by Herbert H. Stein
Some day you can tell your grandchildren (it might even be now) that there was a time (1956) when psychoanalysis was so prominent in the popular culture that it was used as the basis for the plot of a glossy, high budget science fiction film with flying saucers and a powerful humanoid robot. I’m referring to the film, Forbidden Planet, that brought us the tagline, “Monsters from the Id.” I can probably be justly accused of looking a gift horse in the mouth when I say that the filmmakers tended to confuse Freud’s first and second theories; but, that is a sin for which they should be forgiven since many of the psychoanalysts of the time probably fell into the same error. I also think that a closer examination of the film suggests that those “monsters” are multiply determined and perhaps even more terrible than they seem.
Before analyzing the monsters, it’s worthwhile going over some other interesting points about this relatively forgotten “sci-fi classic.” Gene Rodenderry reportedly took ideas from Forbidden Planet in his construction of Star Trek. A modern viewer will, in fact, feel very comfortable with the opening scenes onboard a flying saucer whose interior will easily remind us of the inner workings and crew of the Starship Enterprise. One notable exception, which is important for the plot of the film, is the absence of women aboard ship. In fact, although it will undoubtedly be common in the 23rd century, it would have seemed out of place in 1956 to have women aboard a military expeditionary ship. One little detail that Rodenderry may have co-opted directly is the presence of cylindrical compartments in which the men stand to be put into some form of alternate existence to help them tolerate the gravitational effects of slowing down from hyperdrive (from speeds well beyond the speed of light). Although these are not used to beam anyone down or up, they will also be familiar to the modern viewer.
This film was also a debut performance for “Robbie the Robot,” who went on to have a successful Hollywood career. He looks halfway between a mechanical man and an R2D2 type of robot, with rotating parts and fiery lines that we would associate with digital or wave imagery. Also of note, is that the film uses electronically produced music to create an odd otherworldly effect.
There are aspects of Forbidden Planet that betray broad ambition. It was unlike most, if not all, its science fiction predecessors in its budget and style. Internet sources, including Wikipedia and the IMDb website point out that until that time, science fiction films were low budget, in black and white, with ensemble actors. Science Fiction was primarily relegated to the “B” movie category.1
Forbidden Planet was made with a respectable budget. It was in color and presented in “cinemascope,” a wide screen effect. Perhaps more significantly, it featured Walter Pidgeon as Dr. Morbius and Ann Francis as his daughter, Altaira or Alta. Pidgeon was a very well known and well respected actor with classic theater skills and Ann Francis was a hot young starlet. We will also recognize the other male lead, Leslie Nielsen as Captain Adams, although I don’t think he was of the same stature as the other two at the time.
Perhaps of even more interest in terms of the film’s artistic ambitions is the fact, noted in several internet sites, that the plot was taken from Shakespeare’s, The Tempest. In fact, the Wikipedia article about the film states prominently that “The characters and setting were inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the plots are very similar.” It is easy to line up corresponding characters—Prospero/Morbius, Miranda/Altaira, Ariel/Robbie the Robot, Ferdinand/Captain Adams and Caliban/the Monster—but I would hardly say that the plots are similar. The Tempest takes place on an island under the control of a powerful magician, Prospero, who lives there with his beautiful daughter. Prospero causes a shipwreck, stranding a group of travelers (well known to Prospero) on the enchanted island. In Forbidden Planet, the island is an isolated planet (the fourth planet of the star Altair, or Altair 4) with an earth-like atmosphere and the magician is a scientist, whose magic rests on the powerful equipment left behind by a superior, extinct race, the Krell. Nevertheless, the plot details diverge from that point.
The film may have been based on The Tempest, but I think we could make a closer comparison with Oedipus Rex. For all the sci fi distractions and the somewhat wooden romance between Captain Adams (Nielsen) and Alta (Francis), this is the story of a powerful king (Pidgeon) who is aware of a terrible hidden murderer in his kingdom only to find that the murderer is himself. In fact, it is a particularly interesting variation on Oedpus Rex because here we see Oedipus not as a son but as a father caught up in much the same tragic dynamics with his daughter. For this purpose, Pidgeon plays his part beautifully until the very end, reciting his lines with a beautiful baritone voice and with elocution and pacing worthy of Shakespeare or Sophocles.
At the outset, Dr. Morbius (Pidgeon) makes his appearance as either a threatening presence or a prophet of doom as he warns the expeditionary force circling over his planet that they must turn away lest something terrible happen to them. Captain Adams has orders to explore the planet in order to find out what happened to the colonists who arrived on Altair 4 twenty years earlier. He is a simple straightforward man who obeys his orders.
