“Independence Day”: Isakower in the Sky

 

by H H Stein

Fighting against the most powerful force known to man.

In the world of our emotions, no image is without conflict. Even the womb has its dark side.

 

I am hesitant to admit that I went to see Independence Day. The truth is that I wanted to see it, lured like others by the intriguing ads we saw for months before the film came out. It went something like this: “July 2, they arrive.” We see giant shadows appearing across the land, and then we see massive saucer-like space ships hovering over cities. “July 3, they attack.” We see laser-like beams projecting down from the ships and striking landmarks, the White House and the Empire State Building, causing them to disintegrate in massive explosions. Finally, with no explanation—”July 4, we fight back.”

 

I was further intrigued by the mobs of people lining up to see the film when it opened on July 4 weekend, fascinated with the lemming effect that the film had created. The mass response seemed in keeping with the impression of massive doings represented in the ads. What is more, many of these people came out reporting that the film had delivered its promise.

 

Part of the allure was the prospect of re-living the experience of going to an old style, unselfconscious “sci-fi movie.” I was also intrigued, like others, at the idea of confronting something so overwhelmingly powerful, and curious to see how it could be defeated. As I looked more closely, I came to understand that behind the images of alien spaceships and fantastic creatures was another powerful force with which we must all contend.

 

The film opens in a way that continues the experience from the advertisement. The opening credits appear as a series of exploding letters. Once again, after the title, we see the now familiar caption “July 2”. We find ourselves in space, just off the surface of the Moon. The camera pans to the monument left there by the first Moonwalkers from Earth. I was struck by the silence and the enormity of space. There is a faint stirring of the moon’s surface dust, and then a giant shadow begins to cover the moon’s surface and the small monument. Next, we see Earth in the center of the screen. A large ship eclipses our view of the Earth. We see only a portion of the flat underside of the ship as it moves through our line of sight.

 

These quiet scenes of massive proportions are juxtaposed with scenes on Earth. A young man is practicing his putting in a station in which he is monitoring signals from space while his stereo plays a song with the repeating lyrics, “It’s the end of the world as we know it.” He becomes excited as a signal comes in, and awakens others. Their joy turns to shock as the calculations show that the signal is coming from a huge object near the moon. This brings a flurry of activity as generals are awakened, and finally the President is called. A series of scenes show day to day life on Earth while introducing the central characters. The first evidence to the general public of the arrival of the alien ship is a disruption of TV satellite communication. There is a hurried meeting at the White House at which we learn that the object in space has settled into a stationary orbit and that “part of it has broken off into nearly three dozen other pieces, smaller than the whole, sir, yet over fifteen miles in width themselves.” They are on schedule to arrive in our atmosphere in twenty-five minutes.

 

The ensuing scenes display growing hysteria on Earth. Iraqis in the desert flee from something that turns out to be a huge cloud of fire in the sky. There are reports of mass hysteria in Russia and elsewhere. An AWAC plane reports complete lack of visibility. As vision becomes clearer it is confronted by a fireball of biblical proportions that it cannot evade. In each scene, we are struck by the size of the approaching objects. Asked what happens if the visitors become hostile, the President responds “God help us.”

 

Images fill the screen in rapid succession—an enormous fireball cloud passing over the American southwest, a shadow whose limit we do not see passing over Los Angeles, a similar shadow moving across Washington, as the Washington monument and then the White House are covered in shadow. We see our first direct view of the ships as one comes into view over the Brooklyn Bridge. It fills the sky over New York as people stop what they are doing to look up, cars crashing into each other, and settles with its center point directly over the Empire State Building. The sky darkens over the White House as the President and his closest advisors look up at the underside of the ship that blocks the day.

 

The effect is one of enormity and awe. The sun, the sky, are blotted out. Life stops as all attention is called to the objects above. As viewers in the theater, we also look up at the extraordinary spectacle. The President’s chief advisor, a woman, asks, “What do we do now?” Indeed!

