SOURCE: Rushing, Janice Hocker. “E.T. as Rhetorical Transcendence.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 71, no. 2 (May 1985): 188-203.

In the following essay, Rushing characterizes E.T. as “a significant experiment in the rhetoric of mythic transcendence,” noting that the film effectively deconstructs the boundaries between the individual and the community.

Heaven has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair memory of things that once were. But the heart glows, and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being.

—Carl Jung¹

Our time is marked by a yearning for wholeness. While continuing to benefit from the progress wrought by the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, Western humanity is beginning to ask, “At what price?” For, along with its scientific dreams, the Enlightenment has delivered its share of technological nightmares. The twentieth century has enjoyed labor-saving devices, longer leisure hours, and increased...