PBS is beginning the second season of Pioneers of Television with four episodes. The first will look at science fiction, including Lost in Space, Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, and those who helped create them and make them pioneering.
It’s no wonder that Gene Rodenberry, creator of “Star Trek,” turned to science fiction when he wanted to delve into dicey subjects on television such as race relations and the value of war. It’s easier to unearth tough subjects when creatures from another planet or another time deliver the truisms. Humans have always gazed up at the stars or stared deep into the black, rolling ocean with equal parts fascination and fear. The unexplored frontiers at the edges of our existence beckon and repel in equal measure. In the early to mid 1960s, a number of innovative television writers, producers and actors began playing with these ideas on the small screen — sometimes preying on our universal fears, and sometimes dreaming up a very different future. Whatever their initial aim, these television innovators left behind a legacy of science fiction television that entertained us and challenged our preconceived notions.
“Lost in Space”
A kitschy, comic science fiction show based loosely on the classic novel, The Swiss Family Robinson, “Lost in Space” debuted in 1965 and was created by Irwin Allen, the most successful science fiction producer of the decade. While the show centered on the misadventures of the Robinson family in outer space, a scene-stealing, villainous anti-hero emerged in the form of Dr. Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris). Harris and the robot developed an unexpected comedic relationship in which the robot, voiced by Bob May, plays the “straight man,” allowing Harris to deliver some of his most memorable zingers.
“Star Trek”
Gene Roddenberry had the kernel of an idea for “Star Trek” as early as 1961, and he planned for each episode of the series to deliver a cathartic two-punch in the form of entertaining adventure and moral message. But Roddenberry met resistance from NBC. The network insisted that the “Star Trek” pilot presented fascinating ideas but lacked excitement. Roddenberry reworked the script and brought actor William Shatner to the key role of Captain James T. Kirk. NBC executives were satisfied with the changes, and the series “Star Trek,” hit small screens in 1966. Unlike anything that had come before it, “Star Trek” addressed issues of race, gender, war, nuclear proliferation and drug abuse in a context that was palatable to the public. And the on-screen chemistry between Captain Kirk and logical Dr. Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, was unmistakable. The series became a cult classic, spawning an impressive franchise of movies, animated series, merchandise and fan groups.
“The Twilight Zone”
Created by Rod Serling, “The Twilight Zone” appeared on the small screen from 1959 to 1964, and the anthology series relied on reams of taut writing from sci-fi literary greats such as Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson.
“The beauty of the science fiction genre is that so much of it had been untouched,” said Serling. “It had been reproduced in printed form over and over again, but it had never been done on camera, so we had almost a goldmine of unused material we could operate from.”
Unlike other science fiction television shows that planted their scripts firmly in the future, this series’ stories were usually set in more familiar surroundings. And instead of relying on a regular cast of characters, “The Twilight Zone” was an anthology with different actors for all 152 episodes. The result was a thought-provoking, unpredictable collection known for its excellent writing.
This program airs Tuesday, January 18 at 8/7 Central.
Joseph Laycock, an up and coming scholar of religion and popular culture, has an article in the International Journal for the Study of New Religions Volume 1, No. 2 (2010), titled “Conversion by Infection: The Sociophobic of Cults in the Omega Man.” The abstract:
The Omega Man (1971), starring Charlton Heston, is a film adaptation of the book I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. Matheson’s novel tells the tale of Robert Neville, the last man left alive after germ warfare has infected humanity with vampirism. The Omega Man differs from the original novel and its other adaptations in several ways: the most notable is that it imbues Heston’s character with obvious Christ-like symbolism. A more significant change went largely unnoticed: instead of vampires, those infected with the plague become part of a militant group called “The Family.” Although The Family is never overtly described as a religion, the antagonists speak to a popular fear of new religious movements that emerged in the 1960s. By pitting a medicalized Christ against a disease-like religion, The Omega Man helped to engender a dual perspective of deviant religion as simultaneously medical and heretical. This dual perspective would shape the discourse of the “cult wars” in the United States for decades, from the abductions carried out by cult “deprogrammers” to the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.
