JBs Blog

During the 50s and 60s Americans all flocked to the theater to see films that they could relate to. The constant fear of attack from foreign as well as domestic communists made Americans love the idea of horror Sci-Fi. In the second film viewed this week, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, aliens have come, with seed pods. During this film many main characters get “body Snatched”. this basically means that you act the same, look the same, pretty much are the same, your just only an alien now. During the 1950s this film would have been loved America wide. The idea of an invasion where you cant tell the difference between them and us, is a fear that they constantly had. Is my neighbor an alien or even worse, a communist. The parallels between old sci-fi and real life cold war scare can be seen immensely in this film.
The first film viewed this week was Guilty by Suspicion. This film was interesting because it went behind the scenes during the cold war in Hollywood. This film focused mostly on the Hollywood blacklist and how it effected everyone working in the industry during this time. Not only did it show the process in which a movie like Invasion of the Body Snatchers would have to be made, it showed who got to work on them as well as who didn’t and why Hollywood ruined their lives. Considering Hollywood is an entertainment industry, you can’t have people working for you that would be considered an enemy in the publics eye. This is how Hollywood viewed this during the cold war, even though nothing ever happened, the constant fear kept the movie industry in a state of almost purgatory. People where loosing jobs, money and even lives thanks to Hollywood and at the same time, it kept the general fear of the public down because they had something they could rely on and take their minds off of real life.
Hollywood has always been foremost about making money. The only way Hollywood can make money is by appealing to the public. In order to do this they constantly used fear among the people to create movies that we would like, however while trying to do this, Hollywood was having to do the same behind the scenes and it sure was a nasty process. The same industry with conflicts on all sides and they still survived. Movies will always be a form of escape, even during a war of the most noir sorts people flock to the movies to get away if even just for an hour or two.