Is there a civics lesson in the 1996 film Independence Day? We think so.
Join the Civics 101 team for a conversation about the film, its politics, and what it says about the United States and its place in the world.
There's even a fire-jumping dog!
Transcript
Cinematic Civics: Independence Day
Archive: Mr. president, our intelligence tells us the object has settled into a stationary orbit. Part of it is broken off into nearly three dozen other pieces. Smaller than the whole, sir. Yet over 15 miles in width themselves.
Archive: Where are they heading?
Archive: They should be entering our atmosphere within the next 25 minutes.
Christina Phillips: I'm Christina Philips, this is Civics 101, and I am here in the studio with.
Rebecca Lavoie: Rebecca Lavoie,
Hannah McCarthy: Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: And Nick Capodice.
Christina Phillips: So this is another installment of our ongoing series, Cinematic Civics. Is that what we're calling it? Cinematic civics?
Rebecca Lavoie: Sure. Civics, cinema, cinematic civics, civics on the screen, whatever you like.
Christina Phillips: We'll go with cinematic civics. I like the alliteration there. What I'm talking about is where we talk about our favorite movies that have to do with the government, politics, etc., etc.. And what movie did I make you guys watch this weekend?
Hannah McCarthy: Star Wars Episode ten. Aka Independence Day.
Archive: It is confirmed the unexplained phenomenon is headed for Moscow.
Archive: It's like in chess. First there position on your pieces using this one signal to synchronize their efforts.
Archive: And then what?
Archive: Checkmate.
Christina Phillips: So we are talking about the 1996 film Independence Day, directed by Roland Emmerich, about a giant alien invasion bent on destroying humans and harvesting all of Earth's resources. And the president, President Whitmore, played by Bill Pullman, where he data scientist David, played by Jeff Goldblum, and slick fighter pilot Steven Hiller, played by Will Smith, who team up to bring these aliens down.
Archive: Something you want to add to this briefing, Captain Hiller?
Archive: No, sir. Just a little anxious to get up there and whoop ET's, that's all.
Christina Phillips: I chose this movie for several reasons. One, because it's one of the first movies I saw in theaters when I was five years old, and I loved it. Two aliens three. Because it is a goofy artifact of American patriotism that's about as subtle as being the first country to land on the moon and then immediately planting your flag there, which is also the first scene of this movie. And for because this movie deals a lot with the military might of the United States and the role of the U.S. in geopolitical warfare. Now, one reason I didn't choose this movie is because of the United States decision to drop bombs on nuclear sites in Iran a few days ago, thereby demonstrating this military might.
Archive: With a post online and then an address to the nation. President Trump announced the United States attacked Iran's three most important nuclear sites overnight, marking a major escalation in the violence in the Middle East.
Archive: Iran's nuclear enrichment facility.
Christina Phillips: So we're taping this on Monday, June 23rd, which is two days after the United States drop bombs on three different nuclear sites in Iran. But it just so happens to be extremely, extremely relevant. More than I could have anticipated. So relevant, in fact, that the aircraft carrying the nuclear bomb that the United States drops on Houston in the movie Independence Day is the same kind of aircraft, the B-2, that the United States used to carry the 30,000 pound ground penetrating bombs that were dropped on Iran. So, in the words of our president, Donald Trump, quote, there is not another military in the world who could have done this. All this to say, it's true that this movie both does a really good job representing the geopolitical position of the United States in the 90s, but it's also about telepathic aliens. Will Smith flying a spaceship into another spaceship so Jeff Goldblum can upload a virus to the spaceship's computers. Question mark. Question mark if you've never seen it. Spoilers abound. I don't think spoilers will ruin your experience of this movie. If you have not seen it in a while, I recommend checking it out again. It's kind of fun, but that's just my opinion. So I'm curious and I'll start with you, Rebecca. What did you think watching this movie?
Rebecca Lavoie: Well, I was not five when it came out. I was 24 or something like that when it came out. I was born in 1973. I think that this movie is a peak 90s film. Uh, 90s. The 90s had this entire genre of action movies and political intrigue and all sorts of like, psychological thrillers. And this movie combines a lot of those elements. And you have Will Smith punching an alien in the face.
Archive: That's what you get. Ha ha. Look at you, all banged up. Who's the man? Ha! Who's the man? Why did I get another play?
Hannah McCarthy: So I first watched this film during a party my parents were throwing. I think it was a 4th of July party. If I had to guess, it was on cable. And I just remember thinking, I can't believe I'm getting away with this. All the grown ups.
Hannah McCarthy: During the other room, and I'm getting to watch this movie. That's deeply disturbing to me. I enjoyed watching it as an adult, seeing as it's been so very long. One of the things that struck me the most is that the CGI kind of holds up. I think they were really smart about the CGI. It's often behind smoke or it's like seen through another screen. I do wonder, like, was this one of the first movies in which Will Smith is our dependable, definitely going to save us all guy? How well established was he at that point?