This article is worthwhile for those interested in the study of new religions, related issues like Satanic panics, and religion in popular culture in areas such as horror and science fiction cinema. The article can be downloaded in PDF here.
Recently I interviewed Peg Aloi who shared her thoughts on how the film Season of the Witch might depict the witch and how this characterization might relate to witches and Wiccans in the real world. Since our discussion this film has debuted in theaters, and many reviews have not been positive. By contrast, there has been a positive buzz about another film with some similarities that takes place in the same medieval time period, and in relation to the bubonic plague and religious views related to the witch and the disease. The film is Black Death, directed by Christopher Smith, and starring Sean Bean.
Rue Morgue magazine #108 (Jan./Feb. 2011), featured Black Death as a cover story, and included an analysis of the film along with an interview with Smith. During the course of the interview there is discussion about the application of the film to the present day, and whether the conflict between Christian fundamentalists and pagans may or may not function as a parable for our times. In response Smith states:
I think there’s certainly a relevance between being told something is evil and finding out it’s actually the opposite. But [in regards] to Christians versus pagans, I don’t want to suggest that any one side is more right than the other, because the film is not about which religion’s right — far from it; it’s about the way that religions can be manipulated and used by bad people for their own good. And what you have is this group of soldiers that are in this clash between these two things, where they are told on the one hand to go to this village and destroy the evil there, but when they get there they find a place that seems to be the exact opposite of what they were told it would be. … It’s also a movie about the ways faith can be tested. If you are told that if you come to church you won’t die, how do you go back to church and say, “Why didn’t that work?” At the time, the Church got very scared with the question that faith is being challenged by the people. Part of what you see in the film, this idea of needing to find a demon, needing to find someone that we can pin the blame on this thing on, to go and destroy it, and then when we’ve destroyed it harmony can return again, that’s a very modern parable.
Black Death has already been released in the UK, but is set for at least a limited US release in March of 2011.
“ZEY BELONG HERE MORE ZAN WE”: REMOTE VIEWING AND CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
By Paul Meehan
Stephen Spielberg’s 1977 UFO epic Close Encounters of the Third Kind was a critical and popular success that, along with Star Wars, which was released in the same year, ushered in a revival of the science fiction film that has continued to this day. It remains the most profound and insightful treatment of the UFO subject in the history of the cinema. This was because Spielberg, who also scripted, eschewed science fiction concepts of alien life in favor of material culled from real-world UFO reports.
During the scriptwriting process, Spielberg consulted with two scientists who were the world’s foremost authorities on the subject. Northwestern University astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who had been scientific consultant to the Air Force’s saucer-busting unit Project Blue Book, acted as technical consultant on the film and makes a brief cameo appearance during the climactic scene of Close Encounters. French astrophysicist and computer scientist Dr. Jacques Vallee, who had authored several important books on the subject, was the template for French ufologist Claude Lacombe, played by Francois Truffaut in the film.
But there were a number of curious UFO sub-plots in Close Encounters that incorporated material that seem to have been gleaned from the U.S. Government’s research into psychic remote viewing. In my 1998 book Saucer Movies: A UFOlogical History of the Cinema, I discussed this topic in connection with conspiracy theories about covert government involvement in the making of Hollywood films about UFOs. While I do not give these theories any credence, Close Encounters does contain RV plot elements that are puzzling and have never been explained.
The government’s psi-spy program began at Stanford Research Institute, a University think-tank near Palo Alto, California, in the early 1970’s. At SRI, respected physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff conducted scientifically-controlled experiments into ESP functioning with renowned psychics like Uri Geller and Ingo Swann that produced compelling results and received funding from the CIA. Swann would become the group’s theorist and would devise the protocols for the psychic system that would come to be called “co-ordinate remote viewing” or CRV. He was assisted at this task by a computer scientist who was also working at SRI named Jacques Vallee.
