. I couldn't tell you from what age it began, only that at some point I had no choice but to attend regular events in the gymnasium for the sole purpose of cheering on my school as an institution. There was no specific game being played, nor were we asked to fete our student athletes after a big win. We just needed to be in the gym and celebrate as music played and cheerleaders danced.

My objection had nothing to do with a disinterest in sports; I liked watching sports, be it on TV or in person. What bothered me was the futile nature of our attendance. None of us chose to attend school, least of all this particular school, so I found no value in cultivating or exalting any sense of school spirit. None of my friends played any sports for our school, and all the games took place on evenings or weekends when I would be home watching cartoons or playing my NES in the basement. With no personal stakes, I simply did not care if our teams won or lost.

The fact that our administrators prioritized pep rallies and similar school spirit initiatives taught me an early lesson in authoritarianism. It wasn't enough for us to dutifully attend school, do our homework, and take exams; we also had to engage in performative rituals to convince them that we loved school. I quickly applied this lesson to other institutions in my life and saw the same pattern elsewhere, driving me to question why we had to devote so much time in the synagogue to praising the Lord or why we needed to stand and recite a daily Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

That latter indoctrination method is of particular relevance this week as a nefarious children's property turns 40 years old. While created to sell toys first and foremost, the premiere of a syndicated cartoon depicting America as a unequivocal force "fighting for freedom wherever there's trouble" also taught millions of children that patriotism is a virtue. None of that was evident to me in September of 1983, however, when I tuned in to watch G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero.

The nickname "G.I. Joe" as shorthand for an American soldier dates back nearly a century at this point, with the term already appearing in titles of comic books and movies during the Second World War. Hasbro first began selling G.I. Joe action figures in the 1960s, though as our military involvement in Vietnam dragged on, the toys fell out of favor. By the late 70s G.I. Joe had morphed into Adventure Team, a squadron removed from any real-life conflict.

Everything changed in 1982 when Hasbro relaunched the toy line as a set of smaller figures resembling Kenner's wildly popular Star Wars toys. Like Star Wars, the new G. I. Joe brand included both heroes and villains, thanks to the introduction of an enemy called Cobra. A newly-launched Marvel comic would carry the narrative load of introducing the individual members on each side and outline the two armies' ongoing battles.

An assortment of plastic combatants and vehicles paired with a comic book was a good fit, but the real test came a year later with the debut of an animated television mini-series. As the catchy theme song explains to viewers, G. I. Joe: A Real American Hero tells the story of an eponymous "special mission force" which opposes "a ruthless terrorist organization" called Cobra.

For its inaugural animated adventure, G. I. Joe: A Real American Hero has the Joes and Cobra locked in a globe-spanning sequence of skirmishes. The five-episode story begins with the two sides already at war; we never find out who shot first. While both parties possess a similar level of hardware and personnel, the two follow drastically different procedures. The G.I. Joe members follow a chain of command but keep things light, cracking jokes and even pranking one another. Cobra, operating out of a hidden lair, is much more cult-like and argumentative; the two men at the top both wear masks and are often at each other's throats.

The G.I. Joe/Cobra dynamic which unfolds in these five episodes establishes a template for all their future clashes once the show becomes a full series: Cobra develops a new weapon or scheme, demonstrates it and demands the immediate surrender of all world leaders, only for G.I. Joe to counter and send Cobra running. Notably, no matter how many guns or missiles the two sides fire at one another, neither army suffers a single casualty. Lasers fly through the air and explosions rock the battlefield, but no human being ever gets hurt. Should a turret or chopper or any equipment take damage, the operator always has enough time to leap or parachute to safety.

More importantly, even though G.I. Joe always triumphs, Cobra never suffers any lasting setbacks. Each story ends with the status quo intact and each faction returns in the next episode at full strength. The program thus gave children a theater of perpetual bloodless warfare, a vision of the world which required constant vigilance from the United States else the enemies of freedom would rule the Earth.

As an elementary school student I had no idea G. I. Joe: A Real American Hero offered any controversial viewpoints. The show arrived at the perfect time as the United States was in the midst of a cultural shift headlined by president Ronald Reagan. My limited understanding of politics at the time conformed to the popular narrative that the Soviet Union represented an "evil empire," a term Reagan himself used in a speech just six months before G. I. Joe hit the airwaves. I grew up believing that the United States had never lost a war, a gross distortion of history that I would not un-learn until my teenage years.

I cannot hold G. I. Joe solely responsible for my childhood gullibility, as it was just one source of propaganda amongst many, but it certainly had legs. A Real American Hero aired in syndication for years, while the comic book ran well into the 90s. An Atari 2600 video game took the G.I. Joe vs Cobra conflict literally, as a giant snake sways menacingly on screen that the player must destroy with artillery fire. Years later, Konami turned the property into an over-the-shoulder auto-scrolling arcade shooter which supports up to four players at once, finally offering fans a chance to have the Joes use their weapons to actually shoot Cobra soldiers. While not on par with Konami's many beat-em-ups of the 90s, the recognizable characters taken straight from the cartoon and the voice samples had me pumping quarters into the cabinet whenever I could find it.

Four decades removed from its television debut, G. I. Joe commands limited respect these days. Hasbro still owns all the rights to the name and the characters, but compared to other 80s blockbuster toy lines such as The Transformers, the 21st century has proven less welcoming to Joe or Cobra. Hollywood has given us three G. I. Joe live-action films; I saw two of them in theaters and remember nothing of note.

I'd wager that to most adults, any mention of G.I. Joe will bring up memories not of any toys or films but parodies created by Eric Fensler 20 years ago. By editing A Real American Hero and adding surreal, dada-esque audio, these comedic clips went viral in a pre-YouTube internet; Hasbro's legal team had Fensler remove them from his website, but the shorts remain online to this day. To think that G.I. Joe went from representing American military pride to becoming an ironic meme; if only all propaganda could tumble down the same path.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.