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James Pinkerton: What the "War of the Worlds" Says About Our Fears in a Post-9-11 World

James Pinkerton, in Newsday (7-5-05):

... [T]he human mind is given to imagination and extrapolation. So while H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds," published in England in 1898, was ostensibly about an attack from Martians - at a time when most people believed that Mars did, indeed, harbor intelligent life - the novel was also written in response to fears of a rising militaristic Germany. Indeed, less than two decades after "War" appeared, German airplanes and zeppelins were, in fact, dropping bombs on England.

Atomic weapons added new fears - and generated new responses. Some books and movies, such as "On the Beach" and "Dr. Strangelove," imagined the world simply nuking itself.

Yet once again, restless minds found even weirder ways of comprehending the basic stuff of nuclear-era reality. In Japan, the only country ever to suffer a nuclear attack, "Godzilla" was released in 1954; a 400-foot-tall monster was revived by American nuclear testing. The message to Japanese audiences was clear enough: Not only were atomic weapons bad, but Americans weren't so great, either. When the future history of Japan's militaristic revival is written, historians will point to "Godzilla" as an early harbinger.

So now "War of the Worlds." Director Steven Spielberg has called it a meditation on 9/11 and the associated traumas and even hysterias. Spielberg has said that the image from that September day affecting him most was the vision of bedraggled survivors staggering away from the World Trade Center site.

And just as Osama and al-Qaida were nowhere to be seen on 9/11, so too in "War," the enemy, having launched a sneak attack, is almost entirely unseen. Yet like Spielberg, we have all internalized what's shown in the movie: long lines of people streaming away from the site of tragic calamity.

That's an enduring legacy of 9/11: the sense we have in our bones that more such disasters and dislocations, perhaps on a vaster scale, are headed toward us - from terrorists, from enemy countries, and yes, even from outer space, in the form, most likely, of killer asteroids.

Are we prepared as individuals? Are we prepared as a society? We go to see "War" at least to begin thinking about those questions. The real test, of course, will be how we answer those questions when the time comes. And it will come.