Militarism, Misanthropy and the Body Politic: - Brunel University

EnterText 6.2
The film equates sex and reproduction with a fear of women’s bodies and of the
alien—all are conflated as monstrously feminine. The first off-screen voice we hear (and
the film’s third line of dialogue) says “come on, come on, come on baby,” as if someone
were in the act of childbirth. The camera then dollies past the barrier to reveal a tall
African-American male in white underwear. The camera finds a double for Connie, the
president’s wife and the governess, with tousled hair, body barely cloaked in a short
kimono-like night-gown, and legs provocatively spread across a swivel chair before a
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute desk and monitor. The film works with
bookends. At the end of the movie, David Levinson and Steven Hiller recall this early
scene by calling each other “girl,” the monster “baby” and saying “come on, come on,
come on, we’re in.”
The first scenes conflate the alien invasion and men’s interest in women not as co-
workers but as dames. Most of the first ten lines are pedestrian, but a man who is
awakened in bed says: “If this is not an insanely beautiful woman, I’m hanging up.” The
president tells his wife, referring to their daughter, “I’m sleeping next to a beautiful,
young brunette.” In a later rhyme, both the president’s wife and the alien nestled in its
spaceship die of an internal haemorrhage. Even the daughter’s depiction in regards to
women’s bodies and reproduction is perverse. She is called the munchkin and told to
“grow and grow.” Is she to help the human race outstrip the aliens’ enormous population?
ID4 frequently makes reference to a lack of manpower. 17 In Area 51, Dr. Okun praises
the handsomeness of the found alien spacecraft, “She’s a beaut,” and the munchkin steps
forward and gazes at it as if it were her own reflection. Perhaps the scene with father and
daughter in bed is benign, or perhaps it carries a whiff of incest. Whitmore does taunt his
Carol Vernallis: Independence Day 69