Super 8 and the New Narrative of Zionism

I saw Super 8 yesterday. It's an exact remake of ET with Steven Spielberg shifted horizontally to producer.

There is really very little of interest to the film. For some unknown reason, it’s set in the 1970s. It has a load of children in it. They act very well, which gave reviewers enough excuse to get behind it (no one likes to give JJ Abrams bad reviews), without ever questioning why this film exists. 

I can’t give you the answer (apart from the $150m already in the bank). There is absolutely nothing here you haven’t seen twenty times before. It feels like a long homage to sentimental Spielbergian cinema. Yet again, JJ Abrams skilfully builds up atmosphere and intrigue. Yet again I allow myself to buy into it, telling myself the answer can’t just be another alien in a box. But, incredibly, it is. Thank god I didn’t watch beyond the 3^rd season of Lost.

ET’s plight as an imagining of the Zionist narrative has been pointed out (see James Schamus' essay 'Next Year in Munich' in Representations). He’s lost and alone and just wants to go home. And if Super 8 is a modernization of ET, then it is interesting to see how much that narrative’s tone has changed.

ET was cute and friendly and had the world lining against for him for unknown and unfair reasons. The monster in Super 8 is much larger, faster and more dangerous. Today’s ET is angry.

Whereas Elliot’s love and compassion save the day for little ET, the new Elliot’s compassion in Super 8 just about keeps him from being eaten and that’s it. This new monster doesn’t have human relationships, he doesn’t need them. The only human actor that has any impact on it is Dr Woodward, who sacrifices his life for the alien (Palestine?).

Like ET, the Super 8 monster needs a spaceship to go home. Unlike ET, he has to build it himself, he can’t wait for his parents (America?) to show up.

And so, the blissful naivety of the ET days is over.  The Wall, Cast Lead the Flotilla have all made quite sure that its impossible to portray Israel as a clumsy, lovable friend with a simple domestic desire that we all understand. Instead, it has become, as General Moshe Dayan recommended, "as a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." People’s cruelty have, we are told, turned it in to a thing of rage, and now the best thing to do is get the fuck out of its way.