Rather than legitimating Fordism and its application of scientific-technical rationality to the management of American life, 1950s invasion narratives often criticised this system by directly associating the alien with it. It has often been pointed out that the qualities which identify the aliens with the Soviet Union is their lack of feelings and the absence of individual characteristics. It was certainly the case that during the 1950s, many American critics claimed that in the Soviet Union people were all the same; that they were forced to deny personal feeling and characteristics, and to become mere functionaries of the social whole. It should also be noted, however, that, as has been illustrated, it was common in the 1950s for Americans to claim that the effects of scientific-technical rationality upon their own society was producing the same features within America itself.
If the alien was at times identified with Soviet communism, it was also implied that this was only the logical conclusion of certain developments within American society itself. The system of scientific-technical rationality was impersonal, and it oppressed human feelings and emotions. It did not value individual qualities, but attempted to convert people into undifferentiated functionaries of the social whole, functionaries who did not think or act for themselves but were ordered and controlled from without by experts. It is for this reason that even in the most pro-scientific of the 1950s invasion narratives, the scientists often display a respect for, and a fascination with, the aliens which, it is stressed, represent their ‘ideal’ of a society ordered by scientific-technical rationality. Indeed, the aliens are often directly associated with technology. They either threaten the Earth with it, or are produced by it. Science may at times be necessary to destroy the aliens, but these texts often highlight the uselessness of scientific experts in favour of spontaneity, practicality and even domestic knowledge. As a result, even the most positive accounts of science within these texts suggest a sense of ambivalence with regard to technology.
The aliens are also often represented as the ‘ideal’ image of a scientifically-ordered military. Lucanio challenges Murphy and others by claiming that these films are not celebrations of militarism, but that the military simply offers an image of community.1 Such a claim is ultimately unconvincing in itself, but it is significant that in those cases where military personnel are presented positively, they are usually distinguished from the scientific-rationality of the military high command. They are usually acting on their own and often directly disobeying orders from above. Cooperation may be necessary within these films, but it is not the co-operation required by the Fordist system. It is the co-operation of an interactive community threatened by Fordist rationalisation and domination.
For these reasons, it is difficult to argue that nature itself is the problem within these films. As Biskind himself claims in the case of The Thing from Another World (1951): ‘Despite the fact that it is part of the natural world, more vegetable than mineral, the Thing is a robot.’2 If the invaders are presented as natural, they are carefully distinguished from associations with ‘human nature’. They are vegetables, insects or reptiles. They are cold-blooded beings which lack what are generally understood to be human feelings or thought processes. They resist anthropomorphism, and are usually presented as little more than biological machines.
As a result, the fact that many of these monsters are the products of science is significant. These texts often display an anxiety about humanity’s role within the cosmos. The familiar world becomes unstable and potentially dangerous. Science may save us at times, but it also creates a world which we can no longer recognise, a world in which giant ants or man-eating plants threaten to overwhelm us. As Clarens claims, these texts represent a world in which ‘humanity has slipped from its position at the centre of the cosmos’3 and is now under threat from monsters which are often of its own making. In the case of the 1950s alien invasion narratives, this situation could be associated with the end of American isolationism and the nation’s growing awareness of its place within a complex and often hostile world order. But even this context can only be seen as the result of more general anxieties about whether one can trust one’s world, or whether one’s life is subject to forces over which one has less and less control. In a world where people have faith in the rightness of their way of life, involvement in the international sphere would not provoke the anxieties which one finds in the 1950s invasion narratives.
It is also difficult to argue that these texts are patriarchal in the way that critics such as Biskind claim. The monsters’ association with rationality and science usually means that they are associated with masculinity and not femininity. Furthermore, those qualities which are usually associated with femininity are highly valued within these texts. It is not rationality, but those qualities such as emotion, feeling, intuition, interaction and imagination – qualities that are usually defined as feminine and ‘irrational’ – that are identified as distinctly ‘human’. Indeed, within these texts, women often occupy central positions within the action, as subjects rather than objects of the narrative. Lucanio argues that this is simply a ploy used by the texts in order to get women near the action where they can then be saved by the male hero,4 but it is usually a key index of the ideological problems with which these texts are engaged. Rather than being merely a ploy, these texts often present women’s active involvement in the struggle as absolutely essential to the victory over the menace, and it is the men who fail to appreciate their contribution who are usually portrayed as a ‘problem’. It is these men who must learn to acknowledge the error of their ways, or else be punished for their failure to do so.5
Biskind himself acknowledges the active role which Pat Medford assumes in Them!, but he argues that the film’s message is simple: ‘Better to give them [women] an inch than lose a mile, better to let Pat Medford assert herself, or face a more serious challenge to male power in the future.’6 To some extent, this may actually be the way in which gender issues operate within these films, but, even if this is the case, it seriously challenges many of the claims about the sexual politics of 1950s culture, including those of Biskind himself.
