Unclear and Present Danger - The Puppet Masters

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Happy New Year! In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watch “The Puppet Masters,” an adaptation of a 1951 Robert Heinlein novel that feels aimless in the absence of the original Cold War context. Jamelle and John discuss, among other things, the “Body Snatcher” genre, science fiction as a vehicle for allegory, and the war on drugs.Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieUnclearPodAnd join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more.

An unexpected guest has arrived. Something unusual was reported entering our atmosphere last night. And soon, everyone's life will be transformed because this guest isn't just visiting. Still moving. What the hell is that? A visitor, I presume. It's looking. We're a home.

The probe penetrates the brain while these hooks lock into the spinal column. Using us like puppets? We're being manipulated. They're capable of transmitting not just intelligence but memory. We're only human after home. Stop with them! Secure the building. One day, 4,000.

Two days, 16,000. Two weeks there would be... More than 250 billion. You can't move unless they let you. We've lost to town now. we've lost an army. Danny? They're using children?

Don't not think of them any longer as children. You can't scream until they make you. I warned you. You can't escape when the enemy is within you. Oh, I know it's really you. It's not. You know what to do. Donald Sutherland.

Get it off him, get it off. Welcome to Unclear and Pratern't a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write a substack newsletter called A Popular Front. I'm working on a book about American politics in the early 1990s. First, let me say, happy new year to everyone. We both hope you had a safe and enjoyable new year. And thank you for listening to the podcast for another year. If you are a longtime listener, if you're a new listener,

welcome to the podcast. I hope you stick around for as long as we're doing this. we were originally slated to discuss James Cameron's true lies, but it turns out that movie is not available for streaming, and it's even kind of difficult to find a DVD copy. There's no Blu-ray copies as far as I can tell. There's like a Spanish language line. It seems like the woke liberal bureaucrats have been trying to push that off the streaming services and censoring what that has to tell. That's right.

The cathedral is keeping true lies from you. It is kind of strange. It's not there. I couldn't figure out why. Especially because it was a huge hit. It's like a huge blockbuster. People still love it. Yeah.

I'm going to try to obtain some DVD copies off of eBay. Can I try my luck in there? So we'll eventually get the true lies. I'll get it from the New York Public Library, which is a very funny thing to get from the New York Public Library. But until then, we are going to the next movie on the Chronology. And that is the 1994 science fiction thriller, The Puppet Masters, directed by Stuart Ormay, as someone who I think is just a journeyman Hollywood director, and starring the great Donald Sutherland, as well as Eric Thal, Julie Warner, Keith David, and Yafat Kato, who's on the, he's on the poster as like starring Yafat Kato, but he's like in one scene. Yeah, they really did reduce his role to nothing. They were like, we need a guy in uniform to look like commanding for two minutes.

And it's like, well, you know, you can get you if I cut out if he does that pretty well. Here's a quick plot synopsis. The earth is invaded by alien parasites that ride on people's backs and control their minds. The tagline for the film is trust no one. The puppet masters is available to rent on iTunes and Amazon. It is about an hour and 40 minutes and it feels much longer than that. It feels very long. So long.

The movie was released on October 21st, 1994. So let's look at the New York Times front page for that day. Please take it away, John. Okay, I'm going to read the headlines slower because apparently I've been reading the headlines too fast and people can't understand them. In a shaken Tel Aviv, fear now rides the buses. Bombing fatal to 21 gives city a sense of vulnerability. Tel Aviv, October 20th. Isaac Razimor

had one overwhelming concern today as he rode down the street rode down the number five bus down Dizga Dizengoff Street, past the stores selling books and fashion boots and jewelry, past the fast food outlets, and passed the little makeshift shrine of candles and flowers, where at least

21 people died in a suicide bomber's attack on the same bus line on Wednesday. Fear, said the 29-year-old Razimor, who works, in the marketing section of a big bank. I feel fear. I'm sitting in this bus and I'm not sure

I'll get off again a lot. As you might imagine, this was during the beginning of the suicide bombing campaign in Israel. And this was, I believe, carried out by, I want to say, Hamas. And it was in the early 90s

a newer, newish tactic of Palestinian military. against Israel. Let's see what else is there to hear. Lawmakers face more close races than in decades. Democrats are in peril. Main question for parties is how deeply anti-Clinton sentiment will cut. With the election 19 days away, there are more neck-and-neck contests for House and Senate

races than there have been in decades. The situation of particular powerful Democrats who now hold three quarters of those seats three quarters wow you know i knew they were dominant for a long time but that's something nearly 70 of the fourth 35 house races and 10 of the 35 senate races are among those considered close to call and at least 50 more house races and 10 more senate seats are highly competitive it would take a net game of 40 seats for the republicans to win control of the house and seven for them take a seven and as we do know it happened uh this was the so-called republican revolution part of the story of how the Republican Party got to be the way it is now.

