Lucid Dreams and Saturn Skies The Life and Writing of Andrew Kincaid

Tag Archives: Aliens

I’ve Seen Jesus! …In a Grilled Cheese Sandwich.

February 21, 2013 7:17 am / 2 Comments /

The famous ‘Mars face’. This strange formation was first sighted in a photograph taken by the Viking I orbiter and released by NASA in 1976. The apparent face caused quite a stir amongst UFO buffs. Subsequent photos showed the face was nothing more than a mountain.

…well, okay I personally haven’t seen Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich, but there have been those who claim they did. Reports of people seeing religious figures in random, mundane objects are pretty common–there’s even a cottage industry of shilling such objects to believers on EBay. Now the rest of us might snicker and shake our heads, thinking to ourselves that people are nuts and going on about our business. But hold on! This phenomena isn’t confined to a few who let wishful thinking and/or strong religious beliefs cloud what would otherwise be a functional rational capacity. Tell me: did you ever lay on the cool grass as a kid and stare at the clouds? What did you see? Perhaps a cloud that looked like a horse? How about a face? Have you ever been sitting in a doctor’s office, bored, staring at the chintzy wallpaper when all of a sudden you find a face staring back at you?

I know I have. I’ve seen faces in all sorts of random things. It turns out that this phenomena isn’t the result of some sort of mental misfiring, but rather it is part of our wiring. It is a phenomena called pareidolia, which is characterized by people perceiving random stimulus as significant, when really they aren’t. Basically, our brain is a categorizing machine. It despises random crap, and tries to assert order over the deluge of data constantly coming into it. Now this can lead to some odd associations; for example, baseball players are famously superstitious. Many have good luck charms or rituals that they swear by. This is a case of faulty correlation; a player happens to wear pink socks the day he hits five homers, and in his mind he associates the success with the pink socks. Really, we all know the hue of his socks has nothing to do with how well he hit, but the correlation is there nevertheless.

Now we know how the sometimes bizarre superstitions arise, but what does that have to do with an old lady seeing the Virgin Mary in her morning toast? Well, as I said, humans are pattern seeking animals. There is one pattern whose daily discernment is most crucial to our survival, even today–other people. Think about it. You can see a person’s face and instantly know whether they’re angry, happy, sad, or anything in between. Sure there is room for error there, but most people aren’t that great at controlling their facial expressions. Besides, when making a snap decision as to whether someone is going to smack you in the face with a brick and take your wallet, you’re probably not going to stop and ask how they’re feeling. Point being, for the last 2 million years of hominid existence, humans and their ancestors have had to be good at reading others. Which has made us good at picking out faces, even where there may not actually be any.

So, the next time someone sees the Pope in a fried ham and cheese sandwich, don’t be too quick to judge. They’re only being tricked by 2 million years of evolution.

Posted in: Abnormal Psychology, Our Weird World, Weird Science / Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Government is Prepared for Zombies but not Aliens–A Guest Post by Annabel Lee

July 18, 2012 9:39 am / 1 Comment /

Today I am proud to host a guest post from Annabel Lee over at Double Dip Politics.  Normally she spends her days cutting through the spin to get to the facts behind the day’s political stories, but today she has been gracious enough to stop by here on LDSS to touch on a topic I haven’t done much with–aliens.  Specifically, what the government is doing (or not) to prepare for a visit from otherwordly beings.  Should you want to hear from yours truly, I’m over on Double Dip Politics talking about voter apathy and why it is so important for college age youth to get out and vote.  Now, without further ado, I give the floor to Annabel.

***

An alleged photo of a UFOIn the movies, it all looks so easy. Aliens appear out of nowhere, somehow avoiding detection from our bevvy of probes, radio telescopes, satellites, space-based telescopes, radar stations, individual telescopes, binoculars, and countless other defense systems in place, and either land in a field demanding to see Earth’s leader or begin destroying large cities and monuments. Every person on Earth bands together instantly to fight the aliens or instinctively knows who the right leader of Earth is. In films, it’s the President of the United States.

