Robert Zemeckis' extraordinary new film "Cast Away", starring Tom Hanks as the stranded survivor of a 4 year ordeal on a remote island, is merely the latest in a long line of artistic works that consider the question of civilization (i.e. capitalist society) using this plot device. Before examining the film, it might be useful to review some of the literature.

The first, and probably the greatest, work in this genre is Shakespeare's "The Tempest". The evidence is overwhelming that Shakespeare not only set "The Tempest" on a Caribbean island, but included a Native American major character. The play's ambivalent attitude toward this indigenous slave Caliban serves not only as a useful window into 17th century racial attitudes, it also helps us understand our own period as well. The name Caliban, it should be added, is regarded as a form of "Carib," the name of the original inhabitants on the islands invaded by Columbus.

In 1609 a fleet of nine ships set out from England to shore up John Smith's Virginia colony, the first English settlement in the new world. As most people already know from their high-school propaganda, Smith was condemned to death by Powhatan, but was saved at the last minute when his 13 year old daughter Pocahontas interceded on Smith's behalf. The British returned the favor a couple of years later by burning down Indian villages and attempting to enslave them.

One of the nine ships was separated during a violent storm and ended up on Bermuda. Pamphlets were published that gave a highly imaginative account of the shipwrecked crew's experiences. Evidently Shakespeare got the idea for his play from this background material since "The Tempest" is a tale about shipwrecked Europeans colonizing an American island and enslaving the native population.

Next we turn to Daniel Defoe, whom Marxist literary critic Annette Rubinstein regards as the father of "the greatest art form originated by the bourgeoisie--the novel." Very much the product of Oliver Cromwell's movement, Defoe started life as a merchant, an important fraction of the class that this movement helped to empower. Not only was Defoe a successful merchant, he was a pro-Whig political activist as well, risking his life to place the Protestant Duke of Monmouth on the throne in 1686, and later aiding the successful rebellion that forced King James II's abdication in favor of William of Orange.

While best known for "Robinson Crusoe," his version of the castaway story, Defoe's first book was titled "An Essay on Projects", a rather mundane treatment on the need to improve British roads, enlarge the banking system, resolve commercial disputes, etc. (Sandwiched between these rather prosaic proposals is a rather startling recommendation for the emancipation of women! Defoe writes that, "I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women.")

In December, 1702 Defoe published an anonymous pamphlet titled "The Shortest Way with Dissenters" which was basically a satire of Tory politics. By coming up with the most extreme--and absurd--version of his opponents' views, he made them seem ridiculous, which was the goal. For this Sokal-like hoax, Defoe was charged one month later with seditious writing and disturbing the peace and was sentenced to an indefinite jail term.

Defoe emerged from jail at the age of 43, bankrupt, and with a wife and 7 children to feed. Turning once again to writing, he began publishing "A Weekly Review of the Affairs of France, Purged from the Errors and Partiality of News-Writers and Petty Statesmen of all Sides." Writing it from cover to cover, he included advice to the lovelorn as well as an "Information Please" quiz column! The review covered a wide gamut of topics, from women's oppression to politics and economics. He was the godfather of modern day newsletter publishers such as I.F. Stone, Alex Cockburn and Doug Henwood.

It is remarkable to learn that while Defoe's reputation rests mainly on his novel-writing, he did not turn to this art-form until the age of sixty (there's hope for me!), when he wrote "The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" in 1719.

Cast away on a richly endowed island, the protagonist uses the tools civilization has given him--both in terms of his education, and skill and the iron, seed, etc. that is shipwrecked with him--to build a prosperous life. As Rubinstein points out, this is not an adventure story. Instead of asking "What happened to him next?", we ask "What did he do next?" Crusoe's island becomes a prototype of capitalist civilization, one that in fact has the character of settled, genteel middle-class British society. Rubinstein writes

"The emphasis is not on wonderful and terrible events but on resourceful and effective activity. The initiative comes from man throughout. Nature is raw material for his shaping, not a god for his worship. Sometimes stubborn and difficult, it is never purposeful or malicious and can therefore be mastered and used by any educated, intelligent, self-reliant, hard working and prudent man who has a reasonable share of good luck—just such a share as the laws of probability (or the goodness of God) is likely to afford him. One can hardly imagine a more perfect representation of primitive capitalist accumulation building the nucleus of its first small for- tunes on industry and thrift, as well as appropriation, and the practical Protestant religion it developed as its rationale, than the passages in chapters IX, XI and XII, in which Defoe describes Crusoe’s achievement of a store of grain sufficient to safeguard him from all foreseeable vicissitudes of weather and accident. The kernel of almost every other episode, important or unimportant, is in the same way, profoundly correct as well as realistic."

