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Madison and Klaatu’s Warning to Earth
SPOILERS AHEAD! Listen to the episode first!
What I have found interesting as I’ve absorbed more and more science fiction from the 1950s, is that there are fewer stories about races on different planets in solar systems far, far away. As we discussed in our Year One Madison’s Mad Facts about 1950’s sci-fi (you can listen HERE) the rise of sci-fi in modern entertainment came as the result of two important developments. WWII was the birth of the Atomic Age. So the horror genre turned away from scientists creating monsters to scientists creating technology or robots. It made the genre feel fresh to audiences. But with the 1950s also came the McCarthy Hearings where Hollywood creatives who dared to comment or criticize the government were labeled Communist and run out of the industry. But artists of every age create art to reflect the world they see around them, so putting those messages into science fiction made them abstract enough to fly under the radar of the McCarthy goons.
So what I have observed in the many hours of 1950s sci-fi I have consumed, is how much science fiction is set in “modern day” to the year it was produced. Looking for Madison scripts I’ve found stories with the very basic idea of “What if aliens came to us right here, right now?” And I think “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is a perfect example of that. Having a “spaceman” come to observe us in modern day, what would his take away be? How would we react? In addition, the symbolism of Klaatu from the original film is a Jesus figure. There are a lot of fiction stories about “what if Jesus were to show up today” and I think this film does a great job of handling a very real portrayal of how our society would react. And we definitely did not pass the test.
For Madison stepping into the role of Klaatu, I had a different perspective going in. Klaatu gives a warning about atomic energy and the arms race. Madison has seen how that has played out over the last 70 years, and, again, our society does not pass the test. It was also fun to change Gort into one of our real modern day robots. A lot of sci-fi deals with creating machines, especially sentient robots, to serve humanity, rather than being a weapon. And as these food delivery robots, made with cute faces and chirps (meant to manipulate our human tendencies to care and protect living things we perceive as child-like) become our society’s first real foray into living our daily lives around robots, I can use Gort as a stepping stone to how he ultimately could be weaponized. Creating our own warning to modern day audiences as we passively learn to accept these and other AI devices into the background of our every day.
Overall, Madison’s message is still that of Klaatu. That the seemingly insurmountable discord the Earth’s peoples cultivate between each other will be our demise unless we find a way to choose peace. And looking at it all from an outsider’s point-of-view, upon a platform across the Universe, rather than merely our singular planet, makes our differences seem insignificant.
