Militarism, Misanthropy and the Body Politic: - Brunel University

EnterText 6.2
viewer identification and sexuality draw the viewers’ attention away from misanthropic
representations. In particular, Freudian devices of compensation and displacement help
turn Independence Day into a dream-text that relaxes a viewer’s critical distance.
Significantly, ID4’s densely textured misanthropic representations were deliberate
attempts to obtain specific effects: Independence Day’s regressive character touches are
missing from Dean Devlin and director Roland Emmerich’s original script. 8 The script
doctors may have added the additional material during later scripting sessions in order to
give the film a bit more kick and increase box office, and maybe even to balance the
film’s special effects.
This article begins with a sketch of the construction of the stereotyped
characters. 9 The paper’s second half explores the ways that these devices support the
stereotypes, and finally considers ID4 as a rehearsal for America’s current war.
ID4’s Stereotypes: Punishment of the Other
The characters who get punished by the aliens’ wrath group together as a type: the film
diminishes their humanity, which allows them to help delineate the film’s leading roles.
Nearly all of the casualties in the first third of the movie seem to assume the viewer’s
complicity.
For many viewers, a
sense of glee when flashes
of light first erase the
White House and the
Pentagon may harden into a
Carol Vernallis: Independence Day 65
Fig. 2. The White House is erased.