The image from my previous article, the aeronon of the twentieth century, is from the book Predictions by John Durant, published in 1956. In his book, Mr. Durant quoted from the original source:
As entirely new profession--that of airmanship--will be thoroughly organized, employing a countless army of airmen. . . . Boundaries will be obliterated. . . . Troops, aerial squadrons, death-dealing armaments will be maintained only for police surveillance over barbarous races, and for instantly enforcing the judicial decrees of the world's international court of appeal. (p. 28)
That sounds an awful lot like Cabal's speechifying in Things To Come (1936). In other words, H.G. Wells spouted the same kind of thing in his screenplay that an American magazine had written about nearly six decades before, when he was just twelve years old. (The golden age of science fiction by the way.) But then Wells was an adherent to socialism, just one of myriad, useless, nineteenth-century visions for the future, outdated in his time, delusional in its own, and even more delusional in the 1930s. (Deadly delusion.) These people call themselves progressives, yet they keep getting themselves mired in the ideas of the dead and distant past. And now we have several of them running for president, one of whom is old enough to have been dandled on Grandpa Marx's knee. Sheesh.
Anyway, the quote from above also sounds like the motivation behind Klaatu's mission to our planet in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), one in which Gort is to act as "police surveillance over barbarous races." The Day the Earth Stood Still is a great and very enjoyable science fiction movie, but I think it helps to take it as one of a pair, the more liberal (I won't say "progressive") face of a coin that has on its other face the more conservative film The Thing from Another World (also 1951). All of that, though, is subject for another day.
Just one more thing . . . it occurs to me now that Michael Rennie as Klaatu may have been intended to evoke memories of Raymond Massey as Cabal. Both actors were tall, dark, slender, and British, or at least British-oid. (Massey was Canadian.) Both characters have liberal-slash-progressive views on things, bordering on the tyrannical or totalitarian. (One is far more arrogant and dangerous than the other.) They also both wear the broad-shouldered outfit of the future, like Carol Burnett playing Scarlett O'Hara: "If I don't find some sparkling outer-space duds to wear for tonight, it's curtains for me!"
Wells and Cabal will return yet again in the next installment. Stay tuned.
Original text copyright 2020, 2023 Terence E. Hanley
Just one more thing . . . it occurs to me now that Michael Rennie as Klaatu may have been intended to evoke memories of Raymond Massey as Cabal. Both actors were tall, dark, slender, and British, or at least British-oid. (Massey was Canadian.) Both characters have liberal-slash-progressive views on things, bordering on the tyrannical or totalitarian. (One is far more arrogant and dangerous than the other.) They also both wear the broad-shouldered outfit of the future, like Carol Burnett playing Scarlett O'Hara: "If I don't find some sparkling outer-space duds to wear for tonight, it's curtains for me!"
Wells and Cabal will return yet again in the next installment. Stay tuned.
Original text copyright 2020, 2023 Terence E. Hanley
I just discovered your delightful blog -- and this made me laugh. I have been reading through old post for most of the day!
ReplyDeleteI have a book coming out this year called It Came From:The Stories and Novels Behind the Classic Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy films, and The Day the Earth Stood Still is mentioned in passing. I say:
The Day The Earth Stood Still is a perverse rereading of the tragedy of Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940), who sought to find peace in our time by making deals with dictators. Just as pacifist Klaatu exhorts his American hosts to just get along with European interests dedicated to the extermination of the United States, one pictures Chamberlain armed with an indestructible robot goon ready to level major cities if his demands are not met. It is never surprising that The Day The Earth Stood Still is such a favorite among the Social Justice Warrior faction of science fiction fandom – only a halfwit could stomach its premise.
Hi, Emery,
DeleteI try to inject a little humor into my blog. I'm not always sure that it works. I'm glad to know that I made you laugh.
It seems I'm a little more charitable towards The Day the Earth Stood Still than you are. Part of that has to do with my very fond childhood memories of watching it and may other classic (and not-so-classic) science fiction movies of the 1950s through the 1970s.
There is definitely a little know-it-all arrogance in Klaatu, but we might be able to excuse that by putting the movie into the context of its time when we were all looking towards a bright, shiny, peaceful future. Kumbaya.
Klaatu's ideas are a lot less tolerable these days, but consider this: The original film became practically reactionary in terms laid down by our contemporary "Social Justice Warrior faction," as you call it, when it was remade in 2008 as an environmentalist and thoroughly anti-human piece of dreck. The concerns of the original go out the window in favor of a lot of cute and fuzzy bunnies.
Anyway, like I wrote in my posting, I think The Day the Earth Stood Still might best be viewed as part of a double-feature with The Thing from Another World. They are, I think, two sides of the same coin.
By the way, have you read Seeing Is Believing, or How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the 50s by Peter Biskind (1983)? You might really enjoy it, and it might help you with your research, too.
Thanks for writing.
TH
The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still was far worse than the original, because it contained an inferred Holocaust which either the writers failed to realize, or tried to sneak past the audience.
ReplyDeleteAt the conclusion of the remake, the aliens destroy our advanced technology, knocking us back to either a pre information age or pre-industrial age level of technology. This is portrayed in the movie as being our salvation, and the salvation of the Earth.
Now, knocking us back to a pre Information Age technology would mean reducing our population to no more than two and a half billion, or 1/3 of our our current level; to a pre-industrial Age technology to about one and a half billion, or 1/5 of our current level. Because this would happen due to the hard failure of our entire technology and thus economic supply chain, it would bite almost instantly, and the reduction would happen in the form of malthusian die off.
That is to say, in about a year either two out of every three or four out of every five human beings would die. This death would be accomplished by starvation and plague, and war over the remaining food and medical supplies. It is almost certain that in densely populated parts of the planet, this would include complete social breakdown and mass cannibalism.
What would that be like to live through? Or die in? What kind of societies do you think would be built by the survivors?
What would happen to the fragile ecosystems of the planet, in whose name the aliens are committing this horrendous mass murder, when billions of starving humans descended upon them, armed with rifles and explosives which would most definitely still work, willing to kill anyone and anything for enough food to last the week?
What sort of future would mankind have, knowing that once they had climbed to great heights, only to be capriciously cast down by stronger beings from beyond the stars? Knowing that if we tried to climb back up, the monsters might return and slaughter us again? What sort of dark and anti Human religions might we make with this legacy, WORSHIPPING the alien monsters?
Seriously, a screwfly solution might have been more merciful.
Hi, Jordan,
DeleteYou paid a lot closer attention to that movie than I did. I saw it once at the theater, hated it, and have put it behind me. I should have given it more thought, as you have, but it's really just part of a pattern in science fiction going back--how long, I wonder? Since the 1960s when what we now know as the nonsense about overpopulation began? Whenever it began, the pattern is of anti-humanism, the desire that we be destroyed because we're bad for the planet or the universe or all of the cute and fuzzy bunnies or whatever.
You mentioned "a screwfly solution." That's a new term to me, so I looked it up. It actually comes from science fiction. That's a nice way for you to end your comment. I would just add that a screwfly solution might be more merciful, but it's still anti-human.
I wonder what all of these anti-human, pro-alien people are going to do once they have reached the ends of their lives and still no evidence is found of extraterrestrial intelligence. Poor Donald E. Keyhoe: his agony is being relived among millions of souls right now and will be among millions more for decades to come.
Thanks for writing.
TH