From Mr. Wizard to Dr. X:
The Scientist in American Cold War Culture and Cinema
Stephen King, by virtue of his status as one of America's most popular horror novelists, considers himself something of a lay expert on the nature of fear in the individual and collective psyches. In Danse Macabre, his sprawling exploration of horror and science fiction from Shelley and Stoker to Ellison and Levin, he postulates that horror movies often contain cultural subtexts; "[w]hen the horror movies wear their various socio-political hats," he explains, "...they often serve as an extraordinarily accurate barometer of those things which trouble the night-thoughts of a whole society."1
Considering this thesis and King's age -- he grew up watching the horror movies of the 1950s and 1960s while learning how to duck and cover in case of nuclear attack -- it is not surprising that he spends a good portion of his section on American horror cinema speaking of the Cold War and its fear-fantasies. While many students of film tend to focus on the sort of critically-acclaimed movie that staunchly ignores the supernatural world for more "serious" scenarios, King argues that horror and science fiction, since they already endeavor to frighten the audience, provide a more fertile ground for the analysis of cultural anxieties. As an example, he cites The Horror of Party Beach (1964), a Z-grade beach-blanket-meets-Creature of the Black Lagoon movie that he rightly calls abysmal, as containing a seed of the very real fears confronting Americans in the nuclear age; the rubber-suited monsters arise from the sea after illegally-dumped nuclear waste leaks all over the ocean floor. That the directors would use such a plot device without second thought indicates that fear of nuclear contamination was commonplace, an accepted part of American life.2 Another instance of the social subtext occurs in Don Siegel's 1956 adaptation of Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which alien pod people replace the inhabitants of a friendly little middle-America town. Both the movie and the book have been interpreted, alternately, as anti-Communist and anti-McCarthy, but King argues that neither the author nor the director was wearing a "political hat;"3 rather, the fear of invasion was present in the cultural mind, and the rash of alien invasion movies produced during the height of the red scare was a spontaneous and unconscious manifestation of that fear.
King, though he lacks credentials beyond a taste for truly awful horror movies, hits upon an important subtext of 1950s culture; the realities of the Cold War did weigh heavily upon Americans, who were being presented with two contradictory views of the scientist and his work. One side of the coin showed the smiling, white-coated young man standing in the Atomic Kitchen of the Future, bringing wealth, prosperity, and leisure to the average family, part of a society of brilliant minds dedicated to improving the human condition. The other side bore the face of a warped, irradiated monster -- or of Bert the Turtle, warning children that someday they might have to face atomic annihilation from the dubious shelter of their desks. The two faces were difficult to reconcile: even if the smiling young scientist did mean well, could he possibly stand against the crushing force of the bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Could he maintain his rationality, his altruism, his humanity, despite the awesome power he was able to wield?
As Americans' fears of Communist subversion and infiltration and their worries about atomic power grew, so, too, did ambivalence about the role of the scientist. Americans were required to deal with several archetypes of scientific men, created by cultural currents, political events, and mass media -- types that contradict one another and offer little in the way of comfort. There is the good scientist of advertisements, reassuring consumers that their products are safe and effective; the scientist who stands aloof from the common man's values and morality, emotionless and cold, a condition that through the paranoid eyes of the 1950s resembled a dangerous vulnerability to the amoral ideas of Communism; the well-intentioned scientist who tries and fails to control his research, paving the road straight to Hell; and, finally, the rogue madman with his Jacob's ladder and forbidden texts who tampers in God's domain (a phrase that almost merits capital letters for its ubiquitousness in science fiction).
If we are to take King's thesis of cultural consensus through B-movies as a guideline, the relative strength of these stereotypes is made clear: advertisements, scientific celebrities, and Life pictorials of friendly young men working toward a brighter future did not offer enough reassurance to eliminate the fears evoked by the power scientists wielded, fears that dominated the cinema of the drive-in theaters and quarter matinees. In the end, Americans were left with the uneasy sense that the atom could put power in the hands of the worst men or wrest control from the hands of the best men -- that its promise could transform the smiling Dr. Jekyll, his feet ever treading the upward path, to a dark and lawless Hyde.
Advertisement was not quite as omnipresent in the 1950s as it is today (and yet some still complained of oversaturation), but it was naturally a potent influence on the average citizen. In order to appeal to consumers, advertisers began to use futuristic motifs of space, rocketry, and atoms as a way of distinguishing their products from others. Everything from stoves to ironing boards was advertised with either rockets or space, and "atomic" became the buzzword of the day much as "sanitary" was the word of the 1920s and "antibacterial" the word of the 1990s. The scientific associations sometimes seemed counterintuitive -- a woman ironing clothes in low-Earth orbit makes little sense4 -- but it was apparently effective. Science was the new method of selling -- science as the ultimate argument from authority.
