Jonah, re The Invasion, I think the film-makers started out wanting to make an anti-Bush allegory – cue all those endless background news bulletins about Iraq – and then couldn’t figure out how to make it fit the Body Snatchers narrative. And, insofar as the Russian guy’s point that a world without war would be a world in which we’re no longer human is the nearest thing to a coherent message, I’d bet it’s an accidental one.

Nonetheless, it’s an interesting one. Since my legal travails up north, I’ve been struck by how many Canadians (and Europeans) sincerely believe that a better world can be built by giving the state the exclusive power to “ban hate” and enforce niceness. Such a world will by definition be totalitarian. I’m not proposing that the next remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers should be an allegory for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, not unless Hollywood really wants to lose a ton of dough. But nevertheless that fits the story’s theme of bland conformity better than whatever Nicole Kidman was running through the streets perspiring over.

A human society is a messy one: a lot of people will be “partisan” and “mean-spirited”, others will be hateful and bigoted, a few will bomb and kill and maim. You hope that most folks will stay down the low-key end of that spectrum, and that those who don’t will be resisted. But that is the price of remaining human, and the alternative – a state-mandated niceness – is fascistic. Hey, maybe there’s a book in it, Jonah.

(Oh, and needless to say, the original Body Snatchers is still the best.)