A note on The Day of the Triffids and its film adaptations

A note on The Day of the Triffids and its film adaptations Christian Griffiths Monash University John Wyndham’s post-apocalyptic novel The Day of the Triffids (1951) offers a speculative narrative about an apparently spontaneous meteorological display in the earth’s atmosphere that blinds the majority of the human population. For the scant minority who escape blinding, the task of rebuilding human civilisation is complicated by the proliferation of “triffids”, a tenacious new form of venomous plant life. The novel establishes as one of its key themes the necessity for humans to adapt to new values and priorities in the wake of catastrophic changes, most prominently in relation to gender roles and sexual morality. The Day of the Triffids has twice been adapted to film, once in 1962 for cinema release, and again in 1981 as a six-part miniseries for BBC television. Each of these adaptations of Wyndham’s novel makes alterations to the precise nature of these debates, and these alterations may be taken as reflecting the values of the cultures that have produced the adaptations. In the immediate post-war context in which Wyndham wrote the novel, one of the important changes in gender roles was the establishment of a female workforce in a number of traditionally male professions and trades. Rather than being the result of any attempt at social reform, this phenomenon occurred out of the sheer necessity of keeping many of the essential war industries running while the males who traditionally did the work were absent in combat. A History of Women in the West, V. Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century, Francoise Thebaud, ed, (London: Belknap press, 1994), 40. For the post-war era, this meant that not only would perceptions about innate female abilities have to change, but that there would now be a growing body of women who were not dependent on marriage for financial security. As the historical background to the novel, Wyndham explores the sexual concerns of this period, including the changing role of the female in relation to reproduction, as he reflects on the future directions of the human race. The first film adaptation of Day of the Triffids was marketed to American audiences, and it should therefore come as no surprise that the film displays a conservative approach to sexuality, For a general overview of the sexual and political conservatism of American cinema in the fifties and early sixties, see Albert Auster and Leonard Quart, American Film and Society Since 1945 (3rd Edition, Revised and Expanded), (Greenwood Publishing, 2001); Chapter 3 “The Fifties”, 40—66, and Chapter 4, “The Sixties”, 67—95. suppressing many of the explicit sexual discourses of the novel. The only time that a deviation from sexual norms is explicitly presented in the film is when a sanctuary for the blind, run by the sighted by Mrs. Durrant, is overrun by a group of escaped convicts. The convicts, under the influence of alcohol, force the women to display themselves as sexual objects, by dancing and so forth, as a form of entertainment. The clear implication is that this is a prelude to mass-rape. This breach of the sexual morality is, in typical Hollywood fashion, swiftly avenged as the sanctuary is suddenly besieged by triffids, killing all inside. This scene seems to relate, in an altered form, to an episode presented early in the novel: Bill Mason, the narrator and hero of the novel, sees a group of blind men being led by a sighted man. A member of the blind party requests a woman for purposes of gratification. The sighted leader obliges by grabbing a helpless blind girl and handing her over. Bill, outraged, intervenes and secures the release of the girl from her captivity. However, as he afterward reflects, the girl would have had a better chance of survival had she been taken in by a large group, regardless of her role. Wyndham argues that accepted notions of “decent” behaviour are a social construct and that in different circumstances these values may no longer apply. The 1962 film, on the other hand, clearly shows a preference for preserving the old values, therefore rejecting Wyndham’s themes for the sake of observing cinematic codes of propriety. Yet material of a more confronting nature may infiltrate a conservative adaptation in an “unconscious” form. For example, early in the novel, Bill encounters Jo, a sighted woman of his own age, as she is being held captive by an aggressive blind man who is forcing her to act as his seeing-eye. Bill liberates her and much of the novel concerns their developing relationship, their separation through fate and their reuniting late in the narrative. In the 1962 film, however, the girl that Bill liberates from an identical situation is 12-year-old Susan. Susan is a character who appears much later in the novel and is adopted by Bill and Jo as a daughter. Susan’s appearance in the early part of the film, effectively in Jo’s place, creates a very different dynamic and is highly suggestive of Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel Lolita, which concerns the sexual desire of a middle aged man for a 12-year-old girl in his care. The specific allusion concerns a passage in Lolita where the middle aged Humbert fantasizes about a cataclysm that will miraculously leave only him and the object of his desire unharmed, allowing him the freedom to seduce her without society’s restrictions. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, (London: Penguin, 2000), 53. This is exactly the situation in which we find Bill and Susan. The allusion is fortified by a further scene in the film, also corresponding to Nabokov, Through most of the second half of the book, Humbert and his lover conduct their affair under the outward pretense that they are father and daughter. where another character mistakenly refers to Susan as Bill’s daughter, prompting Susan to respond with a rather suggestive confirmation. The existence of the allusion, whether it is intentional or otherwise, highlights ideas implicit in Wyndham’s narrative and these can be read back into the 1962 film. Following the traumatic reduction in human numbers in the world of the novel, it is made clear that survival of the race will depend on programs of mass breeding that are to be controlled by the body politic, requiring, of course, a rejection of deeply held social values about sexual decency. The Susan of the film, herself older than the Susan of the novel, She is explicitly identified as being twelve in the film. The novel does not make her age explicit but when she is introduced in Chapter Thirteen, the representations of her language skills suggest that she is between six and nine. is an ideal candidate for mass breeding: her age, at the edge of adolescence, means that through her childbearing years she may be able to produce up to twenty children. Bill too, especially in the virile physical form he takes would make an ideal sire. This sort of hypothetical coupling, presented in Lolita as an illicit sexual fantasy, would, nonetheless, be a logical, even sanctioned, pairing in the society that Wyndham depicts adapting to the needs of the future. The 1962 film, while it is certainly does not explicitly endorse it, heavily implies it in the way it has altered its source material. In contrast to the 1962 adaptation, the 1981 BBC mini-series shows a pointed fidelity to its source. Of course, this approach minimizes the opportunities for accidental insight that a looser adaptation may offer, but it perhaps makes up for this by providing a much clearer exposition of Wyndham’s themes for the film audience. This is not to say that anything approaching “complete” fidelity can be achieved in the transfer between two essentially different signifying systems. Brian McFarlane, Novel to Film, 26—27. Indeed, a close examination of the transfer process reveals that there is just as much selectivity to be found in a “faithful” adaptation as there is in a looser one; it just manifests itself in subtler ways. The BBC mini-series adaptation is particularly revealing in the context of the changes to perceptions of gender and sexual roles that had occurred in the thirty years that had elapsed between the writing of the novel and the production of the film. The advent of the second-wave feminism can be detected in the narrative of the mini-series in a way that is absent from the discourses of Wyndham’s novel. This is evident, for example, in the section of the narrative where Bill, in the company of the pragmatist Coker, arrives at Mrs. Durrant’s sanctuary to find the mostly female inhabitants living idle on food stores gathered from the old society. In the novel, Coker, conscious that this food source will only last so long, directs a long polemic speech at a young woman who has chosen to spend her labour on the relatively useless task of sewing, while the house sits in darkness because no-one has bothered to work out how to run the generator. Coker’s diatribe explicitly suggests that, despite “generations” of liberation, women are conditioned to a life of idle pleasure that relies on the labour of the male for its sustainability (175). He states that previously held notions that females were unsuited to industrial work were discredited by the numbers of females who were able to take on complex engineering work during the Second World War. He concludes that, in order to adapt to the future, women will have to overcome their conditioned inclinations to leisure and accept a larger portion of social responsibility. As the scene appears in the mini-series, Coker merely admonishes Mrs. Durrant for making the community’s religious observance a higher priority than its sustainability. It is significant that the gender issue is not raised in connection to this, although in this case it is arguable that the change was made because Coker’s arguments, as they appear in the novel, would be anachronistic in the post-second-wave 1980s. However, a further example of how the novels ideas are transformed by their historical context may be found in the differing approach to the subject of polygamy that Wyndham uses to illustrate the redefined values that must accompany social changes. As it occurs in both the novel and the film, this discourse is presented in the form of a lecture, taking place in a university building, where the sighted survivors of the cataclysm discuss long term strategies for the preservation of the human race. A professor of sociology, specifically identified as male in the novel, suggests that to accelerate the breeding process each male must be expected to impregnate multiple females, allowing for the society’s inclusion of blinded females, otherwise incapable of work, to serve as incubators. A post-second-wave view tends to regard polygamy as a sordid male fantasy. Witness for example, how the idea is presented in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satire on male power, Dr Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Although this film predates the advent of “second wave” feminism, it can be considered a seminal feminist text for its polemic critique of male power. Dr. Strangelove: Or how I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George. (United Artists, 1964). In this film, the notion of mutually-assured nuclear destruction is considered a