Unclear and Present Danger - Independence Day

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

In Independence Day, humanity makes its first contact with an alien race. What follows is one day of destruction, one of despair, and one day where the human race, led by the United States, fights back. Jamelle and John use the film to discuss the triumphalist American optimism of the 1990s as well as the political afterlife of the imagery of the film, which extends into the post-9/11 era.Some of the taglines for Independence Day were “We’ve always believed we weren’t alone. On July 4th, we’ll wish we were,” “The day we fight back!” and “Welcome to earth.”Independence Day is available to buy or rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV. You can also stream it on demand at Hulu.Episodes come out roughly every two weeks, and we’ll see you then with an episode on Mars Attacks, Tim Burton’s satirical counterpoint to Roland Emmerich’s earnest blockbuster.And don’t forget our Patreon, where we watch the films of the Cold War and try to unpack them as political and historical documents! For $5 a month, you get two bonus episodes every month as well as access to the entire back catalog — we’re almost two years deep at this point. Sign up at patreon.com/unclearpod. The latest episode of our Patreon podcast is on Rambo, the 2008 legacy sequel written and directed by Stallone.Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.Contact us!

Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. Mankind, that word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interest. Perhaps it's faith that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom.

Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution, but from annihilation. We're fighting for our right to live, to exist. And should we win the day? The Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday. But as the day when the world declared in one voice, we will not go quietly into the night, we will not vanish without a fight,

we're going to live on, we're going to survive. Today, we celebrate our Independence Day. and stay. Welcome to Unclear. Welcome to Unclear and Military Thaler's of the 1990s of the 1990s, and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section.

I'm John Gans. I'm the New York Times best-selling author of When the Clock Broke. I'm sorry, I had to say it one time. I'll never say it again. No, of course. Hell, yeah. Of when the clock broke, con men, conspiracists, and how America cracked up in the early 1990s.

And I write the substack news letter on popular front. I think it is perfectly appropriate to not be, I mean, I wouldn't drop it in every conversation, of course. But in like, in this, in this environment, you can be a little, you know, you have to be modest about it. And you're a time's bestseller. Yeah. Newerite's bestselling author. For one week. One glorious week.

And of course, if you have not picked up the book yet, listeners, go ahead and pick up the book. It's gotten phenomenal reviews. it's very much widely praised. It's a bestseller for a reason. We didn't buy a bunch of copies. No, we didn't have the budget to do that kind of fraud. This isn't the Republican Nestle Committee. We can't afford that kind of stuff.

Regnery Publishing. Yeah. So please pick up a copy. For this week's episode of the podcast, we watched the 1996 sci-fi action thriller Independence Day. Written and directed by Roland Emmerich and starring an ensemble cast of Will Smith, Bill Pullman, and Jeff Goldblum, Mary McDonald, Juddhurst, Robert Logia, Randy Quaid, Margaret Collin, Vivica A. Fox and James Rebhorn, Rebhorn? Reborn? Rebhorn? I don't know. I've never known how to pronounce his name. Jamel, what is it, what, I just had this argument, or not the argument, but conversation with somebody, what is an ensemble cast? Do they all have to be stars or it's just like the focus of the movie has to spread across the characters? It's both. Typically, an ensemble cast does have a lot of stars.

Okay. You know, who is the leading man in this movie? You could say Will Smith has the most leading man energy, but kind of Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum all have kind of lead. They're all leading men for their kind of parts of the movie. And even when they all converge at the end, they all still have kind of like, they're all kind of the focal point. So typically an ensemble cast, yeah, a lot of stars, a lot of, a lot of people would otherwise be the lead, leading actress, leading actor of the film. And then there's just a lot of them. That's like everything. There's like a ton of them. So I would call, I would call like the dirty dozen is an ensemble film, right?

Right, sure. But 12 Angry Men, not so much. The star of that film is Henry Fonda. And although there are a lot of recognizable faces, it's not, I wouldn't call that an ensemble film. So, yeah, got you. Okay, that makes sense. In Independence Day, humanity makes its first contact with an alien race. Dozens of saucers, each 15 miles wide in diameter, are deployed to major cities around the world, including New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.

Initially, this is greeted with confusion as authorities in the United States and around the world struggle to understand what they're seeing. The American president, first-term incumbent Thomas Whitmore, who is not clear what his partisan affiliation is. I'd say he's a Republican here, but we can talk about that later. It's struggling with low approval ratings. David Levinson, the satellite technician, the sister Jeff Goldman's character, is trying to decode the meaning of the radio interference produced by the alien visitors. Russell Case is an alcoholic retired combat pilot who lives with the three children seized the arrival as proof of his claim that he had been abducted by and experimented on aliens 10 years prior and Stephen Hiller, a U.S. Marine pilot, that's on the cusp of proposing to his girlfriend,

Jasmine, when the aliens arrive. Embedded in the interference, Levinson discovers is a signal which he realizes at the countdown. He rushes to alert the president by way of his ex-wife, who is the White House Communications Director. Levinson and his father, Julius, reached Washington, but it's too late for the president to order an evacuation of cities where soldiers are present. The aliens attack and destroy every targeted city. The First Lady is fatally injured. The next day, the U.S. attempt to counterattack. It's thwarted by the alien's surviving advanced technology.

One of the surviving pilots, Hiller, manages to take down an alien craft. He makes his way to a nearby military base. The president, his staff, Leibonson, and his father all escaped destruction of D.C., and they make their way to the government secret based area 51, or military scientists have been experimenting on aliens unbeknownst to even the president. After an encounter with a living alien, the president orders an unsuccessful nuclear attack on a saucer above Houston. On July 4th, Levinson creates a computer virus that may weaken the alien ships long enough

to allow a successful counterattack. The U.S. military contacts the world's remaining military forces through Morse code to organize a counteroffensive. An aerial fleet of volunteers engages a saucer bearing down. down on Area 51 as Hiller and Levinton commandeer an alien ship to deploy the virus to the central mothership. The virus works, but the counterattack is on the verge of failure. It's at this moment that Russell sacrifices himself by crashing its fighter aircraft along with his armed missile into the saucers weapon, destroying it.

