What comes to mind when “alien” is mentioned?
Little green man with antennae in a silver suit? Brown-skinned, round-eyed creatures? UFOs with bright lights hovering in the sky?
For social and political scientist, Christian Peters, the growth of alien imagery in pop culture has reflected a mix of eyewitness accounts, cultural discourse, and media coverage.
Why gray skin and flying saucers?
Peters, managing director of the International Graduate School of Social Sciences at the University of Bremen, explains how the little green men and silver-suited alien tropes of the 1950s were succeeded by the gray extraterrestrials who also appear in today’s emoji-verse.
He cites the example of “Communion: A True Story” (1987), a bestseller in which horror author Whitley Strieber described his alleged alien encounters – the book was later made into a film starring Christopher Walken.
“The book’s cover features the now-iconic gray face – the kind seen by people who have claimed to have had abduction experiences or first contact incidents. [with aliens],” he tells DW.
The media have also helped to reinforce enduring foreign visions. In 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold described nine luminous objects flying in the sky near Mount Rainier, saying that they “moved like bouncing saucers on water.” Perhaps for the sake of brevity, the press described the craft as saucer-shaped – and thus the term “flying saucer” was born. The image stuck, shaping decades of UFO iconography.
Today, any object or phenomenon in the air, sea or space that defies immediate explanation is called a UAP – Unidentified Unusual Phenomena.
Once dismissed as fringe, the UAP has steadily gained popularity. The first European UAP symposium will take place in Italy at the end of October, bringing together scientists and policy makers to explore the “reality and implications” of extraterrestrial life.
Between invaders and sympathizers: a timeline of foreign upheavals
The lack of definitive proof of the existence of other virtually lifelike forces has given filmmakers creative license when portraying aliens, and the ability to use them as shorthand to address societal concerns.
In the 1950s, Cold War paranoia shaped films such as “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956), where the aliens were widely interpreted as Communist infiltrators. By the late 1970s and 80s, attention turned to corporate exploitation and ecological fear.
In Ridley Scott’s sci-fi film “Alien” (1979), a profit-driven company plots to create a weapon using the biological makeup of a killer alien who hunts down the company’s human employees.
Steven Spielberg’s “ET” (1982) softened the theme, presenting the alien as a benign outsider seeking connection. Meanwhile in the ’90s, the hugely successful television series, “The X-Files,” suggested a plot whereby a group of human elites and a race of extraterrestrials try to colonize and enslave the human race. The series’ catchphrase, “The truth is out there,” highlights the power of the paranormal.
After 9/11, H.G. Wells’ remake of “War of the Worlds” (2005) reimagined the alien invasion as a sudden catastrophe generating trauma and displacement.
Recent films like “Arrival” (2016) and “Nope” (2022) were more introspective, exploring grief, language and our obsession with spectacle.
While many foreign sci-fi films have been America-centric, “District 9” (2009), produced by Peter Jackson, re-depicts the aliens as refugees who are discriminated against in isolated South African slums. Meanwhile, the Hindi film “Koi… Mil Gaya” (2003) explores social exclusion and acceptance through the friendship of an alien and a neurodivergent human.
Same but different?
Interestingly, in most depictions or films, many of these extraterrestrial beings walk upright, have eyes and limbs, and have enough emotions for humans to understand them.
This anthropocentric tendency to see and interpret through the human lens was evident in the grotesque Xenomorph of “Alien” fame, a creature inspired by H.R. Giger’s surreal painting, “Necronome IV.”
“It’s going to walk on two legs, it’s got eyes, a mouth and ears,” says Christian Peters. “You wouldn’t say it’s human; but it’s a kind of monstrous interpretation of earthly nature – the ultimate predator we can imagine.”
The ‘others’ among us
The term “alien” predates science fiction. From the Latin “alienus,” it means “belonging to another,” “foreigner” or “strange.” Foreigner can also be someone who is not a citizen or national.
In many countries, the term evokes exclusion, suspicion and otherness, especially in the context of current debates on migration and integration.
In 2021, the Biden administration in the US proposed replacing “alien” with the less dehumanizing “non-citizen”. But US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officially reinstated the use of “alien” and “alienage” in January this year.
Christian Peters draws parallels with colonialism and the influence of dominant cultures on others.
“It’s the same story in the United States and many European societies right now,” he said. “There is a defense of cultural patterns and distinctions and identities that certainly transports in the idea of the ‘alien’.”
AI: An alien created by us?
Finally, artificial intelligence – non-human, non-biological, and often described as a type of alien mind – is reshaping life as we know it. As Harvard professor Chris Dade said in an interview in 2023 TechTrends GBT About AI Chatbots: “AI is not a weak form of human intelligence. It is an alien intelligence.”
While agreeing that “AI is very exotic,” Christian Peters adds: “The way in which the technology that we have invented actually reaches the end of what it produces is a historically new situation that has never existed before.”
As AI systems become more complex and harder to explain, they are likely to generate uneasiness – not unlike the possibility of extraterrestrials, immigrants or other perceived outsiders. Perhaps this uneasiness stems not from what these “others” are, but from how little we actually understand about them.
Edited by: Stuart Braun