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Read Part One

So then, the abduction phenomenon.

First, a few notes on UFOs. That lights in the sky exist which are impossible to describe as aircraft, meteors, and the like – because they turn on a dime at high speed, are bigger than a star, etc. – is effectively impossible to deny (unless, of course, one simply believes that if a thing is not explained, it does not exist). Far too many UFO events have been filmed, caught on radar, seen by huge numbers of witnesses, etc. to discount them as a legitimate sort of event. That said, there is no particularly compelling reason to think of these aerial lights as alien spacecraft; the majority of such cases show no sign of anything apart from just light, for one thing. And persons are reported to issue forth from these objects very rarely indeed.

Now, when people do issue forth, it is almost never – if not actually never – associated with the more reliable UFOs; these are personal and unrecorded experiences. Indeed, in the abduction material, it is all too frequent that no flying object is ever seen at all. And what these alien people issue forth to do, and, indeed, what they look like while they’re doing it, has changed over time. When all this started, in the 1950s, they usually issued messages of peace, brotherhood, single-payer health care systems, and the like. Over the course of the 1960s, contact took on the sinister tone with which it is normally associated these days, though some abductors do deliver messages of world peace along with their anal violations. Also, during the 1950s and 1960s, different areas reported different aliens: Greys in the US, tall, blond humans in Europe, and hairy dwarves in South America, for example. Greys are now universal, and this shows every sign of being a simple American cultural export.

Also, a very large number of the classic abduction cases are only reported by the victims while under hypnosis. I have two problems with this. For one, I am not confident that a hypnotized subject is sufficiently capable of telling the difference between reality and dream, or dream-like states. Secondly, most of the hypnotists have been UFO investigators. And while I do not wish to impugn the sincerity and good intentions of such investigators, it is of course a fact that a person under hypnosis is suggestible; that is, after all, the whole point.

Oddly, there is a historical, or rather mythological, precedent for such phenomena. In the west, this would be a ‘faerie’ phenomenon – small persons stealing away with an individual, only to return them, deeply confused. That the faeries (or whatever; versions of this are common) didn’t subject people to fiendish medical procedures could be explained by the irrelevance of such to the victim’s worldview; nobody mythologizes about things that don’t happen at all. (Or, if one believes in aliens, and thinks that we’re right now and they were wrong then, the failure to report medical procedures is explained by the victims’ lack of recognizance of same.)

There is a condition called Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) that, some psychologists say, causes its sufferers to experience most or all of the standard symptoms of the abduction experience – which is to say, its sufferers hallucinate abductions. And this under controlled conditions. If this, or some other such psychological difficulty, is true, I think it would pretty much close the book on the whole affair. The ubiquity of the experience, combined with the apparent fact that it is rewritten according to the expectations of the experiencer, and the lack of decent corroborating evidence, points very strongly to abduction being TLE or the like. It would be a sort of archetype, based off of universal themes, but tailored to the fears and hopes of the individual, and triggered by the far ends of human consciousness.

As for UFOs, it seems to me that calling them an unexplained atmospheric or geophysical event is the most elegant solution to the problem. And perhaps such events have an electromagnetic aspect, which could explain the flickering lights and failing car batteries so often associated with them. And maybe such electromagnetism can set off TLE sufferers, thus associating the lights with abductions. Or maybe they’re completely unrelated, lumped together only because people think they’re both aliens.

Now, mind, I cannot demonstrate that abduction victims have not, in fact, been kidnapped by extraterrestrials. Hell, I’d barely want to – it’s a great idea. I simply find the above-given explanation to be the one best suited to the problem, based upon my reading on the subject. A demonstrably true explanation for the phenomenon remains elusive. Even if all abductees are nothing but two-bit hoaxers, the sudden appearance of hundreds of such hoaxers on the cultural scene requires an explanation in itself. The last word, in any case, is yet to be written.

“Everything is possible; the number of things that are probable, however, is quite limited.”
- Nikolas Rubenstein

Hello, everybody. We’re going to discuss the phenomenon of alien abduction, and my own hypotheses thereon; but first, let’s discuss the title of this column – “Fortified.”

“Fortified” is a reference to Charles Fort (1874-1932), the pioneer of research into what, these days, they call “unexplained phenomena.” His attitude – a kind of open-minded omni-skepticism – has, in the last century, become a philosophy and area of inquiry known as the “Fortean.” The Fortean mindset is basically one of scientific agnosticism. All claims, to a Fortean, must be demonstrated as true before they are believed, or believed on an objective, scientific level at least. Where this gets complicated is where it applies to all claims, positive and negative. “I traveled to the candy-coated land of unicorns” is a claim; “No you didn’t” is also a claim, and both need to be demonstrated to be believed. And it’s actually nigh-impossible to prove that somebody didn’t go to the candy-coated land of unicorns, as it happens. And so, unless the traveler can demonstrate that they did take this trip, one can logically believe neither side, and should go about one’s life as though there is no candy-coated land of unicorns, but open to the possibility, however remote.

