The Return of the Pod People: Remaking Cultural Anxieties in Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Abstract

Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), based on a novel by Jack Finney, has become one of the most influential alien invasion films of all time. The film's theme of alien paranoia-the fear that some invisible invaders could replace individual human beings and turn them into a collective of emotionless pod people-resonated with widespread anxieties in 1950s American culture. It has been read as an allegory of the communist threat during the Cold War but also as a commentary on McCarthyism, the alienating effects of capitalism, conformism, postwar radiation anxiety, the return of "brainwashed" soldiers from the Korean War, and masculine fears of "the potential social, political, and personal disenfranchisement of postwar America's hegemonic white patriarchy" (Mann 49). 1 Engaging with the profound concerns of its time, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is widely regarded as a signature film of the 1950s. Yet despite its cultural and historical specificity, the narrative of alien-induced dehumanization has lent itself to reinterpretations and re-imaginations like few others, always shifting with the zeitgeist and replacing former cultural anxieties with more contemporary and urgent ones. Siegel's film has inspired three cinematic remakes over the last 55 years: Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers (1993), and, most recently, Oliver Hirschbiegel's The Invasion (2007. Bits and pieces of the film have also found their way into the American popular imagination, taking the form of intermedial references to Invasion of the Body Snatchers in movies, television series, cartoons, and video games. 2 By remodeling the theme, plot, characters, narrative devices, visuals, sound, and special effects of Siegel's film in 6

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