The Cultural Ambivalences of Family in the Cinema of Steven Spielberg

‘Steven Phone Home’ The Cultural Ambivalences of Family in the Cinema of Steven Spielberg Suzanne Stuart PhD Thesis University of New South Wales 2011 Contents Preface and Acknowledgements iii Introduction: Family Consumption 1 • Spielberg’s Families in the Twilight Zone • Minority Report? Spielberg and the Family in Critical Literature • Close Encounters of the Familial Kind Part One: The Private Sphere of Hearth and Home 1. The Hook within the (Impossible) Family: Standing on the Outside, Looking In – Ideology, Fantasy and Desire 51 • ‘I Fought the Law, and the Law Won’: Catch Me if You Can • ‘Freud’s Robots’: Artificial Intelligence: A.I. • Conclusion: Artificial Resolution 2. The Lost World of ‘Home’: Suburbia, Family Ghosts, and Alienation in Domesticity 106 • Domestic Off-Screen Space in Duel: ‘not the boss in my house’ • Alienation in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial – The Suburbs Become Home • ‘The grass grows greener on every side’: Avoiding Binaries in the Fantasy Suburb of Poltergeist • ‘They’re here’: The Penetration of the Public/Private Home in Poltergeist • The Gendered Home - ‘Ask Dad’ • Implosion: The Death Drive of the Suburban Home • Conclusion: Not Quite Home Yet Part Two: Rhetorical Families in the Public Sphere 3. A Leap of Faith: What Lies Beneath the Word of the Father? Representing God, Religion and the Family 162 • Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Melodramatic Masculinity in (Domestic) Space – Mashed Potatoes and Spirituality • The Color Purple and the Shadow of Incest – Obscene Fathers and Father-Gods • A Radio to God? Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Postmodernism, Religious Nostalgia and the (Impossible) Father- God • Conclusion: Chasms and Symbols 4. Saving Private Families? Fatherlands, Motherlands, and the National Imaginary 221 • Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: ‘You can’t do this to me. I’m an American!’ • Exiled in Munich: Monstrous Motherlands • Amistad: White Marble Busts, Founding Fathers and Historical Representation • Conclusion: Disintegrating Homelands, Degenerating Homes Conclusion: Flat Facts and Fairy Tales 279 References 287 Filmography 305 Preface and Acknowledgements This thesis has its genesis in a 1993 high school excursion to see Steven Spielberg’s much-hyped film, Jurassic Park. The film terrified me, despite my best efforts to maintain critical distance. From the moment the velociraptor glared menacingly out of her cage, to the iconic water glass quivering on the dash as the T-Rex approaches, and of course during the panic-inducing scene as the raptors stalk the children in the kitchen, I was gripping my seat and clenching my teeth. The CGI worked, the plot pulled me in, and all my youthful cynicism evaporated in the darkness of the theatre. Yet, after emerging into fluorescent cinema lights, somewhere beyond my fear, I felt annoyed. I had gone through all that so some fictional character could discover, by the end of the film, that he wanted a family? Several years later, this annoyance carried over into my academic interests. Everywhere I turned, political values seemed to turn around some strange, restrictive, even offensive concept of ‘family values’ that seemed to carry vast ideological and moral weight. Any purported ‘antifamily’ position struggled in the face of this omnipresent focus on ‘the family’. The Simpsons’ sanctimonious Mrs Lovejoy comes to mind: ‘Won’t somebody please think of the children?’ But why did politics, the media, and so many narratives turn around ‘the family’? Surely Spielberg, that paragon of conservative values and the sentimental family, had to take some of the blame? Yet as I commenced my study of Spielberg, I started to change my mind. On closer inspection, it wasn’t so simple. Spielberg didn’t monolithically sentimentalise the family and his representations did not reinforce my stereotypes, despite my best efforts to maintain my prejudices. And so, from an angry critique, this thesis morphed into an appraisal of this powerful, pervasive discourse of family that seems to be a dominant undercurrent in Spielberg’s oeuvre, and in virtually everything else. I wanted to know why and how, where and in what manifestations, the family carried so much affective potency, a potency that cannot be simply dismissed as sentimental and manipulative. Guiding me through my thesis and this seachange in perspective has been my supervisor, Dr Brigitta Olubas, always ready to offer advice, discussion, argument and debate, as well as some much needed humour and perspective, and multiple, invaluable proof-reads. She is owed thanks many times over. I would also like to thank Dr Liz McMahon, my co-supervisor, for her considered guidance, and Dr Michelle Langford for the opportunities she gave me to think beyond my own methodological paradigm. On a