Now, ‘possibility’ and ‘remote’ are words that complicate matters further. It’s possible that there’s a candy-coated land of unicorns, but there’s not really a lot of evidence for it, anecdotal or otherwise. There is, on the other hand, a ton of evidence – most of it anecdotal or otherwise not very good – that there’s a hairy man-ape living in the Pacific Northwest. For example. Therefore, this latter is, shall we say, a more interesting possibility than the thing with the unicorns. Practical considerations are valid, to a point. If someone told me they went camping and saw a deer, I would probably just believe them, without evidence, unless, say, I had ten thousand dollars riding on their going camping and not seeing a deer. If they said they went camping and saw the universal consciousness that guides all life from the center of the universe, however, I probably would not believe them, cash or no cash, unless they proved it.

The taking of articles of faith to be scientifically valid is a big problem these days. Some examples – Creationism should be taught in science class, because I fuckin’ believe it – are obvious. Some, however, are less so, because they come from Science’s side. Take for an example the Committee for Scientific Investigation into Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). Now, if this organization did what its title implies, I’d be all for it; what they do instead is simply deny all paranormal claims. And denial, being a negative statement and therefore a putative certainty, is very different from doubt, to say nothing of investigation. Now, when CSICOP exposes fraud, this is an activity worthy of respect. However, they also spend much of their time stating that things are untrue, because they fail to conform to current scientific understanding. And science, I’m afraid, has not completed its task; the universe is incompletely understood. Current scientific understanding is laudable and impressive, but cannot call itself the final word. I myself have kidney stones, which is to say, I sometimes experience godawful, unbearable pain, which I must pay godawful, unbearable amounts of money to have stopped. And though Science, bless its little heart, is able to stop the pain, it is apparently unable to explain its origin, and hence, prevent it. And thus ‘if science doesn’t know it, it’s not true’ becomes an article of faith, but a subtle and pernicious one.

And so Forteanism aims to be the scientific method, without the dogma of the establishment. The scientific method with an open mind. Like Scully on the later episodes of “X-Files.”

To be continued…

Why, look, it’s Part One!

Some film actors without stage experience are simply no good on stage; not so Bruce Campbell, who was singularly at ease. He was more charming, funnier, just more Bruce Campbell than he was even in his movies, and the one-liners flew thick and fast that night.

He introduced the movie, instructing us to heckle it, which, of course, we did. And then he answered questions for awhile. “There will be a fourth Evil Dead movie,” he regally intoned at one point. Wild applause. “…When monkeys fly out of my ass,” he concluded. “Where’d you hear that, the Internet?” he replied to one question; “Yeah, on your site,” replied the questioner. Bruce Campbell then looked self-defensively smug in the way only Bruce Campbell can. He bragged about his role in the upcoming Spider-Man, identifying himself as the man who gives the superhero his name.

“Two more questions,” he said after awhile, “and then we’re done.” The two questions came and went, and the audience began to yell out additional questions and demands. “What’s Ted Raimi doing now?” “Do the flip!” And so on. He pretty much ignored these. I yelled out, “Why aren’t you Spider-Man?”

“Who said that?” said Bruce Campbell. I raised my hand, halfway back in the crowd. “I dunno, ‘cause I was too busy playing his dad?” he said. “Me as 19-year-old Peter Parker; what’s the matter with you? Okay, here’s me as Spider-Man.” He then went into an impression of Spidey as a doddering old man, waddling about the stage, croaking, “Hey, Green Goblin, knock off all that!” He took out a pair of glasses and fiddled with them in front of his eyes, as though trying to make out his villainous foes. And then he whirled around and pointed at me, saying, “I think you need glasses!” And the crowd applauded wildly, and our evening with Bruce Campbell was at an end.

I was giddy for a week. I had been personally mocked by Bruce Campbell, me out of a theater of hundreds. It was one of the finest days of my life.

What finer Nerd Hero could possibly exist than Bruce Campbell? A man’s man, a hero’s hero; lantern-jawed, cocksure, swaggering – everything that our kind can never be. Okay, can rarely be. And yet, too weird, too cheeseball, too funny for the mainstream. He is a proud outsider; an action hero who is somehow, miraculously, one of us.

So obviously, when he came to town to host a showing of Evil Dead a few years back, Beth and I had to go and see. I was dispatched to get the tickets; they went on sale at noon at the Oak Street Cinema, and we figured they’d go fast, and I was the one who could get off work the more easily. So I went ahead and slipped on down to the theater at ten a.m., thinking I’d check out the possible line, and maybe grab some breakfast in the area if said line wasn’t too bad.

