Given the proliferation in recent years of ufo/paranormal/dreamtime imagery in the media (VW's "Reverse Engineered From UFO's" ad comes glaringly to mind), do you feel that this is actually changing or affecting the phenomenon itself? Is the mass-media consciousness causing the UFO phenomenon to change the way it interfaces with us?
 
 

I first became aware of the "conspiracy" theory of UFOs in the media when UFOlogist Bob Oechsler made a presentation on it to the American Friends Service Committee in Baltimore, MD. I was a sophomore at Johns Hopkins University when Oechsler gave his talk in 1989, and sadly, he was giving it on my birthday! This meant I couldn't stay for the whole thing, since I had to go back to my apartment for a 'surprise' party (that I already knew about) I remember him showing several slides about how UFOs were slowly creeping into most of the major media--and while he was showing these slides he intimated that this was part of a 'plan' by the government to 'prepare' the public for releasing what it knew about the existence of extraterrestrial life. He believed that the government wanted to release the information, but that it couldnít until people had been 'conditioned' properly to accept it.

Well, I remember being skeptical then, and I remain skeptical of this theory today. I have also seen commercials where Fortean-themed things ranging from Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, spontaneous human combustion (SHC), crop circles, ghosts, and freak lightning have made an appearance. Are we to think that we are also being 'prepared' for acceptance of these phenomena by the media? Or are they taking humorous sly digs at the saps who believe in these things while simultaneously finding a safe, cute way to sell more cameras, automobiles, snack foods, and other consumer goods? Furthermore, does the populace need to be 'prepared' for UFOs, considering that alien and rocketship science fiction has been a staple of American popular culture since the 1930s? Oechsler began his presentation with media from the late 80s onward, conspicuously ignoring the films E.T. and Close Encounters. Is Spielberg on the government payroll?

I have no doubt that there is a Hollywood-DC axis, and certainly American filmmakers have been as willing as their counterparts in foreign countries to make films for propaganda and patriotism, especially during wartime. But I find it extremely hard to believe that the egocentric cineastes of the Left Coast would allow their creative control and artistic license to be dictated to them by the government in peacetime. 'Come on Spielberg, we need more films with aliens in them!' I think that science fiction filmmakers choose their themes based on what the dominant zeitgeist is within the popular culture. If aliens turn up in films, it is based on audience market research, not because of the dictates of the government. However, the CIA and other government agencies do maintain some journalists and filmmakers on their payroll, so there is always the possibility that some media are direct outlets of disinformation. However, they lean more toward doctoring ëfactualí news stories than toward releasing'false' fictionalizations.

Obviously, my main opposition toward this theory is that it seems to be suggesting that the media are preparing the public for the acceptance of the 'extra-terrestrial hypothesis' for the UFO phenomenon, and I happen to think that this hypothesis (the ETH) does not explain the evidence as well as some major alternatives (such as the 'ultra-terrestrial' hypothesis of Vallee, Hynek, Keel, and so forth).' Hence, if Oechsler is correct, then the government is either trying to get the public to accept a theory out of ignorance of its falsity (a definite possibility), or trying to get the public to accept that theory in order to mislead them (a more likely one). The reasons for the misdirection could, as always, be severalfold. The government could be trying to throw the public further off the trail of the phenomenon with disinformation, or it could have an entirely different motive for getting people to fear an alien invasion--a new post-Cold War raison díetre for intensifying the military-industrial complex. Realistically, I think the government is doing neither very actively.

As Iíve said elsewhere, the government is lying about what it knows about UFOs. What it is covering up is the simple fact that it probably doesn't know much more about them than the civilian researchers do. They may have come to the same conclusions that some researchers have--that the phenomenon is a lot older than the Cold War, that it originates from outside our spacetime continuum, and that it is manipulative in its own right of peoples' beliefs and perceptions. So, given those facts, could any government tell its people with a straight face that 'everything is under control?'; And lack of control over a situation is one thing no government would ever admit. This is the real motive for concealment. There are no bodies in cryogenic tanks, saucers sitting in hangars in Area 51, Martians living in underground bases in New Mexico; there is only an enigma for which, like everybody else, the government has no explanation. And since it canít admit it has no explanation, it releases the Condon Report which pretends to offer one, claims to get out of the UFO business with the termination of Blue Book, while continuing to monitor sightings reports and UFO organizations.

Still, the UFO phenomenon, like other elements of 'high weirdness', does provide a great deal of cover for other, more 'cryptopolitical' activities. As Loren Coleman has suggested, the Yeti hunter Tom Slick may really have been conducting espionage on Chinese activities in Tibet. So should we wonder why UFO hunter John Lear seems to have spent so much time smuggling arms into Somalia. . .or so many people releasing UFO 'dossiers' seem to be ex-intelligence agents? If there is an incentive to release UFO imagery into the popular consciousness, it is probably to heighten paranoia through films like Independence Day. UN coalitions against pariah states are no longer good enough; but lumbering spaceships can unite the forces of the world behind (what else) John Wayne-style American military leadership. I doubt the military men who are doing this are any bit interested in 'truth' or preparing us to join intergalactic brotherhoodsof peace and freedom; they want heightened fear, cover for their actions, and fatter military budgets. But they don't usually try and reach people through 30 second commercials, unless theyíre political ads or 'issue spots.'