According to some accounts, Vallee’s initial contribution to the genesis of RV was severely circumscribed due to lack of funding, and therefore he was employed only as an unpaid consultant during the early 1970s. Later on, however, when the project had moved into a military phase and was codenamed “Grill Flame” (1978-1982), Vallee was formally initiated into the mysteries of RV by Ingo Swann, reportedly to analyze links between remote viewing and the UFO phenomenon.
In 1973, Swann was struggling to formulate the basic procedures needed to utilize psychic functioning for intelligence purposes. His problem was in directing the remote viewer to the target site that the spies wanted to look at without telling the viewer too much about it. As journalist Jim Schnabel writes in his book Remote Viewers, if a psychic spy was tasked with viewing Ramenskoye Airfield, near Moscow, “then whatever psychic impressions he might have of the airfield would probably be overwhelmed by his imagination–which would find it all too easy to conjure up scenes of massive runways and hangars. What was needed was a way to be directed to a target, precisely and economically, without actually being told what the target was.” Taking a cue from computer programming, Vallee suggested to Swann that what he needed was to designate an “address” to direct the viewer’s vision to. Swann refined this idea into a procedure that used geographical latitude and longitude co-ordinates to indicate the target site.
Swann, who was an artist as well as a psychic, devised an intricate set of protocols for his system of co-ordinate remote viewing. The viewer was given latitude and longitude co-ordinates of the place to be viewed, and would then attempt to render their visual impression of what was at the co-ordinates. The viewer would begin by drawing an ideogram, a simple shape which would contain the basic design elements, the gestalt of the target: a squiggly line could indicate a river; a triangle might represent a jagged mountain peak. Elaborating on the ideogram, the viewer would produce more and more detailed drawings of increasing complexity that pictured the target site. In the final phase of the process (referred to as stage 6), the viewer would construct a three-dimensional model of the target. Author Jim Schnabel, for instance, who was trained in RV by Swann as part of his research, constructed a scale model of the target he had successfully viewed, the Tower of the Americas in San Antonio during Stage 6 of his training.
Remote viewing is an intensely visual process, and researchers soon discovered that some targets were much more “viewable,” or “RV-friendly” than others. Targets that were visually arresting seemed to attract a viewer’s attention much more readily than sites with visually uninteresting optics. Therefore, targets that have a “sexy,” or dramatic visual gestalt, such as, for example, Niagra Falls, the Sphinx or Devil’s Tower, Wyoming are like psychic beacons that seem to attract a remote viewer’s attention.
In Close Encounters, electrical worker Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) has an alien transmission telepathically implanted in his mind after an encounter with a UFO. Afterwards, Neary becomes obsessed with sculpting a strange-looking shape out of shaving cream and mashed potatoes. In remote viewing parlance, Neary has received the ideogram, a vague visual impression of the target site that will be refined until it is identifiable. His neighbor, Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon), who has also encountered the aliens, begins painting watercolors of an odd, flat-topped mountain peak.
In the meantime, French scientist Claude Lacombe (Francois Truffaut), who heads a UN group striving to contact an alien intelligence that has mysteriously manifested itself on Earth, intercepts a series of numbers being beamed down from outer space. David Laughlin (Bob Balaban), a cartographer who has accidentally joined the project and serves as Lacombe’s interpreter, notices that the numbers correspond to latitude and longitude co-ordinates for Devil’s Tower, an imposing mesa located in Wyoming, and Lacombe realizes that this site is where the extraterrestrials will make contact. So, indirectly, Jillian and Neary have “remote viewed” the target that lies at these geographical co-ordinates. Note that Devil’s Tower is a site with a dramatic visual gestalt that is amenable to psychic viewing.
