Seminar Reflection 5/21/09

Today during seminar, we discussed topics base on the movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. I think one of the main topics we discussed was the idea of detente. Detente is a French word meaning the idea of releasing tensions between two sides. This related to our discussion because during the movie, the main character, Klaatu, came to Earth with the plan of warning the whole world of possible obsoletion if countries continued to produce and plan nuclear weapons in a way that could threaten the rest of the universe. It seemed as if the United States were definitely open to the idea of meeting the other nations in order to stop this nuclear production and make Klaatu rest easy. But, the USSR wanted the meeting to be held in Moscow. The US agreed to that idea but then Britain wanted the meeting to take place...in Britain. So this made Klaatu a bit ticked off because he had an important message that he wanted to address to the whole world but was unable to express himself until the very end of the movie because of the disagreements between the nations. He basically left the world two choices. Either cooperate with his demands and stop the nuclear production, or...die along with everybody on the planet and not have Earth anymore :( .