Bombs Away and Smash Hits at Home
57
sensational trench scene generals hunch over maps dotted with Martian landing
sites, while the uncle of Doctor Forester’s love interest, Sylvia Van Buren,
ignores the generals’ warnings and approaches the Martian starfleet.
Significantly, Uncle Matthew is a Protestant minister, yet his role as a cleric is
distinctly opposite to the presence of religion as I describe it elsewhere in this
study: that is, the presence of “God, in his wisdom,” stepping in to defeat the
Martians in their ultra-metonymic state. In contrast, Uncle Matthew espouses the
ultra-metaphoric reading of the invaders, that the Martians are not to be feared for
their differences but welcomed, even admired, since “more advanced than us,
they should be nearer the Creator for that reason.”
The minister approaches the advancing fleet, reciting Psalm 23 as he
goes, with violin music swelling in the background. Like the three townsmen, he
is vaporized where he stands. Sylvia, from the generals’ bunker, begins
screaming; the outburst excites the anger of the Martians who destroy the bunker
and military men (everyone, in fact, except Clayton and Sylvia) and wreak several
miles of havoc in the surrounding countryside. In direct opposition, then, to the
indictment of hawkish U.S.-Soviet relations suggested in the first approach scene,
in this second scene, a “brotherly love” policy is associated with a well-meaning
but benighted elderly (old-fashioned and outdated) element in foreign policy and
with the hysterical reactions of women out of their element. It is thus cast into
serious doubt and in fact blamed for the escalation of the Martians’ hostilities and
the damage that follows from it.
In both these scenes, the question of to what degree these invaders are
like us is further confused but ultimately answered by the horror influences found
here: differing importantly from the mindless destroyers of classic sci-fi, these
invaders do indeed seem to have a will, an intent, and a taste for blood. They do
not merely sweep down a path, heaven help whoever may be walking in it, but
aim their destructive forces at those who have threatened them. In both scenes
they are made to seem, because their victims are so overpowered, as embodiments
of evil, but I would point out that the “evil” invader is an important step up from
the “mindless” one in the register of enemy subjectivity. Fully graduated from
the robotic and