ABSTRACT
The recurrence of the primal scene of Saint and Stranger is, in sum, what the current obsession with aliens is really all about. That is why I’ve been suggesting that films like Men in Black and the seemingly endless Star Wars and Alien series (the first of which was released in the wake of the Iran hostage crisis) so captivate the American national unconscious.1 Why presidential Star War fantasies are taken extremely seriously even when they seem to defy normal distinctions between reality and fiction. Why films like Wag the Dog, exposing the diversionary need for far-flung overseas enemies, tap the pulse of America’s unspoken legitimisation crisis. Why court dramas like the O. J. Simpson or Rodney King cases are played out with compulsive repetitiveness on national screens, reminding citizens that the one frail thing which binds them together – besides the dollar, the Superbowl and the TV weathermap – is a legal document, the Constitution.2
