How to Avoid Becoming a Pod Person
In third grade we got to watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers — the black-and-white 1956 version. One moment we leaned over our desks in anticipation, and a moment later the school floated away. We were in California, fifty years ago.
(Spoilers ahead for the 1956 version.)
The movie’s about a doctor who discovers a horrible conspiracy: people are being replaced by extraterrestrial duplicates. You go to sleep yourself and wake up a flat, emotionless ‘pod person.’
Some questions arise. What happened to the original you? Are you in two places at once? Or does your old body evaporate as your consciousness appears in a new location? Or are you trapped in your own mind? Maybe you’re dead? But then why wouldn’t the aliens simply kill you, instead of going through the trouble of replacing your body? Don’t worry about it — we certainly didn’t.
All we know is the aliens’ general plan: to cover our planet with harmonious, group-thinking, organically grown, human-shaped shells. We humans are in danger of losing whatever makes us us.
In the end, our hero Dr. Miles Bennell returns to the abandoned mine where he left his love Becky Driscoll. The music blares as Bennell leans in for a kiss and he realizes the awful truth — she’s a pod person. Becky is open about it: “I went to sleep, Miles, and it happened.” She wants him to join, but he will never submit. “Never!” he cries, escaping the mine.
More pod people appear out of nowhere. As Bennell flees he catches us up on the plot so far, in case we missed anything. His only hope is “to get to the highway, to warn the others of what was happening.” The trailing pod people are conspicuously riled up — being a pod person isn’t all fun and games — but decide to let him go.
Bennell reaches the highway. He waves and hollers, dodging cars. Why isn’t anyone stopping? A truck driver shouts, “You’re drunk! Get out of the street!” Our hero grabs onto the back of the truck and peers inside. It’s full of pods.
Whirling in oncoming traffic, Bennell screams, “Look! You fools! You’re in danger!” Then he looks in the camera, right at us. “THEY’RE HERE ALREADY! YOU’RE NEXT! YOU’RE NEXT! YOU’RE NEXT!”
Fade to black. Our teacher hit ‘pause,’ flicked on the lights, clapped her hands once, and asked with a grin, “Well, what do you think?” Complete silence. I think the words would be: “holy shit.”
Later, our teacher revealed her plan. She’d cut the movie off early. There was another scene. She wheeled out the blocky TV and showed the real finale: we see Dr. Bennell in a hospital, looking frazzled, but fine. Furthermore, someone believes him — he convinces an authority figure to call in the FBI. The body snatchers will be stopped. They won’t come out of the movie screen and get us while we’re sleeping.
The only problem was that this ‘real’ ending was phony and patronizing. It had none of the terrifying oomph of the first ending — the brazen threat to the audience. “YOU’RE NEXT!” Why did this fake ending even exist? The studio insisted, of course. They added a coda to relieve some of the tension. But our teacher knew the real ending, and she got the intended effect: a class of third graders wondering if they might turn into pod people.
I applaud my teacher for this experiment. Scaring kids with an old movie had a certain mild, hilarious sadism. But it also changed my ideas of what movies can do. For the first time, I considered: What about art that doesn’t seek to comfort or reassure us? What about art that challenges us to think about things we don’t want to think about? It’s still entertainment — in fact, often it’s more exciting — but it also undermines our security. From then on I was a horror connoisseur.
What do phallic aliens, ancient vampires, satanic conspiracies to kidnap babies, books that must never be read aloud, dreams that kill you, badly timed teleportation experiments, architecturally incoherent hotels, murderous goats with negotiation skills, cursed real estate, and a hungry cohort of underground cannibals have in common?
They’re not supposed to exist. Horror movies show us the irrational, the unknown, and the impossible. They reveal what we know: less than we thought. The horror movie expands the moment when we gaze at the stars in petrified wonder — when we realize we’re not the center of the universe.
It’s not a fun process. We don’t want it to happen. But the horror movie is also a coming-of-age story. We enter the haunted house as spoiled children, determined to get our way. We’re pretty sure we know how the world works. We feel invincible. But our self-righteousness sloughs off as we face unimaginable monsters. Unpredictable forces change our plans and theories.
We live our own unique horror movies — not with literal demons, but everyday problems. The mysterious forces we face are just as powerful and unpredictable. Misery and anxiety tear through our lives, turning everything upside down. Falling in love transforms our personalities suddenly. We try to keep these forces away as long as we can, but we don’t always have a choice.
Here’s the good part: if we make it out alive, we’re free from some of the beliefs that limited us. The better end of Body Snatchers is the one that pushes us closer to this transformation. It shows us the encroaching pod people and shouts a warning: we better look around to see the world as it actually is, before it’s too late.
One of the central ideas of Buddhism is impermanence. Security is an illusion. Everything changes, and nothing lasts, including ourselves. We’re a part of the story. If we think we’re safe, then I have some bad news. And some good news. “You’re next!”
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