#sci-fi saturdays

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: The Man in the White Suit

Week 30:

Film(s): The Man in the White Suit (Dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1951, UK)

Viewing Format: Streaming - Kanopy

Date Watched: 2022-02-18

Rationale for Inclusion:

Given that Ewan McGregor has been playing Obi-Won Kenobi in live-action Star Wars media off and on since 1999, would anyone under 30 years-old be able to place Alec Guinness by me saying, "You know, Obi-Won Kenobi in Star Wars?" To Millennials and older geeks this lack of cultural touchstone would hurt our brains, but the knighted, most accomplished character and dramatic actor himself would be relieved that Star Wars (Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope, Dir. George Lucas, 1977, USA) may not be what he is remembered most for in 2024, as it was not his favorite role despite the financial stability it enabled for him. Granted, I don't know what other example of Guinness' filmography I would use for someone under 30 who doesn't attend classic cinema film festivals. Star Wars is still better known than Lawrence of Arabia (Dir. David Lean, 1962, UK) or Kind Hearts and Coronets (Dir. Robert Hamer, 1949, UK) by the mainstream populus of the United States.

I begin on this note because this week's film, The Man in the White Suit (Dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1951, UK), stars Sir Alec Guinness in a comedic role, which while not unusual for him, especially in the 1950s, is not the work for which the mainstream consciousness most remembers him. A chance to witness more of Guinness' incredible range was part of the reason for selecting this film, as was the fact that the last British sci-fi satire that we watched for the survey, Once in a New Moon (Dir. Anthony Kimmins, 1935, UK), has been one of the great discoveries by my partner and I on this cinematic journey thus far. Plus, according to the British Film Institute, The Man in the White Suit is the 58th greatest film to come out of its country.

Reactions:

Being familiar with Guinness' dramatic work, it came as no surprise to me or my partner that the actor turned in a brilliant performance as Sidney Stratton, a research chemist bent on creating an indestructible fiber. The number of lab explosions and subterfuge Stratton undertakes gives his comedic timing ample opportunities to shine.

The emphasis on chemistry led to the inclusion of the "Guggle Glub Gurgle" song to accompany the chemicals burbling, moving and bubbling. My partner and I assumed that it must have been the work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who created the music and sound effects for Doctor Who and both the radio and television versions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. To our surprise, the experimental and pioneering electronic music and sound production company was not formed until 1958; 7 years after the release of The Man in the White Suit. Instead, the creative composition was created by sampling sounds made by actual equipment, which may make it the most widely heard example of musique concrète.

The slapstick humor transitions more into satire when Stratton successfully completes the first batch of his indestructible, radioactive fiber, and makes it into the suit of the title. The viability of cloth that does not stain or wear out causes a panic amongst everyone from capitalists, to textile workers, to little old ladies who take in others' washing for a bit of money. The economy and culture would be upended by it in a way that was too massive for people to handle. Luckily for the conservative minded, a flaw in the formula causes the cloth to gradually break down over a few weeks. With Stratton's firing, the threat seems to be neutralized. Except, Stratton has a revelation whilst looking at his formula notes, and at the end strides off, presumably to seek out a means of creating a second version of the indestructible cloth.

Stratton continues the tradition of the mad scientist, but instead of upending morals and religion like his predecessors, he upends capitalism and commerce. Given the post-World War II industrial boom many countries experienced, and the Cold War being configured on communist versus capitalist lines, it's an evolution keeping with the times in which the film was created. He is nevertheless just as antisocial and obsessive as his predecessors Henry Jekyll and Victor Frankenstein.

He also carries on the mad scientist tradition of experimenting on himself by wearing a suit made of his indestructible fiber. Stratton is not merely daily driving his cloth, the way new products are tested for their practicality, because the fiber includes radioactive elements. The long term damage of radiation exposure through patent medicines containing radioactive elements and working with radioluminescent paints was known by the 1930s. It is entirely possible that Stratton could have developed a version of the formula where the cloth would not deteriorate, but the person wearing it would do so horrifically. At that point his cloth would not only be a direct economic threat, but a direct threat to public health.

My speculating and interpreting of the invention central to the film aside, The Man with the White Suit is a fun piece of sci-fi and satire, managing to be equal measures funny, smart, and thought provoking. It's widely available on streaming and home media formats, and definitely worth a watch.

[70sscifiart]

Happy Sci-Fi Dolphin Saturday. Ron Cobb, for San Francisco Express Times, 1968.

[vogler-art]

Halo! One of my latest illustrations. Drawn w/ Procreate.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Ed Valigursky

[shaneplays]

One of Ralph McQuarrie's concept designs for the Colonial Viper from the original Battlestar Galactica ended up being used as the starfighter ("Thunderfighter") from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. McQuarrie's concepts are so good even his rejected designs are winners… on Sci-Fi Saturday!!