Of course, in order to argue from a scientific perspective (or at least to make the pretense of doing so) one must have scientists to reinforce the argument. The white-coated scientist -- often a doctor -- appeared with increasing frequency in the pages of magazines such as Life to endorse all manner of products. He was dedicated, serious but not grim, always dressed in the symbolic long white coat and often wearing glasses to symbolize intelligence and concentration, attended by his equally dedicated nurse. Of course, he was often an illustration, and almost always anonymous -- the "doctor" was like as not a male model who posed in a lab coat -- but the symbolism was still present. The signifiers of the lab coat and nurse's uniform represented the authority, dignity, and competence supposedly inherent in the professions.5 There was something comforting about accepting the decree of a doctor or scientist; science was authoritative, and one could choose to believe anything it endorsed without demanding further evidence. Once something was "scientifically certified," that was the end of the matter; science meant authority, and authority meant security.6
The Life magazine of the 1950s, with its simplistic, picture-heavy style, was one of the most important articulators of "the American way" -- the life which people wanted to live and which America wanted to offer. The reassuring images of scientists in advertisements were only a small part of what Life did for the American self-image. In its homogeneity, its presentation of a white, middle-class, happy life and a beautiful, prosperous country, it resembled a sort of genial propaganda, a collection of advertisements for the good life. And, since science was a new concern for so many, it dealt with science and scientists in ways beyond the marketing of atomic TV dinners and interstellar ironing boards. It had become clear that the Cold War was an ideological one: to confound and frustrate the Communists and appeal to undecided nations, America had to present a united front of prosperity and military-technological superiority. Since the United States did not produce nearly as much official propaganda as did its rivals, it fell to popular magazines such as Life to do so. Life's December 15, 1952 issue showcased a prototype submarine engine using information granted by the Atomic Energy Commission, which no doubt appreciated the publicity and the opportunity to appear especially advanced; the article is full of exuberant numbers about size and expense and confident praise of the scientists' expertise.7 Other such articles abound. The scientist in this sense represented one of the many ways in which America desired to appear superior to Communist countries -- as the Wernher von Braun surrogate in The Right Stuff says, "Our Germans are better than their Germans"8 -- and, though he was often anonymous in these photojournalistic examinations of The Might of Industry, he was nonetheless an essential element of American power and security.
Anonymity was not the norm; some scientists were so influential, so important, that it was only natural that someone would conceive the idea of doing human-interest pieces on them. The scientist as celebrity was an interesting creature: brilliant, certainly, but often the focus of an attempt to humanize and normalize. For instance, most readers would not be capable of understanding the theory of relativity, so popular magazines had to find something else about the theory's author to share with its audience. Life published an article on Albert Einstein, in honor of his seventy-fourth birthday in 1953, that shows the logical conclusion of all this talk of science: if people are to trust scientists, they must realize that a scientist is no more or less of a man than any other. They must find some sort of common ground, or the scientist will be, though admirable for his intellectual achievements, a wholly unsympathetic figure. Life, addressing this issue, in effect tells its readers that Einstein put his pants on one leg at a time, the same as everyone else. "For the occasion Einstein shed his characteristic baggy sweater and slacks, put on a gray suit," the author writes. "But he found it less easy to shed a lifetime of shyness... [he] felt light years away from relaxation anyway."9 Replacing the brilliant but inaccessible scientist was the familiar image of "Uncle Al," a sweet old eccentric who got a little shy in social situations but was a very nice man for all that. Perhaps he was brighter than most, but he was still a man, with all the insecurities and little fears to which man is prone. Simplistic, perhaps, but then Life did not generally perform in-depth analysis.
