ETs and Entertainment

Since the earliest days of film, encounters with aliens have provided a staple dramatic element, a source for imaginative characters.

More than a dozen movies have come out or will be launched within the next year or so that feature E.T.s: remakes of "Alien" and movie versions of the TV shows "Lost in Space" and "My Favorite Martian", the eighth "Star Trek" movie, a new "Star Wars" trilogy, plus versions of scifi novels "Contact", "Sphere", "Starship Troopers" and more productions of Roger Corman, including "Starquest", another in a long tradition of stories about aliens disguised as humans.

TV series include the ongoing variations of "Star Trek", "The Outer Limits", "Dark Skies", "Sightings" and the amazingly popular "The X-Files".

Since it is less and less politically correct, or even moral, to despise or disparage any group of people, E.T.s can be an acceptable target, a morally safe stand-in for hated and feared human tyrants. Most film aliens seem to be the evil, predatory,  "We-need-your-planet-to-survive" kind, though there are the occasional comic or endearing E.T.s like those in "E.T.", "3rd Rock from the Sun" and the new Tim Burton film "Mars Attacks!" which has aliens both comical and destructive.

Film villains, alien or not, seem to have an enduring appeal. Noting the phenomenal success of the recent movie "Independence Day", Richard Corliss (TIME Magazine, July 8, 1996) quotes Steven Spielberg: "I could never make an evil, aggressive alien movie, but I would sure pay to see one. I'll pay to see this one."

In the same article, renowned cyberpunk author William Gibson says "Science fiction is always about the year in which it is written. 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' is a McCarthyite fantasy. Today, I think, the alien is inside, a virus of one kind or another." He cites author J.G. Ballard's remark: "The only truly alien planet is Earth."

David Hartwell, an editor at Tor Books pretty much agrees: "The alien represents metaphorically what's in the real world. The aliens in '50s films often represented communists - faceless invaders who were going to take over our country. The mysterious beings of "2001: A Space Odyssey" in 1968 represent our transcendent future. "Independence Day" sounds like the old form of scifi: the foreign invaders intend to wipe out our cultural heritage. Ehnic cleansing. They don't want to come in and settle. They want to take over."

The upcoming film "Men in Black", produced by Steven Spielberg, refers to a real organization purportedly established in the early '60s to cover up alien landings, then continuing on to monitor aliens to assure they would not take over, that they were behaving peacefully - otherwise deporting them from Earth. The nature of government complicity and secret association with possible aliens is another prominent theme of many entertainment projects, as in programs like "Dark Skies" and "The X-Files" which use aliens as an example of profound governmental cover-up, even betrayal.

Another theme is aliens and their supposed interactions with human society, such as UFOs and crop circles, as tantalizing mysteries, part of our continuing evolution in scientific understanding. The director of "Men in Black", Barry Sonnenfeld ("The Addams Family") has commented (Cinefantastique Magazine, Sept., 1996) "I just have a feeling we don't really have a clue about what's going on. I don't know whether there are aliens or there aren't aliens, but I do believe that everything that any expert has ever told us in our life has been proven wrong."

The director of the TV movie "Roswell", Jeremy Kagan noted in a magazine interview (Cinefantastique, Aug., 1994) the film is an example of looking at life with a wider vision: "I've become more aware that we have been educated to see the things that are in front of us, and not other things that may also be in front of us, whether they are ghosts or alien presences or other versions of ourselves. I think we are in the time - and maybe it's the end of the millennium - where our awareness level lets us look at life in a deeper, more dense way and we see these other realities."

His film includes as one explanation for the famed crash at Roswell, and its purported alien occupants, the idea of multiverses - as he explains: "People are not flying here from Sirius. I think there are coterminous realities that every now and then there is access to. I have a feeling that what happened at Roswell was one such break. My feeling is that these spacecraft are vehicles that travel in time."

One of the most popular TV series featuring aliens, "The X-Files", is acclaimed, in part, for its detailed background research. As an example, Chris Carter, the creator, executive producer and director, when asked at a recent press conference about the ongoing interest in aliens, said "My interest in it came from a scientific study done by Dr. John Mack, a Harvard Psych professor/researcher, that showed there are a lot of people who believed that they not only had been contacted or witnessed these things, but had been abducted.

"I honestly can't say why people believe this. I think it has a lot to do with the global, political climate, the lack of a clear enemy and a certain amount of navel-gazing as well. But I think that it has to do with science generally. We're living in a world where the advancements are taking quantum leaps and we don't quite know how to fathom those things and it gives a feeling that gives rise to certain fears about the dangers from without."

He also noted that, as an entertainment producer, "Our goal, first and foremost, is to scare people."

One of the aspects that makes "The X-Files" so engaging is the breadth and implications of story material. One of the writers, Howard Gordon, has commented (Cinefantastique, Oct., 1995) that the alien abduction story line in some of the episodes could be seen as a metaphor for incidents of abuse, "because if you look at the governing symbols, they often involve violation and helplessness. The victimization is often of a sexual nature... I think we often feel helpless in this society. It's getting more and more difficult to acknowledge our helplessness, and I think [FBI agents] Mulder and Scully are the champions of that."

