Films For Our Time

Using "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" To Teach Recent American History

Abstract

What if a teacher could demonstrate that one single motif ties the last fifty years of United States history together in a way that students would find enjoyable, contemplative, provocative, and accessible? Of the various ways to teach postwar America, many focus on the "organic" links among the dropping of the atomic bomb, the Cold War, Vietnam, 1960s cultural politicizations, 1970s recovery, 1980s Reaganism and contemporary multiculturalism, and 1990s globalization movements. This periodization works well, focusing students' minds on the exponential experiences that factor into history. Getting them to see links such as these helps them to see their own futures as exigent.¹ Perhaps they might then take some caution in their paths. But what if we could get students to see links between cause and effect, between past and present, even with respect to the march of time, without the need to move forward through history as the only way to study history? What better way to do this than by using the powerful medium of film?