Scientist in ET: “ He’s got DNA! He’s got DNA!”
I hope that scientist lost her job after the events of the movie, because that’s a dumb fucking scientist.
What an innocent time must 1982 have been that such banter passed as substantial scientific know how.
On another note, someone once said intelligence was the ability to hold two opposing thoughts in one’s mind simulataneously, so that fact that I was thinking such snarky comments while sobbing uncontrobaly for the 45 minutes straight must make me pretty darned intelligent. And did I ever sob.
So I have two modes, sarcasm and emotional train wreck. I never knew I could do them both at once. Moving on.
I now feel I have a profound sense of E.T. The boy is without a father, he has been abandoned. He comes to understand the connection between life forces exists on such a level that to be separated with a loved one means to have to severe all emotional connections or that both bodies will die. The fact that thae loved one is dying because they are cut off from the increasingly distant life force of the tribe to which they belong makes it more devastating because Elliot is forced to realize that ET is both not him in their literal emotional fluidity, and also that ET can only live when incorporated into the emotional life force of his larger community, one that cannot coexist with Elliot’s world. The last plea for ET to stay is pathetic. Elliot essentially becomes an adult when he recognizes that he is dead inside emotionally.
Authortities always approach from up hill and remain faceless throughout, with the exception of Peter Coyote’s character, who its safe it assume is essentially an adult Elliot, a child of divorce who has been awaiting a visitor since he was 10 to replace the void in himself. The fact that the ragtag team of neighborhood kids embrace hills to effortlessly on their bikes is such a poetic usurping of authority that I goddamn near punched out my window when it came onscreen.
I hadn’t seen ET in ten years. I can’tremember how the 2002 theatircal release worked with the digital insertion of walkie talkies in place of the authorities guns at the most climactic moment. I don’t care to revisit it. Also, in post 9/11 silliness they dubbed the mother forbidding elliots brother from tricker treating as a “terrorist” with “hippy” even though that kills the joke that he simply puts on a bowler hat to change his costume from Middle Eastern terrorist to a hobo.
Also, I swear to god that Harrison Ford does the voideover of the teacher with an exaggerated monotone.
No one reads this blog right?
1 comment:
Interesting observations. I didn't see the re-release and found your description of the changes consistent with many other experiences about how much our culture locked itself down and cultivated fear after the 9/11/01 attack.
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