Politics, Fear and Science Fiction

Horacio 2021-12-22 08:01:05

There are four versions of Invasion of Body Snatchers*, namely 1956, 1978, 1993 (Body Snatchers) and 2007. The 2007 version is "The Invasion".

Different versions have different political backgrounds:


1956 version-The political background is the white terror of McCarthyism.

The 1956 edition was the age of McCarthyism. Americans’ fear of communist infiltration created the white terror of the McCarthy Committee’s persecution of suspected communists. Those alien pods posing as humans aroused the audience's fear of the Communist Party; however, those fake humans who persecuted normal people alluded to the white horror of McCarthyism.


1978 edition-Watergate triggered distrust

The background of the 1978 edition is no longer McCarthyism, but the United States after the Vietnam War and Watergate. At that time, the entire United States was divided and distrusted because of the Watergate Incident. Those pods create mistrust, deceived humans suffer, and those who are not deceived find themselves in a world that no one can trust. (By the way, the ending of the 1978 edition is one of the famous unexpected endings in the history of film.)


1993 edition-the box office was not ideal. When the

1993 edition was painted in the United States, which was a peaceful and prosperous era , it was the most peaceful and windless in the United States. The era of no waves. At that time, the Soviet Union had disintegrated, and the United States defeated Iraq in the first Gulf War. There is no political message in the film. At most, it points out that the army emphasizes obedience, which is actually very similar to the world of the pod. This version is not a hit at all and is regarded as a work close to a B-level film.


2007 edition (The Invasion)-No fear, no longer resonating. When the

2007 edition was released, there was no major political and military crisis.

When the story of The Pod Man’s invasion of the earth is not supported by a political background, it will be difficult to get the audience's resonance, and it is destined to not be a hit. The fear in the minds of Americans in this age is Islamic terrorists, but their Arab appearance is very recognizable and does not fit the story of alien infiltration.

This version is not without political information-humans will kill each other (the examples in the film are the US invasion of Iraq, the India-Pakistan conflict, etc.), and if they are assimilated by alien creatures, they will find peace. However, this kind of peace sacrifices the free will of mankind.

However, this political message has nothing to do with the infiltration of aliens, and is so powerless that this classic story has become an ordinary science fiction film.

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Extended Reading
  • Allene 2022-04-22 07:01:32

    That "untrustworthy" situation, combined with the political background at the time, should have been deeply disturbing at the time. Although many years have passed, the horror of the film is almost gone, but it can still be seen as an interesting sci-fi film. Small Tucao: Since alien species and others can seize consciousness as soon as they fall asleep (refer to the heroine for the speed), what is the use of copying the human body with so much effort?

  • Andres 2022-03-23 09:02:09

    The plot of some important scenes before and after the first adaptation is still very close to the novel (of course, the novel is the later rewritten version, I don’t know what the old version is), but it is only relative to the later adaptation. In fact, there is still a huge difference , and since then began a series tradition that focuses on a completely different, darker ending. However, the sense of the times of the old movies can be regarded as the progression value today, which is really a plus. And the last part of running in the traffic flow is really a childhood memory. It feels like it can be watched with John Carpenter's "Extreme Space", of course, similar Capgras Sydrome movies can be made into a bean column, like Sean Ellis' "Destruction" American drama Like "V-Star Invasion", Yan Mingjun's comic "Parasitic Beast" can also be extreme to the setting of this kind of globalized substitute that all mankind has replaced.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers quotes

  • Jack Belicec: Stop trying to rationalize everything, will ya? Let's face it, we have a mystery on our hands!

    Dr. Dan 'Danny' Kauffman: Sure you have. A real one! Whose body was it, and where is it now? A completely normal mystery. Whatever it is, it's well within the bounds of human experience, and I don't think you ought to make any more of it.

    Dr. Miles J. Bennell: Look, I wouldn't if I hadn't looked in Becky's cellar! How do you explain away the body I saw there?

    Dr. Dan 'Danny' Kauffman: I don't think you saw one there.

    Dr. Miles J. Bennell: You don't think I saw one here, either?

    Dr. Dan 'Danny' Kauffman: I know you did because three others saw it too.

    Dr. Miles J. Bennell: But I dreamed up the second one?

    Dr. Dan 'Danny' Kauffman: Doctors can have hallucinations too.

  • Dr. Miles J. Bennell: They're here already! You're next! You're next, You're next...!