Neary’s obsession with the strange shape eventually leads him to construct a gigantic, incredibly detailed model of Devil’s Tower in his rec room. In remote viewing terms, he is performing a stage 6 exercise, the sculpting of a precise model of the target. When he happens to see a broadcast about Devil’s Tower on TV, Neary realizes that he must go there and he and Jillian travel to Wyoming. En route to the contact site they are captured by the military and Neary is interrogated by Lacombe, who shows him a number of other paintings and drawings of Devil’s Tower made by others who have also traveled to there and been taken into custody. Lacombe believes these people have “invited” to the contact site and should remain, but he is overruled by the project’s military commander, who insists they be airlifted out, causing Lacombe to lament, “Zey belong here more zan we.”
Jillian and Neary manage to escape from the soldiers ,and Neary guides them to a box canyon at the foot of the mesa that he has viewed and had sculpted on his elaborate model. The canyon turns out to be the contact site, where Lacombe and his group have set up a hi-tech facility. Contact is made as the aliens descend from the skies and Neary is rewarded for his psychic acumen by being allowed to board the mothership and go on a journey into outer space.
These remote viewing themes are central to the plot of Close Encounters and figure prominently in the film’s narrative. Neary’s receipt of the Devil’s Tower ideogram from the aliens and his attempts to solve the puzzle provide much of the dramatic focus of the first two thirds of film. Also, the cartographer character played by Bob Balaban seems to have been inserted into the plot specifically to identify the geographic co-ordinates of the alien’s landing site.
Another connection between Close Encounters and remote viewing lies in the fact that RV has long had associations with the UFO phenomenon. In his 1990 book Out There, Pulitzer-nominated investigative journalist Howard Blum recounts how an SRI psychic inadvertently viewed a UFO during a remote viewing demonstration being conducted for military bigwigs in the Old Executive Office Building of the White House in 1985. He also relates how Army remote viewers were called on to provide information regarding an anomalous object detected by the U.S. Space Command in December, 1986. Several former government viewers, including Joe McMoneagle and Ingo Swann reportedly had spontaneous and unexpected encounters with UFOs and aliens during viewing sessions. The true extent of the connection between government remote viewers and UFOs remains clouded in official secrecy and has become a controversial issue in the history of RV.
It would appear that Spielberg was well acquainted with details of the government’s co-ordinate remote viewing program when he wrote the script for Close Encounters, as specific concepts and procedures are woven into the plot of the film, albeit in an indirect fashion. While some accounts of the SRI co-ordinate remote viewing experiments had been written about in books and magazines, the precise CRV protocols developed by Swann were not, nor was the fact that these techniques were being used in American espionage and were principally funded by the CIA and other government agencies. The connection between RV and UFOs was likewise unknown to the general public.
Conspiracy-minded ufologists have posited an effort by U.S. intelligence agencies to “educate the public” about the reality of the alien presence by producing Hollywood films on UFOs. In the case of Close Encounters, a more likely scenario is that Vallee might have revealed information to Spielberg about the SRI CRV project, which the director then incorporated into his screenplay. Although Spielberg and Vallee have said nearly nothing about their association with each other during the making of the film (they reportedly did not meet until the movie was nearly finished), Vallee was the only person who was sufficiently knowledgeable about both UFOs and CRV who could have advised him about these anomalous subjects.
While Spielberg’s protagonist in Close Encounters is everyman Roy Neary, there are also a number of espionage/paranoia/conspiracy motifs in the film as the secret UN saucer group silences UFO witnesses and the U.S. military stalks American citizens in unmarked helicopters in violation of Posse Comitatus laws. Be it also noted that telepathic aliens and psychic warfare themes appear in other Spielberg movies. In E.T., The Extraterrestrial (1982) a boy establishes a telepathic link with an alien being who is being pursued by another government “silence group,” while in Indiana Jones andthe Crystal Skull (2008) a Soviet psi-spy seeks to obtain an alien artifact that will enable psychic mind control on a mass scale.
