FORREST ESCOBEDO

The power fear invokes can become a double-edged sword. Often those who are afraid will fight fear by creating more fear. Fear stems from paranoia: sometimes the worst of it from the paranoia of losing power. That is not to say all fears are unrealistic. David Merrill in Guilty By Suspicion has legitimate fears, as does Macreedy in Bad Day at Black Rock. The characters in Invasion of the Body Snatchers have obviously legitimate fears, the moral of the story being that others must realize that their fears are true.

In Bad Day at Black Rock, the initial crime the villains committed was out of fear. When Macreedy comes seeking the truth, the characters again defend themselves by trying to scare their threat away. In this case, it does not work, because Macreedy is a force to be reckoned with. It is obvious the movie is about fear, but we are not supposed to be afraid while watching it. There are long periods of silence, and when there is music it is startling, and cues that something bad may happen or has already happened. When the characters talk, they often converse in vague, indirect sentences that refer to what they really mean only by tone of voice and context. They do not directly bring up Komoko’s murder, but hint at it to the point we know exactly what they are referencing. The indirectness their conversation provoke fear because even though no one says exactly what is going to happen, the audience knows. Only at the end when a character says exactly what happened is he free of Smith’s grip. There is a tidy Hollywood ending here, and Macreedy’s tact and persistence overcome fear.

The red scare was a perfect example of fear used as a weapon. Guilty By Suspicion tells the story that must have been typical in Hollywood. The script might be watered down as Thomson describes it, and void of any political message, but the theme is the same. Even those who are not afraid of communists are afraid of what will happen if they do not act afraid of communists. Eventually the “rational” fear has created something completely different that is rational even if the original fear was not. The movie acts as if David Merrill is standing up for what he believes in despite his fear. His fear is less of a fear and more a realistic expectation of what will happen if he does what he knows is the right thing. If he sells out his friends, he will get his career back. If he does not, he will be cursed to his current life, with possibly worse consequences.

Even though it looks like a happy ending, which it is, in an optimistic way, it glosses over the true measure of Merrill’s future consequences. In reality, there were of course far more people who bent their beliefs to save themselves. The Hollywood system itself is still ridden with fear. As Thomson talks about, Guilty by Suspicion’s main character was to be a real communist, not just a communist sympathizer. Like Kael says in her essay, “Real heroism is too dangerous a subject for Hollywood.” Audiences, however, might have been afraid of the idea of Merrill as a communist or ending on a less pleasant note.