Post Number Twelve

I hate Nick Mansfield. I liked him up until I read his little critique of Die Hard. And now I hate him. Say what you will about me and my family, but do not ever criticize Die Hard.

Die Hard is perhaps my favorite movie of all time. It is a close tie between Die Hard, The Terminator, and Aliens. So I was similarly enraged when I saw Mansfield's claim in Chapter 6 that the Alien films equate horror with the maternal because of the feminine nature of the aliens and because they procreate uncontrollable. He seems to have ignored the opposite reading of the films--that male egocentricity and ignorance about the power of maternity and cooperation will lead to the destruction of our society.

Anyways, back to Die Hard. First of all, Mansfield's retelling of the final confrontation is inaccurate, or incomplete at best. It's true that the three men end up laughing while Holly, hero-cop John Mclane's wife, watches in shock and horror from within the evil German terrorist Gruber's clutches. However, the laughter is initiated by John, not by Hans Gruber, and this changes the meaning of the scene. Mansfield claims that the feminine, in this case, Holly, is turned into an object which the men are fighting over, and that the laughter represents some higher plane of existence where men who are about to kill each other can go and where women are not welcome.

But the whole point of Die Hard is that John Mclane ISN'T a cowboy. When John Wayne or Clint Eastwood would be hunting down the bad guys and gunning them down one at a time, John Mclane is simply trying to leave the building. Whenever he runs into terrorists, he avoids them. He doesn't like fighting or killing people.

So at the end, when Hans has Holly clutched in one arm, and he is leveling his gun at Mclane with the other, he says, "What was it you said? Ah, yes, yippie kay-yay, motherfucker." He is repeating Mclane's retort to Hans's earlier accusation that Mclane is just another macho American cowboy. And Mclane lets him believe it--he starts laughing, inviting Hans to that superior level of being that Mansfield is talking about. But while Hans, Mclane, and Hans's thug are laughing, and Holly is staring at them as though they're insane, we see a close-up of a revolver taped to Mclane's naked back. We suddenly realize that it's all a trap for Hans--Mclane is not a cowboy, he's not actually laughing with Hans. He's faking it.

Then he breaks the laughter by yelling for Holly to duck, and shoots both of the men, but Hans grabs Holly's wrist as he falls out the extremely high window of the office building. He hangs by her wrist for a few seconds while Mclane and Holly struggle to pry his fingers off, but they are only able to to so by unclipping Holly's Rolex from her wrist--the Rolex that she received as a gift from the company she left Mclane to go work for.

And with that, the metaphor is complete. In order to save their relationship, John has to prove to Holly that he cares more about her than he does about self-preservation. He comes to the realization that he should have supported her move to LA instead of hoping she would fail and return to him about two-thirds through the movie, when he almost dies and suddenly has more perspective on himself. He tells another cop over the radio, "Tell Holly that John said he was sorry. She's heard me say I love you a thousand times, but she's never heard me say I'm sorry."

The flipside of that is that Holly has to prove to John that she cares about him, and herself, more than she cares about her career. She proves this by taking off the Rolex and saving their lives.

While Holly does play a diminished role in the final action sequences in the film, the whole movie is about John learning that his career is not more important than hers and that she is not a prize to be won.