 

This scene depicted on a world wide level, with millions of people transfixed, reminded me of a similar phenomenon, experienced by solitary individuals, usually as they fall off to sleep, and well known to psychoanalysts. It was first described by Otto Isakower in a 1938 paper:

 

“The visual impression is that of something shadowy and indefinite, generally felt to be ‘round,’ which comes nearer and nearer, swells to a gigantic size and threatens to crush the subject.”

 

The hallucination that Isakower described includes strange sensations, particularly around and in the mouth, feelings of floating or giddiness, distortions of body images, including a feeling of indefiniteness about the boundaries of the body. The sensations in the mouth may include a sandy, dry feeling followed by a sense of something pressed against the nose and mouth and a sensation of something wet. Acknowledging the speculative nature of his deductions, he proposed that the phenomenon reproduces a state of mind from a very early point in infancy, and wondered if the sensations might bear the imprint of what was being experienced at that time:

 

“Yes, these imprints seem very easy to detect; they are mental images of sucking at the mother’s breast and of falling asleep there when satisfied. The large object which approaches probably represents the breast, with its promise of food.”

 

It is as if the film has created for each of us a sense of what it is like to be an infant watching the approaching breast. Large round objects of indefinite size approach rapidly. We see first vast shadows, and then we look up at a massive round surface, blocking out the light and completely enveloping our view. As it sits above the point of the Empire State Building, its button center looks somewhat like a nipple. But if there is any doubt, wait for the countdown as the alien ships prepare to fire their weapons on the cities. We see it first above Los Angeles as eager mobs stand below the ship on a rooftop waiting for contact with the aliens. The bottom of the ship begins to open around its nipple, leaving a dark rounded structure at its center. We see a dark circle surrounded by a thick ring of light with thin dark lines radiating out. For a moment, we are looking up at a full, rounded nipple and areola. This is repeated as we see the same phenomenon over New York.

 

The film does not depict some of the non-visual experiences associated with the Isakower phenomenon such as a dryness in the mouth, or the sensation of fluid in the mouth or loss of physical boundaries of one’s body, but it captures certain emotional aspects of the Isakower phenomenon. We are made to feel awe in the presence of something large and powerful. Along with most of the people in the film, we react by losing all discriminatory faculties. On screen, we see mass hysteria, with cars crashing into one another and people running about as if they have returned to a state in which they can only react globally with no judgment or ability to discriminate.

 

Isakower reported a mixture of emotions in reaction to this phenomenon—”’Not unpleasant, but also not pleasant’”; “’A feeling of discomfort amounting to nausea’”; “apprehension”, “an uncanny feeling”, “disagreeable tension with subsequent relief”. However, most descriptions after Isakower’s emphasize that the Isakower phenomenon is usually experienced as pleasurable. It is often a component of that pleasurable moment before the onset of sleep, and several psychoanalytic authors, including Isakower, have seen it as a return to a very early state of pleasure to ward off more dangerous sexual feelings as we are attempting to go to sleep.

 

In this film, the predominant emotion is fear. We do see anticipation of pleasure as crowds of people in Los Angeles station themselves directly below the ships to await a transcendental experience. These people do, in fact, appear to regress to a state of passivity and eager expectation of mother’s milk from above. Instead, a laser-like beam shoots down, spreading destruction.

 

A Kleinian psychoanalyst (a follower of the theories of Melanie Klein) would probably say that the film is depicting the “bad breast.” I prefer a different vocabulary and perspective, but I do think that the film represents a sense of distrust and anger towards the mother’s breast and the lure of passivity that it carries. We have to look at what is destroyed by the alien ships. We see the destruction of our large cities and their symbols. The advertisements for the film highlighted the destruction of the White House and the Empire State Building. For the average viewer, our powerful institutions, government and big business, are overwhelming. They make us feel small and helpless in our everyday life much as the alien ships do in the film. By overpowering and destroying these institutions, the alien ships are expressing our aggression. In fact, the destruction of “phallic” structures like the Empire State Building by giant “breasts” could suggest a struggle between a maternal and a paternal presence.