The reality of science's relationship to Americans was far more complex, as it usually is. The intellectual in American society, whether artist, scholar, or scientist, has always been somewhat suspect; though he is respected for his talent or intelligence, there is an undercurrent of discomfort, a sort of inferiority complex on behalf of non-intellectuals that breeds resentment of those who distinguish themselves in academic fields. Anti-intellectualism is a fact of American life, and its particular application to the scientist involves a distrust of these men who move in their own circles, speak in their own language, men who can use their greater knowledge to close ranks against those who might be able to restrain them. The scientist is "materialistic and unspiritual,"10 in the words of Jacob Bronowski, a perception created by religious leaders uncomfortable with science's repeated challenges to the Bible and reinforced by scientists' own tendency to speak in tongues; Frankenstein and its descendants play endless variations on the theme of science-versus-God, intimating that science and faith cannot coexist and that the scientist's detachment from normal society makes him a kind of heretic. In addition, there is a cultural notion of the power of the "little guy," the clever man who has no need of book-learning, a populist ideal of common sense and down-home ingenuity that stands in opposition to the scientist. The scientist is a member of an elite group in a country that is largely wary of elitism, a man who spends a great deal of time closed away in a university as if he were too good to associate with normal folk, an enigmatic figure engaged in strange and possibly un-Christian activities rather than doing honest work out in the real world.11
After the development of the atomic bomb, the gap between scientists and non-scientists became even more evident. This new and terrifying technology made Americans sit up and take notice. Triumph over Japan was swift and complete once Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but it was perhaps too swift -- the destructive potential of the bomb made people pay attention about what could be done, and what was being done, with atomic technology. The scientific community's public relations did not benefit from the fact that the bomb was developed in total secrecy; no one bothered to ask the American public how they would feel about such a weapons program, and though most understood that this was a matter of national security, the fact that scientists could do such things without anyone knowing made the public very nervous.
The situation was made worse by the red scare and Senator Joseph McCarthy, who equated intellectualism with Communism through an odd sort of transitive logic: if all Communists are godless, and all intellectuals are also godless, then all intellectuals must be Communists. With this reasoning, McCarthy parlayed the existing cultural distrust of intellectuals into an entire political career spent denouncing any kind of intellectual he could find, including scientists, as Communist threats.12 His accusations, paired with the Soviet development of atomic technology, raised the suspicion that one of those cloistered scientists might have put knowledge above patriotism and morality and, falling victim to red corruption, given atomic information to the enemy. When the FBI found that this was indeed the case, as with Los Alamos chemist Harry Gold and his involvement with the infamous Rosenbergs, the image of the scientist suffered even further. That J. Robert Oppenheimer himself could be declared a security risk for opposing strategic bombing is proof that even the greatest men of the profession, those who had shown themselves completely loyal, could fall victim to anti-Communist paranoia.13 Meanwhile, the Atomic Energy Commission continued its research into what was then called the "super-bomb," giving Americans even more reason to fear nuclear annihilation.
American scientists had put themselves at risk of anti-Communist persecution by criticizing America's nuclear arms programs in the atmosphere of "if you're not with us, you're against us" that dominated the 1950s. This was understood. More worrisome than the prospect of Reds working in American laboratories, though, was the true reason behind the scientific community's warnings and protests: in the face of atomic power, even the creators had begun to feel overwhelmed. When asked who had started the war, Dr. Julian Osborne, a scientist from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation of Australia, told the world that Albert Einstein had started the war but that no one could stop it:
The trouble with you is you want a simple answer. There isn't any. The war started when people accepted the idiotic principle that peace could be maintained by arranging to defend themselves with weapons they couldn't possibly use without committing suicide. Everybody had an atomic bomb, and counter bombs, and counter-counter bombs. The devices outgrew us; we couldn't control them. I know. I helped build them, God help me.14
The falcon could not hear the falconer; pure science had mutated into something that no scientist could control.
