ForgotPassword?
Sign Up
Search this Topic:
Posts: 26945
Oct 2 15 7:35 AM
We’ve known since at least the late 1970s that Mars had been a wet planet; one of those Viking orbiters even grabbed photos of what looked like a transitory vapor plume back when Jimmy Carter was president. We’ve all seen the images of dry lakebeds and rivers, which have been bandied about for decades now. And although the space agency tried to inject major suspense over the weekend into the buildup to a “mystery-solved” press conference, NASA's revelations on Monday about the ebb and flow of surface water were a bit anti-climactic, and easily parodied. Moreover, there was speculation about whether or not this alleged news was timed to coincide with – ahem – the release of Ridley Scott’s latest blockbuster, “The Martian.” And that’s today’s segue into some reflections on what may or may not be happening when government interests converge with Hollywood. In a newly-released book Silver Screen Saucers: Sorting Fact From Fantasy in Hollywood Movies, UFO culture critic Robbie Graham argues that when it comes to shaping perceptions of The Great Taboo, the military, or civilian intelligence, or both, have been leaving their fingerprints on Tinseltown since the end of WWII. And in the backwash of these simplistic binary scenarios – space aliens are either conquerors or beneficent guardians, not much in between – comes an enduring legacy of stereotypes that may be impossible to eradicate from the mass mind. Graham calls it “hyperreality, in which reality and simulation are experienced as without difference, or rather, the image has come to mean more to us than the underlying reality.”
We’ve known since at least the late 1970s that Mars had been a wet planet; one of those Viking orbiters even grabbed photos of what looked like a transitory vapor plume back when Jimmy Carter was president. We’ve all seen the images of dry lakebeds and rivers, which have been bandied about for decades now. And although the space agency tried to inject major suspense over the weekend into the buildup to a “mystery-solved” press conference, NASA's revelations on Monday about the ebb and flow of surface water were a bit anti-climactic, and easily parodied. Moreover, there was speculation about whether or not this alleged news was timed to coincide with – ahem – the release of Ridley Scott’s latest blockbuster, “The Martian.”
And that’s today’s segue into some reflections on what may or may not be happening when government interests converge with Hollywood. In a newly-released book Silver Screen Saucers: Sorting Fact From Fantasy in Hollywood Movies, UFO culture critic Robbie Graham argues that when it comes to shaping perceptions of The Great Taboo, the military, or civilian intelligence, or both, have been leaving their fingerprints on Tinseltown since the end of WWII. And in the backwash of these simplistic binary scenarios – space aliens are either conquerors or beneficent guardians, not much in between – comes an enduring legacy of stereotypes that may be impossible to eradicate from the mass mind. Graham calls it “hyperreality, in which reality and simulation are experienced as without difference, or rather, the image has come to mean more to us than the underlying reality.”
Read more @ http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/15382/one-hand-washing-the-other/
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
Interact