From ET to AI: how aliens populate the popular imagination

Alien iconography has evolved over the decades. The idea of ​​aliens reflects how we define fear, fascination, and the “others” among us. What comes to mind when you hear the word “alien”? Little green men with antennas and silver clothes? Beings with gray skin and spherical eyes? Are bright UFOs circling in the sky? Chupacabra or ET de Varginha?

For sociologist and political scientist Christian Peters, the evolution of alien iconography in pop culture reflects a combination of eyewitness accounts, cultural discourse, and media coverage.

Peters, director of the International School of Social Sciences at the University of Bremen, Germany, explains how the little green men and silver-clad aliens of the 1950s were succeeded by the gray extraterrestrials who also appear in today’s emoji universe.

He cited the example of the book Communion (1987), the bestseller in which the American horror author Whitley Strieber recounts his alleged encounters with aliens. The book was later adapted for film in 1989, resulting in the film Strange Visitors, starring Christopher Walken in the lead role.

“The book cover featured the now iconic gray face, the type of face seen by people who claim to have had abduction or first contact experiences. [com alienígenas]” Peters emphasized.

The media has also helped consolidate recurring images of aliens. In 1947, American pilot Kenneth Arnold described nine bright objects streaking across the sky near Mount Rainier, Washington state, United States, saying they moved “like saucers skimming water.” Newspapers described the craft as shaped like a flying saucer, hence the term “flying saucer.” The image has shaped decades of UFO iconography.

From invaders to empaths

The lack of definitive evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life forces has given filmmakers creative freedom in depicting aliens and the ability to use them as a simplified representation of social anxieties.

In the 1950s, Cold War paranoia permeated films like Vampires of Souls (1956), in which aliens were widely portrayed as communist infiltrators. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the focus shifted to corporate exploitation and ecological fear.

In Ridley Scott’s science fiction film Alien (1979), a profit-driven company plans to produce weapons using the biological composition of a murderous alien that attacks the company’s human employees.

ET Steven Spielberg’s The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) presented the alien as a kind stranger seeking connection. Meanwhile, in the 1990s, the hit television series The X-Files suggested a conspiracy in which a group of human elites and a race of extraterrestrials sought to colonize and enslave humanity.

After 9/11, the remake War of the Worlds (2005), based on the work of HG Wells, reimagined the alien invasion as a sudden catastrophe that causes trauma and displacement.

More recent films such as Arrival (2016) and No! Don’t look! (2022) were more introspective, exploring pain, language and our obsession with spectacle.

While many science fiction films about aliens have been US-centric, District 9 (2009), produced by Peter Jackson, portrayed aliens as discriminating against refugees in segregated South African slums. Meanwhile, the Indian film You’re Not Alone (2003) explored social exclusion and acceptance through the friendship between an alien and a neurodivergent human.

Same but different?

Interestingly, in most depictions or films, many of these extraterrestrials walk upright, have eyes and limbs, and display enough emotion for humans to understand them. This anthropocentric tendency to see and interpret through a human lens was evident in the grotesque alien being of Alien, a creature inspired by H.R. Giger’s surrealist painting Necronom IV.

“It’s bipedal, it has eyes, a mouth and ears,” Christian Peters said. “You wouldn’t say he’s human, but he’s some kind of demonic interpretation of earthly nature: the worst predator we could conceive of.”

The word “alien” predates science fiction. Deriving from the Latin “alienus”, it means “belonging to another”, “foreign” or “strange”. In English, the term can also be used to describe someone who is not a citizen or citizen. In many countries, the word evokes exclusion, suspicion and otherness, especially in the context of current debates on migration and integration.

AI: alien created by us?

Finally, artificial intelligence (AI) – non-human, non-biological and often described as a kind of alien mind – is reshaping life as we know it. As Harvard professor Chris Dede said in a 2023 interview with the TechTrends publication about AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT: “AI is not a weak form of human intelligence. It’s alien intelligence.”

Agreeing that “AI is very foreign,” Peters added, “how the technology that we invent gets to the end result that it produces is a historically new situation that has never existed before.”

As AI systems become more complex and difficult to interpret, they evoke a certain discomfort, something akin to the prospect of extraterrestrials, migrants, or other beings perceived as outsiders. Perhaps this discomfort comes not from what these “others” are, but rather from how little we understand about them.

Source: Terra

Rose

Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.