Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. In late May, I
Speaker 1: spoke with Stephanie Kelly Romano, an associate professor of Rhetoric,
Speaker 1: Film and Screen Studies at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.
Speaker 1: She has conducted research into alien abduction narratives, having collected
Speaker 1: stories from over three people who believe they have had
Speaker 1: abduction experiences and examining these accounts for common themes and
Speaker 1: what they can tell us about issues of control, rights, reality, identity,
Speaker 1: and power in our society. I'm Toby Ball, and this
Speaker 1: is Strange Arrivals. I am Stephanie Kelly Romano. I'm an
Speaker 1: associate professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies at Bates College.
Speaker 1: And for my dissertation research, I interviewed people who thought
Speaker 1: they had been obducted by aliens. So what what kind
Speaker 1: of caused you to be interested in that particular subject. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a question I get a lot. I became interested
Speaker 1: in this because, truthfully, when I was in graduate school,
Speaker 1: I was watching The X Files and I really liked
Speaker 1: the X Files. And when you're in graduate school, you
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of extra time to do things
Speaker 1: that you like, unless it's part of your research. Additionally,
Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily want to just look at speeches of
Speaker 1: like dead presidents, and so I started looking at the
Speaker 1: X Files and conspiracy rhetoric, and of course there's the
Speaker 1: whole theme about the abduction and Molder sister, and so
Speaker 1: then I got interested in people who think they've been
Speaker 1: abducted or claim experiences with extraterrestrials, and how do they
Speaker 1: carve out space for themselves and legitimacy, right, Like, how
Speaker 1: does that happen? I found when I was doing this
Speaker 1: that there seems like there might be kind of a
Speaker 1: feedback loop in between the X files and and the
Speaker 1: population at large. Did do you have that perception that
Speaker 1: you know, the X files obviously uses, you know, the
Speaker 1: stuff that that Bud Hopkins at all have done to
Speaker 1: kind of create this narrative, but then all these people
Speaker 1: who get to see it, and it seems like the uh,
Speaker 1: the instances of supposed abduction somebody to have an uptick. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's any type of uh correlation
Speaker 1: in terms of the uptick and things like that. I
Speaker 1: do know that, like, even I think it was Martin
Speaker 1: Codomier did an article about Barney Hill and that episode
Speaker 1: of the Outer Limits the Balero Shield and whether or
Speaker 1: not there was a correlation or association there. So, like
Speaker 1: the imprinting of cultural texts and the chicken or the
Speaker 1: egg argument, you know, like which came first? I don't know, um,
Speaker 1: but I do know that with the X Files, what's
Speaker 1: really interesting, or the piece that I really look at,
Speaker 1: is so in pop culture, we have certain characterizations of
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial experiences and experiencers, right, and we have them not
Speaker 1: only in the X Files but all kinds. People of
Speaker 1: Earth was a recent sitcom about an alien abduction support
Speaker 1: group that drew on those same tropes of abduction. What
Speaker 1: I find interesting is that people who claim experiences with
Speaker 1: extraterrestrials don't always have those same themes and tropes. But
Speaker 1: people who are interested in the phenomenon but don't have
Speaker 1: the experiences do so general pop culture. Like my students
Speaker 1: when they come to my class and I say, what
Speaker 1: do you know about alien abduction? They tell me all
Speaker 1: the things that have been on the X Files or
Speaker 1: in Steven Spielberg movies or whatever. But people who have
Speaker 1: had actual encounters have a tendency to be a little
Speaker 1: bit more distanced from that. Why don't you tell me
Speaker 1: about the study that I guess form the basis for
Speaker 1: your dissertation, and then um, several papers that I've read, right, So, So,
Speaker 1: like I said, when I started this, I just I
Speaker 1: wanted to study something in graduate school that I found interesting.
Speaker 1: When you're getting work, when you're getting ready to do
Speaker 1: doctoral work and to write a dissertation, you're going to
Speaker 1: be studying it for years, literally, like this is going
Speaker 1: to be the beginning of my career, and so I
Speaker 1: thought this would be an interesting thing that would keep
Speaker 1: my attention. I had no idea, I had no idea
Speaker 1: how big it was. Um, I came to it very underinformed.
