Beep, The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is considered a classic science fiction film, but which also contains elements of horror and film noir, was adapted from a novel written in 1954 by Jack Finney entitled The Body Snatchers. The novel had been serialized or published in consecutive parts in 1954 for Collier's Magazine, which had been founded by Peter Collier, a pioneer in investigative journalism. The magazine also had an established reputation for its efforts in social reform, or muckraking, depending on who was talking.
Finney's story takes place in the fictional town of Santa Mira, California, which is described like the real-life Mill Valley in Marin County, not far from San Francisco's Bay Area. Santa Mira is invaded by mysterious seeds that have drifted through space and landed on Earth in nearby farmers' fields. The seeds grow into large pods within which develop perfect replicas of the townspeople that replace them while they are sleeping.
Once duplicated, the humans disappear forever. The replicas retain all the physical markings of the original, right down to the tiniest scar, and all the mental software, including their knowledge and memories. All of this is completely intact. The only thing that's missing is what makes them human. that is their individual personalities and emotions.
And this also is what distinguishes the so-called pod people from the real people. This ghastly phenomenon is discovered by protagonist Dr. Miles Bunnell, who upon returning to Santa Mira after delivering a paper at a medical conference, is called by a number of frantic patients complaining about various relatives who've changed in ways that they can't explain. They look and talk the same, but they're not the same. They're just different.
This includes his old girlfriend, Becky Driscoll, who has come back to town after a divorce and is concerned about her uncle Ira. Miles diagnoses a mass epidemic along the lines of Capgras syndrome, a psychiatric disorder which causes the patient to believe that those closest to him or her have been replaced by identical imposters. Typically, the disorder occurs in people suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, or more rarely, with serious brain injuries. So Miles is at a loss to explain how it has occurred in this town to so many people at once and during his short absence. When he, Becky and other friends of theirs discover pods growing replicants of themselves, they start to do some investigating and find out about the extraterrestrial invasion which has brought the seeds to Earth.
Spoiler alert, if you don't want to know what happens, stop the lecture now, watch the film and continue listening afterward. Becky and Miles tried to reach federal authorities to no avail. They can't reach them due to the phone lines being jammed, which indicates the scope of the invasion. It has now spread far beyond Santa Mira, across the country.
When Becky and Miles realize that they are the last living humans, they try to escape from the town. But then Becky also falls prey. Sounding the alarm, she reveals their hideout, and the pod people pursue Miles to the highway, where he runs out amongst the cars, trying frantically to alert.
Confused drivers swerving around him, trying to alert them about the catastrophe taking place behind him. Are you crazy? Danger! Through all of us, our wives, our children, everyone! You!
Needless to say, it's a very dark scenario with science fiction's typical embedded cautionary tale. What Miles and his friends discover during their investigation is that the aliens have chosen Earth in order to survive and perpetuate their parasitic species. They can only reproduce by taking over other human beings. If they are not stopped, they will wipe out the human race before moving on to the next planet. Also typical of science fiction...
Though the humans are victims, they are also perceived as responsible for their own demise. As one pod person points out, man has been doing the same thing to the planet for centuries, destroying its natural resources, indigenous populations, and precious ecosystems. Interestingly, the novel, though certainly grim, had a more optimistic ending.
Once the aliens, who only have a five-year lifespan, realize that the earthlings are going to mount up a strong resistance, they leave the planet. But the first film adaptation, made in 1956, is far more pessimistic. It actually had two different endings.
The first ending, which was devised by the screenwriter and director, depicted Miles in the middle of the highway, screaming at the truckloads of pods passing by, on their way to towns across the state and country. But the studio was concerned about this gloomy conclusion, in particular how it would affect the box office once the word spread. So it was decided that a prologue and epilogue would be added, changing the perspective from immediate first-person testimony to a story told in flashback, with a voiceover narrative provided by Miles recounting past events from the perspective of the present.
I'm a doctor too. I am not insane. I am not insane.
Suppose we just sit down over here, Dr. Bunnell, and you tell me what happened. It started. For me, it started last Thursday. In response to an urgent message from my nurse, I... In this way, the end of the world would not seem like a fait accompli.
In these bookend scenes, in the prologue and epilogue, in which we see Miles in the hospital... where he's been taken after being hit by a truck on the highway, and where he's trying to convince the doctors about the truth of his story about the pods, we switch from despair to hope. In the beginning, the doctors don't believe him, and they're preparing to commit him to a mental ward. You see why I did it?
Will you tell these fools I'm not crazy? Listen to me before it's too late! I'll listen to you. Who are you?
I'm Dr. Hill from the state mental hospital. I'm not insane! Let him go! But in the end, when a badly injured truck driver is brought into the emergency room and they find out that police have discovered pods in the wreck, the doctor finally understands that the story is true and calls the FBI.
You don't believe a word of this, do you? Sure, it's fantastic, but it happened. Don't just sit there measuring me for a straight check.
Do something! Get on the phone! Call for help! What's the use?
What do you think? Will psychiatry help? If all this is a nightmare, yes. Of course it's a nightmare. Plants from another world taking over human beings.
Mad as a March Hare. What have we here? Ran his truck through a red light.
Greyhound bust smacked him broadside and tipped him over. Put him in the OR. Will you take over Bunnell for me, Doctor?
Certainly. How badly is he hurt? Both legs, left arm broken, all the bits.