Dr. Morbius reluctantly gives them landing coordinates and sends a high speed land transport device driven by Robbie the Robot. The robot conveys Morbius’s invitation to take their leaders, Captain Adams, Lieutenant Farman and Dr. Ostrow, to his home. His greeting to them could be from the classic theater.
“How ironic, that a simple scholar with no ambition beyond a modest measure of seclusion should out of a clear sky find himself besieged by an army of fellow creatures all grimly determined to be of service to him.” After Adams apologizes, saying, “We do have our orders,” Morbius continues, “But of course you will stay for lunch and do forgive the ill manners of an old recluse.”
Clearly he feels he must satisfy their curiosity, but if we pay close attention, we may hear signs of his ambivalence as he objects to the visit with subtle sarcasm while inviting them in for lunch. Since his objective should be to get them in and out, we might also wonder as he brags about his creation, the powerful robot that he “tinkered together in the first few months here,” opening the door for greater curiosity. But if we have any doubts about his ambivalence or the film’s underlying tension, we are given clearer evidence as he gives a demonstration of Robbie’s (and his own) peaceful nature.
Wishing to demonstrate that Robbie is not dangerous, Morbius has the robot point a blaster at Captain Adams and instructs him to shoot. Robbie’s circuits begin to sizzle as he cannot respond to the command, having been programmed with “his basic inhibitions against harming rational beings.”2 But as we see Robbie pointing the weapon at the captain, we are struck by the sense of menace conveyed under the guise of demonstrating an attitude of peace. We are being prepared for the presence of unconscious conflict.
In answer to their questions, Morbius explains that the members of the Bellerephon party all succumbed to some dark, incomprehensible planetary force that literally tore them limb from limb. “Only my wife and I were immune.” He attributes this immunity to their love for the planet and describes how heartbroken they were when the vote was taken to return to Earth. “How could we have foreseen the extinction of so many co-workers and friends?” He explains that his wife had died a few months later of natural causes.
In answer to questions about the strangeness of his never having seen further evidence of the force, Morbius answers ominously and with prescience, “Only in nightmares of those times, and yet always in my mind I seem to feel the creature is lurking somewhere close at hand, sly and irresistible and only waiting to be re-invoked for murder.”
As if in association to these last words, a new voice appears on the heels of his invoking “murder.” “Father, …” It is, of course, Alta, a beautiful young woman dressed provocatively and bearing an innocent smile for the men.
What follows could be taken for a typical interchange between a doting father and a sly teen who knows how to get around him.
“Alta, I specifically asked you not to join us for lunch!”
“But, Father, lunch is over. I’m sure you never said a word about not coming in for coffee. Did you or did you?”
It is obvious that Morbius didn’t want the men to know about his daughter, but curiously he has a pleasant smile on his face as she flirts with them.
“I’ve always so terribly wanted to meet a young man and now three of them at once. You’re lovely, Doctor. The two end ones are unbelievable.”
Alta’s presence immediately creates conflict amongst the officers. Lieutenant Farman flirts with her and warns her away from the captain, telling her that he’s notorious in seven planetary systems. When Morbius explains that his daughter has never seen a man other than himself, Doc Ostrow explains in kind that the young men on the ship have not seen a woman in over a year.
Despite Morbius’s attempts to keep Alta away from the ship, she circumvents him with the same childish tricks. “He told me to stay away from the ship, but he didn’t say how far away.” Just as Morbius appears to be unable to control Alta, Captain Adams implies that he cannot control his men. He catches Lieutenant Farman teaching Alta how to kiss, sends him away and angrily rebukes Alta for her scanty dress and for provoking his men. By the next scene, he is kissing her himself.
Now the pattern of violence escalates. A mysterious unseen force enters the ship and destroys an important piece of equipment. Knowing that this must be connected to Morbius, Captain Adams and Doc Ostrow go to confront him.
Hearing about the sabotage on the ship, Morbius decides to let the captain and the doctor in on his secret, leading them into his laboratory, a large room filled with strange devices and flashing lights and meters all around the walls. It is now that we learn that he has come upon the fantastic scientific achievements of a superior, extinct race, the Krell. Morbius shows them a pad (we would think of it as a large IPad or Kindle) from which he was able to learn the history and wisdom of the Krell. Another device attaches to the skull, allowing Morbius to use his mind to create from his thoughts a temporary sculpture of his daughter. When Adams wants to try to use it, Morbius warns him that when he first tried that, he was shocked into a coma for over a day, but woke up with a dramatic increase in his intelligence that had allowed him to begin to use and understand the Krell technology.