So--on what basis can we explain what seems to be the heightened presence of UFOs and 'aliens' in the mass media today? There seem to be a variety of reasons, but the most foremost might simply be that they sell. The Mars Corporation lost a hefty chunk of change when they allowed Hershey's Reese's Pieces to get product placement in E.T., one of the largest box office bonanzas of all time. I really don't think the advertising agencies who create ads for Volkswagen or Coca-Cola featuring flying saucers and aliens are either true believers in the phenomenon, or people who are having their arms twisted to 'release' data to the public. They are looking for something that is controversial, funny, and catches eyeballs and attention spans. Various surveys suggest that a good 52% of Americans 'believe' in UFOs. (What precisely this means depends on how the question is worded, an issue that also arose with the 1990s Roper Poll. I suspect that 100% of people believe that occasionally there may be something in the sky which no one can immediately identify.)

The other 50% are not likely to turn off a commercial because it contains UFOs, because I'm sure even the stalwart Phil Klass might be motivated to buy gummy bears if an ad for them contained a cute enough 'alien' doing a jingle and a dance. Ad agencies realize that sci-fi themes are big in popular culture; heck, we even have a cable channel devoted to hawking sci-fi shows (and merchandise) 24 hours a day. I don't think they care about reaching hearts and minds so much as they do accessing peoples' wallets. I think this even is true with some of the network UFO 'docudramas' such as the recent NBC special Confirmation (based on the Whitley Streiber book) or the earlier special 'UFO Cover-up Live' (which revealed the 'EBE's' love for strawberry ice cream). The networks aren't seeking to persuade with these shows anymore than Fox Network wants to raise animal awareness through its airing of 'When Animals Attack!' or increase knowledge of Egyptology through opening an Egyptian tomb 'LIVE!' on TV. They are after ratings, plain and simple. Is it only coincidence that these shows seem to turn up around Nielsen sweeps weeks?

Many UFOlogists made a big deal of Michael Eisnerís announcement of the opening of the Extra-TERRORestrial Encounter ride at Walt Disney World. In the half hour special (which I've seen replayed at two UFO conferences), Eisner spends a good part of the show talking, not about SETI or about the ride, but about UFO sightings! However, while I believe the national entertainment state and the military-industrial complex are allied in many curious ways, I don't think Eisner took orders from the Pentagon on that one. That special merely 'milked' the UFO controversy in America to get people to buy more Disney admission tickets. The ride itself was a cheesy replacement for Disney's aging Mission to Mars ride, which was beginning to show its age. (At least they continually update GE's Carousel of Progress.) Oechsler also makes a big deal over Cosmic Journey, a travelling exhibit which was supposed to detail the history of the U.S. space program for the 1992 World's Fair, and which included a (simulated) 'live' extra-terrestrial. However, like so much else in the UFO field (such as conversations with Bobby Ray Inman), this exhibit 'vaporized' before it was ever put on display.

If the government is trying to 'prepare' people through some kind of controlled media 'release' program, it seems horrifically slow. Already a decade has passed since Oechslerís original observation, and quantitatively, I haven't seen that much more 'preparatory' material. The only people I know of who take longer to 'prepare' their patients psychologically for new revelations are psychoanalysts, who somehow seem to think that a good five years is required just to get people to openly discuss their mother's toilet training practices. A common rationale that some UFOlogists assert for the (putative) cover-up is that people are not 'ready' for dealing with the reality of extraterrestrial contact--that if people aren't 'ready' for such revelations it will lead to widespread social and economic chaos. I think this is bunk; people can handle a lot, and can use typical human psychological defiance mechanisms to deny the rest. Haile Selassie has been dead since 1974, but Rastafarians continue to assert he is still alive. A century after Darwin, people who don't want to believe in evolution just continue denying it.

I think Hollywood films have done a good job showing the variety of reactions that will occur to the 'revelation' that 'we are not alone.' Probably most of us will act like the idiots in Contact or Independence Day and find it a good excuse to go party on top of buildings or dust off our Halloween costumes. Religious fanatics may simply seek to insulate themselves from the knowledge, as they have done with evolution or the Heliocentric solar system of Copernicus. Nationalist fanatics will treat it as a threat to nationalism (and a dangerous temptation to world unity). But will people wander the streets in stupified shock, as society crumbles around them? Nah. I think the majority of people will react to the situation as they have to a number of 'epochal' scientific discoveries--scratch their head and go back to chopping sushior whatever they do in their day jobs. So, the idea that people need to be 'prepared' for the news seems to me to be kind of silly--most people probably would not react much at all.

I do think that once we know the truth of UFOs, we will have a second quasi- Copernican revolution on our hands--one that goes beyond Giordano Brunoís assertion of thousands of worlds in our universe, to an awareness of a larger multiverse with countless parallel universes. The scientific revolution this causes may be tremendous, but I am not sure how much everyday life will change. People will still need to earn their daily bread and pick up their kids from afternoon soccer matches. The UFO reality contains a deeper enigma than astronautical antics. As Keel, Freixedo, and Vallee have noted, it may be connected to the origins of our religions and mysterious paranormal manifestations throughout history. The fact that UFO-themed commercials, films, TV shows, and specials show little awareness of this fact demonstrates to me that whoever is 'behind' their creation knows as much (or more properly, as little) about the phenomenon as you or I do--and probably far less. So don't search for hidden truth in a Volkswagen ad, anymore than you would for one for Absolut Vodka. The only thing Madison Avenue has to hide is its craven desire for your dollars.