Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar, epilogue

This is the epilogue to a three-part series of posts, titled “Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar”, interpreting the movie Jurassic World. The whole series of posts in order is the following:

1. An extended look at the role played by clothing in depicting personal transformation in the movie.
2. An expansion of our analysis, from clothing through enclosures to social relations structured by power, understanding, and survival.
3. An examination of survival, evolution, rationality, and the (non-)distinction between the real and the virtual.
4. An epilogue defending my choice of title, and offering some final thoughts.

I realize now that I did not explain at all why I picked the title for this series of posts on Jurassic World. It is of course meant to call to mind Edmund Burke’s classic critique of the French Revolution, which has the much more elaborate title Reflections on the Revolution in France, And on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. In a Letter Intended to Have Been Sent to a Gentleman in Paris.

Burke is sometimes caricatured as being an arch-conservative and stick-in-the-mud, but it is important to realize that in the context of his society, he was actually rather on the progressive wing. Burke was a supporter of the American freedom struggle, a champion of the rights of the Irish (he was of Irish descent himself), and vehemently opposed to the East India Company’s depredations in India. And yet, he was fundamentally opposed to the French Revolution, because he saw in it the release of forces deeper and more dangerous than those unleashed by any other revolution: rationalism, utterly convinced of its own correctness and of the total mistakenness of all other positions, willing to overthrow everything that came before it in the name of a new world order founded on pure reason unencumbered by primitive inherited idiocies.

What happens on Isla Nublar is a revolution in that sense: a full overturning of the existing order (a re-volvo) and the institution of a new system based on different principles.

Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar, part three

This is the third of a three-part series of posts, titled “Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar”, interpreting the movie Jurassic World. The whole series of posts in order is the following:

1. An extended look at the role played by clothing in depicting personal transformation in the movie.
2. An expansion of our analysis, from clothing through enclosures to social relations structured by power, understanding, and survival.
3. An examination of survival, evolution, rationality, and the (non-)distinction between the real and the virtual.
4. An epilogue defending my choice of title, and offering some final thoughts.

In the previous installations of this series, I first wrote about the hugely significant role clothing plays in understanding the transformations of individuals in Jurassic World. I then expanded on the idea of clothing to enclosures in general, which led naturally to relations of power and dominance, which were then contrasted with relations of trust and understanding (familial relations) and with relations of unification for survival (conjugal relations). It is now time to naturally move from conjugal relations to the theme of evolution, which of course underpins the entire Jurassic Park franchise.

Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar, part two

This is the second of a three-part series of posts, titled “Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar”, interpreting the movie Jurassic World. The whole series of posts in order is the following:

1. An extended look at the role played by clothing in depicting personal transformation in the movie.
2. An expansion of our analysis, from clothing through enclosures to social relations structured by power, understanding, and survival.
3. An examination of survival, evolution, rationality, and the (non-)distinction between the real and the virtual.
4. An epilogue defending my choice of title, and offering some final thoughts.

Last time, we took a very close look at some of the significant ways in which clothing works in Jurassic World. I will avoid diving into such detail this time around, as I have a vast range of topics to cover. (Need I say that this will be massively full of spoilers if you haven’t seen the movie?)

2. Enclosures

I’m thinking of enclosures fairly broadly here as any sort of covering that affords protection from the elements. In this sense, clothing is of course a kind of enclosure protecting human skin: the shedding of clothing is the discarding of a layer of insulation. But there are a number of other such enclosures in the film: the gyroball, for instance, literally encloses the two boys in a protective shell as they travel through the park—

Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar, part one

This is the first of a three-part series of posts, titled “Reflections on the Revolution in Isla Nublar”, interpreting the movie Jurassic World. The whole series of posts in order is the following:

1. An extended look at the role played by clothing in depicting personal transformation in the movie.
2. An expansion of our analysis, from clothing through enclosures to social relations structured by power, understanding, and survival.
3. An examination of survival, evolution, rationality, and the (non-)distinction between the real and the virtual.
4. An epilogue defending my choice of title, and offering some final thoughts.

I haven’t blogged for a regrettably long time, so I figured I would mark my return to the scene by reflecting on a movie that hasn’t done too badly for itself this summer: Jurassic World. Given my obsession with dinosaurs (par for the course for anyone who saw Spielberg’s original miracle), this experience was particularly fun for me.

I suppose it needs no spoiler warning to say that Jurassic World is about (yet another) dinosaur going crazy on a theme-park island, with lots of humans dying gruesomely while the protagonists make it through with all body parts intact and with an increase in their wisdom. But what struck me even while watching the movie was that it very artfully sets up a number of structural polarities, only to dissolve some of them—but not all!—into an even more complex jumble. Postmodern neopaleontology? Bring it on!

What I will do now is look at a few motifs that are repeated throughout the film, creating striking parallels and generating resonances.