As you all know, Democrats dominated the House of Representatives for years and years and years. Newt Gingrich kind of famously engineered this populist upsurge of Republican anger that broke Democratic dominance of the House, and it looked like it was on the horizon here. Let's see what else we got here. Well, highly relevant to our interests, East Europe watches the bear where I leave. Moscow, October 20th, for nearly 50 years from the West German border to the Pacific Ocean, the Soviet Union ruled its imprisoned republics and satellites with brutal, calculated imperialism

backed by fearsome military strength. But when the Soviet regime began to evaporate five years ago and the biggest geopolitical event since the end of World War II, no one had planned for it, least of all Russia's small band of Democrats. For Russians, the humiliating collapse of their grand universe required almost instant redefination of their nationhood and the answer and the answer to two basic questions can Russia its former satellites and the members of its former empire live together as independent democratic and self-sufficient nations and what must Russia do to assure its neighbors and the rest of the world that it wants to do just that well as we know that all turned out to be okay um this is very interesting uh towards the the the bottom of the

the article, or the middle of the article. The Polish foreign minister, Andre Olaschowski, thinks that the West is too optimistic about Russia, choosing not to see the signals of imperial thinking. President Lech Walesa attacks inertia and desertion by the West for his willingness to postpone NATO expansion because of Russian opposition, instead inventing a palliative-like partnership for peace, a kind of associate status in NATO. There's no partnership yet, Mr. Walasa. There's Russia, which threatens the West, which is frighten. and us in the middle. This is obviously extremely interesting to read today

as in the midst of the war in Ukraine. And the question about whether, I mean, the point of view of Eastern European countries who were under Soviet domination and before that under the domination of the Russian Empire about the nature of Russia's relationship to its near abroad, as Russians call it, is, different in a lot of ways from the way people in the West and obviously people in the Russia

think about it. And this question of how much did the expansion of NATO was the provocative thing that made Russia kind of freak out and attack Ukraine or how much was the expansion of NATO the defensive move of these Eastern European countries against what they felt to be the kind of natural inclination of Russia. Russian governments to encroach on their territories. Still, you know, very much an open debate. You can all sort of guess where I fall on that debate. But it's very interesting to see this issue, the nucleus of this issue, 30 years ago.

Let's see what else we got here. Judge restricts Simpson coverage. Parts of the jury selection will be secret he rules. So the O.J. Simpson trial is starting, expressing concern the extraordinary publicity surrounding the O.J. Simpson murder trial could prejudice jurors. Judge Lance A. Edo of the Superior Court today barred the press from his courtroom for portions of the jury selection proceeding that he ruled would be conducted in secret. Well, and that ended the media circus that was the O.J. Simpson trial. Of course not. It was a huge media

extravaganza and spectacle. There was lots of politics of race. Questions about what was the appropriate role of the media and, you know, it was an interesting cultural moment. Anything catch your eye here in this front page, Chabelle? The headline about lawmakers facing more close races is interesting. Yeah. Just in terms of how unusual it is for like any house races to be all that competitive, even in this past election in 2022, there weren't that many competitive seats. Right.

Relative to the number of total seats. So that's just, it's interesting. I mean, I guess one real quick thing to say, I guess, for listeners, it's just like a little bit of political history. As you mentioned, John, right, the Democrats had this lock on the House of Representatives for more or less the entire 20th century, sort of a very strong lock on the House. That was in large part because of the Solid South, that the Republican Party up until the 1950s effectively didn't exist in the South.

There were very few Republican members of Congress from the South, no senators. It was a Democratic stronghold. And the thing about that is that even after the transition to the Republican Party in the South gets started, it gets kind of started in a real way in the 1950s with returning GIs, moving to new suburbs in the South, the rise of the Sun Belt, like that's kind of the real beginning of the shift. It accelerates, obviously, in the 60s with the Civil Rights Act and the Civil Rights Movement and the Republican Party's concerted effort to, in what I think Barry Goldwater said,

go hunting where the ducks are and appealing to southern whites on, you know, a combination of like just anti-black attitudes, but also anti-government attitudes sort of tied up in anti-black attitudes, et cetera, et cetera. But a lot of those changes are happening on the presidential level at first. What the 94 Republican Revolution is in a lot of ways, not entirely, but in a lot of ways, it is like the final culmination of a shift that had begun 40 years earlier, that with each successive presidential election, new cohorts of southern voters, white southern voters are becoming acculturated to voting for the Republican Party down ticket. And it just takes a while

for that to play itself through. And so, you know, by Reagan, obviously 1976, Jimmy Carter wins much of the White South. And that's kind of the last hurrah of that kind of formation, Democratic Coalition. And by Reagan, white southerners are voting for Republicans from President. presidential elections and beginning to vote for them in House and Senate elections as well. And it's not until, like, 94 marks the point where most white southerners are now voting for Republicans at the presidential level and at the congressional level. Interestingly enough, at the state legislative level, this takes a little more time to play itself out. So 2010 is kind of the year where it finally culminates there as well.

and like white southerners just vote uniformly for Republicans up and down the ticket. Interesting. These things take time to play out. And I think that's really underappreciated because in the sort of interregnums, there are always interesting coalitions happening, different kinds of political formations happening. Right. So, you know, Virginia elected first black governor, L. Douglas Wilder, in 89, right? So that's after H.W. Bush's big sweep.

But Wilder wins with like a decent amount of white support. And it's in part because he's a Democrat. And there are still like a lot of white southern voters in Virginia. You're like, you know, he's a Democrat. And I'm a Democrat. And they don't make necessarily connection between their politics in the federal level and the politics in the state level. And part of the story of American politics over the last 30 years is this nationalization of politics that people now don't make any distinctions between, generally speaking. You know, sometimes when the candidate is crazy enough, as we just saw, they'll react.