In reality, there are no formal plans* regarding contact with an intelligent species. The Pentagon has plans for how to invade every nation on Earth, as well as each individual US state, but has nothing for dealing with an alien invasion. *(Link: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/07/if_mars_attacks_.html )

The United Nations has taken on the task of trying to protect Earth from near Earth objects, or NEOs. When it was announced the UN was working on plans for dealing with potential life-ending asteroids and comets, the conspiracy theorists claimed the UN had appointed an ambassador to the aliens. This was debunked* as just wild speculation by bloggers and dreamers attempting to shape support of alien life in the universe. *(Link: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/blog-post/2010/09/alien_ambassador_appointed_by.html  )

The reason for lacking any formal plan in dealing with alien life coming to Earth is the pervasive dismissal of the very potential for its existence. The Vatican has stated alien life conforms to the Bible*. Astrophysicist Frank Drake devised the Drake Equation** used to determine the potential for life within the Milky Way Galaxy. *(Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24598508/ns/world_news-europe/t/vatican-its-ok-believe-aliens/  )   **(Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation )

Drake’s equation has been extrapolated for the known universe. Given the number of stars in the universe, the number of potential planets, the age of the universe, and the size of even one galaxy, Drake postulated life was a mathematical certainty on other planets.

Even with the mathematical certainty of alien life existing on other planets, humans are an interesting species. Since we have never met any aliens, nor have conclusive proof of life beyond Earth, we do not feel the need to plan for an encounter. In our view, having 38 different plans on how to invade and hold Texas is more important than how to protect Earth from potential threats.

Humans don’t want to admit it but proof of life beyond Earth would shatter our worldviews. Our religions are based on humans being special in the universe. Our laws and understand of the world are limited to our experiences. The confirmation that we were not alone would drive many people mad, having devoted their lives to false beliefs and ideals. It would shatter our world and create a type of panic unseen in human history.

What harm would it do to prepare for potential aliens? In the best case, you never need those plans. In the worst case, we need the plans and don’t have them, creating chaos and confusion in a situation, which could have been handled more efficiently.

After all, our government has plans* for dealing with zombies. *(Link: http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies.htm )

Posted in: Monsters & Mythology, Our Weird World, Weird Science / Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

A Prometheus Inspired Ramble on the Origins of Life (Oh, and There’s a Movie Review in There Too)

June 14, 2012 4:27 pm / 8 Comments /
Prometheus, a prequel to Alien directed by Ridley Scott

“They went looking for our beginning. What they found could be our end”

Normally I don’t do reviews of new movies.  And, strictly speaking, this isn’t going to be a review.  The first part will be, but the second part will be me rambling about science stuff brought to mind by said movie.  Prometheus was billed as a psuedo-sequel to Alien.  Being a fan of Alien, I knew that when Prometheus came into theaters I would go to see it.  I wasn’t particularly optimistic as to how good it would be, and so I was pleasantly surprised when the movie sucked me in and didn’t let me go until the end of its run time.  Prometheus is a hauntingly beautiful and deeply engrossing film, showing off stark awe-inspiring visuals of a dead world.  The characters are fully realized and come to life on screen…

I could go on, but I won’t belabor the point.  My friend Amanda Rudd did an in depth review of the movie over on her blog, and she did a better job of it than I could.  No, instead I want to focus on the one quibble I had with the film.  Prometheus raises a lot of profound questions about life, religion, and the origins of humanity.  When the movie begins, we see a freakishly muscled humanoid alone on a barren, rocky world.  He watches a ship take off in the distance before taking a sip of some nasty tar-looking substance that starts to break him apart on a molecular level.  The nameless alien tumbles into the river where even his DNA breaks into pieces.  It’s never said with any certainty, but presumably this is the moment Earth is seeded with life.

You read that right.  Prometheus rewrites human history by introducing the concept that life was seeded by a species of alien beings called The Engineers.  The action of the movie centers around the crew of the ship Prometheus, who have been dispatched to an alien moon whose coordinates were found in ancient cave paintings and carvings the world over in order to ascertain whether The Engineers in fact exist and to see if any still live.  Those among other things–you’ll have to see the movie to find out the rest.

There is a scene near the beginning when the crew of Prometheus are brought out of hibernation and briefed on their mission.  And here comes the point when I got annoyed.  You see, there was a biologist among the crew.  It’s a smart thing to bring a biologist along to an alien world where you suspect there to be life since, after all, life is their forte.  However, this biologist was not a particularly good one.  When Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, played by the lovely Noomi Rapace, mentions the idea that The Engineers seeded the Earth with life, the biologist exclaims that such an idea would “overturn 300 years of Darwinism”.

