Science Fiction
SCIENCE FICTION
WATCH: Watch the Skies!
Polarity
Animalistic (horror)============Human================Robotic (sci fi)
While horror films deal with the idea of a human becoming more animalistic (i.e., The Wolf Man), science fictions films deal with the fear of becoming too efficient/rational Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) reflecting the feared results of a Communist takeover in which ‛normal’ feelings of democratic competition are replaced by the lifeless, ‛deadening’ equality of communism.
Sci-Fi emerged as a distinct genre in the 50s after its beginnings w. Melies, and adaptation of H.G. Welles’ novels by switching the emphasis from individual conflicts to global ones.
With the prospect of further war and the threat of nuclear holocaust came a widespread recognition that science and technology were able to affect the destiny of the entire human race (recall Al Stephenson’s talk w. his son re: atomic energy in Best Years of Our Lives), the modern sci-fi film began to take shape with an emphasis on nuclear catastrophe and space travel.
The common element was some form of world-threatening crisis produced by nuclear war or alien invasion.
The Thing (1951), which concerned coming to earth of dangerous creature from another galaxy, started phenomenally pop cycle of films about monsters and mutations produced by nuclear radiation or materialized from outer space which dominated the genre for ten years. Bordered on HORROR, though concerned w. the catastrophic impact of technology on civilization–an impact which means the end of evolution–while horror focuses upon the potential evil within the human heart. But monster films pose the specifically modern (i.e., postwar) problem of how human evil and tech COMBINE to threaten the existence of the race from WITHOUT, and therefore they seem to straddle the generic fence between sci-fi and horror.
By mid-decade MONSTER films were largely the province of exploitation producers.
YOUTH FILMS: By the end of the 1950’s, due to the post-war baby boom, over 75 percent of the film audience was under thirty years old. Movie theaters became palaces of subtle subversion (recall the ‛corrupting’ influence of films on youth debated during the nickelodeon era). Films like Rebel Without a Cause, The Wild One (1954,) and The Blackboard Jungle (1955) portrayed young people as disaffected outsiders, contemptuous of the System and its dull, hypocritical morality. Three of the most popular new stars–Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and James Dean–were commonly perceived as rebels. Dean was a popular symbol of misunderstood youth, struggling to define his identity in an adult world dominated by shallow, materialistic values.
Advent of ‘beach party’ & ‘biker’ films
WATCH: Clip from Rebel Without A Cause
Syndicate Films/ ANTI-RED ACTION THRILLERS:
1930s – Gangsters were replaced by Film Noir emphasis on the individual common man criminal. Dark crime films like Kiss of Death (1947) tended to concentrate on the individual criminal in his relationship to the underworld. Involved ‘fall guys’ and ‘spider women.’
In the paranoid 1950s – 50s the emphasis shifted from the individual wrongdoer to the existence of a nationwide criminal conspiracy commonly known as ‛the syndicate’ which was responsible for many social ills–murder, gambling, prostitution, narcotics, and labor racketeering (On the Waterfront). This was a also a reflection of the real “mafia” investigations of the early 50s)
Variation on this is the Anti-Red Action Thrillers: Criminal figure is a communist spy and syndicate is the ‛international communist conspiracy,’ but the traditional iconography of the gangster film is maintained. For example, Pick-Up on South Street (1953) (Central impulse of this subgenre preserved in the 007 espionage thrillers of the 60’s).
WATCH: Pickup on South Street trailer