Last summer I was camping in the lake district, stargazing, when a flying set of lights glided across my vision with a cacophony of sound. My first thought when confronted with this was, in hindsight, very irrational – something along the lines of “Oh God please don’t let me get abducted and probed by Aliens like in all those movies”. And since the logical conclusion arose, I couldn’t help but feel a bit foolish for my initial reaction to this unexplained flying object. This ideology of UFOs and malign foreign invaders from outer space had existed in my conscience to the extent I acted as if little green men existed when confronted with the unexplainable. This Ideology made me flout all historical and technological context, and it comes from the many, many, depictions of aliens in film (Two of the most prominent being Close Encounters of the Third Kind [1977] and The Thing [1982]). My UFO was a Royal Air Force Osprey, in case you were wondering.
Real life alien abduction obviously does not exist. Alien – Human relations is explored in Bridget Browns book They Know Us Better than We Know Ourselves: The History and Politics of Alien Abduction, where she identifies that what millions of people all over the world perceive as Extra terrestrials is a mixture of deliberate government misinformation, hallucinogenic drugs and popular culture ideology influencing how we perceive phenomena (like with yours truly and RAF training exercises).
“But they are generally unanimous in their conclusions that alien abduction is the result of a form of brain disturbance and/ or sleep paralysis.” – Bridget Brown They Know Us Better than We Know Ourselves: The History and Politics of Alien Abduction pg. 208, on serious modern depictions of UFO abduction such as Spielberg’s Taken (2002).
Spielberg’s depiction in 1977 however, takes a starkly different tone. The Fantastical themes of perseverance, comradeship and vilification all helped define what we now understand as a stereotypical depiction of an alien abduction. The movie begins with a bang as we witness an electrical engineer get abducted while in his truck, with the story being shown from the point of view of an abductee (the camera almost never leaving his cabin, showing the action from a series of close-ups). This ramps the fear and tension tenfold, only to pull the rug out and not show us any true alien encounter, Spielberg electing to depict them with spotlights in the distance, then a time jump, saving Spielberg’s little green men costumes for the climax of the movie.
For the next act we follow Roy (expertly depicted by Richard Dreyfuss) down a spiral of madness trying to make sense of this phenomena. The second act themes are mostly portrayed through the point of view of his wife, giving the viewer an intrinsic look not only into how the public at large treats abductees, but all people we label ‘crazy’. For example, watching these scenes again, I feel somewhat guilty for my earlier point, dismissing all alien abduction as fanciful ravings of drug addled lunatics. Without Dreyfuss amazing portrayal of a mentally ill man in desperate need of help, these themes put in place of Spielberg would not hit nearly as hard.
My main example I would like to give for how pervasive and twisted the ideology created by alien related movies is explored in my favourite piece of non – fiction reading I did this year. Heavens Gate: Americas UFO Religion by Benjamin E. Zeller goes into detail of the Heaven’s Gate cult, who infamously committed mass suicide in 1997.
Their ideology is explained on pg. 65 – “Heaven’s Gate emerged out of two theological worlds: Evangelical Christianity and the New Age movement, particularly the element of the New Age movement concerned with alien visitations and extra-terrestrial contact. The movement’s leaders and members certainly drew from a broad array of influences, including secular ufology, science fiction, and conspiracy theories, in addition to their religious influences.”
In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a special group of individuals is given physic premonitions of the alien visitation, an invite to join them among the stars. This latter part of the previous sentence could be ripped word for word into the manifesto of Heaven’s Gate. The Cults depiction of the creatures they would evolve into (Right) are exactly the same as the depiction of aliens in Close Encounters (Left).
Earlier I explored how Close Encounters become the default stereotype for alien visitation of earth going down, and the ideology of an intrepid man going against the grain and beliefs of others to prove himself right is duped in this cult, resulting in the deaths of 39 people. They borrowed from science fiction film so heavily, they wore armbands labelled “Heaven’s gate away team’, a moniker from Star Trek.
Perhaps my earlier point about crazy people wasn’t as misplaced as I assumed. But then again, those are the themes that Spielberg intended in Close Encounters, which in my opinion really sets it apart from the other descent into madness flicks such as Joker (2019) and Shutter Island (2010).
I feel its also important to point out that I am not laying the deaths of 39 people on the porch of Spielberg, merely observing how the Ideology of Alien Abductions has been heavily influenced by cinema in the mid to late 19th century.
The Thing is one of the best horror movies ever made. The tension in every second is the most palpable I’ve ever seen in a put to film, most scenes following a 1 establishing shot followed by many close – ups formula. This makes everything seem almost unbearably claustrophobic, making the horror on display seem unavoidable (despite our ensemble cast acting responsibly and correctly, even in hindsight). The special effects coordinator, Rob Bottin, worked himself to death creating the most believable and disgusting villain for a pseudo slasher movie (quite literally, he checked himself into hospital for exhaustion when he was done). Director John Carpenter lights every single gag perfectly, never allowing enough light to reveal it looks like a rubber practical effect. Speaking of the lighting, the film utilises an Anamorphic lens, resulting in these beautiful blue streaks when our characters utilise their only source of light, flares. These pinks and purples of the flares contrast perfectly with the deep blues of the snow.
