The Talkies / The Wimp from Outer Space
Bayles, Martha
THE WIMP FROM OUTER SPACE by Martha Bayles I t is odd that Steven Spielberg's E. T. , The Extra-Terrestrial should be classed with the current crop of special-effects space movies,...
...For all the talk among critics and reviewers about Spielberg's wild imagination, his view of the world, when he is serious, is actually rather trite: He wants the audience to identify with the little guy against the oppressive weight of technocratic society...
...longs to go back where he came from...
...Much has been made of the fact that these pursuers are viewed from the waist down, tramping through the underbrush--presumably as a child would see them...
...stay right here...
...Since by this time the adult world is in hot pursuit, and death itself has lost its sting, there is no need to dread the pending separation...
...and ff Spielberg were really clever, he would have kept it that way...
...is lovable because he is simple...
...Praising the film for having a story, most critics have neglected to place the story in its proper line: tales of animals caught between the wilderness and the human world...
...Reviewers have touched upon this aspect ofE...
...But most of its power and charm arises from the wild creature theme, and in the end that theme is blunted and denied to the point of sentimentality...
...To walk out of E.T...
...All in all, the pain of parting has been thoroughly assuaged...
...biologically and scientifically, but they' d never ever understand that he had a heart...
...Yet E. 7...
...From there to the end, the 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1982 plot is a simple chase: Elliott, his siblings, and the neighborhood kids conspire to spirit E.T...
...have the look of something your mother would want you to keep in the house...
...And most important, E.T...
...One or two things happen, but basically the scene just hangs there and pulsates, while a certain segment of the audience provides its own utopian or Saganesque or ecological-ecstatic meaning...
...of Spielberg's last halfway serious fdm, Close Encounters of the Third Kind...
...Furthermore, Elliott, the ten-yearold boy who becomes E.T.'s protector, does not tame him so much as lure him indoors and befriend him...
...is that he is not a pet but a wild creature--first seen in the woods at the top of a hill, where his fellow extraterrestrials have been forced to abandon him while fleeing human pursuers...
...Its predominant images are those of suburban America: housetops, driveways, bicycles, and the cluttered, nestlike innards of children's closets...
...Even Peter Pan, to which E.T...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1982 27...
...An example of this might be the ending Martha Bayles is film critic o f The American Spectator...
...If anything, E. T. is the one film this summer which speaks to the audience's understandably human need to withdraw from all the weird, frightening special effects that pass for fantasy in movies lately...
...It is a poignant choice, and E.T...
...has powers, but they are irrelevant to the point of being inconsistent...
...had begun this sort of speechmaking earlier: disporting himself like the all-knowing world salvager the UFO cultists dream about, or liberating us earthlings like one of Robert Heinlein's celestial sex therapists...
...E.T...
...The audience can identify with the little guy and love the extraterrestrial, too--because he is even littler...
...The fact that they are gathering specimens is not meant to connect them to the brutish humans who want them as specimens...
...The line is too obvious--we already know that Elliott will remember E.T...
...But more to the point, it works against the wild creature mystique, which depends upon a combination of strong emotion and imperfect communication...
...representing "higher intelligence," but we all know th~/t's a joke...
...To everyone else it is empty, a grand boring hit of illustration...
...But most children do not get chased through the woods by adult men...
...None of the reviewers applauding this scene have considered how awful the film would be if E.T...
...Like Close Encounters, it sidesteps its presumed subject...
...Even those members of the audience who feel sorry for Elliott because his father has left home will be gratified to see his pretty mother taking up, in these final moments, with the one handsome scientist who understands kids...
...And only the children can save him because they are too young to understand the purposes of adult scientists, dressed like astronauts, crashing through the picture window...
...What's more, E.T...
...Nor is it explained why extraterrestrials capable of interstellar travel would waddle down off their ship to pluck specimen plants by hand, as we see them doing in the opening sequence...
...into a suburban shopping mall can be a heady experience, because the film casts a spell that renders both the mall and the people in it peculiarly beautiful...
...Which is too bad, because the rest of the movie is the same old Spielberg...
...As he puts it: "I always thought of the adult world as being symbolized by tall people who cast giant shadows, people who don't think like kids, but think like professionals...
