Nuevomexicanos, the Pueblo, and the Atomic Age

When Spanish settlers came to Mexico in the early 16th century, they moved northward, and by 1598 some had settled in the present state of New Mexico, USA. Many of them weren’t Spanish, actually, and they had various religious backgrounds. They had roots in various regions of Europe and North Africa. In order to participate in the voyages of Spain they had declare loyalty to Spain and identify themselves as Christians, but some of them secretly kept traditions of their religions, Islam and Judaism, in the privacy of their homes.

The historian Larry Torres says the descendants of these early settlers, referred to as Nuevomexicanos, missed the social changes that happened in European culture over the following centuries. In a sense, they are a living time capsule. They had no contact with the Renaissance, the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution. Their religion, their traditions, and their customs are from the Middle Ages. This culture is still reflected in the language, which is a kind of Spanish that is 400 years out of fashion. Scholars from Spain have come to New Mexico to study the language that was spoken by the great Spanish novelist Cervantes (1547-1616). But what happens when you have a society that suddenly time travels from the Middle Ages to the Atomic Age?

 

Nuevomexicano history is often misunderstood. For most Americans, the nation’s history begins on the East Coast where the settlers from Holland and the British Isles first arrived. After that, it is a story of continual westward expansion. However, when Americans from the northeast arrived in New Mexico in the 19th century, they encountered a Spanish-speaking culture that had already been there for 250 years. Even today, many Americans are surprised to learn that there is a European culture in the USA that was in America before the first Thanksgiving dinner in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621.

When the Nuevomexicanos met the migrants coming from the east, they had never seen factories or trains. Their lifestyle was not much different than that of the first peoples of the region, the Pueblo, whom the easterners referred to as “Indians.” The word Pueblo itself is a blanket Spanish term for diverse groups such as the Hopi, Zuni and many others. The Nuevomexicanos co-existed relatively well with the Pueblo compared to the relationship that developed between the Pueblo and the modern Americans.

The arrival of newcomers in New Mexico caused a brutal transition for Spanish and Pueblo cultures. Migrants brought with them banks, factories, roads and railways—all the trappings of a way of life that depended on money and working for wages. The newcomers refused to recognize the existing titles proving ownership of the land.

Life in New Mexico became stranger still when the Manhattan Project came to the small town of Los Alamos in 1943. This was the top secret project to build the first atom bombs. Suddenly, people with a pre-industrial culture found themselves working in the high-tech future. While the best jobs went to scientists and engineers from elsewhere in America, the Nuevomexicanos took jobs lower down in the organization. Many national defense and advanced technology centers still operate in the state, and the economy is heavily dependent on this sector. 

A resident of a village called Truchas compared his town with Los Alamos. Both towns are at the same elevation, directly across from one another, but one is living in the 19th century, while the other is in the 21st and planning for the 22nd century. In Truchas, people are just trying to get enough food to eat, making a living off the land. In Los Alamos, you have people who are thinking about space travel and long-term management of nuclear waste, which would be incomprehensible to the villagers living in Truchas.

Nuevomexicanos have an intense commitment to their cultural history. They know their culture has evolved independently since 1598. They have a unique adaptation to modernity that outsiders are not likely to appreciate. In fact, the English speaking people of New Mexico, whose ancestors arrived recently in the 19th century, are likely to think of Spanish-speakers as foreigners. They often insist that the newcomers should learn English and adapt to American society, failing to see that the Nuevomexicanos and Pueblo are not recently-arrived immigrants.

Anthropologists say that the region hosts a clash of three cultures: that of the Pueblo, the Nuevomexicanos and the modern military state. They note also the irony in the fact that all three of these cultures are difficult for them to study because they all place a high value on secrecy. The sacred sites of the Pueblo have meanings that outsiders can never understand. The Nuevomexicanos have secret religious rituals, and the scientific laboratories guard the national secrets of nuclear weapons.

Further reading:

The Toxic Legacy of Racism and Nuclear Waste Is Very Much Still With Us in Los Alamos

Adapted from these sources:

Joseph Masco, Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico (Princeton University Press, 2006), 165-168.

Lois Palken Rudnick, Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture (University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 336.

The Nuclear Age in Dylan and the Beats

The Nuclear Age in Dylan and the Beats

If you look at all these early performers, they were atom-bomb-fueled… They were fast and furious, their songs were all on the edge. Music was never like that before.

- Bob Dylan, 2007

  

I learned about atomic weapons and the potential of nuclear war at a young age, and I was sometimes puzzled that people could carry on like the threat didn’t exist. Then again, the point is that I was only sometimes puzzled. Most of the time I was getting on with my life, like everyone else. I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, Reagan’s “Star Wars” initiative, and Chernobyl, but it was the Fukushima meltdowns too close to my home that got my attention and made the nuclear threat unforgettable.

from The Illustrated Desolation Row

It might seem that most people live as they did before the 1940s, concerned with their families, traditional beliefs, jobs and where to take their next vacation. We hear about close calls like the Cuban Missile Crisis, and bluffs by crazy world leaders like Kim Jong-un or Richard Nixon, that remind us of the dangers of nuclear warfare. There is the occasional nuclear power plant meltdown, but it seems to be impossible for humanity to sustain a persistent awareness that nuclear war, or just a colossal accident in a spent fuel storage pool, could wipe out civilization—and it is probably a good thing that we can put these worries aside. Nonetheless, the awareness is always there at some level and it has had profound effects on history, culture, and consciousness.

