I thought that the current “remake” of The Day the Earth Stood Still should occasion a look at the original science fiction classic. I had not seen it for many years, perhaps going back to childhood. It is the story of a man from space who comes to Earth to preach peace in the face of the nuclear arms race. It takes its title from a scene in which he stops all machinery on Earth for one half hour as a demonstration of his power. The film holds up surprisingly well, despite some flaws regarding the incredible naivete of the characters. In all, I found it to be as engrossing now as in 1951.
The story can be looked at from several perspectives: as a morality play on the evils of war and the arms race, as a religious parable, as a personal story of a fatherless family, and as a personification of a powerful unconscious fantasy that we all share.
The morality play on the evils of war and the arms race is the film’s surface. In 1951, Stalin was in power in Russia two years away from testing a hydrogen bomb, China had been taken by the Communists in a civil war about two years earlier and the Korean War was at its heaviest. In this context, when a flying saucer lands on the Washington mall, it is met with distrust, fear and outright hostility. In fact, one character knowingly hints that the ship is really from Russia.
We see the radio commentator and columnist, Drew Pearson1 expressing this atmosphere of fear in his attempt at reassurance.
“I am authorized to assure you so far that there is no reasonable cause for alarm. Rumors of invading armies and mass destruction are based on hysteria and are absolutely false. I repeat, they are absolutely false.”
Nonetheless, the ship is surrounded by heavily armed soldiers, one of whom fires on the spaceman soon after he emerges from the ship. The film clearly is intended to depict the spaceman, Klaatu, as a messenger of peace entering into a world which is heavily armed and discordant.
The religious parable is only faintly disguised. One version of a plot summary would go like this: A man comes to Earth from the heavens to deliver a message of peace to our leaders. Initially thwarted from having this meeting, he decides to roam amongst the people using the name “Carpenter”. During that time, he performs miracles and displays wonders of enlightenment, but is betrayed by an informer, tracked down and killed by soldiers and brought back to life so that he can give his message. In light of that description it is astounding that the film’s director, in a documentary accompanying the DVD, says that at the time he had no idea of the parallels with the biblical story of Jesus.
The personal story has to do with Klaatu’s interaction with a widowed mother, Helen Benson, and her son, Bobby, who looks to be about 10 years old. Klaatu has a dramatic effect on their lives, winning over first the son and then the mother, ultimately saving her from a potentially disastrous second marriage.
In any version, the story centers around Klaatu, played by the then young Michael Rennie. Other actors were considered for the role, but Michael Rennie was chosen specifically because as a young London stage actor, he was not familiar to American audiences, allowing him to be seen as a stranger. Rennie adds to that, adopting mannerisms, a bird-like turning of his head, that seem subtly non-human.
Klaatu is shown to us as kind, noble and intelligent compared to the frightened, angry, stupid people he encounters. As he steps out of his ship, Klaatu is eyed warily by the soldiers surrounding him. He raises a hand in greeting and says in perfect English, “We have come to visit you in peace and good will.” As he approaches and reaches for something from within his suit, the soldiers cock their guns. He pulls out a cylindrical object. When he clicks it, causing it to change shape, revealing spiky protuberances, one of the soldiers panics and shoots it out of his hand, knocking him to the ground and wounding him. At this point a large metallic robot emerges from the ship, scaring the crowd and the soldiers, and proceeds to use what we would now call a laser beam to dissolve the soldiers’ weapons, including a tank and a cannon. The spaceman says something to him in a foreign language, at which point the robot’s laser source (from a slit at eye level) darkens and is re-covered with a metal visor.
As Klaatu gets up and picks up the broken object, now looking like a child’s broken plastic toy, he says, “It was a gift for your President. With this he could have studied life on other planets.”
We can quibble that for all his superiority, Klaatu did a stupid thing, pointing and then clicking the device, but the effect is clear. We on Earth are primitive, impulsive and violent. We arrogantly attack a representative of a superior civilization with weapons that are easily overcome and in the process destroy a priceless and irreplaceable tool for knowledge and betterment.
