Hollywood Utopia

176 Hollywood Utopia
Safe uses its stylish, often ambiguous, wide-angle shots to force viewers to scan the
images for clues towards understanding Carol’s psychological predicament. Her
attacks begin in earnest when she watches what could be considered a deep ecology
video, which proselytises for ‘an understanding of the oneness of all life’
reminiscent of the utopic closure of The Incredible Shrinking Man. Carol takes the
video as it was intended -a mildly consoling ‘new age’ balm. She is positioned at the
other end of the spectrum from the Body Snatchers’ mindless conformity or the
Borg’s all consuming totalising system. But at the same time, she is not provided
with the keys to a form of proactive agency or witnessing, which would give
meaning to her life. Unlike the crew of Star Trek or other protagonists discussed
in this chapter who learn to appreciate the correct ethical path to follow, she
remains directionless and therefore unable to fight her psychological
environmental demons.
Yet Peter Dunnings’s treatment in the desert retreat remains one of the most
forthright deep ecological messages presented in a film that at the same time posits
a rejection of any form of human agency. He commands his patients to
cut yourself off from ills of the world, accentuate the positive in your view of the
world . . . and your inner self will be transformed -to healing effect . . . We are the
one with the power that created us. We are safe, and all is well in our world.
While he remains ‘safe’ in his luxury house on the cliff-face overlooking the
commune, promoting at least outward inactivity, the final scene produces a logical
conclusion to this confusing and strangely counter-productive ‘witnessing of self’.
Carol is shown preparing for bed in an empty sterile space of a ‘clean room’ - an
igloo-like porcelain-lined dome - which is the ultimate in ecological simplicity.
Confronting her own image in the mirror, she tries to start working on her nonexistent
self-esteem, with her countercultural mantra of self-love.
The director, as cited in a review in Sight and Sound, is certainly ‘playing with
[your] leftist expectations - making you think Wrenwood has got to be the answer
- tricking you into thinking it has the answer’. Peter certainly has a whole
philosophy (like communitarianism) and is engaging, manipulative and
charismatic -all the things you expect from characters in a classic Hollywood
narrative. Audiences also want White to be healed. But the closure cited above does
not affirm that healing is in fact possible or that ecological pollution can be
contained. Ulrich Beck’s cautionary meta-discourse of the risk society has reached
its critical apotheosis with all the western material benefits of culture turning
against the biological harmony of individualised human nature and no resolution in
sight.
Yet Safe continues to have a strange affinity with The Incredible Shrinking Man.