To combat this sense of helplessness and prevent the misuse of nuclear weapons, scientists realized that they would need popular support; their influence in the government was considerable, but they were still very much a minority, and tied to the administration by problems of funding. More than ever, the government was asking science for its aid -- by 1953 Scientific American reported that "more than half of all scientific research and development in the U.S. is now sponsored and paid for by the Federal government"15 -- and much of that aid came in the form of new and powerful weapons. Nuclear science was becoming a political force, and it seemed to many in the community that average people needed to know about the problems of atomic science so that they could understand the repercussions of their government's policies and perhaps avert disaster through informed political action. The popular magazine Scientific American was one of the principal agents through which the scientific community attempted to reach the general public. Oppenheimer, writing for the magazine in 1950, expressed his hope for "agreement and understanding from an increasing number of men who are not scientists, but who are nevertheless concerned that advances in science make the greatest possible contribution to human welfare."16
There were numerous obstacles to this hoped-for understanding, even aside from anti-intellectualism and anti-Communism. The magazine once attempted to run an article on the hydrogen bomb by Hans A. Bethe, a professor of physics at Cornell, in its layman-oriented "Science and the Citizen" section; the Atomic Energy Commission, fearing a threat to national security, stopped the presses and destroyed the print run. Gerard Piel, the publisher, wrote in response:
We consider that the Commission's action with regard to the Bethe article and the sweeping subsequent prohibition issues to the nation's atomic scientists raises the question of whether the Commission is thus suppressing information which the American people need in order to form intelligent judgments on this major problem. While there are certainly areas of information which must be protected for reasons of national security, there is a very large area of technical information in the public domain which is essential to adequate public participation in the development of national policy, and on which the American people are entitled to be informed by such recognized authorities as Dr. Bethe.17
Excluding Oppenheimer from the atomic discourse is, to put it mildly, ridiculous; excluding the entire American populace implies a level of state control and secrecy that, to many people, conflicted with the ideals of democracy. Physicist Louis N. Ridenour, also writing for the "Science and the Citizen" section, condemns the Truman administration for its "fully authoritarian" decision to begin work on the atomic bomb and its prevention of "informed public discussion" in the name of national security, viewing it as unforgivable irresponsibility in a dangerous time.18
The problem facing publications like Scientific American was twofold: scientists wanted to explain science in a manner that was understandable to the average individual in order to ensure that he could direct his government's actions with a full understanding of what that entailed, but in order to do so effectively they had to forge some kind of connection -- they had to become trustworthy, and to do that they had to become human -- essentially attempting to do the same thing that Life magazine did with Einstein, albeit in a more complex manner. One simple way of doing this was to express the ethical concerns which prompted scientists to reach out in the first place. If the anti-intellectual stereotype of the scientist involves a perceived lack of morality, the best way to combat that stereotype is to show that scientists do have morals and concern for human life. The "Science and the Citizen" section of Scientific American contains numerous examples aside from those about political agency cited above. Hans Bethe, in his aborted article, places just as much importance on moral issues regarding the hydrogen bomb and its uses as he does on explanations of the science behind the weapon. After the technical discussion, he moves on to a consideration of the attendant moral and ethical questions:
I believe the most important question is the moral one. Can we who have always insisted on morality and human decency between nations as well as inside our own country, introduce this weapon of total annihilation into the world? The usual argument, heard in the frantic week before the President's decision and frequently since, is that we are fighting against a country which denies all the human values we cherish, and that any weapon, however terrible, must be used to prevent that country and its creed from dominating the world. It is argued that it would be better for us to lose our lives than our liberty, and with this view I personally agree. But I believe that this is not the choice facing us here; I believe that in a war fought with hydrogen bombs we would lose not only many lives but all our liberties and human values as well.19
Complex questions, ones which go beyond the anti-Communist paranoia of the times to address a deeper sense of what it means to be a free, just nation. He goes on to say that such a war would not only cause unimaginable destruction and earn the censure of history, but that it would reinforce existing anti-intellectualism to such a degree that scientific progress would be forced to a halt by fear and mistrust: "Indeed, it is likely that technology and science, having brought such utter misery on man, would be suspected as the works of the devil, and that a new Dark Ages20 would begin on earth."21 Bethe is disproving the myth that scientists are amoral and detached, partly by appealing to American ideals and partly by showing that scientists share with laymen the fear of Tampering In God's Domain.
Other attempts to normalize and humanize scientists were somewhat problematic. In November of 1952, Scientific American published a study by clinical psychologist Anne Roe entitled "A Psychologist Examines 64 Eminent Scientists," attempting to attract people to the scientific fields by explaining what characteristics went into the makeup of a scientist. The study deals in demographic information and general psychology, but its conclusions are not exactly reassuring. Problems arise immediately: the "eminent scientists" studied -- twenty-two physicists, twenty-two social scientists (in this case, psychologists and anthropologists), and twenty biologists -- were too intelligent for the standard IQ tests, a characteristic that does not inspire a sense of kinship within the common man's breast. After more research, Roe reaches some interesting conclusions:
He was the first-born child of a middle-class family... He tended to feel lonely and "different" and to be shy and aloof from his classmates. He had only a moderate interest in girls and did not begin dating them until college. He married late (at 27)... his marriage is more stable than the average. Not until his junior or senior year in college did he decide on his vocation as a scientist. What decided him (almost invariably) was a college project in which he had occasion to do some independent research -- to find out things for himself. Once he discovered the pleasures of this kind of work, he never turned back... He says his work is his life, and he has few recreations, those being restricted to fishing, sailing, walking, or some other individualistic activity... He avoids social affairs and political activity, and religion plays no part in his life or thinking.22
In one way, this portrayal brings in the emotional side of the scientist, but all emotions seem to evaporate once he (predictably, all scientists studied were male) enters the profession. Roe is recreating the myth of the ivory-tower academic which is such an integral part of anti-intellectualism: her scientist has no interest in anything to do with other people. He exists in a theoretical realm inside his head, and any social distractions are unwelcome. Apparently, to be a scientist one must be thoroughly antisocial; it bears mentioning that the behavior of a natural introvert can be mistaken for snobbery, a misunderstanding which causes a good deal of the frustration laymen feel when dealing with introverted academics. More disturbingly, the "eminent scientist" has no interest in politics or religion -- precisely the idea Bethe was trying to disprove by speaking of atomic morality. Scientists may not have been religious in the churchgoing sense, but Bethe and others were obviously considering questions of morality that related to spiritual matters of right and wrong, good and evil; Einstein in particular was famous for his contemplation of spiritual questions. To imply that religion "plays no part" in a scientist's worldview is to circle straight back to the godless scientist of anti-intellectual fears and resentments.
