Impatient with Stupidity:Alien Imperialism in The Day the Earth Stood Still

Gael SweeneySyracuse Universitygsweeney@syr.edu

When superior intelligence is displayed in post-war American films, it

is often represented in the form of the erudite Englishman. Films such The Day

the Earth Stood Still (1951), Forbidden Planet (1956), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976),

StarGate (1994), and the Star Wars series (1977, 1980, 1983, 1999) exemplify one

distinctive convention of British representation in postwar popular film: the

displacement of imperialism from contemporary political reality into another

realm: here, that of science fiction. The alien who challenges the Western way

of life comes sometimes as a monster of hideous demeanor, but other times,

even more insidiously, as a highly intelligent, Oxford-accented, human–

appearing Other/Not Other. In the 1951 Robert Wise film The Day the Earth Stood Still

[1] the configuration of alien identity is that of the English gentleman, as

contrasted with the American masculine identity that is depicted as the “norm”

for people on Earth. But even when the Alien has good intentions, he uses the

colonialist authority of his “British” identity to master the American masses.

The brilliant messenger Klaatu (played by then unknown British stage actor

Michael Rennie) comes to Earth as a benevolent force of imperialism: he is

reasonable in the face of the barbarians, even when a panicked soldier shoots

him, the government locks him up, and the populace thinks a “Man from Mars” is

on the loose. Klaatu offers the “natives” amazing gadgets that prove the

superiority of his evolution and the promise of fellowship with more advanced

worlds and beings. He also rallies the “brains” of humanity, including

1

Professor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe), an Einstein-esque physicist known as “the

greatest man in the world,” to his side against the forces of “mindless”

politics and economics. But, as the movie’s poster trumpets: “From Out of

Space... A Warning and an Ultimatum!” This urbane Alien is also impatient with

the “stupidity”of humanity, with their petty divisions and quarrels, and

intimidates the newly atom-powered Earth with an even greater technology: a

race of policing robots that will set up a “Pax Klaatu.” Earth, like a

helpless third world colony, really has no choice but to obey or be destroyed.

While Klaatu stresses the ignorance and backwardness of Earth, the irony is

that it is exactly our dangerous and advanced knowledge of concepts such as

atomic power that has brought Earth to the attention of Klaatu and the

Guardians he represents on this voyage. The film therefore offers an uneasy

parable of the basic threat of the future that parallels the dilemma of Eden.

Earthlings have gained knowledge but not wisdom, becoming a danger to

themselves and their betters.

In most analyses of the intersections of gender, race, class, and

colonialism in film [2], American and British characters are treated as

interchangeable representatives of white, male, imperialistic domination.

However, they are far from interchangeable in either form or function, and the

codes “British,” “Englishness,” and “Englishman” serve an ideological purpose

in a medium that is culturally dominated by American interests and ideals. How

is “Englishness” encoded in film, especially the representation of British

masculinity within the convergence of class, nationalism, colonialism, race,

and gender? I begin with the supposition that in English–speaking culture

there is a distinct difference between American and British identities, a

division that is not just apparent, but insisted on, ideologically.

2

Robert B. Ray, in his book, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema,

discusses how certain myths, such as that of the cowboy or the colonialist,

appear in movies at specific moments in Hollywood history [3]. Before World

War II North American culture built up a myth of identification with the

British and their Imperial Era. Such an old hand in “The Great Game” as

Rudyard Kipling recognized the United States as the natural heir to Britain’s

colonial enterprise, writing his famous poem “White Man’s Burden” in 1899 both

to celebrate the American appropriation of Cuba and the Philippines in the

Spanish–American War and to muse on whether the Yanks were ready to shoulder

such a responsibility. Film theorist Raymond Bellour speaks of how the

American cinema is analogous to the British 19th century novel, especially as

“an art of narrative founded on representation, conflict, enigma,

hermeneutics, suspense... [which is why] so many 19th century novels have been

able to be adapted directly to the screen by the American cinema” [4]. As the

romantic novel was an ideological product of the building of a global British

Empire in the 19th century, the popular cinema is an ideological product of

American expansion of power in the 20th century. And as Britain has served as

a political model for the United States, the British novel has served as a

cultural model for American film and British actors as a model for the epitome

in culture and class, especially in stories of the winning and holding of

Empires.