Christina Phillips: I will just say this movie does put him on the map.
Rebecca Lavoie: Fresh Prince of Bel Air actually ended in 1996 when this movie came out. So he had like a continuous career like Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ended. And then this movie came out, which is why he's kind of never had a gap in his fame, for better or worse, since then.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, but this is the one that launched him as the action hero.
Archive: I've been waiting for this my whole life.
Hannah McCarthy: In terms of the actual civics of it. There were a lot of moments where I thought like, oh, come on. Like, there doesn't check out at all. But it was delightful nonetheless. And I was moved by the president's Independence Day speech.
Christina Phillips: Okay, Nick, what did you think?
Nick Capodice: Well, I saw it. And when it came out in theaters in 96, and I was telling Hannah, the one thing I remembered most about this movie is not just me, but the whole audience laughing at the amount of product placement that was going on particular. When Will Smith hugs his girlfriend's son? There's a giant Reebok hat scene. The entire audience exploded in laughter when the emotional highlight of the movie had a big old Reebok right there, as big as the cinema itself. But as to the movie, I got emotional. I was, you know, I was prepared to be really cynical and snide the whole way through. And of course, I was wracked with tears at certain moments. You know I do. I do that one thing that matters a lot to me. The movie opens on July 2nd, which is actually our Independence Day. So they got that right. That's not the 4th of July. The 2nd of July was when the Continental Congress approved Virginia's resolution to become an independent nation. So hooray for that. John Adams would have been thrilled.
Christina Phillips: Does someone want to sort of break down what happens? The aliens show up on Earth, and then the United States does what? And kind of what is the main climax that brings everybody together?
Rebecca Lavoie: Well, I think when it becomes clear that it's a worldwide disaster, that everybody is facing the same thing, the United States comes up with a plan that they say is impossible, but they figure out how to do it in like 45 minutes. And then they put out the Aquaman signal to all of the other heads of state and militaries around the world who were able to somehow coordinate within, just like a five minute window, when they are going to be able to drop the shields of these giant ships that are floating all over the world, and they're all going to simultaneously be able to blow them up. And it takes a lot of coordination. But of course, we pulled it off from deep inside of a mountain because that's how we are.
Archive: What the hell is he saying? It seems they're getting a signal. Old Morse code.
Nick Capodice: There was a lot of like, well, we can't understand each other because we all speak different languages, even though we're all citizens of the world. But then it's like Morse code is going to solve all the problems. It's still English in Morse code. It's not like Farsi, but Morse code. It's English. Fire the missiles now. Yeah, buddy.
Christina Phillips: Exactly. Morse code is not. It has never been a universally. Every single country in the world has used it. And there are different forms of Morse code. So that is definitely like a hand-wavy thing. I do think that's a really good example of a like, well, we'll just do this. And if you poke that hole just a little bit, you're like, nah, I don't think that'll work.
Rebecca Lavoie: I think the whole point, though, was that they were using the cables under the ocean instead of like, signals over the air, presumably.
Hannah McCarthy: Well, just this idea that, like, it's Morse code, it's echoing Jeff Goldblum being like, I'll just make a virus that will infiltrate. This highly evolved technology that we've already been told by Brant Spiner that their bodies are like ours in terms of vulnerability, but their technology is way more advanced.
Archive: No no no no no. We know tons about all, but but the neatest stuff, the neatest stuff has only happened in the last few days. See, we can't duplicate their type of power, so we've never been able to experiment. But since these guys started showing up, all the little gizmos inside turned on.
Hannah McCarthy: But it was the 90s. So computer virus, you know.
Nick Capodice: Well, it's a nod to, uh, War of the worlds. Yeah, it's. Yeah, the aliens die from a virus in that.
Hannah McCarthy: I know, I thought that was great, but it's also silly.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. And to be clear, Brant Spiner, that is the actor playing Doctor Brackish Ocean, who is the scientist, the sort of eccentric scientist who has been studying these aliens for the past 15 years, presumably.
Nick Capodice: At area 51.
Christina Phillips: At area 51, which we will talk about. The big thing that really stuck out to me, that I want to talk about first, is the fact that the climax of this movie is about the United States solving this problem, as we've said, and saving the world and doing so by creating a worldwide alliance which includes countries such as Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iraq all launching their own weapons at the same time. This was a national sensation. It was also a global sensation. This was the biggest blockbuster globally since Jurassic Park, which, like this movie, was about reptilian super beasts and Jeff Goldblum telling us we don't know what we've gotten ourselves into. So, I mean, maybe it's just the Jeff Goldblum of it all. He was not in Titanic, which was the movie that beat the record a year later, but it seems as though he's got something that's really successful. But also, I think that one of the reasons this movie was so appealing is because it hits on the sentiments of the time about the United States, both within the country and outside of it, alongside being super entertaining and bombastic and aliens and excitement. If we think about the 90s, when this movie came out, if we were to imagine a scenario set up in the movie where our world is invaded by aliens, would you say in the 90s that the United States is the one best prepared to respond to that attack?