...Whether through Elliott's protestation of love, or because his ship is about to return, he recovers his bright red heartbeat and his healthy, slimy green complexion...
...back to that hilltop whence he came...
...Spielberg's remarkable camera eye is too quirky and original to be merely flattering to its subjects, but flattering it is nonetheless...
...When Elliott sets free the frogs in his biology class, we are supposed to identify E.T...
...What he does do is go back to the f i r s t - - I ' m tempted to say primal--encounter between the human and the nonhuman...
...It is simply too late in the film to start drumming up enthusiasm for the visitors--who, after all, are arriving in the full authoritative apparatus of their own colossal ship and elaborate technology...
...this problem is cleverly obviated...
...gasps his last...
...In spite of the beauty of this film, Spielberg deserves to be criticized for worshipping not innocence but ignorance, and inviting the public to share his cult of the child, and of himself as perpetual child...
...In American classics such as The Call of the Wild and The Yearling, the animal protagonists face a choice between renouncing their bond with human beings, or allowing it to destroy them...
...He would encourage us all to stay in Never Never Land, a~ though innocence were something that could be willed...
...is affecting to the degree that it plays upon that poignancy...
...Half saurian and half simian, he combines the ancientness and otherness of a reptile with the eerily human aspect of a chimpanzee...
...But this time Spielberg finds a substitute which is emotionally appealing, particularly for children...
...also departs thematically from the cliches of space movies...
...Not Spielberg...
...Once again the animal metaphor cuts closest to the truth: These creatures are a flock, a pack, a covey--peacefully browsing in the lovely, misty, nocturnal forest...
...revives...
...Prior to this he has confined himself to a few pragmatic croaks, notably his request for materials to "phone home...
...has been compared, ends with the children realizing that they have to grow up...
...Nor does E.T...
...E . T . is not without emotional impact, as its wide, enthusiastic audience attests...
...There is also the unpredictability, the slight edge of danger that distinguishes a wild creature from the family golden retriever...
...are thwarted by the arrival of hundreds of NASA technicians, who transform the house into a nightmarish aseptic environment in which E.T...
...thoroughly convincing...
...Now he points to Elliott's forehead and says, "E.T...
...yearns for his ship, and is having trouble breathing the earth's atmosphere...
...Having brought his little-guy hero and heroine to the edge of the vast NASA encampment where the scientific establishment is waiting for the alien ship to land, Spielberg suddenly finds it impossible to go on...
...Which is, of course, the one between child and animal...
...Or even if they had a taste for stalking the wild mushroom, why they would do so without weapons or means of communication...
...THE WIMP FROM OUTER SPACE by Martha Bayles I t is odd that Steven Spielberg's E. T. , The Extra-Terrestrial should be classed with the current crop of special-effects space movies, because visually it is the opposite...
...The efforts of Elliott and his brother and sister to help E.T...
...He can levitate bicycles, for example--but we are not told why, if he possesses this ability, he doesn't make use of it sooner...
...In E.T...
...The angle is really that from which Bambi and every other hunted beast in literature have seen humans in pursuit...
...T., making remarks about " a boy and his dog" or " t h e bond between children and their p e t s . " But the point about E.T...
...with the frog, not the biologist bent on dissection...
...I would suggest that this point of view poses problems for a filmmaker dealing with a subject such as the arrival of extraterrestrial visitors...
...The kids may have a cute line about E.T...
...Such homely intimacy couldn't be further removed from the standard sci-fi fare of black immensities, lurid nebulae swirling with violet gas, and dust storms on alien planets...
...That's dangerous--they might understand E.T...
...E.T...
...chooses this moment to become articulate...
...No previous authoritative statements have come out of that wizened little mouth...
...Yet E.T...
...Spielberg deserves credit for making this death of E.T...
...So instead of going ahead with any meaningful encounter, Spielberg resorts to thirty minutes of classical music and rippling candy-colored lights...
...People who are serious about the question of alien intelligence will find E.T...
...Any child who has seen a parent or relative turn ashen grey while hooked up to forbidding hospital machinery, or imagined a contrast between the soothing words of doctors and their terrifying actions, will empathize with Elliott's hystetical panic...
...silly, for the same reason I find it rather charming...
Vol. 15 • September 1982 • No. 9