Details of the U.S. Government’s remote viewing programs were not made public until 1995, almost 20 years after the initial release of Close Encounters. It is only now that the influence of RV as an inspiration for the plot of this classic science fiction film can be appreciated.
Lately I have been doing a lot of reflection and research on the zombie in popular culture, and how it connects to both postmodern concepts of the body and the sacred. Among the materials I recently came across in this regard that has helped develop my thinking is the work of Gary Laderman, a scholar of religion who helps us consider religion in America beyond the traditional and institutional, and more along the lines of “sacred matters” in popular culture. One of his books connects these dots, and does so by way of reflection on the death industry and the zombie. In his book Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in 20th Century America (Oxford University Press, 2003), Laderman writes:
“The monsters in [George] Romero’s [zombie] film [Night of the Living Dead] are the dark side of luminous angels. While angels are eternally alive though disembodied, these zombie cannibals are eternally dead yet fully embodied. The film troubled and entertained many Americans because it tapped into deep-rooted fears and phobias about the cadaver, and it provided an incisive commentary on the disintegration of contemporary social life. “
I find it interesting that Laderman makes this connection between the religious figure of the angel, and the zombie. I wonder if in some sense the zombie may also be considered a religious or sacred figure in some contexts, even if it is only as the angelic “dark side.” This connection also seems to tap into religious critique as the zombie may also be informed by the disintegration of the dominant religious narrative of America. Understood in this sense, zombies reflect post-Christendom, postmodern forms of resurrection through the deconstruction of the Christian meta-narrative and a lack of hope in bodily transformation in an anticipation of a more nihilistic, in some senses posthuman apocalypse.
Below are several news items related to the fantastic from the last couple of weeks. Those interested in reading these items as they come available can also find them posted daily on my Twitter account and Facebook page.
2011 will be a busy year for geeks on TV
MSN includes a piece that looks at the many offerings on television related to the fantastic, including The Cape, Terra Nova, and Being Human.
Science Fiction in 2010 and beyond
Examiner.com out of Boston summarized the offerings in science fiction from the last year and looked forward to the future.
Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters
Movie Moron has a brief piece which discusses the forthcoming comedy horror Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.
Public Domain: Watch ‘The Golem’ (1920) NOW! The Golem remains a great horror film from the past, part of a collection of films from the period, including Metropolis, Nosferatu, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, as reported by Bloody Disgusting. It can be viewed in the public domain.
Ron Perlman talks Mountains Of Madness and Hellboy 3 | TotalFilm.com
Ron Perlman, currently in Season of the Witch, recently spoke about his hopes to star in The Mountains of Madness, directed by Guillermo del Toro, and is open to the possibility of coming back for Hellboy 3 to wrap up a trilogy.
Top-Grossing Horror Movies for 2010
About.com asks, What Were the Most Popular Horror/Suspense Movies the Year? They provide the answer, and unfortunately the teen paranormal romance The Twilight Saga: Eclipse not only made the list, but topped it.
NASA deems 2012 “absurd”, Blade Runner “realistic”
As reported in Wired.co.uk, “Space agency Nasa has named and shamed Roland Emmerich’s world-ending disaster flick, 2012, as the most absurd and scientifically flawed sci-fi blockbuster in recent memory.” By contrast, Blade Runner received praise.
Anne Francis, of ‘Forbidden Planet’ and ‘Honey West,’ Dies at Age 80
“Anne Francis, best known for her starring role in the 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet, has died of complications from pancreatic cancer at the age of 80. Francis was also known as 1960s TV’s Honey West.” Not long ago, Francis’s co-star in Forbidden Planet, Leslie Nielsen, also passed away.