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah. I mean, we just come off of Desert Storm Like we had practice.
Hannah McCarthy: We're fresh off the Cold War. And I think the United States would have prided itself on being the sort of victor of the Cold War. Right? Like, look, we came out super powerful. You guys didn't get us. And now here's a movie about nukes.
Christina Phillips: All of that. Exactly. Right. So building up towards the 90s, the United States for at least a century had the world's strongest economy. So we were already the economic superpower. By the 1990s, the United States and the Soviet Union were the two main military superpowers, far and away. No other countries were close. And then, as you said in 1991, we have the dissolution of the Soviet Union and your right hand, the United States played a major role. And I think this is a pretty good example of soft power in that George H.W. Bush was lending his support and essentially saying that if there were parts of the Soviet Union that wanted to seek independence as long as they were doing it in a way that matched the democratic ideals of of the United States, that the US would lend them aid. And so there was like sort of this tightrope that the United States is walking. And I think it's a really great example of the soft power that it's using into effect, in part because we have a lot of actual power, meaning weapons. So that is one side of it. So we have the dissolution of the USSR, and then the US is now the global superpower, right? We are the one that is left.
Rebecca Lavoie: Also, I believe I remember this correctly, that when the Soviet Union broke up and they began looking at all the nuclear sites in the Soviet Union, they hadn't really been maintained very well. So it turned out that we'd been maintaining our arsenal and it was ready to go. And the Soviet Union's was kind of rusty. Mhm.
Hannah McCarthy: Given that fact, this movie presumes that all of these other nations have semi comparable nuclear power to ours in terms of size of arsenal. We see how many nukes it takes to bring down a ship, right?
Christina Phillips: My assumption is that the nuclear weapon is only used first on Houston and then on the mothership. Agreed that all of the other weaponry is just bombs of different kinds.
Hannah McCarthy: Random missiles. Oh, gotcha.
Archive: Can I confirm that the target was destroyed?
Archive: You can take me online. I want confirmation the target was destroyed. Yes, sir. Red arrow, Alpha niner.
Christina Phillips: Houston is the one place where they try it first and it fails. And then they're like, well, we have to get down this force field. And the idea is that if you can get into the ship, you can take down the force field. We'll use the one nuclear bomb on the mothership, which is way bigger than the other ones, even though it really doesn't look that way because you don't see it in scaled to anything else. And then all the other countries will use all of their missiles to take down the other ships, presumably using the method that Russell Case, aka Randy Quaid uses by flying straight up into the solar beam and blowing up the ship.
Archive: I told you I wouldn't let you down. Just keep those guys off me for a few more seconds, will ya? Okay.
Archive: Echo niner, echo seven, take flanking positions. I want you to look after this guy. Okay?
Nick Capodice: Just wondering when is an okay time to talk about Randy Quaid. Rebecca. I think he might know what I'm talking about.
Rebecca Lavoie: Right? Yes. Yes.
Christina Phillips: I didn't mention him in the intro, but he is just some real color in this movie.
Rebecca Lavoie: I mean, Randy Quaid in this movie plays a crop duster who's a former Vietnam era pilot who claims to have been abducted by aliens at some point, which everybody thinks makes him bananas. And that kind of parallels some of Randy Quaid real life trajectory. You know, he's a mainstream actor in the 80s and 90s, and then over time, he has become this kind of outside Hollywood figure.
Nick Capodice: He tried to become a refugee to Canada and was refused entry. And, he was convinced, made public statements that actor deaths such as Heath ledger and then somebody else after that who I don't remember, those were due to somebody who was killing celebrities, and he was convinced that he was next on the list.
Christina Phillips: What's his arc in this movie? How are we supposed to feel about him by the end of this movie?
Rebecca Lavoie: Redemption. He got redemption for being a bad dad by saving the kids.
Christina Phillips: Also by he gets redemption for being presumed to have been making it up right. And then he's like, no, no, I was actually abducted by aliens. It's not clear if it's these aliens or what. Civics 101. We'll be back after a quick break. We're back. This is Civics 101. We are talking about the 1996 film Independence Day, directed by Roland Emmerich. There is one other thing that I think is really important to this time period, which we've already alluded to. What President Whitmore's job was before he was elected. So what was President Whitmore doing before he became the president?
Nick Capodice: Wasn't he a pilot in the Air Force?
Christina Phillips: Yes. In what war?
Rebecca Lavoie: Desert storm?
Nick Capodice: Yes. You mean Desert Shield or Desert Storm?
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah. I was actually looking this up, and they. And they've kind of co-branded everything together now. The Gulf War, Desert shield, Desert Storm, freedom, like, they've sort of said, put it all under one big umbrella on all of the military history websites.
Christina Phillips: And Desert Shield is the first part and Desert Storm is the second part. And this all took place over seven months. This was a military campaign. So I'm just going to lay out very briefly what happened. Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and this was part of a long, complex history in this region of the world. The important thing to know for today is that the United States was already deeply embedded in the politics of this region. It would be a disservice, I think, for me to try to condense any of that down into a few sentences.
