Welcome back to the wasteland!
I don't know where you are, but here the weather is beating me down and taking no prisoners. It's not unbearable so much as it is annoying, much like today's subject. As bad as the weather might get, you always know it's going to go the other way eventually. The world isn't ending, no matter how much some of us wish it was, but it has also always had its antis: people who just hate everything and want it to die. Sometimes they disguise it very well.
Today lets take a look at one particular movie that disguises itself as one of peace and love but is actually one of death and misery. It also took a long time for this movie to be exposed for what it was, even though it seems so obvious to us today.
We could talk about some of the most obvious subversive movies made. Pleasantville and American Beauty the most obvious ones people still talk about quite a lot. There are some less obviously subversive flicks like Forrest Gump or Wag the Dog, but are no less corrosive than the former two. Even though these films say one thing, they tend to mean something else, which is a nasty trick Hollywood used to be very good at pulling offer.
However, back in the day it was also a lot less subtle and a lot more blatant about what the message, not that unlike how it is today after decades of trying the poison pill technique instead. The difference is how they focused more on selling a specific worldview back then that is currently fading in the world of Current Year, mostly because it failed and everyone knows it failed, even if they won't admit it. This makes the movie extremely hard to go back to.
The above video speaks about the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still which, for a long time, was looked on as a siffy classic film on par with Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Invaders from Mars. It was seen as one of the Big Ones--and important, to boot. They even had a popular band for a while named after the main character! To this day the film is also studied and looked on as an important building block in modern cinema. It goes without saying that the movie was popular and influential back then. Few movies surpass its cultural importance.
It's also not a good movie.
While the earlier mentioned three movies in this set still hold up, this particular movie does not. The reason is, even from people who agree with its general thesis, because the film is a clunky and ham-fisted lecture with plenteous logic gaps meant to make the audience take one lesson away from the movie in question with no wiggle room or alternate solution. It's a religious tract for the progressive world order of its day. You can see its entire playbook from the above video itself. Suffice to say, the movie does not hold up.
The message being sold in The Day the Earth Stood Still is the same as HG Wells book The World Brain that I discussed in The Last Fanatics. It is the beating heart of 20th century materialism that runs the engine of the siffy mutation formed through convention consensus in 1939. This thesis is the idea that humanity all subconsciously and collectively will come to the same beliefs and conclusions that are, shockingly, the exact same as the siffy author's worldview of the time period. In essence, it says humanity is destined to have an epiphany that siffy authors are actually their superiors and had it all figured out before the rest of you plebs. Do what they say and reach paradise or you are an evil monster who must be put down. As you can tell, things have not changed that much since The Day the Earth Stood Still released.
Therefore, keeping this philosophy in mind, the trick for these writers is to create a specific sort of protagonist, a creature above man that is not supernatural (because the supernatural is infantile and evil) which will guide humanity down the right path. He is clearly above the common piece of filth that is man, and must be portrayed as without progressive sin (progressive sin of its era) with all the solutions that lesser humans are too inferior to figure out on their own.
Once you see this is the one trick, much of what is called "classic" siffy absolutely falls apart, because this is what it is all hinged on. You can even see it done today, complete with new progressive sins and designated acceptable classes of acceptable targets filling in the villain role. It does not work anymore because the trick is obvious to everyone, but said writers have no other one to use, so they just keep using it over and over to diminishing returns and ever-shrinking cliques that do little more than decay into even more bitter beings. Truly the class of betters that should be ruling the world. At least, so they are still told by the people in charge.
This corrosive view of existence is also why adventure stories have always been demonized by these same types. In The Last Fanatics I covered the prevailing view of this set that aliens could never be portrayed as evil or malevolent. Humanity always had to be inferior, the lesser, or the most evil, because the other, the alien, was the Higher Being above them. This is because said anti-social writer considered themselves the outcast and the other, and always saw themselves as above the common man. Portraying an alien as evil is tantamount to calling them bad people. And that's just not possible! They're smarter and more special. The Important People tell them so!