It is also interesting to compare the treatment of Caliban in "The Tempest" to Crusoe's Man Friday. By the 18th century Great Britain had learned that a firm but paternalistic treatment of the native was necessary for economic development. So Friday is cajoled rather than beaten. Defoe urged such a cautious policy toward colonies in 1707, 12 years before "Robinson Crusoe" was written. He said that "[F]or the Plantations being our own Children, the Off-spring of the Commonwealth, they cannot, politically speaking, have too much care taken of them, or be too much tender'd by us."

Written in obvious homage to Defoe's novel, Swiss Pastor Johann David Wyss's (1743-1818) "Swiss Family Robinson" takes the notion of creating civilization on an island even one step further. Instead of being the product of an inventive, lone British subject, Wyss's civilization revolves around the bourgeois family, which depends on a division of labor on the island to succeed. His goal is not to show how the family is tested in life-and-death struggles for survival, but how a proper Protestant family should live. Their island is a Garden of Eden, which seems created for one and one purpose only to make life pleasant for its god-fearing inhabitants. When reading this tale, one is reminded of the fantasy segment in Chaplin's "Modern Times" when the tramp tells the waif about their future, idyllic married life. While sitting at their kitchen table of their dreams, a cow saunters up and Chaplin milks it through the open window. That's what life is like for the Swiss Family Robinson.

To make sure that things go smoothly for the family, the author makes sure that they have all the right accoutrements, which are conveniently rescued from the wrecked ship

"The cargo, which had been destined for the supply of a distant colony, proved, in fact, a rich and almost inexhaustible treasure to us. Ironmongery, plumber's tools, lead, paint, grind-stones, cart wheels, and all that was necessary for the work of a smith's forge, spades and plough-shares, sacks of maize, peas, oats, and wheat, a hand-mill, and also the parts of a saw-mill so carefully numbered that, were we strong enough, it would be easy to put it up, had been stowed away.

"So bewildered were we by the wealth around us that for some time we were at a loss as to what to remove to the raft. It would be impossible to take everything; yet the first storm would complete the destruction of the ship, and we should lose all we left behind. Selecting a number of the most useful articles, however, including of course the grain and the fruit trees, we gradually loaded our raft. Fishing lines, reels, cordage, and a couple of harpoons were put on board, as well as a mariner's compass."

Using these tools and their precious knowledge of the ways of the civilized world, the family creates a small replica of placid and pleasant Switzerland. In a very real sense, this vision is a projection of the colonizer's model of the world. Islands in the South Pacific are seen as convenient receptacles for those on a mission to remake the world in god's image. The natives are seen either as dangerous and insane--as Shakespeare's Caliban--or malleable like Crusoe's Man Friday.

Although there are no restless natives in "Swiss Family Robinson," it is clear in the final chapter that their "New Switzerland" is very much in the spirit of Great Britain's New England or New Caledonia. When the family is finally rescued by a British ship, the father and narrator of the tale conveys his hopes

"From the other two she would willingly part, if they chose to return to Europe, with the understanding that they must endeavour to send out emigrants of a good class to join us, and form a prosperous colony, adding that she thought the island ought to continue to bear the name of our native country, even if inhabited in future time by colonists from England, as well as from Switzerland.

"I heartily approved of this excellent idea, and we agreed to mention it, while consulting with Captain Littlestone on the subject of placing the island under the protection of Great Britain."

As we move toward more recent history, it becomes more and more difficult to retain such innocent notions about "civilization". World wars, genocide and atomic weaponry tend to make one think more in terms of fleeing civilization rather than recreating it on a desert island.

This surely was the intention of Paul Theroux in "Mosquito Coast," a 1982 novel that dispenses with the shipwreck plot device in favor of one that simply implants a family in a remote "uncivilized" region in order to start over. Set in Honduras, the novel's main character is one Allie Fox, a Harvard dropout and self-taught engineer and inventor.

