Them or Us - Political Control In 50s Sci-Fi Movies
The Monolith Monsters and I Married a Monster from Outer Space - Of Silicate and Social Aggravations
Jul 9, 2009
Universal offered The Monolith Monsters in 1957, a still-fresh premise in the form of meteoric crystals that threaten to crush an isolated Arizona town through their tumbling procession.
Dosing their path with salt will halt them. But to do this requires inundating the local salt mine with water from a nearby dam. Near-frantic efforts are made obtain the governor's permission to blow it up, as in their advance, the sky-scraping crystals have brought down the phone lines.
For the same reason, the people can't be warned to evacuate, so the town newspaper editor enlists his delivery boys to spread the word, who express reluctance to do so, unless they are paid.
Kids Today!
Thus, Monolith assays the tension between personal gain and public obligation. Which impulse should be served when, even when in defiance of the rights or authority of others.
Further, why should deference to a distant government take a backseat to the rights of the unseen mine owner, who goes unmentioned throughout the movie? While sacrificing it constitutes a clear case application of eminent domain, in the absence of the mine's legal disposition, the film communicates an unaccountable obsequience to state authority for its own sake.
Water Falls of San Angelo
This double bind permeates real-life through a collective cognitive dissonance, like the traditional convention of bake sales held to buttress chronically budget-strapped American public schools--even as the Pentagon, which nominally exists to protect education and other institutions, never goes wanting.
In Search of Human Men
Given the current U.S. healthcare legislative turmoil, Paramount's I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) is more than just another convention-shaping vehicle.
When newlywed Gloria Talbott’s Marge wakes to discover her husband is an alien, she rushes to the police chief, who offers her coffee and cookies, as if calming a child that has just had a nightmare. But behind the ensuing prescriptions for gender roles lies an unexpected pitch for... the insurance industry.
If It's Good Enough for Old Man Dexter...
Unlike his restless pals, Marge's fiance, Bill,l tools around in a station wagon, right up to his bachelor party. His eagerness to accept family responsibility imparts legitimacy to his work in insurance sales.
Additionally, Sam--also newly-married and compromised--makes contact with the Bill double on the pretext of inquiring about "that policy you sold old man Dexter", a weak excuse given their friendship is well-established, not to mention that both appear too young for a senior's policy.
Love Me, Love My Beulah
It's assumed with these films that, compared with the infiltration of alien beings, human affairs, were, if not reassuringly self-directed, are at least benignly so.
But how a cunning Venusian in 1956's Roger Corman quickie, It Conquered the World responds to a warlike humanity's first steps into space reveals much more about our own behavioral susceptibility.
Beulah, as the cucumber-monster was widely called, engages in all-too-terrestrial political machinations, by tailoring sweet nothings to the idealistic ears of genius Tom Anderson, tragically played by Lee Van Cleef.
Controlled Panic
His colleague, Peter Graves' Paul Nelson, debates substantially with Anderson about human progress. But Anderson will not be dissuaded that It is anything but a pacific benefactor, even as the thing dominates humans through mind-control or sheer terror, depending on their social utility.
Labeling power outages and the unquestioned mass relocation of Red-scared citizens into camps as exercises in "controlled panic", Nelson concludes that while the creature has no native emotional capacity, it knows humans do, and manipulates them accordingly--in short, equating Beulah with a sociopath. Whatever It's exploitive intent, Lou Russoff's script lampoons the Boogey Man tactics of the era, that so similarly animates today's "War on Terror".
Klaatu: A Real Screwball
The Day the Earth Stood Still's Klaatu, played by Michael Rennie, has no horns to tell you he is from another world. While the reason for his visit is the same as Beulah's, his impact as an extraterrestrial (save for the occasional input of his robot, Gort) depends almost solely on the fact of his Earthly presence.
The reaction of the Secretary of State makes this clear, as his detention of Klaatu suggests his fears lie less with protecting the public than it does with protecting Washington from challengers to its authority.
We Will Wait for Your Answer
This exceptional 1951 film's best scenes concern Klatuu's mutual pedagogy with Billy Gray, playing the son to Patricia Neal's Helen Benson. Their open interactions highlight the needless barriers of ingrained custom and fatalistic expectation that separate the way things are from the way they could be.
For its challenge to cozy bromides is what still makes Day so authentic. While much fantastic cinema affirmed the conventions of the post-war decade, the fulfillment of the consciousness-raising ideas of more timeless examples continues to rely on their audience's real-life implementation.