Humanity celebrates. That's independents say. I feel like there's a lot going. This is like a, I think this is actually a phenomenal. A phenomenal is too strong, a great script. But there's a lot going on. I feel like I had to just get that out of there. So we can establish everyone's, I'm sure everyone's seen this movie.

We just got to have that uptown to establish. Okay. Some of the taglines for Independence Day were we've always believed we weren't alone on July 4th. We'll wish we were. This is a good tagline. The day we fight back and, of course, welcome to Earth. I got to say real quick here that in my head, Will Smith has always said, welcome to Earth. But he actually does an unseat the TH.

He says, welcome to Earth. Independence Day is available to buy or rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV. You can also stream it on demand at Hulu. Independence Day was released to a general audience on July 3rd, 1996. Let's check out the New York Times for that day. Which is my birthday, by the way. I saw this. Happy belated.

Thank you. Okay, let's see what we got here. So Victor in Russian election faces economic crisis tomorrow. Russian voters will make a distinct number. faithful choice in Wednesday's presidential election, but the economic and social problems that will surface after they cast their ballots will bedevil the government no matter who wins. Even if President Boris N. Yelts and wins re-election, his government will have little time for rejoicing. Tax revenues are dangerously low while government spending throughout the campaign was feverish and

not accounted for. Just as the bills became due, a new, as yet unappointed administration will face critical choices about the revenue investment and spending the time when its opposition will be most intent on testing its powers. Critics of the Elton administration are already predicting a major investment in the fall, even if he wins. Some of the president's own experts are saying it is already at hand. Yeah, you know, the 90s are remembered as a disaster in Russia for good reason. It was a time of great economic struggle. lots of people's law it's one of the few times

where the life expectancy of an industrial country actually dropped the transition to free market capitalism was very traumatic for Russians, transition to democracy was very traumatic for Russians. Yeltsin goes on to win this election

kind of with the help of some arguably kind of sleazy American help from American political consultants. Russia's the balance of Russia the 90s still struggles. Putin comes on the scene and, you know, whatever happens after that, Putin kind of presents himself as an answer to the chaos of the 1990s.

But yeah, so that is Russia. Let's see what else we got here. There's ATF agents here. A lethal discovery. Federal agents seized rifles and hundreds of pounds of what was described as a bomb-making compound. at yesterday at the home of a paramilitary group member at Phoenix. Members of the group were arrested Monday were charged with plotting to bomb government buildings.

I want to see what group they were. So, I mean, as we've discussed before, there was a lot of militia and right-wing extremist activity in the 1990s, and the ATF was going after it. Infamously, you know, this had some tragic and terrible consequences at Ruby Ridge, Waco, and then there was the Oklahoma City bombing, but the government was very concerned about these sorts of groups. I'm looking at the article, let's see, I wonder what it is.

It doesn't really give me a sense of what this group is, but it's some kind of militia, perhaps, posse comatite they're called the viper militia they're dedicated to resisting the new world order so this is some kind of militia posse comitatis sort of group uh not oh and a libertarian candidate for the Arizona House of Representatives was a friend of the group so perhaps not on the explicitly neo-Nazi right but more of oh another paramilitary group the U.S. constitutional rangers But, yeah, one of these sort of right-wing militias that popped up in the 1990s. And usually all these groups had ties and members to the even farther extremes of the right.

So that's a little piece of 90s history there. Crime is falling in New York. A Supreme Court story here. In Supreme Court's decisions a clear voice and a murmur. The Supreme Court brought a long and difficult term to an end on Monday, leaving behind rulings rich and symbolic significance for women and homosexuals, but at the same time providing abundant evidence of the extent of which the court's discourse has shifted to the right. This was a term with not one theme, but many.

The court spoke sometimes with a surprising clarity as in the seven-to-one decision that validated the men-only admissions policy at the Virginia Military Institute. I remember this, but it sometimes spoke in. multiple voices so muddled as to be barely comprehensible as in the six separate opinions that roamed over the First Amendment landscape in an inconclusive effort to decide whether the government can regulate indecent programming. The court displayed a deep mistrust of government's efforts to classify people, whether by race for the purpose of drawing district lines, as showed in two decisions that had validated majority black congressional districts or bisexual preference

as seen in the 6-2-3 ruling that struck down a Colorado provision that barred the adoption of state or local laws to protect homosexuals. But in a series of criminal law decisions, the courts showed substantial deference to government law enforcement policies, most notably. The court shifted course after several years of questioning the government's aggressive use of its forfeiture authority. the justices overturned rulings by two lower courts who said forfeitures are convicted drug dealers assets violated the constitutional protection against double jeopardy the court also turned back a challenge to the federal government's priorities in crack cocaine prosecutions

rejecting a lower court's conclusion that statistics showing most defendants were black which so suggestive selective prosecution is to explain that to require the government to explain itself Okay, so there's a pattern here. Basically, when the government is doing stuff that might help black people, it's overreach. And when it's doing stuff that shuts them in jail, it's fine. Or takes their property, it's fine. This is par for the course for this conservative court. And I think it's pretty much the same as it is today. I think these specifically racialized rulings, in terms of federal power and the power of law enforcement or something that really defines the Rehnquist Court, would you say that's correct? I would say that's true. The Rehnquist Court is or was notably hostile to efforts to use race to remedy, you know, societal disadvantage, to remedy problems or issues with regards to political representation, all these

sorts of things. Sort of you're seeing the development here of the jurisprudence that, would, really kind of that is really unleashing itself now today under John Roberts. This notion of the Constitution is colorblind, where colorblindness means that the Constitution does not, like neither recognizes race as a category, does not recognize racial inequality as a thing that exists and has no remedies for it whatsoever. I would say, okay, so here's, here's a thing I have not, I take I've not written yet. I don't talk too much about my day job on this podcast, but I take, I have been sort of,

not a take an argument I've been kind of playing with in my notes, is just to observe how this is functionally the same holding as Plessy v. Ferguson, which Plessy v. Ferguson doesn't just say separate and equals okay, but it specifically says that the Constitution does not see racial classifications and has nothing to say about social disadvantage for that sort, that equal protection and the laws does not mean equal social status. And the Constitution says nothing about equal social status. And so a reading of the Constitution, which explicitly just doesn't just says it, there you go, as far as con law is concerned, there is no race, there is no racial inequality. None of that can be taken into account.

