Paradigms of Attitudes Toward Immigration: Science Fiction Films as Allegories in the Mid-Century

Science fi ction allegorically stages contemporary problems through the lens of impossible events. From depicting a laboratory-assembled ideal man in Frankenstein to H.G. Wells’s prophecy of worlds at war, from allegorized social confl icts in Metropolis to Bioy Casares’s prescient exploration of virtual romance in La invención de Morel, science fi ction introduces visions of alternative resolutions to fundamental crises. While immigration may not be remembered as a major sociopolitical problem in the post-World War II U.S., especially in comparison with its position among the concerns of the U.S. electorate (tied with the Iraq War according to an NPR newscast of May 30, 2008), it actually did represent a multifaceted issue of political and cultural concern. And the fi lm industry has always exploited social concerns in its search for larger markets. Although a few fi lms directly stage immigration, like George Pal’s When Worlds Collide (1951), interplanetary in this instance, others, like the two studied here, dealt with the topic more obliquely and closer to home.