Effects Of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers

Two years after the release of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the 1958 film The Blob drew similar, albeit more simplistic, connections to communism and identity. Yeaworth’s The Blob follows teenager Steve and his girlfriend Jane as they discover that a meteorite that landed in their town contained an amorphous alien life form that grows by enveloping human life. As the blob creeps around the town, growing into an immense red mass, Steve and Jane must run to save their lives and find a way to stop the alien from growing- or else become one with it (Yeaworth, The Blob). Like the pods from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the blob is a foreign agent, not born in America, but a disease that could kill it. The blob could assimilate anyone into its

Whereas the pod people could pass in society, marking the fear that anybody could be a communist or lying about their identity, the blob focuses on the fear that one loses every aspect of self when one assimilates with a foreign agent (or ideology). To highlight this fear of loss of identity, the main character has very strong character traits; Steve is a reckless, fast-driving teenager who stands up for what’s right even when no one believes him. If this teenager, the pinnacle of the growing teenage culture, lost his identity, America would lose an embodiment of its individualistic values and opportunities. Steve fights the police and tries to convince people of danger, relying on his own experiences rather than the will of an institution, asserting his individuality that institutions unknowingly endanger by trying to silence individual concerns. After Steve discovers the secret to stopping the blob, the end of the film states that the blob is not dead, only stopped (“as long as the arctic stays cold”) and ends with a question mark (Yeaworth, The Blob). The American identity still needs to be protected and upheld by its young