Not only am I an occasional contributing writer and voice actor for RPPR, but I am a PhD student at UW-Milwaukee. Most of my typical work is done in 19C American literature and culture, but for a class on liberalism and sovereignty I'm writing a paper on The Day the Earth Stood Still. I thought I would share with you guys the short paper / proposal (which will explain some of the formulaic parts of the conclusion) I have to write for my midterm exam. I'll end up turning this into a 15-20 page seminar paper at the end of the semester, which explains some of the initial choppiness in the writing and the formulaic conclusion. In the 15-20 page version, I'll bring in Zizek to help walk through sympathetic association and group dynamics. Some of the formatting will be off because I don't want to go through and edit in all the italics. I hope you guys enjoy this more than you enjoyed the movie.
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The Dialectic of Social Contract and Sympathy in The Day the Earth Stood Still
The 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is a remarkable film not for any aesthetic achievement or box office success, but because it succinctly summarizes the dialectics that undergird the last two-hundred-and-fifty years of liberal thought. The most obvious of these dialectics to film goers is the tension between reason and emotion. Two telling scenes that speak directly to this tension. The first scene occurs when Professor Jacob Barnhardt (John Cleese) tells Dr. Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) that she must prevent Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) by appealing to his emotions. As Barnhardt says, “Change his mind, not with reason, but with yourself” (my emphasis). The second scene occurs in the federal cemetery where Benson's step-son Jacob Benson's (Jaden Smith) father is buried. Klaatu watches as Jacob cries in the arms of Benson before saying to her as the grey goo designed to destroy the Earth from ecophagy swirls in the background, “There's another side to you. I feel it now” (my emphasis). But as I will argue in this paper contained within this obvious dialectic is the much more complex dialectic of the social contract and sympathy as the principle social organizational tool. This dialectic can be broken further down in the film into component parts of realpolitik and state politics, which are represented in the film by Benson and her fellow scientists and the military-state apparatus respectively.
Understanding how thoroughly The Day the Earth Stood Still sets up the dialectic between social contract and sympathy partially requires understanding how the 2008 remake of the movies forms a dialog with the the 1951 original adaptation. The 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still ends with Klaatu (Michael Rennie) explaining to the leaders of major earth power how other planets have created a peace through the use of powerful robots that activate at the first sign of aggression. Klaatu ends his speech with an ultimatum that either the Earth can enter into the same compact with the other planets and “live in peace” or “face obliteration.” The 1951 version of the movie, then, speaks directly to the increasing hostilities and ensuing arms race between The United States and Soviet Union after the end of World War II. At a time when power was becoming concentrated in the hands of two nations and their allies, only the imposition of a third outside, and perhaps alien, force more powerful than either of the first two could sustain a peace. The designed purpose of the robots in the 2008 version is elided with Klaatu explaining Gort's actions, or more appropriately to the 2008 version G.O.R.T.'s (“Genetically Organized Robotic Technology” a name provided by the military and not Klaatu) to Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates) that, “It activates in the presence of violence.” This elision is made so that at the end of the movie Klaatu can appear to be acting on his own free will in stopping the grey goo in a sympathetic gesture.
The dialog between the two versions of the film also helps in understanding how the military-state apparatus of The United States is portrayed in the 2008 version. The United States through its military-state apparatus functions similarly in securing a peace through the use of violence. An exchange between Klaatu and Secretary of Defense Jackson while Klaatu is being held in a military hospital demonstrates this function of The United States. Klaatu explains his want to speak to the United Nations, which Jackson denies saying instead he should speak to her. Klaatu then asks, “Do you speak for the entire human race?” Jackson responds, “I speak for the President.”
The scene implies that as far as the military-state apparatus is concerned, the President of The United States speaks for the entire world as a type of sovereign authority. The powerful robots of the 1951 film and The United States in the 2008 film are similar to what Thomas Hobbes defined as the Leviathan. Hobbes argues that “during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as if of every man, against every man” (185). To sustain a peace individuals have transfer their rights to another and “the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a Common-wealth” (227). The “one Person” is the Leviathan or “that Mortall God, to which wee owe under the Immortall God, our peace and defence” (227): “For by this Authoritie, given him by every particular man in the Common-Wealth, he hath the use of so much Power and Strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof, he is inabled to forme the wills of them all, to Peace at home, and mutuall ayd against their enemies abroad” (227-228). The robots secure peace by ensuring the destruction of any aggressor, while The United States ensures peace similarly on Earth with the Iraq War and also by assuming a lead role in the defense of the Earth by the capturing of Klaatu. The perceived failure of the Iraq War and literal “change of heart” Klaatu has in the 2008 version of the film suggest a rejection of Hobbes' model of social contract theory. The rejection of Hobbes' social contract neatly parallels that of Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith rejects the very basis of Hobbes' argument saying instead of a war of all against all being the need cause for a commonwealth, “Virtue is the great support, and vice the great disturber of human society” (372). Furthermore, virtue is determined not through reason but through “immediate sense and feeling” (377). Smith's rejection of Hobbes rests on sympathy as the modus operandi of his theory of proprietary action. Klaatu's rejection of social contract for sympathy suggests all social contracts should be reject on the basis that they ignore the emotional valency of contractual members.
