Independence Day: Deep Thoughts About American Exceptionalism, Sci Fi Disaster Movies, and Jeff Goldblum in a Flight Suit

Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast

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Welcome to Earth.

The 1996 Roland Emmerich-helmed film Independence Day was one of the touchstone movies for Emily's generation, so her flabber was absolutely gasted to learn Tracie had never seen it until a few years ago. Just in time for the 4th of July, Emily walks Tracie through what made this movie such a monumental hit in the U.S. and abroad, despite its jingoistic American exceptionalism and skin-deep application of science fiction storytelling tropes.

Both in 1996 and again in 2025, Emily appreciated feeling seen as an American Jew via the characters of David and Julius Levinson (played by Jeff Goldblum in his absolute prime and Judd Hirsch, respectively) and she loved the way German-born Emmerich celebrates America's diversity as our greatest strength. That celebration of diversity includes Emmerich's behind-the-scenes fight to have Will Smith in the lead role when the executives balked at a Black leading man.

But this mashup of disaster and sci-fi movies also appeals to some ugly stereotypes Americans believe about the rest of the world while refusing to ask any deeper questions about how aliens or people would react to enormous, world-changing events.

Release…me… by listening in to this episode!

Mentioned in this episode:

Space Opera by Catherynne Valente

This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirls

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We are Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our family as the Guy Girls.

We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com

We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, and analyzing pop culture for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, and whatever else we find.

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1. Introduction to Independence Day (00:00:00)

2. Experiencing the Film for the First Time (00:08:13)

3. Main Characters and Plot Synopsis (00:18:00)

4. The Virus Strategy and Earth's Defense (00:29:25)

5. Jewish Representation in the Film (00:39:10)

6. Analyzing American Exceptionalism (00:49:40)