Militarism, Misanthropy and the Body Politic: - Brunel University

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cropduster-turned-kamikaze pilot, played by Randy Quaid, and with the celebratory white
male war room.
While this article addresses how people in the U.S. might use Independence Day,
it devotes more time to those characters and extras who are presented as misaligned with
the status quo and subsequently othered and/or removed. ID4 creates fear of an invasion
and channels it into a hysteria linked to homosexuality, sex, race, gender, ethnicity and
the body. The film’s othering is also not trivial in relation to United States’ actions and
the war today—perceiving individuals and groups among us and without as “evil” can
spur such questionable actions as military tribunals, detention of people without charging
them with a crime, restrictions on civil rights, the withholding of foreign aid, reduction of
domestic spending, inflation of the military budget, threats of war, and going it alone,
outside of the world community. This piece asks: how might ID4’s dreamscape map onto
President Bush’s, the government’s, the media’s and the public’s imaginary of 9/11 and
the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars?
Here is a brief synopsis of the film: the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Institute (SETI), an obscure agency that monitors the airwaves for evidence of alien
communications, discovers an unusual broadcast signal and forwards it to the Pentagon.
It soon emerges that an alien spaceship has entered Earth’s orbit, and smaller ships have
broken off and placed themselves over strategic sites around the globe, perplexing the
U.S. President and his staff. A cable technician, David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum), notices
that the spaceship’s signal is diminishing and ascertains that the aliens are “using our own
satellites against us.” He and his father rush to the White House to meet with the
President and his assistant, David’s ex-wife Connie. The president, his entourage, David,
Carol Vernallis: Independence Day 62