Invasion Of The Body Snatchers

1418 Words3 Pages

Invasion of the Body Snatchers was originally adapted from the 1955 novel ‘The Body Snatchers’ by Jack Finny. The film has been interpreted in many different ways throughout the years. It has been continuously argued about whether it reflects on the right-wing paranoia of a communist takeover, or the left-wing paranoia about the growing control of the McCarthyists. However, either way, the film shows the themes of a loss of individual identity and of human feeling, representing the paranoia which was consistent both in film and society in America in the 1950’s.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers presents a clear picture of a society being overrun by another kind despite the special effects budget being under $15,000 dollars. People were very …show more content…

This is possibly one of the strangest things about Invasion of the Body Snatchers' as the allegorical message can been linked to both ends of the political spectrum: right-wing paranoia about Communists or left-wing paranoia about McCarthyism. Naturally people read what they already know about the 1950s into the film. Body Snatchers can easily be seen as an appeal to fight back against the conformity of mass society and the pod people: "Join us - life will be much simpler and better." This phrase is eerily reflecting on conformist 50s culture. The scene in which the pod people begin to get into groups in order to spread the pods across the country, represents the idea of how quickly the mass hysteria and panic of the time could be spread across America. The setting of the film could easily be any home town, and becomes a symbolic representation of the country as a whole. And yet although the film indisputably shows individualism under attack and challenges Americas national identity and humanity, the social or political target of the film is not made clear. Robert Kolker asks an important question: “Was noir merely reflecting, as many critics have suggested, a postwar depression so prevalent that the audience merely assented quietly and passively to images of its own fear?” This reinforces the idea of how maybe the film doesn’t have a political agenda and rather, due to the fear and paranoia of the time, audiences read the fear of Communism or McCarthy ideas into the

Open Document