Exploring the sci-fi body snatcher trope
Sci-fi concepts can pop up in the minds of many writers at once. Its unique unease comes to define an era when many creators of the same era come to the same conclusion. That certainly applies to the paranoid situation of the 1950s and their deep-seated fear of being taken over by unseen alien forces.
A body snatcher is a generic term for beings that can assume the physical form of something else. Meandering and recognizing a new meat prison like.
Since the dawn of media, one of the most common stories in science fiction has been the alien invasion. It’s baseline space horror.from space war To annihilation, the trend has not gone away. It’s just smarter. In the early days of the concept, aliens came in military regiments and violently colonized the Earth under the mysterious impression of European settlers. Over the years this narrative has weakened and a new overthrow of the alien invaders must emerge. One of the most common, at least in its 50s heyday, was the subtle invasion of extraterrestrials taking over the populace from within.
Immortal and controversial Robert A. Heinlein is credited with being the inventor of the body snatcher trope. Heinlein’s novel written in 1951 puppet master It tells the story of an American secret organization trying to stop an onslaught of body-stealing slugs from Saturn. Anyone familiar with Heinlein’s work can guess where it’s headed. The highly masculine lantern-chinned hero, the beautiful red-haired heroine, and the mean old genius are all arranged as expected. Early sightings of the saucer are suggested as reconnaissance before the body snatchers attack. In common with Heinlein, this novel is as much political controversy as it is sci-fi horror. There is some truly ferociously disgusting violence directed at the powers he repeatedly compares to his ideological adversaries. This trend is not going away.
Three years after Heinlein’s violent anti-Communist screed was vaguely disguised as a sci-fi spy novel, the one-of-a-kind hit hits shelves.jack finneys body snatcher It’s a film that codifies a concept, a unique piece of its own lineage. In Finney’s 1954 novel, spores descend from the sky to form pods that perfectly recreate sleeping humans. Clones are fully equipped with the subject’s appearance, scars, and even memories, but cannot experience emotions. The terror here is environmental destruction, not outright global takeover. Left alone, the spore-based clones will perish and leave Earth in disaster. Rather than the typical fiercely individualistic anti-communist message, Finney’s Alien makes explicit reference to white culture’s treatment of natives. And rather than the typical nightmarish ending, Finney’s clones realize the error of their ways and leave the planet.
Jack Finney’s novel has been adapted four times directly for the big screen, plus two more loose adaptations with different titles in modern times. His 1956 iteration of the classic changes some details from the book and serves as the basis for most other interpretations of the text. Herd people share their origins but often represent more nebulous goals: the body snatcher trope, like many of the great horror-his concepts, is decidedly political Thing. Of all the horror tropes, however, it may be one of the least consistent in its interpretation: it was so common in the ’50s that many attributed it to comical terror over communism. Heinlein certainly considered the notion of Americans having beliefs other than their own the worst thing he could imagine, but later versions necessarily followed the same trend. Some have argued that the 1956 film adaptation was actually a critique of McCarthyism, portraying 50s America as a violent suppression of individuality. Regardless, body snatchers were the flavor of the time.
In modern times, most body snatcher movies are reinterpretations or remakes of existing material. Most of his sci-fi novels set in space feature one or two of his species that live by similar rules. stargate I have Goa’uld. A snake-like alien that invades from the base of its spine and hijacks its host’s mind. Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan We featured seti eels that change the host’s mind. Though rarely the focus of a specific science fiction work, body snatchers are still common to stories. The notion that it can be done is still terrifying to audiences more than 70 years later.
