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.
It seems, as though through the movies we have watched, and the readings we have done, the central idea becomes one of ignorance. Ignorance to otherness and ignorance to what would seem like in your face facts about political tension and government doings. But I think what we need to do is to put everything into perspective. In a time of trouble, it is almost necessary for a human to make sense of a situation. We see this as a country in the 9/11 conspires that arrive out of the terrible event. We have this longing to understand what is going on which in some ways can make us look ignorant. Perhaps people were simply ignorant, not wanting to know what was happening, or actually bought into the ideas being portrayed by the media. All in all, the bottom line still concludes to be that we can’t necessarily blame people for what they believe or how they reacted. As the conversation in class brought up, Americans also wanted to present themselves in a certain light to the rest of the world as we always want to do. We basically want to look like heroes; like were setting the bar for the rest of the world to follow. Also its interesting to think about how we had just come off world war II in accordance to blacks moving into suburbia. Though it wasn’t apparent Americans didn’t want to look like Aryan race endorsers. Perhaps I am being a bit irrational but the concept of “white flight,” just blows my mind.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the reading goes, I’ll try to keep this brief. (haha) I didn’t like the reading because the author in my opinion went on some wild and in some cases pretentious tangents to make a point. I don’t like how some of the ideas including racial tensions and masculinity were portrayed. I suppose I could see the social connection like you made and agree on most but there are more factors other than what the reading inferred to take into account than what was presented.
I agree that I had heard of this movie but never knew the story behind it. I just thought it was an older horror movie. It is very clear that there are similarities between the movie and the time period when everyone was on edge about the communist invasion. During this time people were told to watch out for everyone including their own friends and neighbors who could be Russian spys. The main parellel I noticed was when people started to notice that for example, the boys mother wasn't his mother anymore. One day people just were different. It was hard to tell but something just wasn't right. I obviously didn't think the movie was scary, but for some reason after I left I couldn't help but feel paranoid, so the movie did get that point really across. Also, I had never heard of the term "white flight" before and couldn't believe it. It's hard to believe that the moment a black family moved into the town half the houses would go up for sale. I can't believe that people either bought all of these ideas or were just to ignorant about them.
ReplyDeleteWhere to begin with the reading. I thought a lot of it was just assumptions that really didn't have a solid backing. I also thought a lot of the article was ridiculous. The parts about the blacks, or especially the mexicans driving the pod trucks were just hysterical. I can see some of the parallels and some of the social connections, but the article went way to far into detail for only a little over an hour movie. The article also had ridiculously huge words and most of the points were just assumptions that were super far fetched. I thought the movie was interesting and learned a lot about white flight and more about the cold war tensions, but the article was to crazy for me.
To go back to the point that was mentioned before about the dominance of white actors within the movie, I do not believe this has anything to do with the 'white flight.' This was likely just done because it was very rare for colored actors to actually be on the silver screen at that period in time. Some years before this, in order for a black person to be portrayed on screen, they would hire a white actor who would cover his/her face and hands in 'black face,' which is like an oil based black makeup because they couldn't/wouldn't have a black actor on film or the stage.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing that the movie was able to effectively relay about this period in time was the feeling of dread/paranoia that was infecting the United States. Throughout the movie you had a looming feeling about this time and the anxiety that must have been felt by the entire nation. Past that, I don't believe anything in this movie was supposed to relate back to current events or fears.
That being said, obviously I disagreed with the reading in much the same way that you guys have. Pretty much every point that the author made in the reading was bizarre. The points that she did delve deeper in to and try to prove were largely unfounded, or based purely upon assumptions that I did not find were supported in the portrayal of the movie.
I agree that the part about reproductive anxieties was the least convincing part of the essay, though the point about in vitro fertilization really was interesting, and something weird was going on with the whole oozy seed pod thing and the fact that the two leads were both divorced.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, the fact that all the actors were white isn't racist in itself in any direct way. As Ben says, black actors basically didn't appear as main characters in mainstream movies during this period (though there were movies with all-black casts made for black audiences). Rather, the general argument in the reading, which most of you seem to have a fine handle on, given its difficulties, is that while looking at the movie as expressing fear of Communism is a typical interpretation, it's more interesting to look at it as an expression of the forces America fears within its own society rather than fears of invasion from without: hence anxieties regarding racial invasions and sexual decay. She's expanding and exploring ideas of what we regard as Otherness.