Where you gonna run? Where you gonna hide? Where you gonna go?

These senseless, emotionless and heartless people are everywhere, you can’t always run away from them! Either you can become one of them to get your job done, and conform, or, you can still be ‘you’, while keeping up the resistance

By Karuna Khandsiya

Body Snatchers is a story written by Raymond Cistheri and Larry Cohen. It was adapted as an American science fiction horror movie in 1993. The film is directed by Abel Ferrara. 

The movie is located in an American military base in a distant and remote region in Alabama. The story revolves around a teenage girl and her father. They discover a terrible fact. Alien clones are suddenly replacing human beings in this army base. 

The movie will leave you with plenty of thoughts. Left  behind will be the essential ‘truth’ of our modern world. 

Those thoughts will strike you again and again in your daily life. The fear of normal people will terrify you at night. The movie will shake you deep inside. Only the stark fear of those dead eyes that stare at you would be left, while giving you another eye to see people in a different mirror. 

The movie showcases our everyday reality and the state of the contemporary world with the help of totally unrealistic, and pure, imaginative creativity. It suspends you somewhere in between, while exploring the essential difference. 

The movie demands your attention in each scene and image, because it literally tells you about our disgraced society — created by us — the wars and mass murders happening all around the world, the  toxic behaviour of people who do not respect the life and times of others, even if  they are children or youngsters, while  selling us the ‘good and beneficial  products’  of modernity and the market. 

It is  not easy to notice all that in a movie because they are never told by words. It starts with a decent family moving to a new environment, with a two-month long road trip. The journey is beautiful, with sublime scenery and sunsets. However, suddenly, the movie gives a jerk, a  shock to the brain, while implanting a thought in the subconscious that remains till the end. 

It shows a typical teenager, our main protagonist, who doesn’t seem to like moving into an entirely different landscape. Her mother has also been replaced by a new mom with a  six-year-old brother. She is just a teenager, whose voice is inaudible, who is being ignored, and who is feeling unnoticed. 

She resists the restrictions and longs for her freedom. While struggling with her family drama, she makes a new friend. She has been ignoring her resposibilitiles, the ‘daughter’s duties’, and  roaming into highly restricted and isolated areas. Then she is struck by a thought which is carefully implanted in the minds of the audience. The freedom which she was prolonging, was already given to  her new friend. To enjoy  that freedom, she tries to be a part of her new environment. 

But, do you really think that ‘uncomfyness’ of that new place was the only reason that was disturbing her? Well, no. It was bothering her whole family, and mostly her brother. 

While her entire family is being disturbed by this new environment, they face chaos at home. This has an impact on the mind of the youngster. Living in a toxic and stressful environment does effect you deep inside, especially a teenager settling in a new place with totally strange people. A place where not only adults but the young have become like a herd of sheep, living in  these perfect frames, with those emotionless, dark and deep eyes. 

This is the reality where every one is thinking the same thought, without any feeling, like a dead person whose heart is merely pumping blood, without  emotions. And it’s not just about  her brother, but all the kids around her; this is not an environment meant for kids. There is relentless tension.

Think of the children who are surviving in a war, amidst daily destruction, dying and death, where there is no happiness or hope in life, and innocent kids are being butchered to reach the ‘future solution’. These kids would be emotionless because they have been brought up in a state where emotions would be meaningless; because they know they can die any moment. 

This is a state prevailing everywhere it seems, where toxicity has become rooted to the inner depths of human survival. Many people have become heartless and without feelings. The only thing they can feel strongly now is greed, and it doesn’t have to be only greed for money. 

After you realise that these people are all around you, it will be too late. This is because you would be so tired and might have already given up. And if you think you can be saved by leaving that place, “Where you gonna go?” 

Where you gonna run? 

Where you gonna hide? 

Nowhere, cause there’s no one like you left. 

 These senseless, emotionless and heartless people are everywhere, you can’t always run away from them! Either you can become one of them to get your job done, and conform, or, you can still be ‘you’, while keeping up the resistance. 

In the movie our protagonist finds someone like her to run away with, but then she will find herself alone most of the time. This can get tiring.

And even if you find someone like you, you won’t be able to recognise them because everyone have this mask on. Like in the movie with aliens stealing human faces.  

I am still afraid in the nights after thinking that someday — what if I also gave up? I am still afraid of that deadly stare. And those greedy eyes disgust me. Even now.

Karuna Khandsiya is a Class 11 student of Dr BR Ambedkar School of Specialized Excellence (SOSE), Dwarka, Delhi Board of Secondary Education, Delhi government.