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| Aliens from Mars Attacks!
Mars Attacks! parodies America in general, but especially satirizes sacred institutions, such as the military and government. The government is basically helpless when he aliens invade. This is very comical, but it also illustrates that we should not always be so entrusting of our own government that is said to always be protecting us. Every individual should also be able to take care of themselves. This is also true for the military in the movie. The aliens immediately terminate them without hesitance. Their armaments easily overpower that of the American soldiers.
A scene that displays the corruption of government is when Martin Short's character picks up a woman from the street, who turns out to be a martian girl that wreaks havoc in the White House. He picked up the girl for his own personal gain, but she ended up killing the president. Burton is showing that people cannot always trust the officials of sacred institutions. They may just end up failing at their job... or suddenly getting zapped by alien intruders.
Also, the military is proved untrustworthy when the aliens first depart from their space shuttle. The entire military is waiting outside in preparation for them. They release a dove as a sign of peace, but the aliens shoot it down immediately. Then, chaos erupts and the aliens continue to shoot at all of soldiers surrounding them. They even kill the head of the military who represented protection for the people. Just like the government, the military in this movie cannot be held in high regards. Even though they are supposed to protect the people against the alien attacks, they are miserably failing. People have to take care of themselves.
Interestingly enough, the people who don't rely on these institutions for guidance end up surviving. Two examples of this are Taffy and Richie. Taffy consistently rolls her eyes at her presidential father's decisions and Richie ignores what his trailer-park parents say altogether. They both disregard the chaos people are partaking in and focus on what is good for them. The fact that Tim Burton allows these people to survive shows that he too scoffs at "sacred" institutions.
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Wednesday, March 13, 2013
McCurdy- Mars Attacks!
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I like your end point about how the only people who Burton allowed to ultimately survive were the ones who did not trust the national institutions. I hadn't thought of that. Richie obviously survived because he had a strong personal sense of family and what the right thing to do was. Byron Williams the retired boxer also survived (although he is at first thought to be dead). He also took matters into his own hands, leading a group and commandeering a plane. He sacrifices his own safety so that the rest of his group can fly to safety, and for that Burton rewards him with life at the end of the movie. It is interesting to me that Taffy survives though. While she always scoffed at her parents, realizing their stupidity, she never actually really did anything. I wonder if Burton only allowed her to live so that there would be a female counterpart to Richie at the end of the movie. Even Burton knows that the boy has to get the girl in the end, even if they've never met before.
ReplyDeleteCyrus Nabipoor
I think Tim Burton let taffy live because the end of the world seems to be one ruled by heroic youngsters. Now I know Byron isn't a youngster, but I think he is pretty young at heart. He still holds true to the idea of heroism, unlike the adults, which is why he survives. This is something I believe to be true of all the young characters in the movie. Richie is definitely a hero for going to save his grandmother even after being ordered by his parents to stay in the trailer to defend the TV. The two kids who skipped school to play video games are heros for saving the president by using their video game gun skills to take down the aliens who penetrated the White House. (On an different note, it is funny that video games are supposed to train kids to be violent in a negative way. But in this case, it trained the kids to be heros and save the world.) And I give Taffy credit for taking care of the newly orphaned nation, which unexpectedly fell on her shoulders. She becomes the new leader of the free world and gets to award the heros who saved the planet from the aliens and from the insufficient protection from the government and military.
ReplyDeleteLydia Kolda