Hollywood Utopia

crude Darwinian instinct to survive. Such agents do not conform to any form of
symbiotic harmony within a nurturing holistic eco-system or offer any addition to
the evolutionary gene pool but instead treat all ‘natural’ organisms as either food
or, alternatively, a host victim to help take over the much sought after planetary
biosphere.
The normative liberal-humanist values of the chief protagonist serve to counter
the dystopic world view embodied in the aliens and help to promote the view that
what ultimately elevates true human existence is a holistic, emotional engagement
with the world and all its sentient life forces. This conventional deep ecological
principle is foreshadowed, for example, by a nurturing empathy for a dog almost
killed on the road which symbolises Dana Wynter’s human(e) credentials. But this
unquestioning affirmation of these ethical values, as well as the ontological
opposition between aliens (who in every other way replicate human form and
consciousness) and humans, is most dramatically and horrifically illustrated later.
Only when the doctor kisses his beloved, after leaving her for a short time alone in
a cave, does he realise that finally she too has been ‘taken over’. The over
determined shot/reverse shot, revealing horror through an extreme close-up of the
doctor’s eyes together with his shocked facial expression, has fascinated audiences
and film-makers ever since. Only when human agents perceive what they could lose
and ‘have to fight to stay human’ can they then begin to appreciate the full horror
of their predicament.
The Incredible Shrinking Man
This preoccupation with ontological notions of human nature is more personally
and psychologically addressed within The Incredible Shrinking Man while avoiding
references to contemporary ‘local’ ideologies, except for gender politics. Unlike
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which never questions the hero’s ethical or
scientific justification in the face of a pervasive anti-natural force, the ‘shrinking
man’ must learn to face up to his transformation and reappraise his relations with
nature and his environment. The narrative becomes a microcosmic example of one
man’s search for identity within the radically changed environment of his erstwhile
controlled domestic habitat.
The Incredible Shrinking Man, directed by Jack Arnold, provides in many ways a
striking example of eco-spiritualism. Scott Carey, the main protagonist, begins a
process of diminution after exposure to an odd combination of insecticides and
radioactive materials. The film first holds to an objective, eye-level schema that
emphasises the banality of Scott’s suburban existence. As in Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, the deadpan banality emphasises the horror of the transformation by
grounding it in the experiential familiarity of the everyday. As the shrinking
continues for Scott, the style changes.
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