Nick Capodice: I just want to give a shout out to another podcast out there. If anybody wants to know the whole history of our embeddedness, specifically in the Middle East. The blowback podcast is a phenomenal exploration of this season, one in particular.
Christina Phillips: What you should know is that post-World War Two, or even starting in World War Two, is that the US, considered the Middle East one of the most strategically important regions in the world? In large part, but not completely, because of oil and petroleum? The US government was involved in the formation of Israel in 1948, the 1949 Syrian coup, the overthrow of the Iranian Prime minister in 1953, and the first Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. So what happened in the early 90s is that in order to stop the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The US and 41 other coalition countries launched a major military campaign that involved massive land battles and massive air campaigns. And they ultimately succeeded in stopping the invasion, ending the invasion of Kuwait. But it created this major humanitarian crisis in Iraq, and it further destabilized the region. But the U.S. comes to call this the Good War because it was an example of a success, if you will. Hannah, I remember you said that you had a lot of thoughts about all of this. What were you thinking when you were watching this movie?
Hannah McCarthy: Okay, so here's like one thing. And this is what often just like baffles me about alien invasion movies. It presumes that an entire planet can overcome infighting completely, get together as a planet and go invade another planet. Like the notion that there are species out there who can coordinate a planetary effort is, like baffling. And if we are to be extraordinarily generous with Independence Day, perhaps that's kind of what's going on when it comes to a full planet coordination in defense of another planet attacking us. But it is a a bridge that is very, very far away, as I'm concerned, because, I mean, we know our species is evolved. We don't know how highly evolved because we don't know what to compare to except for other species on this planet. But like we are having our real hard time with planetary coordination.
Nick Capodice: Why is there no United Nations in this, in this alien planet?
Rebecca Lavoie: They're living John Lennon's Imagine on their planet, right? No borders, no countries, no nothing. And I think these movies are a fantasy. Like if there's an existential threat to everyone, we will come together. And I think that we've proven that that's not true. Given the climate change situation. There is an existential threat to everyone, and yet we are not able to come together and agree to fight it together.
Christina Phillips: So, I mean, I will say that Roland Emmerich, one of his next movies, is The Day After Tomorrow, in which presumably there is a massive climate disaster. We're heading into the next ice age, and that plays a little bit more with the geopolitical situation, in that there is a very obvious, like 1 to 1 to Vice President Dick Cheney in that film. But yeah, to your point, Hannah, if I find one thing about this movie is that it's like very smug. It's extremely smug about the ability of the United States in particular, but also our world to create this kind of unified response to this alien invasion, as though we are all one and they are the enemy. The person who does that gets a lot of, you know, he gets a lot of time to sort of be human and to presumably be the one who can help bring all of these things together. Which is why I really want to talk about President Whitmore.
Archive: Regardless of what you may have read in the tabloids. There have never been any spacecraft recovered by our government.
Christina Phillips: So I would like to spend just a little time laying out what we know about him as a person heading into this invasion. And this is specifically things we learned essentially in the first five minutes of this movie. You know, him waking up and seeing his daughter and hearing the news in the background. What do we learn about him as a person and what people think of him?
Hannah McCarthy: We know that he's awake when he gets the phone call, even though the line immediately preceding it is wake him. But it's like, no, he's already up. He's already watching the news. We know that he loves his wife very much, right? Laura Roslin. I have a feeling that Mary McConnell, starring as President Laura Roslin in Battlestar Galactica is her way of making up for all of the wild space inaccuracies in this movie. Because BSG is known for being pretty good at that.
Archive: I will use every cannon, every bomb, every bullet, every weapon I have down to my own eye teeth to end you. I swear it.
Hannah McCarthy: But yeah. So we know that he's just an all around All-American. Sweetie. Sweetie, sweetie. Right.
Rebecca Lavoie: He gets over his wife pretty quick, though. Just saying.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, he sure does.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, he sure does.
Archive: Perhaps if we'd gotten to her earlier.
Archive: Wait a minute. What are you saying?
Archive: We can't stop the bleeding if we can. There's nothing we can do for her.
Hannah McCarthy: A doctor will not walk out of her room where someone is bleeding out. Be it internally or externally and say, ah, we couldn't stop. That doctor will work on you until you die. I mean, unless there's a doctor out there who's like, no, I do it all the time. But like, to my understanding, that's not what we do when someone is bleeding out.
Christina Phillips: I love that you draw the line not at telepathic alien speaking English, but at doctor leaving the hospital room when. When someone is bleeding out. But yes, you're right. That's ridiculous. What else do we know about this president as far as how he's doing his job up to this point?
Nick Capodice: Oh, yeah, he's a PR disaster, isn't he?
Hannah McCarthy: Mhm.