Generally speaking, people no longer make distinctions between who they're voting for for their delicate to the state house and who they're voting for for president. It's all kind of for Republicans, but for Republican, Democrats, Democrats. A lot of political issues are much more nationalized now than they once were. I know that the big cliche of politics is all politics is local, but it's the same thing where you see, like, Confederate flags and places where they really, like, had nothing to do with historically, like in the north and the west. It's like a lot of these cultural and political divides have become generalized nationally and are no longer like have to do with certain regional

interests or historical traditions. Yes. I mean, Confederate flags, southern rural identity is a really great example of this. It's kind of just become like general conservative identity. So you could live in, you know, the Columbus, Ohio metro area and listen to. to Nashville country music and drive a big pickup truck and maybe have like a Confederate flag decal or something like that despite having no cultural connection to the south. And being from Ohio, a northern state that was very notably not in the Confederacy. So yeah, it's actually it's actually a very interesting kind of dynamic. A great example. I mean, it's funny. And I'll move on to the movie, but kind of a good example is how there's been like this exodus of right

wing influencers to Austin into Nashville in particular. So I think Ben Shapiro has set up in Nashville. Matt Walsh, that guy's in Nashville. And it's very clear to me at least, attempting to kind of like claim that cultural space as their own as being a right wing cultural space. And in creating the idea that to be on the right culturally, is to, you know, embrace this version of the culture of the White South, which, of course, I mean, as a Southerner myself, the culture of the White South is, like, much more diverse than I think people give it credit for, much broader than people give it credit for, for good and ill, and the Nashville thing, that the pickup truck thing

is just, like, one aspect of it. So many people are not going to hear you say that. And, and it's just so sad because you get called, you know, a race baiter and a racist. And here you are in our podcast saying nice things about white senators. You're just like, oh, it's much more complicated. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't even think people really know that I'm a Southern or I don't have an accent or anything. Right, right, right, right.

I think a lot of people think I live in Virginia just because, like, you know, I ended up here for whatever. But, like, I'm from Virginia and my family is all from down south. But whatever. It is what it is. Yeah. Okay, so the puppet masters, a bad movie, some quick background. It is an adaptation of a 1951 novel by Robert Heinleyn. Robert Heinleyn, famous for two particular novels, Strangers in a Strange Land,

which is the, I mean, the good one. And Starship Troopers, which is a good novel, but also, you know, kind of fascist. And we'll talk about Starship Troopers when we cover that movie at a later date. In Heinlein's novel, it takes place in the future, 2007, where there's space travel and mankind is sort of like out in the stars. And in it, American Secret Agents battle these parasitic aliens. Despite this big difference in setting, the movie, as far as I can tell, this movie adaptation appears pretty faithful to that original source material. with most of the changes and simplifications really made to fit its present-day setting. And then what I have to imagine are just like budgetary concerns since this movie,

this is very clearly filmed on a couple sets and not that expensive. No, it's a B-movie. Yeah, it is a B-movie, yes. What's interesting to me about this is that Highland's book proceeds Jack Finney's novel, The Body Snackers, by three years. The Body Snackers is published in 1954. But the movie, its first adaptation, the invasion of the body snatchers comes out in 1956.

So it seems like the body snatchers really eclipsed the puppet masters in terms of sort of its like cultural impact very soon, very quickly. And the body snatchers has been remade three times. I actually did not know it's been remade three times. There was a 78 remake, which I've seen, a remake in 1993 and a remake in 2007. And I'm half tempted to say that at some point we should just do like a big. Patreon main feed Body Snatchers Month where we're just like watch all four of these because I'm actually kind of curious and we'll get into this when we talk about this film. I'm kind of curious

how the body snatchers concept plays out outside the context of the Cold War. As for the main players in the film, Donald Sutherland, I feel like needs no introduction, one of the great character actors of the last 50 years, mainstay of all kinds of really terrific genre work. My favorite role of his is in Kluat, the Alan Pakula movie. He is also the star of the 1973 remake of the Body Snatchers. And they clearly had fun with casting here because Keith David, who's also in the film, is one of the leads of John Carpenter's The Thing, Remake of the 1951 film, The Thing from Another World, adapted from a 1938 novella who goes there. And another film about, right,

like aliens, mimicking people, taking over people, that kind of thing. I don't know a ton about Julie Warner and Eric Thal Eric Thal who looks I mean I'm sure he's a wonderful man I don't know whatever he looks kind of like a pay less brand Christian Slater It's very true But they're fine you know The fine actor is I don't know The problem with the movie is it's just kind of

It's like it's a B movie but like it takes itself a little bit too seriously and tries to like do too much. There's this whole romantic subplot and you don't really need that. You can cut that and just have it be a straightforward sci-fi thriller with some like, you know, sexual tension to spice it up a little bit. And you could easily cut 20 minutes off the film

and kind of a big problem with the movie if you decide to watch it, which I'm kind of like you don't need to necessarily. If you decide to watch this movie, the big problem is that after like an hour and 15 minutes, it's like, oh, well, the movie's over. And then you look and it's like you have like 30 minutes left to go.

It takes forever. There's like two closing scenes. You know, they get to the fucking nest or mothership of the things and then they find another one. It's just, yeah, anyway. Yeah. And so the premise of the movie, to move to move to the discussion proper, the premise of the movie is that this race of alien parasites lands in Des Moines, Iowa or outside

Des Moines, Iowa, and like promptly begins kind of assimilating that the locals, some government scientists, secret agent types, show up to investigate. They realize what's happening. They capture a specimen. They bring it back to Washington. And then basically the alien organism, which is like a singular organism with many parts, is attempting to assimilate as many people as it can and prepare to take over the entire United States and our interpret heroes have to stop it. There's not really that much more to where you can kind of imagine all the beats the film has. It's not as It's like, it's a problem and it's going to be, it's impossible not to compare it to at least the 56 and 78 body snatchers movies.

