Forbidden Planet and the Magic in Science Fiction - Summer of Shakespeare

how does one do sci-fi Shakespeare MGM's 1956 science fiction film is a classic not just of sci-fi but of Golden Age Hollywood cinema not to mention a milestone in electronic music or as an opening narration tells us in the far-off 23rd century humankind has conquered the stars and created a confederation of planets that are united or something and taking up the business of seeking out new biomes and new cultures and generally going daringly or one might even say boldly where few if any had previously ventured in an ongoing slip through the stars this feels familiar somehow anyway captain JJ Adams notorious hater of the name surely lands on the so-called Forbidden Planet of Altair Ford looked for the survivors of the crash starship Bellerophon and a mission which only took them 20 years to look for survivors ok anyway they only find to the Blair founds philologists dr. Edward Morbius and his grown daughter altaira rather than living as two castaways though adams finds that Morbius is living in luxury having mastered the advanced technology of the planets previous inhabitants so the basic setup is that a ship lands on a remote place ruled over by a hermit and his daughter this is also the basic setup of The Tempest ditch the ship add a flying saucer now Holly one of the 1950's generally didn't do sci-fi all that well preferring to put their money and stars into traditional dramas and saving sci-fi for the cheaper second half of a double feature from there we get the terms a movie and B movie B movies being kind of thing that would inevitably end up here that's one small step for special effects one giant leap for our imagination but amid the B movies of the 50s there were a few experimental exceptions where Studios put actual budgets in their sci-fi with varied results 20th Century Fox's attempt to sell look well but Universal Studios entry well it ended up here this island earth can be yours if the price is rights but MGM's Forbidden Planet has remained before Star Wars swallowed all sci-fi that came before and after it this movie was the epitome of filmed American science fiction it's enshrined the Library of Congress in the name of one of the world's best geek merchandise stores and in the lyrics of a Rocky Horror song but how much of that is Shakespeare honestly not much yes there's the basic setup the very basic setup Walter Pidgeon is dr. Morbius as the proximal role is still territorial and he still has magic powers inherited from the island's previous inhabitants only here magic is science and the witch Sycorax has become the alien Krell the former rulers of the Forbidden Planet the Krell became masters of amazing technology such as hollow projection intelligence enhancers math paintings and the jump cut of course this spectacular technology somehow didn't include a way for Morbius to get off the planet likely because he used those special parts to make his robot friend for your convenience I am monitored to respond to the name Robby this is Robby the robots the real star of the movie nice clamored you have here high oxygen content I rarely use it myself sir it promotes rust ha more on him later and Francis as all Terra in the Miranda role is still a doe-eyed innocent and she still melts over the sight of people though she doesn't get a speech as lovely as Oh brave new world that has such people in it we so terribly wanted to meet a young man and out three of them at once what is kiss also no one in Shakespeare slut-shame sir for wearing a skimpy dress you see you can't run around like that in front of men particularly not a space full of like vomit so for pete's sake go home I put on something it's like a season one of Mad Men level sexism it's so easy for you isn't it there's no feelings no emotions nothing human would ever enter your mind this the 1950s future was a long time ago and the crew well Ferdinand Miranda's lover becomes the captain the drunks Stefano and Trinculo get combined into the ship's comic relief cook on the lookout for booze but Sebastian Alonso Antonio Gonzalo all these men with strong ties to prosperous former life as the Duke of Milan know where the tempest at its heart is a revenge story Prospero brings the people who ruined his life to an island which he has complete control over and starts to destroy them only at the last minute does he find it in his heart to forgive them that power dynamic is gone instead it's replaced with this triad of a stalwart captain a curmudgeonly doctor and a chief science officer that also feels familiar but the biggest change they're not brought to the planet by Prospero's magic or even without much trouble it's The Tempest without a tempest and here we get the biggest divergence in the play while the tempest was a revenge story Forbidden Planet it's a murder mystery and for a while up seemingly cut and dry one the rest of the crew of the Bellerophon died soon after landing and the only survivor was a thin old scientist dressed in black with a beard like Ming the Merciless hello I am dr. bad guy I shall be your bad guy for the evening come inside have some bad guy food hey robot minion point the laser at the captain's head it'll be hilarious JK I didn't want to kill you I just wanted to make my adorable robots suffer just to prove my mastery over him I'm the bad guy bad guy bad guy bad guy bad guy in case you're wondering yes that scene was a demonstration of the first and second laws of robotics this came out six years after Isaac Asimov first outlined the Three Laws of Robotics in his series iRobot and actually the first short story in that series was about an adorable robot named Robby I think now I should talk about science fiction Shakespeare of course never could have conceived such a thing like in his time the scientific revolution was still only gradually replacing medieval alchemy but there are still some interesting parallels between the sci-fi genre and Shakespeare's view of the cosmos sci-fi is a distinctly modern genre one that required the Industrial Revolution for people to start seeing science as a practice to be a vessel for interesting storytelling it runs on speculation about current technologies and then doing an exploration about how that technology might work I ever knew the control tower we are about to take off on the highway of tomorrow and the 50s when technology was seen as wondrous and liberating but also terrible in the world destroying that was a golden age of sci-fi an aesthetic that William Gibson once called Reagan gothic where science is worth the romance it was a kind of sci-fi so obsessed with minutiae about technology that would never tolerate something as arcane as magic sci-fi should only talk about plausible things like flying saucers and talking robots that make bourbon 480 Heights as you requested the future is sloshed but classic sci-fi sense of exploration and placing of humanity into a larger cosmos isn't alien to Shakespeare just the 1950s were abuzz with stories about exploring outer space Shakespeare's day was full of travelers tales people seeking new lands some