The atomic age came with the establishment of the American world economic order. The Bretton Woods agreement set the stage for a dollar-denominated global economy, and that economy was based on military spending and nuclear weapons build-up.

Space exploration, telecommunications research, and computer innovation were all directly or indirectly products of the nuclear arms race. The Soviets and the Chinese were ostensibly not part of this new American world order, but they had to militarize their societies to keep up with the Americans. The atom bomb changed everything, and it is still at the forefront of the major issues of this century. The intractable conflicts in the Middle East are shaped by who has a nuclear deterrent and who does not.

One of the best ways to understand the impact of the nuclear age is to see how it has affected art and popular culture. Sometimes the influence is explicit, but usually it is implicit in everything around us. The technocratic, militarized security state is present in every work of art. Comic books and science fiction B-movies offer many examples of how nuclear danger couldn’t be confronted consciously—it appeared subconsciously as mutant monsters, blobs and aliens. In other cases, it was an explicit element of the story. Whereas traditionally children’s stories resorted to magic and spells to give characters special powers, the progress of rational science now provided the transformational power, and, ironically, the superstitious nonsense. A rich comic book and movie franchise was established by the bite of a radioactive spider. Spy novels and popular music are other genres that offer thousands of works with Cold War and nuclear-age themes. These influences on the arts and popular culture have been covered in books such as The Dragon’s Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age, [1] and the famous documentary film Atomic Café. [2]

There is insufficient space here to cover a wide range of nuclear age art and literature, but the best place to start is at the source, with the writers of the 1940s who grasped how the world had changed and were the first to raise the rebel yell. They influenced everyone who came later in the baby boom generation. These artists saw the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union breaking down and heading in an ominous direction. There were pockets of resistance in the political discourse from former officials in the Roosevelt administration, but these would soon be silenced and pushed out of power. The former vice president, Henry Wallace, made an urgent speech in 1946 trying to steer foreign policy away from confrontation with the Soviet Union:

The only kind of competition we want with the Soviet Union is to demonstrate that we can raise our standard of living faster during the next 20 years than Russia. We shall compete with Russia in serving the spiritual and physical needs of the common man… Let’s make it a clean race, a determined race but above all a peaceful race in the service of humanity… The source of all our mistakes is fear. …Russia fears Anglo-Saxon encirclement. We fear communist penetration. If these fears continue, the day will come when our sons and grandsons will pay for these fears with rivers of blood. Out of fear great nations have been acting like cornered beasts, thinking only of survival. …A month ago Mr. Churchill came out for the Anglo-Saxon century. Four years ago I repudiated the American century. Today I repudiate the Anglo-Saxon century with even greater vigor. The common people of the world will not tolerate a recrudescence of imperialism even under enlightened Anglo-Saxon, atomic bomb auspices. The destiny of the English speaking people is to serve the world, not dominate it. [3]

Wallace was soon fired from Truman’s cabinet, a demotion which came after having lost the vice presidential nomination at the 1944 Democratic convention, thanks to manipulation of the vote by party bosses. Thus the writers of the late 1940s picked up on the warnings made by progressives like Wallace. William S. Burroughs, who by odd coincidence attended a high school that was later converted to the Los Alamos Laboratory where the first atom bombs were made, said of his own writing years later:

This is science fiction, but it is science fiction in terms of what is actually here now. I have nova conspiracies, nova police, nova criminals... The virus power manifests itself in many ways: in the construction of nuclear weapons, in practically all existing political systems which are aimed at curtailing inner freedom, that is, at control. It manifests itself in the extreme drabness of everyday life in Western countries. It manifests itself in the ugliness and vulgarity we see on every hand, and of course, it manifests itself in the actual virus illnesses. On the other hand, the partisans are everywhere, of all races and nations. A partisan may simply be defined as any individual who is aware of the enemy, of their methods of operations, and who is actively engaged in combating the enemy. You must learn who and what the enemy is, their weapons and methods of operation. The enemy is in you. [4]

Burroughs’ familiars were fellow writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. All of them had lived on both sides of 1945, so they were well positioned to witness how the atom bomb had transformed society. In the Ginsberg biography American Scream, Jonah Raskin wrote:

“Nineteen forty-eight was the crucial postwar year,” Ginsberg explained. “It was the turning point. Of course the atom bomb had already gone off in 1945, and Kerouac and Burroughs and I had talked about it, but the psychological fallout from the bomb—the consciousness—didn’t really hit until 1948. There was the splitting of the atom and the splitting of the old structures of society and also a sense of the inner world splitting up and coming apart.” Like many other writers around the world, Ginsberg turned the atom bomb into an all-inclusive metaphor. Everywhere he looked he saw apocalypse and atomization. [5]

