Independence Day

by Michael Rogin

Independence Day created a worldwide sensation when it was released in 1996, and has gone on to be one of the all-time highest grossing films. Combining comic-book science fiction on the grandest scale with spectacular special effects, Independence Day delighted audiences with its depiction of alien invaders reducing the White House to an inferno. President Bill Clinton and presidential candidate Bob Dole both endorsed the film breathlessly. "We won in the end," said Dole. "Bring your family. You'll be proud of it. Diversity. America. Leadership. Good over Evil."
How did such an apocalyptic, anarchic and ultra-violent film manage to achieve this kind of acclaim? Michael Rogin suggests that Independence Day serves American power in the name of attacking it. He analyzes how the film re-imagines American society and rewrites American history. Propaganda disguised as escapism, Independence Day salves American anxiety--about race, sexuality, disease, and war--by means of delirious movie-making.
Independence Day is perhaps not a classic in the conventional sense. But Rogin argues, dismissing the claim that the film is harmless entertainment, that it is of the utmost significance. Consummating the marriage of America's two top export industries, entertainment and aerospace, Independence Day is the defining motion picture of Bill Clinton's America.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1998

About the author

[NB: sometimes published as Michael Paul Rogin]

Rogin was a political theorist and the Robson Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. He received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude in government from Harvard University and his master's and doctoral degrees in political science at the University of Chicago.

Rogin began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1963 and remained there throughout his distinguished career. His books and many articles and essays earned him a distinguished place in the United States and Europe among scholars of American politics, who valued the breadth and originality of his work and its interdisciplinary character.

Rogin's books included:

• The Intellectuals and McCarthy (1967) [which he described as "a Gothic horror story disguised as social science."]
• Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (1975)
• Subversive Genealogy: the Politics and Art of Herman Melville (1983)
• 'Ronald Reagan', the Movie, and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (1987)
• Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (1996)
• Independence Day, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Enola Gay (1998)

Rogin's work appealed to and challenged the preconceptions of a wide variety of academics. His book on Ronald Reagan attracted the attention of the media (Rogin was interviewed on CBS TV's "60 Minutes") and the general public.

He served on the editorial committee of UC Press for several decades and was one of the founding members of the prestigious humanities journal Representations.

He was famed at Berkeley for his remarkably creative lectures, which would combine political theory, literature, feminism, interpretations of film and art, psychoanalytic insights, and a firm grasp of the history & material conditions underlying any lecture topic.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeley...