Invasion of the body snatchers was a really interesting movie that i had never watched before. Beside hearing of it I had no knowledge about cultural implications that go along with this film. There is no question that Invasion of the body snatchers has parallels with the "communist paranoia" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s. During this time their was mass histareia over the fact that Russian spy's where infiltrating the U.S. government and all other levels of society in order to steal our secrets and influence us to fallow communist ideas. People all over the country where incuraged to look out for people that had communist ideas or anyone that might be linked to Russia and the communist ideals. The case of the two Soviet spy's the Rosenberg's that where tried and executed of treason happened during this time. You can see the parallels in the movie in the way that the towns folk slowly turned into the "pod people". The people that where normal realized that there family members where not right and tried to say something about it. I feel like the biggest parallel is in the way the whole town turns into aliens in order to take over the town; just as if a town was to have slowly infiltrated by communist. Being so removed from the cold war and the communist scares its hard to understand how people could have been so scared of Soviet spy's. But I feel like their was enough anti communist propaganda scaring people at this time, even beyond the Hollywood movies making their social comments.
The reading brings in the question of racial issuses and tensions that where appeant at the time. "Indeed, the function of whiteness in the racial formation gives the meaning of race and the power of racism sociocultural and historical currency",. The fact is that the movie involves an all white cast and in that since I understand that the fact that there is no colored people in the movie only goes to further the racial divide and helps reinforce the viewers thoughts about race. People as this time where becoming more racist as the idea of witness spread about. Even though the reading brings it up I don't feel that races was as big an issue as the fear of communism was at this time. But its also possible that we didn't realize that as we tried to push back against communist we where inadvertently made the racial divide larger.
The reading says that "the film expresses broad historical anxieties about male potency and female reproductive processes" This is one this that I never in a million year would have thought of. This seemed like a stretch to me because i didnt realize that the parctices of vitro fertilization began in the post war years. The most popular of these practices was spermdonor fertilization. In my mind i envisioned these techniques starting in the mid 80's at least. But know I realize that the movie could be making a social comment on peoples fears of the way people where making baby's. Their where a lot of morale issues being figured out at this time. People where finding new ways of creating life and many people where frankly freaked out. This is mirrored in the move in the way the the aliens reproduce through this fantastical seed pod method that is frankly a freaky concept even today. If this was a comment on peoples fears about these methods I personally believe that this idea was lost, at least to me. This theme is not something that i think most people would pick up on unless maybe this was a larger issue back in this Cold war era.