Many critics, drawing on Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, argue that the message of 1950s popular culture was that women who assumed or even desired positions of power had failed to adjust to their rightful role within the family, and that the only roles within which women can be truly fulfilled were those of wife and mother.7 As a result, 1950s popular culture is often accused of having actively directed women away from public activities and towards the privacy of the domestic sphere. Even if Biskind is right about the way in which Pat Medford is used within Them!, the film is therefore not functioning in the way in which it is generally assumed that films of the period operated. Indeed, rather than confining women to the domestic sphere, many if not most of these texts actually challenge the separation of the public and the private, the masculine and the feminine, the rational and the irrational. It is only when these distinctions are rejected, these texts suggest, that the problems which threaten humanity can be overcome.
Nor is it the case that sexuality is the problem within these texts as Biskind and others have argued. Instead sexuality is usually defined as the ultimate expression of human feelings, emotions and interaction, and it is therefore opposed to the monstrousness of the aliens’ asexual reproductive activities. Asexuality rather than sexuality is the problem, and this is related to a long history in horror fiction that dates back at least as far as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818).8 Furthermore, asexuality is a problem exactly because of its association with masculinity and science. As in Frankenstein, asexual reproduction is associated with the male fantasy of producing life without recourse to women, and it is this fantasy which is defined as monstrous specifically because it is founded on a male fear of female sexuality in particular, and sexuality in general.9
If these films do emphasise the need to ‘pull together’, they do not endorse the kinds of conformist consensus which Biskind, Tudor and others suggest. They are actually deeply critical of conformity, and clearly distinguish their positive groups from the centrally-organised systems of Fordism. Rather than a rational structure of domination and control, these groups are interactive communities which are trying to defend themselves against rationally-organised hierarchies.10 Their ‘xenophobia’ is therefore less problematic than is often implied. It is not just a fear of strangers, but an altogether more admirable attempt to defend the human against the inhuman; to privilege certain communal values in opposition to the ‘dehumanising’ domination of scientific-technical rationality.
Indeed, it is worth noting that most critics of these texts attack them for being non-intellectual or even anti-intellectual. They are often accused of provoking anti-communist ‘hysteria’, and exploiting ‘irrational’ or ‘primitive’ emotions such as xenophobia. But these criticisms actually reproduce the very values and positions which these texts challenge and reject. These criticisms accept a clear distinction between the rational and the irrational in which the former is privileged over the latter. They fail to acknowledge the legitimacy of the ‘irrational’, and ultimately share the same values as the systems of power which these texts attack.
As a result, not only do these texts contradict the claims of most mass culture theories, they are also frequently more sophisticated and complex than those theories. First, they indicate that mass culture critics, such as Dwight MacDonald, were simply wrong when they claimed that mass culture is incapable of producing critical texts, and that it ultimately endorses an elite of experts and adherence to conformity. Second, these texts actually offer an advance over mass culture theory to the extent that they present the solution to mass culture as being social rather than individual. They emphasise not only the need for group interaction, activity and resistance, but also that the simple opposition between society and the individual is a myth. In many texts, the individual not only needs the support of a communal group, but also needs stable social patterns. The conflict in these texts is between different social orders, not simply between society and the individual. This situation also enables these texts to give a more satisfying account of the seductions of conformity and routine than is available in most mass culture theory. They are able to give some sense of why people might be willing to surrender to such systems and pressures.
Finally, these texts also raise an issue which is absent from mass culture theory, at least until The Feminine Mystique nearly ten years later,11 and that is the relationship of mass culture and society to the construction of gender relations. While much mass culture theory was based on the implicit and even explicit concern that mass culture ‘feminised’ men by encouraging conformity and passivity,12 the 1950s invasion narratives often challenged not only the ways in which masculinity was constructed within 1950s America, but also the ways in which femininity was constructed.
It is also worth noting that those critics who discuss these films in relation to the context of Cold War America often fail to examine their relationship to the science fiction literature of the period. In science fiction literature, the alien invader (or Bug-Eyed Monster [BEM] as it is often described) was not a product of the Cold War, but had been popular in the 1930s and 1940s. John Campbell’s ‘Who Goes There?’, on which The Thing from Another World was based, was originally published in 1938.13 Indeed, by the late 1940s, the subgenre had become so familiar that it was already the object of parodies such as Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Concrete Mixer’ (1949).14 By the 1950s, much science fiction literature was desperately trying to distance itself from an association with this subgenre. This is partly responsible for the derision with which 1950s science fiction/horror is often regarded by those with an investment in contemporary science fiction. They were seen as ‘out of date’ in relation to the science fiction literature of their period. On the other hand, not all advocates of science fiction have been negative about them. Indeed, Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Crichton, both of whom write more legitimate or ‘serious’ science fiction, claim that The Thing from Another World is one of the best science fiction films of all time. As a result, the relationship between this subgenre and the period of the 1950s is much more complex than is often implied. The alien invader predates the Cold War.