STARBASE 12 (Starfleet News) – The Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise, James T. Kirk, has been relieved of duty as commander of the ship as a result of his part in the production of “raunchy” videos presented to the crew as entertainment and alleged educational tools. The videos were originally produced and shown to the crew a couple of years ago, but were recently leaked during a visit to a starbase, and then the videos went viral throughout the United Federation of Planets, causing widespread embarrassment for Starfleet Command. The videos are said to contain anti-gay slurs (extremely surprising in light of the Federation’s repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and Lt. Sulu’s openly gay lifestyle), suggestions that female members of the crew were showering together (with rumors circulating as to whether it was Lt. Uhura and Yeoman Rand in the video skit), and other racial remarks that were troubling to the Federation’s extraterrestrially-diverse membership across the universe.
When asked to comment on the situation, Captain Kirk was characteristically defiant. He punched a Starfleet News camera man, and proceeded to kiss the female reporter inquiring about the incident. Kirk will remain on desk duty while the investigation continues, while the Enterprise departs to return to patrol the neutral zone in light of continued Romulan terrorist acts in Federation space.
Through a post at Zombos Closet of Horror I became aware of a great documentary on horror films produced and aired in the UK. It is titled A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss. Gatiss is an actor, screenwriter, and novelist who has been involved a number of comedy and genre projects. Some of his most recent television work in 2010 included an adaptation of H. G. Wells’s First Men in the Moon, in addition to A History of Horror.
This three-part documentary is well worth watching. It represents Gattis’s personal journey in the probing of the horror he loved as a child, and continues to reflect on as an adult. In this way, while the program is ideosyyncratic in that it explores the history of horror from the films of Universal Studios in the 1930s and 1940s, leaping past the American science fiction/horror of the 1950s, and resuming the journey with Hammer Films and other British horror in the 1950s, before concluding the exploration with American horror of the 1960s and 1970s, nevertheless, it is the personal ideosyncracies in film choices highlighting various periods and the evolution of horror that adds to the documentary’s charm. I found myself in agreement with much of the film selection and horror preferences that Gatiss has personally.
In addition to the elements discussed above, A History of Horror includes some interesting interviews with directors and producers, such as those associated with Bray Studios and Hammer Films, and actors, such as Barbara Steele, as well as visits to the locations where key scenes of horror films were shot. He also looks at props from the original Dracula with Bela Lugosi, and returns to the home town of Peter Cushing where a small museum maintains elements from the actor’s career and personal life.
A History of Horror appeared on BBC Four, but unfortunately the BBC iPlayer associated with it is not available in America. Segments of the three episodes can be found on YouTube. An excerpt is reproduced below. Let’s hope this documentary receives greater exposure beyond the U.K. as it makes an important contribution to the legacy of the history of horror films.
Today I came across an essay and interview that appeared last year in Religion Dispatches by Jason VonWachenfeldt that touched on a controversy between the Vatican and systematic theologian Roger Haight. I’m not sure of the present state of the controversy, if there is one, but a year ago the Vatican had concerns about some of the views of Haight that surfaced as a result of a book he published. In order to explore the subject, VonWachenfeldt interviewed Jeremy Kirk, a student of Haight’s at Union Theological Seminary who did his MA on the professor’s Christology. Among Haight’s controversial views from the perspective of the Vatican is his perspective on the resurrection of Jesus. When asked to describe Haight’s views on this topic Kirk said:
Following from this, Haight would affirm that the resurrection was not an historical event that happened physically and empirically in the space-time continuum. When Christians bury a loved one, they put the body in the ground with the faith/hope that the person is resurrected in a way that does not deny the historicity of the physical burial. Haight would state that Jesus’ body did not go anywhere; it is not the resuscitation of a corpse. There was no zombie Jesus.
This is the first time that I have seen reference to “zombie Jesus” in an academic context. It is quite extensive as a pop-culture phenomenon, as any Google search will confirm, surfacing on t-shirts, Internet images, as a character at some of the zombie walks that have taken place internationally, a Facebook page, an Uncyclopedia entry, a website devoted to Zombie Jesus Day, and even as a comedy horror film.
A few thoughts come to mind as a result of this topic.
