Date: Fri, 23 Aug 1996 09:18:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jeffrey Booth <booth2-AT-husc.harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: Phenomenon



Hi Gary,
	I'm not trying to trash your thoughtful analysis but I heard a
much different version of what Phenomenon is about.  Travolta is heavy
into Scientology and the movie is purportedly a ficional representation of
Scientology beliefs.  
	Maybe I shouldn't say because I haven't seen it yet but from the
previews I've seen it does look like cryptic, Scientology propaganda.

				-- Jeff Booth

On Thu, 22 Aug 1996, Gary MacLennan wrote:

> Phenomenon
> 
> I ended up at this movie by accident- had meant to see The Rock but got the
> times mixed up. Still it was interesting though not a great film by any
> means.  The plot is fairly simple. A working class bloke, George McNally
> (played by John Travolta) has what he thinks is a close encounter experience
> during his birthday celebrations.  He sees bright lights in the sky and
> collapses.  As a result he turns into a genius and the movie deals with the
> results of this.  The close encounter however turns out to be a brain tumour
> that has set latent areas of his brain into motion.
> 
> So what is particularly fascinating about this? Well for me it was the
> portrait of the small town community and the impact on it of the arrival of
> supermensch (Over Man). We are of course in the presence of nostalgia for
> lost social harmony.  But this is a community with problems and to achieve
> transcendence it needs help from the inspired charismatic individual.
> 
> The religious undertones are fairly easy to detect and they were always a
> part of the comparable Super Man myth. It was after all no coincidence that
> the Super Man comics began during the Great Depression.  We are though
> dealing with what Raymond Williams called "The god that dare not speak its
> name".  This is the contemporary form that religiosity takes in Hollywood
> films.  
> 
> Think of Harold Ramis' Ground Hog Day for instance.  There the villain is
> trapped in a time warp until he learns to be a nice person and is set free.
> There is no explanation given for the fact that he has to repeat every day.
> In the cinema of the thirties we would have had an angel arrive and explain
> all.  Now the deus ex machina is hidden through sheer embarrassment.  
> It is as if god has become something like the relative we are ashamed of and
> whom we keep hidden in the garret. But such is the level of social problems
> of modernity that we long for transcendence and so inevitably religion is
> turned to.  However contemporary levels of cynicism and despair are so great
> that they demand that we cover our tracks carefully and hide what is in
> essence a turn to religion.
> 
> Equally significant in these films is the process of the misrecogniton of
> society's problems.  The ones we see in Phenomenon are the lack of
> communication because of the different language barriers, loneliness and the
> absence of love, an inefficient postal service, poor farming methods and
> infertile soil.
> 
> What is not shown of course are the problems that really ravage modern
> societies like America namely the evils that attend a class based society.
> Thus, although the people in Phenomenon do not appear to be wealthy, their
> poverty is not compared to anyone's wealth and so the process of
> exploitation is hidden.
> 
> Anyway George makes a huge impact on the town but his mission ends in
> personal tragedy.  With plots like these which pivot around the impact of an
> individual on a community the charismatic/ powerful individual simply has to
> be got rid of one way or the other.  This is of course the classic dilemma
> of capitalist society -how to promote both individualism and the need to
> reproduce society?
> 
> However the town is left celebrating George's birthday.  They honour his
> name and those suggestions that he made for the reorganisation of society
> seem to have born fruit. The people now "love one another as I have loved
> you" and the land is once more fertile.  There may be no over flowing milk
> and honey but the corn is sure as high as an elephant's eye and it looks
> like it's climbing straight up to the sky.  
> 
> An equally hopeful sign is provided by the precious manuscripts that George
> has left behind and which a professor takes away to develop for the good of
> humankind. Not a corporation in sight either. So there you are, George has
> seemingly turned an academic into an inspired selfless do-gooder.  Truly a
> miracle! Though I think he might have had tenure.
> 
> Two other aspects of the movie particularly intrigued me.  Firstly the way
> in which George is caught between the ignorance and superstitious fears of
> the town folk and the paranoid State Forces who want to get hold of his
> brain for national security reasons.  This repeats yet once more the classic
> dilemma of the petty bourgeoisie trapped between labour and capital.  
> 
> The other point of interest is George's telekinesis. His explanation is that
> he understands how things are all connected.  What particularly struck me
> here is that I have been wading through Murray Bookchin lately and he too is
> concerned to stress the inter-connectedness between humans and nature.
> Bookchin wants to end the dualistic society which sees nature as Other.  In
> Phenomenon George achieves this lost unity. Thus he feels an earth quake
> coming and he can move objects around.
> 
> The philosophy underpinning these dreams is Romanticism.  It emerges with
> the advent of industrial capitalism and it is a discourse of social crisis
> marked by longings for lost harmonies.  Phenomenon is yet another example of
> the people's yearning for solutions to modernity, and of the equally
> enduring power of capitalism to give these desires a fantastic rather than a
> realistic direction. 
> 
> But, as I always tell my students when we are discussing how advertising
> works, the greater the gap between the dream/fantasy and reality then the
> greater power the dream has. Such are the workings of the remorseless dialectic.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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