body snatchers

[Phoebe1200]

School of rock, TV series
Context: While searching to find her role in the band, Summer sets out to become the band's songwriter, but has difficulty finding any true inspiration. After multiple failures to write a great song, she shows up to school in a disheveled state and her classmates say.


Tomika: Are you OK? You don't look like you.
Lawrence: I wouldn't rule out body snatchers.

I know its real meaning but I think that here it seems to mean that Summer's being possessed. What do you think?

 

[Dale Texas]

School of rock, TV series
Context: While searching to find her role in the band, Summer sets out to become the band's songwriter, but has difficulty finding any true inspiration. After multiple failures to write a great song, she shows up to school in a disheveled state and her classmates say.


Tomika: Are you OK? You don't look like you.
Lawrence: I wouldn't rule out body snatchers.

I know its real meaning but I think that here it seems to mean that Summer's being possessed. What do you think?

I think you're right. It's probably a reference to a famous sci-fi movie of the 50's, "The Body Snatchers" in which outer space aliens drop big vegetable-looking pods into the ground which then grow up into strange creatures who are able to use their mental powers to take over the minds of earthlings.

 

[Phoebe1200]

Thank you very much, Dale!

 

[Packard]

I read the book "the body snatchers" probably back in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Alien seed pods were implanted in humans and took over their bodies.

The Body Snatchers - Wikipedia

The Body Snatchers is a 1955 science fiction novel by Jack Finney, originally serialized in Colliers Magazine in 1954, which describes real-life Mill Valley, California, being invaded by seeds that have drifted to Earth from space. The seeds replace sleeping people with perfect physical duplicates grown from plantlike pods, while their human victims turn to dust.

 

[Phoebe1200]

Thanks so much, Packard!

 

[Dale Texas]

(I hope you can somehow get to see this film someday, Phoebe. The original was very well done, and in a serious manner. It's well worth watching in my opinion)

 

[Packard]

(I hope you can somehow get to see this film someday, Phoebe. The original was very well done, and in a serious manner. It's well worth watching in my opinion)

Worth reading too. The story stuck with me. I only ever saw the movie on TV (black and white TV).

The synopsis from Amazon says:

Originally published in 1955 Jack Finney's sinister SF [science fiction] tale has outgrown the initial debate about whether it satirized Communism or the conformity of US society at the time, to become a classic of paranoia; an examination of our fear of 'the other'.

 

[Phoebe1200]

(I hope you can somehow get to see this film someday, Phoebe. The original was very well done, and in a serious manner. It's well worth watching in my opinion)

Worth reading too. The story stuck with me. I only ever saw the movie on TV (black and white TV).

Oh, how I wish I could watch it or read it now.

 

[Packard]

Oh, how I wish I could watch it or read it now.

You will have to read it in English; I don't see a Russian language translation anywhere.

The movie is available from Amazon.com with subtitles and dubbing (but again, no Russian):

• Subtitles: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, German
• Dubbed: French, German, Italian, Spanish

 

[Phoebe1200]

Thanks a lot!

 

[Phoebe1200]

Oh, I forgot to ask if this is a common way to use "body snatchers" to mean that a person's body's been taken over by an alien?

 

[Packard]

Oh, I forgot to ask if this is a common way to use "body snatchers" to mean that a person's body's been taken over by an alien?

If you have seen the movie or read the book I think it would be understood. Otherwise people would read it literally.

I have no idea what percentage of the readers would understand it. Probably fewer in Russia than in the USA.

 

[Phoebe1200]

Thank you!

 

[Myridon]

Oh, I forgot to ask if this is a common way to use "body snatchers" to mean that a person's body's been taken over by an alien?

The story was popular enough that the original 1956 movie was remade in 1978, 1992, and 2007. Many people will be familiar with at least one version of the film.

 

[Packard]

The story was popular enough that the original 1956 movie was remade in 1978, 1992, and 2007. Many people will be familiar with at least one version of the film.

For many areas in the world I would agree.

However I suspect that in Russia, China, and other countries where translations, dubbing or subtitles are not available in the spoken language that would not be the case.