Vivian Mayhew recently joined the writing team, and noted in a recent personal interview that the show has full time researchers to help develop the wide-ranging stories: "That's really important; it needs to be sort of grounded in reality. One of the most interesting things about the show is that it covers aliens, paranormal and unusual phenomena, government conspiracy and other topics - and they all seem related in a way, and people sort of like all of that. One of the reasons it's so successful, and I guess it goes along with why people love the idea of aliens, is the thought that we're not in control, that there's something bigger.

"In a way, that's almost a comforting thought, both in the sense it could be something really positive, maybe there's some big scheme we don't know about, and also it could be a focus for negative energy. I think what made Independence Day such a hit is the idea we would all actually band together to fight some big foe. That's also really comforting, too."

Gillian Anderson, who plays "The X-Files" FBI Agent Scully has said in various interviews she is intrigued with various phenomena brought up in the series. On one of her many Internet fan sites she is quoted: "I'm not that much of a skeptic. I do believe in UFO's, I do believe in certain paranormal phenomena, like ESP and psychokinesis and all that. I've always been fascinated with it and I think, on a certain level, I've just known or assumed it to be reality."

Talking about the recurring theme in the show of government cover-up, she commented "I don't think it's the government's job to decide what people can or can't handle. People have a right to their fears, and learning to confront them can be quite liberating. Besides, if there are life forms on other planets traveling to Earth, they must be much more advanced than we are, which means we could be learning a lot from them. I think we should embrace that."

But in many films, there is a presumption of vulnerability about those who are confronted with aliens, that mere citizens can't fend for themselves, or can't endure the fear. Agents Scully and Mulder can take it, and that is part of their charm and appeal.

Megan Ward, one of the stars of the new NBC series "Dark Skies" is quoted on an Internet site about the show that although personally she has never seen a UFO, she has many excited friends who claim to have witnessed one: "It's an amazingly universal topic," she says. "I feel there's no way that we are the only ones around... I wasn't necessarily a believer before I read the script, but I was certainly very interested in aliens because they can be anything. And I think we, as humans, enjoy the idea of something bigger than us, something other than us, whether it's religious or supernatural."

Exploring the reaches of the supernatural is one of the joys and pleasures of both science and science fiction, including films with aliens. But as Apollo 14 mission astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell noted in a recent interview with the author, there isn't any good information about extraterrestrials in the public domain: "It's all conjecture. There is clearly an awful lot of disinformation and misinformation. I think this is terribly harmful, and I think we have an obligation to get good information out so people aren't fearful and aren't creating nonsense.

"It's one thing to create a cartoon and just enjoy it because it is a cartoon, but when you get it mixed up with reality, that's quite a serious thing, and I think that's what's happening. A survey done a couple of years ago indicated the number of people who had abduction experiences was well over two percent of the population. Now, that's ridiculous; those numbers make no sense from any physical point of view.

"But they might make sense from a totally different point of view, for example, that the idea is in the collective unconscious and people are using this as an explanation for bad dreams or whatever. Those are things we as scientists and serious people need to make available and understand, and get to the public, because it's getting crazy out there. I have to take any film as pure entertainment, and I don't get my information from entertainment films. But I'm sure the naive, the young, the uninformed use them as a model, and place credibility in them. I think our leadership has a responsibility to help us get to the bottom of what is true here, the difference between entertainment and real fact."

In an article of his ("UFOs and the Search for Higher Consciousness") consciousness researcher John White comments "The greatest enemy and the greatest ally we have are still to be found in the depths of our own psyche, in the center of our own being. The proper attitude toward meetings with starfolk can only be that which is proper to have for human teachers and helpers. When our attitude assumes the character of a master-servant relation or a deity-worshipper relation, our own evolutionary potential is discarded."

Acclaimed horror writer and filmmaker Clive Barker also finds that alien films may "disconnect us from being able to operate in the real world. There's a sense we're unplugging from political activity, civic duties or even responsibility to our neighbors by saying there are things greater than us and secrets hidden from us. We are a superstitious species, and we need to look outside ourselves for something larger that will bring either calamity or wisdom or maybe both. This is about belief, not just box office."

One of the greatest potential values in alien films, aside from the pleasure of good entertainment, is in exploring our beliefs and attitudes about the Other, the unknown which is seemingly not us.

We can enjoy the portrayal of an alien, superhuman guru figure, feeling a variety of celebrity worship, with awe and yearning for technical and spiritual knowledge beyond our own, or see them as a cosmic fascist, a focus of our fears and loathing.

But in both cases, we may be giving in to destructive and limiting prejudices. Hopefully, we can continue to thrill over creatively devised film aliens without losing consciousness.

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