ABSTRACT
On the first day, the aliens arrive. On the second day, the streets of New York, Los
Angeles and Washington DC are torn apart in a series of graphic conflagrations. On
the Eastern Seaboard, the Empire State Building and the White House explode below
15-mile-wide spaceships that spit out green rays; in Los Angeles, ground zero is the
First Interstate World Center, the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. Fire-
balls erupting from these icons sear down familiar streetscapes. Grid-locked streets
and sidewalks filled with panic stricken citizens are ripped up by the energy of the
fireballs. Cars, trucks and buses careen off exploding buildings. Faces of citizens are
locked in terror as they watch the numbing spectacle only seconds before they too
ever, the impressive destruction of familiar city streets is the best amongst a series
of spectacular special effects. From these impressive displays of combusting
streetscapes, we argue, arise mythic male archetypes that are contrived by the obses-
Elam (1994: 27-8) refers to as a 'spiral of infinite deferral . . . [where] representa-
tion can never come to an end, since greater accuracy and detail only allows us to
see even more of the same representation'.1 Dean Devlin, who produced Independence
Day and wrote the screenplay with director Roland Emmerich, proclaims that they
'intentionally spiced a dark stew' where 'the human spirit is part of the mix . . .
