The Great Disillusionment
How a 20-year-old movie, based on a 125-year-old book, reflects the fears of today
HG Wells’ 1898 book War of the Worlds was an instant classic upon release, and has since gained great fame through multiple film and radio adaptations. The latest (released in 2005), and perhaps most lavish of them, is helmed by Steven Spielberg, and starred Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning.
Although the movie and book are both well before the “unprecedented times” that we have navigated over the past five years, they well reflect the uncertainties, fears, and the negative social responses that have plagued our worlds during this time frame. This should not come as a surprise — the book itself was released in a time of fear leading up to the First World War; arguably the most famous adaptation is a 1938 radio broadcast conceptualized by Orson Welles that led to panic among listeners who believed the events were genuine news broadcasts — a not-uncommon fear in the days leading up to the Second World War.
The panic of today is not as “simplistic” as the worry of a world war, although that remains as conflicts rage across the world, accentuated by the worries of nuclear war. Today’s worries are more varied, including once-in-several-generations pandemics such as the Covid outbreak, more ambiguous worries around economic crises (which are arguably better understood today then a century ago), and continued fears around technology.
The causes — be they war, economy, technology, or pandemics — are secondary; all these fears, and the fears exemplified in War of the Worlds boil down to three different-but-interrelated themes — a fear of the unknown, a fear of change, and a fear of loss of control.
Fear of the unknown
There is no secret that the human race still does not understand several things — it is when one, or some, of these come to the fore that our fears are accentuated in response to our failure to understand what we are confronted by.
The fear often translates into a feeling of inferiority as we understand the limits of our own knowledge. Tom Cruise’s protagonist Ray Ferrier in War of the Worlds exemplifies this, both in his lack of understanding of his own family, as well as the threat from the alien invaders. Ferrier displays a clear lack of knowledge of his children — he does not remember their allergies or their likes and dislikes, and he is unable to understand their emotions, such as when his daughter is terrified by the lightning that Ferrier likens to the Fourth of July fireworks. Every time this lack of knowledge is highlighted, Ferrier displays an inferiority complex that leads to questionable behaviour — such as when he damages his own house by throwing a baseball through a glass window, in a show of aggression against his own son. Our response to the early stages of the pandemic was emblematic of this fear — confronted by a lack of understanding of the virus, there was terror as people battened down the hatches, and in many cases, even turned against one another.
The other interrelated fear of the unknown comes from a fear of sensory deprivation. Why are we afraid of the dark, and why does silence drive us mad? We are attuned to having all our senses gratified — when the assumption is challenged, our neat world is disrupted. This could also come about through social isolation, and a loss of communication — both the movie, as well as real world events such as the recent Covid pandemic highlight the upheaval of our worlds when our world goes silent. Living with our own thoughts, as we must when the soundtrack of the surrounding world is interrupted, is often one of the biggest challenges that humans, social animals, can face.
Fear of change
Another open secret is the fragility of our world. With several interrelated threats, including climate change, the threat of nuclear war, and perhaps even black swan events like asteroids, there is no dearth of potential risks to our world as we know it. Any large-scale change to our lives leads to fears, both due to the change, and because it highlights the fragility of our world.
We are creatures of habit, conditioned to live in our comfort zones — we all struggle the moment we need to stretch our comfort zones, or even worse, go completely outside of them. Our ability to cope with change is highly limited, especially when it is sudden. While humans have gradually adapted and evolved to incremental changes, any major changes lead to chaos in the immediate aftermath.
War of the Worlds highlights an important nuance in this fear of change — the closer this change is to our home, the greater our fears. Ferrier, and most of his fellow suburb-dwellers find the lightning storm at the start of the movie an entertaining curiosity, and gather to watch it as they would a fireworks show, as long as it was at a distance. It’s only when the lightning strikes their homes that their fears come to the fore, and they realize the terror that grips them.
This is clearly evident in the human approach to different threats — we care less about war or disease in far-flung lands; we worry less when something does not appear to affect those we perceive as similar to us. That is why Covid was such a terrifying experience for all — it was unlike many previous epidemics and pandemics, in that it could impact anyone irrespective of their demographics or socioeconomic status, and hence struck close to home for everyone.
Change is inevitable, but us humans are best suited to adapting to gradual changes, especially when they do not hit close to home from the outset. In many ways, this derives from the earlier fear of the unknown — watching a drastic change from a distance gives us time to understand it, and prepare for impact, giving it a perception of graduality. An integral assumption of our life is that home is meant to be a place of safety, where we can always retreat to in terms of crisis — shaking this assumption can bring down the entire fabric of our existence.
Fear of a loss of control
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s…With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter…And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. — Opening lines of HG Wells’ War of the Worlds
Humans have been conditioned to believe in their own intellectual superiority, be it over the animal kingdom, or even (earlier, during the age of colonialism) over other populations. Similar to a lack of understanding, a loss of this control can lead to an inferiority complex and fear that we are not as indispensable as we would like to believe.
War of the Worlds demonstrates this through Ferrier’s tenuous grip on his family and his own life — his children ignore his directions (his son even steals his car to go out instead of doing his homework), and his own house is falling apart. The alien invasion only accentuates this lack of control, and makes him appear even smaller as compared to the events unfolding around him.
The same fears are evident in our world — several political campaigns across nations have been built around “taking back control” from some external entity that challenges the superiority of that group; fears around technology, from the age of the Luddites to today’s fears around AI also arise from a fear that humans are losing control to a greater power in the form of automation that is faster, more skilled, or more efficient than us. This fear of a loss of control often pits various groups against each other — divisions are accentuated as some groups are perceived to be more in control versus others. War of the Worlds showed the anger of a mob against Ferrier when he has the only working car in the region— a metaphor for the divisions that plague our society today, and the battles we fight for scarce resources.
It is hard to truly define something as ambiguous as control — but the perception, or feeling, of being in control is all-important. As HG Wells states in his opening lines, this feeling of control or ‘serene assurance’ leads to ‘infinite complacency’ — a complacency that perhaps, is essential for peace.
From disillusionment to illumination
How can we navigate a world plagued by so many fears? The answers again arise from War of the Worlds.
First, it is important for us to attempt to deepen our own understanding — the metaphorical light through the darkness that causes our fear, and a crucial weapon in retaining a semblance of control through times of drastic change. Constantly learning, adapting, and keeping our eyes open is the first line of defense against any fears; being misinformed is tougher if we are already well-informed.
Second, and correlated, is to prevent ourselves from reacting immediately, and in a knee-jerk manner, to any change. Time is an enemy of the unknown — more time allows us to have a deeper understanding, and a more gradual easing into changes (even if they may have occurred instantaneously). Conversely (and somewhat tautologically), time is integral to stability.
Third, our greatest successes come when we work with each other rather than against each other. Most divisions between people are artificially created, and existential crises do not discriminate along these boundaries. It is only by working together that we managed to get through the Covid pandemic or even previous disruptions; tearing our social fabric becomes tougher when it is tightly woven through various strong interconnections.
Ultimately, the fear caused by us humans is a more dangerous pandemic than any we have seen so far, and is also more deadly than any alien invasion dreamed up by HG Wells or Steven Spielberg. And perhaps more scary is that we are both the cause of the disease and its cure; we are both the invaders and the defenders — it is for us to decide which force takes precedence.