Speaker 1: And so when I first started this, the questions that
Speaker 1: I asked people who thought they had had these experiences
Speaker 1: were very simple. They're they're open ended narrative questions because
Speaker 1: I am a rhetorical scholar, so I studied myth. I
Speaker 1: studied narrative and study the way that people use language
Speaker 1: to make sense of their lives and who they are
Speaker 1: right their actual identity. So the questions were really open
Speaker 1: ended because I just wanted people to talk about their experiences.
Speaker 1: And then I also went to some conferences. I went
Speaker 1: most notably to the Leo Sprinkles conference out in Wyoming
Speaker 1: because I did my graduate work in Kansas, so it
Speaker 1: was close by. I also solicited people on the internet
Speaker 1: I had. I was on various message boards. I got
Speaker 1: in touch with several different researchers and also UM therapists
Speaker 1: who work with populations of experiencers, and they would hand
Speaker 1: out the survey anonymously. The survey was anonymous UM, and
Speaker 1: they would hand it out and then I would collect them.
Speaker 1: So after I first I got my first way back,
Speaker 1: I realized how many questions I also needed to ask
Speaker 1: right in addition, and several people were super good, I
Speaker 1: mean amazing, amazing people in terms of answering my follow
Speaker 1: up questions as I kind of learned what it was
Speaker 1: I needed to know in order to answer my research questions.
Speaker 1: So there were several people who would answer each time
Speaker 1: I would send out another query UM. And then the
Speaker 1: instrument grew little by little until I had a pretty
Speaker 1: decent instrument to capture kind of the experience and how
Speaker 1: people attributed it and what people thought of different aspects
Speaker 1: of it. UM and then once I had all that.
Speaker 1: I mean I have I have hundreds. I have over
Speaker 1: three hundred people now who claim experience is And as
Speaker 1: you probably know, most people who have an experience have
Speaker 1: more than one. Most people that I've spoken with or
Speaker 1: communicated with have been have had experiences since the time
Speaker 1: they were a young child, over the course of their
Speaker 1: lives for many years. So each experiencer might have two
Speaker 1: three experiences that we have talked about or they've described
Speaker 1: to me of where of where corresponded about. Um So
Speaker 1: I have a humongous repository of information and then I
Speaker 1: just look at it with different questions over the years.
Speaker 1: I've been doing this now for twenty five years, and
Speaker 1: so when different things happen oftentimes in the world, I'll say,
Speaker 1: you know, how does this relate? How does this go on?
Speaker 1: And so for example, right now, UM, I just recently
Speaker 1: did a program about coronavirus conspiracies, and on it we
Speaker 1: were kind of talking about how science can be used
Speaker 1: in order to prove non scientific or pseudos scientific things
Speaker 1: like how do methods of research and gathering information gain legitimacy,
Speaker 1: And it immediately made me think about alien abduction discourse,
Speaker 1: and uh, David Jacobs and John mac and the various
Speaker 1: things that they say in order to kind of co
Speaker 1: opt the discourse of scientific legitimacy while at the same
Speaker 1: time critiquing it. Right. So it's it's this tension that
Speaker 1: goes on and so um. Over the years, I've just
Speaker 1: kind of looked at race or gender or implants or
Speaker 1: truth or whatever is interesting to me when you're getting
Speaker 1: things back from people. How much does the believability of
Speaker 1: the experience the reality of the experience, How important is
Speaker 1: that or is that just not important at all? You know?
Speaker 1: Truth is probably one of the biggest questions that I
Speaker 1: grapple with that constantly, is underneath whatever questions we are
Speaker 1: asking of extraterrestrial existence, experience, interaction, right um. And I
Speaker 1: really like the distinction between something being true and something
Speaker 1: being real. Right. So, I do not know the truth
Speaker 1: of an experience, whether or not it empirically happened in
Speaker 1: this reality in another reality. I have no idea. I
Speaker 1: do not know, and that's not my area. I don't
Speaker 1: have the means by which to evaluate that. I do
Speaker 1: know that the criteria that I use is whether or
Speaker 1: not these people believe these experiences to be real. If
Speaker 1: they are real for them in the sense that they
Speaker 1: have consequence in their life, then I care about it, right.
Speaker 1: So it's very much similar to any type of faithful discourse.
