Learning to Live With Monsters...

Have you ever noticed how in old science fiction and monster movies the United Nations, (which is inevitably brought in to co-ordinate the world's response to whatever disaster is facing the planet), always seems to be headed by some grey haired dude with a British accent?  Not to mention a title: he's always Sir Lionel Fanny-Rake or Lord Bumraven.  Or some such.  It is a touching tribute the esteem that British aristocracy and their fabled stoicism and stiff upper lips were held, even as our Empire was in terminal decline post World War Two.  It is the sort of Imperialist fantasy about the UK's influence that the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage still like to play into, despite the sad fact being that we would be just about the last people the world would look to for leadership in the event of a giant monster apocalypse.  Mind you, looking at the international community's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I can't help but fear that they would spend their time worrying that firing our missiles at a monster attacking Japan, for instance, might just provoke it into attacking somewhere closer to home, so best to keep the response low key.

Of course, British made science fiction and monster films of this era also play to the delusion that the country's pre-war 'greatness' had continued unabated post-war, by largely ignoring the need for international responses to threats, instead relying entirely upon British military might and scientific know how to deal with rampaging monsters and the like.  Just look at the two premier British monster movies of the fifties and sixties: Behemoth the Sea Monster (1959) and Gorgo (1961).  Both feature displays of British military prowess in the face of prehistoric beasts striding up the Thames to threaten London.  For the reasons of box-office, both feature token US actors who play characters who prove pivotal in defeating the beasts, but there are no calls for more general international aid.  While these films follow the genre convention of military means being inadequate to stop radioactive giant creatures, other British made films of the period take a more subversive tack.  The Quatermass Experiment (1955), for instance shows the British authorities as a hindrance to the resolution of the threat, with their conventional thinking, lack of imagination and bureaucracy.  Its sequel, Quatermass II (1957), takes it even further, with large parts of the establishment actually being in league with the alien threat.  In both films, it is up to the titular British scientist, (OK, he's played by American Brian Donlevy, but I think we're meant to suppose his accent is actually Canadian and he is therefore part of the Empire and thus British by proxy), to save the day.  While in Quatermass and the Pit (1967), Britain's military might is in the hands of leaders so obdurate and impervious to reason that they unwittingly facilitate a long-buried alien threat.  Thankfully, paragon of reason Quatermass, (this time played by Andrew Kier with a reassuring Scottish accent), is on hand to sort it all out.

Obviously, these days, if a monster or aliens were to threaten the UK, our government would probably spend most of its time trying to keep it all under wraps rather than trying to respond to the threat, on the grounds that they wouldn't want to cause widespread panic.  Judging by their response to Covid, we'd rapidly find ourselves being told of how we had to learn to live with monsters demolishing our cities, or aliens kidnapping and experimenting upon our people, or even invading the West Midlands.  That's the sort of world beating leadership the UN used to look to in those old films, I suppose.