Douglas E. Cowan
Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Social Development Studies
Renison College, University of Waterloo
Abstract
This article uses Robert Wise’s
1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still to interrogate the process
by which particular cultural hegemonies become sedimented in commentarial
and interpretive traditions. That is, since the late 1970s Wise’s
film has been all but consistently interpreted as a Christian allegory,
something for which there is surprisingly little evidence in the story
itself. After discussing this interpretive trajectory, the paper presents
a brief alternate reading of the film, and, building on the work of
Edward Said, offers the concept of “occidentalism” to account for
the manner in which a Christian interpretation has come to have the
power of the “authorized version.”
He lay as if asleep,
on his face the look of godlike nobility that had caused some of the
ignorant to think him divine.
(Harry Bates, “Farewell to the Master”)
This Earth of yours
will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join
us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration.
(Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood
Still)
[1] But for the fact that Darryl
F. Zanuck, then head of 20th Century-Fox, offered contract
director Robert Wise a script based loosely on “Farewell to the Master,”
Harry Bates’ short story about first contact might have vanished into
the dustbin of history, forgotten like so many thousands of other pulp
offerings from the golden age of science fiction. It is not a particularly
good story, not good enough, apparently, even to warrant mention on
the cover of Astounding when it appeared in October 1940. That
honour went to A.E. van Vogt’s now-classic tale, “Slan.” Unlike
“Slan,” though, “Farewell to the Master” was brought to the
silver screen as The Day the Earth Stood Still, and, though it
appeared to mixed reviews at the time, it has emerged as one of the
most influential science fiction films of all time. In 1951, it was
awarded a Golden Globe for “Best Film Promoting International Understanding,”
while later that year the Ninth World Science-Fiction Convention honoured
it as a “meritorious and outstanding achievement in the field of Science-Fiction
Motion Pictures.” It ranks number eighty-two on the American Film
Institute’s list of 100 Most Thrilling American Films, and one of
its iconic images—the alien Klaatu first emerging from his spaceship—graces
the cover of the 1997 edition of Bill Warren’s monumental history
of 1950s science fiction cinema, Keep Watching the Skies! (1982).
According to a 1997 survey, it is among the five films most often used
in university and college courses in science fiction studies (Kuhn 1999,
1). From the music of Ringo Starr to the 1970s rock group, Klaatu, from
intertextual references that still appear in science fiction cinema
to the still-mysterious mantra, “Gort! Klaatu barada nikto,” Robert
Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) has invaded popular
culture in a way matched by only a handful of science fiction films.
[2] Two principal issues underpin
my consideration of the film here. First, since a significant number
of popular and academic critics interpret the main character, Klaatu
(Michael Rennie), as a Christ-figure, and the Klaatu story (either implicitly
or explicitly) as an averted apocalypse based on a gospel allegory,
I ask a relatively simple question: Is this a reasonable reading of
the film? And, if not, why not? Second, and more importantly, since,
as I will indeed suggest, a “Klaatu as Christ” interpretation of
The Day the Earth Stood Still is unreasonably eisegetic rather than
textually exegetic—it reads the Christ-figure into the film rather
than out of it—what does this tell us about the sedimentary process
of interpretation, and the popular will to colonize cultural products
in the name of a particular theology? That is, if it isn’t a Christ
allegory, a cautionary tale that relies on thinly-veiled gospel analogies,
why do so many people think it is, and what might that tell us about
the relationship between dominant mythologies and emergent popular culture?
Since the story itself is so well-known, I offer only a relatively brief
synopsis here, and will consider other aspects in more detail below.
The Day
the Earth Stood Still
[3] Amid panicked reports of
an unidentified flying object buzzing around the world at over four
thousand miles an hour, an enormous flying saucer lands on the Mall
in Washington, D.C. For two hours it sits, while crowds of onlookers
gather and squads of infantry supported by tanks and artillery watch
nervously. Suddenly, an opening appears and Klaatu emerges. “We have
come to visit you in peace and with good will,” he says, but he is
shot the moment he approaches the soldiers and attempts to offer a gift.
As he lies bleeding on the grass, his nearly three-meter tall robot,
Gort (Lock Martin), appears and, firing a beam weapon from his helmet,
begins to melt the army’s weapons into slag. Klaatu, however, stops
him before he can harm any of the people in the crowd.
[4] Later, recuperating in
Walter Reed Hospital, when Klaatu is visited by the secretary to the
President of the United States, he insists that his message is for all
humanity, not for any one group. “I’m not concerned, Mr. Harley,
with the internal affairs of your planet. My mission here is not to
solve your petty squabbles. It concerns the existence of every last
creature on Earth.” When it becomes clear that a meeting with all
Earth’s leaders will not be possible, Klaatu steals a suit of clothes
belonging, we learn later, to a “Maj. Carpenter,” and escapes the
hospital, eventually renting a room in a boarding house. The various
boarders gathered around the breakfast table serve as metonyms for some
of the “petty squabbles” Klaatu wants to avoid: one asks why the
government isn’t doing anything about the alien; another is convinced
the saucer is from somewhere other than outer space—“and you know
where I mean,” she remarks ominously. The third, a young widow named
Helen Benson (Patricia Neal), wonders how the alien visitor must be
feeling, especially since he was attacked the moment he landed. All
of this takes place around the aggravated ranting of real-life radio
journalist Gabriel Heatter, who insists that “the monster must be
found. He must be tracked down like a wild animal. He must be destroyed.”
Throughout, Klaatu looks on quietly, almost bemused.