In retrospect, that statement surprises me because of the intelligent manner in which Prometheus handles the many questions it raises (but never answers).  The biologist’s exclamation shows a very fundamental misunderstanding of both evolutionary theory and how scientific theories in general work, things any decent biologist should understand (but maybe not a script writer, although they should have done better research).

Charles Darwin, author of “On the Origin of Species”. His theory of evolution by natural selection revolutionized the science of biology and changed how people saw themselves in relation to the natural world.

The theory of evolution explains the diversity of life on Earth.  It’s a fairly complex theory, but on a basic level it’s pretty simple.  One of my favorite ways to define it is as follows: “the change in the frequency of alleles [expressed genes] over time”.  Basically, in a given population certain members of the species carry an array of genes that enhance their chances of survival.  Those more likely to survive can pass their favorable genes on to the next generation, and so on and so forth.  That’s a gross oversimplification, but for our purposes it will suffice because it points out the point I want to make.  Namely, evolutionary theory doesn’t comment at all on the origins of life!  It explains how the diversity we see in the biological world came to be, but it doesn’t explain how it started.

On the surface that may seem odd, but a quick look at the scientific use of the word theory should clear any confusion.  I did an entire post on this topic before, so I’ll be brief.  A scientific theory, in a basic sense, explains how something in nature works.  This is different from a fact, which is something that is consistently observed and held to be true.  Evolution has been observed in nature, established from fossil, morphological, and genetic evidence among other things.  It is a fact.  The theory of evolution explains how evolution works.  That is the nature of a scientific theory.

Now, one facet of a theory is that it has a range of validity.  As I said above, the theory of evolution explains the diversity of life, not its origins.  Evolutionary theory’s range of validity begins only after life begins, when there is something there for natural selection and other selective pressures to act upon.  In order to explain the origins of life, another theory is needed.  Currently, the big contender for the theory to explain the origins of life on Earth is called abiogenesis, which is a big fancy word that means that life came from non-life.  For the moment though, nobody is quite sure specifically how this process occurred, but the evidence is gaining and I imagine in our lifetime we will see DNA created from raw molecular materials.

But Prometheus doesn’t touch on abiogenesis.  Instead, it touches on an alternate hypothetical scenario by which life came to be on Earth called panspermia, specifically directed panspermia.  Panspermia means essentially that life came to Earth from somewhere else, probably by hitching  a ride on a comet or meteorite.  Directed panspermia is the idea that an alien species seeded Earth with the rudiments of life and then let evolution take its course, which is the premise behind Prometheus.  However, such an idea does not overturn Darwinism (I don’t like that word but we’ll go with it), although it is a fascinating thing to think about.  Who knows?  Maybe Prometheus is prescient and we will come to discover that all of us are really the descendents of beings from the sky.

Did you get a chance to see Prometheus?  What did yo think of it if you did?  How would it impact you if it turned out that life on our planet was seeded by an alien species? 


Posted in: Movie Reviews, Our Weird World, Reviews, Weird Science / Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack

February 10, 2012 5:43 pm / Leave a Comment /
Spring-Heeled Jack was a strange figure said to have haunted England in the 19th century. Some reports claim he dressed like a gentleman, others that he was dressed like a police officer. Often he was said to accost women before leaping away to escape.

An illustration depicting Spring-Heeled Jack, circa 1890

The United Kingdom has produced more stories of the strange, the bizarre, and the downright weird than this horror author can shake a stick at.  One of my personal favorites is the legend of Spring-Heeled Jack.

The funny business all began back in 1837, in London.  The story goes that Mary Stevens was walking home when a strange figure accosted her.  He kissed her face and ripped at her clothes with cold, clammy fingers.  Mary screamed, and the assailant fled.  The next day, the strange figure resurfaced – a stage coach driver lost control of his coach when a figure suddenly jumped into the road in front of him.  Witnesses to the incident reported that the figure proceeded to jump over a nine-foot wall, babbling and laughing to itself as it did so.

From there, the legend of Spring-Heeled Jack would take on a life of its own.  People reported seeing the humanoid figure on and off up until 1904, and there are some who claim to have seen the creature as recently as 2005.  Accounts of encounters varied from witness to witness.  Many times Jack was said to scare the living daylights out of coach drivers, as he did the day after his first appearance.  He was also commonly said to attack young women, tearing at their clothes and faces with his claws and groping them before disappearing into the night.  Now and then he would jump out of the shadows, slap a man in the face several times, and disappear again before the victim knew what happened.

