Independence Day, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love and Enola Gay (Bfi Modern Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Barmy
Review: Most of the BFI Film Classics booklets are relatively mild-mannered dissertations on the worth and meaning of a particular film, usually steering clear of the worst excesses of the over-analytical 'Sight and Sound' magazine from whence many of them spring. Michael Rogin's guide to 'Independence Day' is not like that, however. It's ever so slightly mad. Presumably annoyed at having to write about such a shallow flim, Rogin piles on layers of Freudian analysis to such a degree that 'ID4' ceases to be a jingoistic action film, and becomes a dark view of contemporary sexual politics. In particular, Randy Quaid's vengeful, drunken airman is on a quest to regain his masculinity after violation at the hands of the aliens (whose 'mothership' is explicitly female, and against which he exacts revenge with a symbolically 'unnatural' penetration at the climax of the film), whilst Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith are acting out a drama of black / jewish unity with symbolically erect cigars. I'm not joking. It's either deeply misguided or a work of genius, and well worth buying.