Mystery Science Theater 3000 is not something one would think is deserving of a scholarly close lens, but it seems that maybe that is precisely why it is so pivotal to use for a postmodern look at films from the 1950s. The show operates on a very simple format that relates the viewer to the situation in a self aware and campy way. A man, either Joel Robinson or Mike Nelson depending on the season, is forced to watch cheesy movies by an evil scientist, either Dr. Forrester or Pearl Forrester again depending on the season. These movies are the worst they can find in order to have some sort of experiment placed onto the test subject. The intro songs for both Joel and Mike suggest that each of them created the robots Tom Servo and Crow in the respective season that he is credited to so I don't think that is supposed to be debated, but these robots were made for the purpose of keeping the test subject's sanity at bay by riffing on each movie with Joel or Mike.
The bulk of the series really has nothing to do with the "plot" I just mapped out for you. In fact that is not why the fans were and still are so drawn to the episodes of the series. It is all about the commentary over the hilariously bad B-movie ranging from all ilk of the cinema world: science fiction, horror, mystery, 60's go-go features, and other varieties. Some episodes even have some "shorts" before the feature, which are mostly taken from the Perlinger archives, which feature a variety of 50s educational short films on proper etiquette and the preparations for social events. These dead-serious featurettes seem archaic in 2010, which is exactly why the lens of MST3K is needed in our evaluation of that culture. After the short, we are given the movie where we see Tom, Joel or Mike, and Crow's silhouettes respectively at the bottom of our TV screen as we watch the film and get the wise-cracking commentary we fans enjoy to this day.
This format sets forth a perfect environment for giving the film a postmodern view on the film. For all intents and purposes we must discuss what exactly postmodernism is if we are going to entertain this notion. Like most literary and cultural movements, it is hard to completely define the movement and confine it to a rigid structure. Rather, postmodernism seems to embody a lot of similar ideas. Two strong ideas coming from the period are that history is represented through nostalgic images of pop culture and fantasies of the past, and the diversion from seriousness to a more ironic and poking holes in that which is considered serious. Art is a means for people to become integrated in culture and history. The period derails heavily from its Modernism past and purposefully. It seems to have a lot of roots in the 80s, a time of conservative and capitalistic upheaval. Reagan was president and basically started up the Cold War all over again with the resurgence of nuclear war anxieties. These shifts back to a more consumerism environment probably are what about this almost cynical approach to seriousness and a nostalgic look toward the past. There is no high or low culture when dealing with art during the postmodern culture that very well may be what we still cling to today. This dichotomy is virtually erased by the upheaval of pop culture. (Irvine)
Of course this is only a surface scratch of postmodernism, but this is just to get a feel for what Mystery Science Theater 3000 is trying to do with the riffs and gags within the show. How fitting that a complete shift into utter defiance toward seriousness and using pop culture as a lens to look at history is exactly the show's purpose other than getting a few laughs. It is also fitting to see the notion of no high culture, because, let's face it, the movies the creators pick are anything but "high" on the scale of story, production, acting, or writing, let alone art. Yes it can be easier to watch a 50s B-movie while a robot pokes fun at it, but does it serve any purpose other than to entertain? Does this postmodern look at 50s movies have any use? One could argue it is a fitting way of looking at the culture, and maybe even giving it a whole new definition.
Before finding out how the postmodern view of the movies and how this lens re-imagines the era, it is best to figure out just exactly how the movies of the 1950s, especially the science fiction ones, tell us about what was going on in the 50s and the anxieties felt due to the emergence of the Cold War. Katrina Mann's "'You're Next!': Postwar Hegemony Besieged in Invasion of the Body Snatchers" gives a lot of context of how science fiction films from the decade, in this case Invasion of the Body Snatchers, embody the beginning of the Cold War by exposing the era's obvious afflictions. A lot of Mann's points are guided by the notion of conformity being a large issue on both sides of the faux War, i.e. the red-blooded American and the heathen Communist. The "traditional" America family in that time consisted of a very rigid structure; you were to be white, middle class, Christian, 2.5 children, living in the suburbs, and part of a patriarchic society of male dominance. The order of that importance can be toyed with but it cannot be contended. Normalcy was a must during that period. The film Mann refers to completely reinforce these values. "Invasion of the Body Snatchers encouraged spectators who may have been representative of both us and them (a nonwhite male or a heterosexual white female, for example) to identify with the representative protagonist, solidifying diverse participation in the retention of nodal (white, patriarchal, and heterosexual) hegemony" (Mann, 50). It is conformity at one of its stronger points during this time. Nuclear war is consistent in the minds of Americans by being told that buying a shelter is better to be safe than sorry. Kids are ducking and covering under desks in a ridiculous attempt to make them feel safe (when in reality it probably scared them witless. Fear and conformity: a match made in heaven?). Hell, the notion of a "nuclear family" being a normal way of saying dad, mom, and children living together pretty much sums up the anxiety of nuclear war. Now, this is not saying that every American believed that we were two pushes of a button away from death and that it could happen at any moment, but it is obvious that the atom bomb never left our minds after World War II.