He takes them into, a giant atomic generating system 20 miles wide and 80 levels down, providing the potential for the enormous power of the Krell machinery. Morbius explains that the Krell had achieved fantastic heights to their civilization, living in a peaceful state for generations; but, as they approached some new level of achievement, something went wrong and the entire population was wiped out by some terrible, mysterious force.
While Captain Adams and Dr. Morbius argue over Adams’ plan to turn the Krell information and equipment over to the United Planets, a new invisible intruder enters the ship, this time bearing enough weight to bend the steps and create large footprints in the sand. This time a crew member is killed in the brutal style of the murders of the Bellerephon crew described by Morbius. As Morbius and the captain are talking, Alta runs in to say that she has had a frightening dream about something terrible attacking the ship.
Once again, there is violence attached to dreams. We are being led to the film’s psychoanalytic secret. The captain sets up a perimeter at night to fight off the unseen attacker. They wait as their radar picks up movement of a large force coming towards them, but still they see nothing. As the force approaches their perimeter, they begin to fire at it. The glow of the weapons fire meeting resistance outlines a terrible monster of no clearly definable shape, something like a cross between a large animal and a genie, which has no form of its own, and only takes form from the impact it has and reflects from its surroundings, unnatural footprints in the sand and shapes defined by the bouncing of the weapons fire. I have used this image in classes to try to describe the relationship of the drives to the ego, the drives having no form, only force that is given form by the ego that gives it expression through attempts at gratification and defense.
Now, we see glimpses of Morbius, asleep with his Krell machinery, the lights of the Krell apparatus flashing wildly. As he wakes up, the monster disappears. We now have enough to know what is happening and await only its elucidation in words. The captain and the doctor return to Morbius’s laboratory. While Captain Adams is comforting Alta, the doctor sneaks in and boosts his intelligence with the Krell equipment, throwing himself into a terminal state, but giving himself the enlightenment that escaped Morbius. As he lies dying, Doc Ostrow tells Captain Adams, “Morbius was too close to the problem. The Krell had completed the project. Big machine. No instrumentalities. True creation. But the Krell forgot one thing, monsters’s, John, monsters from the id.”
Doc Ostrow dies before he can explain the id to the captain. He must turn to an angry Morbius for an explanation. “Id, id, id, id. It’s an obsolete term3, I’m afraid once used to describe the elementary basis of the subconscious mind.”
Now the captain understands it all. The giant Krell machinery is designed to create and transport matter and energy throughout the planet under the control of the Krell mind. “Creation by mere thought. But like you, the Krell forgot one deadly danger, their own subconscious hate and lust for destruction. … And so those mindless beasts of the subconscious had access to a machine that could never be shut down. The secret devil of every soul on the planet all set free at once to loot and maim and take revenge, Morbius, and kill.”
Morbius laments, still unaware of the significance, “My poor Krell. After a million years of shining sanity, they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.”
Now, like an analyst, Adams must interpret Morbius’s resistance to the idea that his own subconscious has been committing the violent crimes that they had witnessed. As they hear the beast approaching them from outside, Alta clings to Adams.
Morbius: I feel sorry for you, young man.
Adams: Feel sorry for your daughter, Morbius.
Alta: It’s listening.
Morbius: Alta go into my study.
Adams: You still refuse to face the truth.
Morbius: What truth?
Adams: Morbius, that thing out there, it’s you.
Morbius: You’re insane. How else would you have led it here where Alta must see you torn to pieces?
Adams: You still think she’s immune? She’s joined herself to me, body and soul.
Alta: Yes, and whatever comes, forever.
Morbius: Say it’s a lie. Shout! Let it hear you out there. Tell it you don’t love this man.
Alta: Not even if I could.
Robbie can’t shoot at the force, prompting Adams to say, “It’s no use. He knows it’s your other self.” From a technical point of view, we might argue that Adams has committed an error, allowing Morbius to dissociate from his id by calling it “your other self.” On the other hand, he provides Morbius with just enough defense in this dissociation to allow him to accept that the monster comes from himself.
As Morbius, like Oedipus, finally recognizes the reality, he picks up on this language, crying that it’s his “evil self.” “Guilty, guilty! My evils self is at that door and I have no power to stop it.”
As the monster breaks through Krell metal to get at them, he finally puts himself in its path, saying “I deny you. I give you up.” As he is struck down, the beast disappears. Morbius tells Adams to turn some machinery that will set in motion the destruction of the planet.