Ginsberg believed the bomb had caused a “psychic disturbance” among his friends, fueling their despair and subsequent drug use. In his journals, Kerouac labeled the spiritual crisis the “atomic disease.” [6] In his writing and his actions, Kerouac showed no interest in politics, or protests and petitions of any kind. Some said his intent was never to save America but to praise its joys and eulogize it, as if the existence of the atom bomb had doomed it. However, William Burroughs said about his influence, “By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their disclaimers.” He believed that Kerouac had inspired a worldwide movement that took his work to the next logical step, an activism which aimed to better the world, not merely fatalistically eulogize it. [7]

Kerouac described his writing as a holy calling, a command from God to “go moan for man” and be “as minute as a seed in the pod” in doing so. [8] Indeed, he may have been one of many humble seeds, for the more powerful forces in the disarmament movement arose later, some secular, some religious such as Plowshares (still spilling blood on nuclear installations in the 21st century) and evangelical Christian groups. It is impossible to know what the alternate history would have been, but it is plausible that nuclear annihilation was averted only because of the resistance of millions of citizens who forced political leaders to step back from the brink. Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York in 2015, Pope Francis echoed Henry Wallace’s speech when he declared:

An ethics and a law based on the threat of mutual destruction—and possibly the destruction of all mankind—are self-contradictory and an affront to the entire framework of the United Nations, which would end up as “nations united by fear and distrust”. There is urgent need to work for a world free of nuclear weapons, in full application of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, in letter and spirit, with the goal of a complete prohibition of these weapons. [9]

Even in Kerouac’s final year, when his talent and his relevance were said to have been drowned in terminal stage alcoholism, he could show flashes of wit and a flair for bringing attention to the existential problem that the chattering classes preferred to ignore. In an appearance on William F. Buckley’s show Firing Line in 1968, [10] he joined a panel discussion seeking a definition of “the hippie movement.” One could say that Kerouac was pathetic in this appearance, offending everyone and at times incapable of speech. But even drunk and diminished as he was, he could still play the holy fool. He may have been aware of what was going on but just couldn’t stomach the political discourse and the inanity of the questions about hippies and beatniks.

Buckley asked him if the hippie movement was “Adamite” (aspiring to a state of purity like Adam in the Garden,) but Kerouac was confused by this flaunting of obscure vocabulary (a habit of Buckley’s that annoyed his critics). He asked with puzzlement, “Adamite? You mean Adam and Eve, or atom? What? Adam and Eve? What’s Adamite? They wear their hair long, in layers? Live in caves?”

“Yeah, sort of, and back to nature and...”

“Well, that’s alright. We might have to in due time—after the atomite bomb! Haha!”

Buckley flashed a smile, “That was good. Give that man a drink.”

So here, even at the end of his road, Kerouac was harkening back to what he had felt in the 1940s on a journey to Mexico City. His evocation of the atom bomb in the final pages of On the Road reveals the reason the characters have refused to chase the post-war prosperity on offer in mid-century America. All the preceding delinquency and mad wanderings of these “best minds of a generation,” as Ginsberg referred to them, now seem to be explained by a painful consciousness of the destiny of the world. This is also the moment of the story when the narrator becomes conscious of the failure within. They have rebelled against their society, but they are also the flawed products of America now carousing through a foreign land. The search for freedom and God has gone hand in hand with utter irresponsibility. As Burroughs would say, this is the recognition that the virus is in them too. Behind them lies a trail of abandoned wives and children, not to mention a few stolen cars. To the natives coming down from the hills, and the pimps and the women in the whorehouse they visit, they are just yanquis with dollars in their pockets. Kerouac shifts our attention back to where it needs to be, to the aboriginal peoples of the world who have endured and paid the costs of Western civilization’s suicidal rivalries:

Strange crossroad towns on top of the world rolled by, with shawled Indians watching us from under hatbrims and rebozos. All had their hands outstretched. They had come down from the backmountains and higher places to hold forth their hands for something they thought civilization could offer and they never dreamed the sadness and poor broken delusion of it. They didn’t know that a bomb had come that could crack all our bridges and banks and reduce them to jumbles like the avalanche heap, and we would be as poor as them someday and stretching out our hands in the samesame way. [11]

Bob Dylan was inspired by On the Road before he hit the road on his famous trek from Minnesota to Greenwich Village, and Alan Ginsberg later befriended him when he recognized him as an heir to the Beat poets. Dylan spoke about the effect of the nuclear age on music in an interview with Jann Wenner in Rolling Stone magazine in 2007:

It wouldn’t have made sense to talk to somebody back then [in the 1920s and 1930s], to ask him, “What was it like in the late 1800s or 1900s?” It wouldn’t have interested anybody. But for some reason, the 1950s and 1960s interest people now. A part of the reason, if not the whole reason, is the atom bomb. The atom bomb fueled the entire world that came after it. It showed that indiscriminate killing and indiscriminate homicide on a mass level was possible… I’m sure that fueled all aspects of society. I know it gave rise to the music we were playing. If you look at all these early performers, they were atom-bomb-fueled. Jerry Lee [Great Balls of Fire], Carl Perkins [Blue Suede Shoes], Buddy Holly [Rave On], Elvis [Shake, Rattle and Roll], Gene Vincent [Be-Bop-A-Lula], Eddie Cochran [Summertime Blues]… They were fast and furious, their songs were all on the edge. Music was never like that before. Lyrically, you had the blues singers, but Ma Rainey wasn’t singing about, nobody was singing with that type of fire and destruction. They paid a heavy price for that, because obviously the older generation took notice and kind of got rid of them as quickly as they could recognize them. Jerry Lee got ostracized, Chuck Berry went to jail, Elvis, of course, we know what happened to him. Buddy Holly in a plane crash, Little Richard, all that stuff.