Oddly, descriptions of the mysterious assailant were fairly consistent.  Jack was described as being a tall, lean figure of gentlemanly appearance.  Some described Jack as wearing oilskins, a helmet, and a heavy cloak – attire similar in appearance to the police uniforms of the day.  When Jack would strike, he did so with clawed hands and blue-white flames that he spewed out of his mouth.  Some accounts claim Jack’s face sported an elongated chin, and most accounts claim that his eyes glowed red while he attacked.

Obviously, some of the physical descriptions of the mysterious assailant varied depending on witness testimony.  The one common feature amongst all the reports though was Jack’s phenomenal jumping abilities.  More than one story described how Jack could jump inhumanly high.  Often, when the miscreant was cornered by an angry mob, he would use his springy heels to avoid a death by pitchfork.  There was no way a mere human could perform the high jumping feats attributed to Spring-Heeled Jack, such as performing a standing jump nine feet in the air.  A human lacks the musculature to jump that high, and even if they could they’d likely break their ankles when gravity inevitably dragged them back down to earth.

Spring-Heeled Jack become quite the sensation back in his day.  He was the star of countless penny dreadful novels and serials, and more than one gaudy stage show.  His story even gained a air of legitimacy when newspapers reported on it – even the Lord Mayor of London looked into the phenomena, although admittedly His Lordship was skeptical.

With all the excitement and fear surrounding the odd occurrences in England, it was natural that all sorts of explanations would crop up.  Even today, there is a fair bit of speculation as to what actually occurred.

The hypotheses range from the plausible to the plain odd.  Modern skeptics fall back to the old stand-by explanation – mass hysteria.  They believe that Spring-Heeled Jack was a miscreant and a prankster with a penchant for harassing women.

Portrait of the Marquess of Waterford

Could the Marquess of Waterford have been the culprit? Not sure…that armor might have made jumping pretty hard :P

Oddly enough, there is some evidence to support this notion.  The Lord Mayor of London himself believed such a story.  He received an anonymous complaint describing a wager among three young noblemen who planned to cause general mischief of the sort attributed to Spring-Heeled Jack.  Indeed, there was even a named suspect in the conspiracy.  The man was the Marquess of Waterford, the so-called “Mad Marquess”, and he had a nasty habit of drunken disorderly conduct along with a bad track record of behaving badly toward women.

But then, if Jack was a mere man, how could anyone possibly perform the jumping feats attributed to the creature, and how could they spit blue-white flame from their mouths?

Modern skeptics again claim mass hysteria.  The crimes perpetrated by the Mad Marquess became inflated in the popular imagination, both by being sensationalized by the media of the day and by being conflated with traditional English folklore.

Those of a less skeptical frame of mind would disagree, and they tout out all sorts of different explanations.  One that I found particularly amusing was the alien explanation.  Some claim that Jack was actually some sort of an extraterrestrial.  As for why some being from another world would come all the way to Earth to grope Victorian English women, proponents of the hypothesis have no real explanation.

A more common supernatural explanation was that Jack was a demon or devil of some sort – indeed, some believed he was the Devil – summoned by occult practitioners who were supposedly quite common in London back in those days..  More modern folks have lumped Jack into the category of “phantom attacker”, rather like the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, and claim that sleep paralysis may have also had a part in the hysteria.

Whether he be a devil, an alien, or the product of mass hysteria, there can be no doubt that the people of Victorian England at least believed that a devil skulked in their midst.  Real or not, Jack had a life all his own in the culture of his day, a life that continues to this day because of the enduring legend of Spring-Heeled Jack.


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Awake in the Dream: Sleep Paralysis

September 16, 2011 7:42 am / 35 Comments /
A painting thought to be inspired by waking dreams, often called the "Old Hag" phenomena

Nightmare by Henry Fuseli

You awaken to find your bedroom quiet, dark, and still.  Panic grips you when you realize that you cannot move.  It feels as if someone has dropped a fifty pound dumbbell on your chest.  Worst of all there is a feeling of being watched, that something is out there to get you.  There’s a harsh buzzing sound, like static or feedback from a microphone.

Your gaze tracks across the once familiar terrain of your bedroom, as much of it as you can see without moving your head at any rate.  The angles are all wrong, and leering shapes seem to lurk in every shadow and fragment of moonlight.

