Science Fiction Lecture 2

Invasion of the Body Snatchers Lecture – Science Fictions.

It was the 1950s, Sci Fi was just coming up.
All of these Sci Fi films that were made in the ‘50s can be take as Political Allegories. How would the audience interpret these films though is a different matter. This allegory thing though goes back thousands of years, like fables, these stories always have meanings and values added to them.

There was a definite cycle of successful B movies in the ‘50s, always at drive ins or back to back with other films. So what was the historical context of these films anyway? Well, since it was the ‘50s, it was the period of the Cold War. There were a lot of anxieties towards being taken over, the American way of life was being threatened by foreign culture. The war between capitalism and communism. McCarthy was a big figure at this time because he tried to hunt people down who were just vaguely left wing and then try and crucify them as the enemy, or even worse, a communist. Some people couldn’t even get work anymore their views were so bad. In this little era then, people had to be very careful about releasing their views to the wider world unless they were very clever.

The Thing from Another Planet (1951) begins with an arctic expedition where some scientists find a persons hand in the snow. In the parts coming up after this scene, it becomes a small batter of banter between the scientists and the army. O thought the scientists would win but oh no, it was the good old common scence of the army that won over that stupid rational scientist. “Watch the skies” became a good slogan that made people watch the skies consistently for UFOs or Trident rockets that were about to Nuke them. It comes with no surprises that the aliens in these 1950 films were always evil and monstrous. It was Us vs. Them. A lot of the monsters were products of radiation that was from Nuclear bombs or factories etc. Theories of life on Mars were very plausible back in the ‘50s. It was Pearl Harbour and the Cold War that gave birth to anxieties of being attacked by things that came from the sky. I imagine if a nation got attacked from the ground then we would have a lot of films exploiting that fear, come to think of it, doesn’t War of The Worlds do that, and doesn’t Gears of War? Jeez, it’s already bee thought of before dammit. Anyway, back to “The Thing from Another Planet”, the scientist obviously are very rational beings, like an emotional vegetable. This was an allegory to what Americans thought everyone would become like is they were subjected to a communist government. America waned everyone to be an individual, not a the same as anybody else, but different. The army in this film is very Right Wing because they want to just stamp out the alien instead of listening to those stupid scientists who keep on whinging to “keep it alive”. The army captain grabs an axe in the meantime. In conclusion, this film presents the good guys as not very tolerant of anything alien or different. Jeez!

In a different film though called The Day the Earth Stood Still, Klaatu, who’s a genius alien who is far more cultured and intelligent than us gets himself resurrected and then makes a speech at the end of the film. He says that the world will live in peace whether it likes it or not, and will be policed by super strong robots that don’t take any shit form anyone. He’s not a monster, he looks like a human. Obviously there are loads of Christian overtones in this as Klaatu is killed by the military authorities and then resurrected. They should do a story based on Samson from the Bible, or indeed that guy called Lot, that would be funny. Klaatu then ascends into heaven in his UFO. America thought of itself as the world police back in the day, just like in Team America. The scientist in this film differentiates from the scientist from the Thing from Another Planet in that instead of having a Russian like hat, he has a big scruff of hair like Eisnstein. The robot that Klaatu instructs by the way is called Gnut, a pretty foreign name to be honest.

Them! (1954) is less complex the Klaatu’s film in that it just has giant ants killing people in it. The military were experimenting and totally made a mistake. What was the solution in this film anyway? Well, uniquely to this film, the scientists and the military actually work together to kill off the insane amount of giant ants. The flamethrowers do the job in the end permissed by the scientist.

These films are thus about the American dream and about it’s Global power. Can we trust our Scientists not to mess our lives up? There’s a lot of anti-intellectualism out there at this point with common and emotional sense having the upper hand. The intellects could not be trusted because they were disconnected from everyone else.

Seminar:
In what way is the Invasion of the Body Snatchers an allegory of the Cold War?
Be vigilant against your enemies the Russians. This kind of war is new and unheard of. They can get you from anywhere they wish, the skies especially.
The political messages in this film are unfortunately confused with moral issues. Apparently, the definition at the end is humans vs. the inhuman/aliens/monsters. No faith, no ambition, no love seems to be the communist/body snatchers dream.
This is all fine and dandy, but there are other interpretations. One is that this film is seen as being anti-conformist. That’s what we are at the moment. I think. You have to be different. Elvis was at the head of this anti conformist movement. You were either a Square or a Cool Cat back in the day.
Discuss the role of gender.
“I want your children!” was a line that the lady said to the man near the end of the film. Terrible isn’t it. She was also the one who was being carried a lot of the way at the end of the film and she still managed to fall asleep and thus get changed into a communist.
Comment on the style.
The outro seems to get everything solved. It is possible that the studios to give the film some kind of hope at the end when the FBI decides to take action put in this intro and outro (sentence corrected by the computer). The real ending by the director was to end less happily at the highway were the doctor is delirious and no hope seems to remain.

THE END