Imaginary Worlds - First Contact

Episode Date: October 20, 2015

They arrive out of nowhere in shockingly large ships, brandishing weapons we've never seen, offering false promises of peace when they really want our land, our resources and our labor. The alien invasion film is a guaranteed blockbuster -- and it's a story that Native Americans know all too well. With LeAnne Howe, Owl Goingback and Despina Kakoudaki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Molenski. So I went to Westlake University, the same school as Joss Whedon, but not at the same time. But we were in the same film program, and there was an instructor there named Richard Slotkin, who taught a class called Myth and Ideology. So Slotkin's class basically focused on how Westerns in the 50s and 60s and 70s were actually dealing with the issues of the day, the Cold War or civil rights, but just doing it with sort of analogies and metaphors. And then after Westerns went out of style, the whole genre is reborn in science fiction.

And I remember for years after college, I'd be watching a sci-fi movie and I'd be like, oh, this is another Western narrative. Specifically the ones where the aliens were playing the role of the Indians. For example, and this is not just in movies, but 19th century dime store novels, there's always the story where the aliens abduct white settlers and they just come out of nowhere and grab them at night. And then the settlers have to bring in hired guns to organize a search party to find the hostages and save them. Like the searchers. Tighten up your cinches. We'll go charging in about son of a... And James Cameron's aliens. We better get back because it'll be dark soon and they mostly come at night. Mostly. And James Cameron's Aliens.

Another common character is the guy that survives his abduction by Indians and then becomes the man who knows Indians. He can think like them, which makes him the best person to hunt them and kill them. Although, in the movie Aliens, he is a she. Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver. Or Captain Picard, who was captured by the Borg in Star Trek The Next Generation. I had their cybernetic devices implanted throughout my body. And then has to face them down again in the movie First Contact. So you can imagine, my dear, I have a somewhat unique perspective on the Borg,

and I know how to fight them. Leanne Howe is a member of the Choctaw Nation and a professor of literature at the University of Georgia. And she points to another character in the Star Trek universe that reminds her of an Indian character. I have not forsaken my heritage. I am Klingon. Yet you come to us wearing a child's uniform.

So that's what boarding schools were all about, to teach us the language, convert us to Christianity, whether it be Catholicism or some form of Protestantism. Worf is that character. He has been socialized in the Star Trek schools, and he recognizes that, and he's on board, both literally and figuratively, but he is the enemy amongst them, who is sort of like Tonto in outer space because he's there to protect them. And the mixed blood character is also incredibly important, whether they're half Indian or half alien. The mixed bloods were the most powerful

and most wearisome to Washington, D.C., because they are both indigenous and they are children of immigrants who are smart and wily. That whole 19th century narrative is embedded in these alien films. But there's another type of narrative which isn't as obvious, where the aliens aren't standing in for Indians. In fact, this genre is really our history as Native Americans understood it.

Which may sound like a film that would not be popular, but it's the most popular. It is a guaranteed moneymaker, the alien invasion story, which to Leanne Howe is just eerily familiar. Remember these aliens that come in, they want to take our space, they want to use our minerals, or they just want to wipe us out and farm other kinds of alien things. And notice what happens to the aliens. They get kicked up, beat up, and driven off. Or, oh, here's the other one. Sometimes they get sick with a cold and all of them die.

Al Going Back is an author of science fiction and horror novels. You had primitive native people looking upon these basically God-type men arriving in sailing ships wearing coats of armor that were shiny in the sun to people who didn't have any medals. The natives had never seen that. Of course, the classic first contact story is Pocahontas and John Smith, played by Colin Farrell in The New World. The sky? No.

From England? The land War of the Worlds. Everybody understands when you wave the white flag, you want to be friends? Hey there! Yeah! And it reminds me so much of the Sand Creek Massacre, which took place in the Colorado Territory. And the chief stood under an American flag. And not only was he under an American flag, but he also ran up a white flag.

So he stood there under his flag, and a lot of the people were cut down because the soldiers opened fire. They totally disregarded this, you know, this peaceful symbol that this guy was clustering under. So every time I see, you know, War of the Worlds, I think about the Sand Creek Massacre. Even when he watches a movie like Predator, he thinks, that's our story too. Predator, I mean, where the aliens came down and hunted humans for sport. Who did this? I don't know. Goddamn.

