2. Them! as a Depiction of Society, Continued
________________________________________

The idea that we could be undone
by our own effort to fight communism
brings us to a third and intriguing meaning
which lets us see Them! not as a war movie
or a morality tale about science and technology
but as a form of social criticism,
with a disturbing message about modern society.

You can discern this message
by looking at the way the movie depicts 
the people and institutions that are fighting the ants.

Here is one of those depictions,
which shows the characters going into
the underground nest, wearing suits
to protect them from the cyanide used
to kill the ants.

Do you see the message hidden in the scene?

Here's another view.
Do you see the message?

Here is another relevant image from the movie.
Do you see it?

What these and other images in the movie have in common
is that they show us scenes in which people 
and technology look a lot like the ants.

In the image above, juxtaposing a helicopter with an ant head,
the helicopter, with its eyelike window,
dark color, propellers instead of antennae or wings,
long rounded body, and landing legs, 
looks a lot like a giant ant.

 In the other scene shown above,
we see the characters wearing gas masks that give their faces
a similar shape and structure to that of the ants.
Compare the shape of Pat Medford's face
with the gas mask on, left,
to the heads of the ants on the right.

Here's another, less obvious, similarity 
in the scene in which the radio announcer reveals
the existence of the ants to America

with microphones shaped like the ants'
segmented body parts.

Even the landscape
in the area where the atomic tests took place
is made to look like the ants,
full of crooked limbs that seem as if they are covered with hair.
In fact, the image of the landscape above,
which appears at the start of the movie,
before the ants have revealed themselves, contains
the hidden face of an ant that stares at the viewer.
You can see it by comparing a smaller, marked, version
of the same image, on the left, below, with the ants on the right,
and then reexamining the larger version above.

When we take these visual similes, which show
things that are similar to the ants, into account
the meaning of the movie becomes unmistakable.
In the story, the movie tells us the ants are our creation.
They are our progeny,
born of our misuse of inhuman technology.
But, in its symbolism, the movie tells us
we are... 

We are the ants.

It is our "formic culture",
embodied in complex, modern, institutions
and technology, that is monstrous and unnatural,
and threatens to devour the world.

The movie brilliantly expresses this idea
in another visual simile
when it shows the front of the building
where the military anti-ant headquarters is located.

The entrance looks like a giant mouth with teeth,
ready to devour humanity, like the carnivorous ants.