Escape with Reality: Spielberg's Virtual Worlds
In my latest deep-dive into the work of Steven Spielberg, I explore how he investigates imagination and escapism. The below is an excerpt focusing on E.T. and Poltergeist and the full article can be read on my site, From Director Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg locates his most explicitly extraordinary stories (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. and Poltergeist) in suburbia. While question marks remain over Spielberg’s involvement in the direction of Poltergeist, he certainly had a key role in shaping the story and script, and its thematic and narrative links with E.T. underline its importance to him. This significance is heightened by what the film represents. Poltergeist marks the first time Spielberg painted a form of technology (in this case the television) in a negative light, and it’s telling that it’s a form he had an affinity for as a child. Spielberg was fascinated by the TV in his youth and he’d spend so long tuning in that his parents had to devise ingenious ways to keep him away from it.
“I was ten years old and forbidden to watch TV. They knew that at night, when the babysitter would be there, I would sneak and turn the TV set on and watch late movies. And so they would put a blanket over the screen and arrange plants and things on top with the precise measurement. Sometimes my father would attach hairs in exact positions so he could tell if I had lifted up the dust ruffle over the RCA nineteen-inch screen and snuck a peak [sic] at The Honeymooners or Dragnet… I always found the hair, memorised exactly where it was and rearranged it before they came home.”
Spielberg called Poltergeist “my revenge on television” and at the film’s end, a set is removed from the motel room the Freeling family has been forced to stay at. It’s a meta-textual moment that captures both a revulsion towards and an affection for television. Referencing the closing credits of ‘The Flintstones’, in which Fred takes a sabretooth tiger outside, the scene asks us to break free of television’s virtual world and engage with the real world, while still acknowledging the power it holds. Even if it unleashes hell, the draw of television, and the cosy comfort it provides, may just be worth the risk.
This sentiment switches in E.T., which features a famous moment in which Elliott and E.T. bond over a TV airing of John Ford’s The Quiet Man. Ford is one of Spielberg’s favourite directors, and so it’s no surprise that, in itself, this moment is presented positively. E.T. (at Elliott’s home) and Elliott (taking part in a science class at school) are bonded by the movie, with E.T. forging a psychic connection to his friend. The boy then plays out the film’s famous kissing scene with a girl in his class, E.T. encouraging him to do so because of what he’s seeing on screen. If this moment portrays the virtual world of film in a positive light, it’s only because of the impact it has on Elliott and E.T. in the real world. Film is a pathway to empathy, Spielberg suggests, and by connecting through it, Elliott and E.T.’s friendship – and Elliott’s ability to connect with others in his class – grows stronger.
Indeed, so strong does it become that Elliott matures through his connection to E.T.. In the film’s early sections, Elliott is fascinated by E.T. and treats him like a pet: luring him into his home with Reece’s Pieces and declaring that “I’m keeping him” to his brother and sister. He connects through fantasy at this stage of the film: not only through The Quiet Man, but also the Star Wars action figures he shows his friend. This sense of fantasy reaches its peak during the famous bike ride, which finds E.T. and Elliott flying across the face of the moon. The pair are dressed in their Halloween costumes – another form of fantasy – and completely alone. This is their escape and the moment is drenched in an other-worldly blue colour that Spielberg uses frequently (in different ways) and which was inspired by Disney’s Fantasia. In a 1982 Rolling Stone interview with Michael Sragow, Spielberg said:
“It is Mother Night. Remember in Fantasia, Mother Night flying over with her cape, covering a daylight sky. When I was a kid, that’s what night really looked like. The Disney Mother Night was a beautiful woman with flowing blue-black hair, and arms extended outwards, twenty miles in either direction. And behind her was a very inviting cloak. She came from the horizon in an arc and swept over you until everything was a blue-black dome. And then there was an explosion, and the stars were suddenly made of this kind of animated sky.”
In other words, the blue-black of E.T. is a comforting fantasy that we (and Spielberg) are attracted to. However, it’s one we need to carefully reject. His love for E.T. makes Elliott realise that he can’t keep him: that he has to help him return to his home planet. It’s empathy and connection, but also an acknowledgement that we must wake up from our dreams. Spielberg underlines this at the film’s end where he references the earlier bike flight, but instead of flying alone across the face of the moon, Elliott and E.T. are riding alongside their friends across the face of the sun – a common symbol for connection and emotional epiphany for Spielberg. By engaging in something real, something disconnected from fantasy and ‘Mother Night’, Elliott has found real comfort and real love. He’s found what a virtual world could never deliver.
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