Study of a Single Film: Forbidden Planet (in memory of Leslie Nielsen)

Leslie Nielsen and Anne Francis star in Forbidden Planet (Fred M. Wilcox, 1956)

Film Studies For Free was sad to hear that the king of deadpan movie humour, actor Leslie Nielsen, has died at the age of 84. Of all the films he starred in, the one that has most often been the subject of scholarly studies was the hugely influential science fiction movie Forbidden Planet, a film in which Nielsen played a sincerely serious role.

In (metonymic) memory of Nielsen's wonderful career (the straight part standing for the mostly comic whole), FSFF has assembled a list of links to openly accessible academic studies of this 1956 film. With its groundbreaking electronic music score by Louis and Bebe Barron, its highly personable robot character, its loose adaptation of a high culture text (Shakespeare's The Tempest), and its well elaborated allusions to classical (and post-classical) mythology, as well as to Freud (the Id monster), Forbidden Planet will probably keep film academics in business for quite some time. But, FSFF hopes some will also turn their attention to Nielsen's comic performances, before too long.

Shirley, they merit that, at the very least.

• Martin Stig Andersen, 'Audiovisual Correspondences', CEC: eContact! 12.4 — Perspectives on the Electroacoustic Work / Perspectives sur l'œuvre électroacoustique (August 2010)
• Simone Caroti, "Science Fiction, Forbidden Planet, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest"    page 2 of 12 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 6.1 (2004)
• David Cooper, '[Review of] James Wierzbicki: Louis and Bebe Barron’s Forbidden Planet: A Film Score Guide', The Journal of Film Music, Volume 2, Number 1, Fall 2007
• Ted Friedman, 'Jung and Lost', FlowTV, May 1, 2009
• Robert M. Geraci, 'Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction: Theological Implications of Artificial Intelligence', Zygon, vol. 42, no. 4 (December 2007)
• Miguel Angel González Campos, 'Shakespeare in Outer Space: Forbidden Planet as Adaptation of The Tempest', Sederi 9 (1998)
• Greg Grewell, 'Colonizing the Universe: Science Fictions Then, Now, and in the (Imagined) Future', Rocky Mountain Review, Fall 2001
• Laurie Johnson, 'Felix and Gilles's tempestuous, monstrous machine', M/C Journal: Journal of Media and Culture, 2 (6) 1999 
• David A. Kirby, 'The Devil in Our DNA: A Brief History of Eugenics in Science Fiction Films', Literature and Medicine 26, no. 1 (Spring 2007)
• T.J. Matheson, 'Marcuse, Ellul, and the Science-Fiction Film: Negative Responses to Technology', Science Fiction Studies, #58, Volume 19, Part 3, November 1992
• Anthony Miller, '"In this last tempest": Modernising Shakespeare’s Tempest on Film', Sydney Studies in English, Vol 23 (1997)
• Roy Schwartzman, '“Engenderneered Machines in Science Fiction Film.” Studies in Popular Culture 22.1 (October 1999): 75-87
• Rachel Weissbrod, 'Inter-Semiotic Translation: Shakespeare on Screen', Journal of Specialised Translation, Issue 5, January 2006