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Hollywood's New Mythology
By Neil P. Hurley

"The design is the statement."
--Ridley Scott, film director.

AS popular art, motion pictures provide clues to the unconscious collective mind and suggest the direction of a culture. Alfred Hitchcock's pictures of the fifties and sixties (Rear Window, Psycho, Frenzy) mirrored the growing instability and fear of our contemporary world. Similarly, box-office attractions of the recent past provide valuable "peep-holes" into American society, its character and values. The perceptive critic can discern the outline of a new blend of religious and secular mythology in such films as Superman I and II, Star Wars I and II, Star Trek I and II, Conan the Barbarian, The Thing, Tron, Blade Runner, and E.T. These films have had broad popular appeal, provoking film critics to ask why the preference for such fantasy costume dramas. Let us look more closely at these movies to see what we can learn about the imagination of American youth, the largest patron group for the films mentioned.

The two Superman movies were based on the classic comic strip character, Clark Kent, the shy bespectacled reporter, who in a flash could disappear into a telephone booth, change into his blue cape with the large red "S" and fly through space to right some injustice or rescue his pretty co-worker, Lois Lane. The first movie opened with a mystical scene of Krypton, a far-away planet, where we meet a king (Marlon Brando), who for security reasons sends his infant son down to earth. In a Kansas cornfield the child is found by a caring farm couple who raise him. The terrestrial life of the child unfolds as the powers he brought with him prove him to be super-endowed and committed to good. It is clear that this part of the film (recounted in a flashback in the sequel) is a contemporary Christian parable suggesting the Incarnation.

Both Superman films touch a chord deep in the American psyche, namely the tension between country and city. Clark Kent, as an adult, is a big city reporter-an idealist, shy and trusting. In many ways he reminds us of the Capra heroes played by Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart. Kent goes promptly into action whenever faced with evil,

Neil P. Hurley, SJ, is Professor of Communications, Fordham University, New York. He has also taught at Loyola University, New Orleans. A perceptive interpreter of films, he has written two books, Toward a Film Humanism and The Reel Revolution, and has contributed articles on Chaplin, Hitchcock, and Wertmüller in a new anthology, Religion in Film, edited by John R. May and Michael Bird. Father Hurley is also the founder and director of "Inscape," a policy research institute for "Edu-tainment.

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usually in the form of a corruption of power at the city, national, or cosmic level. While superior force effectively solves problems, it never (as in most movie and TV cop and spy features) does so on the principle of might makes right. One need only recall films with John Wayne (True Grit) or Clint Eastwood (Dirty Harry) or Charles Bronson (Death Wish) to see that the vigilante spirit of private justice is very real for Americans. Superman, for some strange reason, is never wrong in targetting evil, even though there is no judge, jury, or trial. Superman points to a higher, more perfect moral order of retribution, except it is portrayed as immediate, "this-worldly."

Star Wars I is the greatest revenue-earner in history, though E. T. is likely to surpass it. A breakthrough in special effects, the movie again presents us with the country-city conflict, despite the galactic frame of reference. Luke Skywalker is raised by a farm family (notice the biblical name-Luke). He meets Obi Ben Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), a veteran warrior with a mystical sense of mission, who instructs Luke how to prepare for the interstellar conflict between the forces of good and evil. His weapon is a spiritual Excalibur, a "light-sword." It is used for righteous causes, befitting the blessing Wan Kenobi gives Luke" The Force be with you." Obviously, the Force means a higher benevolent spirit.

The film introduces us to Han Solo, a mercenary, who undergoes a conversion when he learns of Darth Vader ("Father of Death"), the leader of the Jedi Knights, committed to the conquest of space. The values are neo-Victorian with good and evil clearly demarcated. Princess Leia is even a Victorian heroine-someone like the silent stars Mary Pickford or Lillian Gish.

