Forget What You Know… There’s Another World
One of the fundamental aspects of being an intelligent species is our capacity and longing for knowledge. The faiths of the world have deities and texts which describe our beginnings and the Bigger Picture. Explorers have crossed oceans and scaled over vast mountain ranges to discover new lands and new peoples. For centuries we have been using science and mathematics to better understand our world and advance our civilization. In every form humankind, throughout history and to the present day, has endeavored to unravel the secrets of life and the universe.
And yet, despite our advances and knowledge, many people still doubt and question our reality. There is the material world around us that we can feel and interact with, but there is also the world beyond our senses and our perception. In flights of fancy and in daydreams many of us imagine the everyday and fantastic meeting, crossing, blurring into each other. Some of us suspect that the intersection of these disparate worlds is being kept hidden from us — that the truth is being kept secret from us.
Storytelling in literature, film and television features countless examples of characters discovering, through purpose or by chance, that another world coexists above or alongside our own, but its nature is concealed. These stories suppose that for all of our assumed knowledge and understanding of what is real and what isn’t we don’t know the Big Picture until we experience it first hand. Depending on the author and the qualities of a story the Other world’s existence can be hidden for our protection, or to subdue us. The gatekeepers of this knowledge can belong to an order or conspiracy that seeks to suppress our awareness of a greater reality, but our species’ inquisitive nature exposes their secret, and perhaps dark goings on.
Other world stories can be split into two groups: the human scale and the fantastic. Human scale narratives exist within the realm of plausibility and familiarity; we can believe such secrets are being kept from us. Government subterfuge, international conspiracies and social conditioning could happen in the real world — it may be extraordinary but also believable. It can be as simple as the lies parents tell to their children, something every one of us understands. Fantastic narratives take us out of the human and everyday, whether that means featuring the ethereal, the supernatural or the extraterrestrial. People are exposed to events and beings that turn their worlds upside down: vampires exist, aliens are among us, machines have enslaved humankind, angels watch over us.
There are near-endless books and films and video games set in wholly fantasy worlds where Earth doesn’t exist (The Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, Star Wars), so why do writers choose to create stories about secret worlds? Why is our reality within the story important? The strength of hidden worlds storytelling is having an earthbound analogue who sees with our eyes, who can share in our sense of wonder or fear as the fantastic reveals itself. They as a character and we as readers are both fish out of water. They can ask the expository questions that a person or being in the Other world never would. They are the human connection we can empathize with the strongest.
The large number of these stories, fantastic or not, depict their Other, hidden worlds as having malevolent intent, where people are being deceived and exploited. In John Carpenter’s They Live the protagonist, John Nada, discovers that the Earth has been infiltrated by an alien race that uses cloaking technology to hide itself, and subliminal propaganda is used to render us helpless and docile. And the Wachowki’s 1999 film The Matrix shows the human race living in a simulated reality created by machines that use our bodies as a power source. In such stories freedom has been taken away from us without our knowledge; we are incapable of staging any kind of resistance because we don’t know there’s anything wrong.
Other stories show Other worlds as being indifferent to the existence of Earth. Their inhabitants aren’t concerned with domination — they’re content to live divided and in peace. C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books and their radio, TV, and film adaptations show the Pevensie children having adventures in the Other realm, but that is largely the extent of both worlds’ crossover. In Barry Sonnenfeld’s Men in Black Agent K describes to Will Smith’s character the extraterrestrials who live on Earth as refugees who simply want somewhere to make a living and call home. The reason for the MIB cover up is to protect the aliens from the dumb human beings who would panic at the revelation that we are not alone in the universe. The Other world is hidden for Others’ welfare.
An interesting inversion of the hidden world narrative posits our reality as being the secret waiting to be exposed; our world is the truth. In Emma Donohogue’s novel Room and its 2015 film adaptation a young boy’s whole world is limited to a space less than a hundred square feet, but is suddenly thrust into the open world and told he and his mother were captives his whole life. The film presents an ontological concept that our perception of reality is only as far as we are capable or are allowed to see; until he and his mother escaped the Room that was his world. In David Lynch’s Blue Velvet the separate worlds are of adolescence and adulthood. When the naive Jeffrey, played by Kyle McLachlan, encroaches on the sadistic and sexually-charged underworld found in his home town, his innocence and morality becomes shattered. Although exaggerated in the film, the development from child to adult is viewed as two metaphorical worlds intersecting. Unprepared for the darkness that life has to offer, Jeffrey is abruptly exposed to the realities of sex, violence and murder, from which there may be no going back.
Secret worlds can take on a variety of forms, and the stories within them can instill in us feelings of shock, wonder, and fear. But why do authors and readers find themselves drawn to them? I think the answer is simple and complex all at once. Oftentimes stories which rely on fantastical worlds and imagery are thought of by critics as being a form of escapism, which is not untrue. Some books, films, and TV shows present us narratives and characters which distract us from the mundane and grim realities of our world and its problems. They’re less concerned with allegories and drawing parallels than being a temporary reprieve from the humdrum of everyday life.
In contrast, on the human scale, hidden world stories can play into the anxieties and doubts we may have about our society, our leaders and institutions, and the nature of humanity. We have ample historical and contemporary evidence that shows the deceptions that have enabled those with power and authority to indulge mankind’s worst side. To many readers the fictional, secret worlds that authors create on the human scale may not be so unbelievable. These stories are not escapist — they’re cautionary.
Returning to the fantastic, Other world storytelling can be viewed as our existential longing for something greater — that we want more to life than we’re experiencing. Authors present us visions where existence and humanity has a higher purpose that transcends our common reality. This purpose is not necessarily based in spirituality or religion, but in a cause or struggle with lasting and far-reaching implications. In many instances earthly individuals who have uncovered the truth join the cause, becoming heroic figures who fight the good fight and see the Bigger Picture. And as I mentioned earlier these characters serve as analogues to ourselves — it’s not only they who have transcended, but also us as readers, as viewers, and as players. In these fantastic, fictional stories we have a purpose.
Our creation and consumption of stories that contain Other worlds are an expression of our feelings about the lives we lead and the world we live in. Our dissatisfaction, our ennui, our paranoia, our suspicion, our questioning: they reveal a truth about how we view and connect to reality — why it is that we cannot accept the world at face value.
Despite what some people say no one has the all the answers, that last piece of the puzzle, or the unifying equation. But that doesn’t stop us from wanting to find it, fictional or otherwise.
Coming soon: Is There Life Beyond The X-Files?