I think that practically has a lot of the same effects as the ruling in Plessy. And interestingly enough, when he was a young, was it, when he was a clerk, when he was a young aide, Rehnquist did argue that Plessy was rightfully decided. Okay. Yeah. That's crazy. It's crazy. No, I mean, William Rehnquist, bad guy. It is a testament to how terrible our.

current court is, but, like, he wouldn't be the worst justice on this court. No, this is a real gang of violence. Yeah. Yeah. The thing, people describe this court as being moderate. And in this article, in fact, you see some of that as well, that language that, you know, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy represent the sort of moderate swing votes. But this is a conservative court, largely shaped by Reagan and H.W. Bush.

And one thing that I think may surprise people to learn is that there has. really been a liberal majority on the course since basically the 1960s. And there hasn't been a chief justice appointed by a Democratic president since under FDR. And I forget, is it Vincent? I forget exactly the chief justice of the yard nominated. Let me look that up real quick. Harlan Stone, there I go. And then Truman.

See, I knew then Truman, Truman, Truman appointed. pointed Vincent as Chief Justice. Okay. I see nothing else on this page for me. How about yourself? Nope. Okay. Let's talk Independence Day.

John, you had said as an aside, but you saw this on your birthday in 1996. I saw this on my 11th birthday in 1996. I remember it very clearly. It was a fun. It was a good birthday. I went with my parents and a couple friends, I think, to the movie theater.

yeah and it was fun I mean you know I had fond memories of it the movie was fun I think I got some toy of it afterwards like one of the aliens or maybe Will Smith's character action figure

something like that I was into the movie as a kid I will say that it did not have a hold on an imagination in the way that maybe Star Wars did or something like that which you know was like kind of had more of a world built around it

but I enjoyed it as a kid I watched I remember watching the film. It was kind of, you know, it was interesting. I was reading the Wikipedia page for this and a lot of critics were like, eh, it was sort of like, there was something kind of budget about this movie and the, and the characterizations weren't very good. But at the time, I thought this was totally, it was pretty like mind-blowingly, like, big in its scale and scope and imagination about like the destruction that it shows and you know the city's being destroyed and how apocalyptic it was um i mean you know i guess as a little kid it sort of made a big a big impression

on me um so yeah i i think that now obviously watching now as adult you know like you know it's not it's not as impressive to me as it was when i was 11 years old but it's it's a It's a reasonably entertaining movie. It is not particularly deep on any topic. I think it does portray the presidency, the government, the United States, as having these deep wells of power and competence that 9-11, which has some kind of weird rhyming with this movie in terms of the destructive imagery, which happens a few years. years later um kind of shook but you know uh the i think also like the war this this movie was in the background of the war on terror like we're going to come back we're going to get them uh and we're going to win um so it definitely i think this movie was one of those structuring films of

American confidence of the late 90s. You know, some of the movies we talk about in the early 90s kind of show a little bit of the hang over the 80s, the uncertainty of the time, but I think like this movie, although it shows mass destruction, you know, it's got Will Smith, he's, you know, very charismatic, fun, the U.S. kicks ass, we're both very smart, and very capable. We got the smartest scientists.

And the movie also, like, shows, what I think is kind of interesting, it shows, like, Americans, like, it tries to show a class, cross-class, you know, different kinds of Americans. It's not all just, like, middle-class professionals. Like, it shows, you know, his family is living in a trailer. Will Smith's girlfriend is an exotic dancer, you know, so they have very ordinary people with struggles, et cetera. But they're all Americans. So yeah, I mean, the movie's patriotic, but then it becomes kind of imperialist because the U.S. leads the world in fighting off the aliens, which I think is also, you know, as the sole remaining superpower was a fantasy or aspiration of America in the post-Cold War world.

Those are my initial thoughts about it. Yeah, so real quick, it's worth emphasizing how big of a hit this movie was. ends up grossing over $800 million internationally. On a $75 million budget, this movie, so I think it looks great. I was watching a 4K stream, and I think I might actually pick up a Blu-ray to watch it, watch it on physical video to see if it makes any difference. But just the stream looked terrific, and I was doing some reading and watching a few little YouTube documentaries about the making of the film.

and Emmerich in an attempt to keep things under budget as much as possible. And they started pre-production for this in 95. So the whole doing this film did not take that long. But a lot of the effects were in camera. They did lots of models just sort of the, you know, the White House, the destruction of the White House looks so good in part because it's a scale model. I'm pretty large when I have that. and they rigged up like 40 explosives.

So they're doing scale models, actual explosives, and then they're using kind of CGI to touch things up. Like they're using computers, but it's sort of like, it's, it's a computer, the use of computers is very much the supplement and improve upon the model work and the more traditional special effects work. For, you know, the dog fighting sequence, but with Will Smith and another accurate did not mentioned this in the film, Harry Connick Jr., they actually had someone fly like a World War II era training plane through the Little Colorado River Canyon to get footage for POB shots.

And so they're doing a lot of like traditional stuff to make this work. And I think, you know, at this point, it's almost a 30-year-old movie. And it's still, I think it's still visually looks really good. when the alien ship destroys the White House obviously when it destroys, you know, the Empire State Building, like those are all shots that just look fantastic. And even the parts that look a little cheesy, it's not, it's not too bad. No, looks a lot better than fucking Star Wars, the prequels. Yeah, it looks way better than the Phantom Menace comes up with two years, three years later.