 

The film does not encourage us to regress to oral passivity. It gives us a taste of the allure of the experience at the breast, a pull that I think we sense marginally as we are drawn into the film’s fantastic plot. But it always maintains a sense of enormous danger, and, in effect, serves as a warning against the dangers of such a global regression. The President comes to regret his decision not to evacuate the cities while he tries to make friendly contact with the aliens. The film evokes some of our desire for regression, but it primarily supports the pull away from this regression.

 

In fact, the people in the film defeat the aliens and achieve independence in much the same way that the child does, through a process of progressive differentiation. In the early part of the film, we experience the alien ships in a relatively undifferentiated way, with the vague impressions that we associate with the Isakower phenomenon. The ships are large, powerful, unassailable. As the film develops, we can only overcome them by getting a more differentiated, refined view of who they are and how they operate.

 

This is accomplished primarily through four characters who represent cultural stereotypes. They are the responsible, good-looking, leader of men white male President; the brainy, moralistic Jewish computer expert; the brash, in your face, afraid of nothing African American pilot; and, the traumatized, alcoholic pilot living in a Southwest Mexican American community. Each of these men has a reason for not falling fully under the sway of regression.

 

For the President, it is his defined role as a leader. His sense of responsibility does not allow him to regress into helpless awe. With the space ship hovering above them, his aide asks helplessly, reflecting the view of most of us in the audience, “What do we do now?” His response is stereotyped, but it is at least a differentiated response. He says, “Address the nation. There’s gonna be a lot of frightened people out there.”

 

The others have the advantage of being outsiders. They do not see themselves as being fully part of the community and have a natural defiance of authority, be it human or alien. David Levinson, the Jewish computer genius, is so busy solving problems that he never falls into undifferentiated awe of the alien ships. Early in the film, he achieves the first differentiation of the alien attack, a first step towards their defeat. Working for a New York cable company, he starts working on a problem with the satellite communications that is disrupting television transmission. Signals from the alien ship out in space have coopted our satellite communications system. While everyone else on Earth is hearing about the invasion, he is involved in his calculations. While everyone is glued to their T.V. sets, he comes out of his cubicle and says, “I got a lock on the pattern of that signal, so we can filter it out, but if my calculations are right it’s going to be gone in about seven hours anyway. It’s reducing itself every time it recycles, so eventually it’s gonna disappear . . . ” This makes him the first to begin to understand something about what the aliens are doing. He even displays confidence that he can filter out the signal. He is beginning the process of differentiating the information he is getting. This allows him to be less in a state of fear and awe, although he is certainly aware of the danger. In fact, he takes it upon himself to warn the President that the diminishing signal is probably a timing device set to detonate a simultaneous attack on all the targeted cities. (Where was he the last time my cable service was interrupted?)

 

The African American pilot, Steven Hiller, doesn’t see the ships approaching. He is sleeping late with his girlfriend as they pass over creating a rumbling that he takes to be a minor earthquake. When he finally awakens and sees the ship, it is not directly above him. This is the first time that we get to see the ship from a side view, diminishing the full Isakower-like effect. Like David, he is also an outsider. A friend reminds him that he’ll never accomplish his goal of being an astronaut if he marries his girlfriend Jasmine, a stripper. Like David, he is stereotyped as a member of a minority group who has reason to be defiant and not in awe of authority.

 

Steven is part of the first attack on an alien ship. The attack ends in disaster as the larger ship spews out a host of smaller fighter ships that, like the bigger ship, have impenetrable shields. These ships chase Steven and his fellow fighter pilots, destroying most of them, including Steven’s close friend, but Steven remains confident that he can outmaneuver them. He leads a ship through a series of narrow canyons, blinds the ship following him by letting loose a large parachute, then ejects himself, leaving his own plane and the alien ship to crash into the mountain. Steven walks to the alien ship, opens the hatch, and sees an ugly, frightening looking alien. Unfazed, he punches it, then drags it across the desert. This is the next step in differentiation. Although they still seem invincible, the enemy has now been identified more closely and even shown to have some physical vulnerability. The aura of the massive ships with their unknown contents has been broken down. The overwhelming maternal presence, while still a danger, is now seen as consisting of a group of individuals who put on their pants one leg at a time (however many they have).