[5] Befriending Helen’s son,
Bobby (Billy Gray), the movie’s all-American kid, though one Warren
considers “one of the least believable children in movies” (1982:
22), Klaatu explores some of the sights of Washington. Together they
visit Arlington National Cemetery and stop at the grave of Bobby’s
father, who was killed at Anzio. Stunned by the sheer number of neatly
arranged gravemarkers, Klaatu stares into the middle distance and tells
the young boy that his people have learned to live without war. “Gee,”
says Bobby brightly, “that’s a good idea.” At the Lincoln Memorial,
Klaatu ponders the inscription of the Gettysburg Address carved beside
Lincoln’s statue, particularly that those who died in the cause of
freedom shall not be forgotten and shall not have died in vain. “Those
are great words,” says Klaatu. “He must have been a great man.”
Through Bobby, Klaatu begins to see humanity in a different light than
when he first arrived. His mission and his message, though, have not
changed. Indeed, it could be argued that they have become more vital.
[6] Later that day, Klaatu
and Bobby seek out “the smartest man in whole world,” the physicist,
Professor Barnhart (Sam Jaffe), a clear reference to Albert Einstein
(though he lives on “Harvard Street” not Princeton). If the politicians
won’t listen, Klaatu reasons, perhaps the scientific community will
give him a hearing. When he finally speaks with Barnhart, his purpose
on our planet becomes clear. The dialogue at this point is singularly
instructive in terms of the later interpretations of the film with which
I am concerned:
KLAATU
We
know from scientific observation that your planet has discovered a rudimentary
kind of atomic energy. We also know that you’re experimenting with
rockets. So long as you were limited to fighting among yourselves, with
your primitive tanks and aircraft, we were unconcerned. But soon, one
of your nations will apply atomic energy to spaceships. That will create
a threat to the peace and security of other planets. That, of course,
we cannot tolerate.
BARNHART
What
exactly is the nature of your mission, Mr. Klaatu?
KLAATU
I came
here to warn you that by threatening danger, your planet faces danger.
Very grave danger. I’m prepared, however, to offer a solution.
[7] Once again, Klaatu insists
that his message is too important for any one people group or any one
nation; since it concerns the fate of the entire planet, it must be
made available to all, and not used for the political or military advantage
of a few:
KLAATU
I confess
my patience is wearing thin. Must I take drastic action in order to
get a hearing? Violent action, since that seems to be the only
thing your people understand. Leveling New York City, perhaps? Sinking
the Rock of Gibraltar?
[8] When Barnhart asks the
consequences of refusal or rejection of Klaatu’s message, the alien
emissary responds simply:
KLAATU
I’m
afraid there is no alternative. In such a case, the planet Earth would
have to be eliminated.
[9] Barnhart is astonished
that “such power exists,” but convinces Klaatu to arrange for a
less destructive demonstration of his sincerity. Two days later, but
for essential services—hospitals, and aircraft in flight, for example—all
electrical power around the world shuts down. Nothing works anywhere,
and for one half-hour the earth stands still.
[10] Throughout this, much
of the B-story concerns Helen’s boyfriend, Tom (Hugh Marlowe), an
insurance salesman with a suspicious nature and a need to see his name
in print. Uncovering Klaatu’s real identity, Tom sets in motion a
military cordon that eventually results in the alien’s death—shot
in the street as he tries to reach Prof. Barnhart. As Klaatu lies in
a jail cell, Gort kills the two soldiers “guarding” the ship and
carries the alien’s body back to the ship. There, it uses a machine
to restore Klaatu to life “for a time.”
[11] In the final, climactic
scene, scientists from around the world have gathered at Barnhart’s
request to hear Klaatu’s message. Temporarily revived, Klaatu emerges
from the ship, and makes his final speech. This is the heart of his
message, the plea for which the film is best remembered, and, though
lengthy, is worth quoting in full:
KLAATU
I
am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe
grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group anywhere
can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one
is secure. Now this does not mean giving up any freedoms, except the
freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this, when they made
laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We of
the other planets have long accepted this principle. We have an organization
for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination
of aggression.
The
test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that
supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function
is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the
peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over
us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they
act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their
action is too terrible to risk. The result is we live in peace, without
arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression
and war, free to pursue more profitable enterprises.
Now,
we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system—and
it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours
how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence,
this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice
is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course
and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision
is yours.
[12] Klaatu and Gort reenter
the ship and it rises into the air, gradually shrinking until it has
become only one of the myriad points of light in the dark night sky.
Seeing the
Saviour in The Day The Earth Stood Still
[13] In “Teaching Religion
and Film,” Paul Flescher and Robert Torry contend that the fact “that
Klaatu, the alien visitor to the planet, is intended as a Christ-figure
has long been recognized” (1998: ¶10; cf. Torry 1991, 12). Although,
nearly a decade later, they offered a considerably more sophisticated,
but no less theologically animated interpretation of the film (Flescher
and Torry 2007, 49-52), the basic question of who has “long recognized”
Klaatu as a Christ-figure—and why—goes largely unanswered. By all
accounts, it certainly wasn’t the movie reviewers of the day.
[14] A little less than two
weeks before its release, the New York Times published a publicity
photo showing Gort carrying Helen through the corridors of Klaatu’s
spaceship. Slugged “The Monster Walks Again,” the advertising is
clearly intended to draw comparison with one of cinema horror’s two
most famous icons, Frankenstein’s monster (the other, of course, being
Dracula). Indeed, many of the advertising posters for the film depict
Gort carrying a screaming, buxom blonde—an almost obligatory image
from the earliest days of the sci-fi pulps to the cinema sci-fi of the
1950s—while doing death-ray battle with battalions of infantry and
armour. Another showed Helen cowering before the monstrous Gort. In
this poster, she is wearing a low-cut, strapless cocktail dress, not
the considerably more conservative ensemble she wears in the film, and
the headline reads: “The World Faced with Destruction by Strange ‘Men’
and Demonic Machines from a Distant Planet!”