Yeah, it looks like shit. looks way better than the Phantom Menace. So Emmerich says, just a few other notes about the making of this movie, says he and his producer came up with the idea about promoting Stargate, and they were kind of very much doing an update of 1950s-era alien invasion films, the Flying Saucers, I think, are the giveaway there. The U.S. military was originally slated to cooperate in the making of this movie,

but Emmerich would not remove references to Area 51 from the script, and to the military was like, we can't be a part of this, which is funny to me. Jamel, yeah. Do you believe in aliens? I, that's a good question. I don't believe that extraterrestrial life, sentient, extra, extraterrestrial life has ever visited our planet. I think that the odds, assuming the vast universe isn't like some elaborate illusion

cooked up by like a demon who will never be able to perceive. assuming basically assuming Gnosticism is wrong. Okay. You know, statistically there are probably sentient extraterrestrial

civilizations out there somewhere, but I sort of, my view here is that like I'm not sure it's possible for any such civilization to be able to harness the energy necessary to do like

interstellar travel. And even if you could, right, like the kind of civilization that might be able to do that would be maybe so beyond material concerns that why would they even bother? I just, I kind of feel like, I kind of feel like, you know, there's like a, to get to the point where you could do it requires so many fundamental transformations and sort of like the nature of existence. Yeah. For the civilization in question that I'm not sure, you know, anyone would ever care. So that's my view of aliens. I'm not going to say they don't exist. I'm not, you know, who knows.

But it seems statistically likely that they both exist and that will never encounter them. And if we were to encounter them, they might just be completely incomprehensible to us. Yeah. That sounds about right to me, all that. Yeah. So do I think there's an area 51? Probably not. Do I think there's a government facility where they do weird tests?

I'm sure there is. I thought Area 51 actually exists, but the idea that it has the alien remains in it. There is a testing, Nevada test and training range known as area. But I don't think it actually has the UFO from Roswell in it because there is no such thing. I do like one thing, as we get into the politics movie, one thing I did like about the revelation of Air 51 on film is that the secretary of defense knew about it but the president did not deep state deep state and the other thing i wanted to add production wise is they they kind of always wanted a black actor for will smith's role though they did a perk ethan hawk for it but i think i think it is

interesting that he's not black even hawk not black uh but i think it's interesting that they did Will Smith, a black actor for this, like a role that you could imagine being played by like a Tom Cruise 10 years earlier. And I feel like the fact that Harry Connick Jr. is like his basically plays the black sidekick to Will Smith's character. Yeah. Only like emphasizes the kind of like racial inversion they're doing there. And that's, I say the thing that struck me on this most recent watch, which as I've

mentioned in previous episodes, I've seen this movie a ton, is how much it is. is, it is like America's vision of itself in the mid-90s. Yeah, for sure, for sure. In the most optimistic possible sense. Like, we're this multiracial, you know, meritocratic society. Notice how no one, no one in none of the characters, whether they are lower on the socioeconomic scale or higher, are people who are like bad at their jobs, you know? Well, except for the poor white guy. Well, he's drunk. He's a drunk.

He's a drunk. He's a drunk. But he's right about his experiences. Yeah. But sort of, but everyone is, it's meritocratic society. There's a place for everyone. It's, you know, women are in high reaches of the White House. Yeah. black people are skilled pilots

are scientists who say today is Jewish yeah and of course the scientist is Jewish they can't make the Jewish pilot and a black scientist why can't they do that

well America hadn't advanced that far okay right yeah but I don't know as I'm saying the movie the movie just is this sort of is this yeah it is like what america imagines itself to be right down to the fact that although in the film you know the u.s military is is very powerful you know uh fielding you know dozens of fighter aircraft all that stuff that what actually wins the war

for the world is not american military strength or other forms of american power but like american ingenuity yeah it's it's sort of we we it's not just that we're the strongest but we're sort of like the most inventive or the most creative and that's how we get ourselves out of this jam and the world you know again this thing almost a fantasy the world looks to american leadership the world wants american leadership when when they begin sending the the instructions to the other remaining militaries from the world you have that british officer who says you know like finally the americans are here or something like that yeah right the americans have to lead can't do it without us

the indispensable nation and everyone views this indispensable you see you know there's and you guys sent me a funny thing on Wikipedia about how heads below was upset with the movie

about how the movie depicts you know Israeli Arab and Israeli armies like working together but we see the Russians eagerly taking American guidance here American help and assistance

so that's what struck me on this watch. It's like how much, I mean, how much it really is this sort of like, it's like raw, raw patriotic, but sort of it's, it's, it's sort of a, it's sort of a, I mean, it's like an end of history patriotism. Yeah, for sure. You know, America's multicultural, multiracial, liberal society is, saves the world. We have to fantasize an external, a really external enemy to create, we see this in other films or to create this utopian unification of the world,

so utopian that the Israelis and the Arabs are fighting at the same side. I think that that's, you know, like, this is a way to imagine, you know, a future dominated by the United States. But basically, like, the

world has to be totally destroyed for that. to happen. So it was almost like a World War III, but the World War III is against, what do you think would happen actually if aliens showed up and invaded? I don't think there would be like world unity. I think that governments would try to figure out if they could take advantage of the situation. The United States would definitely say, like, you've got to listen to us now. And Russia and China would be like, let's see how this shakes out. I don't think that, yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. I, you know, I'm trying to think back to the movie Arrival, where it's suggested that, right, like everyone, there's attempts at international cooperation, but also different countries are pursuing their own interests and are trying to take advantage of the arrival of aliens to pursue their own ends.

that's what I think would happen right I mean it depends on kind of on whether you can communicate whether you can communicate with them if you if humanity can communicate with them then I would imagine there'd be a lot of attempts to try to like use the aliens the settle scores yeah and to attain geopolitical advantage right the you know the the only situation in which I I can't imagine that is the one you see in this movie where the aliens are kind of just like colonial invaders basically. Yeah.

