April 8-10, 2008
Enemies and Friends from Space:
UFOs and Aliens
in Postwar American Culture
I. UFOs: The Cold War Beginnings
3 First major UFO scare coincided with outbreak of Cold War & arms race.
- 1st wave of sightings in came in June and July 1947:
– Pilot Kenneth Arnold saw lights “like a saucer . . . skipped . . . across the
water.” Wide publicity, followed by world-wide wave of sightings.
– Myth of the Roswell Incident: “saucer crash” on ranch near Roswell, N.M.
(site of an airbase), July 1947:
– Source of trouble: Press originally reported that a spacecraft had
been recovered, but changed story to weather balloon the next day.
– Really part of radar/spy balloon project (MOGUL).
– Wreckage was not consistent with weather balloon (or spacecraft).
– Because of “compartmentalization” during Cold War, no one at
Roswell knew about MOGUL.
– Later claims of bodies found & secret removal of debris.
– Conspiracy claims made by Maj. Jesse Marcel in 1978 & early 80s
books, especially The Roswell Incident by Berlitz & Moore.
– Re-investigated by AF in 1994, MOGUL info released.
st
– 1 fatality: Mantell crash, January 1948.
- Aftermath of the first wave
– Air Force investigations (Projects Sign, Grudge, Blue Book) took reports
seriously at first, coined term UFO, fearing enemy technology, then
began debunking claims.
– Followed by further waves of U.S. sightings in 1950, 1952 (in D.C.) & after.
- Best explanation of 1st waves: secret Cold War weapons development
programs, habits of government secrecy that bred distrust.
- Alien invasions became part of popular culture often as allegories of atomic
bomb, Communist subversion, loss of arms race (surprise attack &
destruction by a technologically superior force).
– Popular culture taught people what to look for.
UFOs through the Decades
Sightings of strange craft with impossible capabilities.
Atomic bomb +
Debate: extraterrestrial or secret weapons?
1940s
+
Cold War + Possible crash (later discredited) & first MiBs.
United Nations + Official interest high, then shifts to weather balloon cover stories.
+ Sightings of strange craft with impossible capabilities, definitely seen as extraterrestrial.
Cold War + Aliens landed, communicated with “contactees,” gave rides, made love.
Hydrogen bomb 3 Contactees claimed that “space brothers” came from utopian societies, without war, were here to
1950s McCarthyism +
assess and help us because of nuclear weapons, just like Day the Earth Stood Still.
NICAP promoted “science” of Ufology, giving some credibility & stature to sighting reports.
Sputnik/U-2 3 Believed that Air Force knew more than it had told, called for hearings on issue.
Monster movies &
space babes + Alien craft left traces & caused strange events like power outages.
+ First abduction & experimentation report (Betty and Barney Hill, ’61), “lost time,”
Civil Rights memories recovered by hypnosis.
Vietnam
1960s Space program
+ 1965 wave of sightings [more pics, video], leading to hippies & counter-culture taking
interest in UFOs & aliens (“Mr. Spaceman,” 2001: A Space Odyssey).
Rise of “serious” Sci-Fi+ Public ridicule of “swamp gas” & similar explanations.
Counterculture + Popular image of aliens as “little green men”: Quisp cereal, My Favorite Martian
Liberal politics + U of Colorado’s Condon Report (1968) brought end of official investigations. Old UFO
groups declined, but speculation increased.
Sexual Revolution
1970s + Rise of a new Ufology, led by J. Allen Hynek & MUFON.
“Therapeutic culture” + “Ancient Astronaut” ideas of Erich von Daniken popular: “Mayan rocket.”
Environmentalism + Spielberg’s Close Encounters idealizes aliens, popularizes their current look.
Watergate + UFOs implicated in many popular fears & c.t.s: Cattle mutilations (genetic
CIA scandals experiments?), crop circles, Bermuda Triangle, etc.
UFO Incident (TV movie on Hill case) broadcast in 1975. Increase in
1980s +
abduction/experimentation tales, often sexual & revealed in psychiatric treatment.
Conservative, anti-government + ↑ abduction reports, elaboration to include genetic experiments,
politics, tax revolts implants, colonization.
Renewal of Cold War & arms race + Consistent description of aliens as “Grays.”
AIDs, backlash against 60s/70s + Rise of MJ-12 / Roswell legend: alien role in technological advances,
Rise of Christian Right secret world government. Cover-up, MiBs.
PCs introduced + Whitley Strieber’s Communion, a throwback to contactees
Elements of Ufology
+ The Religion of the “Contactees”
3 Swedenborg and the Swedenborgians (1700s-present) believe in ET life.
3 The contactee “mainstream”: psychic messages of hope, peace, & love from our “space
brothers.” A critical reaction to Cold War and 1950s conformity.
- George Adamski & the Venusians
- Cults: Unarius Academy of Science (1954-), Heaven’s Gate (1997)
+ Really Close Encounters: Sex and UFOs
3 1950s: Antonio Villas Boas, Howard & Connie Menger (My Saturnian Lover [1958])
3 The rise of the abduction scenario, beginning with the Hill case (1961)
3 Alien “advances” become more threatening, invasive over time.
+ “Scientific” Ufology
3 Donald Keyhoe’s National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (50s-60s),
considered UFOs a scientific mystery & contactees to be embarrassing cranks, tried to
work with Air Force & Project Blue Book, who eventually betrayed Ufologists.
3 Air Force commissioned University of Colorado study (led by physicist Edward U.
Condon) to justify end of investigations. Condon treated UFOs as a psychological
phenomenon, not a physical one. “No scientific value” to further study.
- Ufologists thought investigation was serious, but then staff member discovered memos from CU
dean indicating that study from fixed from the beginning.
- Despite criticism & exposure, Condon Report stopped most establishment support (universities,
military, New York Times) for ufology.
3 Mutual UFO Network & J. Allen Hynek (astronomer & former Air Force consultant turned
believer) emerged to restart a more open-minded but more marginal scientific ufology in
the 1970s
- Hynek’s “close encounters” classification system
- More respectable: SETI project, using such means as the Arecibo observatory.
+ 1990s developments
3 Blending of scary/conspiratorial abductee mythology with utopian/religious contactee
beliefs, confusion of UFO politics.
3 New crop of academic believers (usually not astronomers or physicists) emerged:
Harvard’s Dr. John E. Mack (Abduction), Temple’s David Jacobs (The Threat)
3 Mainstreaming of conspiratorial Ufology in the 1990s : Six Days in Roswell
+ Final observations
3 Geographic patterns
3 The Fallacy of Identical Testimony
3 Fun with Hoaxes: UFO pictures, crop circle makers
