EARTH still provocative

It is a shame, that people can return to Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still, and still find it as scary and provocative as it was when it first opened. For all of the wrong reasons.

The movie is about an extra-terrestrial, named Klaatu, posing as a masculine human-being, who travels to planet Earth -- specifically, Washington D.C. -- to warn the world, that if its people continue to fight wars against each other, then their world will be destroyed.

Written by Edmund H. North, Earth is a satire on a world trained to fear that which they clearly do not understand. North, I can tell, is looking down on the human race. In the film's funniest and most shameless scene, Klaatu is sharing breakfast with a family, who are also listening to the radio, where an ignorant radio newscaster is warning the town's people, that the alien has run amok, and is monstrously dangerous. It is propaganda at its worst.

But Klaatu isn't those things. He's more civilized a person as any church-going Christian could be. We, Earthlings, could learn something from him.

What I learned from the movie is that instead of allowing propaganda to spoil our brains with the negative aspects of something new, we should allow our curiosities to inspire us into seeing the positive, too. Find a reason to fear. Do not fear for no reason.