'Independence Day' on Independence Day

This Fourth of July week, I rented the blockbuster movie Independence Day from Netflix. I had been curious about it since it come out in the late 1990s, but not enough to go see it when it opened. It's basically a large-scale disaster movie, but it tell us a lot about America's mind set at the time and now. Pop culture and massively successful films tell you a lot about a nation's pysche. That's why I like to watch silly old films of the 1930s, '40s, and 50s. A few weekends ago I DVRed Neptune's Daughter starring Esther Williams, Ricardo Montalban, Red Skelton, and Betty Garrett, a silly water-splashing musical. Yet it made me imagine going to a movie theatre in 1950 and seeing this technicolor fantasy and the average drab housewife or closeted gay imagining she or he could go out to nightclubs and see Xavier Cugat or Carmen Miranda singing and dancing in enormous shapes and vivid hues.

Independence Day is a retread of HG Wells's War of the Worlds with a seemingly invincible alien force nearly conquering earth. In Wells' version, the monsters are defeated by a flu virus while in this update a computer virus does the trick. Thus we see that man and not nature can defeat the enemy from space. The characters are a who's who are cultural stereotypes played by actors popular at the time (some still are)--the cocky, charismatic pilot played by Will Smith; the quirky lovable scientist played by Jeff Goldblume; the wise and wisecracking Jewish elder played by our favorite sitcom star Judd Hirsch; the nasty, small-minded bureaucrat played by James Rebhorn (not a well-known actor, but a familiar face from similar roles in films like Scent of a Woman); the gutsy president with the fight-pilot past (Bill Pullman); even the nervous nelly hiding under the desk (Harvey Fierstein who is conveniently killed in the early part of the film just like all gays in movies up to that point.)

We get the comforting fantasy that humankind will come together, with America in the lead of course, and we will make our American holiday into a world holiday when the bug-eyed aliens are destoryed on July 4th. Of course the rest of the world goes along with American dominance and our the brave president forsakes personal safety and protocal to lead the charge. I wonder if George W. Bush got the idea for him to don a fighter pilot uniform and declare mission accomplished in Iraq from this movie? It wouldn't surprise me. There is also a satisfaction in seeing our symbols of government like the White House destroyed in a movie and then having everyone retreat to an imaginary secret installation like Area 51. It did feel strange to watch these images after 9/11.

And where does a single mother stripper like Will Smith's girlfriend, get the money to afford a nice house in a good neighborhood and still have enough to support her son and have a dog? Who takes care of them while she's out pole-dancing?

In reality, my family was visiting our upstate house over the weekend and we went to nearby Kinderhook, birthplace of Martin Van Buren, our 8th president. A retired army vet spoke about our forefathers and Van Buren fighting for limited government. I think tyranny would have been more accurate. He also mentioned our belief in God and the importance of family and community is what set us apart from Europe and why the American revolution succeeded and the French one didn't. But he didn't turn his speech into a libratarian rant and spoke movingly about soldiers under his command losing their lives.

Then we went to Van Buren's house which is a national park site and took a tour. I also finished reading Ayn Rand's novella Anthem. It was very short and didactic. I want to read more of her work because I am curious as to how it relates to what is happening now and how Tea Partiers are using it to justify their crazy no-government screeds. More on that once I have shrugged like Atlas.