But in the aftermath of World War II, American cinema, following the

lead of a politics dominated by Red Scare paranoia, began to take a more

aggressively ideological turn. If there are two competing ideological truths

in English–speaking culture, the older, established British view and the

modern, developing American one, then the American version of reality began to

exercise its muscle in the post–war period. Facing a perceived threat by

3

Communism, America made ideological adjustments to suit the new politics of

the cold war. To counter charges of imperialism and economic and cultural

expansion on a global level, there needed to be an American re-identification

of itself with the colonial, the repressed, the noble underdog who desires

freedom, and with spectacles of struggle against imperialism, especially in

film and literature. The contrast between the excessive plenty and power of

America, which considered prosperity and influence its due for “saving the

world,” and the bleak, spartan, and politically fumbling condition of post–war

Britain (which partitioned India and went into economic crisis after the loss

of the Suez Canal to Egypt) was a signpost to the new order of things. With

the British Empire failing, Britain itself struggling economically, and the

ideology of empire reviled by emerging nationalism in the third world, America

needed a new and more fitting paradigm of masculinity and power than that of

their traditional model, the now discredited “English gentleman” -- a figure

that is increasing portrayed in the post-war era in either a corrupt or

threatening light, even while retaining an enticing aura of class and

intellect. British actors such as George Sanders, Basil Rathbone, Charles

Laughton, Ronald Colman, Henry Daniell, Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing,

Christopher Lee, Trevor Howard, Donald Pleasence, Richard Attenborough, John

Carradine, James Mason, and Claude Rains are seen in roles that walk the line

between sophisticated, cultured leading man and treacherous, sexually deviant

villain. That tradition continues even into the new century, with former

leading men such as Sean Connery, Michael Caine, David Warner, Terence Stamp,

Malcolm McDowell, Jeremy Irons, Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton finding

many of their roles as Oxford-accented villains in American films clamoring

for politically correct bad guys, joining newer names such as Ian McKellen,

Nigel Hawthorne, Derek Jacobi, Ian Richardson, Alan Rickman, Charles Dance,

4

Patrick Stewart, Tim Roth, Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Gary Oldman, Richard

E. Grant, Brion James, Jeremy Northam, Stephen Fry, Julian Sands, Cary Elwes,

Tim Curry, Tom Wilkinson, and the newest of the “Bloody British”: Jason

Isaacs, the twisted, baby-killing Redcoat officer Tavington in Mel Gibson’s

latest ode to English churlishness, The Patriot (2000).

By using the figure of British masculinity as a model for the

imperialism that America wishes to deny, by demonizing British masculinity and

its products, especially the British Empire, American masculinity can disavow

responsibility for the effects of imperialism brought about by American

policy: imperialists build empires, but freedom–fighters establish

democracies. As Britain’s ex–colony, an underdog that had fought for and won

independence from an imperial power, America had a ready–made myth and model

for other nations struggling against colonial (and the even more demonized

Communist “Evil Empire”) domination. American masculinity needed to set the

boundaries of its difference from British masculinity in order to claim a

political, physical, moral, and racial superiority to a British Empire that

was now doomed and obsolete. In order for the United States, as the self-

appointed champion of “freedom” and “democracy,” to justify its own brand of

“imperialism” –– whether calling it Manifest Destiny or the “expansion of

freedom” or even the “New World Order” –– it needed to disengage from the old

Pax Britannica and all that entailed.

Post-war American films reflected the change in the global balance of

power in a number of ways. Film noir, characterized by a darker point of view

and by themes of betrayal and lost innocence, became a mirror of a mood of

suspicion and fear of the Other, especially a foreign -- even English-speaking

-- Other. The Englishman joins other “foreigners” in being looked upon with

doubt and concern. The stylish sophistication, markers of class and erudition,

5

even the accent of the English gentleman begins to seem, not a desirable model

of masculinity but a possible menace to the individualistic, ingenuous,

untutored masculinity of the American male that is presented as the norm. As

Richard Dyer puts it, in his essay on the representation of “whiteness” in

film “Power in contemporary society habitually passes itself off as embodied

in the normal as opposed to the superior” [5]. Post–war films as varied as

Deception (1946), A Double Life (1947), All About Eve (1950), Five Fingers (1952), Elephant

Walk (1954), Casanova’s Big Night (1954), A Star Is Born (1954), Bhowani Junction (1956),

and The Court Jester (1956) offer highly coded and usually pessimistic

representations of the Englishman that focus on notions of uneasy class

difference and often perverse or sterile sexuality. Politically, this is the

McCarthy Era of the House Un-American Activities Committee witchhunts against

“political subversives” and “agents of influence” out to undermine the United

States -- a time when “foreigners” of all stripes were often branded as

possible insurgents or homosexuals or both.

