Sergeant Ben Peterson was
played by James Whitmore. Dr. Patricia Medford was played by Joan Weldon. Dr. Harold Medford was played by a wonderful character actor, Edmund Gwenn, who was also Kris Kringle in the classic 1947 movie, Miracle on 34th Street. He died five years after Them! was released. Them! was produced by Warner Bros. You can get a more complete list of credits and learn what else the actors starred in at the Internet Movie Database. Here is a brief review of Them! at Oh, The Humanity!
Them! was released in June, 1954. As discussed in the main essay, the monsters are partly a disguised depiction of domestic and international communism. The Korean War ended a year before in July 1953, so the fight against a ferocious communist enemy was very much on the minds of America. The McCarthy era, in which Sen. McCarthy and other officials hunted for communists in important places -- and falsely accused innocent people -- was also in full swing during the time the movie was being made. McCarthy was censured for unbecoming conduct by the Senate on Dec. 2, 1954.
The Story * The precise wording of part of this quote, which was not discernable in the movie, still needs to be checked: The passage, with the quote, reads: "We may be witnesses to a Biblical prophecy come true," says Dr. Medford, as he stands amid the howling wind. "-- And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation and the beast shall reign over the earth." * It would be interesting to compare Them! with the work of Hitchcock. Hitchcock's The Birds, 1963, clearly seems to be derived from the same "nature revolts against man" template, although Hitchcock's story creates a sense of anomalousness in viewers, providing no easy explanation for why the birds have changed. Similarly, North by Northwest, 1959, has a scene in which an airplane comes from the distance and the character and audience are first uncertain what it is up to, like the scene in Them! If memory serves correctly, in North by Northwest the plane turns out to be on the attack. Both these movies came out after Them! . It is also interesting to compare the process of discovery and explanation in Them! with the book, The Investigation, by Stanislaw Lem. A character investigates a series of anomalous events and, if memory again serves correctly, ends up discovering that the explanation is that there really is no order to the universe and things were just apparently hanging together in a pattern for a while and now they are not. We thus have three stories with three outcomes: In Them! anomalous events are explained by a scientific theory and thus fit into a coherent view of an ordered and understandable world. In The Investigation, anomalous events are explained, as well, but the explanation turns out to be that there is no order to the world. That is itself an explanation but of a disordered world. In The Birds, no explanation is given for the anomalous events, and no way to stop them is presented. The first story is quintessentially modern, because it upholds the scientific view that we can understand the world and make progress as a result of our understanding. The latter two would be considered "postmodern" because they challenge this view. This Lem page says this about The Investigation: "Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków, 1959, 1969. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986. English translation copyright 1974 by The Continuum Publishing Corporation. Translated by Adele Milch. "A statistical science fiction mystery. Bodies are disappearing, and a Scotland Yard investigator unravels the mystery with the aid of scientific, philosophical and theological consultants. "The Investigation was made into a movie in 1979 by director Étienne Périer." (The Internet Movie Database lists the movie but with the date 1978.) * Here are excerpts from an entry on dragons by Graig Bakay from the Encyclopedia Mythica: "Few creatures of folklore and mythology conjure up the mental images of the dragon. Also known as wurm, wyrm and firedrake, these mercurial creatures pervade almost every pantheon of classical mythology and have become an integral inclusion of an entire genre of fantasy literature.... The beasts are typically depicted as huge lizards, larger than elephants on average. Long fangs are generally accepted as are twin horns of varying length. Western cultures generally include large bat-like wings giving the dragon the capability of flight. But eastern dragons, usually wingless, use a more magical means of flying. As well, eastern dragons tend to be more snake-like in nature, albeit with front and rear legs....It is also generally accepted that most dragons are magical creatures in nature and have the ability to breathe fire (as a weapon)." The ants have armored bodies in place of scales, antennae in place of horns, mandibles in place of fangs, and batlike wings. They inject formic acid in place of breathing fire. * Here are excerpts from an entry on Perseus by James Hunter from the Encyclopedia Mythica: "Perseus was the son of Zeus and Danae. Danae's father, King Acrisius, set Danae and her son adrift on the sea because of a prophecy that Perseus would kill him. The two were taken in by Polydectes, the king of Seriphus. Polydectes later conceived a passion for Danae, but was unable to force his attentions on her because Perseus had grown into a redoubtable protector. To get