It's not as sloppy as the 56 version and not as like nihistic as the 1978 version. And so it's just sort of like, I don't know, what's the reason for this? And to return to a point I just made, it's actually kind of hard to figure out the point of a movie like this outside the context of the Cold War because the whole war. whole the whole um conceit of both highland's novel and finney's novel and certainly the 56 body snatchers is anti-communist paranoia right sort of like anyone could be a communist you'll never know who they are they're a different kind of person they're scary they're subversive that's where that's what it's playing on this fear of uh secret invasion that you can't that by the

time you notice it, it's already too late. Right. They live also has got that sort of, you know, there's an evil parasitic race living among us thing going on. But that makes it kind of more socially critical than anti-communist or paranoid. But I know what you mean. And I think that the movie ends up being very weird about the types of social, um, pathologies or issues that it's kind of responding to. The novel I read about it because it was interested in what it had to say, and it came out right in the middle of the Second Red Scare, right during McCarthyism, the idea that, you know, there were infiltrating groups of subversives that would take over the government was a very raw issue. And, you know, basically the solution is

that this secret section of the of the CIA that that sort of like runs the government unelected and is run by this stern authoritarian figure, literally a father figure as he is in the movie. As with a lot of Heinlein's stuff, like it may look dystopian to to on first examine, but then you realize that he has an ambivalent to celebratory attitude towards some of these like things that look, you know, on first blush, like, oh, this is describing some horrible future state. He's like, no, he believes in the necessity or desirability of some of these things. But in a way, you know, the idea that there was kind of like a deep state during the Cold War

that was not democratically accountable, not entirely wrong. Some say that it still exists, but we'll leave that alone for the time being. The question is, like, what is the, threat, right? In the absence of communism. And weirdly enough, like, okay, this movie, like, can't really name it. So what are the aliens trying to do? In the first place, they want to take over because that's just the way they are. They're parasites. That's like they, that's how they need to live. But there's something attractive about, like, being under the, on the, there's something enjoyable or relieving about being under attack by one of these parasites, right? You feel less lonely, right?

That's like all the characters who get attacked by these. And it creates a feeling of being part of a mass. It destroys individualism, which I mean are, you know, fears that came out of anti-communism for sure. And I think the idea, which was a, there was a big fear of loneliness. I mean, it's a huge problem still. But in the 90s, this was a big, was discussed. There was a big fear of loneliness. And what this is proposing.

And then there's big things are, a big deal is made about the fact that these aliens reproduce asexually, right? They don't require a man and a woman. They don't, they only are one organism. There's no sexual difference between them. And I think that I want to say that there's like some gender paranoia about this movie. Not exactly gender paranoia, but there's something about, we see in a lot of these movies like the new office politics where for men and women are more on equal level there's you know sexual harassment are present in a lot of the movies from

this era and I think that this movie is very concerned about what happens when there's not enough differentiation between the sexes and like what will romance and sexuality and how will people get into couples and so on and so forth? How will we even reproduce? I think that's kind of the—I don't think anyone who was working on this movie was necessarily conscious of it, but I think that's one animating thing about this movie. And there's a weird, like, edible thing going on with the protagonist. His father is the stern father figure, is the person who's hyper-competent. He's the only person who understands how to fit. anything. He's really in charge of the government. The president is kind of a fool. And he's,

you know, he takes care of everything. He's super smart. He's authoritative. And the sun is not quite as bright or not, is a little bit, in the broadest sense of the term, not quite as potent as the father, let's say, even though he's younger. In the father, Donald Sutherland, the movie ends up and you say oh well the big fear is if the father gets infected by this thing it's all over because this is the only truly competent individual right he does get infected and the son kills him and that breaks the spell like that's the last straw and the whole thing is that like the edible conflict ends he kills the father and by killing the father he's able to actually begin the sexual relationship with this woman the woman all

knows everything about him because she somehow melded with these creatures. They both, everybody's been touched by these creatures in some way. So she has like, she doesn't even need to know. She had some insight into him, which she jokes, oh, well, now, it'll be, you know, takes so long for men to open up, but I know I know everything about you. So what are these creatures and what do they represent? I think that they kind of represent, they weirdly represent therapeutic, like where communism was wants a fear. It's now like a therapeutic society where all differences are, everyone, you know,

opens up to each other. She says, I could hear everybody's thoughts and feelings. And, you know, all the, the hard differences between people, individualism, which makes other people desirable or interesting on some way has been removed. So I think it's kind of a fear of a therapeutic society or a society without real individuality and difference, which a lot of conservatives, but a lot of people on the left also have worried about, you know, as society becomes more medicalized and so on and so forth. Yeah. So they're not really, you know, a lot of parasite-type things yet. There's a clear political enemy that's being associated with them. And this is like just a, they're so psych, I just got all these like weird psychoanalytic vibes. It's like,

This is like some kind of weird other way of relating that's not, that's like pathological. And you have to go through the proper, like, edible, you know, way to get back into, like, a normal sexual relationship. All right. Yeah. I mean, so just on that, on that, on that point. So Eric Thaw's character doesn't actually kill Donald's character. He shoots him and interests him. And this actually, I think, bolsters your point.

When Donald Sutherland is being moved into the ambulance, he says to him and the woman, you can go have fun now. Yeah, exactly. He like endorses, the father endorses like the enjoyment of the kids. Like, oh, yeah. And there's a weird, there's a weird incest thing at the beginning because on the one, because because at the beginning there, the father gives the covers. I didn't even understand that it was the literal father. of the Secret Service agent, he says to him, oh, this is your, the cover story is this is your sister, right?

And they begin flirting on this basis. He says, oh, where has my sister been all my life? So there's some, like, there's a very strange psychosexual stuff going on in this movie, which is, you know, which I think we've, we've touched on so far. But, and also, like, one funny plot point we both talked about is like the aliens are not sexually interested. the aliens don't notice women like the the um the main the the female protagonist uh she says she immediately knows there's something wrong with people possessed by the the aliens because they don't stare they don't they're not sexually interested in her right which is yeah so like these

the asexuality of the aliens is like they're their big tell and their big problem like they live in a world of no, there's no, there's only one of them. They don't reproduce. There's no individuals. And I think that that's like the, the fear of a sexless world, a fear of a sterile and sexless world, which at the same time, there's lots of fear of bodily invasion and, you know, stuff that comes along with these things literally being parasites. So I think that that's kind of the underlying paranoia, which I'm sure is underlying paranoia. I mean, if you were a psychoanalyst, you'd say, well, that probably underlies a political paranoia.

But this is like, oh, postmodernity, post-hist history, we don't have any political enemy anymore. So now all we have is like the sheer anxiety of like what happens in the absence of various taboos breaking down or normal sexual relationships breaking down between men and women, men and women's gender roles, all these anxieties are still with us today. But I think that this movie, in the absence of politics,

goes directly to Oedipus Complex or something like that. I don't know. Right. I mean, it's interesting. You mentioned they live earlier, and they live comes out in 84, 84, 80, maybe no, maybe it is 86?

It's like mid-80s. It's height of Reaganism is when they live comes out. And so it's a twist on this idea, on the story of body snatchers or invisible threat or secret invaders, But the way Carpenter takes the approach is to focus it on sort of like the insidious conformity and materialism of the age. That that's sort of the threat to individuality. That's the threat to self-knowledge or what have you.

It is becoming infected, so to speak, by the desire for material gain above all other things. And here, here, I mean, it's sort of, I doubt anyone in the writer's room was thinking this deeply, but here in an age where, you know, America triumphed, triumphant over communism, right? Sort of like capitalism isn't sort of the villain. Can't be the villain because it just won. And so you have, you're turned towards these other forces, still internal forces, worries about the ability of society to maintain the friction and conflict necessary to, you know, do great things. I think it's interesting just to kind of pick up on this like this fear of a therapeutic society.

I think it's interesting that the removal of the parasite is portrayed as akin to drug withdrawal. Yeah. To the symptoms of addiction withdrawal. And so the great Richard Belzer is in this movie. as a security guy. And Richard Belser is like the first of kind of the government cast to be, I guess, infected by the parasite. I guess you're infected by a parasite. To be infected by the parasite.

And when it's removed, he commits suicide because he just can't stand not being connected to the whole. And there's actually the one genuinely interesting scene in this movie is when Eric Thal's character has his parasite's just been removed. He's infected and it's removed. And he's, like, in the shower and, like, having withdrawal symptoms. And the female lead, Julie Thomas, comes to comfort him as he's, like, suffering through withdrawal symptoms.

And I feel like the thought I had is there something there about sort of how there is, I mean, we're kind of height of the drug war in American politics. the over the summer, President Clinton had just signed the crime bill, the big omnibus crime bill aimed at sort of drug-related violence and drug distribution and all that kind of thing. We've already covered the movie on the podcast, but I think around the same time here, clear and present danger comes out, a movie about kind of American attempts to stop the drug trade. And so I think there might be there. And here is where I think made.

the screenwriters may have had this in mind explicitly, sort of this fear among Americans of, um, of the, of illegal drugs and of sort of like the allure of illegal drugs, right? The allure of illegal drugs of, of, of cocaine, of crack, of hair, and whatever is, they provide you this feeling of euphoria. They provide you this feeling, um, uh, if you're in a community of addicts, like a belonging. Um, and then what you sacrifice, for that is essentially your life. You are left, a hollow shell of a person. Keith David's character refers to the condition of being infected by parasites,

being trapped within your own body, which is language you can hear from people who are former addicts, the sense that they are being, they can see what they're doing, but they're sort of a compulsion that they have no control over. I don't know. I think part of this can be read, red scene in the context of not just like American panic over the spread and riots of legal drug use, but sort of like the very real psychological conditions attached to drug use. and the things that drug use has been, the way with drug use has been used to sort of fulfill people

to kind of, you know, make up for the loneliness, find some way to close that hole. And I kind of think this movie is sort of like, on a very, very dumb level, keyed into some of that. Yes. I think there's a relationship between what we're talking about. I think because of the way that it's often put

drugs are kind of like either over sexual like it screws up the proper relationship to sexuality right so it either over sexualizes you or it makes you impotent and not interested in sex etc etc so i think that that's the other fear as like oh well oh no well if there's a if if if people find a i mean you see this a lot in it right now with this kind of reverse moral pain you know it used to be the people thought teenagers, teenagers having sex was a big danger to society and so and so forth. Now, conservatives even are worried that teenagers are not interested in sex, right? They found alternatives to sex and they're becoming kind of impotent and, you know, sapped of their vital spirit by this and we should worry about reproduction, et cetera. There's a, there's a, I'm just,