 

The fourth hero, Russell Casse, is also a pilot. He can differentiate because he has been the victim of an alien abduction. This has led to his post traumatic stress disorder and his alcoholism. He has seen the aliens, and he fears and hates them as an enemy.

 

The process of differentiation continues rapidly now. We discover that the government has a secret experimental station in the desert at which studies have been done for decades on a crashed alien ship and the bodies of the aliens inside it. We also learn more about the aliens. Steven brings his live alien to the complex, and in a dramatic confrontation, the alien telepathically enters the President’s mind before being killed in a volley of automatic weapons fire. Now, we learn the purpose and method of the attack. These aliens are like interterrestrial locusts, moving from one area of space to another, wiping out the inhabitants, taking all the resources, and moving on. Now, the enemy is taking the shape of a horde of hungry babies rather than an all powerful mother.

 

There is drama concerning human mothers as well. President Whitmore has a young daughter and an attractive, kind wife. His wife survives a helicopter crash in her attempt to escape the firestorm that has hit Los Angeles. She is found by Steven’s girlfriend, who with her young son and her dog is leading a small group of survivors out of the disaster site; but when she is finally reunited with her husband and daughter, she is dying from her internal wounds. We see her little girl jumping on her bed and greeting her at the same time that her husband is finding out that she can’t be saved. The President sends his daughter out, and spends a few last moments with his wife. He is crying as he rejoins his little girl, who asks, “Is Mommy sleeping now?” He answers, “Yes, Mommy is sleeping.”

 

David’s mother has died as well. Throughout the film, he is accompanied by his feisty father. Moments after the first lady’s death, it is July 4th and we see David despairing. His father tells him, “Everyone loses faith at some time in their life . . . I haven’t spoken to God since your mother died. You know, sometimes we have to remember what we still have.” We are reminded of the poignancy and despair associated with losing a mother, but also of our ability to survive it. What is evoked is that we can and must survive the loss of a mother and give up our earliest attachment in order to grow and succeed in the world. Independence Day is not a glorification of motherhood, but a warning against its seductiveness. This is reflected in the film’s resolution.

 

Still trying to raise David from his doldrums, his father tells him to get up from the floor lest he catch a cold. With an homage to War of the Worlds, David suddenly realizes that the way to defeat the aliens is by planting a virus in their computer system. The hero of the nineties comes armed not with a gun or sword, but with a computer. The computer is a symbol of power that is open to the great and the small. The computer, which was once seen as an instrument of centralized power and danger, as in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, is now the weapon of the underdog. The computer also carries enough complexity and ambiguity to allow for any sort of magic. A hero types in a few directions on a computer keyboard and our suspension of disbelief will allow for just about anything to follow. Working with his laptop computer overnight, David is able to gain control of the defensive system of the captured alien fighter ship and disarm its shield.

 

The solution to the destruction of the aliens evolves out of the despairing moments after the First Lady’s death and the reminder of the death of David’s mother. In order to be victorious, we must accept and overcome the pain of losing the protection and nurturance of the maternal bond. Conversely, dependence on a maternal breast is a weakness, as shown in David’s plan. “If we plant a virus into that mother ship, it’s gonna filter down to all the ships below.” Steven will fly David in the alien craft to the giant “mother ship” out in space. David will hook into the mother ship’s computer system and plant a virus, temporarily disarming the entire fleet. Now it is the aliens who are vulnerable because of their dependence on a mother!