It is also dangerous to see the subgenre as a unitary object. Many texts use elements of this subgenre while remaining very different types of texts, and even the films which can easily be discussed as part of the subgenre use its elements in very different ways, and develop the subgenre in very different directions. They may deal with a common series of issues and problems, but they deal with them in different ways and frequently take different ideological positions. The subgenre not only develops historically, but within any particular stage of development, different films may contradict or conflict with one another.
1951: the year the aliens arrived!
One of the clearest examples of the ideological differences between films with in this subgenre can be found in comparisons between The Thing from Another World, the first significant example of the 1950s invasion narratives, and The Day the Earth Stood Still, which was released in the same year, 1951. These two films are frequently compared because they share common themes and issues, but while The Thing from Another World is usually seen as an authoritarian text, The Day the Earth Stood Still is often praised as liberal or even left-wing in its politics. This distinction can be seen in Bruce Kawin’s discussion of the two films. Like Lucanio and Sobchack, Kawin is attempting to identify the features which distinguish science fiction and horror, but he argues that genre distinctions ‘are determined not by plot-elements so much as by attitudes towards plot-elements’.15 Indeed he shares Lucanio and Sobchack’s claim that the difference lies in the two genres’ respective attitudes towards science. If, as Kawin claims, these two genres are ‘comparable in that both tend to organise themselves around some confrontation between an unknown and a would-be knower’,16 horror is claimed to present the unknown as threatening and works to defend and re-establish the status quo, while science fiction is not supposed to present the confrontation with the unknown as dangerous, but as potentially liberating. It allows for the possibility of change and development. If these differences are discussed in terms of genre distinctions, Kawin also implies a political judgement. Horror is identified as implicitly conservative, while science fiction is presented as implicitly progressive (as either liberal or radical).
Kawin’s comparison of The Thing from Another World and The Day the Earth Stood Still is meant to draw out these distinctions. Both films, he points out, share similar issues and plot-elements. They both concern an alien being which comes to Earth, and they revolve around a similar series of distinctions. But he argues that they take very different positions in relation to these distinctions. For example, he notes that while the alien provokes a conflict between science and the military in both these films, The Thing from Another World presents the military as right to regard the alien as a threat which must be destroyed, while in The Day the Earth Stood Still, the scientists are presented as right to regard ‘the alien as a visitor with superior knowledge, to be learned from, and if possible, joined’.17 As a result, it is argued that these films have different ways of presenting the distinction between the human and the inhuman. In The Day the Earth Stood Still, the inhuman has value, while the inhuman is simply destructive in The Thing from Another World. The central opposition in these films is therefore claimed to be one between violence and intelligence. The Thing from Another World is supposed to value violence, while The Day the Earth Stood Still is supposed to value intellect. In the former, the creature is simply a threat and can only be dealt with through violence, while in the latter, the alien is highly intelligent and violence is an inappropriate response to it. Communication is the way of dealing with the alien in The Day the Earth Stood Still. A meeting of minds is possible, and rational discussion is the positive value.
Biskind comes to similar conclusions. He claims that The Thing from Another World associates the alien with Soviet aggression and so stresses the necessity of supporting the American state. But he also acknowledges that the alien’s presence provokes a conflict between the military and the scientists. The former recognise the alien as a threat and want to destroy it, while the latter, led by Professor Carrington, want to communicate with it and learn from it. This latter goal is clearly presented as absurd within the film but, for Biskind, the film suggests that the scientists’ real problem is not their use of reason, or even their attempt to consort with the enemy, but rather their refusal to accept the authority of the military, and by extension, the state. Biskind does acknowledge that the film presents rational, bureaucratic procedures as inadequate, and that the alien is presented as ‘reason run amok’,18 but he still argues that the soldiers are ‘employed by government, [and are] working ultimately in its interests’.19 Indeed, Biskind claims that the film also associates the alien with the military leader’s id (his irrational sexual desire), a force which must be ‘symbolically subdued’ in order to clear the way for socially sanctioned heterosexual behaviour (marriage). As a result, the film is read as a conservative one in which force is used to destroy anything that threatens or challenges the status quo. It is a film which cannot accept the validity of anything which departs from its limited notions of ‘normality’.
In contrast, The Day the Earth Stood Still is seen as a radical critique of American society. Biskind argues that it uses the figure of the lone alien to challenge society for its inability to accept him, or the wisdom which he offers. In this film, the alien is good, and society is ‘dystopian’.20 Like The Thing from Another World, the alien is associated with science, and threatened by the military, but in this case, science is not only presented positively, but also as justifiably subversive in relation to the dystopian order. For example, Professor Barnhardt, the brilliant scientist who is able to recognise the alien’s wisdom, is claimed to bear ‘a striking resemblance to Albert Einstein’.21 According to Biskind, ‘Einstein was never a favourite of the authorities’, and in ‘making an Einstein figure the hero of sorts, The Day the Earth Stood Still was crawling far out on a very thin limb’.22 Barnhardt also calls a meeting of scientists from all over the world to come and hear the alien’s wisdom, and for Biskind, the meeting ‘bears a passing resemblance to the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York amid a storm of protest in 1949’.23 People who attended this conference were criticised for being either naïve or subversive, but in The Day the Earth Stood Still, it is presented as the only hope for humanity.