In order to displace and divorce imperialism from modern political

reality, Hollywood often uses the convention of representations of empire

through analogies with ancient Rome and other imperial domains. By locating

empire and its often unsavory and “undemocratic” effects in a distant

elsewhere, either the ancient past, as in the historical epic Spartacus (1961),

or a “galaxy far, far away” as in Star Wars, mainstream film can uphold or

critique issues of imperialism and colonialism that might be politically

awkward if presented in a contemporaneous situation. The Robe (1953), Ben Hur

(1959), King of Kings (1961), Masada (1981), and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) are

only a few other examples of Historical and Biblical Epics that use the

convention of British actors and exalted speech for the oppressive,

imperialistic Romans, with American actors and plain speech and colloquial

6

language for slaves and oppressed peoples, such as Jews and Christians -- or,

to simplify, you can tell the Bad Guys from the Good Guys by the way they

talk! This same trope also appears with great frequency in science fiction

films like Forbidden Planet, The Man Who Fell to Earth, the Star Wars series, StarGate, and

the film that is, in many ways, the prototype for the genre, The Day the Earth

Stood Still. The plummy-voiced Stranger with the aristocratic air and superior

ways is as familiar as he is ominous.

Spartacus is one work that demonstrates how the control is held by the

imperialistic and empire-building Romans who subdue the underclasses and

slaves with military and ideological might, but hold it with the power of

their dominating gaze. The Romans are paternal and powerful, they represent

civilization and the social order, but they are also cruel, masterful, and

castrating. The slaves and lower orders, played by American actors such as

Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, struggle for personal freedom and political

control of their own destiny. But the Romans, played here (and in most epic

films)by British actors such as Laurence Olivier and Charles Laughton, own and

command everything in the filmic universe: the Empire, the land and goods, the

people (especially as slaves), the right of speech, and what E. Ann Kaplan

refers to as “the imperial gaze” [6]. The imperial gaze is the structure by

means of which the imperialist and the colonialist “subject,” usually white,

male, and almost always British, owns the right of looking -- which is to say,

views, analyzes, configures, depicts, constrains and reduces the people who

are the “objects” of colonial interest, conquest, and control.

The Day the Earth Stood Still was released in the United States in 1951, in the

midst of the budding Cold War with that other “alien empire” the Soviet Union,

a “Police Action” in Korea, and a desperate witchhunt for treacherous “aliens”

and secret Communists in the United States government. The fear of a nuclear

7

war that could destroy not only the United States but the entire world was

very real. And many people in disparate places across the continent (Roswell,

New Mexico was only one) were beginning to "see" strange objects in the sky --

objects the media dubbed “flying saucers” and figured as being peopled by

“little green men.” The early 1950s was a time of explicit anxiety and

paranoia. In this atmosphere The Day the Earth Stood Still was produced. 20th

Century-Fox Executive in Charge of Production Darryl F. Zanuck and Producer

Julian Blaustein enlisted Director Robert Wise [7] to make what would

eventually become the archetype for all future alien encounter films. After

reading Edmund H. North's astute and non-sensationalized screenplay, Wise was

immediately interested because he saw the possibilities of using a genre that

was then very new -- science fiction -- to make a statement about the current

world situation: “I liked so much what it had to say: the warning to the world

to get along, to start getting along; let's have peace. So I went back

immediately to Julian and called Darryl and said I'd like to do this one very

much, I think it's great, it will be very strong in its message” [8]. With the

political situation in the United States so uncertain, and with Hollywood

especially under scrutiny from red hunters in Washington, the whole concept of

Day, with its ideas of global cooperation, its warnings of the danger of the

nuclear arms race, and, extraordinarily, its intense anti-militarism is

nothing short of audacious. But because these political hot potatoes were

presented as “science fiction” -- a genre seen primarily of one reserved for

comic books and adolescent boys -- the film caused little uproar and was

highly successful for Wise, Rennie, and 20th Century-Fox. So effective was Day

in setting the parameters for the alien invasion film that its influence can

be seen in countless sci-fi movies that came after, from It Came from Outer Space

(1953) and War of the Worlds (1953), to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), and, most

8

recently, Independence Day (1996). Perhaps the most abiding legacy of Day was

the use of a weird new instrument in Bernard Herrmann’s foreboding score: the

throbbing, wavering Theremin, soon to be a staple, if not a cliché, of every

space opera for the next thirty years [9].

In The Day the Earth Stood Still, the conception of Earth as a

unified, anxiety-ridden entity is clear from the first scenes:

various nationalities are portrayed, all listening in their own

languages to reports of the sighting of a strange object, Klaatu’s

ship arriving from Outer Space. Earth, with all its nations,

races, and creeds, will now have a single focus -- like it or not.