And that's, I mean, I think we've talked about this before where it comes to this kind of genre of film, this kind of science fit, this set of science fiction tropes. These really are, this really is kind of a what if colonialism happened to you. Right.

They're like, oh, you have a similar planet to us, so we need to kill all of you and take all your stuff. Right. Yeah. Imagine that. Imagine that. I want to even say that the beginning of War of the Worlds in the original novella. Isn't a novella? I can never remember how long it is. But I want to say at the very beginning, well, H.D. Wells does, in fact, make this analogy.

I mean, it's pretty explicit in the book. Under those circumstances, aliens try to do a colonialism to Earth, then you would see humanity unite in the same way that in in the real world um although they're you know they're always under colonial conditions there are people who are collaborating trying to you know play play both sides trying to try to get advantage for their own groups there is like this pressure towards trying to work together when it comes to wanting to expel the colonial power um it's not universal but it does exist there differing groups can come together and we kind of discussed this in our rambo three episode with the

Afghanist the Mujahideen and their resistance to the Soviet invasion, a disparate set of groups who kind of temporarily cease their own fighting in order to repel the Soviet invasion. They resume it once

the Soviets are gone. But you also have examples of concurrent anti-colonial and civil wars like in Algeria where the FLN is fighting a war against its rivals to become the chief faction to fight off the French. And I think you can imagine something like that

happening under an alien invasion scenario where there's a war on earth between those that want to collaborate and those that want to take a radical stance against the aliens concurrent with

the war against the aliens. Something like that. Anyway, it's never going to... As we noted, it's never going to happen. But I want to I wanted to know the, I wanted to know what Hezbollah said about the movie because I think it is very funny. The Lebanese Shia Islamist militant group Hezbollah called for Muslim's boy, he caught

the film describing it as propaganda for the so-called genius of the Jews and their concern for humanity. In response, Jewish actor Jeff Goldblum said, I think Hezbollah has missed the point. The film is not American Jews saving, about American Jews saving the world. It's about teamwork among people of different relationships. and nationalities defeat a common enemy. It's very funny to me that Jeff Goldblum responded to Hezbollah. I don't understand the conditions of like, oh, I guess it was a Washington Post article

that they got him to comment. We're like, would you like to comment on what Hezbollah says about this movie? But I think it's funny because it shows what Hezbollah's understanding of imperialism is, which is fundamentally like kind of broken. through an anti-Semitic world view. It's like, no, dude, the Jews in this in this movie are working for the hegemony of the United States, right? Like, it's not that it's, they got it mixed up, you know, like, it's like, yeah, there's all these. And Jeff Goldblum is right.

He's like, teamwork of different religions. It's like, no, there's a very white American president, President Whitmore, who's almost name is White Moore, you know, and it's like more white. who is like a highly white guy who is understood to be a Republican and then he has all his he's got his black guy and his Jew and you know all his guys working for him and that's like the American the old kind of vision of American imperialism which is almost like that Teddy Roosevelt statue that they had to take down um in front of the in front of the uh the natural history museum which was Teddy Roosevelt on a horse and he's got a black guy a black guy and an Indian like holding him up, you know, like being like, yeah, like the

lower races are part of our project, but they're subordinate, right? So it's like, I think this is really like actually way more, it is multiracial, but like the ultimately, and also like the guy is a, the guy is a war hero, like the white guy is a war hero. And then, but it's also interesting like so the very top are the white people is president white Whitmore and then the bottom sort of like the lowest the lowest depiction of people are um poor white people from like from dirt poor california where this guy's a crop duster and he commits he he he's ridiculed he's a vietnam veteran he's ridiculed he set has this paranoid episode that he's made fun of, but then he's shown to be justified.

But this working class guy, this veteran ultimately decides he has to, like, he's kind of a broken man and alcoholic, and he's sort of a comic figure in the movie, which is sort of sad. Like, I was sort of like thought that the, like, he's justified in the end, but I think the movie was kind of cruel towards him because they're like, making fun of him, like, they're like, oh, did the aliens sexually abuse you? and you're like, that's not funny, you know, like, I mean, I guess the movie is in suggesting that they are being cruel to him, but like, you are sort of getting laughs out of it. He's the most beat-up character in the movie, his children think he's a loser, and then

he, like, sacrifices himself, he has to die for everyone to win. So you can imagine, like, a paleo-conservative reading of the movie that goes, the white working class, middle American guy is at the bottom. bottom of the heap and gets no respect, and then they expect him to sacrifice his life to save America. You know, it's just funny to me, and I don't, I think I would, I would prefer a more class-based reading of that than a racial one, but that was my thinking of it. And also, that goes into very much of the anger of like the white militias and the white nationalists of the 1990s, which was this sense that white people are at the bottom,

but they're holding up the whole thing, right? They're the ones making the big sacrifices. They're the ones who fight in the military, which of course is not true, because the military at this point is reflected in Will Smith's character is one of the most diverse and meritocratic institutions of the country. But, like, yeah, he's like a legacy American white guy

who's kicked around, but is ultimately the real hero of the movie. But it's not worth him, his kids appear to be half Mexican. Yeah, exactly. That's true. I noticed that too. Yeah, like, he has like an interracial family. He's the single father of an interracial family, an alcoholic. He kind of is like America and works a very mean old job. He's like the bottom of the heap of America, right, in terms of class position. But he and is mocked and disrespected at every turn. but is ultimately heroic. But heroic in a self-sacrificing way. He doesn't get to reap any of the... He doesn't get to live in the society afterwards. He has to die, you know?

He has respect. He's redeemed his manhood. He's redeemed his manhood through death, which is, I guess, you know, one of the things that you get through war, which is kind of suggesting that maybe he should have died in Vietnam. I don't know. You know, yeah, maybe you should have died of you know. I don't know.

