What does Al Gore have to do with Robbie the Robot?
Well, we started Declaration Entertainment because we believe that politics is downstream of culture; that like all cultures, we get our values and morality from our mythology – and in 20th and 21st century America, our mythology mostly comes to us through the movies. So we thought we’d start a little video segment called “Take a Movie to Work,” where we pick apart a movie and find out some of the lessons it is trying to teach us, under the actual plot.
We started with an all-time classic: MGM’s 1956 classic, Forbidden Planet”. You can watch the video at DeclarationEntertainment.com.
You see, if you think trillions of dollars of deficit spending is not the path to financial stability, if you think East Anglia may not have your best interests at heart when they fabricate global temperature statistics from whole cloth, if you believe that the Commerce Clause does not give the government the right to govern commerce – much less your very thoughts, then chances are you have been informed by the left that you are simply not intelligent enough to understand your own interests. Fortunately for you, your betters in the government are happy to understand these things for you.
From priests and kings to scholars and journalists, elitists of every stripe have always believed that they knew better how to order society than society – which when free has always been perfectly capable of ordering itself. Everywhere we look, this meme is reinforced, nowhere more so than in Hollywood. But that has not always been the case. There was a time when the movies championed wisdom and individualism above knowledge, good intentions, and collectivism.
In Forbidden Planet, Leslie Nielson plays an enterprising and intrepid starship captain – John J. Adams who is ordered to the planet Altair IV to search for the survivors of the Bellerophon sent there 20 years earlier to establish a colony and never heard from again. There, he encounters the only survivors of the doomed expedition, the brilliant, well-intentioned Dr. Edward Morbius, and his beautiful and virginal daughter, Altaira.
Morbius, informs the captain that his entire crew was destroyed by a rampaging monster of nearly supernatural proportions. After his murderous spree, the monster inexplicably disappeared, leaving only the scientist and his infant daughter alive.
Since that time, Morbius – one of the most elite minds in the galaxy – has devoted himself to the exploration of the technology of the planet’s original inhabitants, the Krell, whose entire, fantastically advanced population vanished without a trace 200,000 years prior. Their key technological breakthrough was the PLASTIC EDUCATOR, which increased their intellect exponentially, allowing them to control their planet with their minds.
Not long after the new crew’s arrival on the planet, the incredible creature that destroyed the original ship’s crew 20 years before returns to wage war on the planet’s newest arrivals.
SPOILER ALERT!
In the end, the monster that has consumed so many lives is not flesh or bone. It is the Oedipal subconscious of an over-protective father – Morbius himself – made manifest by the terrific, mind-enhancing technology of the Krell, who were likely destroyed by their own “Monsters, John. Monsters from the Id!”
It is good intentions that destroy civilizations. Good intentions in the hands of powerful elites who know not what they do. They do not know themselves, cannot face what is inside of us all, and so create systems that look like the future on the outside, but still look like fallen man in practice.
For a full explanation of what the movie is saying and a top-notch political commentary, please see Bill Whittle’s full video on the subject here and to keep these messages coming, become a Citizen Producer at DeclarationEntertainment.com.
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