Wenner: Then in this new record [Modern Times], you’re still dealing with the cultural effects of the bomb?

I think so.[12]

Dylan was reminding us of the socially disruptive power of the bomb that was first noticed in the late 1940s. This view of the world passed from the Beat Generation, to Dylan, then to the rock music of the 1960s. Pete Townshend of The Who looked back on the era in the same way as Dylan, in an interview with Barbara Walters and others on the TV talk program The View, in 2012:

As a young kid, walking around in my neighborhood, all of the older boys had been told… “Here’s a gun, go and kill the enemy.” We had none of that. What we had was, “There’s this bomb. We dropped it in on Japan. War is over. We now have an even bigger one. The Russians have it. We’re all doomed.” That was what I grew up with. So in a sense, the sound of the war, the sound of the bombers—I wanted my music to speak of that. That was the umbrella, the cloud that we grew up in in West London. And I know you guys had it too, so when we brought our music to America—although your situation wasn’t as acutely bad immediately after the war—the one thing that triggered was the anger and the revolution and the reaction in the music. It really chimed with our audience here. [13]

Dylan and Townshend are not saying here that everyone was thinking directly about Armageddon all the time, or that Elvis was an avid reader of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. None of the songs on Modern Times, and hardly any other music of the last sixty years, is explicitly concerned with nuclear arms. They are about characters living in this world where things have changed, where there are direct and indirect effects of the atom bomb throughout our culture.

As the music became “fast and furious,” so did the pace of social change. If further examples of the modern interest in this era are needed, consider the present popularity of cable television series like Mad Men (set in the early 1960s) and The Americans (set in the dying days of the Cold War), or the fact that my freshman students in Japan listen to 1970s progressive rock, or even Bob Dylan sometimes. There is still intense interest in these decades that made the modern world.

After the atomic bomb, people were on the move in the perpetually militarized, mobilized and technological security state. Jack Kerouac was On the Road and Allan Ginsberg was Howling. People became much more inclined to question the authority and tradition that were filling the atmosphere with nuclear fallout. By the time the first post-war generation came of age, everything was being questioned. The establishment pushed back hard, but the Cold War unraveled in unexpected ways regardless. The danger seemed to be resolved, but it never really was. The present destruction of Syria is seldom recognized as a post-communist resurgence of the Cold War, a proxy war that could escalate into something much worse under more reckless leadership.

In spite of the first Cold War having apparently ended in 1989, thousands of nuclear weapons are still ready to launch within thirty minutes. Barack Obama has a Nobel Peace Prize for once having said some fine words about nuclear disarmament, but since receiving this prize he has achieved nothing on this issue. America backed out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, and nuclear arms reductions have been stalled since the 1990s. Meanwhile, the US and NATO have expanded eastward toward Russia while at the same time perversely calling the country encroached upon not an enemy but a new “adversary.” China is antagonized in a similar fashion when the US Secretary of Defense talks about defending “freedom of the seas” in waters 10,000 kilometers from North America.

In addition to the threat of nuclear war, the leftovers of the civilian nuclear project might be enough to cause a global catastrophe in slow motion. Seventy years of nuclear waste has piled up with no place to go. Hundreds of aging nuclear power plants will need to be decommissioned in the coming decades, and it would be naïve to think there won’t be another level 7, or an off-the-scale disaster at one or more of them before they are safely put to rest.

Returning to Dylan, it is worth noting that his catalog contains numerous songs on the subjects of politics, war, decline and apocalypse. These compositions include Chimes of Freedom, Desolation Row, High Water, It’s All Good, It’s Alright Ma, Let Me Die in My Footsteps, Man of Peace, Masters of War, Political World, Slow Train, Talking World War III Blues, With God on Our Side, and A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. The lyrics of Hard Rain, excerpted below, are some of the most explicitly apocalyptic of Dylan’s songs:

I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests

I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans

I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard

And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard

And it’s a hard rain’s a gonna fall

Because of these lines, and because the song was written at the height of Cold War tensions in the early 1960s, many people thought the “hard rain” referred to a nuclear fallout rain. Dylan denied this in an interview when he said:

No, it’s not atomic rain, it’s just a hard rain. It isn’t the fallout rain. I mean some sort of end that’s just gotta happen... In the last verse, when I say, ‘the pellets of poison are flooding the waters’, that means all the lies that people get told on their radios and in their newspapers. [14]

“Some sort of end that’s just gotta happen.” These few words explain much about where Dylan went with his music in the years that followed. He stopped writing the genre of “protest” songs he had invented, and refused to speak for causes or take sides in ideological battles. He lived with his family in seclusion in upstate New York during the height of the anti-Vietnam war movement, and later turned to religion. Like Kerouac, he seemed to be more concerned now with celebrating the life and art of the common man, and eulogizing a world he had concluded was doomed, as well as with preparing himself for the world to come. By the end of the century, Bob Dylan’s 30th studio album Time Out of Mind was infused with these themes, especially one with a line that says everything: Tryin’ to get to heaven before they close the door. In these songs there is no hint of politics or activism, but the line implies a reason for that door closing. To be welcomed in heaven, we would have to save the place we’ve already been given.