[15] Media reviews of the film
were decidedly mixed. At the New York Times, Bosley Crowther
called it “a fable of ... absurd assumptions,” “a tepid entertainment
in what is anomalously labeled the science-fiction field” (1951),
while the Hartford Courant’s reviewer dubbed it “fascinating
and well-worked out” (H.V.A. 1951). Splitting the difference, Mae
Tinée wrote in the Chicago Daily Tribune that the cast gave
“a moderately convincing air of realism to a story bedecked with hocus
pocus” (1951). Mindful that the film was released in the midst of
the anti-communist hysteria fomented by Senator Joseph McCarthy and
the House Committee on Un-American Activities—an hysteria that hit
Hollywood particularly hard in the years immediately following World
War Two—Edwin Schallert wrote in the Los Angeles Times that
Wise’s film was “perhaps to be considered the last word in today’s
onslaught of science fiction on the screen” (1951). That said, though,
Schallert did not miss the opportunity to comment on the suspicion raised
by McCarthy that much of Hollywood was little more than a propaganda
machine for America’s enemies. “Certain subversive elements might,”
he continued, “of course, see fit to turn the philosophy of this picture
to account. While it is definitely a challenge to aggression of any
kind and violence, it could also be construed as pacifistic. But there
will be a deal of straining to make it into a propaganda film” (Schallert
1951). Calling it an “interplanetary melodrama,” though sounding
a note of interpretive caution, B. R. Crisler wrote in the Christian
Science Monitor that “it may be well to recall that Klaatu’s
method of uniting the world by force, or threats thereof, has been tried
by numerous powerful material systems, and has never worked yet” (1951).
Twenty years after it was released, The Day the Earth Stood Still
was featured prominently in the film series, “Visions of the Future,”
shown at the American Film Institute Theatre, though, as if recalling
little more than the original advertising, the Washington Post’s
reviewer commented only on “the lugubrious immensity of Gort, the
robot emissary from beyond” (Kriegsman 1971).
[16] What is missing from all
of these is precisely what later popular and academic commentators insist
is central to the film. That is, if Klaatu is a Christ-figure, and
The Day the Earth Stood Still a Christian allegory, these realities
seem completely lost on those who reviewed the film when it was first
released, and commented on it for at least two decades thereafter.
[17] In 1979, nearly thirty
years after Klaatu’s ship first landed in theatres, Dennis Saleh compared
the alien emissary’s flying saucer to the fiery wheel that, according
to Hebrew scripture, the prophet Ezekiel saw in one of his many visions
(see Ezek 1). Saleh continues that “Klaatu comes on a mission from
the skies, in a great glowing wheel of a saucer. He represents transcendent
power and has come to offer mankind salvation from holocaust. His stature
in the film and his fate suggest the figure of Christ and a science
fiction version of the Ascension” (1979, 41). Indeed, from this point
on and with a few rare exceptions (e.g., Barone 1996; Haspel 2006; Lyden
2003), both popular and academic interpretation of The Day the Earth
Stood Still follows this gospel line.
[18] Proceeding from Saleh,
the course of interpretive sedimentation is particularly instructive.
As it progresses, as interpretation of the film as a Christian allegory
becomes firmly embedded in the commentarial tradition, more and more
aspects of that allegory are created and read into the text. Two years
later, perhaps relying on Saleh’s interpretation, the gospel refrain
was picked up by Carl Macek in the authoritative Magill’s Survey
of Cinema. “It is easy to construe Klaatu as a Christ figure who
sacrifices his life in order to preserve civilization,” he writes.
“Simple situations such as his resurrection or his choice of ‘Carpenter’
as his surname when he passes for human underline the overt Christian
philosophy of this so-called federation of advanced beings” (Macek
1981, 590). It is important to note at this point how the interpretation
begins to depart from what is demonstrable in the film, how it takes
on a more theologically eisegetic tone. Despite how most of these commentators
depict it, for example, Klaatu does not choose “Carpenter”
as his name. It just happens to be the name of the officer whose clothing
the alien visitor steals in order to effect his escape from the hospital.
That screenwriter Edmund North intended this to be seen as a subtle
Christ reference is undisputed—and a topic to which I will return—but
it is not the case that Klaatu selects this name from a variety of options.
Similarly, and this is also something that I will discuss in more depth
below, how one could consider the message Klaatu brings—conform to
our interplanetary mandate or be destroyed by our robot army—an “overt
Christian philosophy” is something of a mystery. As the interpretive
sedimentation continues, however, what actually happens in the film
is sublimated either to laziness on the part of critics (who do not
bother to see the film for themselves, but simply repeat what others
have written) or to overarching ideological agendas on the part of those
who are determined to see in the film support for a dominant religious
order.
[19] One of the most influential
entries into this sedimentary process is Krin Gabbard’s 1982 article
in Literature/Film Quarterly, in which he lays out a more elaborate
framework of the Klaatu-as-Christ allegory and on which a number of
later critical interpreters have explicitly relied (e.g., Hendershot
1999; Kozlovic 2001; Torry 1991):
Klaatu . . . emerges
from his ship like Christ from the tomb and delivers a sermon to the
assembled intellects of the world. Before he ascends back to the heavens,
he tells them to spread the word that they are not alone in the universe.
The god-like forces he represents will be watching the people of Earth
to see that they uphold his teachings of peace and disarmament. Like
Jesus at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Klaatu is with us ‘always,
even unto the end of the world’ (Gabbard 1982, 152).
