ABSTRACT
In 1956, a year before the Soviet launching of Sputnik, Shakespeare travelled to the planet of the Krel in the science fiction classic Forbidden Planet. An adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the film presents the fantastic tale of Mobius, an earthling who lands on an alien world where he builds a suburban dream house complete with modernist decor and the latest in robotic home appliances. As the film unfolds, this Technicolor version of suburban bliss becomes a stage not only for Shakespearean drama, but also for the darker side of suburban domesticity. The audience soon discovers that this marvellous space-age home contains a threatening underworld of perverse sexual pleasure. As it turns out, Mobius has an obsessive need to keep his daughter for himself by maintaining her innocence of sexual difference and desire – a need that is destroyed when a team of swarthy astronauts arrives on his planet and awakens the sexual longings of the girl. In his jealous state, Mobius begins to conjure up a series of threats to deter the advances of her suitor. But, as in Shakespeare’s famous play, the father’s stormy rage is placed in check when the young woman, now fully aware of her sexuality, embraces her astronaut lover and takes off on his rocket bound for earth.