This theme is continued when a frustrated, but patient Klaatu meets with a representative of the President. He wants a meeting set up with the leaders of all the world’s nations, but is told, “Our world at the moment is full of tensions and suspicions. In the present international situation, such a meeting would be quite impossible.” When told that the leaders would have to travel long distances, Klaatu retorts, “I traveled 250 million miles.”
The doctors treating Klaatu are in awe that he has the body of a 35 or 38 year old, but has told them he is 78 with a life expectancy of 130. One doctor asks the other, “How does he explain that?” The other answers. “He says their medicine is that much more advanced.” Ironically, as he says this he passes a cigarette to his colleague. “He was very nice about it, but he made me feel like a third-class witch doctor.” Another physician reports that Klaatu had cured his bullet wound with a salve he’d brought. He comments that he’ll take it downstairs to have it analyzed, “And I don’t know whether to just get drunk or give up the practice of medicine.”
Later, Klaatu shows off his superiority to Professor Barnhardt, an Einstein-like figure played by Sam Jaffe, known for his role as the venerable High Lama of Shangri-La in Lost Horizon. Klaatu introduces himself to the professor by solving a complicated mathematical problem he finds on Barhardt’s blackboard, explaining that the professor is on the wrong track.
Who is Klaatu? Is he Jesus, Einstein, Gandhi, God? His relationship with Helen Benson and her son, Bobby, suggests a different image, one which contains elements of all of these archetypes.
Even science fiction, political messages and religious parables require a human story to make them fully interesting to a live audience. Klaatu decides that he must get out amongst the people to understand them better so that he can deliver his message. He somehow escapes his locked hospital room, steals a set of clothes with a dry cleaning slip for a Major Carpenter and goes out into the streets of Washington.
Wandering in a strange city, Klaatu sees a boarding house with a room for rent. The occupants of the boarding house are focused on the TV console where a warning is being given that the alien from space is walking about the city. As Klaatu enters, his outline appearing in darkness, they turn to look at him fearfully, seeming to be relieved when the lights are turned on revealing a normal looking man, “Carpenter,” looking for a room. It is only on looking back that we can see a portent in this image of a dark side to the otherwise benevolent Klaatu.
At the boarding house, Klaatu immediately draws the interest of the young boy, Bobby Benson, who fantasizes openly that the newcomer is an FBI man looking for the space man, whom he imagines to be a fantastical unhuman-like figure. We learn quickly why Bobby would be eager for the friendship of this stranger. His father is dead and his mother’s suitor, Tom, appears to see Bobby as an unavoidable obstacle in his relationship with Bobby’s mother.
Tom calls on Helen Benson in the (presumably weekend) morning with plans for an outing in his car. She explains that she doesn’t have anyone at the boarding house to look after Bobby. The boarders all have plans of their own. Tom looks displeased with the idea of bringing Bobby with them. His interest is clearly in the mother, not the son.
At this point, Klaatu/Carpenter says that he has no plans and that “Bobby and I had a fine time yesterday afternoon. We talked and listened to the radio. I thought today he might show me around the city.” Stevens jumps on the offer and Mrs. Benson nervously agrees. When Klaatu goes up to ask Bobby, she asks Stevens if he thinks it’s all right. “Sure,” he answers confidently. (Can you imagine a mother today allowing her son to roam the city with a stranger, not to mention a space alien?)
The scene fades to Arlington National Cemetery. Bobby has taken Klaatu to see his father’s grave. The stone reads, “Robert Benson-Virginia-1st. Lieut. 45 INF 3 DIV WORLD WAR II-APRIL 10, 1916-JAN 29, 1944.” Bobby explains, “That’s my father. He was killed at Anzio.” Bobby’s father would have been 35 in 1951.
Judging from Bobby’s apparent age, his father died when he was three or four years old, but was presumably away in the army before that. Bobby immediately takes this stranger to see his father’s grave, and has clearly visited frequently himself. This gives us a context for his latching on to this strange but friendly man who looks to be about the same age as his father.
