Invasion of the Body Snatchers Essay

It was Jodi Dean who stated, “Narratives of abduction and conspiracy are uniquely influential in the current technological context, a context where information travels at the speed of light and everything is entertainment.”  She goes on to say, “Narratives of abduction reconfigure the present’s acceptance of passivity, suspicion, paranoia, and loss, as themselves, forms of action.”  Invasion of the Body Snatchers captivates this statement well.  It’s entertaining, it’s had two remakes, and it does display that element that conspiracy thrillers often portray.  The narrative of abduction in Invasion also covers every emotional element that combines conspiracy with gothic as well.  Between paranoia and the forbidden desires of the characters, it’s easy to argue that Invasion is a conspiracy thriller that brought to surface the issues the country had been facing through the original and the remakes.

                According to the US Census Bureau, the divorce rate of the United States hit an all-time high of 2.5 per thousand eligible citizens between the year 1950-1954. Glenda Riley reports that it rose most noticeably after World War II.  When soldiers returned home, marriages couldn’t with-stand the pressure of war-time stress and many marriages failed.  Some would say the World War II and the Korean War took a toll on institutional marriage.  Because it was very evident in a lot of American Cinema, through the elements of femme fatale, that women had taken over the role of their husbands while they were deployed and fighting the war; it was no surprise that marriages were threatened and losing to the battles of post-war households. 

                Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers was, in a sense, a satire on how the institution was threatened and also expressed fear and distrust of the dehumanizing and debilitating force of 1950s middle-class marriage and domesticity.  Because women were beginning to work outside the home and getting divorced, Invasion provided these pods that would dehumanize people of Santa Mira, which maintained stability and lack of emotion.  The two main characters, Becky Driscoll and town doctor, Miles Bennell, fall into a post-divorce romance as they team up to figure out the mystery of the disappearances of their neighbors and friends.  It is suggested in the beginning of the film that they are divorced when they talk about being in Reno.  Just like Johnny Cash and June Carter sang about going to Jackson, Mississippi to get married, it’s apparent that Reno was the place to get divorced. 

                When Becky and Miles part ways at Becky’s father’s hardware store, notice in the background the display in the window of household items such as coffee pots, flint-ware pots and pans, and a foreshadowing of events to come with the slip in of the bug spray, and how it sets these two characters up to be obviously different from the rest of the town already.  Becky is first introduced to us wearing a sleeveless dress with sparkling earrings, looking like she’s going out for a night on the town.  She’s best described as the Gothic heroine.  Elements that support this are; the consuming force, the inborn curse or innate flaw, the loss of self within traditional social relationships-and they terrorize Becky.

                Her role as the Gothic heroine develops more in the film as she teams up with Brenner to help solve the mystery of their friends and neighbor’s mysterious transformation from being human to becoming a vegetable.  Throughout the film, both Miles and Becky also develop symptoms of agency panic.  They’re paranoid about the changing town around them, they know people are being replaced by these pods of duplicates being planted around town and yet in the end the psychiatrists don’t believe Dr. Bennel’s story.    Jodi Dean states, “Taking [abductees] seriously, trusting the words of everyday people, now means allowing for the truth of alien abduction.”  Though at the end of invasion a police officer reports the same findings Dr. Bennel just described to the psychiatrist, we do not see how it plays out.  The movie cuts and ends at that very moment.  So the viewers are left wondering what will happen next.

                Actor Kevin McCarthy who played Miles Bennel in the 1956 film, makes a cameo appearance in the 1978 remake.  In the moment Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams are driving through San Francisco, Dr. Miles Bennel stumbles upon the car, screaming, “They’re coming!”  before staggering down the street and getting killed.   In this remake of Invasion, not only do we encounter the fate of the character from the previous film, but the story continues with Elizabeth Driscoll and Matthew Bennel.  They act as descendents of the original characters, carrying on their curse and inheriting the same symptoms of agency panic as the story continues to be told through them.  Elizabeth Driscoll also has a more active role in society as she works as a research analyst for the Department of Health and Services.  Rather than being divorced and living under the care of her father, she’s living out of wedlock with her boyfriend, Geoffrey. 

In the beginning of the remake, there is footage of floating molecules almost looking like different strands of genetic codes and DNA.  A wistful sound hushes among the floating particles and in the background there is the view of a planet.  This scene is almost a metaphor of the reproductive process as it looks like sperm meeting the egg; the Earth being the egg.  With this transition to planet Earth, the small plant pods attach themselves to trees, plants and grass, a very subtle invasion that happens without notice.  Again, suggestions of an American gothic can be applied to the remake as the painted ladies serve as the mansion that supposed to fulfill the gothic stage.  The elements of American gothic are projected on the characters.

