Industrial Society and the Science Fiction Blockbuster: Social Critique in Films of Lucas, Scott, and Cameron by Mark T. Decker (review)

Mark Decker’s investigation of blockbuster sf movies argues that the popularity of films by George Lucas, Ridley Scott and James Cameron draws on the ideas of Herbert Marcuse, a social critic to whom they all would have been exposed during their time in college. Decker cogently explains the critical models employed by Marcuse, which were popularised during the German scholar’s tumultuous tenure at UC San Diego, and focuses in particular on the notion of instrumental reasoning as a central problem within capitalist society. Decker then analyses the settings, characters and plots of these three blockbuster directors’ sf films: THX-1138 (Lucas US 1971), the Lucas-directed Star Wars franchise (1977–2005), the original Alien franchise (1979–97), Blade Runner (Scott US/Hong Kong 1982), the Terminator franchise (1984–2015), the Predator franchise and its crossover with the Alien franchise (1987–2007), Avatar (Cameron UK/US 2009) and Prometheus (Scott UK/US 2012). This book argues for the continuing social importance of Marcuse’s work, positing the sf blockbuster as a crucial site for articulating his critique of a culture centred on the pursuit of profit. Decker not only argues for the continuing relevance of Marcuse, but also that films like these can serve as vehicles to disseminate his ideas to a broad audience.

The book begins by debunking the idea that, just because a film is successful at the box office, it must be all action and no substance. Decker notes that the first commercially successful film, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (US 1915), drew crowds largely by ‘appealing to the baser fears of the American people’ (5); the questionable politics presented in the film were not incidental but served as a market draw. Likewise, Decker argues, the films under discussion try to direct the audience towards the dehumanising effects of American industrial culture, which is a fear articulated by Marcuse in his work. In this respect, the book might have said more about ‘the baser fears of the American people’ and how these fears are linked to the military-industrial-congressional complex and the threat of nuclear destruction.

Decker notes that the blockbuster is not a genre so much as it is a marketing strategy and an investment of venture capital, and blockbusters rely for their success on the fact that huge studio monopolies can secure large amounts of screens, making it into a cultural event. There are few mediums that can disseminate ideas to so many people while also entertaining them. This is not to say that all blockbusters supply cultural critique, but Decker argues that sf films can do this in ways that others cannot through the ability to render familiar settings and characters in fantastic ways. Some of the creators of these commercial films use ‘existing critiques of society’ that were already popular, thereby repackaging said critiques and presenting them to a broad audience, ‘mobilizing the utopian potential’ within them (8). Thomas Schatz, in his essay on ‘The New Hollywood’, notes that the success of Star Wars came in part from its intermixing of genres and the simplicity of its plot and characters, thus opening the work to audience interpretation. With this in mind, the mixing of ‘existing critiques of society’ simply fits the model of movie manufacture that began to dominate Hollywood blockbuster production in the 1970s. According to Decker, Marcuse’s exposition of the repression caused by industrial society finds expression in Scott’s Alien (UK/US 1979) as the Weiland-Yutani corporation, an institution ‘murderously indifferent’ to the crew of the ship (9). This message, argues Decker, would not be new to industrial workers during this time of globalisation, automation and downsizing; Scott’s film merely expresses it in a new way that foregrounds the danger of instrumental reasoning encouraged by capitalist accumulation. This message then contributes to the film’s...