Notes

1. Robert A. Jacobs, The Dragon’s Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010).

2. Jane Loader, Kevin Rafferty, Pierce Rafferty (Directors), The Atomic Café, Libra Films, 1982.

3. Henry Wallace, April 12, 1946, RG 40 (Department of Commerce); Energy 1, General Records of the Department of Commerce, Office of the Secretary, General Correspondence; Box 1074, File “104251/6” (2 of 7), National Archives, Washington, D.C., in The Untold History of the United States, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick (London: Edbury Press, 2013), ch. 5.

4. Allen Hibbard (Editor), Conversations with William S. Burroughs (University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 12.

5. John Raskin, American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation (University of California Press, 2004). Ginsberg’s concern with the nuclear threat continued throughout his life as he participated in protests in the 1970s at the Rocky Flats, Colorado plutonium pit factory which inspired his poem Plutonian Ode.

6. Mark Sayers, The Road Trip that Changed the World (Moody Publishers, 2012), 57.

7. Richard Lerner and Lewis MacAdams (directors), What Happened to Kerouac (1986; New Yorker Films).

8. Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody, (McGraw-Hill, 1972).

9. “Fulltext of Pope Francis’ speech to United Nations,” PBS Newshour, September 25, 2015,  .

10. William F. Buckley (Host), Firing Line, The Hippies, Season 3, Episode 32 (September 4, 1968; National Educational Television),  .

11. Jack Kerouac, On the Road: The Original Scroll (Penguin Books, 1951, 2007), 398.

12. Jan S. Wenner, “The Long View,” Bob Dylan: 40 Years of Rolling Stone Interviews, 69-75, 2013. Originally published in Rolling Stone, Vol. 1025-1026, May 3-17, 2007.

13. “Pete Townshend on ‘Who I Am,’” The View, ABC Television, October 8, 2012.

14. Jonathan Cott (Editor), Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews (New York: Wenner Books, 2006), 7-9.

The Film that Made the Cold War Stand Still

The Day the Earth Stood Still (20th Century-Fox, 1951)

directed by Robert Wise, produced by Julian Blaustein, written by Edmund H. North

based on the shorty story Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates

Synopsis of The Day the Earth Stood Still (spoiler alert)

An alien (Klaatu) (who is identical in physiology to humans) with his mighty robot (Gort) land their spacecraft on Cold War-era Earth just after the end of World War II when planetary survival is threatened by the nuclear arms race. They bring an important message to the planet that Klaatu wishes to tell to representatives of all nations. However, conveying that message to all of the world’s political leaders proves to be impossible, so, after learning something about the natives, Klaatu decides on an alternative approach. The aliens have understood that earthlings will soon be able to use atomic power for inter-planetary travel, and because they are still warlike, the federation of planets decided that earth must be destroyed if it cannot be convinced to submit to the pact of non-violence that all other planets live by.

Interestingly, Klaatu explains to humans that he has traveled to Earth by an advanced form of atomic power, and this story element reveals that in 1951 even among extreme peaceniks there was a firm belief that nuclear energy had uncomplicated potential for peaceful applications. There was no consideration of the dangers of radioactive fallout, and little thought given to the hazards of uranium mining and nuclear waste disposal, nor to the risks of reactor meltdowns. To the extent that there were any concerns about these, the hazards were deemed to be manageable. This started to change only in the late 1950s.

The Day the Earth Stood Still
Klaatu and Helen, Gort in the background

About the director

For over fifty years Robert Wise has made great movies. He won the Academy Award for West Side Story and for The Sound of Music. But his movies have done more than just entertain us. Working in all genres, he has helped us think about the human condition. Racism, capital punishment, power and purpose in the corporate boardroom, questions of war and peace, the dangers of nuclear and biological weapons—all have been addressed at one time or another in his films, and often ahead of his time. After watching a Robert Wise film, we leave the theater not only entertained but also enlightened by a director who uses his mastery of cinema not so much to leave us conscious of his style as to tell us a story so that we might better understand the world around us.

- From Conversations with History, Interview with Robert Wise, 1998, by Harry Kreisler of the Institute of International Studies at the University of California at Berkeley

The Story

The Day the Earth Stood Still seemed on the surface to be one of the many typical, low-grade science fiction films cranked out by Hollywood, but critics, historians and the public quickly noted there was more to it. It became a classic, recognized for the brilliant way it managed be very human and realistic, and for the way it managed to criticize both sides in the Cold War at the height of the anti-communist witch hunts that had silenced the American entertainment industry and intelligentsia. Though the film focuses on an alien threat, this device was a veil over the real threat that the audience could understand implicitly. Now that both the Soviets and Americans had large arsenals of nuclear weapons, everyone knew that total destruction could be achieved without the help of aliens.