I saw something. Native people were hunted for sports. You know, it's a terrible thing to say. I mean, I'm sure in other societies the same thing happened. I remember in the California Gold Rush era, that was a popular thing to do because basically they wanted the land that the Indians lived on. And, you know, they hunted them down. And it was a sport among people.

Hollywood has been cranking out an average of two alien invasion movies per year over the last decade. Next year, we're going to have a sequel to Independence Day. At 1.07 a.m., the Odyssey satellite received images of an object moving past Mars. In the fifth wave, which is the next hope for a blockbuster series based on young adult novels. With the third wave, disease spread across the world. By the fourth wave, they were among us. I mean, I've been wondering for a long time, why isn't this more obvious to people? But Leanne Howe's not surprised. She says it's part of a cultural amnesia,

a nationalistic game which she calls playing Indian. She says it began part of a cultural amnesia, a nationalistic game which she calls playing Indian. She says it began with the Boston Tea Party, when American colonists revolted against the British by dressing up as Mohawks. If you are no longer British, what are you? And so the best way to do that was to dress up and play Indian. This desire to play Indian, she's seen it firsthand. People will come up to you and say, I was an Indian in another life. I'm generally left speechless. Professor Despina Kakudaki studies

science fiction narratives from a psychological perspective. It's hard to be in both positions where you are saying, oh, I see, I am inhabiting the position of the Native Americans here. And that is giving me an insight of the historical experience that they had. If you are them, you're them. You took over their position in terms of the narrative, and you can feel all of the melodrama and the intensity of that conflict without necessarily thinking, oh, I see I am both the aggressor and the victim in this. But actually, in terms of my historical position, I am the aggressor.

And it also makes the original victim disappear somehow. Of course, the Americans, representing the human race, always beat back the aliens in the end. But Despina would love to see an alien invasion story where neither side wins. The invasion grinds to a standstill like so many conflicts in the world. And rather than the rebellion going on for years,

like the shows V or Falling Skies, we just decide eventually to suck it up and live together. It would have to have lots of meetings. It would have to have a lot of frustrated people who hate each other's guts, but somehow the next day they realize that maybe something is to be gained here. Maybe we talk some more.

The conditions of our everyday life are about all this negotiation and coexistence and giving in and winning something and losing something. And maybe we have a fantasy of absoluteness that comes up in these science fiction movies in which like, no, the answer is no, we bomb them. It's hard to see yourself as the bad guy, no matter what role you would have taken in history. Leanne turned this whole genre on its head when she wrote a play about American Indians who build a spaceship and search for a new planet. Yeah, it was called Indian Radio Days,

and we start back at the period of the plate tectonics, and then we end up on Mars. We are trying to get away from being colonized yet one more time. So are there like aliens on Mars? Yeah. We get married. Everybody sings and dances. And so you have a fusion of red and green like Christmas. So there's no fighting at all, no misunderstandings. Oh, no. Our diplomacy skills save the day. She knows that's not realistic for a lot of reasons. The French really are the first people that we adopted as Choctaw people. And we negotiate with them over a particular problem for 22 years, and the French have nearly gone mad. And in the end, the Choctaws finally lose all patience and go to war and hang their intestines in trees after we've killed them. It's not great filmmaking.

I like going to Mars, I think, better. I'd kind of like to see a movie where this whole narrative is taken to its logical conclusion. Because when we do win in the end in these movies and drive them back, that's always the least convincing part of a story for me. Like Jeff Goldblum infecting the alien spaceship with a computer virus because apparently the cord to his Mac is compatible with their alien technology? I mean, they're going to conquer us. Seriously. And after they have fully taken over the Earth, taken all the resources they need and made it their own,

and named their intergalactic teams after us, the Andromeda Lawyers, the Alpha Centauri Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. After a couple generations, their alien spawn will feel kind of bad about the whole thing, and they'll make a museum of humans in Washington, D.C. The aliens will float or scuttle or slither through the museum, looking at mannequins of humans wearing clothes that aren't really put together properly. The aliens will communicate telepathically to each other and say, these creatures had a really good run.

They did so much with their limited resources and knowledge. And they were so spiritual. And then these aliens will float or slither or scuttle back out the door through the gift shop where the very exotic human neckties are on sale. Even though none of them have necks. Well, that's it for this week's show. Thanks for listening. Special thanks to Leanne Howe,

Owl Going Back, and Despina Kakudaki. You can like Imaginary Worlds on Facebook, a tweet at eMilinski. The show's website is imaginaryworldspodcast.org.