Anti-culte : Independance Day ! I was about 15-16 years old. Yes, like all of you, time hasn’t spared me. And I was “celebrating” the “Fête du Cinéma” (a crude tautology) for my last year of middle school with a friend who got lost in the depths of time, and whom I haven’t seen since… The “Fête du Cinéma” is so wrongly named. During that “Dark Age” period (another tautology) still in the digital era, our 56K Modem connections in France couldn’t download anything other than images. We had to wait until the early 2000s for Lyonnaise Cable Numérique to introduce the first French broadband, 3 or 4 years before the beginning of ADSL.
So “Fête du Cinéma” was the only way to avoid Jean Pierre Foucault and the like on television. Unfortunately, as a young materialistic person seeking an impossible love, the “Fête du Cinéma” often meant piling up a bunch of crappy movies, watching them as fast as possible in 3 days, as if 3 days of ridiculous films would save the ignoramuses that slumbered within us. It was under these not-so-glorious circumstances that I saw “Independence Day.”
At 16, I was already a complete idiot, but having immigrated to France at the age of 4 with an unpronounceable name, in a vibrant neighborhood (at the time) where all cultures and faiths mingled, I struggled with stereotypes. And this film “Independence Day” felt like a stab to the heart. Even worse, my hero Will Smith (from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”) starred in this piece of s***. To put it in perspective, “Men In Black” is undoubtedly a masterpiece compared to “Independence Day.”
In this fabulous film, spaceships position themselves at strategic locations and open fire on poor humans who had absolutely no idea this was coming. Yes, if a psychopathic rapist reoffender stands at your doorstep staring through the peephole for half an hour, he just wants to get some information. The film is full of good intentions, but mostly full of naivety and almost perverse imagery. When the extraterrestrials, who by the way look like a skillful mix between “Alien” and “Predator,” are defeated thanks to global unity (how beautiful), involving Americans, French, Jews, Arabs, and even Africans (portrayed as savages wielding machetes/picks, go figure), we see the American president stepping out with his troops… My God, this is Orwellian propaganda! The worst part is that in this… movie, the American president is a former fighter pilot. Yes, you heard it right, he joins the battle with his troops. As if in this galactic war that must involve hundreds of millions of participants, the American president absolutely must put on his gloves and box with ET. No, no, no. NO!! And the worst part, I won’t even comment on it, is the speech that precedes the final assault, it’s nauseating.