Speaker 1: I I don't necessarily know if God is true, but
Speaker 1: for me personally, God is real, right, So so that
Speaker 1: distinction is one that I make. It's very hard for
Speaker 1: me and I try very much to avoid making any
Speaker 1: type of evaluations about which experiences are true, because this
Speaker 1: is a phenomenon that we don't know things about UM
Speaker 1: and David Jacobs talks about it in the beginning of
Speaker 1: UM I think It's Secret Life, where he talks about
Speaker 1: the fact that now he can kind of intuitively sense
Speaker 1: which accounts are true and are in line with other
Speaker 1: abduction narratives. But my problem is that as a culture,
Speaker 1: as a society, as people, we naturally fill in our
Speaker 1: stories so that they move toward other people. There's this
Speaker 1: reciprocal thing that happens because we're building relationships, and so
Speaker 1: that UM, that tendency to adhere is something that I
Speaker 1: always think about in terms of truth, is it true
Speaker 1: or is it not? And so I just deal with
Speaker 1: what's real and if it's real. For the people who
Speaker 1: claim to have experience, then I include them. I also
Speaker 1: do do some kind of cross checking of narrative elements
Speaker 1: and consistency, right, make sure that the stories that they're
Speaker 1: telling me have coherence and fidelity insofar as they can
Speaker 1: remain consistent over time. Um. But of course, what that
Speaker 1: does is that then eliminates anyone who does not want
Speaker 1: to be contacted again, who wants to remain entirely anonymous,
Speaker 1: or those people who don't contact me, right, And those,
Speaker 1: of course are the people I want to talk to,
Speaker 1: people who have had experiences who don't tell anyone. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's it's hard because we only get I only
Speaker 1: get people who are willing to come forward with their experience.
Speaker 1: What's um, so, so who's getting abducted? M hmm. Well,
Speaker 1: most of the work that I did was in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands, um and UM. At that point, you know,
Speaker 1: Thomas Bullard Eddie Bullard had done that huge store, that
Speaker 1: huge study about abduction accounts. Christopher Bader has also done
Speaker 1: a lot of work in terms of religious studies, as
Speaker 1: as Christopher Partridge. And then I also did a piece
Speaker 1: for the general UFO studies, and and my sample of
Speaker 1: experiencers was very similar to what other people's reports were
Speaker 1: kind of reflecting. And so while in the past it
Speaker 1: had seemed as though more women were being abducted, the
Speaker 1: kind of balance between men and women even out it
Speaker 1: seems as though it's just about equal now. My sample
Speaker 1: seemed to be made up of people who have a
Speaker 1: higher than average education or at least attend more school
Speaker 1: than average kind of census data. But of course I'm
Speaker 1: collecting my data at abduction conferences and via the internet,
Speaker 1: both of which require disposable income, leisure time, and and
Speaker 1: a class privilege that also is correlated with educational attainment. Right, So, um,
Speaker 1: I think that, Um, I think that the people and
Speaker 1: totally I can tell you that the people that I
Speaker 1: talked to about their experiences were not the people that
Speaker 1: I anticipated. They were just regular people, and they had
Speaker 1: regular lives and regular jobs and regular families, and they
Speaker 1: just thought that they had been abducted by aliens or
Speaker 1: had these encounters. And and there was also when I
Speaker 1: was when I was reading your paper about this, there
Speaker 1: was sort of racial disparity compared to the population at large. Yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely alien abduction, at least those abjectives who are willing
Speaker 1: to or experiencers who are willing to come forward are
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly Caucasian. Um. But again, and and it does seem
Speaker 1: to be And there have been several articles that have
Speaker 1: been written about like, you know, why, you know, why
Speaker 1: the aliens only abduct white folks? And I think it's
Speaker 1: a valid question. Um, But you know, culturally, I think
Speaker 1: there are several explanations for that in terms of the
Speaker 1: way abduction stories can be used to kind of explore
Speaker 1: racialized discourse or kind of race more broadly. Do you
Speaker 1: have an example? Yeah, so the ones I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: are all related. Oh I know, yes, Okay, I was thinking.
Speaker 1: I think a lot about gender because a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff that I've been doing lately is more feminist stuff,
Speaker 1: and so I have all kinds of gender examples at
Speaker 1: the ready. In terms of um, you know, David Jacobs
Speaker 1: writes about these extra gestational units that are implanted into
Speaker 1: men so that they can then incubate and kind of
Speaker 1: bring these alien human hybrid fetuses to life literally, and
Speaker 1: so kind of I interpret that as somewhat this co
Speaker 1: optation of birthing narratives and pregnancy narratives by men, right,
Speaker 1: because that's historically a story that they've left entirely out
Speaker 1: of that they're not allowed to experience and that they
Speaker 1: can't have, but through these extra gestational units they can.
