Compare how the key messages and values are explored in the two American films you have studied in reflecting the period they were made.

Niamh Gallagher

Compare how the key messages and values are explored in the two American films you have studied in reflecting the period they were made.

The two films I have studied are 1956’s Invasion of The Body Snatchers and 2005’s War of The Worlds. Both these films are allegorical as they can be interpreted to be reflecting the time they were made in. In this essay I will be comparing how key messages and values are explored in these two films and how they reflect the period they were made.

Invasion of The Body Snatchers and War of The Worlds are both science fiction films. A major theme of the genre and both films is paranoia, this issue being reflected in both films. The feel of paranoia can been seen in the eras that the films were made in. During the 1950’s there was a widespread panic across America caused by the ‘Red Scare’, the threat that Communism would take over the capitalist United States.  Another but more silent paranoia was that George McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin who was staunchly against Communism, was taking away the famous freedom of America.  His methods of weeding out suspected communists were intimidation, some cases so severe that they ended in suicide. The director of the Invasion of The Body Snatchers, Don Siegel, said the pod people do not represent communists but followers of McCarthy. Siegel conveys this cleverly as the pod people are trying to take over society with their ideologies, going to the extremes of using violence to do so, just as followers of McCarthyism did.

During the early 2000’s, a new threat had arisen; terrorists.  These terrorist caused worldwide panic and paranoia as their attacks were sudden and caused huge calamity, such as the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001. This is shown in War of The Worlds as when the first attack of the aliens occur, Rachel shouts; “Is this the terrorists?” This shows the mindset in which post 9/11 lived in, the constant paranoia and fear of a terror attack.

1950’s society is also similar to post 9/11 society as both eras had to deal with the fear of others. In the 1950’s the enemy was the Soviet communists whilst in the years after 9/11 the enemy was now Islamic terrorists.  This fear of others is an important theme for both periods as it caused to overall theme of paranoia in both societies. The fear for both periods was that the enemy had assimilated into society, hiding themselves until they struck. This uncertainty caused major paranoia as it made it difficult for people to know whom to trust. The idea that the enemy had been here all along was shown in Steven Spielberg’s War of The Worlds as the Martian Tripods had been buried beneath the Earth for millions of years.

The representation of women is a key message value explored in both War of The Worlds and Invasion of The Body Snatchers. Women are portrayed as passive, the ‘damsel in distress’ character, whilst men are shown to active, the ‘knight in shining armour’ character type.