On the surface, the tension and horror of The Thing is what sets it apart from Close Encounters. Close Encounters has a whimsical, national-scale alien story about first contact with benevolent, knowledge giving aliens. The Thing is the opposite, with a malicious, all consuming creature. The Thing is one my all time favourite antagonists, forcing likable and believable characters to assault, kidnap and murder each other so it can assimilate and consume all biological life.
Finding a piece of non-fiction that I thought best links to The Thing took some doing, but I eventually came to the conclusion of G. K. Chesterton’s “The Red Angel”, essay XVII in Tremendous Trifles (1909). One of the reason that The Thing is so re-watchable is a topic well versed when discussing the movie. Its that the characters work sensibly to destroy a threat that is defeatable with the right application of intelligence and reason.
This is typified in Chesterton’s quote from The Red Angel: “Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey.“
The Scene example that shows this the most is the infamous blood test. Our unlikely protagonist Mcready (Kurt Russel) realises the shape shifting Thing’s weakness and sets up a blood test to determine who is human. The tension and practical effects all synchronize perfectly to build up one of the very few jump scares in cinema that actually works. The final scene where Mcready finally defeats the Thing with bundle of dynamite also illustrates this well.
The paranoia of this relatively unknown threat is far from gone, with the only surviving characters deciding its best they perish in the cold to prevent any chance of this malicious alien invader from reaching civilization. Its powerful, Carpenter giving each character a faint eye-light as they come to this crushing realization. Quite a change from the wistful positivity of the ending of Close Encounters. I ponder if Roy would have entered the UFO if the aliens looked more like Rob Bottin’s awe – inspiring creations.
Both these movies convey a very different portrayal of how we imagine contact with alien life happening. One positive and wistful, the other pessimistic yet hopeful. Both convey the both sides of the same coin. We imagine aliens to either help us, such as Close Encounters or Contact (1997), or destroy and enslave us as shown in The Thing or The Worlds End (2013).
Most of the opinions I see or hear in the film discourse see science fiction as fantastical, that is to say, beyond reality. Similar in vane to A Trip to the Moon (1902), a way of escape from the brutal horrors of reality, but the opinion I want to draw a conclusion to is that I wholeheartedly disagree with this notion. Although manipulated to seem out of this world with flying saucers descending from the heavens as seen in the two movies ive discussed I believe science fiction to be a inward look, with a little analysis these movies can tell us so much more about ourselves.
The Kind of help we show aliens giving us in film shows us the Technological or Ideological help we think we need. For example, the Aliens in Arrival (2016) offer a uniting tool of diplomacy, leading to world ideological peace. The Aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind offer Roy vilification, a chance to live for more than his narrow world view as a electrical engineer (something Heaven’s Gate members wanted so desperately it resulted in tragedy).
The Kind of destruction we depict aliens as causing in movies on the other side of the coin also show us about or ideological differences, and our history. Maybe the only reason we think aliens will want to enslave or destroy us is because every time weve encountered a new culture weve almost always enslaved or destroyed it.
To me, these depictions of alien contact in film make the struggles I see in day to day life strange again. Seeing a new type of helicopter at night has been transformed by the ideology transposed in these films into a fantastical event that made me ponder all the ideas in this paper, along with all the reading that was necessary. Bringing it back to G. K. Chesterton, he says:
“The function of the imagination is to not make strange things settle, but to make settled things strange.”
Final Word Count: 1852
Bibliography
Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977. [Film, DVD] Directed by Steve Spielberg. USA: Columbia Pictures
The Thing, 1982. [Film, DVD] Directed by John Carpenter. USA: Universal Pictures
They Know Us Better than We Know Ourselves: The History and Politics of Alien Abduction (2007) by Bridget Brown pg. 208
https://www.questia.com/library/117573515/they-know-us-better-than-we-know-ourselves-the-history
Taken, 2002. [TV Miniseries, DVD] Directed by Steven Speilgberg USA: DreamWorks Television
Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion (2014) by Benjamin E. Zeller pg. 65
https://www.questia.com/library/120089932/heaven-s-gate-america-s-ufo-religion
Joker, 2019. [Film, DVD] Directed by Todd Phillips. USA: Warner Bros. Pictures
Shutter Island, 2010. [Film, DVD] Directed by Martin Scorsese. USA: Paramount Pictures
G. K. Chesterton’s “The Red Angel”, essay XVII in Tremendous Trifles (1909)
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8092
Contact, 1997. [Film, DVD] Directed by Robert Zemeckis. USA: Warner Bros. Pictures
The Worlds End, 2013. [Film, DVD] Directed by Edgar Wright. USA: Universal Pictures
Arrival, 2016. [Film, DVD] Directed by Denis Villeneuve. USA: Paramount Pictures
A Critical Analysis of Depictions of Contact in Film 