[20] Moreover, Gabbard sees
Dr. Barnhardt less as Einstein than as a John the Baptist figure, who
“symbolically baptizes Klaatu by verifying his superior intellect
and by introducing him to the world’s scientists who become the disciples
of Klaatu by the film’s end” (1982, 152). For her part, Helen Benson
is the Mary Magdalene of the story, the one “who goes to the space
ship/tomb and is the first to see the resurrected Klaatu” (Gabbard
1982: 152). Even if we accept Gabbard’s tenuous reading of the “baptism”
and credence his interpretation of Klaatu’s message as a “sermon,”
there is no indication from the film that the assembled scientific community
become anything even remotely resembling disciples by the end of the
film, nor that they were commissioned to do anything other than abandon
any plans for off-world violence. At best, they are a church congregation
cowed into submission and conformity by the fire-and-brimstone message
Klaatu delivers. Similarly, Helen does not “approach” the spaceship
in anything like the sense Gabbard implies; she is carried inside by
Gort and imprisoned, essentially, while it retrieves Klaatu’s body
for resuscitation.
[21] Gabbard’s analysis was
not universally accepted, by any means. Bill Warren, whose massive compendium
Keep Watching the Skies! remains the bible of 1950s science fiction
films, notes only that “the principal resemblances between Klaatu
and Jesus Christ are in the Earth name the spaceman adopts when he flees
the hospital, which is Carpenter, and that he does indeed die and is
resurrected. But that’s about the limit of it” (1982: 26). The same
year, however, Kenneth Von Gunden and Stuart Stock collected what they
considered the Twenty All-Time Great Science Fiction Films, and
presented The Day the Earth Stood Still as “a modern retelling
of the Christ story” (1982: 43). Gabbard himself concludes that the
film’s “point is made all the more strikingly by reminding us that
Klaatu’s message and Klaatu’s fate are very much like those of Christ
himself” (1982: 153). “Bigotry against aliens,” wrote editor and
film critic Peter Biskind a year later, “by extension becomes the
heathen denial of Christ,” (1983, 152).
[22] Although he called the
film “a fair example of leftish philosophizing dressed up in a quasi-religious
setting,” (1986: 71), Terence Pettigrew continued the eisegetic sedimentation,
extending and deepening the reading of the film as a Christian allegory:
As well as being
a cypher for a benign and immeasurably tolerant alien force Klaatu has
an unmistakable touch of divinity about him. He is shot twice and each
time heals himself. He calls himself Carpenter, an obvious allusion
to Christ’s earthly trade. Finally, in case some of us have not spotted
the clues, his departure by spacecraft, having preached at length about
living piously and decently, has a New Testament Ascension feel about
it. Straying a little from the Church’s teachings, Klaatu’s recommendations
are voiced with the calm authority of ‘Someone Who Knows.’ Not surprisingly,
when the role of St Peter in The Robe needed to be filled shortly
afterwards, the actor who played Klaatu, Michael Rennie, got the job
(Pettigrew 1986, 71-72).
[23] One is forced to ask a
number of questions from passages like this. First, has Pettigrew actually
seen the film, since “benign and immeasurably tolerant” is the diametric
opposite of what Klaatu actually says at a number of points? What is
“an unmistakable touch of divinity,” and how would we know it when
we see it? Indeed, if one really wants to take the film seriously and
split theological hairs, then consider one of the bedrock principles
of Christian soteriology: that Jesus is ontologically divine and as
such lived a completely sinless life. Yet, Klaatu breaks the venerable
eighth commandment—“Thou shalt not steal” (Exod. 20:15)—when
he takes Major Carpenter’s clothing in order to make his escape from
Walter Reed Hospital. This is even more ironic, since those who would
overtly Christianize the film inevitably point to Klaatu’s “choice”
of Carpenter as an Earth name as indisputable evidence of his status
as a Christ figure. Furthermore, what exactly is “a New Testament
Ascension feel,” or how does Klaatu healing himself necessarily indicate
divinity? After all, some species of salamander have the ability to
regenerate lost tails. More to the point, though, he does not “heal
himself” in the second instance. But for Gort’s intervention, he
would still be lying dead in a metro Washington jail cell. The robot
brings him back to their ship and uses alien technology that has the
ability to restore life “for a time.” Indeed, Klaatu tells Helen
explicitly that he does not have the “power over life and death,”
but that such is reserved “for the Almighty Spirit.” How different
is this scene, then, from a modern hospital emergency room, and how
supernatural, magical, or divine would the “miracles” performed
there appear to someone from the fourteenth century? Finally, Klaatu
did not “preach” about “living piously and decently”; beyond
his frustration and impatience with humanity, he said little about lifestyle,
and nothing at all about piety or decency. Rather, at several points
in the film, including his all-important address to the scientists,
he said that he and the rest of the galaxy don’t care what people
do on Earth, as long as they don’t extend their aggression off-world.
Only when they threaten the peace and security of other worlds will
the Gort robots be unleashed. The clear implication from this is that
we can fight among ourselves, wipe each other out it we want, just as
long as we don’t take anyone else in the universe with us. To insert
the more plausible Cold War allusion here, “We don’t care what you
people do in Russia, as long as you stay in Russia.” The less said
about Pettigrew’s facile suggestion that Rennie’s portrayal of Klaatu
as a Christ-figure made him the ideal candidate to play St. Paul in
The Robe the better.
