Review,
Enemy Mine was one of those stories I grew into. Returning to it decades later, I find its lessons about honoring those we oppose still at work within me.
In the ‘80s, VHS tapes rented from a certain aisle would keep me couch-locked for hours. Movies like The Last Star Fighter and War Games stretched my young mind with the scale of what could be known.
If they’d somehow have mapped the effects that video rentals were having on their quiet boy and his developing brain in the TV room, my folks would’ve found that for the better part of the decade I was high as fuck on adventure, tripping out on adult values and perspectives I’d need when encountering the unknown. Home videos taught me how to relate with others, and Enemy Mine ranked high in this movie watching curriculum.
Let me speak about the original supplier for a sec—the homie Barry B. Longyear. As a writer, Longyear's gifts were in turning speculative premises into moral questions. First published in 1979 in Asimov's, Enemy Mine won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards before spawning a film, sequels and later collections. Not bad for a story that began with two enemies stranded together on a hostile world.
Wolfgang Petersen’s directorial adaptation embellishes parts of Longyear's novella, particularly in its third act, but preserves its emotional and philosophical core. Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett Jr. carry that burden well through their onscreen performances. For all the differences between page and screen, the story survives the translation.
Whether or not this contributed to its box office performance, the one thing I remember anchoring on, rewatching Enemy Mine, were the concepts scattered about the story that were beyond my grasp. The things said or unsaid between the characters—their motivations, the stakes in the movie—all maintained a level of elusive adult complexity that bore rewatching in order for me to touch the essence of what was there. It was enough story to grow into.
The story opens on fighter pilot Willis E. Davidge, who has crash-landed on the remote planet Fyrine IV alongside Jeriba Shigan, the enemy Drac fighter he has just shot down in a dogfight. Locked in their rigid antagonistic roles, the two quickly discover they can’t sustain their conflict while also coping with the dangerous intrusions of the rocky, hostile environment. Reading the book and watching the movie today, both are of their time, but that’s in no way a barrier to enjoyment or suspending disbelief of the story.
Enemy Mine is about survival; an odd couple learning to cooperate for basic needs like food and shelter. From a practical standpoint, this includes making rough-hewn attempts to overcome language barriers and cultural divides. But it also addresses differences in physiological experience, a seed that is masterfully planted by Longyear in the design of his character opposites.
Where humans reproduce sexually, Dracs reproduce parthenogenetically. Making extrapolative sense of this difference, we come to understand that Dracs do not, for example, experience loneliness in the same way that humans do. Nor do they perceive lineage or grapple with the existential questions of the universe in the same manner. This is because humans must find their counterpart to reproduce, while Dracs inevitably reach a time when they reproduce another variation of themselves. For them, it’s a given. And in their eyes, they see a fundamental loneliness in us humans, one so profound that we’ve split ourselves into two sexes just so we can find ourselves.
At its core, Enemy Mine is a tale of transformation and transcending prejudice, paving the way for deeper themes to emerge. It becomes a story where enemies who finally see each other find that they can honor what is sacred for one another. And I don’t mean the shortcut of recognizing an enemy because they resemble something in ourselves. I mean the sort of transcendence in recognizing an enemy after looking past what we revile, what disgusts us and what offends our fundamental sense of what is right and good and beautiful. When we allow ourselves to see without our own measures of value, we finally see our enemy.
This is what makes Enemy Mine a crucial story: It suggests that our character is revealed by how we treat those we regard as enemies. This is an ethos that feels to me to be scarce, that feels endangered in our world. By remembering that disagreement should not erase another person’s dignity, we preserve something essential about our own humanity.
As a child, Enemy Mine exposed me to the concepts of enemies as hidden friends, of conflict as sacred ground, of the chivalric code in recognizing and honoring what we discover to be important for others. Revisiting Barry B. Longyear’s story today reminds me that when we do our best to understand and respect what we oppose, we gain perspective. Even if we think we know enough, and we never do.
In our era inflamed by ideological certainty, misinformation and manufactured cultural divides, Enemy Mine reminds us of the folly of our biases. Four decades later, the seeds of the story have grown into a strange, ironic agitation within me. I find it difficult to tolerate people who refuse to acknowledge the dignity of their enemies. Even if, in principle, I agree with their position. Even if I am in league with their side. In those moments, I feel oddly marooned, inside the disagreement and yet somehow outside the conflict.
I find myself thinking about Davidge and Jeriba, struggling to forge peace and understanding between them on Fyrine VI before the hellscape they’ve crashed into claims them. Few stories have stayed with me for so long or revealed more with each return.