This arrival is as momentous for Earthlings -- and as dangerous --

as that of Columbus was for the Arawaks and that of Cook for the

Hawaiians: nothing will ever be the same. Klaatu, like the

conscientious, paternalistic colonial administrator, treats the

“natives” like children who must be chided, governed, admonished,

punished. Kaplan reminds us that the invention of cinema and the

acme of colonialism were concurrent and that film has always

depended on the images and assumptions of the colonialist

enterprise in genres as disparate as the Western, the War Movie,

the Adventure Film, and the Travel Documentary. Kaplan maintains

that Hollywood’s representations unconsciously reflect or embody

the colonial imagination. White travellers -- explorers,

missionaries, scientists -- did not travel to know the Other, or

to be with the Other. At best they travelled to see what they

could learn from the Other, or with educational zeal to convert

others to their western ‘truth’ (seen as the only truth). They

mainly want to dominate, exploit and to use the Other for their

9

own ends. The western imagination already considered itself the

only ‘civilized’ culture before its representatives set out to

have their convictions confirmed [10].

Like the imperialist traveler, Klaatu does not come to “know the Other” but to

dominate, convert, and exploit. Klaatu does not ask, he tells, he orders, and,

finally, he threatens -- but all for our own good. When the government liaison

Mr. Harley (Frank Conroy) warns that getting the West and East to cooperate

will be impossible for reasons of political idealogy, Klaatu sniffs. “My

mission here is not to solve your petty squabbles... I don’t want to resort to

threats!” -- but, of course, threats are exactly what the imperious Klaatu

offers to Earth.

When he lands on Earth, Klaatu looks out at the planet and its

inhabitants from the position of a superior being and intellect, and causes

all eyes in the world (literally, with television and movie cameras pointed)

to be on him and on the display of his alien power: his darkly shiny,

foreboding, saucerlike ship, his giant robot companion, Gort, and his own

tall, silver-clad body. Says Kaplan:

The male, the white subject, confronts--gazes at-- something Other

to itself that causes dis-ease. Why does this gaze cause dis-

ease? Because the male and the white subject need to be in

control: they assume power lies with them, in their gaze, and are

uneasy when there is an entity that seems to elude their control,

to look and perhaps be different. Their discomfort leads to their

construction of the primitive/civilized binary categorization so

as to defend against difference. It is precisely for these reasons

that the “gaze” may be distinguished from “looking”... The anxiety

10

arises equally from psychodynamic causes and guilt about

political/economic oppression of the Other [11].

Gort soon disables the power of Earth's technology with the superior potency

of his controlling and devastating "gaze"--he is actually eyeless: his visor

raises and lowers to emit a deadly ray that can disintegrate matter, de-

activate weapons, and "dissolve" soldiers who have been set to guard him. As

Klaatu warns, Gort is the designated policeman for Planet Earth, capable of

reducing Earth “to a burned out cinder.” The force that will keep us in line

and stay us from overstepping the bounds our technologically superior

overlords have set for us, Gort has power that “cannot be revoked,” even in

Klaatu's world.

Of course, the first contact that Earth offers its first Alien visitor

is violence: Klaatu, offering a device as a gift to the President, is shot by

an hysterical soldier, the first in a line of hysterical Earthman with whom

Klaatu will have to deal on this backward planet. Taken to Walter Reed

Hospital, Klaatu begins to demonstrate the extent of his abilities: he heals

himself with a dab of salve and military doctors guess his age as 35 when he

is actually 78. Klaatu demands of Harley that it be arranged for him to meet

with delegates from all nations and not just “The West” and its allies. When

told that this is impossible, Klaatu shows the limits of his restraint and his

feelings about the politics of Earth: “I will not speak with any one nation or

group of nations. I don’t intend to add my contribution to your childish

jealousies and suspicions... I’m impatient with stupidity -- my people have

learned to live without it.” Aware that Klaatu is a political loose cannon in

the volatile Cold War milieu, the government locks him up at the hospital,

while the robot Gort is encased in a block of “KL 9-3 -- a new plastic

material stronger than steel” in an attempt to contain his power. But Klaatu

11

easily breaks out, symbolically taking the clothes of a carpenter -- this time

a“Major Carpenter” -- whose name he adopts.

We first see “Mr. Carpenter” (minus the title, as befits an Alien who

eschews the military of any nation) as an ominous shadow in the doorway of a

Washington boarding house -- a shot in Robert Wise’s best

Hitchcockian/Wellesian tradition -- as headlines trumpet the escape of “the

Man from Mars.” Carpenter is the ultimate Mysterious Stranger. One of the

boarders, young Bobby Benson (Billy Gray), guesses that Mr. Carpenter must be

an FBI agent because of his aura of authority and secrecy. But the alien’s

masquerade as an Earthman is at once a masquerade as an imperial Englishman:

his accent, his demeanor, and, especially, his intellect separate him

immediately from the other tenants at Mrs. Crockett’s boarding house,

including the widowed Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her son. “You’re a long

way from home,” says the landlady (Edith Evanson), momentarily startling

Carpenter. “How did you know?” “I can tell a New England accent a mile away.”