rid of Perseus, Polydectes sent him on a quest to bring back the head of the Gorgon Medusa, a snake-haired maiden who turned all who saw her into stone. "Perseus accomplished his quest with the help of Hermes and Athena. He went first to the Gorgons' sisters, the Graeae, who had only one eye and one tooth which they shared among themselves. Perseus took the eye and the tooth, and agreed to give them back only if the Graeae helped him in his quest. They helped him acquire a pair of winged sandals, a wallet or satchel, and the cap of Hades; the sandals enabled him to fly, the satchel was to carry the Gorgon's head, and the cap conferred invisibility on its wearer. Wearing the cap, he approached Medusa, looking only at her reflection in his shield, and cut off her head....Later in the journey he saw the maiden Andromeda chained naked to a rock by the sea as a sacrifice to a sea monster. He fell in love with her and bargained with her father, Cepheus, for her hand in marriage if he killed the monster. He succeeded in slaying the beast...." * Here are excerpts from an entry on Saint George from Encyclopędia Britannica Online: "Early Christian martyr who during the Middle Ages became an ideal of martial valour and selflessness. He is the patron saint of England. "Nothing of George's life or deeds can be established, but legends about him as a warrior-saint, dating from the 6th century, became popular and increasingly extravagant. Jacob de Voragine's Legenda aurea (1265-66; Golden Legend) repeats the story of his rescuing a Libyan king's daughter from a dragon and then slaying the monster in return for a promise by the king's subjects to be baptized. George's slaying of the dragon may be a Christian version of the legend of Perseus, who was said to have rescued Andromeda from a sea monster near Lydda." * I may have watched the movie too many times, but I am unable to find the ant with the protruding proboscis. It may be an image shown quickly that was caught by the image capture. Nevertheless, I will find it and note where it is in the movie. Them!: Anality and Castration * The descriptions of anality and psychosexual development have been written without consulting the literature and so, inevitably, they have various kinds of imperfections. Among them, the description of the psychology of sexual development doesn't adequately take phallic narcissism into account. * In addition to representing the mind, bathroom, body and unconscious, the landscape, particularly the interior spaces of buildings and the mazelike nest, may also represent the house of childhood. The most obvious example is the scene in which the children are held captive by the ants in the storm drains, which depicts the child held captive in the parental bedroom or another room of the house. The nests may also be the dark spaces in the house such as closets and the "underworld" beneath the bed, although there isn't much that points to this idea. As noted, all of these kinds of "spaces" are mixed together to create fantastic (and disguised) depictions that bear no relation to anything we know in the physical world. For example, the human characters are not only thoughts in the conscious personality, which are attacked by the internalized images of persecutors from the unconscious, but they are also people who are depicted as living in the field of consciousness, menaced by monsters from the unconscious. The people, here, are representation of fantasies of people and personifications inside the mind. Or, to use another example, the monstrous ants are experienced as emerging from the hidden recesses of the mother which is also the child's unconscious, and coming out to haunt the conscious personality of life on the surface. * The rail cars holding large quantifies of sugar, which are the object of an ant attack, are once again an anal image of material being transported for unloading. One sees similar images in other stories and in children's play. The spilled sugar and sugar cubes seen earlier in the movie are disguised anal images, as well. * Regarding Them! and the fear of castration: The story may also depict a young male who overcomes his fear of women, embodied in his fear of his mother, which allows him to link up with a woman. Here, he overcomes his fear that Dr. Pat Medford will produce castrating and devouring monsters like his mother, so he can meet her as an equal partner. He overcomes the threatening image of women so he can appreciate a more normal and fully integrated perception of them. Dr. Pat Medford might also have to overcome the perception of herself as a castrating, devouring, monster, jealous of men. This interpretation is just another aspect of the idea that the young male and female have to overcome the fear that the mother will castrate and devour them for leaving her, so they can grow up and choose each other as partners. But, here, the son projects this fear onto Dr. Medford and can't perform with her as an equal partner until he overcomes his fear. Having annihilated the image of the female as devourer, the male can enjoy the image of her as a partner. * The ants are the most complex image in the movie. And, so, they may also be a disguised depiction of the parents entangled in sex, as seen through the fantasies of a child. Two adults engaging in sex can produce a confusing image for a child that can seem disturbing, anomalous, and violent. The entangled couple