Therefore, aliens could not be cast as anything else than Higher or else the writer and story would be labeled as x-ist or y-phobic and therefore discarded without further thought. Aliens are your betters, just like the other, and you need to process this immediately or get sent to a camp. (Or in the case of a particular siffy con, beat your chest about open minded tolerance while having your convention a few hours away from literal concentration camps).
You see, Humanity is bad because Humanity isn't like the writerOther. Therefore, it's a personal affront to these types to express any creativity outside this narrow ruleset. Truly the "genre" of imagination and wonder.
Human beings being cast as an irredeemable evil is key to the playbook, since this framework is created by anti-social types who dislike reality and believe it would be changed for the better if they were in charge, but all they have done is made everything worse. You have to ignore reality, you can't argue, you can't discuss, and you can't offer alternatives. You are to shut up and be led by your betters, the ones who decided they know better but have yet to prove it even with having decades upon decades of institutional support from those who hate humanity even more than they do. What we are left with is a World Braindead, not a World Brain.
This attitude is what set the stage for the climate we are currently living in right now. That is also why it's falling apart and in constant need of propping up. It's a little like a circus tent falling down while those under it frantically run around to prop it back up. The end result is obvious, and those panicking are simply wasting their time.
All of this could have been avoided with the one thing such stories don't allow: self-reflection. This means self-reflection of the writer, not an attempt to project a faulty view of the world onto the audience so they can worship at your feet.
The Day the Earth Stood Still does not understand that change always starts with the self. The movie is obsessed with tearing everything down simply because it has its own superman to bully the world into compliance. It centers on demonizing locality and shared culture to prop up a bizarre individuality that is also part of a worldwide collective of acceptable beliefs and rules decided by the strongman. The one world future of Klaatu requires the right creature being put in charge to rule it all, somehow also embodying the everchanging goals of Progress at the same time. This is the world these anti-socials want. It isn't possible, but that's also why it's dying.
The movies, and these people, don't understand that if you want a solution to a wider problem, you have to start local. You have to connect with people you might not understand or might not understand you and come to a new consensus on how to build something better through both of your contributions. You can't wait for some top down revolution to do it for you. As has been shown, that isn't how we got here to begin with. We got here through laziness and flippancy, allowing rot to take hold and telling ourselves its Natural or some nebulous thing like History leading the charge. Decay is easy; growth is hard. We haven't really tried to grow anything in decades, just complain and hope for others to do it for us or punching holes in the boats of those trying. Well, that isn't going to happen by doing this. The proof for that is Current Year.
The only solution to the current state of the World Braindead is to not follow its example. To start small and focus on that. Give attention to what we can. It's the only option we have to counteract the destruction of Klaatu-types who want us to fall in line with their rotting materialistic view of existence. We need to build, not destroy.
The good ending to The Day the Earth Stood Still would have been to throw Klaatu into a furnace and call his bluff. But the narrative was specially made to not give the characters the choice: it's willful and blissful enslavement Vs deserved genocide of the human race. Bow to Satan or die. He'll give you the world and all you have to do is give him power to tell you white is black and black is white for the rest of your life. Isn't that a small price to pay for tolerance? For a world where everyone can be equal some of the time?
It starts with a rejection of the premise these 19th century materialists set up. Not just Doing The Opposite as many online stylize themselves and their image, but understanding what they got wrong in their initial thesis of what humanity is and correcting with a better and healthier vision. Live a better way free of paranoia, bitterness, and tired memes. Instead find one of belonging and growth. Start local, always. It won't start anywhere else.
We can only start from ourselves, not to change but to understand. What we've lost, what we need, and what we have, is more important than what could be. There is no Eden on Earth and there never will be. We have to start living for something better than failed utopias built by people who have proven time and time again to be full of nothing.
Klaatu's false premise and promises need to be rejected. The World Brain must be allowed to finally die. Only then can we finally move on from this pit we've lodged ourselves into, and only then can we finally have a new vision of the future.
It starts with ourselves and those around us, and that's where the focus should be. Until then, at least we can laugh at the absurdity of the Klaatu class and the World Braindead they have left in the wake of their failed ideas.
Not like the movie has much else of value of offer these days, just like the mentality that thought it up in the first place. It's all dead and rotted, so let's finally put it all to rest.
