In my introduction to this series, I presented my thesis. The Jurassic Park movie series is about the sexual revolution in Western culture. De-extinction of dinosaurs is a symbol. It represents an unnatural, hubristic, and dangerous act perpetrated by man in rebellion. The motto “God creates dinosaurs” captures this conviction. This use of scientific power for consumerism is a metaphor for the sexual revolution. And the everyday signs of the sexual revolution are pervasive in the plots of the films. They reinforce the connection. And the agency of the functional family saves the day.
Signs of the Sexual Revolution
“Jurassic World” (2015)
Jurassic World is a self-conscious homage to Jurassic Park—from background advertising for Jurassic Tennis, to Lowery Cruthers’ mint-condition T-shirt purchased on eBay, to an Agusta A109 flying past the rock monolith in the ocean and into the same jungle ravine.
This recapitulation includes background plot elements. In Jurassic Park, John Hammond’s daughter is getting a divorce. So, Hammond’s grandchildren Tim and Alexis Murphy are sent away to the island. In Jurassic World, Claire Dearing’s sister is getting a divorce. So, Dearing’s nephews Zach and Gray Mitchell are sent away to the island. Although the park in both movies is seen and advertised as a place for the family in the abstract, the park is where we encounter particular children as concrete individuals with names, faces, and personal histories scarred by the breakdown of family.
The sexual revolution promises to entertain families—or rather individuals broken free of family ties of the past, the present, and the future. In reality, it destroys families in its provision of unsatisfying pleasures decoupled from natural purposes and deformed by vicious desires run amok.
Even the background conversations in Jurassic World are filled with content about various family relations that are strained, broken, or recovering. Zara Young is repeatedly on her phone with her friends discussing her fiancé, her conflicts with him and his friends over planning his bachelor party, and their wedding details. Lowery Cruthers and Vivian Krill can be overheard discussing the surrogate father figure in Lowery’s life or who Vivian is dating while wondering if this is an office friendship that’ll become an office romance.
In the end, we simply cannot escape family. It comes back around to remind us what it is we’re opposing in a losing war over the reality that “God creates dinosaurs”—that God’s design for the reality of family can’t be thwarted without dire consequences.
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The vibrant color-coding of the clothing continues from Jurassic Park to Jurassic World and signals to us very basic motifs in the characters.
In Jurassic Park, the elementary color signalling is as follows:
| White | Control | John Hammond |
| Black | Chaos | Ian Malcolm |
| Grey | Urbanism | Donald Gennaro |
| Brown | Wilderness | Robert Muldoon |
| Blue | Masculinity | Alan Grant |
| Pink | Femininity | Ellie Sattler |
Even the secondary characters follow the color-coding. Henry Wu and John “Ray” Arnold wear white as agents of control working for John Hammond. Dennis Nedry wears grey as representing urbanism along with Donald Gennaro—giving an impression of cold metal, artificiality, sterility, corporations, finance, regulations, legal bureaucracies, profits, and so forth. Tim Murphy wears blue like Dr. Grant his hero. Lex Murphy is characterized as a tomboy wearing pink and blue. And the functional family of Alan, Ellie, Lex, and Tim are all caked in brown mud displaying their encounter with the wilderness—impressing the sense of warmth, soil, fecundity, savagery, struggle, survival, and so forth.
The same basic color signalling continues in Jurassic World. And color combinations are employed creating meaningful mixtures of these motifs. Interestingly, there’s no pink in the movie, only two mixed uses of lavender that have motherly connotations.
Claire Dearing dresses in all white. She controls her “assets”. She embodies control. She prints out an agenda for a date. She practically screams control. In fact, she even literally screams, “You are not in control here!” Only once her priorities change and she becomes concerned with her nephews does she reveal her lavender undershirt—a subtle signal of motherly concern appearing. As events progress and her motherliness grows, she sheds the white blouse altogether.
Owen Grady dresses in blue and brown signalling his combination of masculinity and wilderness in strength, struggle, and survival. In his most ruggedly untamed moment, he’s wearing two shades of brown, is smeared with grease and sweat, and talks about animals and their urges and instincts. Owen embodies competent masculine agency contrasted with Masrani’s domesticated chic and Hoskins’ domineering chauvinism.
Simon Masrani wears grey and lavender. His grey suit is an accurate and appropriate signal of associations with the world of finance and business. And his lavender shirt fits his rather motherly demeanor toward his park, which is like his child. He is focused on the guests having a good time and the dinosaurs enjoying their life at ease in play. He dotes over his treasured child-like park and wants to spoil it. “Spare no expense.”
Vic Hoskins wears beige (brown) and black signaling a mixture of savagery and chaos. He’s the embodiment of warped and toxic masculine agency. He revels in carnage and blood-lust. He pillages and plunders. He’s disdainful toward women, womanliness, and motherhood. In an abstract sense, he’s a rapist, defiler, and usurper—spoiling all that is pure and taking away all virginity and innocence.
Henry Wu wears black and grey. He’s surrounded by amber-yellow ornamentation and occupies white and grey surroundings. He operates as chaotic urbanism in a context of controlling urbanism. And his black-and-yellow motif is classic nature signalling for all manner of creatures that are dangerous and poisonous.
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Simon: “Oh, it’s white! You never told me it was white.”
Claire: “Do you think it’ll frighten the children?”