 

As the film approaches its resolution, each of the four male heroes reaches a personal resolution as well. Like Dorothy and her three companions in The Wizard of Oz, each man overcomes obstacles and weaknesses to realize his life ambition by demonstrating independence and maturity. Russell, the crazy alcoholic who has brought shame to his children, finds his courage and honor. He gives his life to destroy an alien ship as it is about to fire its weapon, telling the people on land to “Tell my children I love them very much.” President Whitmore, the unpopular “wimp” President, overcomes the loss of his wife, a maternal figure, to find his own forceful leadership. Steven Hiller, who demonstrates his independence and individuality throughout the film, gratifies his wish to be an astronaut by flying the alien fighter ship into space. He also marries his girlfriend to take on the responsibilities of a family. David Levinson, the obsessional environmentalist, gets to save the planet, discovering his manhood in the process. He is a technological genius who works at a job well below his skills, doesn’t have a driver’s license, gets airsick, and spends his time worrying about the environment (Mother Earth?). Although divorced, he still wears a wedding ring that ties him to a woman who has lost respect for him. In the end, he rides into space to confront our enemies and returns with a manly swagger and a cigar in his mouth, regaining his wife’s respect. Each of these men must prove himself and show personal independence and initiative. Like the growing child, they each must learn to solve problems themselves, through action, rather than by depending upon the protection and aid of others.

 

The final battle for freedom from maternal dependence is fought in the womb itself. Steven and David are pulled in by a tractor beam as they approach the mother ship. As they move through a narrow triangular opening into the ship’s dark, mysterious caverns, it is as if we are watching a scene from the film Fantastic Voyage, in which tiny people travel through the human body. They have re-entered the mother’s womb. At the center, they find millions of aliens prepared for an invasion, a nest full of hungry babies ready to be born out of the mother ship to devour our world. Steven and David are pulled in by this maternal force with no power to resist, yet their purpose is not to permanently reenter the womb, but to destroy the mother ship’s power and then escape, born again as free men.

 

After they have been docked at the center of the ship, David attempts to connect with its computer system using his PC laptop. (A particularly tense moment for me—what if the aliens used a Macintosh?) He makes successful contact with the “host” computer and uploads the virus that disables the alien computer system and with it the defensive shields guarding all the alien ships. He and Steven are ready to set off their nuclear weapon and escape when they find that they cannot undock themselves. At this moment of crisis, the maternal attachment appears to be too strong, but they decide that they will die rather than remain trapped. They smoke a last cigar (a male symbol in this film?) and shoot off their nuclear weapon. When they release the missile with the nuclear device, it lodges in the control center of the alien ship, suddenly freeing them. Now Steven must evade the enemy fighters that chase him and find his way to the opening of the mother ship before the bomb goes off. As he approaches the opening, it begins to close up in a last attempt to hold him in. He gets his ship out just as the maternal womb closes up completely, trapping the aliens who had been pursuing him.

 

In the control panel of the alien mother ship we see a now bewildered and child-like alien looking on helplessly as the clock ticks down and the explosion is set off sending a cascade of parts of the ship towards Earth in what becomes a July 4th fireworks display. David and Steven return to their wives, the victorious President holds his daughter up to see the artificial meteor shower, and the world is spared—minus a few of its major cities and with the minor irritation of world wide radiation from all the nuclear bombs used to destroy the aliens.

 

A friend commented on this last point. Why is it that we leave the theater feeling good when so much of the world has been destroyed and spoiled in the film? One obvious answer is that we do leave the theater and find that our city, still polluted, noisy, and ugly, is comforting for just being there.

 

But there is another answer. As with many films, we do not react so much to the outer “reality” of the film as to its hidden emotional content. This is particularly true for a fantasy. Common sense combines with wishful thinking to allow us to disregard the terrible trauma we have seen. Instead we focus on the underlying positive message. Although it has been at the cost of much pain and destruction, Independence Day has allowed us to experience liberation from the most powerful force known to man, the maternal bond.

 

Isakower, O. (1938). A contribution to the patho-psychology of phenomena associated with falling asleep. Int. J. Psychoanal. 19:331-345.

Published in the PANY Bulletin, Summer, 1997 and in Double Feature: Finding Our Childhood Fantasies in Film (2002: EReads)