Welcome to Jurassic Park: The Blog Entry!

Jurassic Park is definitely one of my favorite Spielberg films, purely in terms of entertainment and enjoyment. And surprisingly, I have actually already watched Jurassic Park in an academic setting, so this was not my first experience looking at the film through an analytical eye (as with these other Spielberg films so far). As I expected, the main topic of conversation around Jurassic Park, both in my film theory class and here, is the creation of the CGI-created dinosaurs and how amazingly "real" they look in the film. This begs the question -- what is "realism" in film, which is itself a reproduction? And how can we describe something (such as the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park) as seeming to be "real" even though we have no actual referent for them in our world today? According to Walter Benjamin, simply by photographing (or filming something) in the process of mecahnical reproduction, the "aura" of that object or place is destroyed. So for Benjamin, the entire film of Jurassic Park may not be classifiable as "real."

To answer (or dodge around) all of these questions, and to avoid a whole ton of other philosophical questions about what reality truly means, I think it is best to simply change the way that we talk about the dinosaurs in the film. Instead of trying to determine whether or not it makes any sense to talk about how "real" they are, perhaps it is better to just refer to them as real-like or realistic or life-like, or whatever. These terms have to do with our perception of hoow the dinosaurs seem to look and act as though they are a part of our natural world even though we recognize that they can't possibly have been filmed by Spielberg's camera. Or, you could avoid this entire question of reality altogether and simply admire the brilliant technology designed by ILM that allows us to create these magnificent images in the first place.

That brings me to what I think is one of the most fascinating things about Jurassic Park, and one of the reasons that it remains one of my favorite Spielberg films -- its amazing vision of what the future of technology may hold and the questions it raises about the implications of such potential power. Even if we reach the point where we are able to genetically engineer dinosaurs as Mr. Hammond does in the film, is it right to do so? Spielberg doesn't seem to take a strong stance on either side of this issue, presenting both sides of the argument around this theme (as he usually does with the themes of his films). This conflict is illustrated by a number of scenes throughout the film, even at the very beginning with Dr. Grant digging for bones and the sonar tool that makes it superfluous to do so. However, my favorite scene that addresses this issue most directly is the scene where John Hammond faces off against Ian Malcolm and Dr. Grant about the morality of his project with only the "bloodsucking lawyer" on his side. This scene, even without the CGI dinosaurs that captivate us for the majority of the film, is wholly entertaining and reveals a lot about all the major characters, a true credit to Spielberg's talent yet again.