I'm just so upset that Johnny and Cindy aren't just trying to get it wet anymore. Right. exactly. And it's interesting, but it's, but it's, but it makes sense because, um, I think there always is a concern, especially among conservatives that like the proper amount of sex is not being hot. It's either too much or too little, right? And that's just a function of the fact that, you know, again, speaking from psychoanalytic perspective, there's no actual right quantity of these sorts of things. Like there's something fundamentally disturbing about the way we are disturbed or traumatic about the way we relate to these things so no matter what it will seem excessive or screwy in some sense and i think that this movie is very paranoid about

the um about both the possibility that people will find some kind of um way of being together that's asexual and will destroy the sexual relationship but it's also kind of like these beings are also using seduction like the woman when she gets taken over by the being tries to use seduction on the man to like get to so the parasite can reproduce I don't know through him somehow of course like you would expect a movie to have a scene like that for for good reason and she says to him like in this kind of classic male fear moment okay they're about to sleep together. And then he says, well, no, this is not what I really want. And she says, well, didn't you always want to be with me? Kind of the implication being like, oh, you know,

women will pretend that they just want to sleep with you, but they're actually always trying to meld on to you. They're the parasite, you know, they're always trying to create a family or some kind of deeper bond, so on and so forth. So yeah, it's, I think that this movie's just like full of stag, standard, bog standard anxieties. about male-female relationships, sexual relationships, reproduction, what that all means, and implication is they're always out of joint. And also the fear, I think, that's hugely wrapped up with all of these and the end of the Cold War in post-modernity or post-hist history, what you will call it, it's like the end of

a kind of male father authority figure that sort of authorizes and controls all. these things, a person like Donald Sutherland or in other movies, I don't know, it might be Clint Eastwood or something like that. So this kind of stern authoritative father figure, like, well, what do we do if something happens to them or they're no, they, this movie kind of suggests, okay, well, they go into the ambulance and they say everything is fine and they give their imprimatur on everything that's happening and it's going to be okay. So, yeah, I think that that's what's going on with this movie. Is that political?

I guess it's subpolitical, pre-political? I don't know. I mean, it's, I think it's sub-political, but you can see some of this emerge in the politics of the 1990s. We've talked about this before, but sort of so much of the cultural critique of Bill Clinton was that he was soft, right? That he's this soft. And also too sexual, but not virile and not masculine, but too, but too, but. out of control. Yeah.

Right. Right. Out of control, sexuality, dominated by his wife, right? Like an inversion of traditional gender roles. And this was tied up. I mean, I was trying to do a quick Google search to see if I can find any of this stuff. But there was very much a, you know, discourse in the 90s of kind of like the Therapides liberalism.

Yeah. Sort of like a liberalism primarily concerned with, internal, you know, not just like the internal state of individuals, but in kind of smoothing over the bumpy, the rough patches for integration into like, you know, our market society or whatnot. That's very much, I think, at this question of these. I'm even thinking now about how when I was in high school, which would have been the 2000s, how, you know, the sequence in like English, right, in your English classes was you read 1984 and Brave New World together. And at least for me

in my English class, in my English class, in which I read those, it was almost like portrayed as kind of like, well, these are like these are like left and right totalitarianism, right? Sort of like 1984, you know, sort of authoritarian, you know, rigid state. And then Brave New World sort of like a medicalized totalitarianism and I think this preoccupation with the latter or this concern with the latter was like very much a part of 90s politics like made it made its way into political political discourse I'm sure if I spent time on it right you could find a Rush Limbaugh monologue

about this exact stuff right you could find a Michael Savage monologue you could find Newt Gingrich railing on about it, about sort of like the softness of American liberalism and, you know, maybe of the modern American man. That is a particular discourse that is common in the present, just sort of like masculinity doesn't exist anymore. There aren't, you know, real men anymore. Today, men want to wear dresses and not want to go to war, that kind of thing. It's very much a part of our contemporary politics. But I think, I think this movie, movie is, to your point, it's like, it's, it's, it is, however consciously channeling some of that stuff into this particular depiction of the body snatchers. And maybe, you know, in the absence of,

because as far as I can tell, this adaptation is attempting to be as straight as possible. So in the absence of really being keyed into like the anti-communist paranoia of the 1950s, and not having really any other take, right? Like the, this isn't, this movie, of course, is not an adaptation of the body snatchers, but sort of, it's in that, it's in this genre. And so the 73 or 78 body snatchers film, its take was that this was essentially irresistible, that like everyone was eventually going to be consumed by the body snatchers because they are unstoppable.

And that nihilism, even if it doesn't have any specific political content, like is very much part of the nihilism of the 1970s, of the sense that like institutions are broken down, that this is a failing society in some way, shape, or form. But in the absence of any kind of political content, whether it is the content that was present in the original story, whether it's the content present in kind of variations on the theme, like they live. Um, they're just, because it's just a straight adaptation, I think it allows some of this stuff that's just kind of ambient in the culture and in the politics to like kind of, uh, to soak in, to soak through, even if it's not intended necessarily. Um, it's there. Uh, because that's what the writers are soaking in, right? That's what the writers are existing in. Um, especially writers who are almost certainly in Los Angeles, which is, kind of the, you know, we've talked about how Boston is sort of like the, uh, the, uh, the avatar of a certain kind of like white working class authenticity in this period. L.A., like the avatar of kind of like a woo liberalism, even today. That's what, and it's when people think of that, they think of Los Angeles. Um, and so I'm sure that at the very least, the aspects of this film that are about kind of like the, the desire for,

community through conformity of sort of like, you know, being, being part of this great hole that, you know, makes you no longer feel lonely and provides some sort of like ecstasy and and fulfillment. I'm sure writers are drawing on sort of like some of this, the cultural stuff coming out of Los Angeles. Absolutely. Among, among white liberal Los Angeles in this period, Hollywood specifically. And I think that it's not even all liberal. I mean, it was a real hotbed of strange religious movements, Los Angeles, which are always have been, always has been worth saying. American Pentecostalism has its origins in Southern California. And of course Scientology, which is sort of the sci-fi religion, and Heinlein and Hubbard were friends.

