ALIENS INVADE, MOVIES, MALLS
96-12-12 13:15:21 EST
Source: AOLNewsProfiles@aol.net
.c The Associated Press
By TED ANTHONY
AP National Writer
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Sure, Ross Park Mall at Christmastime may
appear a typical crowded shopping mecca. But something unearthly's
afoot in this pastiche of suburban consumer bliss.
Don't spread it around, but extraterrestrials -- space aliens,
outworlders, little green men; call 'em what you will -- lurk around
every corner.
Spencer Gifts offers alien black-light posters, keychains,
belly-button chains, mugs and an alien salt-and-pepper set ``for an
out-of-this-world taste.'' Downstairs at Claire's Accessories, an
entire alien display features mood rings, temporary tattoos, even
alien ``Have a Nice Day'' smiley faces.
There's more. The Suncoast video store's main window displays a
flying saucer over Manhattan for the video release of the alien
invasion movie ``Independence Day.'' The big sellers at the
calendar kiosk are ``The X-Files,'' ``Star Trek'' and ``Space
Jam.''
We always believed they'd invade more directly -- abductions,
manipulation, outright attack. But aliens are infiltrating America
in a more insidious way: through popular culture.
Interest in otherworldly beings has escalated in the last two
decades, but even more so in the past two years. Now film,
television, the Internet, even malls are saturated with alien
images.
``ET sells right now,'' says Erik Beckjord, a Berkeley MBA who
recently opened the UFO, Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster Museum in
San Francisco. One of his first products: inflatable alien dolls.
Why is this happening? There are several theories.
Our technologically enhanced era has brought us nearer to the
stars, both philosophically and physically, in recent years.
Scientific discoveries like the possibility of microbial life on
Mars and the existence of planets outside our solar system,
combined with the dawn of the global village philosophy, make many
people conclude it would be arrogant to think only Earth supports
intelligent life.
But it's more than that. These alien images come from a source
all too human -- our anxieties. Some say the belief in aliens, along
with the recent popularity of angels, is simply secularized
religion retooled for popular consumption.
One such outlet is the Weekly World News, the most out-there of
the supermarket tabloids. Aliens are its staple (``Captured Alien
Warns of Invasion from Space!'' ``Demi Moore's Alien
Connection!''), and in 1994 it proclaimed 12 U.S. senators
extraterrestrials.
``In our culture today, everything has been solved by science,''
says its editor, Eddie Clontz. ``There's just not much left that
hasn't been flatly explained. But the human imagination has a need,
and aliens are fulfilling that need.''
As television blurs lines between documentary and docudrama,
shows about unsolved mysteries are building elaborate theories
around grainy footage and conspiracy speculations.
``It gives us something to create our own ideas with,'' says
Deon Crosby, director of the International UFO Museum and Research
Center in Roswell, N.M.
Her institution is located near the site where, in 1947,
something unusual fell out of the sky. Official accounts described
it as a weather balloon, but many people believe it was an alien
craft.
That incident became a springboard for many popular perceptions,
including the ``flying saucer'' and theories that Americans are
regularly abducted by aliens.
In recent months, some rather gruesome film purporting to show
an autopsy of an alien from the Roswell crash has circulated on the
Internet, been featured in Penthouse magazine -- and already being
dramatized on the immensely popular alien-conspiracy TV show, ``The
X-Files.''
Though the latest aliens-on-Earth boom started with 1977's
``Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' (followed by TV's ``Mork and
Mindy'') and grew with 1982's ``ET: The Extraterrestrial,'' many
attribute the interest of the last two years to ``The X-Files'' and
its linkage of alien visits to governmental conspiracies.
``It's brought it out into a weekly ritual,'' Crosby said.
Now television offers a gamut, from the broad alien sitcom ``3rd
Rock From the Sun'' to the eerie drama ``Dark Skies.''
On the large screen, the big-budget ``Independence Day,'' about
aliens attacking and destroying sundry Americans and their
landmarks, was a box office blockbuster and shot to the top of the
Billboard video-sales charts in its first week of release last
month. ``Mars Attacks!'', a black comedy about similar themes,
opens in theaters Friday and is expected to do well.
``In the '50s, aliens were a metaphor for the enemy. Now,
they're the enemy itself because there's nothing to be a metaphor
for,'' says Robert Thompson, a television professor at Syracuse
University.
``If we can't be afraid of something geopolitical, like the
Soviet Union,'' he says, ``then we manufacture them.''
Then there's the Internet, a vast and fast information
distributor driven in many ways by the very people -- sci-fi fans
and technodreamers -- most likely to believe.
In cyberspace can be found 300-plus World Wide Web sites dealing
with aliens, including Roswell autopsy pictures, purportedly
official government UFO documents and tracts linking alien
visitations to apocalypse. A Usenet newsgroup called
``alt.sex.aliens'' offers advice on ``how to make the most of your
UFO abduction.''
But if aliens are indeed among us, they're staying quiet for
now.
They probably don't want to saturate the market any further,
what with such things as pins depicting the Pillsbury Dough Boy
with alien eyes or Pittsburgh's Interstellar Cafe, which offers
espresso, computer access and lots of talk about what may be out
there.
``To me, these television shows, all this merchandizing, is
brainwashing the American public into believing,'' says Philip J.
Klass, a writer for Aviation Week & Space Technology who has spent
his career investigating, then debunking, UFO sightings and alien
visitations.
``I would love nothing more than to write a story saying I found
something that could not be explained by prosaic or down-to-earth
terms,'' Klass says. ``But in 30-plus years, I haven't found one.''
AP-NY-12-12-96 1302EST
Copyright 1996 The Associated Press. The information
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