The Aliens As A Mirror For Humanity In Fiction Films

Aliens tend to be featured in media as the invaders who are threatening Earth or the saviours who are spreading astonishing knowledge to human beings. However, some directors and authors do not let aliens always shoot razer gun to citizens in their stories. It seems that they prefer more focusing one of the characteristics of the existence from outer space, the mysteriousness. The important thing is that the storytellers present aliens and tend to put some meanings into them to deliver a message which is beyond space warfare. In other words, aliens can be presented in science fiction stories as a metaphor to narrate about another people or people’s humanity by storytellers when they try to deliver a deep message which is hard to explain simply to the audiences. Especially when the story has a message about human relations or desire, the aliens can become a mirror for humanity.

Aliens in The Thing (1982), for example, their behaviour shows that they are the typical invaders from outer space because they threaten mankind as they permeate into the human body and spread their species on Earth. However, the film is not only described the alien invasion, but also inherent paranoia and distrust among people. In the story of The Thing, people who are the scientists of a research station in Antarctica accidentally adopted a dog from the Norwegian base but did not know what is the dog’s true form and what happened among Norwegians. The scientists face the truth that the alien had hidden its true form as a shape of a dog and it had already been infecting the other dogs in the cage and somebody as well who is one of them. Since the scientists realized that one of them had infected by the alien but they cannot sure who had been, nobody could trust each other so they started to be out of control. This film narrative the humans’ psychological and behavioural change when they are placed in an extreme condition without given information to solve the problem. It can be seen clearly that the psychological status and behaviours of each person in the base had changed to doubt the others and focus only for survival so they became impatient, aggressive, and even murdered people who are not infected by alien but suspected.

Fusco (2017) narrated that the emotion behind the event that makes them hunt themselves was because of paranoia that some of them had infected by the aliens so they eventually became in disbelief and hostility for people in the base. So it can be said that John Carpenter who is the director of The Thing narrates the fact that the human's rationality is going to be fragile and the humanity becomes aggressive when they are in extreme condition while he had been presenting the alien in the film as a menace for mankind. The alien in science fiction is not only for representing about the conflict between human and alien, but also for narrating about the conflict among human beings itself, especially when the aliens are used in science fiction as a metaphor to represent the people especially who are discriminated and oppressed from society by the others, this metaphor makes audiences feeling irony and get an intense message about the doubt of a definition of humanity.

In the science fiction film, District 9 (2009), the aliens, who are called “Prawn” in the film, are the refugees from outer space and their majority is work-class. They had been isolated into the area, which is called District 9, by human since they crash-landed on South Africa and discriminated without supports from them because people in South Africa hated Prawns for their appearance, behaviour, and rumours about them and did not want to live with them in the same area. Even people had alien medical experiments to research about their organism and technology without their permit. Itzkoff (2009) announced that Blomkamp who is the director of District 9 tried to narrate the persecution of South African blacks under apartheid and also comment on how people oppress other people. In addition, Foundas (2009) also supports the idea that Prawn is the alien as an apartheid metaphor in the story as he said District 9 represents the township settlements where millions of South African blacks are still suffering without support from society, even after apartheid has over twenty years ago. For these reasons, it can be said that the film District 9 narrated aliens as a metaphor of people who are oppressed and isolated by ruling people to deliver messages about the inhumanity for the conflict and the discrimination among races in society.

Another way for using the existence of outer space as a metaphor in science fiction is that the authors and directors present the alien’s legacy as a thing which makes humans wishes come true. In this case, the appearance and behaviours of aliens could be unnecessary because the main topic of the story tends to focus on narrating about the human itself, especially when it is narrating about the humans’ psychological status. In the story of Stalker (1979), a stalker lead two men to the area, which is called ‘Zone’ where is considered as the place of alien visitation, to make their wishes granted by the mysterious power. However, Zone only grants an innermost desire and nobody cannot know what wishes in their mind come true, so they had afraid and hesitated before they entered the room because they have inner desires but hard to tell the others even it is earnest. Throughout the story of Stalker, the main reason for their perilous journey is to make wishes come true, however, the story shows the moments when they were heading to Zone and also make it can be seen by audiences as a journey for self-awareness, the question what they truly wish and what is the wish which is hard to tell the others. Furthermore, Pridham (2013) said that Zone, where is considered as alien’s visitation, is a visualized world of imagination and it is a metaphor to describe the three men’s inner desire. Therefore, it is obvious that the symbol of aliens or their legacy can support the narration of the story when it is telling about the human mentality and idea.

Thus, it can be known that aliens do not always come on the stage as invaders or saviours in science fiction stories. The important thing is that aliens who are from outer space can be used as a metaphor of humanity when the story tells about human beings and their mind because of the mysteriousness atmosphere which they have originally. There is a line in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) and it is said, “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks do not'. Bee (2018) explained that the spaceships in most science fiction are resembling with square blocks, but those can hover while the bricks cannot. So it can be interpreted that science fiction can narrate the story with imagination to deliver the deep messages about humanity. Therefore, it is certain that the directors and writers can narrate about human and their humanity as they put deep meanings into the aliens who come far away from Earth.