Hollywood Utopia

80 Hollywood Utopia
Vietnam film’. It is a story about an ‘over confident American military moving heavy
firepower into a world that is unfamiliar to it and being outflanked by a far cannier
indigenous force’. In the end, as in the original, Hammond makes a presidential
style address to the nation, endorsing an ecological position that supports ‘a new
policy of non-intervention’. Romney correctly insists that it is not a ‘political film’
but merely uses and co-opts ‘Vietnam iconography’ in the service of Spielberg’s
familiar theme of ‘benevolent responsibility’. The explicit application is used to
underscore the thematic subtext, with Hammond having undergone a
philanthropic conversion. We are shown ‘saurians romping in blissful coexistence
on their island utopia -an image that suggests a kitsch airbrushed painting on the
cover of a Christian Science manual’ (1998: 24).
Adam Bresnick is even more vitriolic, describing The Lost World as engaging with
the oldest philanthropy of them all, parenthood. T. Rex is a ‘better’ parent than
homo sapiens, for he never abandons his children even when big-time careers call.
Bresnick ends his critique by worrying out loud that ‘the scariest part is that
millions will subject themselves to such clap-trap, all in the name of kicks and
being part of the cinematic culture that rules the world’s screens’ (Bresnick 1997:
18). The narrative disruption, which initiates the need for a hunting expedition,
certainly brings into focus this ideological theme concerning family values, which
was also foregrounded in the original, and begins with an attack on an adjacent
deserted island that remains symbolic of a utopian paradise for man’s pleasure. 33
But here an illicit family picnic is followed by a young girl ‘straying from the path’
of her parent’s supervision, providing an opportunity for ‘unnatural’ creatures to
pounce.
Bresnick raises an important dimension of the text while at the same time
endorsing the Marxist’s most pessimistic prediction with regard to the pernicious
effects of popular culture. Nevertheless, I would assert that the underlying utopian
theme continues to tantalise an ever-present mass audience, even if the aesthetic
‘performance’ in the text is less effective than the original film. The Malcolm
character (again played by Jeff Goldblum), who has to ‘carry the film’, has
apparently lost his sharp scientific critical faculties, having been neutered by the
scientific establishment. Having been discredited by the Ingen company, he is no
longer the mouthpiece of critical chaos theory questioning the actions of greedy
capitalists as they try to control the prehistoric beasts. They have apparently
successfully undermined his critical faculties and natural instinct to whistle-blow
on the ecocidal disorder perpetuated on the original island with its unnatural
inhabitants. He appears a broken man, incapable of looking after his own daughter,
much less aware of his girlfriend’s dangerous expedition. Like a conventional
melodramatic protagonist, he is reduced to responding to crises rather than having
any predetermined sense of pro-active agency.