Speaker 1: In terms of an example for race, I think that
Speaker 1: just the fact that experiencers talk about a multiplicity of
Speaker 1: types of aliens and that the aliens have different characteristics. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the little gray aliens that are so popular
Speaker 1: in pop culture are oftentimes those beings that are um
Speaker 1: kind of worker beings. They don't necessarily have personality, they're
Speaker 1: not particularly developed or advanced in a lot of ways. Technologically,
Speaker 1: certainly they are, but they're very focused on conducting experiments
Speaker 1: or um or doing that kind of thing. Whereas people
Speaker 1: also talk about Nordic aliens, and Nordic aliens have a
Speaker 1: tendency to be more human looking and they are, you know,
Speaker 1: characteristically Caucasian and blonde. Um, and those aliens are the
Speaker 1: ones that are compassionate. Those aliens are the ones that
Speaker 1: are kind. So there have been a bunch of different
Speaker 1: studies or a couple articles anyway, that talk about gray
Speaker 1: aliens as being kind of the combination of black and white, right,
Speaker 1: and so this ambiguous racialized mixture, But also the fact
Speaker 1: that the advanced aliens are Caucasian, I mean, coupled with
Speaker 1: ancient alien theories, which are inherently racist in some ways. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, race is clearly underneath it all. The fact
Speaker 1: that any um, non westernized, non on colonized society couldn't
Speaker 1: have made whatever it is, the Pyramids and ask a
Speaker 1: lines whatever, um, and they needed to have help from extraterrestrials,
Speaker 1: but westernized Caucasian societies didn't is a little questionable. Okay,
Speaker 1: So sort of change in direction a little bit. Can
Speaker 1: you explain the concept of a living myth? Sure? Um,
Speaker 1: so myth unlike kind of the pejorative negative connotation, right
Speaker 1: that people have Oftentimes when people say when I say
Speaker 1: I study myth, people who have had experiences get initially
Speaker 1: really defensive. They're like, you're not going to tell me
Speaker 1: this isn't real. You're not going to tell me this
Speaker 1: is fake and made up. Because when we think about myth,
Speaker 1: we think about fake stories. But when we talk about
Speaker 1: myth academically, right intellectually, when we're talking about myth, we're
Speaker 1: talking about those stories that orient us towards the world,
Speaker 1: those large framing stories that help us make sense of
Speaker 1: our personal identities of our communities and literally of the universe. Right, So,
Speaker 1: living myths can be or myths, It can be anything. Religions,
Speaker 1: for example, our myths. And that's not to to be
Speaker 1: disrespectful to religion. What it means to say is that
Speaker 1: religions are orienting stories that tell people what their purposes,
Speaker 1: what the universe is about, how the universe got here,
Speaker 1: how society should be. They give us all of these
Speaker 1: kind of ways to behave They tell us what we
Speaker 1: should do and should not. Um So, so religions are
Speaker 1: like living myths, And in my work I argue are
Speaker 1: are like myths. Excuse me, And in my work I
Speaker 1: argue that living myths are those stories that can bubble
Speaker 1: up in communities or in societies that help do the
Speaker 1: work that orienting work of myth, but aren't codified and
Speaker 1: written down and aging in a way that makes them irrelevant. Right.
Speaker 1: One one could argue that the Catholic Church, for example,
Speaker 1: has not kept up with scientific knowledge, it has not
Speaker 1: kept up with feminist positions, it has not kept up
Speaker 1: with kind of cultural social justice issues, and so for
Speaker 1: many the framework of of Catholic myths or Christian myths
Speaker 1: might not resonate anymore, right, they might not feel as
Speaker 1: though they can be a part of that. And I
Speaker 1: think that people seek out most people seek out those
Speaker 1: spaces of belonging and those explanatory ideologies and world views
Speaker 1: that comfort us and inform us. And so I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a bad thing. I always feel like defensive
Speaker 1: when I have to talk about myth UM. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a bad thing. I think it's just an
Speaker 1: amazing faculty of humans that we use narrative to make
Speaker 1: sense of our lives. And these are the stories that
Speaker 1: we tell. Strange arrivals will return in a moment. And
Speaker 1: then so you took a look at these um, these
Speaker 1: narratives and kind of identify some emergent stories right of
Speaker 1: you know, thematically similar stories. Mm hmm, yeah I did.