How to express this? There's a vulgarized approach to metaphysical questions. that um that scientology kind of takes that slightly mixing well literally mixing the conceits of science with with you know the ideas of religion which i think is present also in highlands and a lot of dystopian or science fiction world is that you know the belief that some sort of scientific technology some sort of technological change some creature could directly answer these existential and metaphysical questions, right? Which is a very American idea in a way that, you know, some material advance that we will come up with. We'll either encounter something out in the wilderness that's scary for us, some physical danger or, or we will develop some kind of technology that fundamentally can solve these deep issues.

itself might be a threat, you know. And it's interesting, a lot of American religious traditions are either very physical rather than being metaph- like Mormonism is very, like, you know, God has like a physical being, is not like a non-physical presence. Or they're, or like Mary Baker-Eddy's Christian science, again, a mixture of science and religion, is addressed directly to health problems and the belief that if you change your mental attitude, you know, it will have material effects and so on and so forth. So there's a weird, I find it distasteful for whatever reason. I don't know that that's necessarily a view that other people have to hold, but I happen to think that, you know, my tastes usually are a sign of what's correct. So, but I think about this

combination of of the metaphysical and the and the and the material right and this movie i think is it finds there's something to be something threatening about that as well or weird about that that you know but it sort of assumes that uh there's some way through uh some parasite or some physical thing that could that would you know on the one hand pray on us on the other hand, answer questions of existence or make it easier for us to live, take away the strain of existence. A lot of this is like the American search for a kind of a shortcut or a simple synthesis that, you know, the self-help version of, you know, difficult, philosophical or religious

ideas, right? You can read it and you can read it quickly. You get the ideas and then put it into practice, right? I'm just thinking a little more about American religious traditions, and specifically the homegrown ones. And I think you are right to say that there is this melding of the physical and the spiritual. I mentioned Pentecostalism earlier. In part of the witness in Pentecostalism, you know, part of how you know that you've been possessed by the Holy Spirit is the performance of like certain physical things whether it is um you know kind of like almost like

uncontrollable dancing whether it is speaking in tongues whether it is snake handling in some traditions um uh you're able to manifest itself in these physical ways it's not about rituals rituals so much as it is about physical manifestation of the holy spirit right it's not a metaphor it's not symbolic it's right it's got to be real or people are very you know and this is biblical fundamentalism too it's got to be literal or forget it right yeah right and I think that that's kind of the same underlying thing that bugs me about these science fictional accounts of things it's like it has to transfer abstract ideas into some kind of physical meta well not a

metaphor it has to de-metaphorize ideas about society into some kind of device or creature. And that just strikes me as really stupid. I mean, that's just a matter of taste. But, but, but, but, um, the, the other thing that that I was thinking about earlier was, you know, as a myth of the origin of evil, a parasite is a relatively recent kind of fictional invention, you know, plagues and things like that as symbols of evil or symbols of guilt or disaster, very old. Obviously, you know, an Oedipus, there's a plague, and there's plagues in the Bible and so and so forth. But evil usually kind of comes out of either some internal fault or imperfection of mankind, either that they are, they have some original problem

with them, or they have, they're, they're not God, so they lack a certain, they're sort of out of touch with being able to look into the future. They have an intrinsic flaw, weakness, so on and so forth. Parasite theories of evil are very different because evil is coming from outside, right? It's not from an internal flaw of the human condition. It's an alien being, and that's a very medicalized way of looking at things. It's like, well, if we cut out this tumor, we cut out this, or we take the medicine for this, it can be done, right? The evil, there's no tragic part of the human condition.

Ultimately, we can solve these problems. This is an evil coming from outside. And if that sounds weird, I think it's because it's fundamentally kind of the concede of a kind of totalitarian politics, which is an external enemy is praying upon us, right? And we have to identify them and cut them out. Not that, you know, well, look, you know, human beings intrinsically are flawed. All human societies have issues. Like, this identification of an enemy that is not even an enemy, but it's like a biological threat, you know, on the level of race, on the level of the body, a threat to the body,

to the health of the body. I think those are all a set of rather creepy ideas, you know. so I'm always every time I hear about parasites in this context I'm like hmm okay let's see where this is going um in this case they're you know they're literally they're not I don't think that they were trying to make a metaphor for some you know human group but but I always think about that when you know parasites are the are the metaphor or the the leading creature of a movie last thing I think I'll say, and this kind of fits in with this, is that the Parasians film arrive in Iowa. They attach themselves to three young, you know, healthy-looking white

boys. And initially, in fact, sort of this, you know, model community of God-fearing white Americans. And again, in Highland's book, this is where it all starts in Des Moines, Iowa. But I think if you do try to look at whatever political content this movie has, and you think of it, you know, sort of in the context of the racial politics of upsetting something in Iowa, which, you know, the corn fed, you know, Iowa white American, that's like a racial archetype. That's, you know, the reason, the reason the creators of Superman have him land in Smallville, kind of a fictional Iowa or fictional Kansas. is that it signifies something. It signifies Clark Kent, Superman, as being all-American as being sort of unimpeachably American in both in sort of ethnic terms, right? Like this is sort of the model American ethnicity in ways. And so, you know, this this Midwestern town of God-fearing common folk being

infected by a parasite that has the qualities of an addictive drug. You know, thinking about the politics of the 90s, it's a little, it's a little suss, as the kids might say. A little suspect about what it's trying to communicate. Even if, again, I'm not sure that any of the writers or whomever had any of this in mind. Even if they didn't, this is sort of a general note about interpretation, even if they didn't, nothing exists in a vacuum. And the tropes used and the signifiers use do suggest something. And so if you want to read this as the film in terms of the metaphor with the paraphrase, I think it says something disturbing that this is ground zero.

