Contradicting Popular Opinion:
An Enquiry Concerning Why Your Favorite Movie Sucks
Of Pods and Men
In his nonfiction book, Danse Macabre, Stephen King has many interesting things to say about the genre of horror, one important thesis being that horror is by its very nature conservative. King believes that horror is often about the glorious destruction of the outsider, and a marvelous return to the status quo. Here, horror is about dangerous nonconformity, often manifested in the form of seductive violence, hyper-sexuality, or a general sating of the id. Button-downed asexual scientists, “normal” Americans and/or virginal teenage girls are the only ones to save us from these menaces.
A good portion of this thesis is troubled by the existence of The Body Snatchers, a subject on which King does spend some time. (I’m assuming that everybody is familiar, but for those who have spent most of their lives under a rock: The Body Snatchers is a story about alien plants that replace people with duplicates when said people go to sleep. The duplicates look identical to those whom they have replaced, and have all their memories but none of their emotions or humanity. It’s kinda like the Borg, only without all the S&M gear.) Sure, the story is about an alien invasion, but here the id is what is at stake and conformity is the danger. While the aliens are obviously outsiders, the problem is internal. The problem is total homogeneity, which is the ultimate status quo. In The Body Snatcher scenario, the protagonists fill the role normally filled by our monster. The protagonists, by virtue of being truly human, are the freaks; they have become the true aliens.
The Onion (America’s finest news source) recently declared Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers as second to only The Postman Always Rings Twice as the most reliable source for movie adaptations. It’s easy to argue for that position. At present, The Body Snatchers has spawned three worthwhile film versions, and a host of decent imitators.
The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an oft talked about flick. It has been criticized as being McCarthyist and lauded as being anti-McCarthyist. The answer of course is that it is both and neither of these things. The allegory is not specific to McCarthysim. It is about the duality of identity. That is to say, it is alluring to be safe as a faceless member of a crowd, and terrifying to lose one’s sense of self; it is terrifying to be just another face in the crown, and comforting to be perfectly normal. Ultimately the meaning of any art comes down to its interpretation and not the intent of the artist. If critics apply specific parameters to their criticism of any piece, it is well within their right. But it is naive to assign meaning to the thematic elements of this film so narrowly. A lot of other folks have a lot to say about this film, so let’s not dwell on it too much.
The Phillip Kaufman version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) is a wonderful film. In it, the pod people are mainly composed of “I’m okay, you’re okay” new-agers in San Francisco, with Leonard Nimoy as their pop-psychologist representative. Nimoy’s patients come to him with complaints that loved one’s are not acting themselves, and he treats them with useless psychobabble until the parties stop complaining, for they too have been replaced. In this film where “we’re all the same” spouting hipsters and hippies attempt to verify this maxim, the pods are appropriately represented by flowers. Our heroes are made up of, among others, a health inspector (a floppy haired Donald Sutherland) and an under-achieving poet (a young and skinny Jeff Goldblum), representing vigilance and individuality, respectively.
Lesser known than its predecessors is the 1993 version of the story, directed by Abel Ferrara simply titled Body Snatchers. The aforementioned Onion has recently declared it to be the “leanest and meanest” version, and I’m inclined to agree. Hey, even the title is leaner! (The movie does suffer from some clunky book-ending voice-over, but otherwise it is a fine film.)
In this version, the story takes place on a military base, which I find to be a stroke of genius. Thematically speaking there is no better representation of “the establishment” in which to set a film about dangerous conformity. Plus, what better place would there be for pod people to hide? It’s the military. Who is going to notice when people start acting alike? Who is going to notice when emotions and feelings are repressed? Add to that the “base” aspect of military base. Everything is secretive, everything requires special clearance, everything is self contained. As one who has visited the country’s largest Navy training facility more than once, that is the last place you want to be when pod people are around, if for no other reason than the convoluted paths of serpentine roads needed to get from points A to B.
In Ferrara’s Body Snatchers our protagonist is a teenage girl with a healthy sized rebellious streak. Her family appears to be “normal” but in reality it is a blended family; her “mom” is really a stepmom, her “brother” a half-brother. The half-brother is only 6 years old, so nobody believes him when he says that he saw his mom die and be replaced. Nobody is too concerned when he tells them that all the other kids in daycare finger-painted the same picture, and the teacher pushes naps. A school forcing all children to think in the same manner is far from a sci-fi concept.
Things like these, make this the most counterculture, the most subversive film of the three. The government (by means of the military), parents, schools, and other authority figures are forcing an alien “normalcy” on those who don’t fit in with the right wing view of “regular Americans.” If everything is beige, no one ever has to worry about being upset.
The second Body Snatchers film came about 25 years after the first. The third came about fifteen years after the second. So naturally, we are due for another version.
And we’re getting one.
It is due out next year, titled Invasion this time, and stars Nicole Kidman. This is interesting to me for a couple of reasons.
A) Movies of the last 15 years have been pushing the false message of “deep down we’re all the same” really hard. It helps increase their profits; you can sell beige to everybody.
B) The Millennial Generation is fairly hive-minded as generations go. These are kids that grew up on team sports, and young people that are constantly connected to peers electronically. They are the type that have beaten over the head by these “deep down, we’re all the same” movies. These are people that will have to be told that individuality is a good thing.
C) The first film was seen as either anti-communism or anti-anti-communism. Communists are no longer scary. The second film was anti-“me” generation touchy-feely bullshit. We’ve got different touchy-feely bullshit now, and we go through it too quickly to make an attack worthwhile. The third film is seen by many as being anti-authority and/or anti-corporate. You won’t get millions of dollars to make a movie like that in the current climate.
I honestly feel that the only way the new adaptation can justify its existence is to be anti-religion. It’s an angle that the other films don’t really touch on. I doubt that any major players are willing to back an anti-religious alien movie. I could be wrong.
Back to The Body Snachers as a whole, another point worth mentioning is that of sleep. Don’t sleep; that’s when they get you. The various incarnations of Body Snatchers tap into a very primal fear in humans, that being “sleep=death.” It’s a bloody mean thing to do to a kid. I’m just saying.
Parting Words
Upon watching BloodRayne, I became inspired by its startling badness. Michael Madsen delivers his lines as though he were doing voice over work for a ’70s chop-cocky flick. Michelle Rodrigues puts on a Star Wars accent. The movie ends with a 5 minute montage of random things that happened during the film. But the most striking aspect of all is that I have seen much worse vampire movies.
So this is what I propose. I want to figure out which is the WORST VAMPIRE MOVIE, ever. I’m in a list-y sort of place right now, having contributed to one for Popcorn Junkies and one for Retrograding. Shoot me an e-mail, or g-mail, at wbxylo@gmail.com with what you believe to be the worst vampire movie ever. If the response is strong, we’ll get a couple of columns out of it.
If not, no big loss.
What would be a big loss, would be to lose the Grandview Drive-in. Go to www.grandviewdrivein.com
or
http://members.bluefrog.com/ttroidl/
for details. I have seen more movies at the Grandview Drive-in than any other place outside of my home. I saw Batman there, and Bambi, and Roger Rabit, South Park, Face/off, Courage Under Fire, Eraser, and all sorts of strange double features like Gladiator followed by Road Trip. Okay, so I only like about half of those movies, but still! I drive from Chicago to Buffalo every summer to go to that lousy place (and to see my parents, but mostly for the drive-in).