Biskind does recognise that by making ‘heroes of professors and aliens’, the film ‘creates a top-down hierarchy’ in which ordinary people ‘are not rational enough’ and need to be controlled by experts.24 But this situation does not seem to trouble him unduly. Nor does he seem particularly worried by the alien’s mission. Klattu, the alien, has been sent to Earth to inform humanity that its ‘irrationality’ threatens the universal order and that it must accept the rule of a robot police force or else face annihilation. Gort, the robot which Klattu brings with him, has the power to destroy Earth if it does not put its ‘irrational’ squabbles and petty interests aside. But again Biskind does not seem particularly alarmed by this solution, which is presented as entirely just and benevolent – even utopian. Instead he argues that
where Klattu comes from, the robot cop is trusted. It is only on Earth (and here, Earth stands for society, as society stands for centre) that Gort is dangerous, only on Earth, the world of disharmony and intolerance, that Gort would menace Helen Benson, that technology and humanity, head and heart, are at odds. Where Klattu comes from, Gort is either an obedient servant or benevolent master…25
As a result, Biskind interprets The Day the Earth Stood Still as a positive, enlightened and even radical film, and claims that as a critique ‘of the witch-hunt and the cold war, [it] skated close to the edge of permissible dissent’.26
The Thing from Another World
However, these films can be seen quite differently. Indeed, Biskind’s interpretation of them contradicts his own claims about the dominance of scientific and therapeutic forms of control. Both he and Kawin also end up ultimately defending the very values of rationality and conformity on which the dominance of scientific-technical rationality is supposed to depend. In the process, they ignore or distort aspects of these films. For example, in The Thing from Another World, it is not the military personnel who are associated with the authority of the state, but the scientist. While he is associated with the highest levels of state authority and is given the full support of the military hierarchy, the military heroes have little authority and even have to disobey orders to defeat the alien. They are not the representatives of state authority, but its subjects.
The scientist, Carrington, is clearly presented as one of the experts of the new Fordist order. He has been involved in the Bikini atom-bomb tests, and both the government and the military elites look to him for advice. Indeed, so established is his authority that even the military superiors back at base camp complain that they are told nothing about what he is doing at the North Pole. The military heroes, on the other hand, are far from experts. They are not only required to refer back to their superiors at every available opportunity, but do not even understand the principles of scientific-technical rationality. Hendry, the hero, is constantly telling the scientists that they have ‘lost’ him as they try to explain scientific details and procedures, and the orders from his superiors are forever telling him to defer to Carrington.
As a result, the conflict is not simply between the military and the scientists, as Biskind suggests, but one between ordinary working people and the authority of experts. The military itself is not presented positively, but only the soldiers on the ground. The military authorities, and particularly the high command, are presented as not only inadequate, but as an actual problem. They are presented as cumbersome and out of touch. They install doorways which are inappropriate to the arctic environment and send pith helmets to the North Pole. They publish bulletins in Stars and Stripes which contradict the evidence, and lay down standard operating procedures which do not take account of the context of their use and so have destructive results. When the soldiers use these standard operating procedures to uncover the alien spaceship which they have found buried in the ice, they only succeed in blowing it up. Indeed, whenever orders do come from above, they are either too late or else completely misguided. As the battle against the alien intensifies, the soldiers keep getting messages which tell them to protect the creature at all costs.
In this context, Carrington’s interest in the Thing is significant. After one confrontation with the alien, it is attacked by the camp dogs which tear off one of its arms. As the scientists inspect this arm, they find that the alien is a vegetable and that it has seed pods under its skin. From this information, Carrington deduces that the alien’s reproductive system is asexual, and he proceeds to give a speech which indicates not only why he considers this discovery so important, but also the values which the creature embodies for him:
Yes, the neat and unconfused reproductive technique of vegetation. No pain or pleasure as we know it. No emotions. No heart. Our superior in every way. Gentlemen, do you realise what we’ve found? A being from another world, as different from us as one pole from the other. If we can only communicate with it, we could learn secrets that have hidden from man since the beginning.
For Carrington, the alien is the ‘ideal’ of the system of scientific-technical rationality. It is a creature which has no personal or irrational features. As Lukacs argues in relation to the labour process, scientific-technical rationality is not concerned with the individual qualities of its workers’ labour, but only with the quantity of their labour, their output. Indeed, he claims that as scientific-technical rationality is used by management to create greater efficiency, the individual qualities of a worker’s labour are redefined ‘as mere sources of error when contrasted with those special laws functioning according to rational principles’.27 In this process of production, and by extension, in a society ordered according to the principles of scientific-technical rationality, individuals must deny their individual qualities in order to become interchangeable components within a system which is ordered and controlled by experts.