Conan the Barbarian takes us back into the distant past and justifies the use of violence for the purposes of survival. The title role is played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, body-building iron pumper extraordinaire. In a state of raw pre-civilized nature, humans live a precarious existence, menaced by the elements, fierce animals, and strange, often hostile, peoples. The film's point of view (which is akin to the growing vigilante spirit in America) is that nature's law is the survival of the strongest (not even necessarily the "fittest"). There are no cities in Conan the Barbarian. The atmosphere is pagan. (Recall that the word derives from the Latin "paganus," meaning from the countryside, in short-"uncivilized.")

Is the emerging post-Christian world similar to the pre-Christian world, where, unlike in Star Wars, "Force" means material coercive power and not a caring Providence bent on justice and right order? Conan is Friedrich Nietzsche's "Superman" rather than the cartoon character dedicated to righting wrong and helping the defenseless. Civilization is based on law as an expression of a higher transcendental law, that the late Justice Learned Hand called "obedience to the

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unenforceable." If in Superman I and II and in Star Wars and its sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, a metaphysical universe of absolute values is assumed, this is precluded in Conan the Barbarian.

Contemporary films suggest that in the twilight of the twentieth century, we can slip backward into a de-personalized past or go forward to a new and higher unity, as Augustine said, "Mankind knowing and loving itself as one person." At the moment, we seem somewhere in-between. For example, the Disney Studio has produced Tron, a marvelous "far-out" film with computer-generated animation. The plot, set in a brilliant electronic landscape, deals with a chess programmer who succeeds in combining the knowledge of thousands of computer programs to create one single Master Control Program (MCP), a veritable information dictatorship capable of controlling humans. By means of a laser beam, the protagonist, named Flynn, enters the incandescent grids of this mammoth computer complex. His allies are Ram and Tron, both dedicated also to the humanization of the MCP empire. The classic conflict between good and evil expresses itself through gladiatorial encounters staged in the form of video games.

In its lengthy review of the Disney film, Time magazine spoke of a "new mythology" which encompasses video games, their fans and computer-philes. What was not mentioned in the review was the age-old moral dualism implicit in the plot. As in Superman I and II, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back (and very 'unlike Conan the Barbarian), Tron advocates a sense of duty, sacrifice, and crusading commitment in the service of justice, liberty, and human dignity. More than the other films discussed, Tron is an achievement of technical wizardry and brings us to the forefront of twenty-first century social issues and moral dilemmas. When we penetrate beneath the eye-catching electronic gadgetry and computer-designed grids, we recognize a moral plot as old as Melville, Dickens, and Dostoevski-namely, conscience against ruthlessness and courage versus oppressive control. We have pastoral heroes, too; Ram and Tron are simple folk-hero types, futuristic extensions of those "golly-gee whiz" bemused idealists of the great Capra films (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe, and It's a Wonderful Life).

The first Star Trek movie was a disappointment. However, its follow-up, The Wrath of Khan, proved that a brilliant entertaining movie could be made from a TV series. There is a great deal of psychological complexity in this film (as there was too in the legendary series), for we have the inventiveness of Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, the inexorable logic of Spock, and Sulu's impetuous nature with its abiding fascination for accelerated speeds which warp the time spectrum. The characters represent distinct, if complementary, facets of human nature projected into an adventuresome context of extraterrestrial travel. The Star Trek films uphold moral ideals and endorse "happy endings."

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The 1982 remake of Howard Hawk's 1951 science fiction movie, The Thing, employs special effects to awaken repulsion in the audience. For this reason critics and audiences did not take kindly to the shock. Though boasting more production values and greater budgetary outlays than the original film, director John Carpenter's The Thing is not likely to become the cult film which the older film remains for many. Why? Because the title creature is presented as a huge, malicious, and gruesome rubber model. Far-fetched and repugnant, "the thing" defied the audience to bestow on it either sympathy or believability. For example, in one scene we see the "thing" as a man's severed head running down a hall without its body but on the legs of a king crab. Fantastic? Yes. But that is only one aspect. In another scene, it is seen as an oozing black fluid, capable of assuming various shapes.