I just thought that was interesting. The way the class, they class, um, the class building of the movie is. It's like you've got the professional, managerial, Jewish person. You have the military officer who's black. You have a president who's white wasp, Republican, but not like, not a, not a populist republic like some kind of some kind of like i don't know who would he be a dan quail or something like like like a young john mccain almost yeah yeah exactly right because he served in the military an american aristocrat who served in the military right um a wasp aristocrat and then

yeah go ahead finish and i don't i think that's the end of it's why i was just trying to note the stratification so the the character president woodmore so interesting to me because we we discussed before the sort of like fantasy clinton's that you get the 90s so in the american president with the michael douglas film you know douglas's character is this fantasy clinton he's a liberal he's a democrat uh but he is respectable he's a family man you know he's not having affairs he's very horny i mean he's michael president douglas he's very horny but he it's He wants to recreate kind of a nuclear household. That's like motivating his interest in women.

He's not transat philandering. So sort of like it's like Clinton, you know, the Clinton that people may have wanted, right? This is, and I believe Michael Douglas' character has like one daughter, right? Sort of like, this is how people, what people wanted out of Clinton. It's an Aaron Sorkin Penn movie. of course, Aaron Sorkin, creator of the West Wing, another series at least that's about kind of a fantasy Bill Clinton, a moderate liberal governor from a small state, very smart. Yeah.

You know, a little bit of a populist touch, but sort of like, you know, knows away around books. And that's something that that is desired. Whitmore isn't, Woodmore isn't the fantasy Clinton. He's like, my actual. thought, and I had this thought when he was suiting up to fly. Well, Bush was a fighter pilot. To fight a feeling, right, is that he's sort of

presaging George W. Bush in a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This sort of younger, cowboyish president who is like an action hero. And the film actually is an action hero, but is an action hero president

who, it's suggested, may not necessarily be the greatest peacetime president it's having a really hard time with Congress has low approval ratings. But when it comes to wartime, it's eager to step up in the, in kind of the, I would say, like culturally iconic speech that Whitmore gives before the final battle. It feels, I mean, my, my, my, the thing that came to mind was this beats Bush gives. Yeah. After 9-11.

Yep. Yep. This is a neocon movie. Let's call it. yeah this movie made dick cheney hard as a rock yeah i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i recall it a neocon movie precisely because of its sort of belief in kind of like the multiculturalism of the united states like this is a movie that very much is like diversities are strength you know

i think that's still i think that's still left-leaning neocon i think that they were there they're still like oh we got Colin Powell, you know, like, and we got Jews for sure. Like, I think that that's still kind of neocon. It's a, it's a right-leaning revision of liberal multiculturalism that keeps, that allows space for minorities, but they have to be subordinate to like a certain idea of whiteness. Right. That's why I would make it.

That would argue it is, yeah. Okay. More neokine, more neokine diversity than liberal diversity. Maybe we could say. But, no, just the imagery of President Whitmore just really seems to presage the kind of imagery that would be deployed in support of President Bush. Yeah, suiting up. Yeah, suiting up. And I would not be shocked, the mission accomplished banner.

I would not be shocked to learn that they use this movie as a touchstone for developing the president. image. They almost threw, I'd be shocked if they didn't, precisely because this movie was so culturally quite big and is so instantly recognizable. But yeah, having the president in a flight suit would I think immediately trigger at least like, you know, unconscious associations with with this movie. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that they wanted their fantasy of the way that the war on terror would play out was basically Independence Day, was that everyone would rally behind the United States and the U.S. would shape the world according to our will. And I think, you know, that's the interesting question.

Like, who is this propaganda really working on, right? So, like, you could say, okay, they're cannily using the imagery of this stuff because they know the public response to it. but they kind of believe it you know it's structuring their it's structuring their fantasies to put it in psychoanalytic terms perhaps of what they think they can accomplish in office right so it's like i think that these films these these so-called you know masterminds of policy like these films get into their heads in a very dangerous way we've talked about this in the past i mean this obviously happened with the reagan administration because he's just

obsessed with films. And the Rambo movies ruined his brain and a lot of other movies. But I think like, I think that this film must have really destroyed the minds of a lot of people in the Bush administration. And I think that that's why, I don't, weirdly enough, like, you know, Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood kind of comes to mind where Quentin Tarantino is kind of both diagnosing and is a victim of being plugged into films in this way and like he shows you know like what cinema culture how it's structuring and shaping the imagination the political imagination of the country and even if it's leaders so i just think like you know who really love you know what i think it's really

funny you know who loves once upon a time in hollywood a movie which i actually really like trump really likes that movie interesting yeah he likes that movie a lot and i'm like i don't know if he's picking up on the ironies of it or what but but uh there you know there's there's some kind of real reactionary things going on that movie as people rightly pointed out but but yeah i i do believe that these films, and definitely Trump looks at movies and he's such a moron, you know, like he definitely has the sense of himself as a character for one of these movies. Look, this happens to the best of us. This is not something that we intellectuals, if we may be so bold, are immune to. The films that we watch structure our fantasy lives, they give us the

archetypes that we you know pursue they you know tell us what to enjoy and how to enjoy it um you know so these films are very powerful and i don't think it's like oh you have to be i mean it's easy i think it's easy for us to say only a stupid person could come out of this movie and have it get into their brain and and and make them think certain thoughts about the world but i think it's really happening to almost at all times. No, absolutely. And I would never, I would never suggest only a stupid person. I mean, I think, so two things. The first is that when it comes to the kinds of things that might colonize a person's mind. Yeah. I don't know. Sort of like the liberal internationalism to an extent of this film. Yeah. Seems preferable to like, you know,

what to me are, I like these movies, but to me are the individualist like power fantasies of the superhero film. You know, like, yeah. this is maybe like a little better to have in someone's brain, you know, a country of many different kinds of people can come together and lead the world. Right. It is very, very, very, very tomas. I was just, I was just, for Fourth of July, I was at Monticello for a naturalization ceremony. It was very beautiful. Hot as hell on the mountain, but it's very beautiful to witness, you know,

people, 74 people from like at least a dozen different countries, it's been speaking different languages, like all coming together to become Americans. And, like, Independence Day, at this, like, at this site of American civic religion. And Independence Day is, like, very keyed into that kind of, like, vision of the United States. And so having that in people's brains is, like, not a bad thing. And if it, I'm sure, I'm sure, right, that, like, a childhood of watching movies like this, of watching Star Trek, like, you know, constantly, like, really did influence my conception of what, like, a well-ordered society ought to be in kind of profound ways.

