My podcast is rolling along nicely, and one of the enjoyable aspects is having an excuse to rewatch some of my favorite old school classics. I’ve already covered Forbidden Planet and Them!, and so it was only a matter of time before I got to The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).
And you know what? Seeing this film again after so many years makes me wonder:
Are Klaatu’s people really the good guys?
Consider: his alien race wields godlike powers, from resurrecting the dead to being able to annihilate an entire planet. They come to Earth to insist we stop our belligerent ways (specifically our nuclear weapons), or else they’ll destroy us. Not just us, but every other lifeform on Earth. As Klaatu so eloquently puts it: reducing Earth to “a burned out cinder”.
That’s a rather disproportionate punishment, isn’t it?
I mean, in the film we’re primitives on the galactic stage. So really, we can’t possibly represent a threat to Klaatu’s people. Yet they’re threatening global genocide if we don’t give up our nuclear ambitions. It’s stated that they’ve been studying us closely; learning our language, politics, and level of technology. They surely know that the overwhelming majority of the human race is opposed to nuclear weapons, and that indeed only a handful of governments even had such weapons in the ’50s.
So… I don’t know… how about you eliminate the weapons?
The energy cost is going to be a lot less than blowing the Earth up with a provincial variety of the Death Star. The moral cost is going to be less, too, as you’re not consigning an entire biosphere to oblivion. If Superman could do this in his fourth outing The Quest for Peace, surely Klaatu can figure it out. An army of Gorts could do it. Who would stop them?
You don’t even need the robots. The movie’s title refers to how Klaatu–a single alien in a single ship–is able to shut down the world’s power grids. And the point is specifically made that this isn’t a blind off-switch, as airplanes in flight and hospitals are permitted to continue functioning. That’s an extraordinary feat; there’s approximately 160,000 hospitals in the world, and on any given day, there’s around 100,000 flights. Klaatu is able to bring about a planetary blackout, accounting for planes and medical services, everywhere. I mean, okay… maybe his computers are that sophisticated. Maybe his electricity-dampening technology is really that powerful.
So here’s an idea: tailor this approach to those nuclear nations which refuse to disarm. Isn’t that better than exterminating every terrestrial life form? Should Tahiti be punished because the U.S. and Soviet Union are rattling their radioactive sabers? Should everything from humpback whales to the bald eagle be consigned to the dustbin of history, because some cosmic overlords don’t care for the military doctrine of a couple of nations? Isn’t that slightly psychopathic? I mean, 2024 has seen debates on what constitutes a proportional military response in real life; surely blowing up an entire world is the stuff that supervillains are made of, not enlightened spacefarers.
That takes me to my next moral criticism: Klaatu’s people have come up with a society which is run by robots. Monitored and enforced by robots that have, in his own words “absolute power over us.” I’m reminded of the poem All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan, where we see a utopian world controlled by AI. I always thought there was something incredibly sinister about that, as if the poem was written by some person who grew up in a world where machines are worshiped as gods, and if a god is capable of “loving grace”, might not that same god be capable of nastier emotions? We already have people today who believe in vengeful, wrathful deities who torture people forever in lakes of fire. To quote George Carlin: God “has a special place, full of fire and smoke and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever til the end of time… but he loves you.”
At any rate, it made for a fun analysis on the Space Station Squid.
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Before Earth is destroyed by Klaatu and Gort, I decided to go see a giant metal being of a different sort.
Here at the feet of the Mother of Exiles on Liberty Island, which to my shame I’d never visited before. She’s a breathtaking sight: 305 feet tall (including pedestal), 148 years old, and directly inspired by Egyptian statues, the Greek colossus, and the Roman goddess Libertas. Her red-copper skin turned green in just 25 years, and her original torch sits in the nearby museum, but still she stands.
The statue’s upkeep has been a perpetual battle… not unlike the battle for liberty itself.
And nearby is a sobering memorial to September 11.