[24] By the 1990s, though,
this trope was firmly embedded in the interpretive sediment. “The
film has a clear parallel with the New Testament,” writes film studies
scholar Mark Jancovich, “in which Klattu [sic] takes the role of Christ”
(1996, 44; cf. Gianos 1998). Not only was the heaven-roaming Klaatu
a Christ-figure,” insists Anton Kozlovic, a scholar who has proposed
the most elaborate, if far-fetched framework for christologising popular
cinema (2004; cf. Deacy 2005), “but many of the surrounding characters
complemented his Christic role” (2001, ¶11). Indeed, when Klaatu
is shot in the back as he tries to escape the military dragnet—he
does not sacrifice his life, as Macek would have it (1981: 590)—according
to Kozlovic, “he falls onto the ground in a cruciform pose (with appropriately
bent knee), the Christic identifier” (2001, ¶6). Although
it is hard to give credence to Kozlovic’s reading here, given that,
by all accounts (including his own), director Robert Wise knew nothing
of Edmund North’s subtextual Christian references when he was shooting
the film, Matthew Etherden goes even further. Arguing not only for a
number of substantial links between Christianity and The Day the
Earth Stood Still, he even contends that there is a connection between
Klaatu’s display of alien power and events allegedly surrounding the
death of Jesus:
Also demonstrations
both of the power of God in the New Testament, and of the alien races
in the film involve darkness descending [sic]. When Jesus was dying
on the cross “… from the sixth hour there was darkness over all
the land …” (Matthew 27:45). This bears a clear resemblance to the
scene in The Day the Earth Stood Still where Klaatu cuts off
all power over the world for an hour, plunging half the world into darkness.”
(Etherden 2005, ¶14)
[25] From the simple inference
that Klaatu is a Christ-figure based on his appropriation of the name
“Carpenter” to Klaatu’s “high regard for Christian values”
(Cornea 2007: 38), the interpretive sediment has gathered every possible
reference within the film and turned it to Christian advantage.
[26] In “Making the Earth
Stand Still,” a documentary included with the 20th Century-Fox
“Studio Classics” DVD release of the film, director and film commentator
Joe Dante followed the gospel line, that there was an attempt to make
Klaatu appear “very Christ-like,” but that it was not done in “a
particularly pretentious way” (1995). For him, that interpretation
is “there for people if they care to see it, and not if they don’t”
(Dante 1995). In the same documentary, the film’s producer,
Julian Blaustein, recalls that Edmund North inserted the references
into the script, but at a very subtle level, not meant to be overt or
blunt in any way (Blaustein 1995). “It was my private little joke,”
North admitted in an interview. “I never discussed this angle with
Blaustein or Wise because I didn’t want it expressed. I had originally
hoped the Christ comparison would be subliminal” (in Von Gunden and
Stock 1982, 44; cf. Warren 1982, 26). “Honest to God,” insists Wise,
“none of us working on the picture knew it [was an allegory]; it was
only later, after the picture came out, that people started noticing”
(2004, 55). Indeed, as we have seen, it was much later.
A Brief Excursus:
The Deuteronomic Bargain
[27] In light of what actually
happens in the film—the threats Klaatu makes, his remarks about the
relative lack of concern he and the rest of the interplanetary federation
have for humanity per se, and, most importantly, the ultimatum he delivers
in his final address—there are two ways to look at the interpretive
stratum that has developed, this critical predilection for seeing the
saviour on The Day the Earth Stood Still. On the one hand, given
the violence and coercive evangelism that has plagued so much of Christian
history, perhaps this is not such a problematic reading after all. Forced
conversions, the crusades, the myriad wars of religion, both large and
small, the Inquisition and the witch-hunts, and Christian colonisation
that took place at the point of the sword from the British Isles to
the banks of the Don, and from Europe to the Americas—perhaps a Christian
reading of the film is not so out of place. On the other hand, I suspect
this is not what any of the interpreters discussed above had
in mind. That said, then, is there an interpretation of the text that
draws closer to a readily identifiable biblical parallel? Yes. Rather
than Ezekiel’s wheel or a Klaatu-Christ, The Day the Earth Stood
Still presents us with a clear cinematic example of the Deuteronomic
bargain.
[28] The Deuteronomic bargain
finds its origin in the barren desert west of the Jordan River, as Moses
prepares the Hebrew people to enter Canaan. Knowing they will cross
into the promised land without him, Moses delivers a lengthy and often
complicated list of instructions from Yahweh. At the end, however, everything
comes down to a relatively simple choice:
See, I set before
you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command
you today to love the lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep
his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and
the lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
But if our heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are
drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to
you this day that you will certainly be destroyed (Deuteronomy 30: 15-18a).
[29] That is, conform or be
destroyed.
[30] Now, consider for a moment
what Klaatu actually says at key points in the film. First, he tells
the President’s chief of staff that he’s not concerned “with the
internal affairs of your planet. My mission here is not to solve your
petty squabbles.” Confronting Professor Barnhart, he admits that “So
long as you were limited to fighting among yourselves, with your primitive
tanks and aircraft, we were unconcerned.” We could slaughter each
other by the millions—the Soviet Union lost nearly 25 million people
during World War Two, without the benefit of nuclear weapons—as long
as we don’t export our aggression off-world. Further, because that
off-world capability now exists, unless he is given a hearing, Klaatu
himself is willing to resort to “violent action.” “Level New York
City, perhaps?” he asks. At that time, New York City’s population
was nearly eight million. It is difficult to imagine Jesus suggesting
to his disciples that he is willing to level Jerusalem just to get the
people’s attention! The most chilling words, of course, conclude his
address to the scientists gathered around his spaceship:
KLAATU
It
is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten
to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out
cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue
your present course and face obliteration.
