Stuff...

I recently saw the film Paul. It was enjoyable, enough, a touch easy in places (more on that later). It got me thinking, however, what do aliens mean? Alien are specifically part of capitalist culture. They have substituted, to some extent, for monsters and spirits (perhaps outer space is psychological equivalent of the dark forest).

Without knowing, without bothering to go to some shaded part of the internet to find out, I guess the notion of alien encounters rose out of three discoveries, the heliocentric model of the solar system, the descent of species through natural selection and powered flight. The first two discoveries undermined mankind's unique place in an ordered universe, the third suggested it might be possible to travel between worlds, maybe meet other creatures like us.



As you can probably guess there are two main types of alien in our culture, two uses for aliens. First they represent fear incarnate. Here is a simple, stunningly obvious example, Ming the Merciless (in an early incarnation). Do you even need to know the history of Sinophobia in America to realise he is a racist fantasy? These aliens are dangerous and potent but also repulsive and sybaritic. They ultimately have to be critically effete, the Ayrian Good Guy must prevail.

But there is also the liberal, hopeful breed of alien. Paul is one of these aliens, intelligent, well adjusted, humorous and likeable. The liberal alien has been rather distorted by the film ET, a wandering man-child-walkingcarrot-christ-figure, a bewildered lamb from beyond the stars. Paul at least is a refreshing change from this.

The generic black eyed grey alien is a projection of assumed trends in humanity. They have large heads meaning bigger brains meaning greater intelligence (even though these facts don't follow), they also have smooth, pale skin, large eyes, even more sight-dependant. They are generally given some supernatural power, mind control, telekenesis, the ability to heal by touch. They show humanity's progress, away from its mammal origins.




Paul, the film, is OK, good enough. The strange thing about Paul is it has two charismatic actors who spend all, or almost all of the film off camera. The humour is fairly broad, rednecks are dumb, Federal Agents are uselessly dumb, christians are fanatically dumb. I love religion bashing as much as anyone else, but few religious folk are as boneheaded as the ones in this film. Worse than that, Paul misses the obvious point that Ufology is a modern substitute religion, with claims just as preposterous as regular religion.

Paul would have been better off as a TV series, perhaps with Paul as a wacky neighbour or workmate. The part is very well suited to Seth Rogen's comedy type.