Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Are the Pods Really “Outer Space” Invaders?
Invasion of the Body Snatchers:
Are the Pods Really “Outer Space” Invaders?
WRIT 140
A3
Liang Chen
Mar 19, 2012 The era of 1950s in America was an era of paranoia. Following WWII, it was a time when the Americans were confused and neurotically preoccupied with international political events, especially the on-going Cold War. For Hollywood, these fears turned into the exploration of the science fiction genre, while huge numbers of movies about monsters, alien invaders and modern technologies like hydrogen bombs and spacecraft were made to covertly mirror the fact that the America was filled with severe anxiety, fear and even hysteria under the shadow of “Red Scare”------the danger of nuclear wars and the possibility of Russian Communist conspiracy, as well as Americans’ suspicion of its own capitalist system and political tendency. Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is such a “social” science fiction film that expresses the psychological tension and unbearable fears that swept the country during the fifties. The film tells the story of the heroic but helpless struggle of Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), a doctor from a small Californian town of Santa Mira, to vainly combat with the deadly, indestructible threat of tremendous alien invasion by large seedpods that replicate and take over people’s minds. To be short, it is a film about…“Pods”, which Siegel answered in an interview. (Kaminsky 133) These huge vegetable seeds actually serve as metaphors of the issues of communist subversion, atomic bombs and McCarthyism conformity, which illustrate the main factors of the mass paranoia at the time.
“Something evil had taken possession of the town.” ------Dr. Miles Bennell The pods, most obviously, are the metaphors of Russian communist ideology, reflecting Americans’ fear of communist subversion in 1950s for their identical characteristics of invading into people’s minds without their
Are the Pods Really “Outer Space” Invaders?
WRIT 140
A3
Liang Chen
Mar 19, 2012 The era of 1950s in America was an era of paranoia. Following WWII, it was a time when the Americans were confused and neurotically preoccupied with international political events, especially the on-going Cold War. For Hollywood, these fears turned into the exploration of the science fiction genre, while huge numbers of movies about monsters, alien invaders and modern technologies like hydrogen bombs and spacecraft were made to covertly mirror the fact that the America was filled with severe anxiety, fear and even hysteria under the shadow of “Red Scare”------the danger of nuclear wars and the possibility of Russian Communist conspiracy, as well as Americans’ suspicion of its own capitalist system and political tendency. Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is such a “social” science fiction film that expresses the psychological tension and unbearable fears that swept the country during the fifties. The film tells the story of the heroic but helpless struggle of Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), a doctor from a small Californian town of Santa Mira, to vainly combat with the deadly, indestructible threat of tremendous alien invasion by large seedpods that replicate and take over people’s minds. To be short, it is a film about…“Pods”, which Siegel answered in an interview. (Kaminsky 133) These huge vegetable seeds actually serve as metaphors of the issues of communist subversion, atomic bombs and McCarthyism conformity, which illustrate the main factors of the mass paranoia at the time.
“Something evil had taken possession of the town.” ------Dr. Miles Bennell The pods, most obviously, are the metaphors of Russian communist ideology, reflecting Americans’ fear of communist subversion in 1950s for their identical characteristics of invading into people’s minds without their
Citations: Booker, Keith M. Alternate Americas: science fiction film and American culture. Westport: Praeger P, 2006. Pirnt. LaValley, Al. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Piscataway: Rutger’s University Press, 1989. Print. Kaminsky, Stuart M. Don Siegel On the Pod Society. Editor. Gregg Rickman. New York: Proscenium Publishers, 1976. Print. Skal, David J. The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. London: Penguin Books, 1994. Print. Whitehead, John W. “A Tale For Our Times.” Gadfly Online. Web. 16 March 2012. http://www.gadflyonline.com/11-26-01/film-snatchers.html