[31] That is, conform or be
destroyed. Rather than salvation at the hands of an alien messiah, Klaatu
presents the same ultimatum that Yahweh made to the Hebrew people. Though
there is no space here to consider it in detail, this reading points
to the integral relationship between religion and fear, one far more
common historically and comparatively than between religion and peace
(cf. Cowan 2008). Readers may not be convinced by my interpretation
of the film as a form of the Deuteronomic bargain, and that is fine.
I offer it merely to demonstrate that the interpretive tradition that
has developed since Saleh is hardly the only viable option, that other
interpretive overlays fit the film as well or better.
Hegemony,
Occidentalism, and the Inevitable Will
to Theology
[32] In many ways, the interpretive
sedimentation I have traced in this chapter is a case study in dominance,
or, to use Antonio Gramsci’s concept, cultural hegemony. As Edward
Said interprets Gramsci, hegemony means that in non-totalitarian societies
“certain cultural forms predominate over others, just as certain ideas
are more influential than others” (1978, 7). Hegemony obtains, indeed
it is most deeply rooted when those dominant cultural forms become the
lenses through which even people who do not participate directly in
them view the world. It is most insidious when we no longer even recognize
that the lenses exist, or when we lose sight of the fact that there
are other lenses that would work perfectly well (cf. Berger and Luckmann
1966). In terms of religion in the West, of course, this dominance means
Christianity—whether one is a Christian or not. In this particular
case, it means the hegemony of a limited collection of idealistic understandings
of Christianity, understandings largely divorced from or ignorant of
the historical, theological, and ideological realities of the Christian
religion as it has developed around the world, but which have permeated
the interpretation of pop culture products such as The Day the Earth
Stood Still. In many respects, these ideas/ideals have become the
common sense of culture, the local currency of interpretation not because
they are necessarily reasonable or correct, but because they are socially
and culturally ascendant. They command cultural capital unavailable
to competing interpretive templates. Klaatu is a Christ-figure not because
he is or because Robert Wise intended him to be, but because the cultural
dominance of Christianity has intruded into the interpretive process
to make him so. The Day the Earth Stood Still is “a modern
retelling of the Christ story” (Von Gunden and Stock 1982, 43) not
because this describes it most accurately, but because an idealistic
version of the Christ story is so pervasive in Western culture that
its effects are difficult to avoid and even more difficult to control.
(For an example of how an explicitly anti-Christian novel—H.G. Wells’
The War of the Worlds ([1898] 2005)—was turned into an explicitly
Christian film by George Pal in 1953, see Cowan 2007a, 2007b).
[33] At this point, some readers
might think that I am suggesting consumers do not have the right to
interpret popular culture products according to their own interests,
agendas, and predilections, or that an analysis such as mine too closely
echoes early theories of film criticism that painted audiences as passive
receivers, receptors subject only to the meaning imposed by directors,
writers, producers, and cinematographers. Nothing could be further from
the truth. Cultural consumers are perfectly free to interpret books,
songs, theatre, television shows, and movies in any way they please.
Each of these products invites an interactive experience, something
that relies at least as much (if not more) on what a reader, audience
member, or viewer brings to their interpretation as the author, writer,
or director means to be experienced. Movies, as Joe Dante says, are
in many ways Rorschach tests; “there is what you mean when you make
them, and then there’s what people get out of them. And sometimes
those two things are not always the same” (1995). This explains, for
example, why a film as visually and narratively complex as The Matrix
(Wachowski and Wachowski 1999) really functions as a blank canvas for
the audience, ready for interpretation as Christian messianism (Stucky
2005), Buddhist mythologising (Ford 2003), or Gnostic allegory (Flannery-Daily
and Wagner 2001).
[34] What I am indicating is
that the hegemony of particular cultural forms will dominate the interpretation
of cultural products simply because the lenses they present are more
readily available, they can be employed across a wider range of potential
audiences with less need for initial or prefatory explanation, and,
as a result of this, they can import readings into those products regardless
of whether such readings are entirely justified. It is this hegemonic
process of interpretation that warrants closer investigation. Rather
than simply accept what have come to be regarded as the standard interpretations
of a particular product—the authorized versions, as it were—it is
important to take seriously the other side of the interactive equation:
what is it that audience members bring that invites and embeds particular
interpretations, and what does that tell us about the social relations
between the audience and the product, the consumer and the consumed?
Once again, this is not to say that those who want to interpret Klaatu
as a Christ-figure and The Day the Earth Stood Still as a gospel
allegory are not free to do so. Such is the right of anyone who has
honoured an artist with his or her attention (and often admission or
rental fee). What they ought not do, though, is suggest that this is
The Meaning of the product, as though other meanings, other interpretations,
other readings, other eisegeses, are by definition bounded out. How,
for example, would a Sikh know to interpret The Day the Earth Stood
Still as a Christian allegory? How would a Jew or a Muslim—conversant
with but not accepting of the Christ myth—interpret the film? Or a
Zen Buddhist? Or an atheist? To suggest, as Krin Gabbard does (1982:
150), that The Day the Earth Stood Still is “all the more remarkable
for its use of the Christ myth to make its point” presents a very
limited range of interpretive possibilities, a range few commentators
since Saleh seem willing to contest. Indeed, demonstrating a remarkably
proscribed sense of religious intertextuality, it is as though invocation
of the Christian gospel has foreclosed most if not all other interpretive
options.
[35] This opens up the other
term in the hegemonic equation, what I am calling “occidentalism,”
a creative misreading of Edward Said’s famous concept, orientalism.
