Badlands Story Hour Ep. 122: Crimson Tide

Chris Paul and Burning Bright dive deep into the 1995 submarine thriller Crimson Tide, exposing its layered regime propaganda and eerie relevance to current global tensions. Against the backdrop of recent narrative warfare around Iran’s nuclear program, the hosts dissect how the film primes audiences to trust government authority, dismiss rebels as threats, and frame preemptive strikes as justified. They explore how Denzel Washington’s and Gene Hackman’s characters represent competing modes of deference, to protocol versus to power, and how these dynamics mirror today’s media, military, and political theaters. With precision and wit, Chris and Bright unpack the manipulation of moral perception, the dangers of uncritical obedience to “expert intel,” and the propaganda value of nuclear threats as a narrative ticking clock. Alongside commentary on Trump’s narrative maneuvers, CIA information pipelines, and the spectacle of war as politics by other means, this episode is a compelling study in 5th-gen warfare, on screen and off.