reading three - key points

(in correspondence with Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader edited and compiled by Sean Redmond)

one, Re-examining the 1950's Invasion Narratives, by Mark Jancovich (325-336)

• "The system of scientific-technical rationality was impersonal, and it oppressed human feelings and emotions. It did not value individual qualities, but attempted to convert people into undifferentiated functionaries of the social whole, functionaries who did not think or act for themselves but were ordered and controlled from without by experts," (Jancovich, pg. 325).
• "If the invaders are presented as natural, they are carefully distinguished from associations with 'human nature' ...science may save us at times, but is also creates a world which we can no longer recognize, a world in which giant ants or man-eating plants threaten to overwhelm us," (Jancovich, pg. 325).
• "...qualities such as emotion, feeling, intuition, interaction and imagination - qualities that are usually defined as femining and 'irrational' - that are identified as distinctly 'human,'" (Jancovich, pg. 326).
• "...while the latter ...want to communicate with it. This latter goal is clearly presented as absurd within the film but, for Biskind, the film suggests that the scientists' real problem is not their use of reason, or even their attempt to consort with the enemy, but rather their refusal to accept the authority of the military, and by extension, the state," (Jancovich, pg. 328).
• "...in The Thing from Another World, it is not the military personnel who are associated with the authority of the state, but the scientist ...the military heroes have little authority and even have to disobey orders to defeat the alien," (Jancovich, pg. 329).
• "...The Thing from Another World dramatizes the conflict between these two modes of social organization. It suggests that in the latter system, people are merely objects to be used, and this situation is dramatized through the film's presentation of the alien as a kind of modernist vampire. It feeds on human blood which it also needs to reproduce itself as a species," (Jancovich, pg. 330).
• "Carrington gives monologues and speeches in which he sets himself up as an authority who hands down information and orders to others ...he frequently withholds information in an attempt to control situations, and he shows little concern when this often endangers people ...the more he tries to understand the alien and to communicate with it, the more he findes himself unable to communicate with other humans" (Jancovich, pg. 331).
• "For Klattu, human emotions have no foundation or validity, and it is only rational thought which has any positive value. The problems of human societies and their conflicts are simply dismissed as the product of these irrational emotions," (Jancovich, pg. 332).
• "Klattu takes the role of Christ. He comes to Earth to save it from its follies; goes amongst the common people; is killed by human ignorance and intolerance,' and eventually rises again before delivering a message to the world and ascending to the heavens. He even takes the name Carpenter while on Earth. Klattu does tell Helen that his resurrection is only temporary and that only God can give back life once it has been taken, but this only further associates technology and science with the powers of God. They become powers to be worshiped and adored," (Jancovich, pg. 335).
• "Klattu decides that instead of addressing the world's political leaders, he will address its scientists ...Politicains are associated with the defense of particular interests, while scientists are presented as objective and rational," (Jancovich, pg. 335).