All at once, you see it! A huge, black figure, looming over you – maybe it’s standing at the foot of your bed, or maybe it’s hovering on the ceiling above.  Either way, it is a thing of malice and dark intent.  Its hand reaches towards you, skeletal and dappled with moonbeams, coming closer…closer…

…until you jerk awake.

The panic fades.  The world once again looks as it should, and the terrible shape is gone.  Congratulations.  You’ve just experienced sleep paralysis, also known as a waking dream.

Every night when you go to bed, you go through four distinct phases of sleep, followed by a fifth phase called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.  REM sleep is the phase where dreaming occurs.  During the dream stage, the body releases chemicals that paralyze the body (except for the eyes) so that you won’t get up and start acting out the contents of your dream.  Every now and then though, something goes out of whack in the system and part of your mind will awaken during REM sleep.  You will see the contents of your dreams not played out in your mind, but rather in your bedroom.

What I described in the opening was a fairly typical incidence of sleep paralysis.  Different cultures seem to experience slightly different phenomena – the Old Hag of northern Europe, incubi or succubi, ghosts, demons, aliens – but in general the physical symptoms are the same from culture to culture.  The symptoms of panic are associated with the inability to move and obviously with seeing the bizarre imagery of dreams in what seems to be the waking world.  I’m not entirely clear on why the waking dreams are generally unpleasant events associated with beings of malice, but it is interesting to note that the night tormentors exclusively shape human forms.  I suppose in a way that shows you what people truly fear, doesn’t it?

It is thought that many supposed “alien abductions” were really instances of sleep paralysis. The same goes for encounters with ghosts, demons, and other paranormal critters.

Oh and I should point out that everyone of us will have a waking dream at some point in our lives.  Point of fact, I’ve already had at least one that I remember.  I was asleep on the couch that day, with my face towards the back cushion.  I remember waking up and not being able to move.  All I could do was stare at the cushion and feel something staring at my back.  I knew, deep down in that primal place that humans share in common with our reptile cousins, that something deadly dangerous was in that room with me.  And that I did not want to roll over and get a look at it!

Still, it was an interesting feeling.  I was completely helpless during – paralyzed, at the whim of whatever my subconscious projected.  It was almost a humbling experience, in an odd way.

Look at it this way: we spend our lives in an illusion of power.  Money, our cars, our homes, our jobs, our authority – all of the trappings of human civilization make us forget sometimes that Death can be mere moments away for any of us. In our sterile, routine world we forget that sometimes the Universe has different plans, that the world in reality is a much harsher, more awesome place than the mundane fragments of it we exist in.  I think maybe the waking dream gives us a glimpse – a little taste – of the raw world that lies just beyond the safe bubble of modern life.

But that’s just my opinion.  I could be wrong, and maybe this is just one of those odd things in life that seems to arise for no reason at all, and disappear as suddenly.

I don’t know the answer.  But I do know this: people have been having waking dreams for ages, and they always will.  It’s a fact of life.

So when your time comes – and it will – try to enjoy it.  It’s a rare experience after all, and it might be a bit enlightening as well.

Sweet dreams!

How about you? Have you ever had a waking dream?  Or an experience that you think might have been one?


Posted in: Abnormal Psychology, Ghost Stories, Monsters & Mythology, Our Weird World / Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Black Eyed Kids

July 22, 2011 12:56 pm / 12 Comments /

Imagine opening your door late at night and seeing her on your doorstep.
Credit: Mysteriousuniverse.org

Night has fallen. You’re just settling in to watch your favorite TV show when you hear a soft knocking at the door. You wonder who could be visiting this late. Oddly, you feel a growing apprehension as you approach your front door. You peek out the peep hole and notice that there are a couple of kids standing on your doorstep. They’re boys, somewhere between 14 and 17 years old.  They’re dressed like average kids, and there’s nothing remarkable at all about them.

Even so, your apprehension grows. It’s becoming a sense of dread and foreboding.  You flick on the porch light and open the door. You ask the kids what they want.

“We were on our way to see a film and our car broke down. Could we use your phone to call our mother?” the oldest asks.

Their speech strikes you as odd. It’s way too formal for a kid that age, and furthermore they speak with a confidence most teenagers lack.  They look you in the face as they speak, although strangely you can’t bring yourself to look into theirs. You feel compelled to believe them, and scared of the compulsion. Your fear leads you to deny them. They become more insistent, growing angry at your denial, changing their story and asking if they might use your bathroom? You’re scared and confused and you don’t know why.

