Nixon, Post-détente, and Invasion Films in the 1970s

Abstract

The invasion films of this time reflect the panoply of attitudes toward the nation state in a decade where the end of the Vietnam War, the Watergate Scandal and its conclusion, and the growing presence of advanced communication technology in American life made for a complex mix of optimism and pessimism in the culture. Alien others in the world shortly before and after détente reflect the same byplay of monstrosity and positive recognition as in earlier films but with a depth and complexity not seen in the earlier decades of the security state. Representations of race and gender show tendencies to support and subvert old paradigms—creating the impression that the pre-Reagan world toward the decade’s end was vacillating between opposed visions of the neo-imperialist state, as if the country were waiting for some force embodying politically and culturally the shifting dynamics of these films to push America resolutely in one direction or another.