Nick Capodice: His PR person is also like mouthing the words to his speech that he's giving at the beginning of the movie. Yeah. It implies that his press secretary also writes all of his speeches for him. He's not doing well in the polls. He needs a boost. He's under constant supervision by the press secretary, who happens to be Jeff Goldblum's former wife.
Christina Phillips: Mhm. Yes. Connie.
Nick Capodice: But later in the movie, when he speaks from the heart, his own words, they rallied the world together.
Christina Phillips: One of the things that you hear sort of in the news that's coming up and in his conversations with his press secretary, is that he was a fighter pilot in the Gulf War. Right. So he's presumably fresh off this war. He's very young. He's 39 years old. And that young ness helped him win the presidency. But now it's also seen as a weakness. He is getting mired down in politics at one point. It's too much politics, too much compromise. So at this point in the movie, he's seen as a very weak president.
Archive: They're not attacking your policies. They're attacking your age, addressing Congress. What more seems less like the president and more like the orphan child? Oliver asking. Please, sir, I'd like some more.
Christina Phillips: But if you look at how he performed with audiences, a number of studies and polls have found that he is one of the most beloved fictional presidents in pop culture, alongside President Bartlet from The West Wing and President Marshall from Air Force One. The first was played by Martin Sheen, of course, in the second by Harrison Ford. Why do you think he's so popular? And you alluded to this a little bit, but I'm curious, like, what do you think this says about what we value in a leader if we're using this movie as a frame of reference for American audiences?
Hannah McCarthy: I don't think we actually value, like, experience and being a good dad the way we might pretend to saurus means loving one's wife a great deal. But my point is, while these polls might say that he's our favorite, and maybe it has to do with the fact that he ends up like redeeming himself and saving the world, maybe. I think we like people who are loving fathers and husbands in fiction, but in terms of a leader, does that really matter to us once they're actually in power? I'm not so sure.
Nick Capodice: I think one of the reasons he's so beloved as a fictional president is because he is fictional, because he doesn't have a party as long, as far as I can tell. Uh, isn't that interesting? Uh, we don't know where he stands on any issues that are sort of hot button political issues. He doesn't have any policy at all. A crime bill, that's the most generic thing in the world. We just know that he's good at fighting aliens, and he can speak with sort of a paraphrased Dylan Thomas poem and get everyone all rallied up.
Christina Phillips: Rebecca, do you have thoughts about him?
Rebecca Lavoie: Pullman. That's all I'm going to say about it. Okay. Very appealing.
Hannah McCarthy: He's handsome.
Rebecca Lavoie: He's just appealing. He's like, I mean, when the attack is first happening or first imminent, he's going to stay behind in the white House, like he's going to be with the ship, right? He's going to be the captain. Oh my God, those poor second helicopter people. They always get destroyed in these kinds of movies. Like never get on the second helicopter when you're escaping the white House. That is my advice. If I've learned anything, it's that if I'm at the white House when disaster happens. Get on that first helicopter with the president and randomly the press secretary and other people who are there, because the second one is always a goner. Always.
Nick Capodice: Yeah. The first helicopter also always has the evil guy who's going to keep saying do the wrong thing. And that actor, I don't know his name, the actor who plays the evil, uh, secretary of defense, do you know his name?
Christina Phillips: Anybody know the name of the secretary? This is the secretary of defense, Albert Nims. He's named for, I believe, a producer that Roland Emmerich didn't like. He's played by James Horn.
Nick Capodice: James Horn has been that role in about 7000 movies. And he's always like, no, no, we gotta bomb everything.
Archive: Moved as many of our forces away from our bases as possible, but we've already sustained heavy losses.
Archive: I spoke with the Joint Chiefs when they arrived at Neurath. They agree we must launch a counteroffensive with a full nuclear strike.
Archive: Over American soil.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, yeah, I think that that is hitting on something that really stands out to me, which is that at every opportunity, this is a president who is approaching things from as peaceful a perspective as possible. So they send out that helicopter is called the Welcome Wagon. They're they're like, we're sending out the welcome wagon to like, flash some lights and see if they'll communicate with us.
Archive: No, they will not.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, but even when he's in front of an alien itself, he's like, can we strike a deal? Let's communicate.
Archive: I know there is much we can learn from each other. If we can negotiate a truce, we can find a way to coexist. Can there be a peace between us? Peace.
Archive: No peace.
Christina Phillips: And it's like the alien is like. No! We're gonna kill you. You know, it's only once the alien has telepathically communicated the future in which they take over all of Earth's resources, that he's like, all right. It's time. We have to attack them. But I think he's he's situated throughout this entire movie as Responding to attack rather than initiating attack in order to prevent harm, which at least to me, seems very different from the way the United States has been engaging in political warfare and regular warfare for much of the 20th century. Yeah, and that we have been taking active military action. And even, by the way, today, in order to prevent what we presume as a threat or prevent some sort of action in the future.