Speaker 1: There are several different themes, and themes have changed over
Speaker 1: the years. Right in my initial dissertation, I wrote about
Speaker 1: themes of physical salvation, where the extraterrestrials were here to
Speaker 1: kind of rescue us, whether that was actual physical rescuing
Speaker 1: like taking people off the planet via ships or collecting
Speaker 1: our DNA to be able to um remake or you know,
Speaker 1: keep alive humanity in the future. So those were narratives
Speaker 1: of physical salvation. There were narratives of hybridization, which are
Speaker 1: the stories that we hear about a lot in both
Speaker 1: the abduction community, the UFO community, and also in pop culture.
Speaker 1: And those are the stories about the alien human hybrid
Speaker 1: kind of program, this UM drive to make a master race.
Speaker 1: And and within narratives of UH narratives of hybridization, we
Speaker 1: have this tension between both those stories where the extraterrestrials
Speaker 1: are it's kind of the John mac story of they
Speaker 1: are spiritually advanced. They're here to help us, They're here
Speaker 1: to help us evolve, They're here to help us have
Speaker 1: that ontological shock that will allow us to be integrated
Speaker 1: into the galactic community UM, versus the stories that are
Speaker 1: told by people like David Jacobs, where the aliens are
Speaker 1: not at all good. They are very manipulative, they're very
Speaker 1: deceitful UH, and they are not here for anything other
Speaker 1: than their own personal use of the human as a
Speaker 1: resource right to to carry out this program. So hybridization
Speaker 1: has this tension between the two that I find totally fascinating.
Speaker 1: So UM. The third narrative type was betterment of humanity,
Speaker 1: and in those narratives, the extraterrestrials were coming in order
Speaker 1: to help humans evolve themselves. But it's a very in
Speaker 1: those So in those stories, people would be compelled to
Speaker 1: advance spiritually, engage in meditation, they would be compelled to
Speaker 1: change jobs and do things that were more service oriented
Speaker 1: like e. M. T. S or doctors. And what's really
Speaker 1: interesting or what distinguishes the betterment of humanity narratives from
Speaker 1: the cosmic community narratives is the fact that embedterment of humanity,
Speaker 1: the individual is the focus. So it's not about humanity,
Speaker 1: it's not about UM the universe. It's about the individual's
Speaker 1: personal journey of betterment um that and it's intimated that
Speaker 1: that is for the betterment of humanity certainly, But in
Speaker 1: terms of making distinctions, it was the fact that it
Speaker 1: was still focused on the individual, whereas the later narrative category,
Speaker 1: cosmic community, is much more about the collective whole and
Speaker 1: the collective move towards UM, you know, integration. And then
Speaker 1: the four thematic thing that I found in my dissertation
Speaker 1: research was these narratives of cosmic community. And in the
Speaker 1: narratives of cosmic community, it's really this more full articulation
Speaker 1: of almost a religious discourse of this idea that the aliens.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes it's the aliens are us and we are them.
Speaker 1: The DNA is all shared, but it's not necessarily turned on.
Speaker 1: Also in this category are narratives that talk about kind
Speaker 1: of the inter dimensional or intergalactic nature of these entities
Speaker 1: UM and whether or not they are us from the
Speaker 1: future and uh and and other things like that. So
Speaker 1: what I found and the reason why I did that
Speaker 1: thematic analysis was I found that depending on the motive
Speaker 1: that people believed right the individual experiencer, depending on what
Speaker 1: they believed why the aliens were here, the narrative qualities
Speaker 1: of their store ease were similar. So, for example, in
Speaker 1: stories of um cosmic community, oftentimes people didn't talk about abduction,
Speaker 1: which I found fascinating um. Instead, they would talk about
Speaker 1: the significance of the experience. They would talk about the
Speaker 1: consequences of the experience. And so I argue that those
Speaker 1: stories have kind of been internalized more and are much
Speaker 1: more a part of the person's identity, whereas stories of
Speaker 1: like physical salvation and evacuation, when the aliens are going
Speaker 1: to come in a ship and take us away, or
Speaker 1: take our d n A. Those stories are very granular
Speaker 1: in their detail. The textual detail is tiny. So they
Speaker 1: talk about the the the appearance of the beings and
Speaker 1: of the ships. They can talk about the smells. Oftentimes
Speaker 1: people report smelling sulfur. They talk about the attitudes of
Speaker 1: the beings, they talk about telepathic communication and in play.