The "good scientist," the humane and brilliant scientist with a true desire to help others, has an undeniable place in American culture of the time. Anti-intellectualism, powerful as it was, was tempered by the desire to receive assurance from some higher authority; in an era of nuclear anxiety and the postwar need for comfort, people wanted to be told that everything was going to be all right, that the atom bomb was in the hands of good men and that these same good men were doing their best to make life easy and happy. It was the scientist as father figure, the humanized and down-to-earth version of the scientist, who could best provide these assurances. People needed to trust him, and to some extent they were able to overcome their old antagonisms, especially when the scientist made the effort to reach out to his fellow men, establish a moral and ethical framework for communication, and explain in layman's terms what he was doing.
Upon examining popular cinema, though, it becomes clear that all the old fears are still very much present under the veneer of clean, rational, humane science. Atomic paranoia films proliferated to a remarkable degree, bringing us giant creatures and nuclear holocausts. The Japanese changed culture forever by bringing forth the towering, screeching lizard Gojira, perhaps the ultimate symbol of atomic devastation arising from the wreck of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Americans adopted the image and the films wholeheartedly (after inserting Raymond Burr and anglicizing the title to Godzilla for no good reason). Science, especially atomic and nuclear science, kept on creating monsters in film, and Americans clearly responded to this idea. And, behind the machinery of radiation, behind the beasts, moved the hand of the scientist.
Before discussing the role of the scientist and his work in mid-century film, it is worth revisiting for a moment the genre's progenitor -- 1931's film version of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein. The novel is perhaps the most famous evocation of the scientist who Tampers In God's Domain, and Universal Pictures's adaptation emphasizes Dr. Frankenstein's latent insanity. Key to an understanding of the archetype is that Frankenstein is not initially mad; he becomes mad after apprehending the power he can wield through science, and his creation of life is the ultimate expression of that madness. Knowledge may be power, the film reminds us, but power corrupts. Frankenstein is a foundational image in the West, the primary evocation of the Mad Scientist -- a man who plays with forces beyond his control and, in doing so, brings destruction upon himself and others. In many respects he inherits of the legacy of Dr. Faustus, but he has no real Mephistopheles; power is available to him without any contracts, and the temptation he experiences comes not from a literal agent of the Devil but from within his proud soul and too-curious mind -- a far more modern concept of the origin of human evils. The fear expressed by the Mad Scientist is that science ultimately cannot be controlled by mortal men, both because it is too great for any man to harness and because men are inherently flawed; combined with the sense that certain kinds of science and knowledge are an affront to God, the archetype represents a particular visceral response to the scientific intellectual that pervades American culture.23
Most science-fiction films of the time period are not quite as blatant in their portrayal of the Mad Scientist, although that particular stereotype persists in endless Universal efforts to capitalize on the Frankenstein brand and second-rate knockoffs of the Dr. Moreau theme. Horror and science fiction movies both shared (and still share) a fascination with mutation and monsters, but the former was more concerned with the process, even if that meant inserting chunks of dull, expository pseudo-scientific dialogue into what might otherwise be a simple scary picture.24 The more concerned with the process a film was, the more attention was devoted to the scientist, who often became a somewhat tragic figure; the conventional giant-creature films, for instance, are populated by hundreds of scientists who intended nothing but good with their research and are quite dismayed to find that they have inadvertently spawned giant mantises, tarantulas, or, in the later Night of the Lepus, giant bunny rabbits. A typical "mad scientist" is a static character, showing no signs of past sanity or goodness, and often as not his "science" involves mysticism and pagan rituals such as sacrifice, placing him in the role of arcane priest rather than rational intellectual. The line between 1967's The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies25, in which a gypsy fortune teller uses hypnosis to turn people into zombies for no particular reason, and I Was A Teenage Werewolf, in which a megalomaniacal psychiatrist uses hypnosis to turn Michael Landon into a werewolf for no particular reason, is very thin. By contrast, the scientist in a science fiction film follows the model of the Greek tragic character, starting out sane and gradually falling victim to his fatal flaw, usually hubris, without intending any harm. The scientific process which gives rise to the Creature of the Week mirrors the scientist's progressive loss of control, where both begin as good, benevolent influences and become evil or at least chaotic forces despite all the best intentions.
