Bombs Away and Smash Hits at Home
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Sobchack’s continuum aligned with my own enables an even more
detailed comparison: horror is concerned with the inner world: 1930s and 1940s
horror with the ethical struggles of the individual, and modern-day horror with the
inside of the body in all its sexual, menstrual, and visceral “fearfulness.”11 As I
argued at the outset, the metaphoric is the realm of the collapsed boundaries, the
failed biological or social system permeated by foreign matter and made
profoundly sick. Likewise, horror, as is argued by recent queer and feminist
theorists, is the most radical of the genres we entertain here—populated by
“freaks” and “queers” which invite us to thoroughly reformulate our
understanding of the “norm;” 12 and I have also previously argued that the most
radical of the three Martian equations is the one that would have suggested an
identity between “us” and “them” which, stated too loudly, would have in its day
jeopardized not only the film but the careers of all associated with it.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, science fiction, noted for its
optimistic faith in progress and technology13 is the happiest, most escapist of the
three genres; the ultra-metonymic, removing the Martian figure from the whole of
its political and ethical relevance, is also escapist, reverting and diminishing the
film to an adolescent’s diversion.14 In many guises, science fiction is a
conservative genre,15 while the ultra-metonymic, as I will show below, is a
reactionary position for the film to occupy. I will save comparison of the middle
positions on these two continua for my closer reading of the film; as I mean these
positions to define not a single center point but a chaotic and interrogative
interaction with innumerable points between the poles, it is necessary to stop
occupying single positions and start moving through the fascinating episodes of
this important film.
Early in the story an ungainly meteor-like hunk of rock crashes into the
California desert near the town of Linda Rosa, creating a huge crater and an even
larger local sensation. A small cadre of “ambassadors” drives out to the stilldormant rock and unloads white flags from the bed of their pickup, bent on
establishing contact with the strange visitors. It is a scheme to become famous
and well-thought-of, yet it almost immediately backfires. The three townsfolk,
among them a Mexican