have the following relevant characteristics: they have body hair; they are large; they are made up of a number of connected parts and, together, they have eight limbs. That is also the ants -- a disturbing, violent and strange figure, covered with what looks like hair, with eight limbs -- six legs and two long, limb-like, antennae. * If we link the imagery of the castrating mother to the political imagery, we see that the movie also depicts a battle in which communist China, as a dangerous giant, is perceived to be a castrating, devouring, mother that would engulf the world and keep the youthful society of America from maturing and remaining alive and free. The ants, like China, as perceived by many in America in the 1950s (and after), is "the Other" -- inhuman, unnatural, dangerous; the darkness that is antithetical to America's perceived light. Of course, the ants may also be Nazi Germany as the malevolent mother. The imagery of a world engulfed by fascist takeover or by communism would thus link up with the common childhood fantasy of being engulfed by, and devoured by, the mother. * Regarding the statement: "Setting off an atomic explosion requires sending in a particle to cause a chain reaction, which is similar in imagery to fertilization that sets off the process of growth and cell division." This is based on my best memory of high school physics. The description may be "improved" later. * As the characters engage in conflicts
over information,
a number of the characters can take either side, depending on the scene. In fact, the primary force for knowledge and discovery -- Dr. Harold Medford --
is also the character who has decided that the existence of the ants has to be concealed, first from his law enforcement partners Them! & the Secret Soul of the West * All of the similarities in the movie may be created with conscious intention, without conscious awareness or anywhere in-between. As described elsewhere on this site, these are complex communications from the conscious and unconscious of the creators to the conscious and unconscious of audiences. * The ants create holes which the characters have to face and go through to find the truth so they can ultimately close the holes up and be whole. We've got a number of spatial metaphors, here, of openings and things that are damaged or torn into fragments, and of closing up the holes and putting things back together. The final image of an opening at the end refers to this: "When man entered the atomic age, he opened a door into a new world. What we eventually find in that new world nobody can predict." In other words, man has opened the door into Mother Nature in which these terrible things may be lurking. But he has also opened the door into the future, the world associated with sexual adulthood. * Regarding the assertion that the similarities between the ants and communism; the ants and anality, and so on, are portals that lead to various realms of meaning: this is in line with the imagery of the movie. But one might better refer to these similarities as devices that draw meanings from other sources and imbue whatever is on the screen with that meaning. * The anomalousness created by the hard-to-identify airplane and the incomprehensible car radio may partly remain after we understand what these are since we still may feel uncertain why the movie has imposed these confusions on us. (I am assuming the scene with the airplane is confusing on a large movie screen in the way it is on my television set.) Also, it is interesting to note that the difficulty understanding the voice on the car radio is echoed by the difficulty we have understanding the radio announcer in the scene in the store. As we listen very closely, trying to make sense of what we are hearing, we are in a situation much like Sgt. Peterson who is walking through the destroyed store, bewildered, and trying to figure out what he is seeing. There is also another source of confusion in the movie involving the image of a television.
Theorists who have written about anality include Freud, Karl Abraham, Ernest Jones, and Otto Fenichel. The reader will find some of the references in Life Against Death. Here is a quick reference to Abraham from Encyclopędia Britannica Online that refers to the way he subdivided Freud's stages of psychosexual development: "In a major paper (published in 1909) he connected myths with dreams and viewed both as wish-fulfillment fantasies. Abraham devoted himself chiefly to pioneering efforts in the psychoanalytic treatment of manic-depressive psychosis. He suggested that the libido, or sexual drive, develops in six stages: earlier oral, oral-sadistic, anal expulsive, anal retentive, phallic, and adult genital. If an infant's development becomes arrested at any of the earlier stages, mental disorders will most likely result from a libidinal fixation at that level." Norman O. Brown: Life Against Death, The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (Middletown, Ct.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988) Interested readers may want to check out pages 283-304, which provide a nice summary of the book, followed by his ultimate vision of "The Resurrection of the Body", pages 305-322. Erich Fromm: Man for Himself, An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990.). __________________________________________________ |
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