Movies and TV have created the UFO phenomenon
Copyright 2012, InterAmerica, Inc.
While watching The Twilight Zone marathon on the SyFy network over New Year holiday weekend, I noticed how the idea of extraterrestrial visitors suffused the series and, as I see it, impacted or influenced the unconscious minds of viewers.
As most of you know, those who’ve had UFO experiences – (somewhat) blasé encounters, abductions, and bizarre interactions (those listed by Jose Caravaca in his Distortion hypothesis) – recount those experiences in ways that mimic scenarios that one finds in movies – Invasion of the Body Snatchers, This Island Earth, et cetera – or television programs – The Outer Limits, said Twilight Zone – and some old radio shows – The Inner Sanctum, for example.
Colin McGinn’s 2007 Vintage book, The Power of Movies: How Screen and Mind Interact, provides a non-psychologically afflicted approach to the influence that one will find in UFO encounter accounts and reports.
Although Freud is mentioned, McGinn uses little or no psychobabble to present his views.
Serious visitors to this blog know (or should) that human kind is subliminally impacted by ads and media presentations, and now images and offerings on YouTube, Facebook, and the internet generally.
Vance Packard, in his 1957 best-seller, The Hidden Persuaders, presented his substantive views on how media (ads in particular) seeped into the societal mind and influenced buying and attitudes that marketing people and companies exploited.
A Columbo program from 1973 with Robert Culp delved in the how subliminal messages in film and TV ads could influence behavior.
While Columbo’s airing and Packard’s book insinuates that all classes of people, and in particular, intelligent folks could be influenced as easily as the mentally deficient (and I don’t mean those with inferior brains), those who have lower I.Q.s than the population generally.
But UFO aficionados know that those who’ve reported and report UFO encounters (Hickson and Parker, the Hills, and those noted by Jose Caravaca at his blog, et al.) are not at the top of the intellectually sophisticated file; the encountered are common folks, generally: persons prone to be influenced by social and cultural elements.
When has a MacArthur Grant person experienced a UFO landing, or a Hawking assistant, or one of Einstein’s associates come face to face with UFO occupants?
When has a Tolstoy, or Fitzgerald, or Pynchon type had a UFO encounter?
My point is that persons with lower mental abilities have UFO encounters – and that includes Ezekiel in the Hebrew texts; he was prone to believe in things and people from the skies.
I’m not taking about UFO sightings, per se, here. Many of us have had UFO sightings, but those sightings stop at the observation.
When a UFO sighting triggers an “encounter,” one has to consider the Caravaca “theory” that a kind of oneirism takes place, and this is what McGinn covers in his book (see above).
We are dealing with something a little more complex than an hallucination, arguably, but something that is palpable enough to be studied or researched by those hoping to get a handle on the meaning of UFOs – those at ground level anyway.
RR
posted by RRRGroup at
4:34 PM
2 Comments:
I don’t dispute your thesis about the power of moves and TV to influence our beliefs and opinions. However, movies and television also serve as models of the world that the less intelligent often perceive to be unquestioningly true (case in point; reality TV).
So we can expect that in describing a real UFO encounter, reports from less intelligent witnesses would reflect what they’ve learned about UFOs or aliens from movies and TV. They haven't the tools (vocabulary and ability to analyze and articulate) to convey their own direct experience. There's probably a fair amount of overcompensation for these shortfalls in their reports as well.
On the other hand, think what you will of Jacques Vallee, it's clear he's at the higher end of the IQ spectrum based on his professional life away from Ufology. He's described an encounter with a landed UFO he had as a young man that engendered his lifelong interest in the subject. So, intelligent people do report encounters, but their reports are far less likely to sound almost exactly like scenes from Close Encounters or The Outer Limits because of their greater powers of analysis and description.
I think movies come to either demystify a scene well witnessed by a few or support a scene well witnessed by many,movies act as tools of conviction to work with the protective governments,what I strongly believe us that there is nothing that appears in a human mind cannot be possible,99% of what runs in a humans brain and is memorable,can be available somewhere
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