The line already stretched halfway down the block.

This was actually fine with me; I’d learned from the line for The Phantom Menace (shut up, you) that such lines could be quite enjoyable. Makes sense, if you think about it; a whole bunch of people who have an unswerving dedication to something to which you, too, have an unswerving dedication. You’ve all got something to talk about. And talk about it we did: our favorite things in the Evil Dead movies, lesser-known works in the Bruce Campbell oeuvre, other gems of gonzo horror entertainment. A splendid time was guaranteed for all. At one point, my father came strolling down the street, going to lunch with a few of his coworkers; he stopped and we chatted pleasantly, though he was clearly a touch embarrassed. His son was, after all, sitting on the sidewalk with a bunch of gutter-punks, waiting for tickets to see a horror movie actor of whom he had never heard. Haw!

Tickets secured, we proceeded that evening to the festivities. The theater was, of course, packed; two middle rows were reserved for a horde of executroids, quite in over their heads. But then, they were here as representatives of a local company that was releasing a new DVD of Evil Dead, and one might hope that the naked enthusiasm all around them at least reassured them that they had made the right decision. For the rest of us, the spirit of bonhomie from the morning had only increased, lathered up as it now was by the impending arrival of Mr. Bruce Campbell. A group of lads behind Beth and I were particularly funny; one warned another to stop what he was doing, lest he anger the huge man in front of him, meaning me. I played along, pretending to be an enraged thug. We were all buddies!

And then Bruce Campbell – I find myself unable to refer to him by any single part of his name – arrived, and we were buddies with him, too.

To be continued…

Part One
Part Two

Take our next subject: Agent Smith, who is concerned with preservation of the Matrix. Like Zaius, he proposes that humans are destructive, indeed, a very cancer on the earth. Now, the narrative does not take care to prove his point, as it does in Planet of the Apes; and yet it is hard to look at the world around us and fail to see what he’s getting at. If you’re not a human, humans are clearly bad news. The counterpoint to Smith’s perspective is presumably ‘Freedom,’ and it’s quite a good one, but nobody ever bothers to make it. It is simply never as well-expressed in the story as is Smith’s position. And if the villain has a point, we’re going to be needing a counterpoint. Smith wants to contain a destructive force, and I for one cannot blame him. It is therefore difficult for me to root for his undoing. (This is one of my several problems with The Matrix; perhaps, one day, I shall tell you of the others. Here’s a hint: One of them was also in Constantine, and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.)

More recently, this problem manifested in X3: X-Men Eating Sandwiches or whatever. Here, we already had a villain who was even more compelling than the usual; I mean, Ian McKellan for God’s sake, and plus he is portrayed as defending himself and others from oppression. And it is the feeling of personal oppression, for whatever reason, that leads to the desire to lash out at society that villainy speaks to in the first place. This is really the crux of the matter: Many people feel, at least sometimes, like outsiders, given the short shrift by society, and desirous, therefore, of vengeance. This is why catharsis works. Evil can be the ultimate underdog. Especially when it breaks out of prison like that! God damn!

Still, that doesn’t mean that Magneto should get to murder all humans. Most of them never did nothin’ to him. His righteousness is therefore mitigated by his cruelty; he’s still on the wrong side. X3 demonstrates, unwittingly, what a delicate balance this can be. For those of you fortunate enough to have missed it: A cure for, er, mutancy – the quality that makes its holders unique, and thus, outsiders – is devised; Magneto is concerned that it will be used without the consent of the ‘cured.’ And then, lo and behold, it is. By the goddamned government. And Magneto takes this as a declaration of war on mutantkind. And so he attacks the source of the cure. Which is what I would do in his position. Robbing people, suddenly and without consent, of the things that make them unique? Yeah, let’s put a fuckin’ stop to that! Even if we do have to recruit a bunch of teenagers depicted with an understanding of youth culture which suggests that when you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way!

I can forgive The Matrix for having a villain who makes more sense than the hero. The Matrix assumes, probably rightly, that its audience consists of humans, humans who would rather not be enslaved by machines. And my own knee-jerk misanthropy is, I confess, not for everybody. But X3 assumes that its audience consists of people who think it’s okay to rob people of their unique abilities, to violently enforce personal conformity, in the name of safety. An audience of people with more sympathy for normalcy than for outsiders. And of course it found such an audience; conformity wouldn’t be conformity otherwise. But still, as a diehard villain enthusiast, this scares me a whole lot more than being choked to death by the Force.

Being choked to death by the Force would be awesome.