We had to dig him out from under the most peculiar things I ever saw. What things? I don't know what they are. I never saw them before. They look like great big seed pods.
Seed pods? Where was the truck coming from? Santa Mira. Get on your radio and sound at all points along. Block all highways, stop all traffic, and call every law enforcement agency in the state.
Operator, get me the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, it's an emergency. Don Siegel, the director, hated the bookends as he felt they nearly ruined the film and changed the original intent, which was to scare the crap out of viewers.
Producer Walter Wenger agreed, however he believed strongly that without these bookends the studio would not release the film. Over the years critics and scholars have read into the film various meanings and warnings related to the context of its production. Interestingly, three very popular interpretations have come up, each which had to do with fears about post-war American ideology. The first few theorized that the story warned about the blandness of conformity in the Eisenhower era, which turned people into mindless automatons. The second view theorized that the story warned about the dangers of communism, which had the same effect in its elimination of the capitalist impetus underpinning the American dream.
If everyone is the same, then what are we striving for? How do we move forward and develop and grow? The third view theorized that the story actually warned against McCarthyism, which through the communist witch hunts sought to eliminate freedom of choice, a basic American right guaranteed by the Constitution. What all three interpretations circle around is the concept of so-called normalcy, with respect to American-ness and belonging. In the Eisenhower era of conformity, normalcy means putting things back in order and averting the chaos of difference.
Within communist ideology, if everyone is equal, then we avoid the kinds of differences that signal inequity and inevitably lead to social conflict. In the era of McCarthyism, red-baiting, which involved the harassment of communists in institutions and places of employment across the country, this was tantamount to state-sanctioned persecution of otherness and was uncomfortably reminiscent of the oppressive tactics of the Nazis during the war. In that sense as well, these three main interpretations zero in on the reason for the film's success and its extreme longevity as a classic within our popular culture.
First, the multiple meanings and modes of address made it all the more adaptable to different social contexts and generations of audiences. And secondly, these variations all lent themselves to its meditations on humanity, which is the main subject matter of science fiction, the meat and potatoes, if you will. Through its post-colonial consciousness, science fiction, or at least good science fiction, always engages in debates about what it means to be human, preserving or imperiling one's humanity, chiefly the consequent loss of individualism and identity.
Individualism and identity had always been important American values, particularly for their connection to freedom for which the revolution had been fought and also was argued every subsequent American war. Individualism and identity are also key components of post-colonial ideology. to which is examined the human consequences of oppression and exploitation, and other actions undertaken with the aim of acquiring power by denying freedom to others.
Individualism and identity are also essential components of science fiction's central theme of humanity, and various related discourses that engage with otherness and belonging, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and nationality. Not surprisingly, then, Science fiction is a Hollywood genre, takes a huge leap forward during the 1960s and 70s, the era of social protest and various equality movements, out of which emerges identity politics. Identity politics refers to a mode of thought and social influence that privileges the culture of the minority, that is, the ideas, the tastes, the fashion, the hairstyles, music, literature, arts. and political opinions of the minority members of society, rather than those of the majority or mainstream culture.
One of the most revolutionary aspects of identity politics was its positive emphasis on difference, bringing it out from the background to the foreground of social interaction and discourse. Through identity politics, otherness is resituated to the center of the culture, whereas sameness is pushed to the periphery. In other words, in this context, it's good to be different.
And various minority groups began to proudly advertise their differences rather than hiding them or taming them to conform to the master code of identity. So in this era, for example, we see African Americans reclaiming their cultural heritage and racial heritage, letting their hair grow into big afros rather than straightening it to look like white people. We hear the slogan, black is beautiful. Within science fiction, the boundaries between same and other are continually pushed to the limit, and identity and normal and human are terms which are reconfigured not as absolutes, but as relative and fragile concepts.
Whereas horror film and to some extent crime film champion normalcy and humanity by representing the abnormal or inhuman as disruptive, destructive, and chaotic. In science fiction, the so-called abnormal sometimes represents a new kind of order. Abnormal may be imbued with human qualities or beset by tragic circumstances that provoke responses of sympathy and tolerance within the viewer.
To that end, we have seen in more recent contemporary science fiction films produced in the last decade, depicting the creatures or monsters as victims from the same forms of oppression, cruelty, or social injustice as those suffered by their human counterparts. Frequently, the creatures or aliens have even been cast as refugees, enabling viewers to explore and understand from the inside the painful experience of marginalization or the trauma of exile and forced assimilation. They don't belong here.
They're spending so much money to keep them here when they could be spending it on other things. At least they're keeping them separate from us. A lot of bad things started to happen. They must just go.
I don't know where they go. They must just go. We're at the breaking point. People are living in fear. Why are you here?
Why don't you just leave? How do your weapons work? It's not accidental that in the invasion of the body snatchers, both Miles and Becky first encounter the problem plaguing Santa Mira as outsiders. Both have been away and at first are not privy to or personally intimate with the changes taking place, as are the other residents.
Initially, their shared outsidership provides a bond between them that offers companionship and support, enabling them to survive for a time. In other circumstances, assimilation to the mainstream would be a first step toward belonging, the hope for resolution to their mutual loneliness and isolation. But in this particular context, assimilation would be fatal, so they struggle desperately to maintain their independence and distinct personal identities, knowing that once they lose these, the last vestige of their true selves, it is game over.
A pretty interesting and unique statement for that time, to be sure. Thank you.