Boyhood heroism is overdue for a comeback
40 years later, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial shines a light in ways we never anticipated.
I recently took my daughter to see the movie E.T. at a neighborhood second-run movie house, which felt like a rite of passage. I’d only just found out that same morning that there were two matinee showings — that day only — so I knew I needed to make it happen.
It was tremendously meaningful for me to be able to take my daughter, so much so that after we sat down and got settled in our seats I held her close and kissed the top of her head, shuddering with gratitude as, unbeknownst to her, tears welled up in my eyes.
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I hadn’t seen the film since my mom took me way back during its first theatrical run in 1982. One of my dearest — and most comical — memories from childhood is a scene from when my mom and I went to see E.T. a second time with my grandmother in tow and I looked over to find both of them crying at the same time as I was, the three of us sobbing in unison.
Naturally, several things stood out to me this time that there was no way I could’ve registered back then:
I was surprised at how pleasantly nostalgic I felt for director Steven Spielberg’s portrayal of the suburbs. I didn’t grow up in the suburbs and have often felt something not quite on the level of horror or disgust, but certainly a very strong distaste towards the suburbs.
Prior to the other day, I would’ve told you that I’ve always recoiled at the way Spielberg idealizes the suburbs so much it’s like he wants us to buy into the myth of the American suburb as utopia. I don’t ever remember buying-in myself. In fact, for decades now, the mental image I get when I think of Spielberg’s films is of the camera making the suburbs look like they glow, an ‘80s update on Leave It To Beaver‘s vision of the world.
Spielberg’s shots of suburban tract housing in E.T. literally do glow — and, as it turns out, there’s a place in me that feels warmly toward the (false) sense of promise and innocence Spielberg imbues these scenes with. Maybe it’s the fact that the USA seems to be on the verge of a chaotic, violent disintegration, but I found myself not only yearning for the Spiebergian myth to be true as I watched, but also feeling like I was re-connecting with something concrete, even if it wasn’t true: I did, after all, live through the period where these depictions were everywhere — so prevalent in the culture you had no choice but to breathe them in.
It was nice to watch without having to push my cynicism aside.The film is almost entirely devoid of bullying. I mean, some of the boy characters prod each other, but it lacks the nasty edge that anyone who’s ever been a teenager can tell you is just par for the course. Again, Spielberg presenting adolescence as a time free of peer pressure and violence just doesn’t map onto the truth. But instead of finding it hokey and unconvincing, I was struck by a sense that Spielberg hadn’t gotten enough credit for shining a light on an unsung aspect of boyhood.
What really stood out to me was how quickly the character of Mike comes to the aid of his younger brother, the now-iconic protagonist Elliott. Mike doesn’t immediately believe Elliott that there’s some kind of creature out by the shed, but once Mike sees for himself, he becomes a loyal, indispensable ally-protector to both his younger brother and to the E.T. character.
There’s one scene in particular where Mike, played by Robert MacNaughton, out-maneuvers and evades a carful of (presumably) evil government-scientist pursuers on his dirt bike. He does so by being brave and relying on raw physical skill. I never had anything close to that kind of physical confidence as a teenager, but I didn't feel inadequate or wistful as I watched. On the contrary, I felt a joyful exhilaration.
Late in the story, Mike’s teenage friends — who’d earlier given Elliott flak — all band together and put their lives on the line to help Elliott, Mike and E.T. get away from the government scientists. They do so with an endearing combination of naïveté, gusto and physical agility. It’s noteworthy that the scientists are portrayed as scary and even evil for their cold, impersonal brutality. In a sense, the film pits boys against men. If the boys have any chance of winning, it’s because they haven’t severed the compassion from their toughness and their nerve.
American society, I thought, could really benefit from re-awakening and re-embracing this noble aspect of the teenage boy, and from restoring its place as an archetype in our collective cultural repertoire.
It would seriously help heal us on a number of levels. We need that boy back in a major way.There’s a symbiotic, extra-sensory connection between Elliott and the creature. In retrospect, this part of the story feels like a foreshadowing, because I’d say we’ve achieved a new baseline level of empathy since E.T. was made. We’re not quite at the level we see in the movie, but we’re well on our way. Often when I watch films from the ‘70s and ‘80s (including Spielberg’s monumental 1975 classic Jaws, which single-handedly set the template for the summer blockbuster), the interactions onscreen reveal such a dearth of emotional awareness that it seems we’ve advanced hundreds of years in the space of just a few decades.
The way E.T. and Elliott synchronize hearts, essentially (as shown in the iconic scene where E.T. is at home drinking beer and Elliott is in biology class as the students prep for a frog-dissection) just doesn't seem quite like the leap into fantasy as it did back then. It almost plays now like a metaphor for our connections with one another, nowhere near as much of a stretch or implausible as it must’ve seemed 40 years ago.
Alas, our species is certainly headed somewhere… simultaneously teetering at the edge of an abyss while leveling-up in profound ways.
Belated kudos to Steven Spielberg for pointing the way forward, perhaps unwittingly, in a way I’d never been inclined to recognize. My bad!
<3 SRK