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Princess Aura - Flash Gordon (1979)

[aceghosts]

Rooney Shepard (They/Them)/Yorinobu Arasaka Screenshots (8/X)

BONUS AFTERWARDS:

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@socially-awkward-skeleton, @cloudofbutterflies92, @captastra, @katsigian, @hookhearted,

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@theelderhazelnut,

[thekristen999]

Inspiration Saturday

I'm over 22k words on the Sci-Fi of Doom Fic. About to start writing the big climax of the story! \o/

Previous snippets here.

....

Athena gingerly walked toward the back of the room where Eddie stood in front of a table taking an inventory of his supplies, his fingers trembling as he struggled to zip the medical bag.

She took the zipper and pulled it closed. "How are your patients?"

"Stable. For now."

His voice struck her as odd. Hollow and tired. His complexion a little too grey under the fluorescent lighting.

"You did a hell of a job earlier."

"We need to go back out there."

He gazed at her, waiting. The horror that erupted in the hallway seemed only to fuel Eddie's determination, bordering on desperation to leave.

The longer the delay, the greater the likelihood that Bobby and Buck were in peril.

Considering the multitude of creatures and the ferocity of their assault, Athena had resigned herself to the possibility of discovering their bodies.

[juls-art]

Terrance, another beloved oc from yonder years u vu

–  

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[spacetimesally]

Time to rub the sleepies outta yer eyeholes and plop down in front of that warm 'n' fuzzy vacuum cathode ray tube box apparatus, Space Cadets! The Spacetime Sally Animated Adventures are starting!

[big-low-t]

Thundarr the Barbarian

[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Five

Week 29:

Film(s): Five (Dir. Arch Oboler, 1951, USA)

Viewing Format: Streaming Video (Amazon)

Date Watched: 2022-02-11

Rationale for Inclusion:

Late in the runtime of last week's film, The Thing From Another World (Dir. Christian Nyby, 1951, USA), as part of a monologue trying to convince his fellow occupants of the Arctic base not to destroy the carnivorous plant alien that has already drained the blood of multiple scientists and sled dogs, Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) concludes his plea for the importance of the pursuit of knowledge at all costs with, "We split the atom." At which point, one of the airmen, Lt. Eddie Dykes (James Young), cuts in with, "Yes, and that sure made the world happy, didn't it?" The sardonic quip stops Carrington cold.

In 1951, only six years had passed since the United States had deployed atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August of 1945. Whilst news of the destruction and atrocities were initially slow to spread, by the time the film takes place the scientists and airmen in The Thing no doubt knew the horrors inflicted upon Japan. Furthermore, the Soviet Union had detonated its first nuclear weapon in 1949, and the Cold War was very much underway.

With this cultural context in place, it follows that the post-apocalyptic film would make a comeback in the 1950s. Rocketship X-M (Dir. Kurt Neumann, 1950, USA) featured a post nuclear disaster society on Mars, but this survey has not featured a film where the central narrative is built around people trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world since natural disaster film Deluge (Dir. Felix E. Feist, 1933, USA). So when I encountered Five (Dir. Arch Oboler, 1951, USA) described as the "first to depict the aftermath of an Earthly atomic bomb catastrophe" whilst perusing Wikipedia's science fiction cinema list, I knew it was an essential film to view.

Five was an independent film written, directed and produced by Arch Oboler, a successful radio dramatist who followed in Orson Welles' footsteps in transitioning to filmmaking. Oboler had directed three films prior to Five, and to keep costs down on the production the cast featured relatively unknown working actors, the crew was recruited from recent University of Southern California graduates, and the primary filming location was a Frank Lloyd Wright designed guest house on Oboler's Malibu ranch.

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With its limited cast and locations, Five is dominantly the kind of no frills character study that would become more commonplace during the 1960s. It is simply and competently made with aesthetics that may remind modern day audiences of episodes of anthology television series, like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits.

As implied by the title of the film, the small cast of characters includes five people: the pregnant Roseanne Rogers (Susan Douglas Rubeš), white everyman Michael Rogin (William Phipps), the aged bank clerk Oliver P. Barnstaple (Earl Lee), black everyman Charles (Charles Lampkin), and supposedly affluent adventurer Eric (James Anderson). Roseanne's sex and Charles' race become sources of drama, mostly because Eric exhibits a behavior described decades later by sociologists as "elite panic."