Settling with his wife and four children in the village of Jeronimo in remote up-river Honduras, he effortlessly creates civilization out of nothing, just like the Swiss Family Robinson. Crops flourish, water flows to bathhouse, latrine and laundry, old bicycles become self-propelled boats, and so on.

Allie Fox is a kind of industrial Darwinist ''The things that get to this beach are indestructible remnants that survived the storms and tides and the bite of the sea. They've proved themselves - stood the test of weather and time. By putting them to use, we are making a settlement that can't be destroyed. Your average Crusoe castaway lives like a monkey. But I'm no fool. Take those toilet seats. That's natural selection.''

His biggest project is to create an ice maker in the tropical rainforest, which he calls "Fat Boy" in sardonic homage to the Hiroshima bomb. Even though the ice melts before it can be used by the bemused natives, Fox feels that this is his greatest accomplishment. As in most of Theroux's fiction and travel writing, the work is marred by mean-spiritedness. While the Allie Foxes of the world obviously deserve satirical treatment, Theroux's broad sword cuts at the indigenous peoples as well, who are depicted as gullible fools standing in awe of the ice as the Africans in the wretched "Gift from the Gods" stood in awe of a Coca-Cola bottle.

To its great credit, the Zemeckis film dispenses completely with the idea that civilization can be created on a remote island. The story of how this new attitude toward the genre unfolded is nearly as interesting as the movie itself.

According to a December 17, 2000 Washington Post article, the idea for a Robinson Crusoe type film actually came from Hanks. He had seen a Discovery Channel documentary on a downed World War II fighter pilot who spent four or five days on a tropical island. He was asked how wonderful it was to have been there, and the pilot responded that it was a terrible ordeal, there was nothing fun about it at all. Hanks loved the idea of turning the tropical idyll into something dark and dramatic.

He made the most interesting choice of William Broyles Jr. to write the script. While Hanks has been involved in a vast effort to romanticize World War Two in recent years, Broyles is a veteran of a more recent war which defies that kind of misty-eyed regard.

Broyles served as a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970. Part of his hitch involved leading a combat platoon and spending the rest of it behind the lines at Da Nang as aide to a general. After returning to the United States, he became a founding editor of The Texas Monthly and then, briefly, as editor of Newsweek.

However, the war continued to haunt him. In the fall of 1983 he asked permission to visit Vietnam "I wanted to do what no American veteran had ever done return to Vietnam and write about the people we had fought against. For me the war had never really ended. If I could meet my enemy in peace, perhaps it would finally be over." The results of that trip was the thoughtful "Brothers In Arms A Journey From War to Peace", a book published in 1986.

Independently of the Zemeckis-Hanks project, Broyles lived on a remote island for a week six years ago. He drank dewdrops from palm fronds, fashioned primitive stone tools, and speared stingrays and crabs, eating their soggy innards raw. All of these activities are reflected in the Zemeckis movie.

For Broyles, the hardest part was emotional rather than physical survival. He told "USA Today" (Nov. 29, 2000), "What's harder is the emotional survival. You need to find mental projects like remembering every meal you ever enjoyed. Your mind is your enemy as well as your friend." One morning, a Wilson volleyball washed up. "I started talking to it. It became my companion," says Broyles, who decorated it with shells and seaweed. This relationship with an inanimate object is captured in a highly dramatic fashion in "Cast Away". Hanks' volley ball is decorated with his own blood, which keeps getting spilled in gruesome but realistic fashion throughout the film.

Tiburon Island in the Gulf of California was where Broyles conducted his experiment in survival. But he was not totally alone. He had recruited survival experts and Seri Indians (a hunter-gatherer tribe) in case of trouble. From the Indians --some of whom lived close to earth in their youth-- he learned the value of resourcefulness. "They'd stop and pick up a rock or stick or skull and make it into a needle to sew with or a knife or a frame for a net."

This kind of resourcefulness is clearly conveyed in the survival mechanisms of Tom Hanks' character. Unlike Robinson Crusoe or the Swiss Family Robinson, the detritus that washes up from the crashed Federal Express plane has no real value--at least at first blush. But he turns a pair of ice skates into an axe and video tapes into rope. Even more compellingly, he discovers how to crack coconuts using a rudimentary flintstone tool, make fire by rubbing two sticks together and to spear fish. Basically, the film is a homage to the precapitalist societies who made these kinds of islands their homes before the colonists came to slaughter and exploit them. They in fact were the truly civilized people.