Artificial Bodies, Artificial Lives: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
by Tessa Swehla, Staff Writer
We are now in the '50s! Often idealized as the quintessentially American decade, the '50s encapsulated the fast-rising contradictions in US culture. The late '40s and early '50s saw the end of WWII and the return of millions of veterans, prompting a resurgence of heterosexual institutions like marriage and reproduction–literally "the baby boom." Economic opportunities given to minorities during the war due to scarcity contracted as white men rejoined the labor force. All in all, the beginning of the decade saw the reassertion of traditional power structures that had been disrupted by the war, despite growing criticisms of those structures. The optimism and confidence that US citizens had gained coming out of the war quickly turned to anxiety and paranoia as the Soviet Union became capable of launching nuclear weaponry. At the beginning of the Cold War, everything–including the future of the human species–seemed chaotic and uncertain.
It was also a turbulent time in the film industry. Television was on the rise, probably due to the migration from cities to the newly developed suburbs. Antitrust laws, the adoptions of the Hays Code, and the influence of the House Committee on Un-American Activities all created chaos within the studios. To stay relevant and make a profit, the old rules and paradigms had to be thrown out or re-evaluated.
All of these factors contributed to the making of the 1951 science fiction masterpiece The Day The Earth Stood Still. I wrote briefly about this film before in my Sound and Vision Poll Ballot. It is not just one of my favorites, however: the film holds an almost universally popular appeal even today amongst film lovers of all kinds. The film is both extremely topical in its focus on Cold War-era politics and culture and yet universal in its questions about humanity's proclivity for self-destruction. Director Robert Wise effortlessly blends the mock documentary style derived from war newsreels with emerging cinematographic techniques derived from film noir–and of course, his work with Orson Welles on Citizen Kane (1941). The result is a high-concept science fiction film, something that had rarely been attempted before due to science fiction's status as a genre for adolescents.
Science fiction provided many filmmakers and writers in the early '50s a chance to peel back the veneer of those "classic" American values, to examine the rotten underbelly of paranoia, conformity, and hatred. Screenwriter Edmund H. North, producer Julian Blaustein, and Wise all saw in science fiction an opportunity to engage with Cold War paranoia and McCarthyism through the metaphor of first contact with an alien species. Blaustein specifically wanted to make a film that confronted these themes in a way that he could have never made in a more realistic genre: had he had tried, he would have been in danger of being subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
The film's premise–based very loosely on the pulp novelette "Farewell to the Master" (1940) by Harry Bates–hinges on the various reactions of different humans and institutions to a visit by an alien representative from a united group of planets (Star Trek may have the most famous Federation of planets, it is certainly not the first science fiction property to have one). The visitor, Klaatu (Michael Rennie), claims he is on a diplomatic mission to deliver an urgent message. His arrival is very public: the film begins with his spaceship–a classic silver flying saucer that would influence many alien ships in future films–landing in Washington D.C.
Klaatu is accompanied by Gort (Lock Martin), an android that shows up time and again on lists of the most iconic androids in science fiction film alongside R2-D2, the T-1000, and the maschinenmensch. Over eight feet tall, he towers over Klaatu and the soldiers in the park (Martin, a doorman at a theater in LA, was recruited to play Gort due to his 7-foot tall frame). His body is composed of a single piece of the same silvery metal as the saucer, a metal that one Earth scientist character describes as indestructible. Costume designers Addison Hehr and Lyle R. Wheeler specifically wanted Gort to appear seamless, impregnable, so they would stitch Martin into the suit at the beginning of each day of filming. The contrast between Klaatu and Gort as emissaries from another world is striking. Klaatu looks and sounds human: it is his worldview and physiology–he heals from a bullet wound in a matter of hours–that mark him as alien. Gort, on the other hand, is completely inhuman: silent, cold, unknowable. Klaatu is the carrot and Gort, the stick.
For the first two acts of the film, Gort seems like a peripheral character. His only purpose seems to be protecting Klaatu and providing the audience with a memorable inhuman image. Klaatu is the focus here. Despite the location and his capture by the US military (after he is shot by a nervous soldier), Klaatu refuses to give his message only to the US government, insisting that representatives from all of Earth's people need to hear what he has to say. This seems naive and laughable to the government representatives, as it would have been to the original audience. Have the President and Stalin meet in the same room? But Klaatu is not impressed by these objections, saying, "I'm not interested in your petty squabbles," dismissing the Cold War conflict out of hand like it was a familial disagreement. The implication is that without violence, his worlds have been able to concentrate their energies on medical and scientific advancements.
