IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (Jack Arnold, 1953)

Fetishism is a strategy to disavow difference. The male seeks to find the hidden phallus in the woman by focusing on an object. The purpose of this focus is, ultimately, to make those objects figure as the missing phallus. The female form is contained or subverted by a denial of difference. She is phallic, therefore safe.

It Came From Outer Space can serve as an allegory for Freudian fetishism on many levels. A clear example here is John's obsession with his telescope, an obvious phallic symbol that allows him to disavow sexual difference at the same time he investigates it. The telescope gives him (phallic) power and agency that he is lacking in his relationship with Ellen. She, after all, is the one who brings up the subject of marriage at the beginning of the film, becoming subject in the trajectory of their relationship, rendering him object. Additionally, this apparently liberated woman has turned down the proposal of the more conventionally masculine suitor--the sheriff. To deal with his "castration," John turns to his fetish-object, the telescope, to compensate for his objectified status. Whatever insecurities Ellen arouses in John are diminished with his investment in the instrument of his hobby as an amateur astronomer.

A complementary strategy to fetishism is voyeurism, adopted by the male to counter his fear of sexual difference (between himself and the sexual "other") and the fear of castration which he feels as a result of that difference. In this strategy, the male holds the woman in his gaze, again objectifying her in order to render her powerless. In this film, Jeff voyeuristically investigates the alien spaceship--a (fetishistic?) stand-in for Ellen's body. The spaceship is the object of his investigation and in that way he safely contains it. As the object of his look and surveillance, it is subject to his controlling, powerful gaze. For John, the spaceship becomes a stand in, a physical representation of sexual difference, a fetishistic object safer to investigate than woman herself. He works to "see" and tame the unknown (through telescope, camera, flashlight) that which he cannot understand.

Complicating his mission is the lack of support he receives in his endeavors from the other men in town. John has to "prove" that the spaceship exists. The scientist, Doctor Snell, denies its true nature, surveying the damage from the crash, roping off the area, and pronouncing it a meteor. At the same time, the doctor posts a sign on the crash site which says "NO ADMITTANCE," warning all to stay away, and criticizes John's "willingness to believe things we know nothing about." He declares John to be "individual and lonely," someone who "thinks for himself." In other words, if we view the spaceship as a representation of the female, John is abnormal because of his unwillingness to disavow the notion of the "other" (sexual difference). The sheriff, functioning symbolically as the "male" side of John, attempts to persuade John to disavow what he thought he saw, unwilling to consider the notion of sexual difference. The men from town form a posse with guns, planning to obliterate the difference.

Despite this, John continues his quest, eventually descending into the womb-like structure of the space craft, demanding to see the aliens as "they really are." Once he comes face to face with this physical embodiment of sexual difference, John says "I saw them as they really are. Horrible." In the end, John ultimately overcomes the threat of castration by reassuming a conventional role with Ellen--one that will keep her object and him subject.

Jack Arnold's It Came from Outer Space may be viewed quite literally as a representation of Freud's notion of the fetish, where the alien symbolizes woman as other, and in that regard leads to a castration anxiety of earthlings. Although this theme is central to the film, of equal importance are the ways in which Arnold equates other constructs with the alien and/or other, namely the desert.

Arnold spends a strange amount of time focusing on the desert scene; Richard Carlson as John Putnam squints into that unknown world and becoming fascinated. We soon realize, however, that the desert comes to symbolize the unknown, or even the archaic mother, as it exists as a great void seemingly bereft of life, but living, an unknown abyss Putnam associates with the alien.

At one point during this scene, Putnam states "Maybe I'm looking right at you and don't even see you. Come on out." Here we see Freud's idea of the fetish at work within a patriarchal structure. Putnam can't comprehend the desert/alien, but he wants to--he wants to probe it with his scientific mind and understand its otherness. The statement "come on out" could even be seen as an allusion to the antiquated understanding of biological sex, that the vagina/womb is really a penis that never came out during it's time in the mother's womb. Similarly, when Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) asks Putnam near the end of this scene "What do you make of it?" he replies "I'm not sure yet. I wish I could figure it out." Despite Putnam's characterization as sympathetic to the aliens, he still becomes fixated on the anxiety of castration, of this other that his objective mind just can't figure out.

Linda Williams writes in "When the Woman Looks" that "The monster is thus a particularly insidious form of the many mirrors that patriarchal structures of seeing hold up to the woman" (22). The more frequent the mirrors, the more so the idea of this structure grounds itself. These mirrors appear often in It Came from Outer Space, where a crater, an alien, a desert all come to exist as representations of the same thing--the other whose difference and/or lack of the conventional comes to represent a symbolic form of castration that leads to fear.

In 1953’s It Came From Outer Space, stargazer John Putnam is man scoffed at by society. No one will heed his warnings about what is up there in space or down there in the crater in the desert. He knows though. Even before seeing it, he knows something is wrong, and when he finally does face the creature, it is so frighteningly disturbing that he can only face it through the human mask that it wears.

In a way Putnam is a stand-in for Freud’s fetishist who fears what is “down
there” on the female. The fetishist cannot cope with what his subconscious believes it will fine, so he finds a stand-in to focus his sexual desire on. For Putnam the universe or space is the woman, and the alien is her unseen penis which only he believes is hiding in the crater. Its guise is the face of his friends and neighbors.

In these ways he does fill the role of the fetishist, but the allegory is not perfect. The female penis is only symbolic and only exists in the mind of the fetishist. In the film, the aliens are real and eventually seen by others. In real life it is the fetishist who replaces the female penis with his item of choice. In the film, the stand-in for the female penis--the alien--chooses their replacement form. It is not Putnam who simply decides to see the aliens as his girlfriend Barbara and the telephone workers. Imagine a world where women did have penises, which they hid from men by transforming them into things like high heeled shoes. This would be an interesting film; the man who discovered the truth and had to face the female penis face to face. Thankfully John Putnam lives in a world where he is only faced with invaders from Mars, and we live in a world where the Freud’s fetishist fear of the female penis is all in our heads.

Confronted with the alien “otherness” in It Came From Outer Space, Johnny, as though a child realizing for the first time that his mother has no penis, experiences a new kind of castration anxiety: the aliens are not like him, and therefore hold a threat for him and his entire species. As Susan Lurie asserts on the subject of castration anxiety, the fear of the male child is not that he stands to lose, but that women do not. What the woman lacks, truly, is not the penis, but the vulnerability that comes with having a penis that could be castrated. The aliens in this film are exploring foreign territory which automatically makes them more vulnerable–-which causes Johnny to wonder why they have no fear. And because they have no fear-–should that be a good reason for him to have fear?

What excites Johnny the most about this alien visit is that fact that he can immerse himself in the idea of it and possibly learn something. But notice he never goes anywhere without a phallic learning tool to precede him. First it’s the mega-sized telescope in his front yard, then it’s his trusty pair of binoculars, and finally he cannot enter the mine without returning to his car to retrieve his handgun. He can’t learn anything without these protruding objects to penetrate into the unknown, whether it be the desert, the crater, the mine, etc. Similarly, Matt and his posse need the same kind of phallic reassurance. Matt’s rage turns to comfort and power when his weapons are present, after which he shouts orders like “check your guns and ammunition” and “set up some flares.”

And of course the “martians” don’t hurt them. Even though their clear, slimy, and seemingly fetus-bearing bodies consume their victims like captive sperm, in the end they are spit back out. Turns out, they aren’t a threat at all because “they have nothing on us”–-just like women. And besides, who could stay mad at something that leaves behind a trail of pretty glitter dust?

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Last update: 8/27/2004