Elizabeth is a key character in this film because she helps illustrate the lack of domesticity that women had during the 1970s because of Women’s Liberation.  In the original Becky is every domesticated and exudes the image of a television house wife like June Cleaver.  Even though she and Dr. Bennel weren’t married, in the scene at his house, they are both playing house and pretending to be married while she cooks for him.  In the 1978 version, Matthew Bennel is the one cooking for Elizabeth when she comes over to tell him about Geoffrey.  Yet he lures her into helping him cook dinner by assigning her to chop onions.  This plays on the overall aspect of the film where the invasion is trying to sustain human, marital behavior between a man and woman.  Jennifer Jenkins stated, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers both maintain the subtext of marriage and divorce as part of the Gothic apparatus of the film narratives.”  The roles in which Elizabeth and Matthew play in the film, portray of what the rest of society saw as a threat to marriage.  Living out of wedlock was growing more and more popular.  Dr. David Kibner [Nemoy] states, “People are stepping in and out of relationships too fast because they don’t want the responsibility.”  He goes on to say, “That’s why marriages are going to hell—the whole family unit is shot to hell.”  As we follow Dr. Kibner and Elizabeth as he continues his session with her, they stop in front of a display window of a furniture store.  Much like the display window in the original 1956, this gestures towards how the invasion of the plants that are trying to stabilize a sense of domesticity.  The dining set in the window is supposedly set up for a family, which supports Dr. Kibner’s argument earlier in the conversation when he stated that the family unit was shot to hell.  An empty dining set illustrates what he means.

                Because Elizabeth and Miles are involved in a romance that is based off infidelity, they pose as the reason for the invasion.  Elizabeth especially displays the symptoms of agency panic as she feels the entire city has changed overnight, and everywhere she runs people seem to be watching her, keeping an eye on her.  It’s as if they know she’s been unfaithful to her boyfriend or inhabits strong feelings for her co-worker, Matthew Bennel.  When Dr. Kipner finally captures her and Miles in the lab, with the help of her boyfriend Geoffrey, the strong connection Miles and Elizabeth share almost pose as a threat to the invaders as they try to put a stop to it. 

                The moment Elizabeth is changed at the end of the film could refer to the Mary Ann Doane article where it talks about The Stepford Wives and it states, “The Stepford Wives indicates a loss of the obsessive force of the signifying matrix of the machine-woman-as though its very banalisation could convince that there is no real threat involved, no reason for anxiety.”  As Dr. Kipner proposes as he’s giving her the drug, “Born into an untroubled world free of anxiety, fear, hate.”  As a side note he indicates that love no longer exists either.  And in the end, Elizabeth does become like one of the Stepford Wives, but only in a sense that she has no feelings.

                What’s ironic about the film is that the pods are planted all over the city and serve as a vehicle for people to be reborn and live a life without disruption or war.  Everything points to this phenomena, the fetal heartbeat heard over the digetic sound, the pods themselves are in the shape of a uterus, and the flowers blooming gesture towards the beginning of a new life.  Even when the two main characters are constantly running and hiding from the pods, the fact that they are constantly thirsty and drinking water points to a life reborn because water brings life. The ironic part is the dead skin, the bagpipes playing Amazing Grace at the ship scene, and the fact that all the bodies are being “disposed” through the garbage trucks, suggests the end of life.  The pods and the replicas of these humans aren’t performing a rebirth of the human population; they are driving it to extinction.    

                As a conspiracy thriller, the film gestures towards the fact that this California gothic addresses the beginning of industrialization and the end of an empire and the rise of the middle class.  In each film and remake, the city grows bigger and population affected is larger.  In the original film, the conspiracy seemed to be that the plants were taking over the small town of Santa Mira because the divorce rate was so high, and the pods were sent to stabilize the institution of marriage.  In the remake, the conspiracy was the same target, only this time it was on preserving the idea of settling down, rather than jumping from one relationship to the next as Elizabeth does in the film. 

                In conclusion, I discovered that both films run with a similar theme to Stepford Wives and in some aspects Coma.  There seems to be this underlying fear from those in higher power of change and a lot of it points to the fear of these feminist movements and how women have been able to gain equilibrium.  In both the original and the remake, there was also the older male who seemed to dominate and recruit the younger male population.  In the 1978 version, Dr. Kipner recruits both Geoffrey and Jack (Jeff Goldblum) in an effort to get Matthew and Elizabeth to give in to the invasion.  Also the tower of the church that shows up behind Matthew, also indicates how Church and State are collusive in keeping women down.

                So perhaps the film’s portrayal of a plant invasion, is a subtle reference to the agency panic that society feels towards the revolution of relationships among marriage and the family unit.  It was a threat.  And in a sense, it is true.  Marriage has gone to hell in the last thirty years and the family unit isn’t doing so great anymore either.  So while the invasion might serve to prevent distress from happening among humanity, it also is another symbol of an emotional and mental apocalypse and it isn’t just the sanctity of marriage at risk, it’s the sanctity of life.