This is the film’s psychoanalytic explanation, that the destructive force of the planet is coming from the mind of Morbius, an enraged father protecting his daughter and keeping her close and under his protection. The monster from the id, human rage and jealousy, has been turned upon its fellow men and finally itself.
I said earlier that I thought the filmmakers had, like some contemporaneous psychoanalysts, conflated and confused Freud’s two theories. The dialogue just described, while certainly capturing the general spirit of psychoanalytic, psychodynamic thinking, does equate the subconscious with the id. Obviously, most analysts now would argue that although the drives and their derivatives are largely unconscious, that there is much more that is unconscious. It’s also interesting that in this film, it is unconscious aggression and related affects, greed and envy, that are condemned as the monsters from the id, leaving out the role of unconscious sexuality, perhaps presaging some of today’s analytic theorists.
Like Oedipus, Morbius is aware of a terrible crime committed on his planet twenty years earlier, the death of his fellow colonists. Like Oedipus, Morbius, with much outside interpretation from Captain Adams, comes to realize that he was the murderer. But we have not exhausted Oedipus’s crime. Yes, he discovered that he was his father’s murderer, but that may have been his lesser crime. Oedipus also discovers that he has made love with his mother and that she bore his children. It is perhaps the act of incest that drives him to gouge his eyes, a brutal equivalent of castration.
One of the strangest and most important insights of Freud and of psychoanalysis is that our superego, our conscience is born in the cauldron of early childhood fantasy. It does not follow the pattern that it would take if constructed by a logical ethicist, leading to some very perplexing twists in which incest may be a more compelling crime than murder.
Morbius acknowledges no sexual crime. How could he in the relatively puritanical climate of film in 1956? Unlike Oedipus, he has not killed his father and certainly does not make love to his mother.
But the analogy holds if we flip the generational picture and look at those relationships from the point of view of Morbius as a father, in rivalry with his future son-in-law for the love of his daughter.4 That rivalry stands out in a brief dialogue between Alta and her father after the monster has attacked the camp, killing several men (including the first to kiss her, Lieutenant Farman).
Alta runs to her father screaming that she has had a terrible dream.
“There was blood and fire and thunder and something awful was moving in the middle of it. I could hear it roar and bellow.”
Morbius holds her in his arms and reassures her that a dream can’t hurt her.
She says, “Not me. Not us. The thing I saw was trying to break into camp. It was gonna kill … You’ll take care of him for me, won’t you father? You’ll protect him.”
He answers, “My darling, I’m completely helpless so long as he remains here so willfully.”
Alta knows who it is the monster wants to kill, even if she has not yet identified the monster with her father, and he implicitly understands who she means. It is also evident at this point, with unspoken words, that she has chosen Captain Adams as her lover.
Sexuality plays a big part in this film. It is the scantily clad Alta, the only woman in the film, who provokes conflict amongst the men. It is her appearance that reinvigorates the plot. I pointed out that her entrance comes just after Morbius has described his sense that the monster is still present, lurking in his dreams and waiting to strike again. In fact, we later see that she is the catalyst for unleashing that monster as Morbius presumably recognizes the men’s sexual attraction to his daughter.
Morbius appears to recognize that danger, initially warning Alta not to come to lunch with them and later warning her away from the ship. But he has no control over her as she thwarts him with her trick phrases, “But lunch is over; He didn’t say how far away.” This is cute, but it has to raise a question. If Morbius is so protective of his daughter as to unleash murderous rage, how is it that he is so lax in protecting her from masculine attention? We never see him angry or insistent with her.
It is not as if Morbius is incapable of righteous rage. When the captain and the doctor enter his study to find it empty, they begin to look at a set of hieroglyphs on his desk. Entering from an inside passage, Morbius admonishes them in a stentorian voice, “You’ll find the household silver in the dining room and my daughter’s jewelry on her dressing table.” (For some reason that particular phrase has stuck in my mind over the years.) Later, he will rail at the doctor for trying to boost his intelligence through the Krell equipment. Why can’t he control his daughter?
That is left to a surrogate. When Captain Adams finds his lieutenant, Farman “teaching” Alta how to kiss and hug, he sends him away and becomes infuriated. Alta is confused. She has never been spoken to this way, but she responds by trying to comply with his demand that she cover herself better, asking Robbie to make her a new dress that will cover everything.