Mr. Carpenter gives her an ironic smile. This alien, like the benevolent

Imperialist, is both familiar and utterly strange at the same time.

In his study of 1950s science fiction films, Seeing Is Believing, Peter

Biskind refers to Klaatu as a “Milquetoast” but actually he is far from that.

His British masculinity is of a self-assured, rational kind, quite at odds

with the hysteria of most of the American Earthmen we see in the film. Helen

Benson’s suitor, Tom Stevens (Hugh Marlowe), is typical of the kind of

deficient masculinity with which Klaatu must contend. Tom is greedy and self-

serving; he doesn’t want to turn in the “spacemen” for patriotism or any other

purpose (“I don’t care about the rest of the world!” Tom whines), but to

bolster his own masculine inadequacy (“I’ll be a big man around here, you’ll

see”). Helen is obviously intrigued by Mr. Carpenter -- intrigued enough to

12

stir Tom’s jealousy. She defends the purpose of the alien even before she

knows what that purpose is. Unlike his insufferable Earth rival, Klaatu is the

strong and silent type, with the piercing and knowing eyes of the possessor of

the imperial gaze. Klaatu makes “normal” people uneasy, but he’s also charming

and magnetic, especially when compared to poor specimens like Tom and the old

men who hang around the boarding house. Helen trusts her son Bobby with him,

and when Klaatu later reveals his alien identity to her, she not only believes

him, but she immediately helps him. However, Klaatu is also oddly unsexual and

his relationship with Helen Benson in no way resembles a conventional romance.

Michael Rennie’s aloof British persona exudes the intellectual sexlessness (or

the androgyny) that often typifies the Englishman/Alien construction [12].

Wise had originally wanted Claude Rains [13] for the role of Klaatu,

his urbane Alien: “He was a fine English character actor and we thought he had

the right quality... [We got a memo from Darryl Zanuck saying]: ‘I have just

come back from England and while I was there I saw a young man on the stage.

He’s a very good actor, I think, and he has a very interesting look’” [14].

Michael Rennie was new to American audiences, giving his performance as Klaatu

a mysterious edge that, Wise says, “lent a lot of credibility to the whole

thing” [15]. Any unknown British actor could use his unfamiliarity, as well as

his resonant voice and intelligent demeanor, to project the determination of

Klaatu. But the original consideration of, and rejection of Claude Rains, an

older Englishman adept at playing brilliant villains, treacherous side-kicks,

and mad geniuses, shows that Wise was looking for an English actor who would

stand out from an American cast by projecting an “imperial” kind of foreign

masculinity (as well as holding within him the possibility of villainous

intent) -- not just foreign masculinity per se.

13

Rennie is, in fact, Lincolnesque [16] in appearance; it is no surprise

that when Bobby takes Mr. Carpenter to the Lincoln Memorial on their tour of

Washington, D. C., Klaatu expresses admiration for this particular Earthman

and desires to meet the current “greatest man in the world.” But rather than a

politician or a military leader, Bobby leads him to the Nobel Laureate Jacob

Barnhardt, “the smartest man in the world,” an Einsteinesque astrophysicist

with a vague accent and wild hair who in another context (and another movie)

would easily fit the Mad Scientist mold. Klaatu introduces himself to the

professor by doing the one thing guaranteed to prove that “Mr. Carpenter” is,

indeed, from a superior race: like an elementary school teacher, he corrects

the calculations in celestial mechanics of Earth’s greatest intellect, telling

Bobby that the professor “just needs a little help.” Klaatu finds a kindred

spirit in Barnhardt, the “voice of reason” in the film, for the professor is

another “alien” on Earth, a brilliant man who is honored, but not listened to

by governments. Barnhardt is also all too ready to be captivated by the

intellect of the alien, whose pure intelligence implies perils as well as

marvels, but he cannot fathom Klaatu’s true purpose any more than any other

Earthman and seems to believe that the alien purpose is a higher purpose

because the alien intelligence is a higher intelligence. “We scientists are

too often ignored or misunderstood,” says this intellectual magnet able to

call together at short notice the greatest minds on Earth to hear Klaatu’s

propositions and attempt to sway their various governments. Professor

Barnhardt, however, is not the free agent he seems. As a nuclear scientisy, he

is working for the government of the United States. It is therefore not merely

or innocently in the name of pure science that he aligns himself with the

alien cause that, he discerns, must eventually prevail. Though his scientif

masquerade might belie this, his brains are at the service of an imperial

14

power bent on economic and cultural domination. “You have faith,” says Klaatu

to Barnhardt. The magnetic Mr. Carpenter, whose god-like qualities are slowly

being revealed, has gained an important disciple.