The second thing I'll say is that we had this discussion for the episode, but we were talking about birth of a nation, right, that like birth of a nation is, was, and I would say still is, it's a very potent piece of storytelling and art and propaganda, and that these things, you know, cinema, the movies, is this, I think this uniquely potent form of storytelling that who's who's whose power we kind of we we we understate or underestimate at our own risk. I'm thinking, you know, I think of Tana Hasa Coates, who no longer is a regular political writer. He's still doing an essay here or there and he has a new book of essays coming out, but has been writing screenplays and wrote comic books for a while talking. He's

I've talked to him about this. He's talked about this publicly about how storytelling is how we understand ourselves. The stories we tell about ourselves, they're how we understand the world around us. And it makes total sense to me that this movie could be such a big hit because the kind of the story it is telling about America is this positive story about this multicultural and multiracial, ingenious country that can that can succeed. do well and demonstrate our leadership. It feels good. It's a feel good movie. Like, you feel good about the country at the end of it. You know, like, it's a, it's a, it's a nice movie. Like, it's not a, it's not a bleak or, I mean,

the country gets destroyed. We drop a nuclear missile on Houston, but like the country does, it shows, I think what Americans really hope is that even under the worst of circumstances, is America would prevail. And I think that that also shows it's liberal or maybe a neocon, but, you know. Somewhere in an intersection of liberal and neocon. Yeah. In the establishment consensus where both those groups can kind of exist in Washington, V.C. together and speak the same language.

Can I say real quick that if one politician kind of just encapsulates this, it's definitely Hillary Clinton. Oh, yes. for sure, for sure. Hillary Clinton, for sure. I think Hillary Clinton favorite thing to do was to hang out with generals and stuff like that.

I really think that she enjoyed being around the national security state. So, I mean, Trump does too in a very different way. But I think that what was I going to say? Oh, yeah. So the country as a creed Like, this is a very creedal nationalistic movie, right?

So, like, the American creed survives the destruction of the country, and it keeps people together, as opposed to, like, a concrete nationalism where it says, well, you know, once the people of the United States change and once the country is destroyed, it's not really America anymore. But this is, you know, Independence Day is the Day of the Declaration of Independence, It's not the Constitution, right? And so it's a declaration. Now we may be taking a little too far. It's a declarationist conception of the United States,

which is a creedal nationalism, which is all men are created equal and so on and so forth. So I think that this is a, yeah, Jeffersonian in that way, nationalism, a creedal nationalism, which both liberals and neoconservatives can get behind. As per Sam Goldman's great book, after nationalism, it's that creedal nationalism is forged in the fires of the Second World War, in that conflict

as the country out of necessity and practicality for ideological reasons is to pull together a bunch of disparate and different kinds of people into a single kind of national identity. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it makes total sense that this movie did so well. And, you know, it's interesting, you know, Roland Emmerick, it's still making movies. You'll forget he still made the movie.

He made Moonfall in 2022. Didn't see it. Of course, yeah. I mean, I saw it, yes. That's, that's, yeah, that's how this goes. You didn't see it. Obviously, I saw it. But he also does the Patriot.

Yeah, that's right. Oh, he did the Patriot. Wow, okay. Day after tomorrow, you know, a lot of big hits. made a lot of money. These movies made a ton of money. A lot of big kids kind of figured up the formula. We didn't do Universal Soldier, right?

No, I don't think we did Universal Soldier. Maybe we got to do that. Seems like we got to do that. Maybe we could do that on the Patreon or something. Yeah. Well. All right. So final thoughts.

Last thoughts on the movie. No. It's still a pretty easy watch. It's not going to. change your life but it's again you can throw it on and enjoy it and like yeah if you're like you know you got a hangover you just don't feel like thinking you've had a hard week at work you just want to throw something that's mindless enjoyable on this movie is pretty great uh for that you know eat some ice cream have some popcorn just forget about everything

Yes, this movie is so, it's an easy watch. Like, as soon as I put it on, I mean, I'll say it's a good script. Like, it begins, you know, immediately you're told what's happening. There's an alien invasion. And very quickly you're introduced to all the main players. Like within the first 10 minutes, you kind of meet everyone you need to meet for the film. I forgot to mention another actor who shows at Brent Spiner, Lieutenant Commander Data, is a scientist's film. but uh the the movie just it picks up starts moving really quickly and all the plot lines all the

various characters they end up converging in area 51 and like it's very elegant how it comes together um you know if a skill if a character is a skill that's introduced for example we meet um randy quade's character he's flying it comes into use at the end of the film like nothing goes the waste and despite the movie being like two hours and 20 minutes it does not feel like that. I mean, it's very easy for me to see, I mean, I saw it in theaters too, but it's also easy for me to see how this became just a huge hit because it very much is like the quintessential you show up for a good time at the movie's kind of movie. It doesn't require you to know anything going into it, right? This isn't the Avengers where like you have to have some sort of,

not just knowledge of the characters, but like knowledge of like the thing of the previous movies. You can just show up at a movie theater for Independence Day. immediately be plugged in. And they did very well internationally. I think that the, the, the, the fact of this movie kind of depicts,

right, even though it's American leadership, um, other country is engaged in the fight. I think also is a testament to sort of how it, it's almost like perfectly calibrated to hit every possible person who might step into a movie theater. Yeah.