Nick Capodice: I freaking love movies like Starman and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and any movie where an alien comes to Earth and people keep wanting to kill it. And it turns out this may be the savior of humanity. All of those movies are referenced in this one. Will Smith punches the alien in the face and says, now that's what I call a close encounter. And the helicopter that's flashing lights like.
Archive: Doo doo doo doo doo.
Nick Capodice: Just gets blown to hell. So it's it's it's sort of a slap in the face to this notion that people from other planets are welcome and they might help us save ourselves. We need it.
Rebecca Lavoie: Now. They're worse than us because they want to use all of our resources even faster than we're using all of our resources.
Nick Capodice: Yes. Yeah.
Christina Phillips: How dare you do it.
Speaker22: Better than others?
Nick Capodice: Yeah, we're the ones who do that. We strip everything.
Christina Phillips: I would like to listen to the speech that the president, President Whitmore, makes on the morning in which they are going to begin this mission, to send Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum up to plant the virus somehow and wave at that and lower the defenses of all of these alien spaceships that have gathered around the world and allow us to attack.
Archive: We're fighting for our right to live, to exist. And should we win the day? The 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice, we will not go quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight. We're going to live on. We're going to survive. Today we celebrate our Independence Day.
Nick Capodice: I would love it if there was a holiday that celebrated everybody as a citizen of the world. And we're all together on this roller coaster. I don't love the idea that, hey, our independence, they're not independent from anything like from these aliens. We're already independent of the aliens. How on earth is that a celebration of independence?
Hannah McCarthy: Do you know what it is?
Nick Capodice: What is.
Hannah McCarthy: It? It's American democracy. See finally triumphing worldwide, which is the thing we tell everyone we're doing when we engage in war activities.
Christina Phillips: So we will come back to the president when we talk about aliens and area 51, which is what we're going to talk about next, about all of the things that this movie references, all of the government agencies, all of the secrets that are referenced in this movie and not really explained and oftentimes miss referenced when we come back from a break. So stick around for that. We're back. This is Civics 101. We are talking about the movie Independence Day, which came out in 1996. We've talked about the geopolitical climate. We've talked about how the US is the hero of this movie and what that says about how we feel about our country. Now we're going to talk about aliens and whether or not our government knows anything about them. I want to start with a moment where David, aka Jeff Goldblum and his father are on Air Force One.
Rebecca Lavoie: David's father is the one who invokes the idea of area 51.
Archive: None of you did anything to prevent this. There's nothing we could do. We were totally unprepared for this. Ah, don't give me unprepared. Come on. It was, what, in the 1950s or whatever.You had that spaceship.
Archive: Dad?
Archive: Yeah.
Archive: That thing that you found in New Mexico. Dad, what was that? No, no, not the spaceship. Roswell. Roswell. New Mexico. Yeah. No, you had the spaceship and you had the bodies. They were all locked up in a in a bunker. David, I don't know. Area 51. Right. Area 51. You knew then and you did nothing.
Rebecca Lavoie: And that the U.S. has encountered aliens before, and the president's like, no, we haven't. And then his people are like, yes, we have. We just wanted to give you plausible deniability, thereby putting plausible deniability in the lexicon for American English forever.
Nick Capodice: Thank you, Independence Day.
Christina Phillips: Let's talk about this plausible deniability thing. Right. So the idea is that the president does not know about a secret military base that maybe has aliens. Is it a good look that the president doesn't know what the government is doing? Or is it a good look if the president does know and is part of the scheme to hide it? What do you guys make of that?
Hannah McCarthy: The president is an elected civilian, the highest ranking civilian in the country, right. But the idea is like the president is like us, which we know that this is not true. But so the idea that someone who doesn't have the cohesive training that many people at various levels of the government have would be given a bunch of information that they almost certainly cannot understand or know what to do with. That should be a little frightening, right? Like it should the idea that the president knows everything without the tools to parse it is a bit concerning. So I can understand the concept of just. He doesn't need to know this.
Nick Capodice: I'm with you on this one, Hannah, because, you know, the president is given the nuclear codes right there, given the, the the football and the biscuit, and then they're not the president. Right. And they're not president forever. It's eight years at the most. You know, you can't take the knowledge of aliens away from the president once they're no longer the president. So, you know, I think that's kind of in keeping with the framers intent.
Christina Phillips: I do think it's interesting that once he knows, he's able to make a lot of decisions about it, once he sees the facility, he's like, okay, this is what we're going to do. We're going to do this. We're going to do this. So it's almost like he gets to demonstrate the fact that he's a problem solver or whatever. But before we even get to area 51, David's father, Julius, accuses the government of having found aliens before, and he references a place known as Roswell, New Mexico. What is the significance of Roswell, New Mexico? Because he's alluding to something that actually is a part of our history. What is he talking about here?
