"The Day the Earth Stood Still" is a classic science fiction film, released in 1951. I consider it one of the best movies ever made. It works eminently well even today, despite the rather shaggy special effects (or complete lack of them). *Of course* the 2008 re-make was much worse. In contrast to most fans, however, I liked the re-make as well (I think it was quite clever. Besides, I'm partial to John Cleese!).
I'm more ambivalent to the message of the original film. Perhaps it's pointless to criticize a message so obviously connected to the Zeitgeist in 1951, but I can't say I like it. Stripped of all the cosmic rhetoric, the alien visitor Klaatu really calls for a stronger United Nations Organization, which will use deadly force against everyone threatening "peace". Really? But who watches the watchers, I wonder? Also, Klaatu implies that "war" in general is something negative, pointless and primitive - and this in a movie from 1951, just six years after the end of World War II, when the Western powers and the Soviet Union (correctly) united against Nazi Germany. Many other examples of righteous wars could be mentioned: what about the war against the slavocracy in the American South, for instance? Or what about the wars of national liberation in the Third World after the end of World War II? They obviously threatened "peace". But so what? The movie says nothing about the threat of the great powers to smaller nations, nothing about social justice, etc. It simply calls for "peace", apparently policed by an even greater power (the robots).
It's richly ironic that when Klaatu calls for peace, he can only do so by threatening humanity with an even more powerful military force...
In the re-make, Klaatu is more new agey and wants humans to transform on a spiritual level. That may be just as naïve, but somehow it does feel as an improvement on the original message, with its implicit craving for authoritarian One World Government. I mean, a robotic peace force threatening everyone with annihilation unless they behave?!
But, as I said, none of this diminishes the stature of this elegantly made sci fi flick. On a more humorous note, I noticed that Professor Barnhardt looks vaguely like Einstein!
Incidentally, it's also interesting to speculate about the connection between "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and the contactee phenomenon. Did the movie inspire contactees such as George Adamski? Or was it the other way around? Or was it some kind of cross fertilization? After all, the aliens supposedly encountered by the contactees also warned us about the dangers of nuclear power and war. However, they also peddled a warped form of Theosophy. By contrast, Klaatu is a pseudo-Christian monotheist. In 1951, the New Age didn't even exist, and similar notions were very countercultural.
In his book "UFOs - the Greatest Mystery", Hillary Evans speculates that the scene where GORT resurrects Klaatu may have inspired stories of alien abduction, which often include a medical examination. I'm not sure whether this speculation makes any sense, however.
To sum up, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is both a entertaining adventure story, a look into a mindset long gone, and (possibly) an important part of the origins of the UFO subculture.
Klaatu barada...five stars.
Have you read anything about, or by, Elizabeth Klarer? http://kiremaj70.blogspot.com/2018/08/alpha-centauri-elizabeth-klarer-och-en.html
ReplyDeleteDon't know why the sentence became formatted in that way....
ReplyDeleteInteresting. No, never heard of her, actually!
ReplyDelete"Did the movie inspire contactees such as George Adamski? Or was it the other way around?" It could not be the other way around. George Adamskis first contact was said to have taken place in november 1952. And that story was the first published contactee-story, although many contacts much later have claimed to be contacted before 1951.
ReplyDeleteI am sad to say that, because I would love to believe in the contactee stories. But in fact, the movie predated them all.
"although many CONTACTEES much later have claimed"....
ReplyDeleteThere still seems to be cross-fertilization, though. For instance, Guy Ballard claimed to have met a Venusian on Mount Shasta, I think during the early 1930´s. That in turn was inspired by a novel 30 years earlier, and maybe that was inspired by Theosophical speculations about Venus, etc.
ReplyDeleteDid he really publish this claim as early in the thirties? Or did he claim that later? And did his description include these semipacifist and "idealistic" themes that dominated most of the contactee stores after the movie?
ReplyDelete"stories", not "stores"
ReplyDeleteHe published it already back then, although I´m not sure if he explicitky said Saint Germain was from Venus. (I have some reviews about this, too, but I haven´t come that far yet!) However, Ballard was more facsist than pacifist. He inspired Elizabeth Clare Prophet.
ReplyDeleteAnd he did NOT talk of flyings saucers, I assume...
ReplyDeleteI mean there are some main themes in contactee stories after "The day the earth stood still" . Vistiors come from other planets, in spaceships. and they often have some vaguely pacifist ideals and the planets they come from are often sympathetic utopias.
ReplyDeleteAnd almost always the spaceships are saucer-like.
I think that some stories before that may be called proto-contactee stories or something, But the stories that began to be spred from the early fifties and onward are a distinct category.. I would be very glad if at least a single one of them had been published before the movie, bur sadly that seems not to be the case.