I grew up in the 1980s, and having
a ‘geek’ dad, I got to watch, read, and play all the things he was interested
in, and luckily for me his hobbies are films, books, and computer and
videogames. He loved, and still does,
the Blockbusters, and the heroes that come with them. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean Claude
Vanne-Damme and Sylvester Stallone regularly appeared on our screens, with
their heroic achievements and superhuman ability to survive any peril. I remember a lot of science fiction being
released as mainstream film during this time, with The Terminator, Predator, Total Recall, and of course Blade Runner making their mark on my
consciousness—indeed, it has been argued that in the 1980’s, science fiction film
achieved a dominant position in terms of production, which given the amount of
science fiction films I remember watching, seems reasonable. All of these blockbusters, made for their
box-office appeal were expensive to make, with a lot of special effects, and
were designed to bring about maximum profit.
John Clute writes that the 1980s saw the beginning of a changing
relationship between science fiction and the world, with that relationship
becoming altered ‘almost out of all recognition’, through the intertextual
nature of franchises such as Star Trek
and as the content of science fiction films began to resemble the real world
more (Clute 2003, 64-65) . This change contributed to the mainstreaming
of Science fiction, and included the introduction of science fiction electronic
gaming and the growing presence of science fiction in television. This decade also saw a rise in the adolescent
hero, a younger, broadly identifiable character, whose appeal did not rely on
muscles and violence, but on his ability to use intellect and emotion to solve
problems and resolve issues. Coming from
a wide range of economic and social backgrounds, these heroes, often seen as
geeks, nerds, and even losers, use their skills as gamers and hackers to
achieve their heroic status, which seemed to me a more plausible heroic type,
and one I, as a child, could recognise.
My
dad, it turns out, made me into a gaming, sci-fi loving, 80’s film fan. A lot of the films we watched, the games, we
played, and the novels I borrowed from him, remain fixed in my memory as
favourites. Some of them still are,
despite the years and the progression of technology that makes them look simple
and cheaply made in comparison to contemporary examples, especially in terms of
computer generated content. In the first
part of the 1980s, the inclusion of computer generated images, sequences, and
animation into live action film was revolutionary. Tron (Bridges 1982) was the first
film to feature CGI to a great degree, and compared to contemporary examples,
it looks—and I acknowledge the heresy—pretty crappy, as you can see!
The introduction of CGI in science fiction
during the first part of the 1980s paved the way for many, many films,
including another of my childhood favourites –The Last Starfighter (Guest 1984) . Computers and computer technology then, were
being used to create the very stories that were commenting on their use in
society, and on the people that used them.
WarGames (and
of course, Tron, D.A.R.Y.L, and Weird
Science) were telling stories and exploring the potential for the use of computers
and the perceived dangers of giving them too much power. However, despite the science fiction themes
of these films, computers were not science fiction, they were real. Keith M Johnston writes that ‘for the first
time, science fiction was coming into your house…the computers were real, the
technology was real, and you could program your computer to do almost anything’ (Johnson 2011, 2) (including bringing
Kelly LeBrock to life apparently), and computers were
becoming part of everyday life—at least for some of us!
Whilst films
were featuring young people, and using them as metaphors for openness and more
accepting of new and alien experiences, there were other factors in the production and release of adolescent
oriented film; Johnston says that ‘by the 1980’s, Hollywood had embraced
demographic audience research, and studios were increasingly aware of the
number of young male customers that were attracted to the new summer
blockbuster’ (Johnston 2011, 100-101) . This resulted in a rash of films that
explored the relationship adolescents or children have with and in the world,
as well as with alien life: Stand by Me, and
The Goonies are two of the many instances that spring to mind. The result of this focus was that in these
films, ‘the
1980’s masculine hero was defined less by the action star than by young male
characters that relied on empathy, emotion, and intelligence over aggression
and violence’ (Johnston 2011, 100-101) . Despite the dominance of male heroes, I’m not
going to discuss gender in this paper, apart from to acknowledge a discrepancy
in the number of female heroes at this time, and to say that at the point I was
watching them for the first time, I didn’t care that the heroes were male, they
were first and foremost gamers and geeks!
The Last Starfighter is one of the first
films that sticks in my mind to feature a protagonist that I identified with
(After of course, Luke Skywalker in Star
Wars).
Alex Rogan is an average young man who dreams of escape from his life at
the Starlite Starbrite trailer park. The
setting of the earthbound portions of The
Last Starfighter in the trailer park establishes Alex’s social status, and
his desire to leave and to make life better for himself. Keith M Booker writes that ‘Every detail [of the opening
scenes] reinforces the dreariness of the working class roots of the residents
of the trailer park. Every tiny trailer
looks rundown, with tiny front yards packed with kitschy lawn ornaments and
banged up furniture. The small dirt lane
between the trailers is overrun with too many people crammed into such a tiny
space’ (Booker 2012, 154) . The perception of imprisonment this creates is
deliberate, as director Nick Castle explains. The film, he says, was originally set in a
suburban environment reminiscent of ET
and Poltergeist, but he considered
that this was ‘too derivative of these works’.
The setting was changed to foreground Alex being trapped in his economic
situation and to allow audiences to feel sympathy for him and to empathise more
with his desire to achieve the American Dream.
Alex’s principle
relaxation and escape is to play an arcade game— Starfighter. In 1984, when the film was released,
computers were not present in every home, or pocket, as they are today, and the
Starfighter game, in its huge arcade
casing, is situated outside the trailer park’s shop in a communal space. Whilst the trailer park is seen as a space to
escape from in economic terms, the communal nature of the park, nevertheless,
is shown as a supportive and nourishing place, with Alex being part of a loving
community. When Alex has a perfect run
through and completes the game, many of the park’s residents gather round him
in this public arena; as well as supporting and encouraging him as he plays, the
technology is so new and exciting that the residents want to be part of it—even
vicariously.