An interesting example of the scientist overwhelmed appears in 1953's Magnetic Monster, a creative but muddled movie whose "monster" is a chunk of heavy metal. A special government bureau, the Office of Scientific Investigators, receives a report that all of a hardware store's wares have been magnetized. Traces of radioactivity are found at the scene, and the "A-men" follow the trail to an elderly scientist carrying a briefcase with his discovery -- a new type of radioactive isotope. The isotope behaves somewhat like a living organism, using powerful magnetic impulses to draw metal to itself so that it can expand; since its growth is exponential, it represents a threat to the world, and it destroys a few buildings before the scientists manage to halt its fatal growth cycles.
Every scientist in this film is portrayed in a positive light, a relative rarity in American science fiction. Howard Denker, carrier of the isotope, is a sweet old man who obviously wanted none of the terrible things that are happening, and he seems a bit uncertain as to how he even managed to create his little monster. Stewart and Forbes, the A-men, are smart and competent in a solid American fashion, as much gumshoe as egghead. Everyone involved is good and decent, but their good intentions mean nothing when pitted against the magnetic monster, which -- being a thing of science -- can only carry out its natural functions. The mad scientist is understandable, but the real fear here is the one expressed by Dr. Julian Osborne: at some point a scientist's good nature ceases to matter, because science's power will eventually exceed man's ability to control it. The A-men eventually stop the monster in the nick of time, as usually happens, but Denker is not so lucky; he dies of radiation poisoning, an unwitting and undeserving victim of his own work. Men may care for the good of humanity, but science does not, and science -- especially nuclear science -- ought not to be tampered with for this reason.26
Even the absolute worst of films can, with a sort of wretched simplicity, illuminate this theme. 1961's The Beast of Yucca Flats, a ludicrously awful little enterprise, features the inimitable Tor Johnson27 as Russian scientist (!!!) Joseph Javorsky, a defector who apparently comes to our country bearing valuable information about the Soviet space program. This premise could be interesting, but for no apparent reason Javorsky ends up a little too close to an A-bomb test and is transformed into a lumbering, oatmeal-faced monster. Coleman Francis, a director who makes Ed Wood look positively spendthrift, elects to shoot the film without sound and dub in dialogue later; as a result, most of the film relies on Francis's comically grave narration about the evils of science and progress. "Touch a button... things happen," he intones as the bomb goes off. "A scientist becomes a beast." As Javorsky rambles about the desert killing people, Francis continues to pontificate upon "a once powerful, humble man... reduced to nothing" and various characters "caught in the wheels of progress." The repetition and overstatement of the narration makes analysis all too easy: The Beast of Yucca Flats represents a world in which even a brilliant man who tries to do the right thing by helping America, who has dedicated his life to "the betterment of mankind," cannot maintain his integrity and goodness when confronted with the power of the atom.28
From the nadir to the zenith: Forbidden Planet (1956), considered by many to be one of the best science-fiction films of all time, also deals explicitly with mankind's inability to control technology, though director Fred Wilcox works with a subtlety alien to Coleman Francis's oeuvre. The film's plot, a futuristic version of The Tempest, concerns a search-and-rescue mission to the planet Altair-4, where the ship Bellerophon -- named after the mythical rider of Pegasus, who tried to approach the abode of the gods and was cast down from the heavens for his hubris -- crashed twenty years before. On Altair-4, Dr. Morbius and his daughter Altaira lead an idyllic existence, and Morbius is quite irate when the interlopers appear. It seems that he has discovered the remnants of a phenomenal alien civilization, the Krell. The aliens had attempted a technological version of Dr. Jekyll's quest to deny his darker side, but their suppressed emotions manifested as monstrous invisible entities who destroyed their creators. The good doctor wants to prevent the same thing happening to humanity, but his reasons for trying to keep the deadly technology secret also involve a good deal of selfish hubris; he is convinced that he is the only human capable of truly understanding and controlling that technology, and like a child with a new toy, he wants to keep the Krell's powers to himself. The men who land on Altair-4 present him with two threats to his dominance: not only do they want access to his science, but the commander is making advances toward his daughter, and she is responding. The tragedy of the Krell begins to play itself out again, with Dr. Morbius's suppressed anger manifesting as an invisible beast of the id that kills several crewmen and eventually destroys him.