“That fellow wants something!” says one of the boarders at the rooming

house of the amok alien -- and indeed he does. Klaatu has been promising many

advantages to the Earthlings if they will join the aliens and their alliance:

medical advances, technological progress far ahead of what Earth could achieve

itself, and brotherhood with other intelligent beings. But Klaatu neglects to

outline the negative or exploitive aspects of an Earth under the sway of an

alien power -- beyond, of course, being obliterated by Gort. Earth seems to

have been of little interest to the “Guardians” of the Universe when it was

backward and in complete ignorance. But in the post-war period, when Earth is

testing atomic weapons and on the verge of exploring space, the aliens arrive.

Their pretense is that Earth has become a danger to the other planets. But

surely Earth has the power to destroy only itself at this point -- something

that Klaatu himself threatens -- and is not even aware of the existence of

other worlds, let alone the ability to menace them. But Klaatu mentions

another more veiled purpose: “We live in peace, without arms or armies, secure

in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war -- free to pursue

more profitable enterprises. We do not pretend to have achieved perfection,

but we do have a system -- and it works.” The alien system sounds quite

familiar; in fact, it sounds exactly like a form of colonialist capitalism. If

Earth is now ripe for commercial exploitation, and open to Aliens looking to

“pursue more profitable enterprises,” then Earth must also be brought into

line and made to be worthy of belonging to, as Klaatu stresses, “an

organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the elimination

of all aggression.” This promised Pax Klaatu is couched completely in the

15

language of colonial ideology: the more powerful, more “civilized,” and

technological stronger state can dictate the terms, while the weaker state has

no choice but to capitulate.

In Seeing Is Believing: How Movies Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties, Peter

Biskind, identifies The Day the Earth Stood Still as “left-wing sci-fi” that

polarizes the masses “into a conflict between the individual and the

community” [17]. It is 1951 and “Unlike the weirdos with their polyfaceted

compound eyes... Klaatu is eminently presentable. Soft-spoken, mild-mannered,

cultured, Michael Rennie, more Milquetoast than Martian, is surely the best

behaved, most polite alien who ever hopped across hyperspace, so we know

there’s nothing to worry about when he gets loose” [18]. Douglas Menville and

R. Reginald in Things to Come call Klaatu “‘a quiet, sensitive, very human

being, whose mental and moral superiority to the government bureaucrats and

army generals is apparent from the first scenes’” [19]. Biskind places Klaatu

on “the side of the angels” by showing his equation with Christ: “Bigotry

against aliens by extension becomes the heathen denial of Christ” [20]. If

screenwriter Edmund H. North “intended to parallel the betrayal, crucifixion,

and resurrection of Jesus” [21] it was a subtext he did not share with Wise or

the producers (but which is almost always the first thing critics see).

Originally, Klaatu’s death and resurrection at the end of the film was meant

to be permanent, further reinforcing the god-like nature of his alien power,

but industry censors, uneasy at what was already perceived to be a left-

leaning tone of the film, forced a line substantially qualifying Klaatu’s (and

Gort’s) omnipotence: “That power is reserved for the Almighty Spirit.”

The Day the Earth Stood Still, says Biskind,“pits the individual, with his or

her unpopular, idiosyncratic views, against the center” [22] and aligns him

with a woman, a child, and a foreign scientist -- all marginalized to some

16

extent in the 1950s by white males like Tom Stevens, by the military and by

the Washington bureaucracy. But Helen, Billy, and Professor Barnhardt are not

innocent of motive: each has something to gain in an alliance with Klaatu,

whether power, knowledge, or (possibly) romance. Many narratives of colonial

power (such as Kipling’s Kim) also feature intrepid imperialists pitted

against a hostile mass at center with women, children, and outcasts -- Othered

figures with various self-interested reasons to identify with a redemptive,

powerful, and power-offering invader. Helen and Bobby are at risk in such a

uncivilized world, having lost a husband and father respectively in a

“senseless” war (“Were all these men killed?” Carpenter asks Bobby as they

stand at Bobby’s father’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery); they are prey

to, and dependent upon, the likes of Helen’s vulgar boyfriend Tom, who clearly

loses out when compared to the solicitous and sensible Mr. Carpenter. Tom

seemingly does the “right thing” by turning in (or is it “ratting out”?) the

“monster” from outer space, but he does it for all the wrong reasons. Biskind

points out that in a “right-wing film” Tom would be the whistleblowing hero;

in Day he is the obnoxious, self-seeking villain.