First, I believe that one of the issues lurking beneath the concept of “zombie Jesus” are postmodern concepts of the body. Without an awareness of Christendom’s teachings on the resurrection body as a transformed and immortal physical body, it is understandable how one could read the resurrection of Jesus in zombie-like fashion. The Zombie Jesus Day website argues, “Everything that rises from the dead is a zombie. Easter is touted as the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So let’s call a spade a spade, eat lots of chocolate, and celebrate Zombie Jesus Day.” In addition, the Zombie Jesus on Facebook website goes further in connecting New Testament texts to the concept, arguing that Jesus came back from the dead in keeping with Acts 2:24, and that Jesus “encourages zombie like behavior,” referencing John 6:53: “Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.'” A study of postmodern conceptions of the body might shed light on the “zombie Jesus” phenomenon in its satire and parody of Christianity as well as other meanings, perhaps even hint at a critique of the frequent Christian emphasis on the soul/spirit to the neglect of the physical body and material creation, and help provide another face of understanding in the continued popularity of zombie films.
Second, Haight and other theologians miss an opportunity to engage contemporary concerns with a practical theology when they do not explore the zombie Jesus concept in popular culture. This is especially surprising in Haight’s case since the essay in RD states that “Haight’s project was intended for a current intellectual context” that addresses “the postmodern critiques of Christianity.” Rather than simply invoking the term “zombie Jesus,” Haight and other theologians might consider exploring the concept in more depth, unpacking its various meanings, engaging in self-critical theological reflection where appropriate, and then engaging those who enjoy the figure of “zombie Jesus.”
Third, Haight might reconsider the dichotomy he makes between those Christians who bury lost loved ones in faith/hope and the possibility of a bodily resurrection of Jesus as a “historical event that happened physically and empirically in the space-time continuum.” It is possible that the resurrection was “a transcendent reality that is a matter of faith and hope” as well as a historical event. Scholars like N.T. Wright have argued in this way, and it is a view at least worth considering before rejecting it outright in relation to a postmodern critique of Christianity. (For an interesting read that looks at very different interpretations of Jesus, including the resurrection, by two good scholars see The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, 2nd ed. (HarperOne, 2007) by Marcus T. Borg and N. T. Wright.)
This case provides yet another example of the connection between horror and religion, in particular between the zombie and theology, indicating that even zombies can function as suitable objects for theological reflection for those daring theologians willing to explore this territory.
I have been fortunate with the holidays to have a little extra spending cash that I have been able to put into adding to my video library. One of the films added to my collection was Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). Of course, this film is based on the book by Jack Finney from 1954, and rather than being a remake of the 1956 classic film star Kevin McCarthy, the 1978 version is better understood as a reimagining of Finney’s ideas, shaped to reflect the social and cultural circumstances of the 1970s.
The 1956 film has been interpreted variously as reflecting fears (and paranoia) regarding Communism, and also a critique of social conformity as in the McCarthyism of the time. But Don Siegel, the director of the Fifties film, has offered a very different interpretation:
“Many of my associates are pods, people who have no feelings of love or emotion, who simply exist, breathe and sleep … To be a pod means that you have no passion, no anger, that you talk automatically, that the spark of life has left you … The pods in my picture and in the world believe they are doing good when they convert people into pods. They get rid of pain, ill health, mental anguish. It leaves you with a dull world, but that, my dear friends, is the world in which most of us live.”
Moving to the very different cultural context of the late 1970s, the Philip Kaufman directed version still retains a concern for paranoia and conspiracy, but it does so by interweaving the concerns of people two decades after the original film aired. The location for the 1978 film shifts from a small city to the major metropolitan area of San Francisco, and the concerns of the “me generation” are evident throughout the film. This is especially evident in the depiction of the significance of psychoanalysis as a means of sorting out all of life’s troubles, and (ineffectually) explaining away the growing fears of many in the city by the bay that loved ones and friends just aren’t the same on the inside anymore.