A real, uh, I think like triumph of Blackbuster filmmaking in that sense. And, um, it's like no surprise. that basically Hollywood is just sort of like giving him property

property his next this is the Roland Emmerich that is the next film is a 98 Godzilla which is not good I saw that in theaters too I also owned the soundtrack because it had that collaboration between Diddy and Jimmy Page

but not a good movie still a huge hit still made nearly $380 million so Americk the 90s were that guy's decade just like cranking out hits day after day after tomorrow a movie will likely do on this podcast in the future gross like over a half billion dollars

um yeah he there's a formula and he kind of figured it out i guess yeah that is our show if you're not a subscriber please subscribe we're available on itunes spotify and google podcast and wherever else podcasts are found if you subscribe please leave a rating and a review it does help people find the show and you can reach out to us on social media if you want to you can also reach out to us over email at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this week in feedback, we have an email from David titled Root Beer in the First Contact episode. A lot of people like the first contact episode. Hi, Jamel and John. I really enjoy your podcast. I particularly love the first contact episode, not just because I like Star Trek, but for the amazingly

insightful comparisons about the Federation and or the Borg, America and the left and right to day. Comparisons of the Federation in America are not new, but you added a lot of never heard before relating to the current right-wing mindset. And everything about Hegel and the Borg was fascinating and stuff I've never heard before. I also love the insight about how Star Trek, at least in the 90s, usually favored solving a conflict throughout running the opponents rather than being stronger, unlike a lot of other media, which I had felt, which I had felt on a certain level, but never quite articulated before. I'm suspecting with the first to email with this comment, but as I was listening to your discussion, I kept thinking of

the well-known deep space nine conversation about Rupier and the Federation. I'm sure Jamel knows this, but for John's benefit, it's a conversation in the fourth season opener, The Way of the Warrior, between Quark, a capitalist Ferengi bar owner, and Garrick, a former spy from the Federation's often enemy the Cardassians, whose exiled on the station as a tailor becomes a major ally to the crew. In light of all your discussions, I was thinking both are kind of of right-coded in the logic of today's politics. Quark, because he's an Uber capitalist, who prizes profit overall, so kind of an analog of a right-leaning business owner who wants tax cuts, and Garrick, who's kind of like a neocon, he views defeating your enemies through

strength or cunning as the best solution to conflict. In the episode, the Klingons show up and suddenly are being warmongers again and are going to attack the Kordassians, who had been aggressive in expansionists, but lately have been weakened. The Federation tries to stop the Klingons because ethics and we're the good guys and all that. In a break from the action, Quark and Garrick have a conversation at the bar. Quark. I want you to try something for me. Take a sip of this.

What is it? A human drink. It's called root beer. I don't know. Come on. Aren't you just a little bit curious? Oh. What do you think?

It's vile. I know. It's so bubbly and cloy and happy. Just like the Federation. But you know what's really frightening? If you drink enough of it, you begin to like it. It's insidious. Just like the Federation.

You think they'll be able to save us? I hope so. I hope so. This seems totally in line with your comments about how the Federation represents this more subtle kind of expansion as ethos, that the multicultural egalitarianism should absorb every other ideology. Now, the modern rights sees the modern left in the same way. Here, Garrick and Quarker are outsiders to this ethos, and after three years in the show, are feeling the impact of it with great ambivalence.

In other DS9 episodes, some people make that point more well pointedly. I agree with Jamel, it's too bad there is never a DS9 movie. perhaps you could cover the two-part way of the warrior to quasi-movie in future episodes. Thanks again for your great work on the podcast, never else, David. Thank you, David. I think that this was in the back of my mind during that, during our episode. I feel like, I know I've seen this episode and I feel like this exchange, I couldn't like, I couldn't, it was the tip of my tongue, but I think it's a very important exchange for

thinking about how other, you know, how other races in Star Trek viewed the Federation. And I think it's very much, it's a good way of explaining how a lot of people view America, right? Like American cultural exports are viewed very ambivalently, ambivalently, are viewed very intimately for this reason, because people do like them. No, I'm not so familiar with Star Trek. this listener or you, but it sounds like a smart take. But yeah, I'm not into the, I don't have the same lore of Star Trek. If you ever get it, if you ever need, like, if you're ever bored when I just like watch something, DS9 kind of is, it's like, it's like Star Trek for people like us. Okay. I'll give a shot. I'll give it a shot. It's very much like the more thinkier

philosophic Star Trek series. Episodes normally come out every two weeks, but I will be on vacation in a few weeks. I'm heading to the cradle of Western civilization, Greece, but mainly just to drink and eat. That sounds like great, man. I'm very jealous. I want to go to Greece. This is first international trip in a while. Are you taking the kids?

No, we're not taking the kids. Okay, you're leaving with a thing. Okay, nice. That's going to be so much fun, man. Yeah. But okay, so I'll be on vacation in a few weeks. So our next main feed episode will be a Patreon bonus episode. Most likely our episode on Rambo First Blood.

And then you can subscribe to the Patreon and get all the rest of the Rambo episodes. After that on August 2nd, we'll have an episode on Tim Burton's kind of more comedic and cynical counterpart to Independence Day, the 1996 film Mars Attacks. Oh, fine. Here is a brief plot synopsis. It's a normal day for everyone until President James Dale announces Martians have been spotted circling Earth. The Martians land and the meeting is arranged, but not everything goes to plan. And the Martians seem to have other intentions for Earth.

You can find Mars attacks to rent or buy on Amazon and Apple. I had this on DVD way back when and used to watch it all the time. I don't even know why. I think it's because it was like one of the DVDs we owned. And so it's like, I guess I'll just watch this a bunch. don't forget our Patreon where we watch the films of the Cold War and try to unpack them as political and historical documents for $5 a month.

You get two bonus episodes every month as well as access to the entire back catalog which is almost two years worth of episodes. You can sign up at patreon.com slash unclear pod. The much recent episode of our Patreon podcast is on Rambo 3 and the next episode will be on Rambo, the 2008 film. And then we're going to set Ranbo. and then check out some i think we'll do some other 80s 80s stuff as well that is it for us

for john gans i'm jemel bowie and we'll see you next time Thank you.