Mann's article really shows how a 50s science fiction film can expose these fears in order to entertain and give a little bit of a mirror for the public. But if Invasion of the Body Snatchers is considered a B-movie from the era, then the films I watched from Mystery Science Theater 3000 must be closer to Z-movies. These included Manhunt in Space, Night of the Blood Beast, and Teenagers from Outer Space. To be blunt, these films, if we are going to use that word in the loosest sense, have concepts that go beyond needing of A-listing funding to be remotely good. Then again, if they had been A-list films, it would not have been the same experience watching them with the quirky commentary by our favorite trio. Before we get into what the postmodern ideas being presented by the crew entail as far as some sort of critical analysis, let's first introduce these three movies and take a look at them through the context of the 50s era and what they embody as films by themselves.
Manhunt in Space is a 1956 film directed by Hollingsworth Morse which features a futuristic space adventure with our hero Rocky Jones and his lovable adolescent partner Winky. Yes, the Satellite of Love crew had quite a few good jabs at that name. What plot I could decipher out of this mess is that Rocky and Winky are sent on a chase against space pirates who have also captured his girlfriend. It is uncertain where these pirates have come from, but it is known that they were sent by the evil Queen Cleolanta and she knows very well about Rocky's prowess as a space hero. What ensues is a mishmash of scenes showing Rocky and Winky fighting bad guys, getting captured by bad guys, fighting bad guys, almost getting captured by bad guys, tricking bad guys with some invisibility technique that only Rocky knows, which in turn becomes the goal for the bad guys to obtain. The Queen becomes very angry with her crew because they keep getting foiled by the ever-so-clever Rocky Jones, whom she wants to try and have join forces with her because he is just so damned good. This movie could have taken place in a back alley instead of space, but then it wouldn't have been so deliciously cheesy.
We see Rocky as the complete dominant male in this feature. He is the one that not only Winky looks up to the entire time, but even the villain wants him to join her forces, seemingly because she is not good enough to defeat him. Rocky's girlfriend, Vena Ray, is completely incompetent without him around saving her and making sure she's all right. This dominance that Rocky has over all of his companions and the female villain seems to show the patriarchal side of the 50s culture. Granted, this will probably be brought up for the other two movies, but this seems to be quite present all around in this film. What makes it more prominent is the fact that the evil queen is not the mastermind and cannot find very effective ways to dispatch or defeat Rocky so she is attracted to his obvious superior abilities. She recognizes how she is inferior to him and the only logical step is to have him be on her side so that she is more a more competent villain. But of course Rocky would never leave the side of the good. The 50s is full of black and white evil stereotypes. The line is never blurry because in the culture it is obvious who the threat to the American public is: those damn Reds.
The film doesn't really delve too deep into the concept of the "other" considering these space pirates are not really from a different planet per se, but we are shown a group of people acting outside of the accepted behavior of their society. "The 1950s were distinguished by a profound popular anxiety toward the subject of conformity and mass society" (Mann, 58). In other words there are anxieties toward those unwilling to stay relatively close to society's rigid cultural structure. Those who broke it are undoubtedly bad people. The pirates in this film are cookie cutter evil characters that have no moral standing, which is how 50s society depicted Communists and socialists. There is the just, and then there are the unjust.
The second film, Night of the Blood Beast, is a Roger Corman produced gem which has a pension for almost nothing going on for most of the time. The story revolves around the crashing of a space shuttle which contains a supposedly dead astronaut. The astronaut is brought to facility by a doctor, the dead astronaut's sister, and a few throwaway characters. It is at this facility that they realize a monster has appeared and kills one of the characters and then the doctor. The monster supposedly came with the ship, and the presumed dead astronaut revives suddenly and it is revealed that he has embryos from the monster living inside of him. Obviously the others want to kill the monster, but the astronaut is not willing to let them do so because he has a telepathic connection (or something like that) with the monster and just knows he won't hurt them. Through an awesomely bad climax we get a scene where the monster is chased into a cave and then gives a speech using the dead doctor's voice to communicate how he is there to repopulate his people and he is peaceful and trying to improve the lives of humanity. Naturally the others find this to be more of a selfish plan to use their planet for the good of the monster's species so they burn him with Molotov cocktails. No, I did not make this film up.
