VICTIMS OF CINEMA: THE BODY SNATCHER MOVIES
I hope you will enjoy this brief analysis of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movies. There is so much more to say about them, but here are some of my current thoughts on this theme that won't go away. All of my film reviews delve into the areas of predictive programming, mind control and conditioning. The newsletter/zine is called Victims of Cinema and it is also available in print form. You can support this work at the link below.
Jack Finney’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers has already been made at least four times with a fifth version currently in production. The first film appeared in 1956, then again in 1978, one more in 1993 and in 2007 we saw the release of The Invasion starring Nicole Kidman as well as a low budget knock-off called Invasion of the Pod People. Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty (1998) was another in the family of invasion movies with strikingly similar ideas.
The premise is that aliens hatched from organic-looking pods take over our bodies when we fall asleep and we are then replaced by look-a-like alien clones. Simple enough, but this simple storyline proved to have dynamite potential for embedding symbolic meaning. McCarthyism and rooting out Communism may be at the core of the message in the original version, but fast forward to today and it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where the pod people aim to expose anyone not accepting of Communism.
And in this time when immigration is so hotly debated, I don’t doubt that if a new version is made that it will overtly connect immigration messaging, tailoring its pros and cons in a way that viewers will take away what they want. This begs a question I always wonder and that is, do we perceive messaging in a way that only allows us to continue to see the world the way we are already programmed to see it? And do certain messages go unseen and undigested because we don’t allow particular ideas to enter our minds because they go against our established belief systems? It’s as if dual messaging can be applied and each will be perceived by the targeted audiences on their own terms. The ‘undigested’ messages that go against our beliefs can then be filed away in our subconscious to be exploited at a later date.
The most obvious and consistent messaging in the films is the demonization of the individual and the forfeiture of his rights. Each film depicts a dictatorial and military enforced demand that everyone adapt to a ‘new way’ that stigmatizes the individual and places the hive or collective whole in the only position of importance. Over and over we’re made to believe that our control (death/conforming) is an improvement over our freedoms and inalienable rights, a concept many today seem blindly accepting of. This illustrates a favorite tactic used in media of inverting the truth and repeating it often enough so that people begin to doubt obvious falsehoods or accept bad ideas as actually being good.
The creepiest and most revealing element of the Body Snatcher series is something I consider to be truth hiding in plain sight where we are given answers that can save us in both the movie and in real life. This outward presentation of truth seems to mimic techniques of magical workings wherein secrets are revealed as part of occult rituals. The hypnosis and blindness we fall prey to makes this type of magic all the more powerful by its revealing of a great truth in the plainest way. The truth often repeated in the films is always the same, DON’T FALL ASLEEP. Some understand the warning, but most do not. And it’s the truth activists, conspiracy truthers, Red Pill types, whatever you want to call them, that keep trying to bring us back to reality with their pleas to WAKE UP!
