Seeing the Saviour in the Stars: Religion, Conformity, and The Day the Earth Stood Still

Abstract

This article uses Robert Wise’s 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still to interrogate the process by which particular cultural hegemonies become sedimented in commentarial and interpretive traditions. That is, since the late 1970s Wise’s film has been all but consistently interpreted as a Christian allegory, something for which there is surprisingly little evidence in the story itself. After discussing this interpretive trajectory, the paper presents a brief alternate reading of the film, and, building on the work of Edward Said, offers the concept of “occidentalism” to account for the manner in which a Christian interpretation has come to have the power of the “authorized version.”