In his book on American horror films of the 1950s, Rational Fears, British

theorist Mark Jancovich states more pessimistically that “the aliens of The Day

the Earth Stood Still demand that the humans accept the ‘rational’ way of doing

things or perish... Science is rational. It is above individual or special

interests, and is therefore justified in imposing order on humanity” [23]. On

Klaatu using his rationality to force the Alien agenda on a bewildered Earth,

Jancovich says, “The science of ... Klaatu is a rigid, objective structure

which invalidates alternatives,” while Klaatu is a much less benevolent

figure, a “serious, grim patriarch” [24]. In opposition to Biskind, Jancovich

reads Day as an “authoritarian” text which “calls for the repression of

17

individual feelings, interests and desires, all of which are simply defined as

both irrational and destructive. This repression is necessary in order to

ensure the efficient running of a state which is not merely national or even

international, but a fully ‘universal’ order.... Violence, or at least the

threat of violence, is essential to the smooth running of the rational state”

[25]. Although Jancovich doesn’t state it explicitly, rationality is also

imperialist, and this is a formula for the Imperialist way of doing business

with colonized people. Klaatu is the ultimate civilized Englishman in the

guise of spaceman -- only instead of the Irish, or Indians, or Africans, it is

Earthmen who need to be tamed and civilized by the “benevolent” colonialist

and his advanced technology. Humans can be good individually: there is

precocious Bobby Benson, who looks up to the example of the sensible Mr.

Carpenter (“I like you, Mr. Carpenter,” he says. “You’re a real screwball!”);

Helen Benson, who is attractive, hard-working, and -- best of all in

subservient races -- obedient (she learns enough of Klaatu’s language to

signal Gort, and carries out his instructions to the letter); and Professor

Barnhardt, who alone understands the full implications of Klaatu’s power --

and who sets about converting the “finest minds in the world” to the

inevitable. But on the whole Earthmen are irrational and therefore incapable

of ruling themselves: their unreasonable fears and infantile worries must be

overridden by a greater power, for a greater good. Klaatu scoffs at humanity’s

“childish jealousies and superstitions... For Klaatu, and for the film,

individual and national interests must be put aside in favour of the

Universal, but the Universal is not an interactive community based on shared

interests. It is an abstract, rational and totalising order to which

individuals and nations must surrender themselves” [26]. Klaatu has advanced

technology, which doubles life expectancy, heals grave wounds, and brings the

18

dead to life. Says the doctor at Walter Reed Hospital, “He made me feel like a

third-rate witchdoctor!” And so he is. Klaatu’s abilities are so far above us

that “they become powers to be worshipped and adored” [27]. In other words,

Klaatu acts the part of the perfect imperialist: rational, generous, and

advanced, but also rigid, controlling, exploitative of the natives, and,

ultimately, godlike.

The masses of Earth have already lost faith in their own elected

authorities (“What can the government do? After all, they’re only people”

“People my foot! They’re Democrats!”) and in the army, institutions that have

let the “Monster” get loose and “run amok.” Since he cannot get the government

of any country to obey him in unqualified terms, Klaatu must use “the only

thing you people understand”: a demonstration of his raw alien power. Klaatu

promises Professor Barnhardt that he will do “something dramatic, but not

destructive.” At noon, he causes all machines (except in hospitals and

airplanes in flight -- Klaatu is a benevolent autocrat, after all) to cease

functioning for a half hour. By disabling all of Earth’s technology at once,

Klaatu both proves the truth of his claims and demonstrates the feebleness of

Earth’s ability to withstand him. The day the Earth actually stands still

human civilization is revealed to be literally at a stand-still in comparison

to the potential of the alien Other. “The whole city is stopped -- people are

running around like ants!” says Helen’s co-worker of the ensuing hysteria --

and ants are what we must seem like to the Guardians. Klaatu also uses the

moment -- while they are trapped in an elevator -- to reveal himself to Helen

and further seduce her (intellectually, of course!) to his cause. Professor

Barnhardt, already remote from his fellow Earthmen because of his exceptional

mind (and Nobel Prize), sits back and enjoys the spectacle.