Carrington admires the alien because it lacks the very features which he defines as an impediment to efficiency. The alien race is not made up of individuals with individual features or qualities. Each is a replica of its parent and is produced through a system of reproduction which is not only seen as more efficient by Carrington, but is also associated with the standardisation of mass production. Not only does this system of reproduction define the alien race as little more than biological machines, it also means that they lack the features which Carrington sees as the ultimate form of ‘irrationality’, sexual desire. It is sexual desire which is seen as the ultimate expression of all human emotions and feelings, but it is this very feature which Carrington’s scientific-technical rationality seeks to control or erase. It is not only seen as an impediment to the efficient performance of social roles, but it also requires interaction. Carrington’s ideal model of society must seek to eradicate interaction in favour of a centrally-ordered system of control, and it is the struggle between interaction and domination which preoccupies this film.
Just as MacDonald and Mills argued that the new system of domination broke down interactive communities in order to bind individuals directly to the centres of power, so The Thing from Another World dramatises the conflict between these two modes of social organisation. It suggests that in the latter system, people are merely objects to be used, and this situation is dramatised through the film’s presentation of the alien as a kind of modernist vampire. It feeds on human blood which it also needs to reproduce itself as a species. Marx had used the image of the vampire to describe the workings of capitalism, and argued that ‘Capitalism is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more it sucks.’28 In a similar way, as Carlos Clarens puts it, The Thing from Another World suggests that ‘superior science … will bleed us to death’.29 Even Carrington is worried by this situation. If the alien only sees humans as a means of sustaining and reproducing itself, why should it want to communicate with them? As Carrington puts it: ‘He regards us as important only for his nourishment. He has the same attitude towards us as we have towards a field of cabbages. That is our battle.’ Unfortunately Carrington is as unable to influence the actions of the alien as ordinary people are able to influence the elites of mass society. He is as unsuccessful in persuading the alien to communicate with him as the soldiers are in trying to persuade him to interact with them.
The issue of communication is therefore central to the film, and it is partly dealt with through the different styles of speech which distinguish the film. While Carrington tends to give speeches or monologues, the soldiers tend to speak in overlapping dialogue, a feature common to those films associated with the director Howard Hawks who produced The Thing from Another World. The soldiers talk fast, bouncing ideas off one another, finishing each others’ sentences as they add ideas and comments. In this kind of dialogue, meaning and ideas do not originate in the authority of any one individual, but develop out of communal interaction. Hendry may act as the leader, but instead of dictating to the group as Carrington does, he mainly acts to facilitate dialogue. Indeed, he is often given ideas and even orders by his subordinates, and in the final battle, he actually loses track of what is being planned. He becomes displaced from the centre of the group, which now no longer needs him to coordinate it, and moves to a place on the sidelines from which he keeps asking what is going on. However, this situation is not presented negatively, and Hendry does not resent it. In fact, the reverse is true: Hendry turns it into a joke because he is able to accept that his men know what they are doing, and may even be better equipped in certain areas than himself. Indeed, the group even involve themselves in his ‘private life’, and finally succeed in pushing Hendry and Nicky, his girlfriend, together. As she tells him, ‘they know what’s best for you’.
In contrast, Carrington gives monologues and speeches in which he sets himself up as an authority who hands down information and orders to others. Indeed, rather than interacting with others, he frequently withholds information in an attempt to control situations, and he shows little concern when this often endangers people. When he discovers that the alien is using the camp’s greenhouse to reproduce itself, he refuses to tell Hendry and the others. Instead he leaves a couple of his fellow scientists to keep watch and so causes their deaths. He even begins secretly to breed the alien’s seeds himself. Indeed, the more he tries to understand the alien and to communicate with it, the more he finds himself unable to communicate with other humans. His powers of speech start to deteriorate, and he frequently resorts to passing his notes over to Nicky, his secretary, who reads them for him. This technique is similar to the way in which experts often use press conferences to control and manage the flow of information to the rest of the population. He even finds it increasingly difficult to interpret the responses of others. When he explains to the other scientists that he has been breeding the alien seed pods, he mistakes their looks of horror and disapproval for disbelief. This situation is unsurprising given that their lives are unimportant to him, except as an aid to the further development of scientific knowledge. As Carrington puts it, ‘knowledge is more important than life’.