Forbidden Planet is a near-perfect example of the ideological conflict between the desire to use science for the good of humanity and the fear that humanity might prefer to use science for evil. The best of science is represented in the figure of Robby the Robot, one of the most famous automatons of science fiction film, who can recite Asimov's Laws of Robotics on command. The Krell machines, too, appear benevolent at first glance; their purpose is to enhance the intellect and improve life. When human emotions and fallibility encounter science, though, the situation grows unstable. As the situation begins to deteriorate, the ship's scientist uses the Krell mind-expansion machines, a decision that kills him because his human brain is unable to withstand the effects; he wants to understand the threat he and his friends face, but one suspects that he also really wants to find out what it would be like to have an IQ of 300. Ultimately, though, it is Dr. Morbius's hubris, his possessiveness of his science, and his fury at being balked that brings forth the most destructive powers of the ancient science. The machines and computers are only as good as the men who operate them, and both scientists who try to use them end up being destroyed by the fatal combination of technological strength and human weakness. In the end, the film's moral is a familiar one: there are some things that man is not meant to know, and some powers that man cannot be trusted to handle. The scientist is therefore suspect, because his work skirts the edges of these forbidden territories, always with the possibility that he might go too far.29
This possibility makes it clear that scientists must not be allowed to make decisions for the good of mankind, because he might have been corrupted by his science -- or by other ideas, subversive ideas, ideas of appeasement. Nowhere is this more apparent than in The Thing -- Howard Hawks's 1951 version, not the far bloodier John Carpenter interpretation. An alien spacecraft lands outside an Arctic military installation, and the occupant, a carnivorous vegetable-based humanoid -- the inevitable smart-mouthed reporter calls him a "super carrot" -- is accidentally let loose upon the base. Those present quickly split into two camps: the military men, whose outlook upon the situation is relentlessly practical, and the scientists, led by Dr. Arthur Carrington, who insists that the creature must be preserved for Science: "There are no enemies in science," he proclaims, "only phenomena to be studied." Even after the creature kills a few sled dogs and attacks the inhabitants of the installation, the doctor remains firm: "We owe it to the brain of our species to stand here and die... without destroying a source of wisdom." This type of collectivist pronouncement sounds decidedly Communist, especially by comparison with Captain Hendry's grim statement of purpose; when the reporter begs him to think of what their discovery means for the world, he staunchly replies, "I'm not working for the world. I'm working for the Air Force."
Whether or not Dr. Carrington is meant to be a Communist, he typifies the figure of the intellectual as appeaser -- a man whose impractical thirst for knowledge at any cost blinds him to the dangers of infiltration and attack. It had been less than a decade since the end of World War II, and the figure of the Appeaser loomed large; everyone knew the dangers of allowing an obvious threat to continue operating, and it seemed much safer in many science-fiction films to shoot first and ask questions later rather than risk another hostile takeover by trying to negotiate with monsters. By turning Carrington into the Appeaser, the film shows that the individual can be a danger to himself and those around him, and that he must be watched carefully -- he must be held accountable to society at large, in this case represented by the military. Carrington, with his effete, superior mannerisms and his rather suspicious fur hat, does not want to be responsible for the safety of the American people: "Knowledge is more important than life," he says, cementing his image as the cold, unfeeling scientist who has no sense of morality or decency and must be controlled lest he open the door for the invaders.30
Science occupies an extremely uneasy position in the culture of 1950s America, which was itself riddled with unease. Americans wanted to believe in the safety, security and superiority of their nation, but they feared that Communists might be powerful and insidious enough to overcome America's values and morals. They wanted the benefits of science, but they feared the destruction that might be lurking in top-secret laboratories. Conflicted, they struggled to reconcile their potent feelings of achievement and power with the equally potent night-terrors that came with living in an atomic age. The scientist, with his great power and knowledge, could represent any of these facets of America's relationship with science and society; he could be a kindly father figure, a Communist spy, a wild-eyed madman, or -- perhaps worst of all -- a man who has been given the privilege and position to control great forces but who is no less fallible than anyone else.