Simon: “Children? This’ll give the parents nightmares.”
Masrani draws attention to the coloration of the Indominus Rex, and the connotations immediately rush to mind. She’s the product of unprecedented levels of genetic control and manipulation. She’s inordinately aggressive. She has exaggerated predator features and behaviors. She kills for sport rather than food. She’s killing her way to the top of the hierarchy. If the de-extinction of dinosaurs is an allegory for the sexual revolution, then this sort of artificial hybridization for non-natural entertainment and military ends is a frightening allegory for the violent weaponization of sexuality in rebellion.
The Indominus Rex is white. And she’s a she. And she’s also the dark alter-ego of Claire.
“You made a genetic hybrid. Raised it in captivity. She is seeing all of this for the first time. She does not even know what she is. She will kill everything that moves. … She is learning where she fits in the food chain, and I’m not sure you want her to figure that out.”
While Owen describes the Indominus Rex, the camera glares right into the face of Claire, creating a connection between a woman disconnected from nature in almost every way and a mutant hybrid she-monster artificially built against nature in almost every way.
One could readily interpret the Indominus Rex as the embodiment of warped and toxic feminine agency—womanhood, sisterhood, and motherhood hideously transmogrified. A jealous woman who eats her sister. A woman who cares nothing for husbands of any sort and will have nothing to do with children in any form. An Anti-Eve. Not the mother of all living but the destroyer of all living. A Witch-Queen. The demonic Lilith of myth.
One could also readily interpret the Indominus Rex as an allegory for a more ruthless or subversive version of corporations. Corporations inherently supplant natural households. And as corporations exist in a culture that is increasingly nature-neutralizing, they begin to realize that the natural family itself is a hindrance to optimal corporate operations. A new corporatism will eat everything that moves in this family resort destination.
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I’m just going to pin these thoughts here for your own imagine to run with them:
- Owen Grady is a noble patriarch with four daughters. And he teaches them virtue.
- Simon Masrani is a benevolent Walt Disney. And the dinosaurs are his princesses.
- Vic Hoskins is a malevolent Harvey Weinstein. And the dinosaurs are his victims.
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“We want to be thrilled.”
“Bigger. Faster. More teeth.”
One of the realities of thrill-seeking is the problem of diminishing returns and the need for escalation in stimuli. This reality has played itself out in many different ways in the sexual revolution as it becomes increasingly revolutionary and extreme as time passes. Nature is fought further and further. The consequences become increasingly severe.
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Zach Mitchell is a lost boy seeking to be found. A loner going his own way. He assumes he’s on his own in life. He’s waiting to escape from his parents’ custody. His cold truth-telling to his brother Gray is that “there comes a point when you have to grow up”. And it’s clear that “grow up” for Zach means focusing on yourself and your survival.
Zach doesn’t see himself as a son. And he has no aspirations for being a father. Zach’s a wannabe womanizer. He has no affections for the girlfriend he leaves behind to travel to the park. He leers at and flirts with girls. He has a teenage male’s sex drive, yet he knows only what the sexual revolution has told him to do about it. He’s cynical and embittered.
Zach is aimless and purposeless as a young man in a world that no longer knows what to offer or do with young men, because the present culture marred by the sexual revolution fears and despises virile male agency. And therefore the present culture abandons male agency to the frustration of young men. But Zach finds purpose when the circumstances force him to take responsibility for his younger brother’s survival. He finds courage. He finds brotherhood. And that’s an excellent start.
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Once again, I have to give my father-in-law credit for his movie analysis skills. He nailed the meaning of the climactic showdown with the Indominus Rex.
Owen’s three remaining velociraptors, like prodigal daughters, come to their senses and return to allegiance with their father. The Indominus Rex seeks to destroy them, because they’ve abandoned her and her agenda. Ultimately, only Blue survives the onslaught.
In the midst of the conflict, Claire runs to unleash a new ally against the Indominus Rex and all she represents—an ally with “more teeth” that can be brought to bear. She leads the Tyrannosaur into the conflict. The Tyrannosaur is a challenge for the Indominus but the former ultimately takes a beating and is almost killed until Blue rejoins the fight.
Blue and Rexy together form an effective team and are able to beat down and drive back the Indominus Rex into a standoff. And then a third critical bystander becomes an active combatant. The Mosasaur clamps down on the Indominus Rex, drags her into the lagoon, and drowns her.
This is the allegorical triumvirate that kills the Indominus Rex:
- Blue the Velociraptor is Reason.
- Rexy the Tyrannosaur is Tradition.
- Shamu the Mosasaur is Nature.
The weaponized sexual revolution represented by the Indominus Rex is savagely opposed to reason, tradition, and nature (all of which comport with one another). Reason finds the vulnerabilities in all that is irrational. Tradition holds established ground against all that is dangerously unproven or provably dangerous. And Nature scourges and condemns all that is woefully disordered and in rebellion against its created purpose. Reason launches off of Tradition’s back to strike while Tradition plows with its respectability. And when an opportunity presents itself, Nature is the gargantuan enforcer that comes crashing down and puts an end to it all.
In the end, we simply cannot escape nature. It comes back around to remind us what it is we’re opposing in a losing war over the reality that “God creates dinosaurs”—that God’s design for the reality of nature can’t be thwarted without dire consequences.
Highly Aaronic 