Alex's Blog: 2009

Monday, May 25, 2009

How did the text help you look at the film differently? Do you agree with the author of the handout?

When the author was talking about the movie, I agreed with him at certain points however, I did disagree with him too. One time when I disagreed with him is when he stated that, "the threat of violence is essential to the smooth running of the rational state." This didn't make any sense to me because when I think of fear, I think of mass hysteria. most people can not act rationally when they are faced with fear, and we are more irrational when faced with violence.

One thing that I did agree with was when he said: "individualism is merely irrational selfishness." I think that when Hellen's boyfriend was going to give away the location of Klatu, he was only thinking of himself and not the world as a whole or even for Klatu. In this movie, the people were extremely selfish and I think that is sometimes the case in real life too. People in this movie really showed the need for eveyone to come together and be under the protection of the "general will" according to Rousseau. He also said that "science in general isn't bad, but it is when used in an irrational and irresponsible manner." This is one of his quotes that I do not agree with. I think that this is deffinetly a conservative veiw on this movie. It really sounds like something the military would say. I think that scince can only help, even if it leads us to more dangerous weapons and gets up in worse situations, the only way were going to over come that is if we keep moving forward.

The Thing Themes

The handout lists 4 themes of alien invasion movies and two different interpretations by scholars named Biskind and Jancovich. Which of the listed themes apply to The Thing? Why? What scenes reveal those themes?

I think that the theme that The Thing tries to portray is the Invasion Narrative theme that says the importance of the new power elites vs. post-war decision making. It explains how there is a need for the military, scientists, and experts in science fiction to work together in to overcome the different crises proposed to them (i.e. Nuclear War), or else the world will be in grave danger. It is argued that the only way to defeat the alien is for the scientists and the military to work together. But this movie really puts this to the test, both sides do not want to work with eachother. In this movie, the conflict between the science power elites and the military power elites are against eachother by showing both sides not communicating with eachother, the military thinks they can solve the problem with violence and the Scientists just wanted to experiment on the thing, and neither was backing down. One example of this is when the alien escaped, the scientists, mainly Dr. Carrington, conducted experiments without the consent of the USAF, igniting another conflict. Dr. Carrington believed that the alien could be reasoned with while Captain Patrick Hendry wanted to kill it believing that it couldn't be reasoned with and it came to the Earth to take over. But in the end, the scientists' knowledge of the alien helped the military defeat the alien showing how both sides can in fact work together.

Kahn vs. Failsafe

Kahn came up with the thought of the practical politics of a Doomsday Machine -- a computer attached to a cache of thermonuclear weapons which could automatically trigger in the event of a nuclear attack and purposely coat the planet in nuclear fallout. Building such a weapon would be, in Kahn's mind, impractical, dangerous, and foolish, but he used the idea as an analogy to the state of Europe at the time.
This more relates to Dr. Strangelove where the U.S. bombed Russia and set off the Doomsday Machine but since Fail-Safe and Strangelove are so similiar it can be assuemed that Kahn is reffering to this sence of "second attack" or retaliation. Thats all that the Doomsday Machine does. It prevents them from being bombed because the people bombing them know the consequesces if they do. However this machine does no good if no one knows about it because then it doesnt provide fear, it just kills everyone.

Herman Kahn

Who was Herman Kahn?
He was a very important addition to RAND for the military. He was very well known for analyzing the consequences of nuclear war and recommending ways to improve survivability. In his writting he came up with the quote "Nuclear is winnable, it is inevitable."

What is your reaction to his ideas so far?
Well when I first read this article I was surprised about the imagination that Herman Kahn had. I thought that he was a little out there and my initial thought was that he was paranoid about nuclear war. And that he was just overreacting to everything but after talking to my peers about it we came to the conclusion that he was just being aware. When you work for the Research and Development for the US Armed Forces and youre dealing with Nuclear war I guess you need to anticipate the worst. That way you can prepare for it. This is proactive thinking. This is the kind of thinking that wins wars. It doesnt do much good if you prep for something when its already started.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