even think that he based the tempest in part on the discovery of Bermuda and as for the cosmos he may have looked to alchemy to structure prosperous Island the island is essentially the early modern Western world in microcosm Prospero its patriarch Miranda the lone female and yes there's a huge feminist criticism of the play and how the one female character is subservient to her father and does nothing except get married to another guy who has to prove himself worthy to the father so she can be passed on from one male authority figure to another male authority figure and yeah and knee way dated sexual politics aside the island has a male aspect and a female aspect and the supernatural beings Prospero servants Ariel and Caliban correspond to Aristotle's four elements Ariel is a magical spirit of air and fire and Caliban at one point is described as either man or fish making him correspond to earth and water so by exerting control over them he's symbolically showing his mastery over four elements and therefore the entire world he's like The Last Airbender of course magic in the occult in Shakespeare's time wasn't exactly looked upon highly remember England's King at the time wrote a book about how to hunt witches and I think it's important to note that Prospero ends the play by abandoning his magic and asking a pardon from the audience and a religious pardon at that my ending is despair unless I be relieved by prayer which pierces so that it assault mercy itself and frees all faults as you from crimes would pardon'd be let your indulgence set me free it's entirely possible that Shakespeare's audience would have looked at Prospero and immediately gone bad guy bad guy that guy's the bad guy so Morbius might not be off the mark of course Morbius isn't a Renaissance man he's modern man and unlike the Renaissance man modern man and definitely sci-fi man only wants to be master of the cosmos in traditional science fiction the brilliant scientist is always destroyed by his own creation as punishment for his arrogant belief that he could control the universe and it's been that way ever since Mary Shelley wrote a story about a scientist who created the thing that destroyed him while prosperous world is shaped by the four classical elements of Aristotle Morbius world is shaped by a more modern thinker Sigmund Freud instead of air Fire Water and Earth we have ego super-ego and it Morbius himself is the ego of course comfortable with himself in his position in the world Robbie is a super-ego his conscience the thing over which he has the most control Freud thought that the super-ego was in some ways the internalization of the father figure the idea of authority since Morbius worships the ancient Krell civilization and Robbie's made out of spare Krell parts Robbie symbolizes Morbius as assurance in his mastery over the world and himself and his super-ego is hilarious sorry miss I was giving myself an oil job haha that sounds sexual but it isn't and B it'd and Forbidden Planet is actually called the it'd but the crowd forgot one thing yes why monsters John monsters from the it'd the end what sad spoiling the whole movie but it turns out yes Morbius was the bad guy just didn't know it the Krell created technology that could externalize someone's inner thoughts technology that Morbius had accessed and triggered he'd convinced himself his own mental superiority while forgetting that he was still human with very human fears fears of his own death fear of losing his daughter fear of his fellow crewmates fear of these gun-wielding newcomers to his small sanctuary those fears manifest themselves in the form of an invisible monster that probably would have been very scary to a kid in the 1950s okay fair talk there is something brilliant about how the monster is shown invisible but glimpsed as it roars writhing and laser fire this is Raygun gothic at its purest the beast from the it'd killed the crew of the Bellerophon and several members of Adams crew and ultimately Morbius himself whose last act is to destroy the forbidden planet and prevent such terrible technology from being used again it's a fitting sci-fi message for the 1950's as scientists for breaking boundaries and splitting atoms regular folk watched and wondered what these terrors might bring they were wrapped with fear over this new thing called radiation an invisible unnatural killer that humans could create and an even greater fear with the arrival of the atomic bomb they were the first to seriously ponder that human beings had the power to literally destroy the world and so Forbidden Planet has a very timely message of humility scientists remember that you're only human and that the power you seek to control also controls you but then when you thought we were threatening your little egomaniac Empire your subconscious said it it monster out again more deaths mobius more murder and now this - are my own daughter but now she's defying him obviously even in you the loving father they still exist the mind was primitive likewise Prospero's magic isn't all-powerful he ends the play by breaking his staff drowning his books and abandoning his magic he is magic - has limits and I think Morbius is description of the Krell civilization fits here since that unexplained catastrophe even there cloud-piercing towers of glass and porcelain and adamantine steel have crumbled back into the soil of altair-4 and absolutely nothing remains above-ground Shakespeare also spoke of towers in The Tempest the cloud-capped towers the gorgeous palaces the solemn temples the great globe itself yea all which it inherit shall dissolve and like this insubstantial pageant faded leave not a rack behind we are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep may be Forbidden Planet owes more to Shakespeare than I thought your father's name will shine again like a beacon in the galaxy its cruel it will remind us enviable God but still Forbidden Planet was far more to sci-fi than it does to Shakespeare it doesn't succeed because of its innovation on the tempest but its foundation on the sci-fi genre the Flying Saucer taken from countless films and pulp magazines the square-jawed intrepid hero the goateed batty the live objectified nymphet and of course Robbie built out of spare parts from Asimov and progenitor of generations of other charming robotic servants by building off these familiar tropes and using a classic story as a framework Forbidden Planet succeeds by to use of genre tradition by making a world that feels both old and yet to be made and of course the film's basic set up hinted at a huge universe outside of it it hinted at the same sort of golden age of exploration that caught the imagination of Shakespeare's time like a kind of adventure to explore brave new worlds strange new worlds to seek out new life and new civilizations to boldly go where Oh Oh Oh

Channel: KyleKallgrenBHH

Views: 98,375

Rating: 4.8733401 out of 5

Keywords: Forbidden Planet (Film), William Shakespeare (Author), Theatre (TV Genre), Science Fiction (TV Genre), Brows Held High

Id: Za50E46Z87Y

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2015