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Mars in Pop Culture

Today, Mars is a scientific hotspot–a source for a wealth of scientific data and a multitude of scientific arguments. It may even hold the key to that age-old debate over whether extraterrestrial life actually exists!

However, Mars is far more than just a point of interest for those erudite enough to traffic in scientific discovery. It also affects our daily lives as a major part of our pop culture–our movies, literature, music, and even things as simple as the days of the week and months of the year. As we explore the reality of Mars, let us also examine the role of Mars in our imaginations–the many ways in which the Red Planet has affected humanity’s popular culture.

Fascination with Mars dates back all the way to some of humanity’s most ancient civilizations, whose ideas about the planet still affect us today. For example, the ancient Babylonians, who first conceived the idea of the week, named the days of the week for the seven known heavenly bodies of the time: the moon, the sun, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and, of course, Mars, which they associated with war and aggression due to its red color. "Mars Day" is now known as Tuesday. "Tuesday" may not sound much like Mars, but it evolved from Tews, the English equivalent to the god of war. The ancient Romans also honored Mars as a war god. In their culture, the year began not with January but with March, because springtime represented renewal, or the "rebirth" of the year. This was also the time when armies, previously detained due to snow and freezing temperatures, was freed up again–and hence the time when battles tended to start up. Thus, it was quite fitting that the Romans named March, the first month of their year, after–you guessed it–Mars.

Centuries later, Mars appears in literature in Jonathan Swift’s famous Gulliver’s Travels. This appearance is interesting because Swift, who was a satirist, not a scientist, makes some surprisingly accurate predictions in his novel that were beyond the knowledge of his time–or of over a century beyond it! First, in the book, astronomers on the fictional island of Laputa discover two satellites around Mars–Mars’s moons, which were not discovered until 1877! This was slightly less remarkable, however, because Kepler had previously speculated that Mars had two moons (based on the idea that Venus had no moon and Earth had one moon, so it logically followed that Mars would have two moons). What is much more fascinating is that Swift also correctly guessed that the inner satellite orbited Mars in less than a day (Phobos orbits Mars in 0.32 of a day, Deimos in 1.26 of a day)! Was this mere coincidence, or did Swift somehow know more than he was telling...?

In 1897, one of the most influential Mars-related novels was first published as a serial–H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds. This was both the first and the greatest novel in the sci-fi sub-genre of alien attack. However, this novel had effects much more far-reaching than anything Wells could possibly have imagined when he originally wrote the novel.

On the evening of October 30, 1938, most Americans tuned in to "The Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy Show," the most popular radio show of the time. Twelve minutes into the show, the usual musical break came on, and many people changed the channel. These people heard Carl Philips in the field near Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, doing a report on–horror of horrors–alien invasion from Mars! Needless to say, millions panicked. Several committed suicide, and others rioted in the streets. By the time an announcement came on stating that this was merely Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater performing the radio play "The Invasion from Mars" (based on H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds), most people were no longer listening.

Amazing, isn’t it, that Mars is to blame for the most famous–and, coincidentally, most terrifying–radio broadcast of all time?

Mars has played many different roles throughout film history. In 1924, it was used as the capitalistic antagonist in a silent Soviet propaganda film. In several old American films, it was used either as a Communist-style antagonist or as a warning against nuclear holocaust. In many films that were neither political propaganda or social warnings, however, Mars is inevitably the homeland of invariably hostile, technologically superior beings trying to take over the Earth.

Though most of the old Martian movies were lame, poor-quality works, a few old films do stick out as classic films of movie history. In 1953's Invaders from Mars, little David MacLean must stop evil Martians from taking over the minds of the adults in his hometown. This movie was remade in 1986. Also in 1953, a film adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds won an Academy Award for special effects. Of course, this film was made in the height of the Cold War, so Martians equaled Russians.

More recent movies often jest at these old Mars films. In Lobster Man from Mars (1989), in a ‘film-within-a-film’ sequence, Martians send the evil Lobster Man to Earth to replenish Mars’s depleted air supply by stealing Earth’s air. The Lobster Man is finally defeated by a mad scientist, a girl, and an army colonel. This movie is among those who blatantly caricature the old Mars movies, where Martians are always evil invaders seeking to destroy the Earth. Another of these movies is 1996's Mars Attacks. This film, which featured a cast satiated with stars of the caliber of Michael J. Fox, Jack Nicholson, Tommy Lee Jones, and many others, even more obviously parodies the traditional "invaders from Mars" plot-line. In this movie, evil, technologically superior Martians attack the Earth, shooting people with ray-guns and even, in one instance, crossing a girl’s body with a dog’s, forming a creature with the girl’s head and a dog’s body and a second creature with the dog’s head and the girl’s body. As usual, the Martians are finally defeated by something extremely simple and insignificant. In fact, in this comedy, it’s even stupid. An old song with a really bad opera singer is found to make the Martians’ heads explode. While this movie comes off as almost idiotic, it does manage to parody just about every traditional aspect of old "invaders from Mars" movies, though not in a way I personally appreciate.

Other recent movies, such as Red Planet and Mission to Mars (both released in 2000), take a more scientific look at Mars, and contemplate the possibilities that await humanity there. In these movies, the very real prospect of a manned mission to Mars–which will most likely occur within our lifetime–is explored. Of course, the adversity and adventure which characterize Hollywood are added in–just to make the movie more interesting to the masses.

Today, we have two underlying visions of Mars. One is the more scientific vision–the fourth planet from the sun, a reddish, Earth-like planet with hills and valleys, canyons and plains. Our robotic missions to the planet have given us photographs which bolster this Martian vision. However, thanks to a long history of Martian fiction and film, we have a second, more fantastic vision of "little green men;" of Warner Brothers’ Marvin the Martian who never can quite destroy the Earth (or our comic hero, Bugs Bunny), of My Favorite Martian and all his antics, and of the thousands of other fictional versions of Mars and its "people" that have been shown to us throughout history. The Mars of our imagination has become an unerring part of humanity’s culture, and will continue to be so throughout the ages. Even if scientists never find little aliens on the Red Planet, I don’t think anyone will ever visit Mars without glancing over their shoulder, wondering if an evil alien will fire a ray gun behind his back–or a little green man will peek up from behind a rock just to say hello.

Note: Rather than horrify you with my terrible drawing skills, I borrowed a few pictures (mostly belonging to the listed sites; all of them can be reached from links on the listed sites) and compiled them into a jpeg file.

Sources:

http://humbabe.arc.nasa.gov/mgcm/fun/pop.html

http://www.mtn.org/~jstearns/wow.html

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mystique/dailylife.html

Final Project