Free preview episode cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. A madcap collage of American Berserk—that’s one way to describe David O. Russell’s Three Kings, and it’s exactly how Van, Lyle, and screenwriter Kevin Fox dive into it.

This two-part episode (the second installment drops shortly) unpacks the film’s wild genre mash-up: comic book absurdities collide with nods to Star Wars and Apocalypse Now, all while a grim commentary on U.S. militarism and society simmers underneath. The group digs into how the film disorients viewers with slapstick humor and sudden, brutal violence—like Mark Wahlberg’s character, whose torture by an Iraqi soldier (grieving the loss of his son to an American bombing) flips the script on American power. When Wahlberg’s character feebly defends U.S. actions as “maintaining stability in the Middle East,” the soldier shoves a CD-ROM in his mouth—a searing metaphor for the imposition of U.S. hegemony.

From cartoonish “United States of Freedom” patriotism to cow guts and milk truck explosions, Three Kings might not be the perfect vehicle for telling Americans—and all the privileged in the Global North—what they need to hear. But at times, it sure comes close.

Subscribe to the Bang-Bang Podcast to unlock the rest of this episode, Part II, and the entire Bang-Bang catalog: https://www.bangbangpod.com/p/part-i-three-kings-1999-w-kevin-fox

Kevin’s Website

“The Class of 1999: ‘Three Kings’,” by Matthew Goldenberg

“Three Kings: neocolonial Arab representation,” by Lila Kitaeff

“The Gulf War, Iraq and Western Liberalism,” by Peter Gowan

“The Gulf War’s Afterlife: Dilemmas, Missed Opportunities, and the Post-Cold War Order Undone,” by Samuel Helfont

What Tupac predicted about the defense budget. Pete Hegseth unveils Trump's imperialist peace plan for Ukraine. The Monroe Doctrine means mercenary imperialism. Why the Democratic Party can't critique Trump's lies about being antiwar. In the Trump era, being anti-anti-China is worse than being a white nationalist.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions.

Dr. Van Jackson gave a public lecture at the Havens Wright Center for Social Justice in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin on February 4, 2025. This episode is the full set of remarks plus Q&A from that lecture.

About the lecture: The concept of the “national interest,” Van Jackson argues, has become an under-appreciated source of global insecurity. Not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with people having interests that must be preserved, promoted, or protected. Rather, the “national interest” as such obscures whose interests are served (and harmed) by the efforts of policy elites to secure the state. Governments routinely use the language of the national interest to justify a politics of violence, secrecy, and exclusion while bracketing off explicit questions of morality and justice. And national frameworks for mobilizing resources and collective action are logically mismatched against global threats like climate change. But rather than wishing away the modern nation-state or simply suggesting changes to the words that governing elites use, this lecture argues that addressing the contradictions in the national interest—as well as some of international security studies’ most cherished strategic constructs—is a start point for constructing more durable forms of security.

The full video lecture: https://youtu.be/6uEGvZQTjNA?si=LvOqClXur72a7v7T

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