In the ‘80s, VHS tapes rented from a certain aisle would keep me couch-locked for hours. Movies like The Last Star Fighter and War Games stretched my young mind with the scale of what could be known.
If they’d somehow have mapped the effects that video rentals were having on their quiet boy and his developing brain in the TV room, my folks would’ve found that for the better part of the decade I was high as fuck on adventure, tripping out on adult values and perspectives I’d need when encountering the unknown. Home videos taught me how to relate with others, and Enemy Mine ranked high in this movie watching curriculum.
Let me speak about the original supplier for a sec—the homie Barry B. Longyear. As a writer, Longyear's gifts were in turning speculative premises into moral questions. First published in 1979 in Asimov's, Enemy Mine won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards before spawning a film, sequels and later collections. Not bad for a story that began with two enemies stranded together on a hostile world.
Wolfgang Petersen’s directorial adaptation embellishes parts of Longyear's novella, particularly in its third act, but preserves its emotional and philosophical core. Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett Jr. carry that burden well through their onscreen performances. For all the differences between page and screen, the story survives the translation.
Whether or not this contributed to its box office performance, the one thing I remember anchoring on, rewatching Enemy Mine, were the concepts scattered about the story that were beyond my grasp. The things said or unsaid between the characters—their motivations, the stakes in the movie—all maintained a level of elusive adult complexity that bore rewatching in order for me to touch the essence of what was there. It was enough story to grow into.
The story opens on fighter pilot Willis E. Davidge, who has crash-landed on the remote planet Fyrine IV alongside Jeriba Shigan, the enemy Drac fighter he has just shot down in a dogfight. Locked in their rigid antagonistic roles, the two quickly discover they can’t sustain their conflict while also coping with the dangerous intrusions of the rocky, hostile environment. Reading the book and watching the movie today, both are of their time, but that’s in no way a barrier to enjoyment or suspending disbelief of the story.
Enemy Mine is about survival; an odd couple learning to cooperate for basic needs like food and shelter. From a practical standpoint, this includes making rough-hewn attempts to overcome language barriers and cultural divides. But it also addresses differences in physiological experience, a seed that is masterfully planted by Longyear in the design of his character opposites.
Where humans reproduce sexually, Dracs reproduce parthenogenetically. Making extrapolative sense of this difference, we come to understand that Dracs do not, for example, experience loneliness in the same way that humans do. Nor do they perceive lineage or grapple with the existential questions of the universe in the same manner. This is because humans must find their counterpart to reproduce, while Dracs inevitably reach a time when they reproduce another variation of themselves. For them, it’s a given. And in their eyes, they see a fundamental loneliness in us humans, one so profound that we’ve split ourselves into two sexes just so we can find ourselves.
At its core, Enemy Mine is a tale of transformation and transcending prejudice, paving the way for deeper themes to emerge. It becomes a story where enemies who finally see each other find that they can honor what is sacred for one another. And I don’t mean the shortcut of recognizing an enemy because they resemble something in ourselves. I mean the sort of transcendence in recognizing an enemy after looking past what we revile, what disgusts us and what offends our fundamental sense of what is right and good and beautiful. When we allow ourselves to see without our own measures of value, we finally see our enemy.
This is what makes Enemy Mine a crucial story: It suggests that our character is revealed by how we treat those we regard as enemies. This is an ethos that feels to me to be scarce, that feels endangered in our world. By remembering that disagreement should not erase another person’s dignity, we preserve something essential about our own humanity.
As a child, Enemy Mine exposed me to the concepts of enemies as hidden friends, of conflict as sacred ground, of the chivalric code in recognizing and honoring what we discover to be important for others. Revisiting Barry B. Longyear’s story today reminds me that when we do our best to understand and respect what we oppose, we gain perspective. Even if we think we know enough, and we never do.
In our era inflamed by ideological certainty, misinformation and manufactured cultural divides, Enemy Mine reminds us of the folly of our biases. Four decades later, the seeds of the story have grown into a strange, ironic agitation within me. I find it difficult to tolerate people who refuse to acknowledge the dignity of their enemies. Even if, in principle, I agree with their position. Even if I am in league with their side. In those moments, I feel oddly marooned, inside the disagreement and yet somehow outside the conflict.
I find myself thinking about Davidge and Jeriba, struggling to forge peace and understanding between them on Fyrine VI before the hellscape they’ve crashed into claims them. Few stories have stayed with me for so long or revealed more with each return.
