Invasion of the Body Snatchers

In 1950’s America, when Don Siegel released the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, people were living in a state of perpetual fear of the ‘other’, anyone who the government defines as a threat for their differing beliefs and ideals against the current establishment: homosexuals, communists, black people, Mexicans. This is heightened by the paranoia people felt due to escalations involving the cold war and political leaders such as Joseph McCarthy inciting panic through his attempts to rise up the political ladder by bringing anybody who opposed him crashing down, for this reason it is easy to see how people could find themselves living with conflicted thoughts, caught between wanting to keep your family safe and following your own moral compass, yet it is impossible to justify. This created a world of insecurity of the status quo and I feel that Invasion of the Body Snatchers reflects this.

For example, the film opens in the midst of panic shown through the use of a police car racing in to the parking bay of a hospital whilst blaring its sirens. This is a conscious point by the director to reflect a world that the audience are used to, a world where fear does not creep up but instead exists constantly in the back of everyone’s minds. Don Siegel could have chosen to go the way that many films do (such as the 2005 rendition of War of the Worlds) and open the film in a calm world until the panic erupts and the people are thrown into a state of fear but he chose not to as films are most prevalent when they are able to have an impact on the audience by relating to a setting which they are familiar with. To accentuate this, the director set the film in the fictional town of Santa Mira, California, because if the town had an already defined identity then it would lose its allegorical nature and familiarity of America as a whole.

The way that the director utilised the 1950’s American fear of difference is by positioning the character of Miles as the ‘other’ in the opening scenes, achieved through the authority treating him with trepidation and not trusting what he has to say as it goes against their views of what is, and what should be, real. This is emphasised through the use of non-diegetic sound that creeps up on the audience with a sharp crescendo when Miles is first framed within the doorway of the hospital.

Not only is Miles portrayed this way, but also as the film progresses there are other characters such as the little boy, Jimmy, and uncle Ira’s niece who are almost viewed as deluded. They are not taken seriously because the authority figures in the town, such as the police and other doctors, are constantly refusing what they are saying. However, after viewing the film we can look back with hindsight and know that these people in positions of authority have already been ‘Snatched’ by the ‘pod people’, this shows just how much faith and trust that people put in people of influence. This point is further emphasised by how Miles’ patients – when they first suspected something was wrong with their loved ones- insisted that they would only speak to Miles himself as he is their doctor.  The distrust of others in this action is successful at portraying the wariness of others that Americans felt in the 1950’s.

Miles’ movement through the plot is oftentimes based purely on his paranoia and suspicion, shown through the use of his voiceover with words such as ‘premonition’ and ‘hunch’. Not only does his voiceover show his movement through the plot, but it also manages to amplify with the audiences paranoia and fear of others with the use of 'for the first time I was really scared'. 

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