According to Said, orientalism “can be discussed and analyzed as the
corporate institution for dealing with the Orient—dealing with it
by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it,
by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it” (1978, 3); it is “an
accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness”
(1978, 6; on Orientalism in cinema specifically, see Bernstein and Studlar
1997). Occidentalism is a species of this same process. However, if
orientalism renders the different exotic and thereby exerts control
over it, occidentalism renders the exotic familiar, enclosing
it in non-contested interpretive spaces, bounding out competing interpretations,
and exercising similar control. In this case, this means the hegemonic
Christian filters in the West, lenses that focus exotic phenomena and
render them familiar to Western audiences, or focus potentially threatening
or disturbing phenomena and render them acceptable. A form of theological
colonisation, we see this practice constantly deployed in Christian
apocalyptic fiction and non-fiction (see, for example, Hunt 1989; Kirban
1970; LaHaye and Jenkins 1995; Lindsey 1970; cf. Cowan 2003; Frykholm
2004; Shuck 2005). In these, there is no aspect of culture or society,
no current event or emergent phenomenon that is not bent to serve the
theological agenda of the authors.
[36] Critics may consider this
creative misreading of Said, especially in light of the genre of cultural
product I’m talking about—science fiction cinema—to be trivial
at best, derogatory at worst. But this would be short-sighted. Indeed,
it is the very “trivial” nature of the products, and their cultural
ubiquity and polyvalence, that render this kind of interpretive process
so insidious, so deeply embedded that it seems beyond reproach. Through
occidentalism, the theological colonisation of pop cultural spaces renders
the Christian lens normative, establishing and reinforcing the hegemony
of Christian interpretations of the products that occupy these spaces,
and sedimenting (to use Berger’s and Luckmann’s term; cf. 1966,
85-89) the Christian understanding as “recipe knowledge” (Berger
and Luckmann 1966, 83), the taken-for-granted reading of the material.
[37] Occidentalism as I have
described it here occurs in two principal valences, what we might call
proactive and participative, both of which warrant further investigation
across the spectrum of pop culture production and consumption. Proactive
occidentalism encompasses those who intentionally interpret cultural
products in the service of particular theological commitments and agendas.
Usually writing for their coreligionists, in the case of Christianity
this valence often contributes to the larger dimension of occidentalism
simply by virtue of the ready availability of these interpretations
in the cultural marketplace. That is, they often do not rely on dedicated
venues (e.g., churches) or specialty outlets (e.g., Christian bookstores).
The cultural dominance of Christianity ensures that many of their different
interpretive products will find their way into mainstream markets. On
the other hand, participative occidentalism refers to those who interpret
pop cultural products in terms of a particular cultural hegemony, but
do not do so because of an explicit allegiance to the theological agendas
inherent in that hegemony. Neither of these should be taken as discrete
positions, hermetically sealed on from the other, but as endpoints on
a continuum that defines the relative power of a particular cultural
hegemony at a given time and place.
[38] Said continues that one
of the characteristics of orientalism is its “flexible positional
superiority,” a condition that privileges Western interpretations
of “the Orient without ever losing ... the relative upper hand”
(1978: 7). That is, the orientalist understanding has become common
knowledge to the point where it is no longer questioned, regardless
of the claims it makes. The same obtains in occidentalism. Christian
interpretations can be overlaid on any number of cultural products,
and according to whatever theological or hermeneutic frameworks the
interpreters choose for three principal reasons. First, the Christian
story, at least as it is nominally understood in the West, is ubiquitous
enough that a careful delineation of the interpretive contours that
rely on this story is largely unnecessary; those familiar with it will
pick up the interpretive cue and fill in the blanks as needed. This
is clearly illustrated in the interpretive sediment laid down around
The Day the Earth Stood Still, as critics gradually read more and
more of the Christian story into the UFO film. Second, elements of the
Christian story are broad enough and contain enough elements of ordinary
human experience that not to find something to interpret in this
fashion would be surprising. Said cautions his readers that “one ought
never assume that the structure of Orientalism is nothing more than
a structure of lies and myths” (1978: 6). Such is also the case with
occidentalism. The problem here, though, which is most clearly demonstrated
in Kozlovic’s putative “Structural Characteristics of the Cinematic
Christ-Figure” (2004), is that superficial similarity in no way indicates
coordinate relationship, causal connection, or subtextual significance.
Put differently, not everyone who throws their arms out is a Christ-figure,
bent knee or no. Third, like the orientalism Said elucidates, occidentalism
of the kind I describe operates at little or no risk of challenge or
reciprocal interpretation. That is, there is relatively little chance
that the cultural hegemony inherent in and reinforced by a Christian
interpretation of something like The Day the Earth Stood Still
will be held up to a counter-interpretive microscope by those who have
other vested interests or agendas. Thus, to take an example from a different
(though related) genre, a very conservative pastor can indulge his passion
for Hammer horror films by reinterpreting them as part of his own religious
repertoire, by rendering that which is exotic (which can mean frightening
or threatening in some way) in terms of the hegemonically familiar.
He can take cultural products that many of his coreligionists would
understand as entirely inappropriate (if not downright blasphemous;
cf. Stone 2001) and reinterpret them in terms of—and in the service
of—his own conservative Christian agenda. Thus, Presbyterian minister
Paul Leggett recasts horror film director Terence Fisher as Hammer Studio’s
closet evangelist (see 2002; for a similar case using George Romero’s
Dead films, see Paffenroth 2006). Although Jesuit film critic Richard
Blake insists that movies “must not and cannot be baptized and then
coerced into ecclesial servitude” (1991, 289), this does not stop
it from happening. Indeed, as Catherine Barsotti and Robert Johnston
note in the introduction to Finding God in the Movies, “God
is present in the movies for those who have eyes to see and ears to
hear . . . this book is meant to help Christians find God in the movies,
to use reel faith to encourage and strengthen real faith” (2004, 12).
