the imagination of disaster

USE THESE PASSAGES TO REFER TO AND GET DIRECT QUOTES
The Imagination of Disaster”
PASSAGE 1:
IDEA: Even though sci fi movies are fiction, the underlying fears are REAL.  Dealing with these fears in film helps people feel less afraid.
The fantasy to be discovered in science fiction films does both jobs. These films reflect world-wide anxieties, and they serve to allay them. They inculcate a strange apathy concerning the processes of radiation, contamination, and destruction that I for one find haunting and depressing. The naive level of the films neatly tempers the sense of otherness, of alien-ness, with the grossly familiar. In particular, the dialogue of most science fiction films, which is generally of a monumental but often touching banality, makes them wonderfully, unintentionally funny. Lines like: “Come quickly, there’s a monster in my bathtub”; “We must do something about this”; “Wait, Professor. There’s someone on the telephone”; “But that’s incredible”; and the old American stand-by (accompanied by brow-wiping), “I hope it worksl”-are hilarious in the context of picturesque and deafening holocaust. Yet the films also contain so
PASSAGE 2:
IDEA: Sci fi movies follow a pattern, reproduced in many, many different films.
A typical science fiction film has a form as predictable as a Western, and is made up of elements which are as classic as the saloon brawl, the blonde schoolteacher from the East, and the gun duel on the deserted main street. One model scenario proceeds through five phases: (1) The arrival of the thing. (Emergence of the monsters, landing of the alien space-ship, etc.) This is usually witnessed, or suspected, by just one person, .who is a young scientist on a field trip. Nobody, neither his neighbors nor his colleagues, will believe him for some time. The hero is not married, but has a sympathetic though also incredulous girlfriend. (2) Confirmation of the hero’s report by a host of witnesses to a great act of destruction. (If the invaders are beings from another planet, a fruitless attempt to parley with them and get them to leave peacefully.) The local police are summoned to deal with the situation and massacred. (3) In the capital of the country, conferences between scientists and the military take place, with the hero lecturing before a chart, map, or blackboard. A national emergency is declared. Reports of further atrocities. Authorities from other countries arrive in black limousines. All international tensions are suspended in view of the planetary emergency. This stage often includes a rapid montage of news broadcasts in various languages, a meeting at the UN, and more conferences between the military and the scientists. Plans are made for destroying the enemy. (4) Further atrocities. At some point the hero’s girlfriend is in grave danger. Massive counterattacks by international forces, with brilliant displays of rocketry, rays, and other advanced weapons, are all unsuccessful. Enormous military casualties, usually by incineration. Cities are destroyed and/or evacuated. There is an obligatory scene here of panicked crowds stampeding along a highway or a big bridge, being waved on by numerous policemen who, if the film is Japanese, are immaculately white-gloved, preternaturally calm, and call out in dubbed English, “Keep moving. There is no need to be alarmed.” (5) More conferences, whose motif is: “They must be vulnerable to something.” Throughout, the hero has been experimenting in his lab on this. The final strategy, upon which all hopes depend, is drawn up; the ultimate weapon-often a super-powerful, as yet untested, nuclear device -is mounted. Countdown. Final repulse of the monster or invaders. Mutual congratulations, while the hero and girlfriend embrace cheek to cheek and scan the skies sturdily. “But have we seen the last of them?”
PASSAGE 3:
IDEA: The focal point of most sci fi movies is the spectacle of disaster.  Think of a Godzilla movie, where everyone’s favorite part is watching a city get utterly destroyed.
Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art. In science fiction films, disaster is rarely viewed intensively; it is always extensive. It is a matter of quantity and ingenuity. If you will, it is a question of scale. But the scale, particularly in the wide-screen Technicolor films (of which the ones by the Japanese director, Inoshiro Honda, and the American director, George Pal, are technically the most brilliant and convincing, and visually the most exciting), does raise the matter to another level. Thus, the science fiction film (like a very different contemporary genre, the Happening) is concerned with the aesthetics of destruction, with the peculiar beauties to be found in wreaking havoc, making a mess. And it is in the imagery of destruction that the core of a good science fiction film lies. This is the disadvantage of the cheap film-in which the monster appears or the rocket lands in a small dull-looking town. (Hollywood budget needs usually dictate that the town be in the Arizona or California desert. In The Thing from Another World [1951], the rather sleazy and confined set is supposed to be an encampment near the North Pole.) Still, good blackand-white science fiction films have been made. But a bigger budget, which usually means Technicolor, allows a much greater play back and forth among several model environments. .
PASSAGE 4:
IDEA: These films allow people to take pleasure in things that, if they were real, would be horrifying and terrible.
Another kind of satisfaction these films supply is extreme moral simplification-that is to say, a morally acceptable fantasy where one can give outlet to cruel or at least amoral feelings. In this respect, science fiction films partly overlap with horror films. This is the undeniable pleasure we derive from looking at freaks, at beings excluded from the category of the human. The sense of superiority over the freak conjoined in varying proportions with the titillation of fear and aversion makes it possible for moral scruples to be lifted, for cruelty to be enjoyed. The same thing happens in science fiction films. In the figure of the monster from outer space, the freakish, the ugly, and the predatory all converge-and provide a fantasy target for righteous bellicosity to discharge itself, and for the aesthetic enjoyment of suffering and disaster. Science fiction films are one of the purest forms of spectacle; that is, we are rarely inside anyone’s feelings. (An exception to this is Jack Arnold’s The Incredible Shrinking Man [1957].) We are merely spectators; we watch.

and choose one SPECIFIC idea to focus on from your chosen text. This specific idea should be applied to YOUR OWN SPECIFIC EXAMPLE. This example can be anything: a film, song, book, etc. Firstly, you will need to write an introduction in which you give a brief overview of the article being discussed. This introduction should build to your thesis, which should be very specific in naming what will be discussed: the idea from the text and your chosen example that illustrates this idea. Secondly, you will need to write at least two body paragraphs in which you equally support each point; be sure to begin each body paragraph with a strong topic sentence. Thirdly, you will need to write a conclusion that both restates what you have said throughout the paper, and also gives possible solutions.

Requirements

There should be at least four paragraphs (including one intro., two body paragraphs, and a conclusion) in your essay and the thesis should be the last sentence of your first paragraph. The thesis should have at least two clear points, each of which relates specifically to one of your body paragraphs. Failure to follow this simple format will result in the deduction of a letter grade.

Outline

Paragraph #1: Introduction and thesis

Paragraph #2: Discussion of the theory or idea you plan to use—This paragraph MUST, MUST, MUST use quotes and specifics from your chosen article!

Paragraph #3: Application of idea to an example (not personal) of your choosing

Paragraph #4: Application of idea to an example (not personal) of your choosing

Paragraph #5: Conclusion

2. “Imagination of Disaster”

Ideas:

a.) films can contain actual fears of society, in an effort to deal with them

b.) most films, science fiction included, are structurally similar and reproduce many of the same social norms