Here we see the "other" being pursued much more so than the other film. Here we have a creature invading us from another planet in order to fulfill its needs to repopulate its species. Our "heroes" are representing our fear of the other because they will not listen to the creature. The astronaut is even turned against the creature after convincing himself that the embryos inside him are evil and out to take over Earth instead of living peacefully with humans. The "other" in 50s culture is usually considered anything outside of the norm of white middle class. This can be Soviet Communists again or even minority groups. In Mann's article, she uses the invaders from the Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an analogy for the taking over of white suburbia from members of the black community during the 50s. "In its challenges to white hegemony and Hollywood's evasion of explicit interracial conflict, the ubiquitous homogeneity of Invasion of the Body Snatchers sutured audience identification to an idealized suburban whiteness besieged by outsiders who force a new and foreign version of 'mongrelized' homogeneity on a suburban town. Furthermore, this identity shift was forced on Santa Mira's mythic white Americans by 'foreign' invaders" (Mann, 52). We can see the same thing going on here with a group of white, middle class people, though we don't know if they're suburban because we don't know where they are from but it probably can be assumed, being invaded by the other. They also believe that the other means to take over the people of Earth to ensure the prospering of the creature's species. They believe it is an "us versus them" situation where the other (aka minority groups) are coming in, raping the women, and then pushing out the white people from their neighborhoods. The white people are threatened by this other and thus must purge themselves of it no matter how much it tries to reason.
There also seems to be some sort of gender reversal that seems to add to the threat. The male astronaut is the one who is the carrier of the monster's species; therefore he becomes some sort of mother figure. He is also the one who shows the most compassion and understanding toward the monster because of this. Perhaps this is also why the monster is seen as a menace to Earth and society in general. The man is no longer the masculine figure in this situation. Instead it's the monster who impregnates the astronaut, who is someone usually associated with intelligence and manliness. This is stripped from him after he is the mother of the foreign species and now he is feminine and compassionate. The monster has broken down the social structure by essentially raping the astronaut since the man didn't know he had the creatures growing inside him until an X-ray was performed. Here we see the fear of the evil black rapist coming and destroying our communities.
The final film I watched called Teenagers from Outer Space, directed by Tom Graeff, involves the invasion of aliens who look like normal teenagers coming to Earth in order to use it as a food source for their giant lobsters. The main charcter, Derek, is the alien wanting to save the human race from the antagonist's, Thor, ray gun that leaves its victims as only skeletons. It is discovered by Thor and their captain that Derek is their planet's leader's son and Thor is sent out to stop him from saving humanity. Derek runs into a girl named Betty along the way who is naïve of Derek's alien nature, even though it is blatantly obvious that he is not acting like a normal human being. The two eventually become the obligatory love couple and he is her protector. The film ends with superimposed lobsters attacking the suburban town and then Derek assuming his role as the leader's son in order to take control of the UFO he and his kind came on and blow himself along with his counterparts into smithereens. At least this is what I think happens.
Again we are given the 50s psychology of the anxiety of the other, though interestingly the other this time is also the youth. Here we see the youth being casted out as the other, though we still could argue for the otherness of the alien. Perhaps this film is using teens from outer space as a way to expose the 50s anxiety of the delinquent youth by othering them as an alien life form coming to destroy suburbia. These aliens talk, dress, and act different than those of the town and mean to use the town for their own purposes. Perhaps this is a stretch at trying to connect this film to anything in general other than a terribly made 50s science fiction piece of trash, but it doesn't seem to be too coincidental that we are shown youths being the ones to take the reins and start killing our people and dogs.
Of course Derek is the exception. He is the youth who stands against his delinquents. How would we have triumph over evil if one of the aliens wasn't civilized, male, and dominant over the female? I just want to point out that many driving scenes in the film between Derek and Betty backup any patriarchal stereotype from the 50s because he is always driving even though his character is said to not know how to do so. Betty of course gives him pointers, but every scene has Betty moving over after turning on the vehicle just so the male alien being with no driving experience can drive because he's in charge. This movie isn't exactly giving me much to work with so it's time to move on.
