Cinema
Independence Day (12, selected cinemas) My Beautiful Laundrette (15, selected cinemas)
One giant leap for machines
Mark Steyn
Bob Dole, in the midst of his auto-sub- versive post-modern campaign for the Pres- idency, went to see Independence Day the other day. His speech-writers had already written him a speech saying how much he liked it, but he had a couple of hours to kill so figured he might as well see it anyway. Afterwards, he summed up the movie in his usual staccato: 'Diversity, leadership, America,' he announced approvingly. Later, he was asked to amplify this rave review and examine the film's qualities in greater depth: 'We won, the end, leader- ship, America, good over evil,' he declared.
That's really all the précis you need, though it's worth observing that, unlike Dole, the fictional President in Indepen- dence Day, played. by Bill Pullman, knows how to deploy a verb: his eve-of-battle speech to his troops in the Nevada desert is the sort of address John Wayne might have given at Agincourt, and any presidential candidate could learn from it. Dole might also have noted the film's unerring sense of iconography, beginning with its first eerily formal image — an ominous shadow pass- ing over the Stars and Stripes planted on the moon. Most invading aliens would knock out, say, the electric grids, but these guys want to make a point: they zap the Statue of Liberty, they shatter the Empire State Building, and best of all they blow up the White House. It was this shot in the
trailer that had American audiences cheer- ing. At the time, the film hadn't been com- pleted, but director Roland Emmerich and his co-writer/producer Dean Devlin wisely took their cue from the promotional teaser. It was, without doubt, the most successful ever: even before the film was released, its signature image — the flying saucers big as cities hovering over New York and Los Angeles and plunging them into night was being parodied in the trailers for the Brady Bunch sequel.
After which, is there anything to be said for the film itself? Dole has a point about `diversity'. The aliens who destroy the world's great cities are eventually overcome by an array of archetypes — a black air ace (Will Smith), a brainy Jew (Jeff Gold- blum), a stripper with a heart of gold ... More problematic stereotypes — like the whiney gay — are dispatched early on. As in The American President, the Hillary Clin- ton problem is solved by killing off the First Lady, thereby allowing the President to get in touch with his masculine side, don his helmet and fly off to vanquish the foe. Ultimately, the fate of the American dream hinges on the fortuitous fact that, in the most spectacular product placement in his- tory, Jeff Goldblum's Apple Mac happens to be compatible with the aliens' master computer. As Apple Mac isn't even com- patible with Amstrad, this suggests British technology won't be much use — and, indeed, Her Majesty's forces are restricted to a brief cameo of two plummy chaps in the Iraqi desert.
The odd thing about Independence Day is that it isn't ever scary, and it's hardly ever thrilling. Like the Atlanta crowds cheering the US basketball team to victory over Angola, the film revels in the peculiarly parochial invincibility of America. Once upon a time, space inspired man to reveries Cone small step' et al); now, man drags space invaders down to earth and treats them like guys who cut you up on the turn- pike: when the hordes are eventually repulsed, it's to the stirring poetry of 'Up yours, alien assholes!' Think back to Inva- sion of the Body Snatchers, with its furtive, creeping takeover of a small town, its citi- zenry reduced to empty, soulless husks: a metaphor for McCarthyite conformity, sup- posedly. There are no metaphors or sub- texts here. The striking thing about this picture is its lack of genuine human impulse; machines and effects are all. Who needs an invasion? The husks are already here. In Hollywood at least, the body snatchers have taken over.
Meanwhile, stop the permanent press: My Beautiful Laundrette is back. If it seems like it never went away, that's because its twin preoccupations — young Asian bi-guy feeling his way through Sarf London plus compulsory savage indictment of Thatch- er's Britain — have been endlessly recycled by Hanif Kureishi in ever more lurid car- icatures ever since. Back then, though, he didn't know it was the only plot he'd ever have, so its treatment is comparatively understated. Among other charms, the film has the most sweetly ingratiating gay make- out scene in motion pictures. Incidentally, whatever became of Rita Wolf, the pic- ture's Asian babe? I've caught her since in a fringe rap musical and a Jack Rosenthal television play, but not often on the big screen. She had a zillion times the presence of insipid dolls like Helena Bonham- Carter. What happened?
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