The film suggests these rejections of social contract for sympathy occur continuously in terms of realpolitik. When Benson is first taken to the military staging area, she manages to sneak in her specifically forbidden cellphone. She later manages to hide in the women's bathroom and place a call to her step-son Jacob. A uniformed female officer bangs on the stall door and as Benson opens it authoritatively asks, “Is that a cellphone?” There is a momentary pause to build the dramatic tension of the scene before the officer haltingly continues, “Can I borrow it?” The shifting tonal register and disruption of anticipated result allows the audience a brief catharsis. What could be better than knowing that not all of the characters in the film are going to be heartless? But the scene also clearly exemplifies how realpolitik organizes through sympathetic associations in the film. The officer is contractually obligated to follow the orders set by her commanding officers, which include the confiscation of cellphones. She breaks this contractual obligation by not confiscating Benson's cellphone on sight. Instead, the officer sympathizes with Benson's desire to call her step-son – I will ignore the obvious gender constructions in the scene – and asks Benson for her sympathy symbolized here in the cellphone itself. She does this to prove she is like Benson enough that she has the same innate desires for family in a time of crisis. Although the scene breaks on the officer's second question, watchers can assume Benson will lend the officer her cellphone. The exchanging of the cellphone corresponds with the completion of the sympathetic association: Benson accepts the officer into her group and recognizes the officer's rejection of the social contract.
This early scene foreshadows the crux of the film when Klaatu explains to a pleading Benson the terms of the social contract under which the Earth is an unwitting, if not unwilling, participant. Klaatu explains that if the human race is exterminated “the Earth survives.” Survival of the planet, he continues, is of the utmost importance because, “There are only a handful of planets in the cosmos capable of supporting complex life.” The scene is interrupted by a highway patrolman whom Klaatu briefly kills before bringing back to life. Klaatu's actions allow Benson to question why Klaatu would bring the patrolman back to life since the human race was going to be annihilated anyway. The interruption hinges on Klaatu's agency and his ability to show sympathy. Benson challenges, “You could stop this. Couldn't you? If you wanted to,” implying Klaatu has more agency to act within the terms of the social contract than he is acknowledging. Klaatu maintains the language of the social contract in his response: “I tried to reason with you. I tried to speak to your leaders” (my emphasis). Benson retorts, “Those aren't our leaders. If you want to speak to one of our leaders, I'll take you to one” (my emphasis). Benson takes Klaatu to the aforementioned Professor Barnhardt who tells Benson to convince Klaatu through emotion and not reason and whose Nobel Prize, coincidentally, had been awarded for his work in biological altruism. The emphasis that Barnhardt is one of the Earth's actual leaders, and not the President of The United States represented by Secretary of Defense Jackson, signifies the divide between science and the military-state apparatus. The division also represents the division between realpolitik and state politics. Barnhardt's disciplinary specialty only serves to further emphasize that science, and realpolitik, functions through sympathy, while the military-state apparatus only functions to maintain a social contract. In fact, Barnhardt knows the genetics of sympathy as well as represents it as a social organizational tool. And it is at Barnhardt's that Klaatu is moved by Bach's music to “feel” “another side” of the human race that becomes fully realized at the federal cemetery.
There are specific problematics with sympathy as a social organizational tool that are represented in the film that I do not have the space to detail here. Many of these problems are associated with the differing postulates on human nature that Hobbes and Smith begin their arguments from. Hobbes begins with the postulate that humans are innately selfish and violent in their actions, while Smith begins with the postulate that the selfishness of humans makes them innately sympathetic. Instead of always and only wanting to war with one another in a natural state, as in Hobbes, Smith assumes humans will work to develop peace through sympathetic associations because sympathy promotes virtue and order. The film suggests then a rejection of social contract theory, at least a social contract that favors intervention by the military-state apparatus, in the American populace and its corresponding realpolitik in favor of a more sympathetic approach to dealing with world conflicts and disasters. What the film does not provide is a dialectical synthesis between social contract theory and sympathy, such as one modeled after Rousseau who does attempt to include emotional valency in his theory of social contracts. Finally, the major problematic aspect of sympathetic association as social organizational tool in the film revolves around the contingency that sympathy can only be granted to persons who have been admitted to a group. Klaatu's sympathy toward the human race in stopping the grey goo not only rejects the terms of the social contract he explicitly outlines, but offers the human race admission into the larger group of alien races to which Klaatu serves and is part. Of course, Klaatu's agency in offering this admission must be questioned. Does Klaatu's sympathy represent just a temporary reprieve from destruction? As I continue working on this paper, I will have to address questions such as these.
Works Cited
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Ed. C.B. McPherson. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.
Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Ed. Knud Haakonssen. New York: Cambridge UP, 2002.
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