The film’s concerns with issues of interaction and communication are also dealt with through the figure of Scotty, the newspaper man who comes to the base with Hendry. In this film, the news media are not presented as a form of mass cultural manipulation, but as a democratic force. It is their role to disseminate information to the public. But when the soldiers find the alien spaceship, a conflict develops between Hendry and Scotty. Hendry will not let Scotty release the story of the discovery. He claims that the army radio cannot be used for ‘private information’, but when Scotty retorts that this information is not private, but belongs to the whole world, Hendry replies that he is not working for the whole world, but for the US army. This exchange is given a darker dimension later in the film when Scotty comments on the destruction of the spaceship and claims that the military will probably make Hendry a general for destroying embarrassing information. The implication of these comments should be clear. The film raises the issue of the military hierarchy’s control and manipulation of information. If Scotty represents the democratic flow of information, the military, like Carrington, seek to dominate and control information for their own ends, rather than in the interests of the wider population.
However, Hendry is largely dissociated from this problem. He is clearly seen to be acting under orders, and he makes great efforts to get permission from his superiors for Scotty to release his story. Indeed, Hendry has been responsible for persuading his superior to allow Scotty to go to the North Pole in the first place. As the film progresses, Hendry also becomes distanced from the hierarchy and learns the importance of disobeying orders. Scotty seems to acknowledge this situation, and though he still complains, he is spontaneously included within the group. The group even makes him their spokesperson after the conflict. Scotty is given the radio and not only addresses the world, but also talks for the group. His speech even includes Carrington within the group under the assumption that he has probably learned his lesson and will now respect the interactive community.
If the film concerns a conflict between the interactive community and the authority of scientific-technical rationality which seeks to dominate and reconstruct this community, these issues are also dealt with in relation to sexuality and gender. Not only is the alien’s mode of asexual reproduction that which is ultimately defined as monstrous, but in American culture, as linguistic theorists such as Deborah Tannen have claimed, overlapping dialogue and interaction are usually associated with the feminine, while monologue and rationality are usually associated with the masculine.30 As a result, while it could be argued that the alien’s association with reproduction defines it as feminine, its physical appearance and its association with rationality define it as male. Indeed, there is a long history of horror texts, dating back to the early Gothic novels, concerned with the patriarchal fantasy of producing life without interaction with women and define the attempt to realise this fantasy as that which is ultimately monstrous. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a particularly clear example, and like The Thing from Another World, this novel relates this fantasy to the logic of scientific rationality. Not only is it this asexual method of reproduction which leads Carrington to associate the alien with technology and rationality, both of which are usually defined as masculine, but this method also leads him to distinguish it from those very qualities which are usually defined as feminine, qualities such as interaction and emotion.
Indeed, the film is highly critical not only of the distinction between rationality and irrationality, but also of the distinction between masculinity and femininity to which it is related. As a result, it not only contains a strong central female character, but also presents its male characters as emotionally weak. Not only does Nicky wear trousers throughout the film, she is often at least as capable as the men in traditionally masculine activities. She has been able to out-drink Hendry, and knows enough about science to understand Carrington’s work and its implications. Indeed, the military team accept her as an equal within their group without question. At one point, she does turn up with coffee for the men, but this scene is particularly telling with regard to the film’s self-conscious handling of gender roles. As the men are discussing how to combat the alien, Nicky arrives at the door with coffee and asks if anyone wants a cup. Recognising that this is an excuse, they say that they don’t want any coffee, but that she can join them anyhow. Having already been accepted, she admits that she had only brought the coffee so that she could join them. Only at this point, once the men have made it clear that she has been welcomed into the group as an equal, and not in order to perform traditionally female roles, do they then agree to drink the coffee.
But if Nicky is skilled in traditionally masculine activities, she is not a surrogate male.31 She does not distance herself from traditionally feminine qualities in order to achieve male approval. Indeed, her strength is that she embodies both masculine and feminine virtues, but is not confined to either one. If she does trouble and disturb the male characters, it is due to their own inadequacies. Hendry, for example, is quite capable in traditionally masculine activities, but he is unable to deal with his emotions and so finds it difficult to relate to women. In the film’s terms, he is not only presented as immature, but this immaturity is also associated with the rationality of the scientists and the alien. These latter figures either lack or despise emotion, and the scientists are frequently claimed to be ‘like kids with a new toy’. If, as Biskind argues, this situation implies that the alien is not just associated with rationality but also with Hendry’s sexuality, it is not because it is associated with his id, or his sexual desire. After all, the alien has no sexual desire. Instead, the alien is associated with Hendry’s masculinity, and his inability to deal with women as anything more than objects for sexual conquest. In the film’s terms, he must grow up, but this does not mean that he must repress his sexuality. Quite the reverse, he must acknowledge his feelings, including his sexual feelings, and learn how to interact with women as equals. In short he must acquire traditionally feminine qualities.
Not only does Nicky call into question traditional gender roles, and gender distinctions, she is also for this very reason absolutely essential to the destruction of the alien. Indeed, she is the one who comes up with the comment from which the final plan is developed. As the group tries to work out how to kill a vegetable, she jokingly suggests cooking it. It is by combining her domestic knowledge with practical science that the group is finally able to destroy the alien by burning it to death with electricity. It is only when the distinctions between the masculine and the feminine, the rational and the irrational, the domestic and the scientific, are dispensed with that the threat represented by the alien can be finally eliminated.
