Militarism, Misanthropy and the Body Politic: - Brunel University

EnterText 6.2
bad, and what the hell is that smell?! Ahh! I coulda been at a barbecue. But, hey man,
that’s alright. Hey! Hey! Hey!” 27 The camera cuts from a wide shot of Hiller to a close-
up of the alien’s “limbs.” (They look like ostrich legs.) Hiller begins his dreadlocks
monologue: “Draggin’ your heavy ass... with your dreadlocks.” In the cinema or in the
classroom, this is a moment when everyone laughs. (The other moment is when Marty
Gilbert, a gay man, is flattened by the underside of a falling car.) The joke is that finally a
black man has to shoulder the white man’s burden—black males. Like the stereotypical
black man, the alien is lazy, smelly, and unkempt. 28
Steven Hiller tends to show up late. His other minor flaws include childishness
(He removes his hands from the alien flight craft steering wheel, raising Levinson’s level
of anxiety), a volatile temper (he screams at the top of his lungs as he leaves the aliens’
corridor, and yells at both Jasmine and the alien), and perhaps a touch of sexual cruelty
(Like the President, he playfully threatens his wife with infidelity, suggesting he’ll get on
“a freaky thing” with his girlfriends). He appears relatively late in the film, and he is
sketched more quickly than are the other male leads. Jasmine repeatedly reprimands him
for his tardiness, and he has trouble advancing in the military ranks. Wilder further casts
a shadow on his character when he jokingly calls him “a loser” and “a wuss.” Battling the
enemy helps the male leads grow out of their faults. After exiting the alien ship, Hiller
says, “Elvis has left the building.” Like the original security guard who broadcast the
message over a walkie-talkie, he’s done well to keep track of time.
While Steven Hiller shows courage (he slugs the alien one) and a high degree of
physical dexterity (his mastery of spaceships resembles adolescent boys’ skills with video
games), he is granted neither great cunning nor perceptiveness. The alien spaceship’s
Carol Vernallis: Independence Day 75