"The Day the Earth Stood Still" and Modern Life

D-Day + 63 years.

I watched “The Day the Earth Stood Still” last night. I can’t say that I’ve ever seen it all the way through because I did not recognize hardly anything past the first five minutes. Among the interesting extras on the DVD was a 1951 newsreel clip. I watched it first so it set the tone before I watched the movie. I have a couple of thoughts about the film.

One, the movie is a perfect reflection of its time. The Korean War was raging, the Communists seemed to be everywhere, the Soviets had the A-Bomb, and a sense of unease permeated the country despite the happy diversions of radio and the then-emerging TV. It makes me wonder what the equivalent movie and story would be for 2007. Is there a way to illustrate our current malaise in an SF allegory or trope? That might be the new question of the summer.

Two, the nostalgic longing. I rarely get nostalgic for something I never knew. I have always enjoyed living in the time I have lived. That said, the seemingly ‘more simple time’ aspect of TDTESS was nice. Heck, I even liked the communal aspect of the boarding house in which Patricia Neal and her son lived. Granted, as a parent, the fact that she’d let her son wander the city with Klaatu (‘disguised’ as Mr. Carpenter), a man who just moved into the boarding house the previous day, a little disconcerting but that was the time. That was the time before JFK was killed, before MLK and RFK were killed, before Vietnam, before Watergate, and way before 9/11. Is it wrong to want to go back and live the more simple life, a less complicated life? There is so much to appreciate in the world of today but there is also much more complications. But it’s how we deal with both the good and bad things in life that define us.