Them and Society 4

2. Them! as a Depiction of Society, Continued
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But the real horror of the human and ant societies
isn't merely that they seem inhuman and unnatural.
It is that these characteristics have allowed them to become
killing machines that could destroy humanity.

The ants now have this power
because they are a form of nature that has been transformed
by our own inhuman destructiveness.
After all, it was the human institutions based on rationality and control --
namely science and the military -- that created the ants.
The procedures and organization and ability to generate
theories and abstractions, which are inherent in these institutions,
allowed them to deploy a device of massively destructive power.
They believed they could contain that power
by confining atomic tests to the middle of nowhere
and keeping the test area off-limits to people.
They didn't count on the fact that other creatures of nature
in the test area would be transformed
by human destructiveness.

What the ants have become, of course,
is a monstrous version of our own technology.
With their siren-like high-pitched sounds,
their ability to destroy humanity,
and their tendency to proliferate unseen in bomb-shelter-like nests,
the ants are the stockpiles of nuclear weapons
that will destroy humanity
if they aren't contained and eliminated.
With their segmented, rounded and oval, body parts,
and moving legs and mandibles, they even look like bombs
and other forms of demonic technology,
which have come menacingly to life
and now haunt the world.

So it isn't merely our technologies
that look like the ants, because we are becoming as inhuman as they are.
The ants also look like our technology
because they are organic versions of killing machines.
They are an extreme version of ourselves --
a form of life that is partway
toward becoming a form of technology,
with the soul of technology to match.

Here are two images again that illustrate this.
On the right, above, the young queen ants,
with their look-alike armored bodies
and segmented moving parts
appear to be something that is an amalgam of
a living thing and various forms of technology,
including bombs, jet airplanes,
and other forms of transportation.

On the left, above, is a person who is fitted with a gas mask
that is now part of her breathing system
so she seems like an amalgam of a human being
and an antlike machine.
This is an image many members of the 1950s audience
would have associated with atomic weapons,
since, (as noted earlier), gas masks were considered part of
the defensive armory against nuclear war.

Both these images are of life
transformed by atomic weapons.
They are monstrous images of "nuclear man"
mutating into something unnatural and inhuman.

Of course, if the movie had offered only this nightmarish vision
it would have had little chance
of attracting an audience when it was released
and would not have had the capacity to move us
to a happy ending.

So, in addition, it shows
acts of compassion, selflessness and common sense
on the part of people in positions of authority,
which is its way of telling us that the dehumanization of formic culture
hasn't yet destroyed our capacity to be human.

In the scene in which the officer makes the radio call,
full of ridiculously abstract numbers and letters,
for example, there are two expressions of compassion.
First, there is the fact that his call is part of society's effort
to deal with a crime and save a young girl.

Second, as he speaks, his partner, Sgt. Peterson,
gently examines some evidence
as he is careful not to wake the girl.

In the scene in which the doctor speaks in medical gibberish
and turns the young girl's suffering into a case,
once again this caricature of science run amok
is offset by two other, more admirable, characters.
There is Dr. Medford, who sees the little girl as a person,
and acts instead of talking, putting formic acid
under her nose to evoke her memory
and jolt her out of her state of shock.
And there is Agent Graham,
who insists the doctor translate her gibberish
into everyday English.

Through scenes like these, the movie contrasts
two ways of using the apparatus of modern institutions.
One way is fully human and based on
compassion and common sense.
The other, based on dehumanization and absurdity,
causes us to become a caricature of our own machines.

That is why the act of compassion at the end,
in which the characters save the two children, is so important.
One character in that scene is ready to set the storm drains on fire.
Presumably, the two children trapped inside
would be treated as an expendable resource.
But the main characters oppose the idea,
revealing that humanity can be humane and noble,
which is what makes it worthy of surviving.

All of this makes Them!
a brilliant and much underrated depiction of the modern society
that was evolving when the movie came out in 1954.

The movie is a form of "pre-apocalyptic fiction"
that shows an invented version of its present
in order to foreshadow the new world
of progress and danger that awaits humanity
in an age of science and technology,
and of militarism and rationalized, complex, institutions.

It depicts three dangers
that could threaten humanity in this new world:
dehumanization; the creation of a wasteland;
and the conversion of nature into something unnatural.
All three negate life.
The institutions of control -- both the more monstrous ones
involving communism and fascism
and the less extreme version in America
that has the potential to get worse --
are offered as examples of the negation of life
in the modern world.

It is the unnatural dehumanization they bring about,
when coupled with modern techniques and technologies,
the movie says, that has resulted in a new release
of destructive power on the world.

In making this point, the movie doesn't suggest that
America's institutions of rationality and control
are the moral equivalent of these other systems.
Instead, the movie shows these institutions at a crossroads,
and says they could go either way.

It also tells us they can be benevolent and effective problem-solvers.
After all, they employed their organization, their ability to abstract,
and the power of their weapons and other technologies,
to overcome the ants.

It is the pairing of these new technologies
and techniques of modernization
with the essential human characteristics
of wisdom, insight and compassion, that will protect us,
the movie says, from the the dehumanization and destruction
inherent in the modern world.

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Next, you can check out the scene in the store to see what it says about modern society (recommended).

Or you can jump to Part 3, "Them! as a Story of Discovery" to find out how these ideas are revealed to audiences