Then you notice their eyes.  They’re completely black. No whites, no irises. Just blackness.

You slam the door in their face, overwhelmed by terror.

Congratulations! You’ve just encountered Black Eyed Kids or BEK’s for short.

My little story illustrates a typical encounter with the BEKs. Sometimes there might be a girl and a boy, but usually there are two boys. Sometimes they approach cars and ask for a ride. Sometimes encounters occur during the day as well.

The first recorded account of an encounter with BEKs occurred in 1998. Apparently more and more have occurred since then. There are a variety of explanations for this phenomena: everything from vampires to demons to grey aliens in disguise.

Skeptics claim that it is probably just pranksters with special contact lenses. There are contacts that can cover the whole eye and make it appear black, but they’re $2000 a pop and used only for costumes and certain eye disorders. They’re too expensive and too uncomfortable to wear for most kids to go through the effort to use them for a prank. Besides, mere contacts don’t explain the feelings of dread associated with an encounter with these folks.

There aren’t too many accounts of what happens when you let them in the house. One fellow fled his house in terror as soon as they entered, and another had the kids saying “we’ve come to collect” before the owner understandably barricaded himself in another room until they left. I read of an encounter on a Marine Corp base, where the kids appeared in a barracks but upon investigation no one else saw anyone of that age on base.

So what are they? I can’t tell you. I don’t try to explain such things. I just like the stories. I don’t put a lot of credence to them, I simply like to entertain the thought. Whatever they are, be they pranksters or something otherworldly or simply products of anxious times, they’re damned creepy!


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The More Things Change…

April 27, 2011 1:29 pm / Leave a Comment /
The Day the Earth Stood Still is a classic sci-fi movie about an alien named Klaatu who comes to Earth with a message from the stars--shape up, or be destroyed.

Gort, Klaatu’s robotic protector.

The other day I was watching The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) as a part of my retro sci-fi/horror kick.  I figure if I want to write decent horror I need to read/watch decent horror right?  To see how the master’s did it.  Anyway the plot of the movie is probably pretty familiar to most by now.  An alien named Klaatu visits Earth in his flying saucer.  He and a giant robot emerge from the ship to be greeted by a crowd of civilians and military soldiers.  Klaatu brandishes an odd looking device, and a soldier panics and shoots him. The robot reacts by vaporizing all the weapons in the immediate vicinity.  During the course of the movie Klaatu learns of the human race whilst trying to get his message across.  He’s sort of an alien academic, but surprisingly his message is rather brutal in its own way.  He tells the assembled scientific elite at the end of the movie basically that Earth needs to get its shit together or the rest of the civilizations in the galaxy were going to wipe us out.  It’s sort of a stark message but then he even says that.  He says they’ve developed a system for intergalactic peace that while it was imperfect at least it worked, and they wouldn’t tolerate some upstart world with violent tendencies screwing the pooch for everyone.  So basically it was an ultimatum: make peace or die.

Interesting as that was (there was a lot of interesting stuff going on in that movie–it was definitely more dense than what you might think it would be considering the era), I found one scene in particular interesting.  During one part the alien befriends a little boy who takes him on a sort of tour of Washington D.C.  They go to visit the UFO which is parked on the National Lawn.  The place is buzzing with activity as military folks cordon the place off and civilians jockey to get a look at the strange craft.  Newsmen are there interviewing people, getting their impression of the whole business.  But it was funny because the newsmen ask leading questions, fomenting fear amongst the masses.  They come to Klaatu, who looks like a normal Fifties guy in his suit, who says something like: “hey maybe the aliens just want to talk?”  The newsman doesn’t even let him finish and goes onto the next person.

Immediately after this (unless I’m muddling my scenes together) a paper boy appears hawking papers with headlines about how horrific and threatening the alien is blah blah blah.

I just thought it was interesting because frankly how the media was acting was no different than the media today.  Fomenting fear to sell papers or draw ratings.  Shunning or marginalizing the more rational response in favor of the sensational.  But what can I say?  Fear is a strong emotion.  Obviously the strategy works, even if it is harmful to the well being of the society as a whole

That movie is sixty years old now, yet its portrayal of the media is spot on for the 21st century.  I guess that old cliche “the more things change, the more they stay the same” has some truth to it.

 

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