desirable outcome by male rulers, since the responsibility of repopulating the planet with a multitude of highly desirable females would fall to them. We find, however, that Wyndham’s novel presents this idea in a very different light: following the conference, Bill and Jo, who have not yet become lovers, discuss the implications of the new order. Bill tells to Jo that he would very much like to be the father of her children. Jo consents but reminds him of their responsibility to the human race and insists that their domestic arrangement will need to involve at least two other wives. Bill is shocked by the idea and, in his mind, compares Jo’s stance to that of “purposeful, subversive-minded women like Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Fry” Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was a pioneer of the nursing profession whose writings are considered important texts in the development of feminism. "Florence Nightingale" The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English, Sandra M Gilbert and Susan Gubar, ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), 836—837. Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) was a Quaker philanthropist known for her work in prison reform. Bonnie S. Anderson and Judith P Zinsser. A History of their Own, Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present, vol. II. (London: Penguin, 1990), 177—179. (125). We can conclude from this that Wyndham reflects a perspective that may categorise polygamy as a characteristically female, even feminist, idea. The mini-series adaptation makes some telling changes to how the same subject is presented. Firstly, the professor of sociology that presents the polygamy discourse is played by a female. According to the producers, the decision was made to cast the professor as female since it was concluded (perhaps a little cynically) that that the ideas would be less troubling if they were presented by a woman. Andrew Pixley, The Day of The Triffids: Viewing Notes, 6. The private discussion between Jo and Bill that follows has also been significantly altered: rather than asking if Jo would like to have a baby with him, Bill asks if she would consent to be one of his wives. Jo responds that she will only do so on the condition that she is allowed to select his other wives. This exchange carries an implication of male domination, and of resistance by the female, that does not exist in the novel, where Jo makes it a condition that he consents to taking extras wives. So, while the novel depicts the male as reluctant to accept the idea of polygamy, the film shows the male as accepting, even secretly excited by, the idea. The notion of the female spouse as the proselyte of the polygamous ideal is judged as not likely to sit well with audience perceptions in a post-feminist era, so the film adopts a “cautious” approach in the way it presents this theme. We can see that John Wyndham’s deceptively simple science-fiction novel is in fact a highly complex piece of social observation that has as much to teach us today as it did on its initial publication. The post-war context has clearly shaped the narrative, presenting an almost passionate plea to humanity to learn and accept alternative forms of social organisation before it destroys itself in its narrow ways of thinking. Wyndham clearly sees that our perceptions of gender and sexuality are not exempt from this exhortation, and that a flexible understanding of gender roles is, while perhaps not critical for survival, surely a desirable path for humanity to follow. Both film adaptations of the novel display a far more conservative approach to these sexual discourses. The earlier film, as might be expected, simply conforms to a less liberal model of storytelling that, in order to reach as many viewers as possible, must jettison all but the most rigorously controlled controversies. Nonetheless, a film that takes a highly creative approach to interpretation, as this one does, can display a number of “hidden” or “accidental” commentaries on the themes of the source. The later film is conservative in its “faithful” approach to its source material, and while this might give a clearer exposition of Wyndham’s narrative, it too inevitably adopts a cautious approach to its presentation of sexual themes. ***** WORKS CITED Anderson, Bonnie S. and Judith P Zinsser. A History of their Own, Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present, vol. II. London: Penguin, 1990. Auster, Albert and Leonard Quart. American Film and Society Since 1945 (3rd Edition, Revised and Expanded). Greenwood Publishing, 2001. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/australiancathu/docDetail.action?docID=10021440 Dr. Strangelove: Or how I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George. United Artists, 1964. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar, ed. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. McFarlane, Brian. Novel to Film, an Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. London: Penguin, 2000 Pixley, Andrew. The Day of the Triffids: Viewing Notes, DVD booklet. BBC Worldwide Ltd, 2005. Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd, 2006. Thebaud, Francoise, ed. A History of Women in the West, V. Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century. London: Belknap press, 1994. The Day of the Triffids. Screenplay by Philip Yordan. Security Pictures, 1962. DVD: Force Entertainment Pty Ltd, 2004. The Day of the Triffids. Adapted by Douglas Livingstone. BBC, 1981. DVD: BBC Worldwide Ltd, 2005. Wyndham, John. The Day of the Triffids. London: Penguin, 1975. PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 7