The movie Poltergeist was on TCM today, and it seems to me to have a hidden agenda. Well, maybe not hidden, as it’s right out in the open, but still, an agenda. And what agenda might that be? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Watching television will cause all kinds of havoc and panic in your lives, so go see movies instead.
Yes, when you consider the plot of this movie, it really almost seems like the movie industry’s attack on television. And it’s easy to see why. After all, what’s the first manifestation of the hauntings in Poltergeist? Why, it’s the television, isn’t it? And then all hell breaks loose! In fact, if they didn’t own a television set, I’m sure they would have led a happy and healthy life, and the angry spirits would have bothered and cursed someone else, like maybe their next door neighbor, who we know has a TV because of his remote control, and its role in the film. (And notice also how the TV set is the source of friction between the neighboring families, with their remote controls interfering with each others’ set.)
And what’s the last shot of the movie? That’s correct: right before the credits roll, the family from the haunted house go to a hotel, and the final shot of the movie is them kicking the television out of their hotel room. Well, the message couldn’t be clearer than that, now could it? Watch TV, and you’ll get attacked by monsters and ghosts and all kinds of unseen curses. Oh, but go and watch movies in the theaters, and you’ll always have a happy and long life. (Unless you die in a car accident on the way home. But that would only happen if you watched television before the movie! {That means at any point in your life before the movie, so you’d better only watch movies in theaters, or else!})
You know, maybe the movie studios never got over their fear of television, and this movie is simply the manifestation of that fear, trying still to brainwash us against progress in entertainment. After all, weren’t the movie moguls the ones who said talking pictures were just a fad, and who thought television would die on its own? Well, maybe they were wrong, but they can try to fight the rising tide. And hey, didn’t a silent movie win the Academy Award for Best Picture just last year? You see? They’re still trying to bring back the old glory days from back before they had any real competition.
(Just kidding! But you can argue it if you want to. It is right there in the movie. Maybe next there will be a TV show where people get haunted from going to a movie in a theater? Actually, I think I have seen that somewhere, come to think of it...)
BTW: There’s another TV-related social commentary movie on TCM tonight called The Twonky. It’s a movie about a man who gets a TV set that completely dominates his life, telling him what to do and all that stuff. It’s basically the kind of symbolism that smacks you in the face like a cricket bat, criticizing how the TV tells us all what to think, etc., only this movie was made back in the early 1950s (!) when TV was relatively new. Anyway, it’s really a bizarre movie which would make a great double feature with Poltergeist’s TV-spawned horrors.