19

After being tipped off by Helen’s boyfriend Tom, the Army tracks down

and kills Klaatu. But before he dies Klaatu gives Helen the code words that

activate the robot -- “Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!” -- who then retrieves the body

and resurrects the former “Mr. Carpenter.” Thus, Klaatu reaches the apotheosis

of the imperialist, the status of a god. And thus the demure Helen aligns

herself completely with the alien’s cause, putting herself squarely in the

tradition of native women, like Cortez’s mistress La Malinche or even

Pocahontas, who affiliate themselves with powerful conquerors against their

own people. The scientists, led by Professor Barnhardt and gathered in front

of the spaceship, also stand with Klaatu against the unreasonable and

uncomprehending soldiers and politicians. “The Day the Earth Stood Still’s respect

for intellect makes heroes of professor and aliens... and creates a top-down

hierarchy. The intellectual elite are the only people smart enough to hear

Klaatu’s message” [28]. They are also the only ones who understand the

implications of Klaatu’s visit, that Earth’s technical, moral, and mental

“inferiority” makes domination by the Guardians an inevitability. The sooner

that Earth joins wisemen like Professor Barnhardt, beautiful, sincere women

like Helen, and smart, young lads like Bobby and learns the ways of Klaatu,

then the sooner it will be able to follow the example of “civilized” planets

and progress. Because Klaatu controls knowledge that Earth is as yet incapable

of grasping, and because he is the representative of a “higher” power, he

claims the “right” to dictate to Earth. This is his “imperial mandate.” If

Klaatu feels an obligation to warn and to teach the hapless Earthlings, a kind

of white man’s burden for aliens, that does not mean that he will somehow

“save” Earth from its designated fate. As Klaatu asserts before his departure:

“The universe grows smaller every day. Threats of aggression cannot be

tolerated. There must be security for all... at the first sign of violence,

20

your Earth will be reduced to a burned-out cider. Your choice: join us and

live in peace -- or face obliteration... The decision rests with you.” But it

is a decision the new imperial masters have already made.

Klaatu and Gort leave Earth, but the “decision” -- and the plot of the

film -- remains unresolved. Will there be total annihilation, full-scale alien

domination (colonization or enslavement), or some kind of “benevolent”

imperial rule by “rational” autocrats like Klaatu? Robert Wise ends The Day the

Earth Stood Still with this crucial issue in doubt, but given the fates of

colonized peoples in Earth’s own past, the effect of an alien imperialism that

is so “impatient with stupidity” is liable to be one that imperfect human

intellect would rather not contemplate.

Sources

Biskind, Peter. Seeing Is Believing: How Movies Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties.New York: Pantheon, 1983.

Jancovich, Mark. Rational Fears: American Horror in the 1950s. Manchester: ManchesterUP, 1996.

Kaplan, E. Ann. Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze. New York:Routledge, 1997.

Kuhn, Annette, ed. Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema.London: Verso, 1990.

Loban, Lelia. “The Day the Earth Stood Still: Farewell to the Master,” Scarlet Street 25(Summer 1997).

Penley, Constance, ed. The Future of an Illusion: Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis.Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1989.

..., Elisabeth Lyon, Lynn Spigel, and Janet Bergstrom, eds. Close Encounters: Film,Feminism, and Science Fiction. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1991.

Rubey, Dan. “Star Wars: Not So Long Ago, Not So Far Away,” Steven, Peter, ed.Jump Cut: Hollywood, Politics and Counter Cinema. New York: Praeger, 1985: 83-105.

21

Ruppersberg, Hugh. “The Alien Messiah,” Alien Zone, ed. Kuhn: 32-8.

Shinnick, Kevin G. “Hail to the Master: Robert Wise,” Scarlet Street 25 (Summer1997).

Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentricism: Multiculturalism and the Media.London: Routledge, 1994.

Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film. New York: Ungar,1987.

Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and ImperialAdministration. Durham: Duke UP, 1993.

Stam, Robert, and Louise Spence. “Colonialism, Racism and Representation,”Screen 24.2 (1983): 2-20.

Torry, Robert. “Apocalypse Then: Benefits of the Bomb in Fifties ScienceFiction Films,” Cinema Journal 31.1 (Fall 1991).

Weaver, Tom. “Years After Stillness: Robert Wise Recalls The Day the Earth StoodStill,” in Starlog 211 (February 1995): 24-27, 69.

Websites

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/Wise/wise-con07.html("Conversations with History: Robert Wise Interview," Institute ofInternational Studies)

http://movietunes.hollywood.com/movietunes/soundtracks/notes/1,1364,stoodstill,00.html (The Day the Earth Stood Still Soundtrack Site)

http://members.yourlink.net/jgerard/gort/ (James H. Gerard’s Gort Website)

http://www.afionline.org/wise/robert_wise.html (AFI Tribute to Robert Wise)

http://www5.50megs.com/classics/gort/index.htm (The Day the Earth Stood Still FanSite)

22