Top Gun Takes Down Grendel’s Mom

Tom Cruse in "Top Gun"

Film Friday

At a screening of Top Gun the other night—the 1986 film about testosterone-charged Navy pilots—I suddenly realized that I was witnessing an epic battle between Maverick (Tom Cruse) and Grendel’s Mother.  The unexpected parallel with Beowulf has given me new appreciation for the 8th century Anglo-Saxon epic and a deeper insight into how at least some guys in the military handle grief.

The film was part of a summer “Movies and Music” series that I have been running in conjunction with St. Mary’s College of Maryland’s River Concert Festival. We are located less than ten miles from the Navy Aviation Test Pilots School—many famous astronauts have lived in our community—and to commemorate “the Base” (as it is called) our July 4 concert will be a “Salute to Naval Aviation.”  At one point the theme song of Top Gun will be played as jets fly overhead.

Anyway, I was watching the part of the film where the cocky and seemingly unfazable Maverick must deal with the death of his buddy (Goose, played by Anthony Edwards).  The accident that kills him, nobody’s fault, occurs when their jet gets caught up in the backwash of another plane and is sent into a spin that tears it apart.  They parachute out but Goose is killed by flying debris.

Plunged into sadness, Maverick loses the edge a pilot needs to fly.  He appears prepared to walk away from that which gives his life meaning, an activity he does better than anyone else. As I see it, he is in the grip of Grendel’s Mother.

I interpret the monster as the figure of grief that undermines warrior resolve. The grief can take two forms, which I see as extrovert and introvert responses: either our grief can cause us to lash out at others so that they suffer what we are suffering or it can cause us to pull into ourselves and shut down.  Grendel’s Mother lashes out following the death of Grendel and kills Aeschere, King Hrothgar’s best friend. Hrothgar in response shuts down.  “Rest, what is rest,” he cries out.  “Sorrow has returned.”

In the film, Maverick is in danger of becoming a Hrothgar.

Beowulf’s fight with GM shows us an ultimately successful struggle with grief.  He plunges into her lake, which (in my interpretation) is being swallowed by sadness.  Two things can happen. Either grief can hold him there forever, thereby breaking him as a warrior.  Or he can overcome her and emerge, stronger than ever.  What is positive is that Beowulf (unlike Hrothgar) is proactive in the grieving process: he dives into the lake—faces up to his grief—rather than shutting down.

To deal with his grief, however, he must also acknowledge that his normal coping mechanisms will not work.  His sword is ineffective against Grendel’s Mother, which I read as his routine warrior mentality being insufficient.  Also insufficient is his fabled will power–his mighty grip–which worked against Grendel. He needs something more.

What works is a giant sword that he finds within Grendel’s Mother’s lair.  This sword has been forged by giant warriors who lived in the golden age before the flood, and Beowulf comes upon it at a critical moment. Grendel’s Mother is stabbing at his armor-protected chest with her dagger—which means (metaphorically) that sooner or later his heart will break unless he takes action.  He grabs the sword and chops off her head, at which point light breaks in and the monsters that have infested the waters disappear.

Back to Top Gun.  After Goose dies, Maverick is given two ways to heal, neither of which work.  First, he is told that he has to let Goose go.  He is also sent back into the air.  The first is the iron grip approach to grieving, the second business as usual.  But he can’t merely exert his will, wrestling the grief to the floor.  And returning to business as usual, whether with familiar swords or with planes, doesn’t work because the heart has been scorched.

What works is that his instructor tells him the story of how his father died. The official account is that he died with dishonor, but the truth is that he was a hero.  With his fuel running out in a fire fight over Vietnam, Maverick’s father chose not to return safely to base but instead took out three enemy fighters before going down.  In other words, he was a giant from the golden age before the flood, an ideal that Maverick can aspire to.

This is the inspiration that Maverick needs if he is to step beyond his grief.  Grasping Goose’s dog tags, Maverick engages in a real firefight and comes through when it matters most.  Life takes on meaning again.

Put in the context of 1986, Maverick is Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America.”  He has been grieving over Vietnam but now, plugging into a deep vision of America’s imperial status, he can stand tall again. Refuting rumors of America’s demise by taking out three Soviet MIGs (how convenient the Soviets used to be as an enemy!), Maverick shows us that the U.S. is Top Gun.

So all we need is a bigger sword, some greater ideal, to overcome a wounded heart?  Neither the epic nor the movie can altogether make this claim.  The epic makes it clear that Beowulf’s victories don’t solve the problem of grief once and for all.  Indeed, by the end of the work, Beowulf is looking back over his life and seeing nothing more than a string of meaningless deaths.  Meanwhile the dragon, the metaphorical equivalent of his old and bitter heart, is ravaging the countryside and burning down his hall.  (Ultimately he defeats it with the help of a young nephew, but that’s another post.)

The movie, meanwhile, figures that its final scene can’t be a macho Maverick lifted in triumph upon his comrades’ shoulders. Something softer is needed to ultimately address the grief.  Therefore, the film ends with a healing woman and a song from his childhood playing on the jukebox.

As a work, Beowulf is pushed to greatness because the poet doesn’t shy away from describing the ravages of grief, even though—immersed as he is in the warrior ethos—he doesn’t entirely know how to handle it.  Top Gun, made during a decade when American men were fantasizing themselves as hard bodied and invulnerable Hollywood heroes (think Rambo or the Schwarzenegger movies), at least wrestles with the issue of grief.  That makes it a step above those other films.

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