Aliens: The Terror of the Trespassing & Illegal Intergalactic
I’ll preface the article by saying that not everyone is spooked-out by the idea of creatures from beyond our world. Some of us have what we in the business refer to as “Space Balls” (a damn good movie, but sadly one outside of the spectrum of horror :’[), the complete apathy to the idea of extraterrestrial life, mainly stemming from disbelief of their existence. I’m not going to argue about the universal-fear of aliens, but I will claim with extreme conviction that the most impactful alien-centric media in our culture has held malevolent connotations towards the possibility of life outside of the Earth’s sphere, E.T. aside. (Though let’s be honest, that guy was a creepy fuck in his own right. Keep your glowing fingers to yourself, crinkly-wrinkly!)
Which brings us to the question this article is focused on: Why are some of us creeped out by the concept of aliens? As a species of organisms who’ve technologically advanced enough to begin our own exploration into the outer-reaches of space, shouldn’t we give extra-terrestrials the benefit of the doubt? Obviously, this distrust is a reflection of internalized themes we’ve witnessed throughout the course of human-Earth history and our relations with foreigners on our own plant. Once more turning generic horror tropes into politically-charged allegories, I’m going to open your peepers to the intrinsic fear of foreigners, foreign disease, and imperialism that horror’s bad-rep of aliens imply.
Fear of Foreigners
There’s a reason Trump won the presidential election of 2016, and why American politics have been a circus ever since. Be it excused by a “lack of resources”, “lack of homegrown morals and loyalty”, or otherwise, many people, both in America and beyond, are guilty of feeding into fear to deny displaced people shelter in their home country. District 9 (2009) takes this socio-political phenomenon quite literally, following a race of aliens who crash-land on Earth in search of new living space after their own planet faces ecological collapse. They are immediately met with hostility by locals, and forced into government-backed segregation camps, which leads to the poor species living in even more squalor. Hell, they even come up with a derogatory slur for these guys: “Prawns”. Albeit on the nose, District 9 perfectly showcases how the trope of displaced aliens looking for a safe environment to live parallels that of political and ecological refugees from third world countries, and how our animosity towards them and their differences is not entirely based in fiction. Regardless of how you look at it, the anxiety of sharing resources with people who are “different” remains an issue still today.
Fear of Foreign Disease
Once again, history does a brilliant job of developing humankind’s fears over time. Just like the Western world brought along genocidal disease into the Americas, so too do fictional aliens seem to follow a pattern of inflicting uncomfortably intimate, bodily harm onto humans. (I can argue how this in-part carries fear of inter-species reproduction, but I’m trying to keep the contents of my therapy session this month to a minimum.) I mean — it makes sense, right? We as humans have been able to establish contact all-across the continents, and as a consequence, unfamiliar disease has historically wrecked utter havoc on those whose immune-systems were not familiar with such strands of germs. Imagine what that’d be like on a COSMIC scale! Though admittedly the disease-like symptoms in alien movies are never a by-product of the alien’s presence so much as a direct result of their weird reproduction system (cough sexual connotations in phobias again cough), the connotation of a foreign entity bringing bodily harm to whoever comes into contact with it is pretty straightforward. Never has this fear of contagion been more prominent than it is in The Thing (1982), where an alien species unearthed in an arctic research facility takes on the form of its host, leading to a hair-raising witch hunt over who its next victim is.
Fear of Imperialism
Since we’ve discussed the insinuation of fear towards foreign refugees, it must also be noted that on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, aliens pose a supernatural embodiment of the fear of imperialism. This takes less explaining than the others: aliens with technology far-more advanced than our’s come down to Earth and subjugate its populace mercilessly for the sake of claiming the land’s resources for its own. Sound familiar? If not, you might need to repeat 8th grade U.S. history. Though literally every alien movie follows this theme, one that does-so in a way that especially highlights the imperialistic aspect of alien-invasion is War of the Worlds (2005), a movie detailing a strategic global alien attack, and the disturbing ways in which humans are mass-slaughtered, and their bodies exploited to fertilize the alien vegetation they embed into the ecosystem.
In Cosmic Conclusion:
We all have our own personal reasons to feel the way we do towards aliens, but if fear comes at the forefront of our minds, maybe its best we sat-down with the way media has portrayed extraterrestrial life, and deduce what aspects projected onto them have us most unnerved. Shockingly, the most disturbing facets of fictitious aliens can be seen reflected in historic happenings between humans of different cultures. In this way, are we perhaps utilizing the concept of aliens to communicate the evils of humanity we are still too uncomfortable acknowledging directly? Maybe. Regardless, aliens once again give us a horror trope we can analyze and discern real-life influences from, reminding us once again how horror as a genre is compromised of our greatest fears, and thus can do more in revealing hidden aspects of the human condition than any other genre.