Lee Clarke and Caron Chess of Rutgers University coined the term in a 2008 journal article, in which based on available research and case studies of disasters from the 1950s through 2001 they determined that the source of panic in these scenarios was not the general public devolving into a mob, but by elites, fearing that their power and wealth would be violently stripped from them by a mob. Clarke and Chess specifically identify three relationships with panic that occur during disasters: elites fearing panic, elites causing panic, and elites panicking. My introduction to this concept came via an episode of the podcast Behind the Bastards recorded during November of 2020, when amid the COVID-19 pandemic and stress around the presidential election having a reminder that the majority of people are inherently giving, caring, communal creatures was a huge comfort.

In Five, after an initially violent encounter, Michael and Roseanne band together for survival, with Oliver and Charles later joining them. They compassionately deal with Roseanne's pregnancy and Oliver's mental dissociation and decline from radiation sickness amid their limited resources. Oliver's dying request to visit the nearby ocean results in the old man having as peaceful a death as available under the circumstances, and the discovery of a man washed ashore, Eric.

The injured Eric's explanation for how he survived the atomic bombing is bizarre compared to the banality of the others' explanations, who were shielded from the blast via being in an elevator, lead-lined hospital x-ray room, and bank vault, respectively. Instead Eric was actively climbing Mount Everest alone when a blizzard stranded him. When he made it back to basecamp he found other climbers dead. On foot and via abandoned conveyances Eric had made his way back to America, encountering no other survivors along the way, just dead bodies.

Eric's journey in its entirety sounds highly unlikely, but at first only one aspect utterly defied my credulity: who climbs Mount Everest alone? Mountaineering is not a pet topic of research for me, but I know enough to know that no serious climber attempts Everest without guides, frequently members of the local Sherpa community. "What happened to his sherpa?" I demanded aloud when we got to this point in the film. "Did he eat them?"

Given that Eric is gradually revealed to be a greedy opportunist, in retrospect his story may have been nothing but lies. It seems more likely he was in the United States the entire time and leapfrogged from one pocket of resources and survivors to another until he ended up washing up on the beach. Regardless of whether he actually was a billionaire or not--and the film does nothing to disprove his account--he nevertheless has an elite mentality: trying to hoard resources (including Roseanne) to himself. 

Eric is the sociopathic evolution of the wandering rapists from Deluge, and ultimately serves the narrative role of Michael's doppelganger. Michael may have initially tried to sexually assault Roseanne, but spends the rest of the film making up for that feral moment. Eric is predatory and ends up becoming a murderer in the course of the narrative; after being banished by the others, he goes back to steal supplies and kills Charles when he is caught. Michael is spared having to also become a murderer by the reveal near the end of the film that Eric has radiation poisoning and likely does not have much time left. The film makes it clear that Michael is a good man, and deserving of being the new Adam of the post-apocalyptic world.

Roseanne earns her new Eve status in part by being the token female, and in part because she is devoted to her missing husband until she finds definitive proof that he died in the bombing. Her dedication to her husband and baby are all that is needed to qualify her as a good woman. 

Unfortunately, her newborn dies for reasons of narrative convenience. Apparently it was too much to ask for Michael to be father to a baby he did not conceive. Instead it ends with Michael and Roseanne left alone. Despite the tragedies and threat of radiation sickness lingering, Five closes conservatively and reasonably optimistically: life will go on.

Before I wrap up, I would be remiss if I did not spend more time discussing Charles. His presence is itself a progressive act, given how the casts of most mainstream films surveyed thus far have been all or mostly white. However, he is introduced in a subservient role to an old white man, and spends the remainder of his time in the narrative as a litmus test to show who is the superior white man to repopulate the world: Michael or Eric. The notion that Charles might be a candidate for Roseanne's mate is never so much as suggested. For all the indignities Charles suffers throughout Five, he at least is spared the trope frequently placed on black men of being the first to die. Overall, Charles is a minor step forward for black representation in science fiction cinema.

Five, on the other hand, is a solid first representation of the post-nuclear apocalypse narrative. Later films built on the premise, like On the Beach (Dir. Stanley Kramer, 1959) and The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Dir. Ranald MacDougall, 1959), would result in better movies, but Five deserves greater attention within the sub-genre.

[70sscifiart]

For Sci-Fi Dolphin Saturday, here's an uncredited cover to MicroComputer magazine, 1983

[thegoodmorningman]

It's gonna be a Hot One!!!

[shaneplays]

According to some sources, the Battlestar Galactica from the original 1978 series was over 500 years old when the series began. The battlestars served as faster-than-light capable battle cruisers, fighter carriers, and mobile command centers for the fleet of the Twelve Colonies. In addition to the protection provided by its viper squadrons, the Galactica had turbolasers, fusion missiles, and shields. Series creators said the Galactica was about one mile long, and fan estimations based on the scale model put it around 4,741 feet. A big battlestar for a big job… on Sci-Fi Saturday!!

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Jason of Star Command (1978)