The Day The Earth Stood Still

In this movie, an alien names Klatu comes to earth bearing a message that we need to stop the development of nuclear weapons because it will lead to inter galactic space travel and that puts Klatu's planet in danger. When Klatu comes to earth he is seemingly friendly until he pulls out a mysterious object and one of the front line soldiers acted out of fear and ignorance, leading him to shoot Klatu. Throught this entire movie, Klatu is faced with many oppertunities like this to become violent and retaliate with violence but he truely shows his compassion to the earth people. However he does have one demand and it seems like he will do anything to get it. He wants to warn people to stop nuclear weapon development, he never tries to obtain this through violence, instead he simply goes to a scientist and asks him to call a meeting of the most intellegent people he knows. Where this gets contraversial is during his speach he poses an untimatium to the people saying "I'm afraid there is no alternative. In such a case [where you do not stop nuclear progression], the planet Earth would have to be... eliminated." This is a threat to everyone. People were already paranoid about this new "space man" and their paranoia was led by ignorance, no one new Klatu and so they immediatly came to the mindset that he was bad. I think that Klatu was justified with his demands because this is an immediate danger and anyone who denies this, I want to know your reasoning. This is exactly what we did with Iraq, we thought that they had weapons of mass destruction so we infultrated their country looking for these weapons, and even though we havent found any, were still there.

The thing seminar reflection

In this seminar, we mostly talked about the movie “The Thing From Another World.” But we were by no means restricted by that. We mostly talked about the themes not only of this movie but also the major themes of the cold war. Regarding this movie, we talked about: quotes stated in the movie (“There are no enemies in science. Only phenomenon to study”) and this relates to this whole project talking about fear and paranoia, all though you have to realize that this is coming from a scientist and most people wouldn’t think this way (or in other words the directors representation of the military). Some of the other things that we talked about were “Why was the monster mad?” and an even bigger question that you need to answer “Who’s fault was it that the monster was mad?” And the answer to this question is not obvious, everyone has a different interpretation and no one is wrong. The two major sides you can approach this question is Liberal or Conservative. If you’re conservative then you’re going to believe in militarism and using brute force so people critical of conservatives (liberals) are of course going to blame the military. However, the flip side is if you are a liberal you believe in Détente and the conservatives say the the scientists (represented by the liberals) caused the hatred by wanting to experiment on him but it would still be a form of capturing. So as you can see there are many different answers to this question. But it deffinetly led us to other bigger topics. Ones like “could the monster have been scared even when he first arrived?” There wasn’t really an answer to this question, and unfortunately that’s how most of our seminar went only because so many people had stuff to say and so many questions so we kind of skipped over some ideas. But overall I thought that we had a really good seminar. When I was watching the movie I started to get lost and then I just gave up on the movie but once we got into seminar everything just seemed to click and everything was just so clear. So I got a lot out of seminar.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The Thing From Another World (1951)

http://www.celtoslavica.de/chiaroscuro/films/thing/4.jpg

http://tribes.tribe.net/giantnuts/photos/27b0e3fc-a7d0-4c7c-8180-5c4b50b476d7

http://www.ijpc.org/monsterspress_files/press_007.jpg

Sunday, May 17, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3oBtxIWr4M&feature=related

Movie pics

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews25/a%20invasion%20of%20the%20body%20snatchers/de%20ws%20invasion%20of%20the%20body%20snatchers%202043.jpg

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/electronic-publications/stay-free/images/19/pod.jpg

http://www.gadflyonline.com/11-26-01/invasion3.jpg

http://blogs.timesunion.com/comics/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/mccarthy.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Come_unto_me%2C_ye_opprest.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Joseph_McCarthy.jpg

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/images/reviews/190/1161792881.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO34CJqbTCc

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

When I first saw this movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” I thought the main focus of this film was the thought of Fear vs. Paranoia. I thought that everyone in the town was just being paranoid over this epidemic. But after reading the packet given to us I changed my way of thinking and I finally realized that what this movie truly was about. It was about the fear of communism. In the movie, people were being taken over by aliens and then they were all the same with no emotion. When I first watched this movie I did not even think that this could be related to communism but after reading this text I made the connection. The Red Scare was a general fear of communism. People feared communism because they felt that it was a direct threat to their freedoms as an American and it damaged basic individual values. This was shown and portrayed by the character Dana Wynter played. When everyone was telling her to just accept the fact that they are going to be the same, the only thing she was afraid to loose was to the emotion, which is a big part of communism.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Seminar Reflection

There were many points brought up in this seminar talking about the movie “Dr. Strangelove,” “Fail-Safe,” and the reading “Fat Man.” The main points that we discussed in this seminar related around the topics of Deterrence, Fear vs. Paranoia, Thought of what Russia had vs. what they actually did have, and actors in the movies.
The opening question to this seminar was posed by peter and it was basically “Do you have any small questions about the text “Fat Man” or “Dr. Strangelove.” And Lola responded with the question “Is Kahn for or against Nuclear War?” And I was one of the people that responded to the this question and said that I don’t believe that he has to pick sides, because since he works for RAND he has to think about the worst possible situation, which would be nuclear destruction. This relates directly to the thought of deterrence, which is to install fear to prevent the other side from attacking. In the movie the Doomsday Machine is U.S.S.R.’s deterrence mechanism. And then again this also ties into the idea of Fear and Paranoia comes into play. Or at least I think it does, because why else would U.S.S.R. need that big of a device that would destroy the whole world if they weren’t paranoid. In a way I think it could be warranted but a little over exaggerated. This is what I mostly learned about in this seminar. But this is mostly what we talked about too. Overall I liked this seminar a lot and this is a very philosophical topic so we really had a lot to talk about, unfortunately we ran out of time.