The film is brutish and nasty and flows out of the logic of Carpenter's previous film, Escape from New York, which sees civilization in the West approaching the point of "closing time." In The Thing, the hero, Macready, is amoral; a helicopter pilot, he is seen swilling down bottles of whisky, living without evident purpose, a "loner" among the embattled crew working in the Antarctic.

This same dark side of life is also the premise of Blade Runner, a film directed by the "special effects" master, Ridley Scott, who won recognition with The Alien, a film about a parasitic force in the host organisms of other humans. Whereas in The Thing, the preternatural force was expelled from people, in The Alien the mysterious being went inward. Blade Runner is a nightmare view of Los Angeles in A.D. 2019 and is based on the late Philip K. Dick's study of a negative utopia, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Through C3 PO and R2D2 of Star Wars, audiences became acquainted with "thinking machines" called "droids" (an abbreviation for androids). In Blade Runner, the androids are not as cute or friendly as, say, R2D2 and are referred to as "replicants."

The futuristic cityscape of Los Angeles is dark and menacing, recalling Fritz Lang's silent German classic, Metropolis, the story of a de-personalized city. The loss of pastoral innocence, direct contact with nature, and simple folk culture is lamented through punishing images of a soul-less world. There is no sun, only acid rain, neon-lit food stands, and kiosks with abundant offerings of "hard-core" pornographic literature.

The film features a "chase-suspense" plot starring Harrison Ford, the star of the hit movie, The Raiders of the Lost Ark. He plays Rick Deckard, a police "bounty hunter" amply rewarded for tracking down highly intelligent androids. As a result of what are called "skin-jobs," they can "pass" as human beings and, therefore, are called "replicants." These superior "droids" are perceived as a direct threat to the survival of humans since they surpass them in many significant achievements. Consequently, they must be retired, that is to say, artificially infected with a " factory- installed" disease that produces gradual deterioration of

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the parts of the cybernetic organism. So believable is this category of "cyborgs" which are indistinguishable from biological humans that Rick falls in love with the beautiful, reflective Rachel, whom he does not realize is a marvellously evolved machine-construct with plastic skin. Rick's discovery of this fact creates a dilemma for him, given his mission of eliminating "replicants" such as Rachel. It also adds melodramatic spice to what might be justifiably called a science fiction "film noir" like Laura, Double Indemnity, or The Maltese Falcon, those classic "black thrillers" of the 1940s.

Blade Runner, though somberly pessimistic, must be given serious attention. Its special effects are stunning. But it is the suggestion that in the twenty-first century there will be industrial conglomerates "cloning" human beings in remarkably synthetic ways that cannot be easily dismissed from the mind. The reason? We know that experiments with DNA and bio-engineering are advancing, bringing us ever closer to the year in which humanoids might be laboratory mass-produced such as the Nexus-6 "replicants" featured in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. As an expertly designed and crafted motion picture, the film is easily one of the grimmest films to have come into theaters from what one film critic has facetiously called "Outer Hollywood."

The picture turns its back on pastoral America forever, shutting the iron door of a dread-filled future on America's agrarian heritage and, implicitly, on its Judeo-Christian heritage of values and beliefs. In Blade Runner there is concern about the discriminating norms between right and wrong. Director Ridley Scott summed it all up with his curt remark: "The design is the statement." That statement denies biblical and traditional American roots. In viewing this film, the audience must feel oppressed, even violated. Curiously, young audiences are fascinated and experience some strange release of pent-up frustrations, some sense of cathartic awe.

Now we come to Steven Spielberg's instant classic, E. T. (originally entitled "The Extra-Terrestrial"). The overwhelming response to this film ranks it with Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane, and Star Wars. Numerous families have gone three, four, and more times. I would estimate that over a million families have spent each a hundred dollars for admission tickets to this attention- riveting film, so brilliantly conceived, shot, and edited.

