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The Imagination of Disaster*

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The Imagination of Disaster* SUSAN SONTAG THE IMAGINATION OF DISASTER* OURS IS INDEED an age of extremity. fiction films we have to do with things which are For we live under continual threat (quite literally) unthinkable. Here, "thinking of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, about the unthinkable"-not in the way of Her- destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable man Kahn, as a subject for calculation, but as terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by a subject for fantasy-becomes, however inadvert- the popular arts, which allows most people to ently, itself a somewhat questionable act from a cope with these twin specters. For one job that moral point of view. The films perpetuate cliches fantasy can do is to lift us out of the unbearably about identity, volition, power, knowledge, hap- humdrum and to distract us from terrors, real or piness, social consensus, guilt, responsibility which anticipated-by an escape into exotic dangerous are, to say the least, not serviceable in our present situations which have last-minute happy endings. extremity. But collective nightmares cannot be But another one of the things that fantasy can banished by demonstrating that they are, intellec- do is to normalize what is psychologically un- tually and morally, fallacious. This nightmare-the bearable, thereby inuring us to it. In the one case, one reflected in various registers in the science fantasy beautifies the world. In the other, it neu- fiction films-is too close to our reality. tralizes it. A typical science fiction film has a form as The fantasy to be discovered in science fiction predictable as a Western, and is made up of films does both jobs. These films reflect world-wide elements which are as classic as the saloon brawl, anxieties, and they serve to allay them. They in- the blonde schoolteacher from the East, and the culcate a strange apathy concerning the processes gun duel on the deserted main street. of radiation, contamination, and destruction that One model scenario proceeds through five I for one find haunting and depressing. The naive phases: level of the films neatly tempers the sense of (1) The arrival of the thing. (Emergence of otherness, of alien-ness, with the grossly familiar. the monsters, landing of the alien space-ship, etc.) In particular, the dialogue of most science fiction This is usually witnessed, or suspected, by just films, which is generally of a monumental but one person, .who is a young scientist on a field often touching banality, makes them wonderfully, trip. Nobody, neither his neighbors nor his col- unintentionally funny. Lines like: "Come quickly, leagues, will believe him for some time. The hero there's a monster in my bathtub"; "We must do is not married, but has a sympathetic though also something about this"; "Wait, Professor. There's incredulous girlfriend. someone on the telephone"; "But that's incredi- (2) Confirmation of the hero's report by a ble"; and the old American stand-by (accompa- host of witnesses to a great act of destruction. (If nied by brow-wiping), "I hope it worksl"-are the invaders are beings from another planet, a hilarious in the context of picturesque and deafen- fruitless attempt to parley with them and get them ing holocaust. Yet the films also contain something to leave peacefully.) The local police are sum- which is painful and in deadly earnest. moned to deal with the situation and massacred. Science fiction films are one of the most accom- (3) In the capital of the country, conferences plished of the popular art forms, and can give a between scientists and the military take place, great deal of pleasure to sophisticated film addicts. with the hero lecturing before a chart, map, or Part of the pleasure, indeed, comes from the sense blackboard. A national emergency is declared. Re- in which these movies are in complicity with the ports of further atrocities. Authorities from other abhorrent. It is no more, perhaps, than the way countries arrive in black limousines. All inter- all art draws its audience into a circle of com- national tensions are suspended in view of the plicity with the thing represented. But in science planetary emergency. This stage often includes a rapid montage of news broadcasts in various lan- SUSAN SONTAG, the young critic and novelist, is the author of The Benefactor and contributes frequently to a wide variety guages, a meeting at the UN, and more conferences of magazines. The present piece, in somewhat different form, between the military and the scientists. Plans will be included in a collection of her essays, Against Inter- are made for destroying the enemy. pretation, to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. *Copyright © 1965 by Susan Sontag. 