personal level, I have to thank my family, who put up with my growing intellectualisation of our relationship. My mother was always ready with some practical advice as well as ‘motherly’ comfort, and my sister managed to put up with my analysis of her ‘hetero-normative reproductive imperative’ as she spawned her first baby. And, consequently, thank you to my wonderful little nephew for a different perspective on the ‘cultural telos of the Child’. And I have to thank my father (who at times seemed to really embody the disciplinary law-of-the-Father as he put the red pen to my work) for giving so much of his time to help guide me through the highs and lows of thesis writing, for helping me to argue and articulate my thoughts, for the diligent proofing, and for his enthusiasm and belief in my capabilities. And of course, I am particularly grateful to my own little family: to my ever- supportive partner, James, who put up with so much, and was always there with a glass of wine and some not-Spielberg conversation, and to our own ‘children’, Dexter and Kif (if dinosaurs can have ‘family’, then these cats are certainly mine). And, after it all, despite the analyses, despite all my intellectual scrutiny, Jurassic Park still makes me jump. Even though I now sometimes side with the dinosaurs. iv Introduction: Family Consumption At an archaeological dig in the Montana Badlands, Dr. Alan Grant coos enthusiastically over the fossilised remains of a carnivorous velociraptor. Challenged on his interpretation of the skeletal remains, Grant, one of Jurassic Park’s (1993) central characters, whips around to face his young antagonist. Western style, the crowd parts before him, as Grant approaches and looms menacingly over the boy. The camera follows Grant’s predatory movement toward the child, as he narrates a scenario of violence and horror: Try to imagine yourself in the Cretaceous Period. You get your first look at this ‘six foot turkey’ as you enter a clearing… you keep still because you think that maybe his visual acuity is based on movement like T-Rex - he'll lose you if you don't move. An ominous bird sound emphasises Grant’s bullying, and despite the crowd, only Grant and the boy are now framed within the screen. He continues, “but no, not velociraptor. You stare at him, and he just stares right back.” Grant glowers at the boy. “And that's when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side. From the other two raptors you didn't even know were there.” Illustrating this attack, Grant draws his fingers sharply together, making the boy startle as he is held in thrall to Grant’s story. “Because velociraptor's a pack hunter, you see, he uses coordinated attack patterns and he is out in force today.” Beginning to move, Grant circles the boy, a fantasy attack, and the camera follows his movement as he circles his ‘prey’, pulling the audience into his movement. Grant is standing in the foreground as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wicked, scythe-like object, centering it in front of the camera, from which the boy recoils. “And he slashes at you with this... a six- inch retractable claw, like a razor, on the middle toe. He doesn't bother to bite your jugular like a lion, say... no no.” He continues his movement around the boy, menacing him as he moves closer with the claw. “He slashes at you here... or here.” Grant demonstrates by whipping the claw in front of the flinching adolescent: “…or maybe across the belly, spilling your intestines.” He physically drags the claw across the gulping boy’s fleshy belly, and the camera moves slowly in on Grant leaning over the frightened youngster, relishing his fantasy and the effects of his intimidation. He states, with dry pleasure, “The point is... you are alive when they start to eat you.” 1 Dr. Grant’s velociraptor claw makes one more significant appearance in the film: after only just escaping from a T. Rex in the eponymous Jurassic Park, Dr. Grant, who has been forced into a position of protecting the film’s children, Lex and Tim, takes them up a large tree for safety. He sits between the children, and they snuggle up to him, preparing to sleep, secure now that he has promised ‘not to leave them’. He looks a little perplexed, then distinctly uncomfortable. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the claw, ponders it momentarily, then considers the children and chuckles to himself. The little family unit snuggles firmly into the hollow of the tree, safe and cosy within the paternal embrace: Grant promises to stay awake and protect them. And with that, he throws away the claw. In a purely functional sense, Jurassic Park’s first scene introduces and explains the film’s key villains/monsters, the velociraptors, as well as establishing Dr. Grant’s narrative trajectory from ‘anti-family’ to a protector of children, from velociraptor to family man.

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