After being shot in the arm and captured, Klaatu is under guard at a hospital in Washington. He reveals to the President's secretary, Mr. Harley (Frank Conroy), that he bears a message so momentous and urgent that it must be revealed to all the world's leaders simultaneously. However, Harley tells him that it would be impossible to get the world leaders to agree to meet. This scene is carefully crafted so as to not come off as explicitly anti-American or accusing of the USSR. Mr. Harley says only ambiguously that Klaatu must be aware of “evil forces that have produced the trouble in our world.” Those forces might be the atom bomb itself or the enemy against which we, "the good guys" must fight against.

Klaatu escapes from the hospital and lodges at a boarding house, assuming the alias John Carpenter. Among the residents are Helen Benson (Patricia Neal), a World War II widow, and her son Bobby (Billy Gray). While staying at the boarding house, Klaatu visits the famous physicist Jacob Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe), hoping to convince him of the need to convene the world’s top scientists and politicians to hear his message.

Klaatu eventually finds that it is time to tell Helen who he is so he can enlist her help. He finds her at her workplace where she leads him to an unoccupied elevator which mysteriously stops at noon, trapping them together. A montage sequence shows that, as a demonstration to capture the attention of the world, Klaatu has neutralized all electric power everywhere around the planet, except in situations that would compromise human safety, such as hospitals and airplanes in flight.

After the thirty-minute blackout ends, the manhunt for Klaatu intensifies as Tom, Helen’s fiancé, informs authorities of his suspicions. Helen is upset that Tom placed importance on his jealousy and ambition to be the hero who catches the alien. She breaks off their relationship and helps Klaatu complete his mission.

During the chase, Klaatu is mortally wounded by army soldiers, but he has instructed Helen that should anything happen to him, she must tell Gort "Klaatu barada nikto". Helen heads to the spaceship and gives Gort the message. Gort leaves her in the spaceship, then goes to retrieve Klaatu's corpse. Gort then revives Klaatu while Helen watches. Astute observers of the film noted that John Carpenter has the same initials as Christ, and in the final scene he rises from the dead, but industry watchdogs forced the writer of the story to make Klaatu explain that his revival is only temporary. Even with advanced medical technology, they cannot overcome death. Like other mortals, he does not know how long he will live. This fix actually helped to make the story more human and "down to earth."

Klaatu steps out of the spaceship and addresses the assembled scientists, explaining that humanity's penchant for violence, combined with its discovery of nuclear energy and first steps into space, have caused concern among other inhabitants of the universe. On other planets, intelligent creatures have created, empowered, and submitted themselves to robot enforcers who deter such aggression. He warns that if the people of Earth voyage into space with their violent tendencies unreformed, the robots will destroy Earth. He finishes by saying, "The decision rests with you." He enters the spaceship and departs.

DVD Extras: Interviews and 1952 Newsreel

The texts below come from the supplementary videos on the 2003 DVD release. The interviews were conducted in 1995, and they reveal how the director and producer were determined to find a way around the censorship and the negative political atmosphere of the era. They also discuss the ambiguous intentions of the film around the question of surrendering national sovereignty to an international entity.

Patricia Neal, who played the role of Helen, said that she couldn’t take the story seriously during filming, and kept laughing during rehearsals. However, she felt differently when she saw the film. It’s just a sci-fi flick, but it had a lasting impact on world culture and on history. The idea of a meeting of world scientists was taken by the writer from Einstein’s 1949 Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, but then perhaps the film had an influence on the Russell-Einstein manifesto of 1956, on the Pugwash conferences that followed from it, and on the entire counter-cultural and anti-nuclear movement that emerged later in the decade. According to President Reagan’s biographer, Reagan liked the notion that extraterrestrial invasion would trump national differences, and he mentioned the scenario upon meeting Mikhail Gorbachev for the first time at Geneva in 1985. [1]

The Movietone Newsreel transcript reveals exactly what US Secretary Harley’s words in the film refer to in the real world. The report on the San Francisco Peace Treaty shows Western leaders speaking with an utter disregard for diplomatic civility toward the Soviet Union. The former WWII ally is here mocked as if by crude, adolescent bullies, and this report from the free Western press makes no attempt to tone down the rhetoric with more objective language. It speaks for government agencies with enthusiasm for vilification, as if it were the product of a wartime propaganda machine, which it was essentially. Ironically, the newsreel includes a report on the film The Day the Earth Stood Still winning a science fiction award. At the end of the newsreel, the male adolescent mentality or the time comes through again in the language used to describe the Miss America and Mrs. America pageants of 1952. Irony upon ironies: the newsreel was distributed by 20th Century-Fox, the same company that produced The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Interviews on the making of The Day the Earth Stood Still, from the 2003 DVD, interviews conducted in 1995

Robert Wise (director) 00:01:16

It was a marvelous way to tell a science fiction film. I liked so much about what it had to say, particularly at this time. This was the early 50s after WWII. We had had the atomic bombs on Japan which caused such a furor, rightly so, around the world, so it was very, very hot subject matter. It's grown hotter over the years of course with all the threat of nuclear war that has gone on up until recent times and maybe still. So, I went back to see Julian and I said, "Listen, I love the film. I think it's a marvelous script and a marvelous way to tell a science fiction film and a marvelous way to get a message over to this world that says, "Let's stop fooling around with this atomic bomb that we've invented... and start being sane about this whole matter."