Rebecca Lavoie: Roswell, New Mexico, is the site of an alleged flying saucer crash. And basically, Roswell has branded its entire town around this, which is super interesting. There's a lot of debate about whether or not it was a weather balloon, and there's a lot of really fun fake videos of the alien autopsy that happened after the Roswell, New Mexico incident. They're totally fake. People try to pass them off as real, but it definitely fed Roswell fed into this law that, you know, we are being surveyed, and it was very much a response to the growing power of the Soviet Union and things being up in the air that we don't know what they are. But yes, Roswell certainly took on the most legendary status of UFO incidents in the United States. It was even a television show called Roswell with Katherine Heigl in it.
Hannah McCarthy: In 1996. Was the existence of area 51 not particularly well known? We didn't have Google Maps. We didn't have a super robust internet. What was the status of the generalized knowledge that area 51 does actually exist?
Christina Phillips: The government did not officially confirm the existence of a research facility in Nevada, known as area 51, until 1998. In fact, Roland Emmerich, the director and his producer have said they originally had permission to film on military bases for this film. When the Department of Defense saw the script and saw references to area 51 and Roland Emmerich refused to take them out, the US government pulled that offer of filming locations and material. Roswell, New Mexico What the government has said is a military research balloon that crashed in 1947, in Roswell, New Mexico. The reason it was in New Mexico is because New Mexico is a place where the federal government does a lot of top secret research. This is borne out of a few things. Geography it's hard to access. There's the kind of topography that you can do a lot of tests and, you know, you have lots of space for runways also. Oppenheimer chose to build the Manhattan Project in New Mexico. And and that sort of laid the groundwork for further research facilities in that region. There's also a lot of research facilities in Colorado, Utah and Nevada in particular. So the fact that Roswell becomes important is, is honestly, because that's where the government was testing things that would go up high enough to monitor communications, especially communications and transmissions from Russia. There was also a lot of scientific research just to gather information about the planet. So once that weather balloon crashed in Roswell. The government was very secretive about it.
Christina Phillips: There were actually people who witnessed what looked like body bags when the government went to recover it, and that led to the assumption that there were aliens. It was actually, as far as the government claims, they were transportation bags for the equipment to keep the equipment safe. All of these things sort of led to these theories of aliens, when in fact it was the federal government trying to hide its own defense research capabilities. And it is true that area 51 is a place that was known to people, in part because of former military and former government officials who left the government and then would say, hey, I worked on an alien spaceship when I was at area 51. It was sort of known in popular culture, and it was also known pretty widely that there was a black box, if you will, in Nevada that was near Las Vegas. That was about 23 miles wide and 25 miles wide in the other direction. That was a no fly zone, a no fly zone, and that was the location of area 51. It was known as the Groom Box. And so there is this knowledge that there is something there that nobody is allowed to get near. And there's also this idea that we've seen these weird flying things in the sky, and it turns out that many of those things are actually researched weapons, their weapons development happening in that place. Nick, do you want to tell me your factoid about area 51?
Nick Capodice: You can go online and see people who have federal criminal records. You can see their file one day, a person who was, you know, a journalist, sort of stumbled into area 51 and was looking around and trying to take photographs and now has a file, now has a government file. And that man who walked in that day. Later on became a radio personality. And now you know the rest of the story.
Rebecca Lavoie: Wow.
Nick Capodice: Paul Harvey, ladies and gentlemen, Paul Harvey.
Nick Capodice: Paul Harvey.
Rebecca Lavoie: When did the government figure out that the UFO theories were actually good for them? Because they were. Because I remember when the stealth bomber first was unveiled. Right. And everybody in, like, Nevada or whatever was like, oh, we've seen that. We thought it was aliens this whole time.
Christina Phillips: There's lots of communications that you can see declassified information in part where the government is kind of like, people know about this place and like we know that they're seeing the military weaponry, the military aircraft that we're testing, and they're assuming it's UFOs. And like, what do we do? Should we confirm that this is, in fact a military training ground or it's a testing facility? Like, what do we do? And there were conversations about that. I think it is one of those things where the the government is like, maybe this is a better thing for you to think we're doing here than what we're actually doing, which is developing weapons and stealth reconnaissance abilities and testing nuclear bombs, which is another thing that was happening in Nevada. There was actually a civil lawsuit against the federal government in 1996 by some government contractors who were like, you're not disposing of nuclear materials properly in this area, and it's causing a lot of environmental issues and health issues.
Hannah McCarthy: There are still communities deeply affected by this who are just.
Christina Phillips: Yes.
Hannah McCarthy: Who still want some sort of help or retribution.
Christina Phillips: And it's yeah, it's been confirmed that over 700 of the over 900 nuclear tests have been done in this region. So this is just a a concentration of weapons development and weapons testing that happens In this part of the country. We have had some things declassified, but it's still like the development of weapons and the development of different kinds of infrastructure. Military infrastructure is still not very well known. Do you know of some of the things that have come out of area 51? What sort of stuff has been developed.
Rebecca Lavoie: Besides stealth technology for planes? Because isn't that area 51 stuff?