Speaker 1: They're talk in great detail about what goes on during
Speaker 1: the experience, particularly um the capture portion of the experience,
Speaker 1: where they're paralyzed in bed or compelled to drive to
Speaker 1: a remote location, whatever it may be. But those stories
Speaker 1: are very much specific in their in their details, and
Speaker 1: people are much more likely to use qualifiers and to
Speaker 1: say things like I know this might sound crazy, or
Speaker 1: I don't know what I think about this, or I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, or this may have been a dream right.
Speaker 1: There are a lot more qualifiers in those other narratives
Speaker 1: as well, and so with the four of them, I
Speaker 1: argue that they're kind of like Russian nesting dolls in
Speaker 1: terms of the process of belief, and so as someone
Speaker 1: comes to believe something, as someone interprets their experiences right
Speaker 1: there having these anomalous experiences that they don't know what
Speaker 1: to do, with and then suddenly extraterrestrials make sense. It
Speaker 1: resonates as true for them, and so of course at
Speaker 1: first they're going to say, I'm not sure about this.
Speaker 1: I don't know. But then as they come into their belief,
Speaker 1: as they get more affirming UM and and confirming evidence,
Speaker 1: then they get more and more developed in exactly the
Speaker 1: significance of that experience. So is your sense that these
Speaker 1: different themes UH can like sort of happily coexist, you know?
Speaker 1: I I do think that they can. They can well
Speaker 1: happily coexist. I don't know about happily coexist. I think
Speaker 1: that whenever UM reality is being created, which reality is
Speaker 1: always being created through language, like that's how we get
Speaker 1: things that are real, you know. UM. But whatever that
Speaker 1: is happening, there are inconsistent and other narratives that contradict
Speaker 1: the status quo or the party line. Right, So we have,
Speaker 1: for example, a history of race in the United States
Speaker 1: that until recently ignored the you know, colonization and murder
Speaker 1: of indigenous people, and ignored the degree to which UM
Speaker 1: capitalist society was based in slavery. So, but now we're
Speaker 1: getting those kind of corrective narratives. So I think that
Speaker 1: with any with any truth, with any reality, we have
Speaker 1: this kind of competitive narrative thing that goes on. So
Speaker 1: I find it really interesting the tension between people who
Speaker 1: claim that the extraterrestrials are here to help us and
Speaker 1: people that claim the extraterrestrials are here to hurt us
Speaker 1: because they don't have room for each other, right, because
Speaker 1: it can't be both um. Although some people do say
Speaker 1: that there are certain ones that are here to help
Speaker 1: us and certain ones that are here to hurt us.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, these tensions of motive I
Speaker 1: think really speak to kind of the tensions in our
Speaker 1: culture and tensions in our society. Interesting. Um, so you
Speaker 1: use you use Jacobs and you use mac what Um
Speaker 1: Was there a reason why you didn't use Bud Hopkins.
Speaker 1: I did do um well for my dissertation. I did
Speaker 1: primarily I used the narratives that I had collected. Right subsequently,
Speaker 1: I've looked at and Hopkins. I think certainly I've read
Speaker 1: his work, and he's part of the trajectory of authority
Speaker 1: and trajectory of narrative, and that's tense to just in
Speaker 1: terms of the release of his book Versus Whitley, Strieber's book,
Speaker 1: and the timing of all of that, and and the
Speaker 1: privilege ching of particular narrative types. So I think that
Speaker 1: for me, Mac and Jacobs are the primary kind of
Speaker 1: touchstones because of their credentials quite truthfully, right m d
Speaker 1: pH d um. Those credentials are oftentimes highlighted in their work.