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Day the Earth Stood Still, on the other hand, is a far more authoritarian film. Its criticism of American society is simply that it is not rational enough, and it calls for the repression of individual feelings, interests and desires, all of which are simply defined as both irrational and destructive. This repression is necessary in order to ensure the efficient running of a state which is not merely national or even international, but a fully ‘universal’ order. Nor is this film any less violent in its values than The Thing from Another World. It is just more impersonal. Violence, or at least the threat of violence, is essential to the smooth running of the rational state. It has to be used to keep irrational elements repressed. Violence may be denied to individuals or nations, but only because it is given over to the rule of technology and science embodied in the robot police force of which Gort is a member.
Klattu has been sent to Earth to inform us that the Earth’s internal conflicts threaten the peace of the universe, but the language which he uses to describe humans and human society clearly defines these conflicts as simply the products of irrationality. He criticises humans for their ‘unreasoning attitudes’ and when he is asked by an interviewer (who does not know his identity) if he fears the alien’s arrival, Klattu answers that he is only ‘fearful when [he] sees people substituting fear for reason’. For Klattu, human emotions have no foundation or validity, and it is only rational thought which has any positive value. The problems of human societies and their conflicts are simply dismissed as the product of these irrational emotions. When the nations of the Earth refuse to meet one another in order to hear Klattu’s message, he is angered by their ‘childish jealousies and superstitions’. They are not based on a reasonable foundation and are merely described as ‘petty squabbles’. For Klattu, and for the film, individual and national interests must be put aside in favour of the Universal, but the Universal is not an interactive community based on shared interests. It is an abstract, rational and totalising order to which individuals and nations must surrender themselves. It is vertical, rather than horizontal, in its organisation.
Indeed, rather than criticising the scientific-technical rationality of the American state, the film continually defends and even champions it. For example, the film is careful to emphasise that it is not the American state which is responsible for the conflicts between the nations of Earth. Henley, the diplomat who tries to organise the meeting of national representatives which Klattu demands, is presented as honest and sincere. He genuinely wants to help Klattu, but it is the other nations which cause problems. The American president has even tried to appease the Soviet Union by agreeing to their demand that the meeting should be held in Moscow, and it is the British government who complicates matters by refusing to attend the meeting if it is held there. If there are problems with American institutions, it is that they are not rational enough in their organisation.
Neither is the American military presented negatively as is often claimed. It is presented as a problem only in so far as it functions to defend the interests of an individual nation, rather than universal interests. Indeed, Klattu does not even disapprove of war itself, but only wars fought for supposedly ‘petty interests’. Strangely, when Klattu is taken on a tour of Washington by the young Billy Benson, a young boy whom he befriends during the course of the film, he is awestruck by both the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington cemetery. Indeed Billy’s father, who has given his life in World War Two, is not presented as a fool who died in a meaningless war. Instead, both the American Civil War and World War Two are implied to have been heroic struggles for grand universal values. Lincoln in particular is seen as a ‘great man’. The Gettysburg address is not seen as a piece of propaganda designed to encourage men to fight in one of the bloodiest wars of American history, but rather as a heroic testament to the values of ‘Union’ over sectionalism, of universal over particularistic interests. Unfortunately for Biskind, and others who defend this film as a critic of Cold War ideology, it was this rhetoric of universalism over particularism which America used to justify its Cold War politics. America, it was claimed, was defending universal human values over the particularism of the Soviet Union. Indeed, at the beginning of the film, the military is not even presented as having been responsible for the shooting of Klattu. The shooting is the fault of an individual soldier who panics when his emotions get the better of him. It is a lack of military discipline which is the problem, not military discipline itself.
As a result, in The Day the Earth Stood Still, it is ordinary people who are the problem, and they are presented as needing the authority of experts in order to keep them in line. Throughout the film, people are presented as prone to irrational panic and in need of discipline. When the spaceship lands, they run in terror. Later they form crowds around the vessel and need to be controlled by the military and police. When Gort appears they react in horror, and flee once more. Indeed, while Klattu claims that his message is too important to be entrusted to any one individual or nation, he does not seek to address the ordinary people, but only their leaders. If he has the power to make the world stand still for half an hour, it is difficult to accept that the film cannot find a way for him to address all the peoples of the Earth (as the aliens do in Earth Vs the Flying Saucers [1956]). Indeed, while he does go amongst the ordinary people, he explicitly states that he is doing so in order to discover the basis of the irrationalities which divide the world. It is the irrationality of ordinary people which causes problems at the higher levels of government, not vice versa. Furthermore, the film does not contradict Klattu’s view of people. When he goes amongst the people, he takes a room in a boarding house in which everyone except a young woman, Helen Benson, and her son, Billy, display irrationality and panic. They either suspect the alien of being a Russian, or are just plain ‘jittery’.