Robert Wise (director) 01:04:10

The fact that the story of The Day the Earth Stood Still had something important to say was very meaningful to me. I've been anti-militarist my whole life... I made a number of films that say we should stop wars, stop fighting and somehow get along... I made a film called The Sand Pebbles about a gunboat on the Yangtze River in China with Steve McQueen playing the lead in it. It had a message to America saying, "Stop showing your military might all around the world," as we've been doing since the early part of the [20th] century... It's been important for me to have something vital to be said in my films, but never, hopefully, to get up on a soap box and talk about what the message is, or the theme, but to have brought it out and dramatized it through the story itself... except, interestingly enough, in The Day the Earth Stood Still... where Klaatu gets up and delivers [his message] to the scientists and important people there what it is about: stop fooling around with your primitive atomic bombs and warfare or we may have to do away with you.

Julian Blaustein (producer) 00:01:57

The idea for the picture came from a series of newspaper headlines which referred to the phrase "peace offensive." At the time the Soviet Union was trying to talk peace and all the people, obviously, who were enemies of the Soviet Union didn't trust them and it became a "peace offensive" and it seemed like such a contradiction in terms that characterized that whole period that we were living in. The atmosphere and political ambience was so negative, and I wondered if we could do something to say that peace is a five-letter word, not a dirty word. The screen [motion picture industry] has maybe a responsibility. It started that way and then I said I'm never going to find a story that will carry that idea without becoming a tract, without becoming a non-entertainment piece of work that Darryl Zanuck [head of Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation] would never approve. He had the approval of what we did. And it suddenly hit me the science fiction story might be the way to go.

What turns out to be a man steps off the space ship, brings an offering as a gift, but because it's strange and certainly unusual, he's immediately shot at by our military and seriously wounded. That appealed to me. The way that we deal with strange things is with weapons, guns, no effort at finding out how the other person thinks, feels, works. Different from us? Kill him.

And the main idea in that story that was appealing was the fact that peace in the universe had been achieved by sacrificing some sovereignty to a central agency, but irrevocably, so that the United Nations, for us, became the focal point of the way to go to world peace. Give the United Nations full authority to step in, to put down violence wherever they saw it—give them the equipment, the manpower, which we knew was unrealistic. To give up sovereignty is something that is very tough to ask heavily nationalistic entities to do, but it was an idea that was very appealing.

Billy Gray (child actor in the film) 1:06:15

The message is incredibly powerful and it is just as important today, if not more so than then. I don't think the Soviet Union really had ideas of world conquest. That was started by our industrial military complex to fatten everybody's purse primarily... and I think this picture addressed that dilemma and it probably wasn't very popular. It was right around the "red scare" time. This was 1951. The McCarthy hearings were happening. It took a lot of courage to put this movie together.

Julian Blaustein (producer) 01:07:18

The political landscape was scarred by this political attitude in Washington, picked up by that portion of the press and the public that agreed that there were communists under everybody's bed, and if you belonged to this kind of organization or made that kind of comment, you were a danger. And it hurt a lot of people. It was not an atmosphere in which political positions that were unpopular might well have been financed by motion picture companies, but we never had any trouble, as I remember it, except for Sam Jaffe. He was attacked after the picture was made. The picture was attacked because of him, but not because of the subject matter, which is interesting.

Robert Wise (director) 1:09:58

In spite of the fact that it's science fiction, it's very credible... credible situations, credible characters, even though the key character is from outer space.

Narration from:

49 Nations Sign Japanese Peace Treaty, Movietone News Inc., 1952, distributed by 20th Century-Fox

Story 1

In spite of Soviet Russia's attempt to wreck it, the San Francisco Japanese Peace Treaty Conference attended by 52 nations moves to a successful conclusion, [with the] final hours highlighted by John Dulles exposing Soviet plans to make the Japan Sea a Russian lake.

Congressman Armstrong's presentation to Gromyko of a map showing all the slave camps in the USSR, [is] quickly discarded by his aide.

The New Zealand delegate, Sir Carl Berenson [makes a] dramatic statement of a fact the Russians overlook. "The United States, with the full cooperation of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and other members of the British Commonwealth, fought the Japanese for four years! And the Soviet Union fought them for six days!"

A bit of blatant hypocrisy by the Polish delegate getting the treatment it deserves: “A great English man once said, that to preach freedom of discussion is not enough, you have to practice it. If you don't practice it... [laughter erupts in the hall].

The treaty sponsored by Britain and the United States succeeds as the signing begins, a triumph for Mr. Acheson the Russians couldn't bear to witness. They deserted the party. [Signing] for the Argentine, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of Canada, la belle France, communist defeater Greece, the Philippine Islands, the United Kingdom, the United States, and finally Japan. Mr. Dulles and Secretary Acheson deserve the plaudits of their country and the free world.

Five hours later at San Francisco's Presidio, Secretary Acheson and his loyal bipartisan spokesman Mr. Dulles, with premier Yoshida of Japan, compound the diplomatic victory scored at the peace treaty conference. In the hall of the headquarters of the Sixth Army, they assemble to conclude a mutual defense pact between the United States and Japan. Mr. Acheson signs for the United States while his prototype from across the Pacific, Premier Yoshida, signs for his empire, former enemies becoming allies in a security pact against communist aggression in the Far East.