Pictures from Dr Strangelove

http://grumpasaurus.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10001/normal_dr_strangelove.01.jpg
http://blogs.e-rockford.com/applesauce/files/2008/09/000strangelove.jpg
http://www.espionageinfo.com/images/eeis_02_img0698.jpg

Monday, May 11, 2009

Compare

When we talk about nuclear war, we're talking about bombs, radiation, destruction, chaos, and paranoia. These two movies, “Dr. Strangelove” and “Fail-Safe”, have similar stories but thats about it. On one hand we have “Dr. Strangelove” who laughs about what we should be concerned and worried about, and the film transforms this horrible idea about the bomb and massive destruction into something funny and peculiar that we should accept as part of our normal life. In this film all the characters seems to be mentally insane. On the other hand, we have “Fail-Safe” that, from a very serious point of view, exposes the problem of nuclear bombs. There are no jokes in this film. Both movies show that even though it seems improbable that the USA and the USSR would destroy each other, they were absolutely capable of doing it. Although both of these films talk about the same thing, they approach the nuclear bomb problem completely different. This is why I find it odd that they would be suing one another, because they are so different, all they do is show the different sides of the same problem.

Dr. Strangelove

In this movie “Dr. Strangelove”, General Ripper is a delusional commander of a United States Air Force base who tries to attack the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons, hoping to stop a Communist conspiracy to "sap and impurify" the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people with fluoridated water. To do this, he orders the nuclear armed Air Force planes past their failsafe and into Soviet territory. Although a nuclear attack should require Presidential authority to be initiated, Ripper uses "Plan R", that a senior officer (like himself) could launch in retaliation attemp against the Soviets, it was meant to discourage the Soviets from launching a strike against the President in Washington and stop an American nuclear counterattack. Ripper's executive officer (Mandrake) realizes that there has been no attack on the U.S. When Mandrake reveals this to Ripper, he refuses to recall the planes, and it was never clear why.
In the "War Room" at The Pentagon, Air Force General Buck Turgidson tries to convince the rest of the men to take advantage of the situation to eliminate the Soviets as a threat by launching a full-scale attack. He believes that the United States is in a superior strategic position, and a first strike against the Soviet Union would destroy 90% of their missiles before they could retaliate.
The Soviet Premier gets word of this, and tells the men in the pentagon that U.S.S.R. has installed an active Doomsday device which will automatically destroy all life on Earth if a nuclear attack were to hit the Soviet Union. It acts as a safeguard, it cannot be deactivated, or it will set itself off.
The President now calls upon Dr. Strangelove, a former Nazi and strategy expert. The wheelchair-bound Strangelove is portrayed as a type of "mad scientist.” He explains the principles behind the Doomsday Device, which he says is "simple to understand... credible and convincing".
After this, The correct recall code, "OPE", is issued to the planes. This correct code was obtained from Ripper who came up with them from the combination of the abreviations from peace on earth and purity of essence. Thanks to this recall code, all those planes that have not been shot down return to base – except for one. Its radio and fuel tanks were damaged by a Soviet anti-aircraft missile, with the result that the plane is neither able to receive the recall code nor to reach its targets. Because they never got the recall code, they acted upon the previous command which was to drop the bomb.
As they start their bomb run the damaged B-52's bomb bay doors will not open. Aircraft commander Major T. J. "King" Kong goes down to the bomb bay to open them himself, as the B-52 reaches its target the doors open, triggering the bomb to fall without further warning. Unable to grab a handhold Kong rides the bomb to the ground whooping, hollering and waving his cowboy hat.
The bomb explodes, triggering the Doomsday Machine. According to the Soviet ambassador, life on Earth's surface will be extinct in ten months. Dr. Strangelove recommends to the President that a group of about 200,000 people be relocated into a deep mine shaft, where the nuclear fallout cannot reach them, so that the U.S. can be repopulated afterwards.
In the concluding scenes, a visibly excited Dr. Strangelove stands up out of his wheelchair, shouting "Mein Führer, I can walk!". Abruptly, the film ends with a barrage of nuclear explosions.