Invasion Films and the Reagan Era

Abstract

If the aim of the Reagan paradigm was to return to a Cold War-style clear delineation of good and evil, or to re-establish faith in the neo-imperial security state, these 1980s invasion films seem to suggest this process was not always completely successful in its endeavors. They reflect doubt and fear of a world trying to replace cultural anxiety with a simplistic nostalgia for the past. They testify to the complexity of a culture retaining suspicions of America’s geopolitical role in the world whether instilling cautious hope or deep pessimism in the viewer. Yet strangely, they seem to borrow unconsciously pro-status quo elements of Reagan era culture even as they sometimes reflect doubts about its implicit proposed return to America’s hegemonic tendencies at home and abroad. Toward the period’s end with the finale of the Cold War, there seems to be as much anxiety implicitly expressed in cinema about the dissolution of the Reagan paradigm as there was initially doubt about accepting the paradigm in the period’s inception.