Mr. Carpenter is captivating to the boy. He is friendly and interested, yet intelligent and powerful to the limits of imagination. He carries diamonds in his pocket for change, offers complicated explanations about the spaceship. He even helps Bobby with his math homework. When they find the home of the “smartest man in the world,” Dr. Barnhardt, Capenter enters his study where he makes additions to the professor’s complicated blackboard calculations, telling Bobby that now the professor will be able to solve the problem in celestial mechanics that he’s been working on.
Bobby takes Carpenter to the Lincoln Memorial, where Klaatu is very impressed with the words on the monument, the Gettysburg Address, ending in “That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth.”
Carpenter says, “Those are great words. He must have been a great man. … That’s the kind of man that I’d like to talk to.” He asks Bobby, “Who’s the greatest man in America today?” Bobby says, “I don’t know. The spaceman I guess.”
In the context of the film, Bobby is right, of course. Klaatu is the greatest man in America, in the world. He is seemingly all knowing, fantastically powerful, kind and thoughtful, capable of solving the Earth’s problems or the problems of a boy who has lost his father.
Bobby is, of course, looking for his father and finds in “Carpenter” an idealized father. This is not necessarily the image of a father that we might expect from a 10 or 11 year old boy. He is the idealized father of the Oedipal period. But we can easily accept that this image of father would linger in fantasy for a boy who never knew his father and hadn’t grown up with a real father.
Carpenter is also recognized in this role by Tom Stevens, who wants to marry Bobby’s mother and soon sees Carpenter as a rival. When Tom arrives that evening and is told by Helen that she is a little late because she’s been talking with Mr. Carpenter, Tom retorts, “Well I hope Mr. Carpenter won’t mind my intruding.” A moment later he tells Helen that he’s tired of hearing about Mr. Carpenter and doesn’t like him attaching himself to her and Bobby.
There is, of course, another side to a boy’s fantasy of the Oedipal father. His power and imagined omniscience and omnipotence is a source of pride and comfort, but also a frightening danger. Bobby becomes curious when he sees Mr. Carpenter go out at night after borrowing a flashlight. He follows him to the spaceship where he sees Carpenter signal to the robot, awakening him. The robot, Gort, knocks out the two soldiers guarding the ship. Carpenter gives a verbal order to Gort, “Gort! Marenga,” and enters the ship. Bobby runs home to wait up for his mother and Tom to tell them what he has seen, telling them, “I like Mr. Carpenter, Mom. I’m kinda scared.” His mother tells him it was all a bad dream.
Moviegoers are somewhat familiar with the idealized image of father, exaggerated in this case, with enormous wisdom and power, a kind and powerful protector. But here we get a glimpse of the other side of father in a boy’s imagination, an awesome, dangerous figure whose anger must not be aroused.
We never see Bobby in the film again. Klaatu approaches Helen Benson the next day at work and while they are caught in an elevator during the blackout that Klaatu has created, he explains to her who he is and what he is doing here, making her his ally and convincing her to help him. From this point, it is not Bobby, but his mother who is Klaatu’s companion. Now, the world’s conflict has become the conflict of this family.
Tom discovers the truth as well by taking one of the diamonds to an expert where he finds out that there is no such diamond on Earth. In a dramatic confrontation that brings together the biblical parable with Tom as Judas and the personal drama in which Tom and Klaatu are in competition for Helen Benson, Helen pleads with Tom not to turn in Carpenter.
Tom: “He’s a menace to the whole world. It’s our duty to turn him in.”
Helen: “But he isn’t a menace. He told me why he came here.”
Tom: “He told you? Oh, don’t be silly honey, just because you like the guy. You realize of course what this would mean to us. I could write my own ticket. I’d be the biggest man in the country.”
Helen: “Is that what you’re thinking about?”
Tom: “Of course, someone’s got to get rid of him.”
He puts in a call to the general and Helen pleads, “Tom, you don’t know what you’re doing. It isn’t just you and Mr. Carpenter. The rest of the world is involved.”
Tom says, “I don’t care about the rest of the world. You’ll feel different when you see my picture in the papers.”
She tells him, “I feel different right now.”
Tom: “You wait and see. You’re gonna marry a big hero.”
