{"id":23016,"date":"2017-12-19T10:34:36","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T14:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=23016"},"modified":"2018-01-30T21:26:20","modified_gmt":"2018-01-31T01:26:20","slug":"not-accepting-visitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2017\/12\/19\/not-accepting-visitors\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Accepting Visitors"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Jack Nicholson’s President James Dale<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have this childhood memory of one of those rigged games at a county fair where the prize was a stuffed alien. I wanted it really bad. It looked just like the Halloween costume I\u2019d made with my mom a few years back. We covered a balloon with Papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 and when it dried we popped the balloon, cut out almond-shaped eyes, and spray painted the whole thing silver. This stuffed alien looked just like my costume but it was electric green and had a beautiful black cape with silver embroidery. I won it (don\u2019t remember the game) and kept it for a long time. I might still have it somewhere.<\/p>\n

Being the 90s kid I am, I was excited to see a New York Times story<\/a> about a 2004 incident off the coast of San Diego where two Navy airmen followed a U.F.O. as it, \u201cappeared suddenly at 80,000 feet, and then hurtled toward the sea, eventually stopping at 20,000 feet and hovering. Then they either dropped out of radar range or shot straight back up.\u201d I was hoping this story might circulate for a while, especially given that a $22 million Defense Department program<\/a> meant to study U.F.Os was recently discovered in the Pentagon\u2019s black money budget. There\u2019s even video<\/a> of the thing! Sadly, it barely scratched the surface of most newsfeed algorithms.<\/p>\n

The paltry reaction to such amazing footage might annoy me, but it isn\u2019t surprising. The 21st<\/sup> century, in spite of 20th<\/sup> century sci-fi\u2019s predictions, has been radically ambivalent to the stars. There\u2019s no Star Trek <\/em>\u00a0on primetime TV and The X-Files<\/em> reboot received mixed reviews. In the 90s there were not one but two Star Trek <\/em>series running throughout the whole decade, The X-Files<\/em> was one of the most popular shows on television, and alien abductions were fodder for weekly episodes of Unsolved Mysteries. <\/em>UFO sightings were also a dime a dozen, providing source material for books, documentaries, and even feature films.<\/p>\n

Then, something changed. Part of the change is cultural, which, I\u2019ve argued before<\/a>, is exemplified by South Park<\/em>\u2019s Eric Cartman. Even as an 80-foot satellite dish emerges from his butt, he refuses to believe that he\u2019s been abducted by aliens:<\/p>\n

This syncs up nicely with Vox <\/em>style explainerism to create a furiously obnoxious ethos where fun half-truths die and only the vindictive lies remain. One is either the liberal explainer Cartman who is technically <\/em>correct (e.g. \u201cThere is only a 0.0024 percent chance that an 80-foot satellite dish is coming out of my ass.\u201d) or the alt-right Cartman who refuses to acknowledge the satellite dish in the first place. Either way you\u2019re Cartman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I still think its accurate to say that we\u2019re governed by a cynical desire to prove others wrong, either through bad faith deployments of data or categorical denials of incontrovertible evidence. What\u2019s remarkable is how well represented both perspectives seem to be in our politics. It\u2019s sort of amazing that one society can contain both Fivethiryeight.com and a Centers for Disease Control that can\u2019t use the phrase \u201cevidence-based\u201d in their reports.<\/p>\n

First contact stories have always really been about humanity. We are on our best behavior, or rise to the occasion when aliens arrive. In the 90s we proved our worth through feats of technical achievement (Star Trek: First Contact, Contact<\/em>) or we defeated them (Independence Day, Mars Attacks). <\/em>Either case required massive cooperation and the suspension of usual conflict. But what happens when a fragmented society such as our own encounters the extraterrestrial?<\/p>\n

More recent takes on first contact \u2014namely Europa Report<\/em> in 2013 and District 9<\/em> in 2006\u2014\u00a0are very different. In Europa Report <\/em>first contact is deadly and a part of a larger corporate conspiracy. In District 9 <\/em>humans are the antagonists: forcing aliens into Johannesburg\u2019s slums. Mars Attacks <\/em>may actually belong in this list too. Jack Nicholson\u2019s President James Dale gives what reads today as a decidedly Trumpian speech<\/a> (read the YouTube comments if you don\u2019t believe me): \u201cwhat is wrong with you people? we could work together! why be enemies? because we\u2019re different? is that why? think of the things we could do. think how strong we would be. earth and mars\u2014 together.\u201d President Dale is then stabbed through the heart by a Martian\u2019s robot hand. Defeating the aliens in Mars Attacks <\/em>is achieved through an accidental discovery<\/a> instead of super-human achievement.<\/p>\n

While District 9 <\/em>is based in (white) humanity\u2019s track record of reacting to foreign visitors, Mars Attacks <\/em>pokes fun at our earnest belief that our leaders are the most honorable and talented society has to offer– their Sorkin-esque speeches ensuring that \u201cwe do not go quietly into the night<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t believe that anymore. Most don\u2019t see the president as competent, let alone inspiring. If we can no longer maintain the fiction of imagining our leadership as competent, then what use are aliens to us? They\u2019re dinner guests showing up when you haven\u2019t finished tidying up. They\u2019re rubberneckers at a crash site. If aliens showed up today we would feel kinda embarrassed because we don\u2019t feel like we\u2019re at our best right now. Sure in the 90s, when we published books that heralded the end of history<\/a>, we were happy to show off humanity, but today we are back to feeling society is a work in progress.<\/p>\n

We aren\u2019t paying attention to the New York Times\u2019 reporting on U.F.Os because we don\u2019t want to pay attention to humanity. In the past we used U.F.Os as an excuse to imagine what global cooperation would look like and we searched the skies to see if we would ever have the chance to try it out. Such cooperation and even our own best selves seem very far away at the moment. We\u2019re not accepting visitors at the moment but hopefully, soon, we will.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have this childhood memory of one of those rigged games at a county fair where the prize was a stuffed alien. I wanted it really bad. It looked just like the Halloween costume I\u2019d made with my mom a few years back. We covered a balloon with Papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 and when it dried we popped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1512,"featured_media":23017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[97230,1624,97233,1215,97232,21833,97234,36366],"class_list":["post-23016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-aliens","tag-epistemology","tag-sci-fi","tag-south-park","tag-stark-trek","tag-supernatural","tag-ufos","tag-x-files"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2017\/12\/Screen-Shot-2017-12-18-at-6.29.19-PM.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1512"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23016"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23019,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23016\/revisions\/23019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}