Spielberg and ideology: nation, class, family, and War of the Worlds

摘要

In the last decade and a half, Steven Spielberg's directorial oeuvre would appear to have gone through perspectival and ideological change. The films that he directed in the 1970s and 1980s have familiarly been regarded as being indicative of, and even complicit with, the rise and eventual dominance of the Reaganite Right. By contrast, Spielberg's output latterly can be seen to demonstrate a more critical and liberal, or even Left-liberal, focus. War of the Worlds would seem to be of a piece with this change. Indeed, the film's representation of the alien menace can itself be conceived as presenting a figure for (Left-)liberal American fears before an emergent, politically malignant Right. However, in its articulation of such fears - which evokes 9/11, and suggests criticism of American aggression in Iraq - the film also furnishes what are, from a Leftist position, certain residually reactionary implications with respect to its representation of class and of the family. Combining close textual analysis with historical contextualisation, the paper engages with and unpacks the ideological connotations and contradictions of War of the Worlds, and considers their possible wider resonance.