In using an
arcade game that involves an intergalactic rebellion, The Last Starfighter draws parallels with another popular film and
the wish fulfilment of its central protagonist; as Howard Hughes explains in The Outer Limits: The Filmgoers Guide to The
Great Science-Fiction Films ‘In the wake
of Star Wars’ mega-success, every kid
wanted to be a star pilot and take on the Empire. The
Last Starfighter was a tale of such wish-fulfilment, offering hope to those
who spent their entire lives playing videogames’ (Hughes 2014,
124) . Although I have not actually been in space and fought aliens, I have been playing computer
and videogames since I was about 7, and have been there hundreds, maybe thousands
of times over the years, and killed untold aliens in the process, so this is a
childhood fantasy I recognise!
Films that
featured videogames and computer technology were not universally optimistic,
and whilst The Last Starfighter was
offering its teenage viewers hope for a better, brighter, future, WarGames (Broderick 1983) following Tron’s example, was promoting a more
cautious approach to computers and technology, whilst at the same time
suggesting that hacking and hackers were a good thing.
In WarGames, David Lightman, ‘a computer
geek, before most people really knew what a computer geek was’ (Johnson 2011, 1) , accidently hacks
into a state-of-the-art government computer system instead of a videogame
development company, and nearly starts World War Three when he begins a
computer simulation called Global Thermonuclear War. The Government assume that the simulation is
a real event and starts taking real measures to counter the perceived
threat. Unable to terminate the program,
David has to teach the artificially intelligent computer humanity just as the
simulation he began reaches its apex, bringing with it the realisation that
there is no winner in war. At the time,
the film gave a fairly accurate representation of how a hacker accessed a
remote system, placing a telephone receiver onto a cradle and dialling a number
and in using this depiction, just like Tron
before it, WarGames romanticised
hackers and hacking, seeming to condone breaking into computers and stealing or
changing information, something that has subsequently touched most people’s
lives detrimentally. 25 years after the
film’s release Wired magazine stated that WarGames
was ‘the
geek-geist classic that legitimized hacker culture’ and ‘minted the nerd hero’ (Brown 2008) . Rather than the contemporarily perceived
hacker as a destructive force, David Lightmann is as a good character, part of
the phreaker culture that studied how telecommunications work, and that
considers that all information should be freely available, a movement that has
gone on to include Hactivism. The film
simultaneously implies that hacking is a good thing then, and yet questions the
widespread use of computers and the potential for them to go wrong if machines
are given too much autonomous power. The
ramifications of these films was culturally immense, just like Alex’s brother
at the end of The Last Starfighter who
is inspired to play videogames, a generation of children and young adults
‘started programming, building games, and basically geeking out’ (Johnson 2011, 2) as our computing
interests were acknowledged, explored, and even accepted through the films we
were watching.
Whilst WarGames offers us a hero that is similar
to Alex in The Last Starfighter, an
adolescent, game playing male, the film is doing something substantially
different in terms of theme and the exploration of computers and gaming.
Unlike the Starfighter game,
which is a training simulation, the machine in WarGames is a sentient intelligence, which has been given the power
and ability to simulate and enact war.
It is presented as a childlike individual in the film, one who must be
taught that winning is not everything.
The unsuspecting David triggers one of these simulations, which fools
the military into thinking war is about to break out, and it is he that
convinces the machine to end the simulation and teaches it that there is no
winner in war, making him the hero, despite the fact it was he who started it! Where The
Last Starfighter offers a positive image of technology as a means to escape
and to achieve the American Dream, WarGames
instead questions the wisdom in giving computers too much power and control, as
well as reinforcing the age old message that war is universally lost, no matter
who wins.
30 years on, and
the science fiction themes that the two films offer have in some respects
become fact. The Starfighter game, an
intergalactic military simulation that tests Alex’s skill has gone on to become
reality in the form of an international military training programme, Virtual Battlespace 2, which offers ‘semi-immersive,
experiential learning opportunities to familiarize and train soldiers in
various tactical scenarios and environments’ (Rundle 2012) and is used by many
countries across the world, including the UK and the US. Hacking is not the romantic pursuit that WarGames portrays, but instead is part
of everyday life, with news stories reporting the infiltration of multinational
businesses such as Playstation, and more than 10 million attempts to infiltrate
the Pentagon every day (Bender 2014) . Hacking organisations are common and include
the network Anonymous, a collective of unnamed individuals, which use
‘collaborative hacktivism’ to take action against what it perceives to be
‘corporate interests controlling the internet and silencing the people’s right
to share information’ (Tsotsis 2010) .
The films
exploring computers such as WarGames
and The Last Starfighter offer two
opposing views of computers and technology. The Last
Starfighter shows the potential for computers
as a positive influence, and WarGames
is a ‘cautionary tale about the futility of war and the dangers associated with
giving computers too much control over our lives’ (Johnson 2011, 2) , they all
nevertheless were exploring the technology that was being brought into our
homes, and our daily lives. The protagonists
in these films are not the muscle bound heroes of the big blockbusters, but a
more recognisable, more identifiable hero to the children and young adults that
were using computers and playing videogames, and while these films were
empowering and entrusting their protagonists in the 1980s with ‘the huge
responsibility of representing earth, and defending it from hostile others’ (Geraghty 2009, Ch4, p2) , such as aliens or
computers, or even from humanity itself, they were also offering us the hope
that this technology could bring about our salvation, both economically and
socially. More than that though, these
films intimated that the people using computers, programming them, and playing
them were heroes, not losers.
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