How does this all tie into Mystery Science Theater 3000? Clearly the show is making numerous jokes on the expense of the shoddy story and production, and mostly shies away from making any direct commentary on the social aspects of the era. On the other hand, we are given a snarky and satirical view of these films in a postmodern way: through pure sarcasm and indifference to seriousness. Using this model, it is possible to examine these films, which expose all of the fears and anxieties pointed out above, and twist them on their heads. What does this do for us? According to Jessica A. Royer's chapter in Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy entitled "What's Happening on Earth?: Mystery Science Theater 3000 as a Reflection of Gender Roles Toward Women" the show "provides a unique means of reinterpreting older texts" (Royer, 116). This comedic setup for showing us a lens of 1950s science fiction is reinterpreted to us by the Satellite of Love trio in order for us to make a new understanding of the time. Royer goes on to say that "comedy is frequently used to negotiate social change because, like science fiction, it provides a safe atmosphere for the examination of sensitive topics…in addition, 'comedy has often been linked to man's [sic] ability to transcend his oppression by laughing at his chains, linked to his satiric facility which enables him to suggest changes for his society, and related to his natural cycles of regeneration and renewal'" (Royer, 117).
We are given quite the cynical view of the 1950s through the overdubbed commentary of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew. Manhunt in Space entails some commentary that shows the flamboyancy of not only Rocky but Winky and at one point purposefully points out Vena's over-the-top weeping with over exaggerated sobs. We are given the almost child-like point of view to what once might be considered a film of wonder or just mild entertainment as a way for us to critique the ridiculous aspects. Painting Rocky and Winky (boy I never grow tired of typing that name) as flamboyant, though not necessarily homosexual (even if Winky says something about riding the rocket which made the trio immediately hush themselves) it certainly emasculates what is supposed to be seen as a masculine and dominant figure. Therefore we are taken from the picture's wondrous point-of-view and immediately see the commentators' skewering as the more valid point. The weeping woman is no longer a normalized like it would be in a 50s film but is now a thing of ridicule and just plain pathetic.
Also, the use of this ridicule helps take the fears of the 50s and reinterpret them for us today. The trio looks back at a film like Night of the Blood Beast and don't try and help us understand that the time period would be feeling anxiety toward an intruder coming to re-assimilate with the American population and impregnate our men and women, thus breaking down and reversing the normalized patriarchal society and bringing mass chaos. They don't commentate on how purging of this beast is the only way to be rid of the threat. No, what they do is they completely take these fears and make them as a thing of comedic value. We reinterpret this satirical look back at the 50s' fears as a way for us to understand what they feared, though probably not in a way that they would appreciate. The trio and the postmodern audience understand these fears today as radical and downright strange. We look back to the 50s in an almost nostalgic way, but also in a way that is funny as a way to understand it better.
Teenagers from Outer Space is also ridiculed to this extent with the downright criticizing of anxieties and gender roles, but also we see how they poke fun at how the society works. The film has a grandfather who we regularly see sleeping, to which one of the trio makes constant references to him being drunk, but being mimicked as though through the Betty character's voice as though him being drunk is a regular occurrence. Though he is never said to be drunk in the film, this commentary shows a lot of 50s culture of covering up something as serious as alcoholism as though it were something normal. The female is of course the one sugar coating this notion, which plays on the stereotypes of the bottled up female. Also, there is commentary on supposed sexual tension between Derek and Betty, though it never is really true to the film. These allusions show the nature of sexuality in the 50s as something not exposed, but in a postmodern society it's not only exposed but holes are poked in order for us to interpret them in a new way.
The comedic satire of the show really helps interpret the 50s era's anxieties and cultural taboos, though not necessarily in a sophisticated way. Through this postmodern viewpoint of an adolescent mindset of taking nothing seriously, we look back on history to relate it to our lives today by interpreting it through ridicule. Ridicule is what socializes us in our earlier years in junior high and high school. By saying "that's stupid" we are really saying what it is we don't want to be. Mystery Science Theater 3000 shows us through the ridiculously bad movies what these social anxieties do to a culture. The show not only exposes these but also bashes them as a way for us to interpret them as something that we don't want for our current situation. It is used to trigger a social change away from anxieties and patriarchy and move toward a more equal culture.
Citations:
Irving, Martin. "Approaches to Po-Mo." Georgetown.edu. Georgetown, n.d. Web. 8 Dec. 2010.
Mann, Katrina. ""You're Next!": Postwar Hegemony Besieged in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)." Cinema Journal 44.1 (2004): 49-68. Project MUSE. 21 Sep. 2010 <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.
Royer, Jessica A. "What's Happening on Earth?: Mystery Science Theater 3000 as a Reflection of Gender Roles Toward Women." Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Ed. Elyse Rae Helford. Lenham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. 2000. 115-34.