WORKS CITED
Text:
Hofstadter, Richard. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. New York: Knopf, 1963.
The Internet Movie Database. Accessed 27 May, 3 June 2004.
King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. New York: Berkley, 1981.
Lileks, James. "Microfilm Gallery: Old Ads Rescued from a Doomed Medium." Accessed 3 June 2004.
Luciano, Patrick, and Gary Coville. Smokin' Rockets: The Romance of Technology in American Film, Radio and Television, 1945-1962. Jefferson: McFarland, 2002.
Tietge, David J. Flash Effect: Science and the Rhetorical Origins of Cold War America. Athens: University Press, 2002.
Vieth, Errol. Screening Science: Contexts, Texts, and Science in Fifties Science Fiction Film. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2001.
Whitfield, Stephen. The Culture of the Cold War. 2nd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1996.
Film:
The Beast of Yucca Flats. Directed by Coleman Francis. 54 minutes. 1961.
Frankenstein. Directed by James Whale. 71 minutes. 1931.
Forbidden Planet. Directed by Fred M. Wilcox. 98 minutes. 1956.
Magnetic Monster. Directed by Curt Siodmak. 76 minutes. 1953.
The Right Stuff. Directed by Philip Kaufman. 193 minutes. 1983.
The Thing. Directed by Howard Hawks. 87 minutes. 1951.
NOTES:
1. Stephen King, Danse Macabre (New York: Berkley, 1981), 132-133.
2. King, 155-156.
3. King, 19.
4. Rid-Jid ironing board advertisement, 1957, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, reproduced in James Lileks, "Microform Gallery: Old Ads Rescued from a Doomed Medium," accessed 6/3/04 (this site has many fascinating sections on advertisement, art, and merchandising).
5. David J. Tietge, Flash Effect: Science and the Rhetorical Origins of Cold War America (Athens: University Press, 2002), 50.
6. Tietge, 117-119.
7. "Biggest Sphere for the Atomic Sub Engine," Life, December 15, 1952, 62-75, quoted in Tietge, 122-124.
8. The Right Stuff, dir. Philip Kaufman, 193 min., 1983.
9. Life, March 30, 1953, quoted in Tietge, 125.
10. Jacob Bronowski, The Common Sense of Science (Cambridge; Harvard, 1953), quoted in Patrick Lucanio and Gary Coville, Smokin' Rockets: The Romance of Technology in American Film, Radio and Television, 1945-1962 (Jefferson: McFarland, 2002), 5.
11. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Knopf, 1963), 9-13.
12. Luciano and Coville, 9-11.
13. Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1996), 181.
14. Errol Vieth, Screening Science: Contexts, Texts, and Science in Fifties Science Fiction Film (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2001), 161.
15. "Where the Money Goes," Scientific American 189.2 (August 1953), 40, quoted in Tietge, 50.
16. Oppenheimer, J. Robert, Scientific American 182.9 (September 1950), 21, quoted in Tietge, 46.
17. Gerard Piel, "Concerning H-Bomb Reactions," Scientific American 182.5 (May 1950), 26, quoted in Tietge, 53.
18. Louis N. Ridenour, "The Hydrogen Bomb," Scientific American 182.3 (March 1950), 11-15, quoted in Tietge, 68.
19. Hans A. Bethe, "The Hydrogen Bomb: II," Scientific American 182.4 (April , 1950), 21, quoted in Tietge, 73.
20. A common theme in Cold War lore, expressed of course in Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz.
21. Bethe, 21, quoted in Tietge, 74.
22. Anne Roe, "A Psychologist Examines 64 Eminent Scientists," Scientific American 187.5 (November 1952), 22, quoted in Tietge, 58.
23. Frankenstein, dir. James Whale, 71 min., 1931.
24. Drawing the line between science fiction and horror is perhaps more difficult during this time period than for any other in cinema. For the purposes of this paper, "science fiction" includes any movie with a substantial amount of running time devoted to talk of science, however flimsy that science might be.
25. This may be the second-longest film title ever (second to Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb); it is certainly the worst.
26. Magnetic Monster, dir. Curt Siodmak, 76 min., 1953.
27. Best known for his work in Plan 9 from Outer Space, where he played another bald, lumbering monster.
28. The Beast of Yucca Flats, dir. Coleman Francis, 54 min., 1961.
29. Forbidden Planet, dir. Fred M. Wilcox, 98 min, 1956.
30. The Thing, dir. Howard Hawks, 87 min., 1951.