The Day the Earth Stood Still (September 28, 1951) marks a turning point in the conflation of anti-communist and Christian apologist sensibility in concert with The Thing from Another World (April 29, 1951) and The Man from Planet X (April 27, 1951), completing an alien invasion triad. Driven by Edward Herrmann’s frenetic score, this landmark film opens with worldwide news reports of a spaceship’s landing in Washington, indicating a Tower of Babel transformed by its radio network. Terror and fear are reflected in the onlooker’s faces as a saucer-like oval glows, streaking across the clear sky until it lands in a baseball field.
This opening depicts a contemporary 1950s timeframe rather than the museum’s futurespective in the original Bates’ story. The American way of life feels threatened by an unknown boogieman, but revealed to be our own worst enemies, mankind potentially threatens the greater galaxy. The film’s snapshot in time contrasts the short story’s dimensionality and scope. The former’s implied self-destructive brink promotes an End Times atmosphere while the latter’s ironic conspiracy of shame belies mankind’s capacity for contrition. Must salvation result from humiliation or humility? And at whose hand?
Aggression repressed by the promise of aggressive retribution reflects the spectrum of American militarization from global domination to cold war. Rather than the source’s crazed assassin, the film’s trigger-happy soldier (knowing not what he does) acts out the first of two shootings. While that shot lands Klaatu in Walter Reed, the second shot—also military, except resultant from a fugitive alien manhunt—kills the visitor. Initially just weapons get disintegrated, but later Gort’s eyebeams blast two soldiers that seem to die in a glowing radiation bath, setting the stage for the teeth behind the robot’s vigilant deterrent.
Instead of Cliff, Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her son, Bobby (Billy Gray), channel the audience’s fears, and Professor Jacob Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe) represents scientific rationalism’s counterpoint. Helen puts aside her fear by allowing Bobby to bond with Klaatu in his human guise as Mr. Carpenter. Later Helen becomes his closest human ally, forsaking her fiancé (Hugh Marlowe) and commanding Gort to spare Earth with the famous words “Klaatu Barada Nikto.” This transformed feminine perspective counterpoints militarism by moving from fear to love rather than hate.
Though North felt the underlying Christian message was subtle, its power as a cautionary tale against nuclear proliferation and self-destruction could not be more direct. Klaatu’s resurrection by Gort is met with the revelation to Helen (who asks, “You mean he has the power over life and death?”): Gort’s power is limited and “that is a power reserved for the Almighty Spirit.” Whereas the original tale would have us believe in a partial myth of resurrection that constrains masculine aggression, the film presents a hierarchy of potency from humanity through extraterrestrial robotics to inspired omnipotence.
North must question our ability to save ourselves in the face of higher and highest powers. As with Cliff's successful pursuit of the clearest recording of Klaatu's voice, Helen’s selfless love (agape) temporarily saves Earth from an Old Testament vengeance. The film's ultimate difference results from a preemptive cosmic Manichaeism. Black and white, mankind’s final choice would be righteous as long as evil is cast as godless and insidiously bent on world domination. Could this choice be between an encroaching communist secularism or our own rampant, militaristic xenophobia?
The answer may come in a scene absent from the script but a key thematic highpoint in the film. When Bobby and Carpenter tour Washington, Klaatu (asked by a news reporter if he is as afraid as everyone else) replies: “In a different way, perhaps. I am fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason.” This meta-reference to the contemporary xenophobic climate represents the power inherent with significant speculative fiction, the power to address problematic issues, however obliquely.
Director Robert Wise, his screenwriter and the pulp hack from which the concept came depict a transformation of public consciousness from parochialism to an awareness of a Galaxy-wide Order. From here we can speculate on an Intergalactic Vigilante Squadron of Gort-like Robocops that will keep us wacky humans in line. Whether a benevolent force perpetrates individualism’s white lie or a superior force quashes our destructive tendencies, we have little choice but comply. Harry Bates merely asks that we control our crazies to ward off vengeance, while the filmmakers ask us to choose to be ruled by a greater deadly force.
From 1951, culminating in the Moral Majority triumph of 1980s Reaganism, the black and white of evil and good has worked to keep America vigilant. Now, instead of Communism, the fear of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism stands as our counterpart challenge in this checkerboard world. We might be better off as a mere threat to the greater cosmos, reminded that "It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet--but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder." Note Klaatu's overriding disinterest in whether we blow ourselves to Kingdom Come.
Analogously, where and how would the public fascination with extraterrestrial intervention fit into the Superman mythos? I would argue that as a Jewish icon more concerned with earthly ethics than some Christians, Superman salvages secular humanism through logical positivism and scientific rationalism. However supremely good, he cannot be considered divine in a religious sense, so he must represent the alien who super-assimilates the indigenous culture he inhabits.
He does not blend in to be saved from eternal damnation; he does this out of the purest form of Christian love: agape. Few doubt whose side this alien visitor would defend if his beloved family of man were attacked by extraterrestrials. This avatar forms a trinity of alien, earthling and icon.
Rather Nietzschean, even as he remains silent as to his faith in God, Kal-El’s spiritual philosophy arises from the death of his homeworld, Krypton. Their advanced civilization dies from denial of destructive chthonic forces. As a renegade scientist, Kal’s father Jor-El represents a paragon of apocalyptic insight infused with a parent’s sacrificial love.
The Kents exemplify Protestant work ethic, imprinting their adopted son with good-natured pragmatism. Clark performs self-humiliation rituals while secretly saving his community from injustice and alien intervention. Ranging from common criminals to his father’s sworn enemies from the Phantom Zone, Superman’s adversaries challenge him morally as much as they do physically. Yet he prevails in both arenas with the triple threat of righteous certitude, wit and supreme power.
This moral synthesis does not deny the heart of Clark Kent’s sympathy for his adopted race, but the main weight is borne by his head and shoulders. In this way, Kal-El’s potential robotism manifests as mandatory guardianship, masked emotions and frequently automatic responses. His master/slave ambivalence creates both affinity as well as conflict between personae.
How these personae manifest and reconcile provides perpetual renewal of faith in mankind’s capacity to love and disappointment in its capacity to hate. This unification represents a metaphor-cum-trope for xenophobia as the basic human condition from which many myths spring. The strange visitor character--turned friend when faced with a common enemy--runs rife throughout historical and fictional narrative.
Next I will look at some specific instances where the Superman mythos grows to adapt 1950s science fiction sensibilities.
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