Independence Day
Unclear and Present Danger
Jamelle Bouie
4.7 • 660 Ratings
🗓️ 15 July 2024
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Independence Day, humanity makes its first contact with an alien race. What follows is one day of destruction, one of despair, and one day where the human race, led by the United States, fights back. Jamelle and John use the film to discuss the triumphalist American optimism of the 1990s as well as the political afterlife of the imagery of the film, which extends into the post-9/11 era.
Some of the taglines for Independence Day were “We’ve always believed we weren’t alone. On July 4th, we’ll wish we were,” “The day we fight back!” and “Welcome to earth.”
Independence Day is available to buy or rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV. You can also stream it on demand at Hulu.
Episodes come out roughly every two weeks, and we’ll see you then with an episode on Mars Attacks, Tim Burton’s satirical counterpoint to Roland Emmerich’s earnest blockbuster.
And don’t forget our Patreon, where we watch the films of the Cold War and try to unpack them as political and historical documents! For $5 a month, you get two bonus episodes every month as well as access to the entire back catalog — we’re almost two years deep at this point. Sign up at patreon.com/unclearpod.
The latest episode of our Patreon podcast is on Rambo, the 2008 legacy sequel written and directed by Stallone.
Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning. |
| 0:05.0 | In less than an hour, |
| 0:07.0 | aircraft from here will join others from around the world. |
| 0:11.0 | And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. |
| 0:19.0 | Mankind. That word should have new meaning for all of us today. |
| 0:23.6 | We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. |
| 0:29.6 | We will be united in our common interest. |
| 0:33.6 | Perhaps it's faith that today is the 4 Fourth of July, and you will once again be |
| 0:41.8 | fighting for our freedom. Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution, but from annihilation. |
| 0:51.7 | We're fighting for our right to live, to exist. |
| 0:59.0 | And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, |
| 1:08.0 | but as the day when the world declared in one voice, we will not go quietly into the night, |
| 1:14.4 | we will not vanish without a fight, we're going to live on, we're going to survive. |
| 1:24.6 | Today, we celebrate our Independence Day. |
| 1:28.3 | We celebrate our Independence Day. Welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. |
| 2:02.3 | I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I'm the New York Times |
| 2:07.3 | best-selling author of When the Clock Broke. I'm sorry, I had to say it one time. I'll never say it |
| 2:13.6 | again. No, of course. Of when the clock broke, clock broke con men conspiracists and how America cracked up in the early 1990s. |
| 2:23.0 | And I write the substack news letter on popular front. |
| 2:28.0 | I think it is perfectly appropriate to not be. |
| 2:31.4 | I mean, I wouldn't drop it in every conversation, of course. |
| 2:34.0 | But in like, in this environment, you can be a little, you know, I wouldn't drop it in every conversation, of course. |
... |
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