1996, a presidential election year with a very much criticized President, Bill Clinton, and a strong conservative movement building up in the wings to impose later on a republican president that would sell a vision of the world drawn from the apocryphal gospel of some Christian born again that is no saint at all. But you have to put this vision on the market, peddle it to innocent customers and prepare the public to the total war it would justify and bring upon Americans, with eventually thousands of dead totally collateral victims. This film is part of this « cultural » strategy to make us believe the US are under attack and has to go to war and pay the sacrificial price of this war and its victory. In other words it was paving the way to the election, by the Supreme Court first and later with a minority of the popular vote, of George W. Bush and his war on terrorism, on Afghanistan and on Iraq. Luckily the infernal mechanism seems to have come to a gripped halt, to a citizen-inspired grasp of reason, in time to avoid two or three more wars on who knows what and whom. The result is a schmaltzy waltz with invading extra-terrestrials. Nothing is original. The basic idea comes from Ronald Lafayette Hubbard and his Battle Earth, without the basic idea that human beings are slaves and must not be destroyed because they can be exploited, without the long and fundamental initiative coming from the deepest depth of the human species to build up a counter-offensive and the reconquest of liberty. The Extra-terrestrials are copied from so many other productions that it is nearly an icon of visual and pictorial plagiarism. And the victory is borrowed from H.G. Wells and his War of the Worlds in the form of a virus, this time a computer virus. That's a creative twist, isn't it, in other words spam ? The actors try to do what they can but it is so incredible that they seem to be acting with a tongue, or maybe two or three tongues, in their cheeks. When Hollywood goes to war in the political field, it can be pretty bad and unbearably unethical. Every producer and director is not Charlie Chaplin, not even Jeff Goldblum, thanks God for it, otherwise we would effectively, efficaciously and effect-fully be sold any kind of adventurous caper on the international stage. Though in this case this campaign succeeded quite well, even if it seems to have come to an end.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