Story 2

Accepting the city's salute in Cleveland, Ohio, General MacArthur makes this observation on Japan: "In this post-war period of general failure to attain real peace, one of the bright spots has been conquered Japan. It is a Japan which may now assume the burden of preparing its own ground defense against predatory attack and thus in short time release our own beloved divisions for a return home.

Story 3

Flash floods that accompany torrential rains make life rugged for this Greek contingent of United Nations forces fighting communist aggression in Korea. Waist deep in water, these veteran red-fighters who've never fled from communist attacks find it strategically wise to pull up stakes now. Nature's a real tough foe. Over northern Korea, rain-filled clouds failed to impede a bombing mission of US Air Force B-29s. A marshalling area at Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, being plastered in spite of occasional flak from red enemy aircraft guns. An emergency truck wheels to the runway to meet a returning sky giant that was slightly damaged by the fire from the ground. The hits were superficial, however, and although the tail of the big ship is pretty well riddled, not even the tail gunner was hit. Just a laugh for these dauntless airmen.

Story 4

Klaatu, the weird Earth visitor in the 20th Century-Fox film The Day the Earth Stood Still, learns a quaint Earth custom. He receives a certificate of merit from the Science Fiction Convention at New Orleans. He is presented by Chairman Moore for the faithfulness of the film to the best science fiction traditions.

Story 5

Pomp and pulchritude on parade in Atlantic City and Miss South Dakota bids for Miss America. Same girl in a bathing suit. Miss Indiana poses a pretty problem for the judges as she seeks the laurels of loveliness. Miss North Carolina, a bright-eyed belle of the South, sir. Right fetchin', I'd say. And here's Miss Utah, five foot 10, eyes of blue, a blonde enchantress whose blooming talent places her in the charmed circle. Colleen Kay Hutchins of Salt Lake City crowned by last year's winner Yolande Betbeze, Miss America of 1952, America's reigning beauty, Queen Colleen.

Story 6

In Asbury Park, New Jersey, more bathing beauties vie for the title of Mrs. America. These wedded wonders are cheered on by happy husbands. Mrs. Virginia. Hmm. And Mrs. Philadelphia. "Atta a girl, mommy." Mrs. California, and another stunning bride, Mrs. New York City, an eye-catcher who catches the eye of the judges. Easy, buster. Mrs. Penny Duncan is Mrs. America, a 5'7" strawberry blonde, 126 pounds of heavenly homemaker, 22-year-old mother of a two-year-old son. Hmm. How about that?

Selected dialog from The Day the Earth Stood Still

Klaatu explains the purpose of his visit to the president’s secretary

MR. HARLEY: Our world at the moment is full of tensions and suspicions. In the present international situation, such a meeting would be quite impossible.

KLAATU: What about your United Nations?

MR. HARLEY: You know about the United Nations?

KLAATU: We've been monitoring your radio broadcasts for a good many years. That's how we learned your languages.

MR. HARLEY: I'm sure you recognize from our broadcasts the evil forces that have produced the trouble in our world.Suely...

KLAATU: I'm not concerned with the internal affairs of your planet. My mission here is not to solve your petty squabbles. It concerns the existence of every last creature on Earth.

MR. HARLEY: Perhaps if you could explain a little...

KLAATU: I intend to explain… to all the nations, at the same time. How do we proceed, Mr. Harley?

MR. HARLEY: Well, we could call a special meeting of the General Assembly. But the UN doesn't represent all the nations.

KLAATU: Then I suggest a meeting of all the chiefs of state.

MR. HARLEY: Believe me, you don't understand. They wouldn't sit down to the same table.

KLAATU: I don't want to resort to threats, Mr. Harley. I merely tell you that the future of your planet is at stake. I urge that you transmit that message to the nations of the Earth.

MR. HARLEY: I will make that recommendation to the president. But I must tell you in all honesty, I'm extremely dubious about the results.

KLAATU: Apparently I'm not as cynical about Earth's people as you are.

MR. HARLEY: I have been dealing in Earth's politics a good deal longer than you have.

Klaatu explains that he doesn’t have power over life and death

HELEN: I thought you were...

KLAATU: I was.

HELEN: You mean... he has the power of life and death?

KLAATU: No. That power is reserved to the Almighty Spirit. This technique, in some cases, can restore life for a limited period.

HELEN: But... how long?

KLAATU: You mean, how long will I live? That, no one can tell.

Klaatu’s final statement to humanity

KLAATU: I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure. This does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves, and hired policemen to enforce them. We of the other planets have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets, and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one, and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is, we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war, free to pursue more profitable enterprises. We do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet. But if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple. Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.

Note

[1] J. Hoberman, “The Cold War Sci-Fi Parable That Fell to Earth,” New York Times, October 31, 2008. This article gives a detailed discussion of the film’s cultural legacy, and was written just before the 2008 remake was released. A subsequent reviewer for The Guardian wrote it was “a stupendously dull remake of Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic.” The remake, heavily laden with special effects and a complicated plot, lacked the simplicity and humanity of the original and is a footnote in film history, just like it is in this essay.