From the outset, when we see men (only from the waist down) trudging through the dark, shadowy underbrush of a forest in search of something, someone, the audience's identification is with the creature being stalked. Emotionally, the "rooting interest" is there without seeing E.T., as he comes to be known. Even when we first confront him, he is in panic at seeing Elliott, the small boy from the suburban family who frightens E.T., just as he is frightened. We the audience accept the mutuality of the fear and are disarmed. It never occurs to us that E.T. is an alien, perhaps dangerous. It is the pursuants who frighten us. (Later

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we find out they are government officials from some agency which seems to be a blend of the FBI and NASA.)

The friendship between Elliott (notice first and last letters) and E.T. is a gradually unfolding one-involving first a ball, then "Reese's Pieces." While in school, Elliott experiences strange sensations through telepathic empathy; he becomes tipsy when E.T. raids the ice-box and drinks too much beer. The telephone plays a role, too, when E.T., capable of making himself understood somewhat, expresses an interest in phoning his home planet.

A careful reflection upon E. T. shows us that, basically, the plot does handle the dilemma of "the civilization versus the primitive" theme. Suburbia, where Elliott lives with his mother (abandoned by the father), his brother, and smaller sister, is a twilight zone between city and country. It is a semi-rural satellite of the city just as planet Earth is a marginal star in an expanded universe populated with other bodies and-as scientists anticipate-with other forms of life.

The film is a blend of the mystical and the mundane and does not always mix both convincingly (for example, the final scene in which E.T. on a bicycle with Elliott soars into the air beyond the possible reach of the law officials.) If E.T. has any predictive power as a crucial element in American movie mythology regarding the future and our spiritual destiny, it lies largely in establishing communicative links of sympathy and understanding with humanoids that are not synthetically generated in laboratories or corporate conglomerates with computer-controls and "skin jobs."

E.T.'s love for Elliott is sincere and convincing (not so with the tenuous romance of the "replicant" Rachel with the bounty hunter, Rick, in Blade Runner). E.T. is filled with faith, hope, and affirmation. Its sub-text is the American "open-ness" to the future, to surprise scenarios, and to the biblical revelation of mystery working itself out in history.

Films such as Conan the Barbarian, The Thing, Escape from New York, and Blade Runner depart from the classic moral tradition which has undergirded American's cultural tradition. There is the same tension in the current crop of fantasy films, whether based in the past or future, as in American literature and the popular culture of the past century-namely between a yearning to go back, to return to a simpler form of life where values were clear-cut, good and evil distinguishable, and the impulse (bordering on "driven-ness") to go forward, to write another Genesis with the machine as made in man's image. In the Christian humanist tradition, certain constants are affirmed. The Hollywood mythology is taxing this tradition, proposing through imaginative works that scientific, technical, and organizational advances can alter, radically and irreversibly, human nature made in God's image and likeness. We cannot dismiss the scenarios that would mold humankind into a pawn on some cosmic chessboard, a creation capable of being

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invaded psychically or physically by strange irresistible forces whether from the primordial past (regression) or from laboratories (progress) or from other planets (immigration).

Some films hint that we can only prevail precariously in a paranoid state as alert vigilantes always on the defensive and with brute force at our beck and call. On the other hand, there are films-understandably more popular-which postulate a pervasive benevolent and guiding force assisting humans of good will and courage to use technical and scientific knowledge to bring about an integration of the universe, despite undeniable evil forces and the frailties of the human condition as we have thus far known it.

We will surely have more such films from the same, and from perhaps new, directors. Whether the American public wants a radical rupture with their past and their traditional values, including their religious heritage, or whether they will welcome futuristic fantasies about the age-old conflict between good and evil, all this remains to be seen. In the meantime, films continue to mirror the fears, expectations, and behavior of a culture, and the most popular recent ones suggest that the option for what remains of this century may be a choice between faith or fatalism.