Christina Phillips: That is the correct answer. Yeah. So the first is the U-2 and then later the A-12. Now these are military aircraft, surveillance aircraft that can fly way higher than most aircraft, presumably outside of the range of Soviet missiles that can pick up on radio transmissions and monitor and take photographs. The U-2 and the A-12. For a while, they were like, yes, these cannot be shot down. And then the Soviet Union did shoot them down in 1960. They shot down one. And and in order to negotiate, in order to get the pilot back, the US government had to admit that they had developed these spy planes. So these came out of area 51. There is also something known as the F-117, which is the first stealth bomber developed in the United States. Now, if you look at the alien spaceship in Independence Day.
Rebecca Lavoie: The ones they fly around. Yeah.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, yeah. The one that Will Smith flies that if you look at the F-117 or the B-2, which is the same aircraft that was used to drop the ground penetrating bombs that were dropped on Iran this past weekend. They look very, very similar, which I think gets to your point, Rebecca, that people were seeing these being tested and they began to associate them with aliens, when in fact these are government weapons. One of the features of these Hollywood patriotic movies is that the United States is our military hero, right? This film, it does make attempts to make humanity important here, but it's pretty easy to watch a movie like this and sort of get the impression that the United States is all good. The United States is being presented as all good in this film. Until you remember that the reason we have all of these super powerful weapons in the first place is not to defend ourselves from outer space, but to use these weapons against one another and use these weapons against human beings. So I feel like this movie is really relevant in our current moment, because we are holding these two things right next to each other. These weapons are used to save humanity in this movie. They're now being used very similar weapons, in some cases the same aircraft to carry out campaigns against other people and other countries. So that's sort of where I ended up ending my feelings about this. And I'm wondering what else you guys thought about. If you have any final thoughts.
Rebecca Lavoie: I thought a lot about Jeff Goldblum's character and sort of the, you know, the before the rise of tech bro culture. You know, there were just in pop culture, especially computer guys were always portrayed as like sitting in dark rooms alone. He obviously couldn't maintain his marriage and all that stuff. Right? But he's kind of the hero, right? The guy who figured it out, the computer guy, the quote, nerdy guy who can see the code, who can interpret the code, and everybody listens to the tech guy. And it just occurred to me that, like, that seemed very much like a fantasy. Like at the time, like, you know, the smart guy in the corner who no one talked to in high school is all of a sudden the hero. Same thing with wargames, same thing, you know, with lots of these, like, 80s and 90s films. And today it's the tech guys who are running the world like they see themselves that way. Like, we're not they're not portrayed in pop culture that way anymore. They're are villains in pop culture. But they see themselves as saving the world in real life.
Nick Capodice: It's because those tech guys started making those movies in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. Or they could. Be the hero. And then, you know, two generations later, they run the world.
Rebecca Lavoie: Hmm.
Hannah McCarthy: What's so strange to me about this movie is that it doesn't have a moment of the deeply selfish character who's supposed to be representative of all of the deeply selfish people who, in a moment like this, would get on a spacecraft and leave Earth. And we know that there are people who have the ability to do that privately, right, in certain ways. I mean, I know I'm stretching it a little bit, but I would have appreciated like one guy trying to get to Florida so that he could just get off the planet and then somehow he's foiled or the aliens get him or something. But there was none of that. Nobody even suggests leaving the Earth and not staying in fighting. And I have one other thought, which is that, as I hinted at the beginning of this episode, Will Smith is so Luke Skywalker coded? It's ridiculous. It is so silly.
Rebecca Lavoie: Hero's journey.
Hannah McCarthy: Hero's journey. He is someone who wants to have an adventure in space, but is mostly getting his training in an arid climate in a canyon. He performs beautifully, and then later on, he uses that exact same skill that he displays when he is in a giant, destructive structure in space after getting it ready to be blown up. It's so Star.
Nick Capodice: Wars. Oh, that's a good yeah. Just like Beggar's Canyon back home, huh? I had a thing that I thought was interesting, that I just sort of realized is that there's a scene in this movie that's kind of the reason we're all here making this show. Bill Pullman turns to his weaselly, weaselly secretary of defense and says, you know, you're fired. And the secretary of defense says, I don't think he can do that. You can't do that. He can't do that. And then the white House press secretary says, yeah, I think he just did. This notion of, can the president do this? Well, he did it. That's it. That it just got done. That's that's something we talk about a lot on our show. And that is it's part of our genesis as a show. So thank you Independence Day.
Christina Phillips: Thank you Independence Day.
Nick Capodice: Also, there's a scene where the dog jumps through a ball of fire. Before that scene happened and like the dog was in the tunnel, I was I jokingly said to Hannah, I was like, man, it'd be really cool if the dog, like, jumped through a ball of fire to get out. And we laughed really hard. And then it happened exactly like that. Yeah. 90s baby.
Christina Phillips: This episode of Civics 101 was written by me, Christina Phillips, and produced and edited by Rebecca Lavoie. A big thank you to our hosts, Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy. Our team includes producer Marina Henke. Music in this episode from Epidemic Sound and Chris Zabriskie. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.