MAKE IT GO AWAY! – WHY SCIENCE FICTION HAS BECOME SCIENCE FACT

Like many children, I fell off my bicycle and scraped my knee. I came home, crying, and as my father cleaned the wound and affixed a Band-Aid, I asked him to make the pain go away. He kissed my knee and within seconds I felt better. Americans, no matter how hard we try wish that magic would last a lifetime—with the exception of those who are never given the chance to be sheltered from harsh realities. We revere fortitude, perseverance and boldness. Beneath all these attributes, however, exists a child-like belief in a promising future.

After World War II, our country had a desperate need to shelve the misery and anger from lives lost; those inexorably changed by global conflict. A new invention, television, continued to reinforce this desire to return to more innocent times. In contrast, movies often reflected the looming fear of nuclear obliteration, soon to be more possible as the Cold War and the Cuba Missile crisis followed. Going to the movies became a vehicle for fans to face, and therefore release their anxiety. And who were the heroes of these classic science fiction films? Often ordinary men and scientists who teamed to produce extraordinary solutions with the military providing expendable support.

Take THEM, produced in 1954 with James Whitmore and a young James Arness, a sci-fi gem that continues to scare and make viewers think. The hero, as I see it, isn’t one of the younger leads, but the entomologist, portrayed by the lovable Edmund Gwenn. His character, Dr. Medford, a brilliant, elderly relic of a man is the stories conscience. He must wage war on the insects he also admires and has spent his adult life studying— ants. These normally tiny nuisances had become mutated into monster-truck sized creatures with pincers that could cut a man in two. The gigantic ants also symbolize what the screen writers had imagined could result from atomic testing (also shared, more poignantly by the Japanese in their GODZILLA movies) as Dr. Medford postulates in the movie’s epilogue.

Although they knew THEM and other similar films were fictional, these movies became more popular as fans across the time zones loved to be scared. And yet once a new possibility of global nuclear proliferation emerged—sprouting from the  approaching Cold War and later the Cuban missile crisis—the threat of atom bombs and radiation poisoning became very real. Still, except for young children or eccentric adults,  “experts”  dismissed monstrous mutations.

Under the radar, though, science fiction writers, and slowly film makers, began to see a more insidious danger lurking when Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published in 1962. Carson revealed in her landmark book that should the destruction and misuse of our natural resources were to continue without immediate action, life, living organisms on Earth would be doomed. Despite the initial, serious reaction to Carson’s groundbreaking study, as the sixties segued into the early seventies, societal and political upheavals necessarily overshadowed the increasing grassroots movement of environmental awareness and protection.

Activism became regionalized but not tepid, e.g. pioneers including the late Pete Seeger and those who sought to protect the Hudson River and its estuaries, wouldn’t retreat from the battle. Also during a more bi-partisan era, moderate Republicans, such as Nelson Rockefeller, were undaunted by political pressures and helped push through state legislation to clean up the Hudson River. Not-for-profit organizations such as Scenic Hudson (1963) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (1970) arose to help raise awareness and money to support the cause.

And amidst the tumult of this era, Hollywood produced movies with story-lines scattered across the genres. Studios continued producing films featuring atomic catastrophes, an issue ever-constant in the  public’s mind. Stand-out examples include  THE TIME MACHINE, THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE, and PLANET OF THE APES. However, screenwriters didn’t ignore the ecological conservation trend though few films captured the alarming prediction of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

One noteworthy exception, and what I consider to be the most prophetic and frightening film of the early seventies, was SOYLENT GREEN, roughly based on an award winning novel written in 1966, Make Room!, Make Room!  . Released in 1973, the story centers on overpopulation and the exhaustion of food resources due to pollution and the greenhouse effect. Yes, that’s right, the greenhouse effect, resulting in a synthetic food substitute, “soylent green,”. You will need to watch  the film to see the terrifying climax and the underlining warnings which scientists had predicted but were widely ignored. Sound familiar? The movie garnered critical acclaim and much later became a cult hit among movie renters. Stars comprised an aging Edward G. Robinson and a robust Charlton Heston, who headlined SOYLENT GREEN after starring in PLANET OF THE APES.

As the seventies progressed, the environmental message and a belief that we all could change the course foretold by Rachel Carson spread across the country and the world. A UNESCO activist for peace, John McConnell, suggested the creation of Earth Day. Protecting our forests through planting a tree to replace those lost caught on. Films that addressed these issues included SILENT RUNNING and LOGAN’S RUN. Still, the number of movies, as compared to science fiction novels, produced about preserving our planet were limited.

Television became the messenger for activism. For example, cleaning up our national parks and the litter which lay along our nation’s highways spawning the famous Public Service Announcement (or PSA) of Iron Eyes Cody with a tear running down his cheek as he stood among garbage with cars passing by  as one through trash directly at Cody’s face. The symbolism of an American Indian seeing the land he loved besmirched by the carelessness of others resonated with many who then joined the push for clean water, protecting our nature preserves while establishing new ones and population control. Moreover, the short-lived, original television series, STAR TREK and subsequent sequels provided a platform for intelligent discussions concerning Earth’s environmental future.

The environmental fervor grew.  People from all strata began to take up the charge, and idealism continued to bring major changes in ecological policy. Little did any of us know how much more was needed to make Carson's and others' dire predictions "go away."