Adams takes a parental tone with her, filling the gap left by her father. But we see through him, if not then, soon afterward. He sees her swimming and realizes she is nude. Turning his head away, he waits for her to come out and sees her in her new dress, which covers more, but is nevertheless quite sexy. Now, he kisses her and this time she responds in a way she didn’t with Farman. She responds to the man who approaches her in a more parental way. He, in turn, reveals that behind his angry reproaches about her behavior with his lieutenant is his own sexual attraction to her.
Is the film giving us a more acceptable model for the thin line between parental protection and parental attraction? There is some evidence for this in Morbius’s own anomalous reaction. Despite his stated concerns, he seems to be enjoying his daughter’s flirtatiousness in the opening scenes. He wears an indulgent smile. Is his inability to control Alta an inability to exert a moral force with his daughter or evidence of his deep ambivalence about her raging sexuality? Why does an adolescent girl living only with her father and some pet animals wear only miniskirts and sleeveless dresses? Whose sexual pleasure is aroused?
We never see direct evidence of Morbius’s sexual attraction to Alta, but the film presents us with an associative hint when Captain Adams appears to take on a parental role, scolding Alta and telling her to dress less provocatively, only to reveal that his remonstrance disguises and reveals his own sexual desire when we next see him kissing her.
Why does a father become so enraged at a man who covets his daughter? I’m reminded of a line from an old Ian and Sylvia song, “When he comes to call, her pa aint got no good word to say; that’s cause he was the same in his younger days.” It is not a leap to think that Morbius identifies with the men’s attraction to his daughter. In fact, it is a more acceptable form of his sexual feelings towards her. This would explain his indulgence as she first titillates them, but it turns to rage when the sexuality becomes more overt.
It brings us back to Morbius claim to being “a simple scholar with no ambition beyond a modest measure of seclusion.” He is not merely alone working in his study. He is inhabiting the planet with his own beautiful adolescent daughter. We might wonder about his wife’s death “of natural causes.” We are quickly turned away from any questioning of her death. Her untimely death, described in passing, is as convenient to the plot as the death of Oedipus’s father. Certainly her death allows us to imagine a planet on which a still virile looking Walter Pidgeon is living with a sexy, wide-eyed Ann Francis.
As the monster approaches them threateningly, the dynamics are brought as close to the surface as the censorship—Morbius’s and the film’s—will allow.
He tells Alta, “Say it’s a lie. Shout! Let it hear you out there. Tell it you don’t love this man.”
She answers, “Not even if I could.”
If Morbius identifies with the lascivious men, both in an understated pleasurable way at first, and in a more conflicted way when the kissing gets serious, and also projects his own sexual desires onto them, then his murderous rage, attributed so easily to the id alone takes on a new meaning, serving the superego as well. He attacks them as he would attack himself.
What’s more, the focus on aggression and the selfish, envious evil self disguises the more deeply buried source of guilt, one which could not pass the censorship of 1956, the guilt over his incestuous fantasies about his daughter. Unlike Oedipus, Morbius plea bargains, accepting his punishment for the psychologically lesser crime.
As Adams tries to convince Morbius of his conflict, he, too, emphasizes the murderous rage, saying that he turns the monster on his own daughter because she has defied him. That is true, but we can see it is a half truth, allowing him to come to terms with his aggression while still disguising the more frightening sexual fantasy.
Even the famous monsters from the id can serve a defensive function. The ultimate act of self destruction as Morbius puts himself in front of his own raging beast and then as he destroys the planet and himself serves the needs of a ferocious superego and the need to cover up the sexual nature of his fantasies.
Apparently the original title for the film script was “Deadly Planet.” It was changed to “Forbidden Planet” because that sounded better. Or, perhaps someone had a sense of something forbidden “lurking somewhere close at hand, sly and irresistible and only waiting to be re-invoked … .”
As the film ends, the planet explodes, and with it Morbius and the Krell machinery. Alta watches, conveniently and safely in the arms of Captain Adams, removed from the danger so terrible that even we the viewers can only glean it with our “subconscious minds.”
- I don’t know if the term “B” movie had this exact connotation, but keep in mind that in the ‘50’s, double features were common and the science fiction was often relegated to the second feature role.
- Science fiction aficionados of that era will recognize this as a basic rule of robotics created by Isaac Asimov.
- Apparently, he had read Brenner.
- The contemporaneous play, A View from the Bridge, recently revived on Broadway, has similar dynamics, but the protagonist in Morbius’s place is the girl’s uncle who has taken on the role of father.
Published originally in the PANY Bulletin, Spring, 2010 48:1.