Despite the wonders of Klaatu's technological advances, there is a dark edge to the technology in this film, both human and alien. The Day the Earth Stood Still has been described as an early example of techno-horror, a subgenre of science fiction that explores fears of the rapidly changing world of the 20th century. The obvious example of this in the film is when Klaatu demonstrates his superior technology by turning off all electrical devices on the planet for a half hour (except essential equipment in hospitals and aircraft). He does this as a way to get the attention of world leaders and scientists, the latter with which he hopes to begin a dialogue. Despite what ends up being a rather benign albeit impressive demonstration of power, the atmosphere of paranoia and panic grows even more acute. Why? Because of the ubiquitous nature of the media–radio, TV, newspapers–a fairly new 20th-century human technology. Throughout the film, there is an almost constant barrage of news reports theorizing and questioning the appearance of Klaatu and Gort. Some of the most recognizable broadcast journalists of the time–Elmer Davis, H.V. Kaltenborn, Drew Pearson, and Gabriel Heatter–all have cameos in the film. The equivalent today would be the use of Wolf Blitzer in Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018) or Anderson Cooper in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). The media in The Day the Earth Stood Still wants to sensationalize the alien visit; they want to use the paranoia and fears of their viewers to boost their numbers, not unlike some media sources today. One poignant example of this is when Klaatu and his human child friend Bobby (Billy Gray) pick up a newspaper that features a spread depicting Gort leveling the city as buildings crumble and terrified humans run away. The film wants us to understand: this pitch of anxiety is only possible through technological advancements that allow opinions, speculation, and fear-mongering to be broadcast at a national or even international level.
To be fair to whoever commissioned that spread, Gort does cut a terrifying figure. He is completely silent, only moving in response to Klaatu's instructions or other unknown stimuli. Unlike previous androids discussed in this column, he seems to move very quickly, a trick Wise accomplishes by making edits that cause him to suddenly appear unexpectedly on screen. The only piece of his armor that moves is a visor over his "eyes" that lifts to shoot a laser that can completely vaporize any object or human–a feature that has influenced many a robot and mutant since (see Cyclops of the X-Men). Klaatu also seems on edge about Gort's powers, powers he describes to Bobby as limitless. He worries aloud to Bobby's mother Helen (Patricia Neal) that if Gort believes Klaatu to be injured or in danger, he may retaliate. When Klaatu is dying from a second bullet wound, he tells Helen to take a message to Gort so he will not destroy the Earth: "Gort, Klaatu barada nikto."
This is the famous line from the film, repeated and riffed on in pop culture for decades. There is no translation provided. Some have speculated that it means "Gort, Plan B" or "Gort, come get me," but either way, it halts Gort from continuing a rampage of destruction in one of the more tense moments of the film.
In the final act, Gort emerges as the vital character of Klaatu's mission. It turns out that Klaatu is there to give Earth a warning. When Earth developed nuclear weaponry, it suddenly became a threat to other lifeforms in the galaxy, prompting them to take action to force humans to stop their violent wars. Gort is the consequence of Earth ignoring the message: a resurrected Klaatu proclaims to the gathered scientists and reporters that Gort represents an intergalactic force of androids tasked with keeping peace. These robots patrol the various planets and are given absolute power to intervene in any acts of violence by the inhabitants. No one planet controls these androids; every planet has given them the power of arbiter and, if need be, executioner. Klaatu compares them tangentially to various Earth police forces but reassures the gathered crowd that "this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly." The system isn't perfect, he says, but "it works." By creating a seemingly incorruptible entity of accountability with zero tolerance for violence, these planets have been able to end war and conflict altogether.
The other planets' fear of Earth's newly found nuclear power reflects that of the '50s era audience, an audience who had seen the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and wondered if the world would annihilate itself. Unlike the US and the Soviet Union–who at this time seemed content to maintain an uneasy truce of mutually assured destruction–the citizens of other worlds see no other choice but to neutralize the threat. This revelation turns the classic alien invasion trope on its head: we are the potential aggressors here. We are the threat to the galaxy.
Some science fiction scholars and critics identify this solution of policing by androids as fascism, and I think that this interpretation relies on the film's misstep of having Klaatu compare Gort and his cohort to the American police, a group historically aligned with white supremacy and institutionalized violence. But I don't think it was North or Wise's intention to imbue Gort with these attributes; in fact, Klaatu emphasizes that Gort is purely dispassionate and apolitical in his duties. The idea of creating a group of powerful androids who would self-actualize and take over the galaxy had not yet entered science fiction–these are not the Sentinels of X-Men fame (for those of you counting, that's my second X-Men reference).
It is a tempting idea. The problem of human self-destructive tendencies has preoccupied science fiction ever since: from Octavia E. Butler's "Change or die" in Parable of the Sower (1993) to Captain Pike's "kill each other or create something better together" in the pilot of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022). Maybe an android police force isn't the way to go, but as we know from observing human behavior over the past few years, we may be running out of options.
Next month, we will meet another famous android, Robby the Robot, in Forbidden Planet (1956) and The Invisible Boy (1957).