 

Until the 1990s, the conservation movement garnered continuing media coverage, droves of supporters, but then the stock market boom arrived and the “Me” generation, Dot.com gluttons burst the inflating ecological bubble. Look at the science fiction movies released in this decade: CRITTERS, MARS ATTACKS!, ROBOCOP,  INDEPENDENCE DAY. Only a new generation of STAR TREK films alluded to ecological disasters. One of the overlooked exceptions, a much smaller budgeted movie, was THE HANDMAID’S TALE, based on Margaret Atwood’s  novel. The story of a dystopian, elitist American society with limited resources, except for a group of young fertile women who become surrogates for barren elite couples, returned to what had been predicted decades before the greed of the few controlling the destinies of the many. A lukewarm critical response and a box office bomb, unfortunately, prevented a widespread discussion of the disturbing film.

No, the modern economic boom had begun and a growing number of scientists believed we needed to recognize the darkening threat of global warming. Yet, the consensus among the majority of experts, politicians and the public was climate change due to greenhouse gases had no basis in science or empiricism. With the onset of the 21^st century, however, the scientific community finally began to see the truth in fiction: the depletion of the ozone layer and the creation of a hole over Antarctica had serious repercussions, which we now understand  to be melting glaciers and polar ice caps.

Hollywood took these signs as inspiration for “end of the world” movies: a remake of THE PLANET OF THE APES, THE MATRIX trilogy, zombie movies, and more harrowing, DAY AFTER TOMORROW. The latter 2004 film addressed problems that already existed and made millions at the box office. We, the movie audience, could relate to the depiction of blind politicians, bickering scientists, corporate greed and most importantly, the desecration of Earth.

In fact, DAY AFTER TOMORROW has been a staple in the news recently since the Polar Vortex invasion this season. Roland Emmerich’s film visualizes a new Ice Age as a by-product of climate change. Images include a flash frozen Statue of Liberty, buildings encased in ice and a cargo ship stuck in the middle of Fifth Avenue  washed ashore by a mammoth, glacial tsunami, the ship’s inhabitants— ravenous gray wolves. Audiences learn that ice has covered most of North America with Florida being the only state unaffected and Mexico left unscathed. But when DAY AFTER TOMORROW was released, scientists still hadn’t agreed on climate change, and politicians, just as those in the film, dismissed global warming as alarmist.

A regular contributor on CBS This Morning, physicist, Professor Michio Kaku of City College of New York, spoke pointedly about the instability of the Jet Stream and Polar Vortex which is weakening due to  “. . .the gradual heating up of the North Pole causing gigantic storms of global proportions.” In an earlier appearance, Professor Kaku had stated that almost all scientists now believe these erratic weather occurrences around the world are due to global warming.

The word “warming” is deceptive, as the average observer would say then why are we, Americans, having such a cold winter this year? Well, if you study the patterns of El Nino and La Nina, each brings either a warming or cooling of  the oceans’ currents which then causes changes in our weather patterns. But not the extreme temperatures and monster storms we have seen in the last decade. And, the U.S. isn’t the only country suffering from wild weather phenomena: for example, Great Britain

has had its worst storms and flooding in 250 years, and if we were to observe the dipping jet stream and shifting polar vortex, as Professor Kaku observed, we would see England and Wales’ disastrous  climate conditions are directly related to the same extremes we have seen in the eastern and western United States. The point is that these weather events aren’t isolated, nor are they separated by long periods of time. They have happened within one year.

So, do we need a super hero to save our planet? Hollywood often uses empowered, heroic figures to save the day. One refreshing change, though, could be seen in the lead character of James Cameron’s AVATAR (2009). Though trained by the  military, our hero had a heart, a conscience that superseded his disability and his duty. He removed his blinders and absorbed a new culture, a world unscarred by human greed, an innocence among a people who had not yet been introduced to tunnel vision. Yes, AVATAR with its 3-D effects and brilliant FX brought in audiences and broke box office records, but it also planted a seed in its audience’s minds and hearts. The science fiction megahit provides a predictor of what could be.

I’d like to finish where I started by returning to my father, a volunteer environmentalist, when not working, as Board President of a small nature museum in our community. I recalled a day, ten years ago, when my father and I discussed oil exploration. Insightful, my dad posed a rhetorical question regarding the future consequences of disturbing the earth’s crust. He didn’t have scientific data or reliable sources, no, his concern was based on his opinion, observations and his curiosity. I had forgotten our conversation until I read about our newest environmental threat in the U.S., fracking and its resulting complications. My father had the foresight to see the possible dangers of tampering with Mother Earth. Maybe it’s the bystanders, the regular people living here and around the

 world who have the vision to see long term consequences that our short-sighted leaders do not.

Prescience ties into seeing the world as it really is and what it could be. We can no longer ask others to make our climate problems go away. Humans have relied too long on our leaders and scientific community for the answers without pressing for solutions. We would like to believe, just as I had with my father and my scraped knee, that a hero or heroine will make the pain of global warming disappear. Sadly, we cannot rely on a cinematic hero to rescue us from the dangers we face as the world continues to ignore the current, confirmable science. Nor can we depend on a single person to make a difference.

Finally, the creators of THEM, SOYLENT GREEN, and the DAY AFTER TOMORROW addressed an unknown, unquantifiable variable not seen by so-called experts as having a basis in real science. And moviegoers once dismissed these dramas as “just” science fiction. Today, we can no longer set aside the warnings sci-fi authors and screenwriters have argued for decades. Let’s face reality folks. Science fiction has become science fact.