Helen: “I’m not gonna marry anybody.”
In effect, Klaatu, acting in a sense on behalf of Bobby’s dead father, has saved Helen from a terrible marriage and Bobby from having a weak, self-centered step-father.
Now everything converges as the army closes in on Klaatu and Helen. They take a cab to the spaceship where he has arranged to meet with Professor Barnhardt and a group of leading scientists from around the world. As they see tanks and soldiers along their path, he tells her that he is worried about the giant robot, Gort. “I’m afraid of what he would do if anything should happen to me. There’s no limit to what he could do. He could destroy the Earth. If anything should happen to me, you must go to Gort. You must say these words, Klaatu Barada Nikto.” He has her repeat back to him, “Klaatu Barada Nikto,” and tells her, “You must remember those words.”
As anyone who has seen the film will attest, this is a powerful dramatic device. I have unclear memories of the film from childhood and other times I have seen it, but I do remember that I felt compelled to memorize these words as if the fate of the world depended upon it. If I could forget “Klaatu Barada Nikto,” so could she.2
Of course, she does not forget the words. Klaatu is caught by the soldiers and shot to death as he tries to run. A terrified Helen Benson runs to confront Gort, who has already begun to destroy the soldiers guarding him. She waits an agonizing moment, seemingly tongue tied as Gort opens his visor to destroy her, but finally says, “Gort! Klaatu, Barada Nikto,” which apparently means carry me into the spaceship, then find Klaatu in the building in which they’re holding his body and bring him back to the ship where you will set up a process to bring him back to life.
The revived Klaatu explains to her that his rebirth is temporary, but he does not know how long he will live. He then goes out of the ship, preceded by Gort, to deliver his message to the scientists. His tone is stern now.
“I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure. Now this does not mean giving up any freedom except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We of the other planets have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is of course the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war, free to pursue more profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned out cinder. Your choice is simple: Join us and live in peace or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.”
As he is about to get back into the ship, he turns to extend a friendly greeting to Helen Benson. The film ends as the space ship takes off into the heavens.
I believe that any biblical scholar will agree that this is no message from Jesus, despite the film’s allegorical quality. Rather, this is closer to the early God of the Israelites, a wrathful, demanding God.
We find ourselves on more familiar ground when we turn to the family story and its analytic insight. These are the stern, uncompromising words of the “paternal introject”, the violent and forbidding fantasy of the Oedipal father that is so key to what Freud calls “the dissolution of the Oedipus Complex.” He is armed with an 8 foot phallic robot capable of destroying anyone who disobeys his rules.
In essence, the film makers call upon a very basic unconscious image to enforce the peace, one that we all carry in us. In Klaatu, we have a perfect embodiment of the powerful image that forces us to adopt a conscience and an ego ideal. He is wise, all powerful, comforting and rewarding to us if we do good and a terrifying threat to us if we do wrong.
Even in his smile and greeting to Helen as he leaves, Klaatu embodies that Oedipal father who asserts his link with Bobby’s mother. The film focuses on prohibitions concerning aggression, but through the weak character of Tom Stevens, Helen’s suitor, we get a hint of the prohibitions against petty personal ambition, rivalry and sexual desires directed at the mother. Who would dare to compete with Klaatu armed with Gort? He would drive anyone to latency.
Klaatu’s rebirth reassures us that we cannot kill Father. More importantly, in Klaatu and Gort, we get a glimpse of the core of the superego, something we cope with every day of our lives, and a sense of how important it is to remember those three words that can tame the beast, “Klaatu Barada Nikto.”
- One of the perks of watching the film is seeing a series of commentators of the day reporting on the arrival of the object from space. In addition to Pearson, we see or hear Elmer Davis, H.V. Kaltenborn and Gabriel Heater.
2. In fact, until this latest viewing, I had thought the words were Klaatu Varada Nikto, pointing up the fragility of human existence. Can you imagine the cab moving through Washington with the army net closing in and Klaatu saying, “No, not Varada, Barada, “B” as in Barenga.
Published in the PANY Bulletin Spring, 2009