42 THE IMAGINATION OF DISASTER 43 (4) Further atrocities. At some point the hero's abridged, deploy a complex technology which girlfriend is in grave danger. Massive counter- (after initial setbacks) finally prevails against the attacks by international forces, with brilliant dis- invaders. plays of rocketry, rays, and other advanced wea- Another version of the second script opens with pons, are all unsuccessful. Enormous military the scientist-hero in his laboratory, which is casualties, usually by incineration. Cities are de- located in the basement or on the grounds of his stroyed and/or evacuated. There is an obligatory tasteful, prosperous house. Through his experi- scene here of panicked crowds stampeding along a ments, he unwittingly causes a frightful metamor- highway or a big bridge, being waved on by phosis in some class of plants or animals, which numerous policemen who, if the film is Japanese, turn carnivorous and go on a rampage. Or else, are immaculately white-gloved, preternaturally his experiments have caused him to be injured calm, and call out in dubbed English, "Keep (sometimes irrevocably) or "invaded" himself. moving. There is no need to be alarmed." Perhaps he has been experimenting with radia- (5) More conferences, whose motif is: "They tion, or has built a machine to communicate with must be vulnerable to something." Throughout, beings from other planets or to transport him to the hero has been experimenting in his lab on other places or times. this. The final strategy, upon which all hopes Another version of the first script involves the depend, is drawn up; the ultimate weapon-often discovery of some fundamental alteration in the a super-powerful, as yet untested, nuclear device conditions of existence of our planet, brought -is mounted. Countdown. Final repulse of the about by nuclear testing, which will lead to the monster or invaders. Mutual congratulations, extinction in a few months of all human life. For while the hero and girlfriend embrace cheek to example: the temperature of the earth is becom- cheek and scan the skies sturdily. "But have we ing too high or too low to support life, or the seen the last of them?" earth is cracking in two, or it is gradually being blanketed by lethal fallout. THE FILM I have just described should be in A third script, somewhat but not altogether dif- Ttechnicolor and on a wide screen. Another ferent from the first two, concerns a journey typical scenario is simpler and suited to black-and- through space-to the moon, or some other planet. white films with a lower budget. It has four phases: What the space-voyagers commonly discover is (1) The hero (usually, but not always, a scien- that the alien terrain is in a state of dire emer- tist) and his girlfriend, or his wife and children, gency, itself threatened by extra-planetary invaders are disporting themselves in some innocent or nearing extinction through the practice of nu- ultra-normal middle-class house in a small town, or clear warfare. The terminal dramas of the first on vacation (camping, boating). Suddenly, some- and second scripts are played out there, to which one starts behaving strangely or some innocent is added a final problem of getting away from form of vegetation becomes monstrously enlarged the doomed and/or hostile planet and back to and ambulatory. If a character is pictured driving Earth. an automobile, something gruesome looms up in I am aware, of course, that there are thousands the middle of the road. If it is night, strange lights of science fiction novels (their heyday was the hurtle across the sky. late 1940's), not to mention the transcriptions (2) After following the thing's tracks, or de- of science fiction themes which, more and more, termining that It is radioactive, or poking around provide the principal subject matter of comic a huge crater-in short, conducting some sort of books. But I propose to discuss science fiction crude investigation-the hero tries to warn the films (the present period began in 1950 and con- local authorities, without effect; nobody believes tinues, considerably abated, to this day) as an in- anything is amiss. The hero knows better. If the dependent sub-genre, without reference to the thing is tangible, the house is elaborately barri- novels from which, in many cases, they were caded. If the invading alien is an invisible para- adapted. For while novel and film may share site, a doctor or friend is called in, who is himself the same plot, the fundamental difference between rather quickly killed or "taken possession of" by the resources of the novel and the film makes the thing. them quite dissimilar. Anyway, the best science (3) The advice of anyone else who is consulted fiction movies are on a far higher level, as ex- proves useless. Meanwhile, It continues to claim amples of the art of the film, than the science other victims in the town, which remains im- fiction books are, as examples of the art of the plausibly isolated from the rest of the world.
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