Militarism, Misanthropy and the Body Politic: - Brunel University

EnterText 6.2
out of its centre. (Is this what miscegenation begets—complete incoherence?) A shift in
camera angle to the monster’s front reveals the creature to be something like Baba Yaga.
The alien resembles the Russian monster because its bulky top half opens up to reveal a
shielded interior that houses a living entity—a miniature devil. The little devil looks like
those from medieval paintings, with triangular heads and diamond-shaped ears. It looks
like a goat. It also looks like General Nimziki!
Class
Looking like the most unbelievable characters in the whole film, as if they came directly
from a 1940s cartoon strip, two homeless people, with putty plastered over their faces to
suggest hairy moles and other unseemly protuberances, the white man wearing a little
paper crown, the black man clutching a green bottle of whisky, step forward together
from underneath a railroad overpass. This is the film’s only imagery of very poor people.
A population a few economic rungs up has a bit more representation—the South-
west working poor. The ways their homes are displayed in the mise-en-scène makes them
seem like locusts roosting on the land. 48 Independence Day has no wealthy or corporate
characters. This is the film’s most striking lacuna. To show the wealthy or to show people
with real corporate power would be to raise to the level of an issue that these people have
already taken their tax cuts, moved to gated communities, and departed from the civil
sphere. Only the lower and middle classes can be called upon for their courage and
commitment to America.
Carol Vernallis: Independence Day 87