Alien Picture Show

Nothing sums up the dizzying, exploratory weirdness of our childhood quite as well as the moment when we watched a boy called Elliot get smashed off his face in a Coors Light alien mind-meld and snog Erika Eleniak while frogs skipped 'round his ankles. It is a signature memory for any personality which formed during the 80's because it concisely captures the alien strangeness of sudden-onset adolescence. Also, because no producer would ever, ever, consider allowing such a bizarre scene to be included in a modern G movie.

After E.T., my generation took its obsession with the idea of alien life (and Erika Eleniak) to such a degree that it became almost spiritual. These aliens will be wise and tender, probably naked. They will gently chastise us for our warring ways, and introduce us to amazing new technologies: love-bots, mood-plugs, hover-nannies, extra-sensory fellatio, and baths which let you wash between dimensions.

Perhaps realising that the religious instinct was central to a belief in alien life, Steven Spielberg intentionally bedded religious ideas in his epic movie about an alien spud who arrives from the heavens, befriends a group of misfits, evades the authorities, performs miracles (healing, levitation,) prays for deliverance, is captured, put through a series of trials, dies, wakes up again, and ascends once more to the heavens (but not before leaving his friend a message of hope and friendship.)



Spielberg has said that he never intended the film to be a religious parable: "If I ever went to my mother and said, 'Mom, I've made this movie that's a Christian parable,' what do you think she'd say? She has a kosher restaurant on Pico and Doheny in Los Angeles." I assume she’d say, “That’s hilarious.” There are so many ideas from the life and martyrdom of Christ in his film that it is inconceivable to think it was accidental: from the composition of his followers (all boys, one girl,) to shots of the alien performing miracles with a blanket draped like a shroud over his lumpy head, to the scene, where he prays in the forest for deliverance while his followers sleep. Even the poster-art for the film has religious connotations: it is is an obvious spoof of the Creation of Adam by Michelangelo. It is impossible to see the film as anything other than an intentional satire of a rival faith by a prominent Jewish filmmaker, and perhaps the second greatest religious satire behind Life of Brian.








Our perceptions of alien life have changed dramatically since E.T.. Recently, our greatest physicist, Stephen Hawking, spoke out against efforts to establish diplomatic relations with other planets. These creatures will not be friendly, he thinks. They will kill our livestock, take our stuff, and mock our puny brains and eclectic sense of fashion.

“We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

Aliens aren’t benign anymore. They steal us from our beds, they mercilessly probe our hillbillies, they have no desire to send luminous, green-skinned ladies to show us their advanced knowledge of human g-spots; instead they will lay eggs in our brains, or send their squid-like spawn to suck our faces. They are a testament to our new and apparently Godless Universe. They will stalk us over the rubble of our cities in omni-legged deathpods, and at the end of a hard day of conquest, they’ll kick back by unhooking their lower jaw and gobbling down a hamster.

(To be fair, this is also how Madonna feeds.)