And if you want to think about it in terms of like American drug politics of the 1990s and sort of the racialization of drug politics in 1990s, I think there's something disturbing there as well. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Okay. I think it's time to wrap up.

Final thoughts on the movie. It sucks. It's very bad. It's pretty bad. And it was a flop at the time. It's a real B movie, and I think we really squeezed as much information or ideas as you possibly. Probably no one has thought harder about this movie, including the people who made it in the history of humanity or ever will. I was just about to say, I think we have subjected this movie to more critical analysis than it is received.

It's been out for almost 30 years now. I guarantee you we have thought more about this in the last hour than anyone has combined in the time this movie has existed. For my part, I wasn't even high. I watched this on the treadmill. I was like, oh, I'll run some and then I'll walk and maybe this will keep my attention. And I was like, man, I need this to end so I can like end this workout. I need to get off of this treadmill. I mean, I wasn't doing it.

I was basically like, oh, I'll watch a movie. I don't have to do other work. This is great. And then by the tune at the end of it, I was like, I just want to like do the dishes or something. So that's what I'll say to listeners is feel no need to watch this movie. I mean, come on. Of the two of us, I'm the one who like will apologize for all sorts of trash. Don't, if I'm telling you not to watch this, don't bother with it.

Not worth your time. We've other movies we've talked about in this episode, They Live, the two Body Snatchers films from 56 and 78. terrific films worth watching. The thing, John Carpter is a thing. One of my favorite movies is just a wonderful film. So watch those instead. And I think we will get to these more recent Body Snatchers adaptations at some point

because I'm just generally interested in how they were done. The most recent one in 2007 stars Daniel Craig, which is, you know, would have been film pre-Bond. So really kind of like a almost like a, I mean, Daniel Craig was just like another character actor type at the time. So, interesting. Okay. That is our show.

If you are not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, Sitcher Radio, and Google Podcast. And wherever else podcasts are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and a review. It does help people find the show. And you can reach out to all of us on Twitter. I am at Jay Bowie. John, you are.

I'm at Lionel underscore trolling. I should say, I'm all. also on TikTok for reasons. And on TikTok, I'm at Jamel Bowie. You can see me talk about the Civil War and yell at people for saying stupid things about the Civil War. It's pretty much what I do on TikTok. You can reach out to us over email at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. For this week in feedback, we have an email from Rob, titled Blown Away Feedback. Hi, Jamel and John. Long time. First time, I love that you dedicated an episode to Blown Away. A minor film that loomed large in Boston up until the departed came out. My parents were, quote, yuppies living in Charlestown. Is that how you say it there? Charlestown, Charleston? I don't know.

When it was filmed, and they loved to recount how the ship explosion at the end of the film blew out many windows in East Boston, and the blast woke up everyone in the house, except my infant brother. As you discussed at length, Boston's the city deeply divided along race and class lines. And while those lines have shifted, they are still very present. I moved back last year after 14 years living in Washington, D.C., and was struck by how segregated it feels in comparison. The main political divide in this democratic-run town seems to be between the white working class and a coalition of people of color, appellant progressives, and transplants. Recently, the city redistrict to give minority communities more political weight at the cost of changing longstanding political boundaries in white, predominantly Irish Catholic, sections of Dorchester and South Boston.

This was controversial, and the participants became heated. The Nadir was reached in November when city council member Liz Breeden, a progressive lesbian immigrant from Northern Ireland, proposed a new district map. In response, council member Frank Baker said that local Catholic clergy viewed her map as an all-out assault on Catholic life in Boston, and it's not lost on them that the person leading the charge on this is a Protestant from Fermanagh. more things change Yeah

That's really interesting It's you know Maybe this is just a consequence of like growing up during You know the Iraq war and American excursions there But I just remember So much talk around that time of people You know being like You know you what can you do out there in that part of the country

They're always fighting each other They hate each other for thousands of years There's like that kind of like essentializing thing. And it's fun, it's sort of funny that like that, that kind of energy exists everywhere, including in the United States. And, you know, divisions can run very deep and wounds can last very long. And I think that's a, that in Boston's a good example of it. Thanks, Rob.

Episodes come out every other Friday. So we'll see you in two weeks with surviving the game and adaptation of the most dangerous game starring Ice Tea, Riker Hower, and many others. Here's a quick plot synopsis. A homeless man is hired as a survival guide for a group of wealthy businessmen on a hunting trip in the mountains,

unaware that they are killers who hunt humans for sport and that he is their new prey. It's available for rent on Amazon and iTunes as well as streaming on Amazon Prime. Or is it available streaming? It may not be available for sure. streaming. It's available for rent. We'll have a guest for this one, a friend of mine who studies housing and urban projects, and I think she'll be have interesting things to say.

So keep an eye out in two weeks for our episode on surviving the game. And don't forget our Patreon, the latest episode of our Patreon podcast is on Carol Reed's film The Third Man. We're about to tackle Fritz Long's Ministry of Fear. You can listen to that and much more at patreon.com slash unclear pod. It's just $5 a month and totally worth it. I also need to do the monthly Blu-ray drawing for December, which is a thing that you get access to on the Patreon. Once a month we do a drawing and you get a free piece of physical media of your choice

among the stuff we've covered or will cover on either the Patreon or the main feed podcast. So another reason for you to join our Patreon. It's a lot of good fun. Our producer is Connor Lynch, and our artwork is from Rachel Eck. For John Gans, I am Jamel Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger. We'll see you next time. You know what I'm going to be.