[39] In terms of the cultural
hegemony of Christianity, the most obvious way this occidentalism occurs
is through interpretive similitude: some product or element of popular
culture is thought of as reflecting or being like some aspect of the
gospel or the biblical story. Whether its creators intended the reference
or not, the product is theologized—colonized in the service of a particular
religious understanding. Thus, Bertonneau and Paffenroth can proclaim
of the venerable Dr. Who that “many of the Doctor’s nemeses
bear a strong resemblance to the competitors of Christianity in Paul’s
day,” that “television’s most famous science-fiction series,
Star Trek, consistently portrays broad Christian ethics,” that,
in The Twilight Zone, the “depiction of evil is predominantly
and unmistakably Christian,” or that by investigating The X-Files
we are taken into “a world deeply imbued with the imagery and urgency
of Christian apocalyptic” (2006, 26, 27; cf. Porter and McLaren 1999).
Like the interpretive sedimentation that has built up around The
Day the Earth Stood Still, this process bounds out other, often
more plausible readings, both for the intended audience, and, just as
often, for those who rely on these readings to support their own interpretation.
[40] The Day the Earth Stood
Still notwithstanding, the most heavily colonized of science fiction
cinema is Star Wars, the most successful sci-fi series in the
history of cinema. Here we see the effect of occidentalism at its fullest
(cf. Dalton 2003; Staub 2005; Wilkinson 2000). In Finding God in
a Galaxy Far, Far Away, for example, Baptist pastor Timothy Paul
Jones reads his way through the series, beginning each short chapter
by pairing a quote from one of the films with an analogous bible verse,
and closing each with “Spiritual Exercises for the Serious Padawan,”
all of which encourage readers to “Be Mindful of the True Force”
(2005). In Star Wars Jesus, Caleb Grimes also works his
way through all six films, similarly aligning passages and images from
each with selected biblical texts designed to elucidate his Christian
interpretation. Thus, one chapter begins with Obi-Wan Kenobi’s last
words to Darth Vader as they battle in the Death Star’s docking bay:
“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can
possibly imagine.” To this, Grimes adds, “The power paradox of Christ,
this is”—plus an assortment of verses from the New Testament (2007,
69). Unlike many of his coreligionists who interpret a wide range of
cultural products in terms of their own religious views, in The Gospel
According to Star Wars systematic theologian John McDowell
wrestles with whether a theological reading of these films is appropriate
at all (2007, xvii). Since the concerns he finds in the Star Wars
saga coincide with those he regards as central to Christianity, however,
not surprisingly he concludes that his is a worthwhile endeavour. He
spends more time addressing the issue in terms of those who are “worried
that SW is occultic, perhaps we could say sinematic”
(McDowell 2007, xvii). The issue here is compatibility: can Christians
safely watch Star Wars, or must it remain a guilty pleasure dutifully
confessed on Sunday? In each of these cases, the authors read the films
in terms of their own theological perspective, turning the series to
Christian advantage, and seemingly unaware of the larger issues of cultural
hegemony these interpretations reveal. (All this said, though, for a
fascinating debate arguing that Star Wars has no redeemable spiritual
or religious significance at all, see Brin and Stover 2006, esp. 97-134).
[41] Returning to The Day
the Earth Stood Still, one of the final questions suggested by an
occidentalist analysis of this kind is not “Why read the film as Christian
allegory?” but “Why now?” That is, why does it seem to have taken
nearly thirty years for what many critics consider the film’s obvious
subtext to surface as part of the commentarial tradition? Though this
would bear further investigation, two reasons suggest themselves. First,
when the film was made, portrayal of Christ onscreen was largely limited
to the biblical epic model, films such as Quo Vadis (LeRoy 1951)
and The Robe (Koster 1953), a form considered more respectful
of its topic than a UFO invasion story. Indeed, when the script was
submitted to Joseph Breen and the Production Code Administration—Hollywood’s
censorship board and principal moral watchdog (cf. Black 1994, 1997)—Breen’s
office so objected to the notion that Gort could bring Klaatu back from
the dead using alien technology that the line “No, that is a power
reserved to the Almighty Spirit” was added as a compromise (Von Gunden
and Stock 1982, 44). Suggesting that Klaatu was an unsubtle reference
to Jesus would clearly have put the film beyond the pale. Second, by
the late 1960s, especially with the rise of the counterculture and the
numerous Jesus movements that emerged from it, a more relaxed attitude
to the portrayal of Jesus prevailed. While films like Jesus Christ
Superstar (Jewison 1973) and Godspell (Greene 1973) appeared
to bouquets and brickbats from audiences around the world, enterprising
evangelists like Arthur Blessitt were turning other aspects of popular
culture to the Christian cause. Most famous for an itinerant ministry
in which he dragged a cross across several continents, whenever he stopped
to talk with people Blessitt would pass out stickers that looked like
current advertisements for Coca-Cola, but substituted “Jesus: He’s
the Real Thing” and “Christ adds life!” (Blessitt and Oliver 1978).
By this time, reading Klaatu as a Christ-figure would not have seemed
out of place.
[42] Although, in his Los
Angeles Times review of the film, Edwin Schallert may have countered
potential concerns in the 1950s that The Day the Earth Stood Still
was a propaganda film, it took the cultural hegemony of Christianity
and the analytic will to theologize to make it one.
Postscript
[43] While I have considered
only the 1951 version of the film, and the overt Christianizing of its
message, an important comparison awaits between the original and the
remake by Scott Derrickson (2008), which was released nearly a year
after this essay was completed. Derrickson is best known for directing
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), a film that allowed him to talk
freely about his own Christian commitment (see Cowan 2008).
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