FROM THE ARCHIVES: Remembering Deepwater Horizon: A Marksist Proposal

This piece is being published as part of The Rival American’s Decade Throwback Thursday

By Jack Purcell

This spring, on April 20, 2010, the Gulf of Mexico was rocked by a cool-as-hell explosion. BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing eleven people and leaking thousands of gallons of crude oil into one of our world’s most diverse and crucial marine ecosystems. Some of this oil (because of the deadly explosion) was on fire, and as the thousands of tons of metal sank into the Gulf, most likely never to be recovered from its resting place among the filth of hubristic big business, it was surrounded by flaming water, like some kind of dope-ass album cover that would definitely have cooler music than whatever that Bieber kid released this year.

A tragedy this epic needs to be remembered, lest humanity be doomed to repeat its visually stunning mistakes and spend another ten months watching caring corporations slather Dawn brand soap on an entire coastline’s worth of oily pelicans. I’ve spent months wracking my brain over how we can best commemorate the events of that terrible day, and as I half-watched that sick movie The Other Guys while playing Brick Breaker on my dad’s Blackberry, it hit me.

No memorial will be able to capture the horror and scale and freakin’ cool explosions of the Deepwater Horizon. The only medium powerful enough for that is film. We need to make a Deepwater Horizon movie. Starring Mark Wahlberg.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Mark Wahlberg? Marky-Mark of Funky Bunch fame?” No. Well, yes. Technically. But he did other stuff too! I think. Maybe...was that Matt Damon? No… hmm… Boogie Nights… yeah, Wahlberg’s had some movies. And I really can’t think of a better actor to capture the somber mood of fighting for survival aboard a screaming metal death trap in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil rig workers have to be strong, mentally and physically, and if you’d spent as much time as I did looking  at Wahlberg’s  old Calvin Klein ads, you’d know that he’s definitely got physical strength down.

As for mental fortitude, Mark Wahlberg has spent years in the film business performing all kinds of roles, switching from muscular white character to muscular white character like a chameleon, yet never once losing his natural charm. He’s even spent the better part of the last decade as an executive producer for Entourage. If that doesn’t show that he’s a psychological stone wall, nothing does. 

Now, a few of the strangers sitting near me on this WMATA bus have expressed to me that it might, maybe, potentially be a little disrespectful to the people who died in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, as well as to the millions of people whose livelihoods in the fishing and tourism industries were shaken to the core by the damage wrought as a result of 205.8 million gallons of crude oil flooding into the Gulf. Bullshit.

Historical  movies are cool. Have you even SEEN 300? No one would remember Leonidas without Gerard Butler. Similarly, no one who wasn’t one of those who happened to have their life ruined by Deepwater Horizon will remember it without a super cool and respectful portrayal of the events by Mark Wahlberg. It’s been too long since we’ve had a movie that properly and considerately captures a historical time period while still looking really cool. A Mark Wahlberg Deepwater Horizon movie could be epic. It could be the next Braveheart. Mark, you could become a modern Mel Gibson. Wait—