1) In what ways and for what reasons are aliens presented as a subject of fear in Hollywood films of the 1950s? Your answer should focus on either The Thing From Another World or Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Answer) I will focus on the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. This movie was released in 1956 when the World War 2 had been over and the Cold War arrived. During Cold war, the United States held the military tension and fear of communism and nuclear war. This social and political condition affected not only the daily life but also the cultural life. So the movie in 1950s shows the fear of communism and distrust of scientists. This is the essential background knowledge to analyze “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.
In this movie, the alien invaders take over the human body and they replace human beings. So the alien can live with normal people as if they are really human beings. The thing we must pay attention is that the alien which tries to take over the whole earth doesn’t look different with just normal human beings This alien implied the communist spy. During Cold War, there were a lot of communist spies in United States so that the fear of spies was widely prevalent. So movies released during this era have common metaphor about communist spies. As we can see in this movie, the alien implies communist spy in that it looks like us but actually isn’t. And it also contains the negative point of view about communist in the way that the alien tries to invade and dominate the whole earth; the alien means communist and the earth do the whole world.
Our movie, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a kind of the marvelous, one of the category among three types of sci-fi film by J.P. telotte. The marvelous tells the story about the force of the domain that surpasses that of human being, such as alien things. In fact a lot of directors chose sci-fi films to send their hidden message about some political issues. That is because the sci-fi films feel like...