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CONSPIRACY IN OTHER GUISES
The conspiracy theory theme continued to occasionally appear in a relatively
traditional and less politically cynical guise. Perhaps the most successful movie
of the early 1980s to take this approach was director Brian DePalma s Blow
Out. As the title suggested, it looked back to sources such as Michelangelo
Antonioni s 1966 thriller Blow-Up as inspiration, as well as to The Conversa-
tion, which had pursued a similar theme and story line a few years earlier.5 Yet,
as much as it bears a surface resemblance to these two predecessors, Blow Out
also follows in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock with a narrative that focuses
on a lone character s fear and desperation in the face of mysterious forces
that seem to be working against him. And so unlike other conspiracy-themed
movies of the era, DePalma does not deal with the theme by focusing on the
decay of government and society as its source.
Blow Out stars John Travolta, the popular actor who at the time was still
struggling to escape the typecasting that followed him on the heels of the
phenomenally successful Saturday Night Fever. Travolta plays the part of Jack
Terry, a run-of-the-mill sound engineer for a Philadelphia production com-
pany. One evening, while recording background sound effects for a movie,
Terry witnesses a car wreck. Apparently, the tire on the car blew out just as
it was crossing a bridge. Without hesitation, Terry attempts to rescue the oc-
cupants as the car sinks into the river. The driver is dead, but Terry manages
to save the passenger, a young woman named Sally (played by Nancy Allen).
Later, he learns that the driver of the car had been a rising political figure
with aspirations for the White House.
Sometime after the accident, Terry realizes that as he was recording sound
effects for his work, he inadvertently had also recorded the crash. When he
listens carefully to the sounds on his tape, he is startled to hear what he thinks
is a gunshot just prior to when the car careened out of control. He soon
begins to wonder if the accident was an accident after all. Perhaps, he specu-
lates, the sound of the blown out tire had obscured the sound of an assassin s
bullet.
With his suspicions raised, Terry tries to discover more information about
the incident. He stumbles onto a blackmail scheme, which seems to involve
Sally. But it doesn t seem as though the potential blackmailers had murder on
their minds, and so the truth seems hazier and more complicated than ever.
As with other movies of this type, the hero eventually tries to rally the
interest of the authorities in the case, but to little avail. Terry thinks that the
122 Conspiracy Theory in Film, Television, and Politics
tape recording is compelling evidence that a gun was fired, but the authorities
are not convinced. With officials uninterested in the case, the sound engineer-
turned detective then tries to solve the mystery on his own.
Among DePalma s more successful movies, Blow Out is an effectively de-
signed film that weaves a complicated story to entertaining effect. As a con-
spiracy theory film, its importance lies in two elements. First, Blow Out is
further evidence that conspiracy theory, specifically political conspiracy the-
ory, had reached a sufficient level of audience acceptance as a theme that it
could be effectively used without much explanation. In the movie, the con-
spiracy is suggested, but the director never feels compelled to follow up with
many details, or even to make the conspiracy the central theme. Instead, it
is a conspiracy theory movie in which the conspiracy is simply there among
other plot elements, somewhat similar to the way the theme was portrayed in
Chinatown, which also had used the theme as one of many.
Second, in terms of furthering the evolution of conspiracy theory in film,
Blow Out brings an earlier conspiracy theory element to new attention. This
is the old idea that officials in the government (here represented by law
enforcement) are unlikely to recognize a conspiracy even when they encounter
it. In this respect, Blow Out calls to mind a wide range of predecessors, in such
disparate movies as Hitchcock s The Man Who Knew Too Much, in which a lone
man tries to bring attention to a conspiracy without much success, and even
the two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers that had appeared to that
date. This way of telling stories about conspiracy had received less attention
in recent years, especially after the Watergate era, in which narratives often
assumed that once evidence of conspiracy got into the hands of officials or
news reporters, the story was essentially over. With Blow Out, the idea is
reasserted that presentation of evidence might only mark the beginning of
a struggle to uncover the truth. This theme would become a more essential
component of populist conceptions of conspiracy theory in the coming years.
Other movies from the early 1980s also emphasized the institutional turn in
conspiracy theory. Like Rambo and Missing in Action, they were more apt to
represent certain elements within the nation s central institutions, particularly
the government as the source of conspiracy. These movies also assumed
that some parts of America s institutional landscape were still relatively pure,
however, and so the stories assume that although conspiracy was lurking close
to the surface of everyday American life, it could still be exposed simply by [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]