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Analee Newitz reads the abduction narrative as “a
cautionary racial fable for our multicultural times . . . the alien abduction
story teaches us that what we fear most is that white people are not the only
people or beings who might try to take over and rule the world.”16
Along these lines of racial/sexual fear, an early 50s discussion of
Invaders From Mars by the Campaign
Book Review speaks of “the crisis of the gripping drama [which] is brought
about in the contamination of U.S. citizens by the invading Martians. The
destruction of the spaceship and its inhabitants, who are a terrible threat to
all mankind, is finally accomplished by the U.S. Army.”
17 Interestingly enough, a certain group of hip academics has come to
calling an academic interest in ufology “white trash studies.”
18 The most popular abductee couple is significantly the interracial
Betty and Barney Hill, whose story is chronicled in The
Interrupted Journey : Two Lost Hours 'Aboard a Flying Saucer.
Parliament’s Mothership Connection is a concept album of sorts, and what is
that concept? It speaks of visitation by musical masters, funky invaders in your
earhole. Hendrix writes often of this visitation, though it’s
usually a muse—an angel on a solitary visit. And he writes of it from both
sides—alien and contactee. Jimi’s alien persona appears on are you experienced? (1967) in the instrumental anthem "Third Stone From The Sun" where he observes Earth to be: “strange-beautiful/ jurassic-green /with your majestic silver seas/your mysterious mountains i wish to see close /may i land my dinky machine?” Afro-Alien Jimi is tired of monitoring Earth’s radio waves filled with the Beach Boys: “never hear surf music again!” and finds Earthlings inferior to the planet’s “superior cackling hen.” The Hendrix alien experiencer persona can be found in songs such as “Angel” and “Little Wing.”
It’s telling to note here that those who believe they have been abducted by
aliens prefer to call themselves “experiencers.”
Clinton also writes of the UFO experience from both sides.
In "Unfunky UFO" from The
Mothership Connection, the Friday-like experiencer Clinton fears the
imperialist Crusoe-like alien has come to Earth to rip off the funk: “Oh, but
like a streak of lightning it came/Filling my brain with pain/Without saying a
word, this voice I heard/`Give up the funk, you punk!’”
But for the most part Clinton the Starchild is empathetic with the
freaky, funky alien “boogie-man.” The funk is all about hybridity, just as
is the alien agenda to mate grays and humans.19
Aliens are a race referred to by skin
color. “Be they white, black, red, yellow, brown, or green…or
gray.” The insight at the
heart of nearly every alien monster movie is that we are the aliens, we are the
monsters—an insight that need not preclude the existence of flying saucers. |