Discussion
Sentient extraterrestrial beings have captivated humanity’s imagination for centuries. From Ancient Greece, to the discoveries in astronomy in the 17th century, to contemporary conspiracy theories and reports about “visitations” – history shows how our perceptions of aliens have changed over time. The horrors of the Second World War produced new narratives showing aliens superior to humans both technologically and morally, and
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) provides an example of aliens represented as potential saviours for a humanity (Pardon, 2008) destroying itself. On the other hand, anti-communist propaganda in the US at the start of the Cold War found its reflection in films like
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), in which aliens assume the appearance of humans or take control of human minds, revealing fears over communist infiltration and giving rise to paranoid plots (Grant, 2010). The 1970s and 1980s substituted hostile aliens of the Cold War period with the friendly versions (Grant, 2012) found in Steven Spielberg’s
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982).
My paper takes Contact [Kontakt], a 1978 Soviet science fiction animation directed by Vladimir Tarasov, as a case study to discuss its representation of humankind’s first contact with extraterrestrials. It explores the ways in which the animation reflects scientific and public discourse on encounters and communication with intelligent extraterrestrials. As aliens provide an instrumental way to explore “otherness” including race, ethnicity, and gender (Graham, 2002; Berg, 2002), different ideologies have potential to create different forms of representation. The representation of extraterrestrials in the Soviet Contact presents a positivist way of thinking about extraterrestrial communication and encounters with the Other.