If Helen Benson and her son do not display these negative features, it is not because the film values the feminine qualities of interaction or emotion. Instead, Helen displays the traditionally maternal qualities of self-denial and self-sacrifice. She represses her own interests and defers to authority. This feature is particularly clear in her relationship with her boyfriend, David. When he finds out that Klattu is the alien, David decides to inform the Pentagon. However, Klattu has spoken to Helen and has persuaded her of the universal importance of his mission. She accepts his authority and tries to persuade David not to inform. Unfortunately, he is filled with dreams of individual power and heroism. He says that by informing he will become a ‘big man’ and that he will ‘be able to write [his] own ticket’. In response, Helen asks him to consider the broader implications of his actions, but he only responds, ‘I don’t care about the rest of the world’. In this film, individualism is merely irrational selfishness, but all the film has to offer in its place is self-denial. It hardly offers the image of a society in which humans can live more fulfilling lives, and simply calls for the repression of individual desires before an authoritarian state.
Helen’s son operates in much the same way as his mother. Children are seen as open to the wonders of the world, but in the film, the reason for their openness is that they look up to others. Indeed, their sense of wonder is almost entirely presented in relation to scientific achievements. While adults are terrified by the spaceship, the children are presented as being excited by, and in awe of, the vessel. Billy is also fascinated by Klattu’s stories about the scientific wonders of his civilisation.
Indeed, science in general is presented as wondrous and benevolent. Not only does the film emphasise that the science of Klattu’s society is more advanced than that of humans, it often associates it with medicine. It is claimed that due to their advanced medicine, the life expectancy on Klattu’s planet is twice that on Earth. At another point, a doctor comments on the miraculous properties of an ointment which Klattu has brought with him, an ointment which has healed a bullet wound on Klattu’s arm within one day. But the greatest display of the healing powers of science occurs at the end of the film when Gort uses technology to bring Klattu back from the dead after he has been shot by the army for the second time. Indeed, this sequence also gives science religious overtones. The film has a clear parallel with the New Testament, in which Klattu takes the role of Christ. He comes to Earth to save it from its follies; goes amongst the common people; is killed by human ignorance and intolerance; and eventually rises again before delivering a message to the world and ascending to the heavens. He even takes the name Carpenter while on Earth. Klattu does tell Helen that his resurrection is only temporary and that only God can give back life once it has been taken, but this only further associates technology and science with the powers of God. They become powers to be worshipped and adored.
The film also goes to great lengths to allay fears about science. For example, at one point, Klattu tells Billy that his spaceship is powered by atomic energy. Billy is surprised and claims that he thought atomic energy was only useful in the making of bombs. In response, Klattu explains that atomic energy is useful for a great many other things, too. The implication should be clear: science in general and atomic energy in particular are not bad in themselves, but only when used in an irrational and irresponsible manner.
Indeed, science is presented as the only potential saviour of humanity. When Klattu finds that the world’s leaders will not meet with him, he tries to find an alternative way of delivering his message, and asks Billy who is the greatest person in America. Billy seems a bit confused, and well he might. Klattu really means: who is the most intellectually brilliant, or as Billy puts it, the ‘smartest’ person. There are many different ways of defining ‘greatness’, but for Klattu, as for the film, greatness means scientific genius. Billy decides that the answer is Professor Barnhardt, and Klattu decides that instead of addressing the world’s political leaders, he will address its scientists. His preference for science over politics is again related to issues of rationality. Politicians are associated with the defence of particular interests, while scientists are presented as objective and rational. They are supposedly above the ‘petty squabbles’ of politics and address universal truths in a logical and rational manner. For this reason, they can overcome the irrationality which divides the world and come together for the good of all.
Not only are scientists the best way of spreading the message, the message itself is that humanity must put aside its irrational behaviour and accept the rule of science in the form of a robot police force. These robots are the embodiment of super-rationality and Klattu informs the scientists that the peoples of the universe have given them ‘absolute power over us’. They have incredible destructive powers and have been programmed to destroy any planet which behaves aggressively. Klattu claims that this solution to war does not involve any loss of freedom, except the freedom to behave ‘irresponsibly’. But there is a problem with the word ‘irresponsible’: it is not as easy to define as Klattu implies. What may be irresponsible to one person may not be to another. It is also worth noting that instead of a solution to aggression, the justification for this scheme sounds very similar to the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) philosophy which was later used to justify the arms race. According to this philosophy, the stockpiling of nuclear weapons was an aid to world peace, not a threat. The combined destructive strength of these weapons, it was argued, would be so great that no nation would dare to act aggressively for fear of starting an atomic war which would destroy the planet. It would assure the mutual destruction of both sides. Klattu’s proposal does not reject violence, but places it firmly within the hands of the state. Not is it presented as an option. He informs the scientists that there is no alternative. Earth must either accept the rule of robots such as Gort, or be destroyed. Instead of respecting difference, the film demands rigid conformity to the universal order, an order from which there can be no valid dissent.
Notes