Peace through Strength: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

“Does that mean I have to be a bigger, badder bad-ass than the source of all badness?”--Willow, “Beneath You,” Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The other day, I corrected a great omission in my science fiction literacy: I watched the classic 1951 allegory of the atomic age, The Day the Earth Stood Still (director, Robert Wise). The film tells of a humanoid alien Klaatu (Michael Rennie) who comes to Earth--in an honest-to-goodness flying saucer--to warn the human race that if they insist on spreading their destructive proclivities into space, they will be destroyed by a league of space nations dedicated to peace. The metaphor is clear: if you pursue atomic warfare, it will destroy you. If you haven’t seen this movie, see it. Its 1950s sci-fi-ness notwithstanding, it’s worth your time on several counts.

See it because it’s a fascinating historical document that is even more relevant today than it was in 1951. The America that produced this film was reeling from its precipitous entry into the atomic age. In the space of a few years, our world transformed from a vast globe we could damage but never destroy to a tiny island in space whose continued ability to support life as we know it rested squarely in our own hands. Of course, our power to ravage the Earth is incomparably greater today than in the 1950s. But more than half a century of living with the nuclear reality has dulled our shock at our own power. With an awestruck air of innocence, The Day the Earth Stood Still returns us to that revelation. Today, given nuclear proliferation among developing nations and the chance that nuclear weapons may fall into the hands of non-governmental agencies, given the weight of our collective nuclear responsibility to the continued viability of this planet, this sense of revelation is well worth reawakening.

Watch the film because it’s well-written, well-acted storytelling. The cinematic style, the action sequences, and of course the special effects are dated, but the dialogue remains crisp and plausible--reminiscent of the more “sci-fi” episodes of The Twilight Zone. Rennie gives a powerful performance as the alien come to warn us away from global suicide. Patricia Neal, as the young widow, Helen, who becomes his unlikely ally, is not the traditional 1950s screamer (though she does scream once); she is an intelligent, proactive participant in the story. Even her son, Bobby (Billy Gray), displays a minimum of Annoying Kid Syndrome. If he seems too chipper with his signature “Okay!” in response to anything anyone tells him to do, he nonetheless ably fulfills his function as the innocent capable of listening to the alien’s message of peace. Some of the strongest dialogue, however, comes near the beginning of the film when an agent of the U. S. government explains to Klaatu the political impossibilities of uniting the Cold War East and West into one group willing to meet together to hear his message. The agent is, of course, correct, just as Klaatu is correct that Earth’s whole situation is petty and stupid.

Watch the film because the special effects are admirably un-bad. The movie worked within its technological limits to produce effects that are fully adequate to the needs of the story. Many of them still look plausible. After all, airplanes from the ground look like lights in the sky, so there’s nothing wrong with depicting a flying saucer as a little glowing disk. The space ship has one of the better interior layouts I’ve seen in older science fiction: it rather resembles a yurt hung with Venetian blinds. By steering clear of the technological clichés of the time (giant, box-like computers, for example), the ship’s design creates an atmosphere that remains plausibly “high-tech alien” even today. But most iconic is the alien’s robot, Gort. His slow, stilted movements; blank, featureless face; and habit of slowly raising his visor to disintegrate people with his laser keep him creepy and inscrutable. This sense of menace is essential because Gort is the weapon with which Klaatu proposes to keep human beings in line.

Unfortunately, as a plot device, “Gort the Policeman” doesn’t work. Watch the film because this device doesn’t work, and its failure is the most fascinating aspect of the story. Klaatu explains that space-faring nations have achieved peace by establishing these Gort-like robots as their “police force.” They have given the robots absolute power to keep the peace. If some person, population, or agency behaves violently, it is destroyed. Simple. Klaatu concedes that his civilization isn’t “perfect” but assures humanity that their system works. Once humans enter space, they will become subject to the same system: act aggressively and have your planet reduced to a cinder.

As a literal plot device, this robot policing system is problematic. What happens if a robot malfunctions? What happens if it honestly mistakes “innocent” activity for violence? What happens if violence is warranted, for example, against an invading alien species? One might presume that someone is ultimately in charge of programming and monitoring these robots and can, thus, take these concerns into account. But as soon as we make that assumption, the whole system falls apart because then, once again, mere people are in charge. The robots become nothing more than weapons the powers that be can use to dominate everyone else. Klaatu says the system isn’t perfect, yet it depends on the perfect authority and benignity of the robots in order in to function.

As a metaphor for the atomic age, the robot policeman is even more problematic. If the movie’s core message is “control your atomic weapons or destroy yourselves,” its solution for achieving that control is a bigger, badder weapon: the single, infallible superpower that can ensure that North Korea doesn’t fire its nukes at anyone else. I don’t invoke North Korea facetiously: this is, in fact, much the situation we have today. America (the country that produced this film) has the power to destroy life as we know it several times over. America has appointed itself as policeman of the nuclear world. But unlike Gort, America is not infallible. It’s just one more human institution fighting the temptation to actually use those world-destroying weapons. The inmates are running the asylum.

This is the most unsettling, most provocative part of The Day the Earth Stood Still. The movie adopts a utopian pose in which advanced, peace-loving aliens enlighten humans to the folly of their self-destructive course. (It’s no coincidence that Klaatu, our paragon of pacifism, is given the Christ-like pseudonym “Carpenter.”) But the narrative itself shows a dystopian society ruled by a robotic dictatorship whose authority is based purely on superior weaponry. There are no checks, no balances; there’s no escape. And from this day forward, the human race--like it or not--is a subject of this implacable dictator. But despotism is no solution to nuclear proliferation. Despite all the best of intentions, this film finds no solution.

Can we?