Washington Paranoia from the Left and Right: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL & MY SON JOHN

Written in July 2008 for an issue of Stop Smiling devoted to Washington, D.C. 2022: In a way, the recent Arrival might be said to qualify as a mystical remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and I found it every bit as gripping. — J.R. To get the full measure of what Cold War paranoia was doing to the American soul, two of the best Hollywood A-pictures of the early 50s, each of which pivots around its Washington, D.C. locations – The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and My Son John (1952) — still speak volumes about their shared zeitgeist, even though they couldn’t be further apart politically. An archetypal liberal parable in the form of a science fiction thriller and an archetypal right-wing family tragedy (with deft slapstick interludes) that’s even scarier, they’re hardly equal in terms of their reputations. Leo McCarey’s My Son John, widely regarded today as an embarrassment for its more hysterical elements, has scandalously never come out on video or DVD [2014 footnote, it’s now available from Olive Films], though in its own era it garnered even more prestige than Robert Wise’s SF thriller, having received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay. Read more

Feb 13, 2025 - 06:32
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Washington Paranoia from the Left and Right: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL & MY SON JOHN

Written in July 2008 for an issue of Stop Smiling devoted to Washington, D.C. 2022: In a way, the recent Arrival might be said to qualify as a mystical remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and I found it every bit as gripping. — J.R.

To get the full measure of what Cold War paranoia was doing

to the American soul, two of the best Hollywood A-pictures

of the early 50s, each of which pivots around its Washington,

D.C. locations – The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and My

Son John (1952) — still speak volumes about their shared zeitgeist,

even though they couldn’t be further apart politically.

An archetypal liberal parable in the form of a science fiction

thriller and an archetypal right-wing family tragedy (with deft

slapstick interludes) that’s even scarier, they’re hardly equal in

terms of their reputations. Leo McCarey’s My Son John, widely

regarded today as an embarrassment for its more hysterical elements,

has scandalously never come out on video or DVD [2014 footnote, it’s

now available from Olive Films], though in its own era it garnered

even more prestige than Robert Wise’s SF thriller, having received

an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay. Read more