Parting Glances: Reruns as metaphor (Pt. 2)

It's the damnedest thing. I plucked this exotic-looking plant while out for a Sunday stroll. It had bright red blossoms, blue-white, intricately woven, pentagonal leaves. I put it in a glass of water at my bedside. And so . . .
I awoke to find my pajama-free arm laced with tangled filaments extending from this exotic tuber. I felt utterly drained, but still resilient enough to dump the demon vegetation into the garbage. A narrow escape I'll say, occasioning this reverie about . . . .
. . . my first "pilgrimage" to San Francisco in 1975. (I've been back in '93 and '95, visiting Alcatraz and Sausalito as well. My vacations bracketed the 1978 assassinations of SF Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Mascone, the "Twinkie defense" trial of assassin Dan White, the aftermath riots, and the later AIDS decimation.)
When I visited the Castro in 1975 the "clone look" was in: mustache, sideburns, plaid shirt, Levi's, short-boots, the Tom of Finland x-rated stud. Streets were filled with laughing, energetic young men — Tom's carbon copies — most of whom, sadly, are now gone forever.
It was a revelation to see so many gay men in one place. I made the rounds: Midnight Sun, Twin Peaks, Pendulum, Castro Theater, coffee houses, cafes. I stood outside Elephant Walk and watched the nonstop macho parade. The so-called sexual revolution was in full testicular swing, following the end of the Viet Nam War — a senseless carnage that drained men, resources, and credibility.
Since my Castro pilgrimages, I've watched "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1978 version) many times. Set in the Bay Area it evokes a tangible feel for that timeframe — a distillation of visual "essence". Even though the movie's a sci-fi thriller, it triggers a multilayered sociological metaphor to mind, now oddly current.
For starters, it's about replication — uniformity, sameness — and back in the mid-70s gay men had a strong need to bond; and what better way than by dress, haircut, facial adornment. [These days it's the beach blanket buffo! look.]
Gay cloning originally was a statement of solidarity, of shared liberation that, in turn, led to rainbow flags, lambda symbols, key chains, decals, and other items of clan ID. It also found expression in color-coded hankies worn in protocoled back pockets (with handy charts for decoding kinkage), and, sadly, memorial quilts.
"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is prescient, coming four years (1982) before the onset of AIDS. The movie opens with a subliminal sense that there's something "not quite right" the way people look, act, blankly move. That there's "something" just on the edge of taking over — something unspeakable, something the like of which has never before been seen — a nightmare waiting to hatch.
And, for a PG movie that's 27 years old, "Body Snatchers" sounds a curious warning of another takeover — one already in progress. This omen occurs near the film's end, when Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams struggle against the parasitic sleep that will certainly doom them to replication.
They resist the inevitable, together and alone, near to a shipyard dock where hundreds of eager-to-feed plant pods are being hoisted onto oceangoing vessels. Loudspeaker music — reedy bagpipes — eerily plays through the star-spangled night. The tune's an oldie but goodie, hauntingly reverent: "Amazing Grace".
Is the music intended as irony? Or, is it prophetic of things to come should we Americans — usually vigilant and normal-heartedly alert — dare to collectively doze off — to be vegetated — to be replicated — erased — in the name of a cloning, soporific faith — marching onward — onward, "as to war"?