But in viewing the film I wonder if another element might be present that reflects some of the concerns of the time. In the late 1970s the Christian right was a significant force in the culture, particularly but not solely in politics. The general Christian background of America, coupled with the prominence of the religious right, may have contributed to a general background of religious conceptions of the body and the afterlife. It is here that I suggest that Invasion of the Body Snatchers may provide some kind of interaction if not critique.
In one scene near the end of the film, two of the main characters who are still human, Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) and Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) are confronted by the alien forms simulating what was once Dr. David Kibner (Leonard Nimoy) and Jack Bellicec (Jeff Goldblum). Kibner encourages them not to resist, and along with Belliceck, describes the benefits of leaving their humanity, and their bodies behind as the pods assume their current identities:
David Kibner: “You will be born again into an untroubled world, free of anxiety, fear, hate…
Matthew Bennell: “David, you’re killing us!”
Jack Bellicec: “That’s not true. David’s right. Your minds and memories will be totally absorbed. Everything remains intact.”
I suggest that this segment of dialogue raises philosophical and religious questions about the nature of identity, consciousness and the body, and also Christian conceptions of the afterlife. Some may question my religious reading of this scene, but it would seem that the use of the phrase “born again,” a popular one in the religious right of the time where even President Jimmy Carter claimed to be a “born again Christian,” as well as the the immediate context for the term in reference to the type of world that Bennell and Driscoll are about to enter, permit a reading of religious implications in the scene. In addition, later in the film, after Bennell and Driscoll escape and find a moment of refuge from their alien pursuers, Bennell leaves Driscoll momentarily to track down the source of music he hears in the background. The music is coming from a radio found on a ship at a loading dock putting thousands of pods on board for exporting around the world, and the tune is “Amazing Grace” played on bagpipes. Of course, “Amazing grace” is a very popular Christian hymn, and a variation of this music is found later in the film at its pessimistic climax. The reader can watch the trailer for the film below and hear this music played at the conclusion of the promotional material. It is interesting to read some of the comments from YouTube where one individual shares that this is “an unusual song” to include in this kind of film. Indeed, unless some kind of commentary and critique were being offered of a theological nature related to the cultural context of the time.
Regardless of whether a direct reference is made to critique of aspects of the religious right, this film does provide an opportunity for theological reflection. Two items are in view in the dialogue reproduced above. First, the alien pods offer entrance into a trouble-free world without the struggles and pains connected with our present existence. While this may sound appealing, it also involves a life free of positive emotions as well, including love. The alien earth presented in this film echoes Siegel’s “dull world” that he critiqued in the 1956 version of the film, and it may also reflect the lack of appeal for bland depictions of the afterlife found in the religious right of the 1970s, and perhaps in the present time in less-than-robust presentations in Christian fundamentalism and evangelicalism.
Beyond this, the film may also provide for reflection on other aspects of eschatology, in terms of personal identity as it relates to life after death, and specifically the Christian idea of the resurrection of the body. In the dialogue above the human characters are concerned that as the alien pods assume their identities that in essence the aliens are killing them. Not so, argues one of the aliens: “our minds and memories will be totally absorbed. Everything remains intact.” This raises questions about personal identity in relation to the creation of another body, identical to the original in every way, complete with the mind and memories. Scholars of various stripes, including not only theologians, but philosophers and those in religious studies, have wrestled with this issue asking questions that are echoed in this film: “Is it rational to hope for life after death in bodily form? Will it truly be ‘we’ who are raised again or will it be post-mortem duplicates of us? How can personal identity be secured?”
Here in Invasion of theBody Snatchers, I believe we have yet another example of a slice of the fantastic in popular culture that can be mined more deeply to provide us not only with entertainment in the externalization of our fears, but also an expression of something more, the concerns and questions about personal identity and the shape of the afterlife from the perspective of a particular religious tradition.