Speaker 1: At the top of every page of I Think It's
Speaker 1: Secret Life, it says David Jacobs PhD. You know, on
Speaker 1: the cover of Abduction. For John Mack it says John
Speaker 1: Mac m d um. And so I think that the
Speaker 1: the pushing of the credentials along with the narrative makes
Speaker 1: it digestible to general society. Not necessarily experienced there's, but
Speaker 1: general society in a different way. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I find really interesting about abduction discourse and alien
Speaker 1: experiences is the focus on reproduction. And there is uh
Speaker 1: a book by a woman named Brown, I think, who
Speaker 1: writes about the kind of correspondence between reproductive rights politics
Speaker 1: and abduction accounts. Timing. So, for example, Betty and Barney
Speaker 1: Hill happens right as kind of Row v. Wade in
Speaker 1: vitro fertilization. All of these kind of things are swirling
Speaker 1: around reproductive politics, and suddenly, not suddenly, but simultaneously we
Speaker 1: have aliens who are focused on reproduction and on making
Speaker 1: this kind of hybrid race. And I think that when
Speaker 1: I talk about FUCO and biopower, what biopower does is
Speaker 1: biopower really gives us away to think about, to take
Speaker 1: a step back from the actual narrative or from the
Speaker 1: story and try to understand who gets power from this
Speaker 1: or how is this working for the individual or for society.
Speaker 1: And so with with notions of biopower, what we have
Speaker 1: is we have two poles, and on the one pole
Speaker 1: we have the individual, and on the other pole we
Speaker 1: have society. And for CO argues that there are mechanisms
Speaker 1: that can strain and kind of limit both the individual
Speaker 1: and society, and um alien abduction discourse kind of really
Speaker 1: demonstrates that in the sense that it's highly focused on
Speaker 1: the individual and the individual's reproduction and what the individual
Speaker 1: gives and what the individual can do. And so you
Speaker 1: can talk about that, right, so the individual can talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that they have just stated several of
Speaker 1: these pregnancies, they have had these pregnancies taken, and then
Speaker 1: they can have ownership over all of that trauma, right,
Speaker 1: because the rhetoric trauma is huge, and so then those
Speaker 1: feelings are then given an outlet. Similarly, when we think
Speaker 1: about kind of the whole body politic, we also have
Speaker 1: kind of rules that are being made around the future
Speaker 1: of the species, so to speak, in the sense that
Speaker 1: the aliens are targeting particular types of people or types
Speaker 1: of characteristics that are deemed desirable. So most notably oftentimes,
Speaker 1: when people claim that they've been they've had these experiences,
Speaker 1: when I ask them why they're chosen, oftentimes people will
Speaker 1: say that they're chosen because they have the ability to
Speaker 1: be more intuitive, to be more spiritual, to rely less
Speaker 1: on the rational world, to distance themselves from capitalist consumer society,
Speaker 1: whatever the case may be. And so what we really
Speaker 1: see and there is a critique of enlightened rationalism and
Speaker 1: this idea of that spirituality, intuition, individual experience are all valid, right,
Speaker 1: They're all important ways of knowing, and that the scientific
Speaker 1: method should not be the only privileged way of knowing.
Speaker 1: And that particular tension is most clearly shown when people
Speaker 1: will say to me, I don't care that you know,
Speaker 1: people try to refute it, I know what happened to
Speaker 1: me right, So the primacy of that experience interesting. Is
Speaker 1: there anything that I haven't asked you about that you
Speaker 1: think is important for people to understand? What I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about is I'm thinking about the fact that I do
Speaker 1: believe that the people with whom I corresponded and interviewed
Speaker 1: and everything else, I do believe that these people believe
Speaker 1: what has happened to them, right, And I believe that
Speaker 1: they believe that it's true. Um, And so I guess us,
Speaker 1: what I hope is that researchers, both the researchers of
Speaker 1: all types, are able to kind of help people find
Speaker 1: ways to talk about these stories and talk about the
Speaker 1: larger cultural reflections. Kenneth Burke rights that language selects reflex
Speaker 1: and deflex reality, and I absolutely believe that is true, right. So,
Speaker 1: so abduction discourse to some degree selects particular aspects of
Speaker 1: reality and magnifies it basically for us to see. And
Speaker 1: so the focus on reproduction, the focus or the the
Speaker 1: exclusion of racial diversity, all of these things I think
Speaker 1: are indicative of kind of our current political cultural times.
Speaker 1: Next week, on the final bonus episode of this season
Speaker 1: of Strange Arrivals, I talked with documentary filmmaker Carol Rainey
Speaker 1: Bud Hopkins ex wife and former research partner. She talked
Speaker 1: to me about her experience in the midst of the
Speaker 1: abduction heyday of the nine nineties and early two thousand's.
Speaker 1: Bud and Dave regarded their findings as they interpreted them,
Speaker 1: showing that if the aliens were here to harm us,
Speaker 1: and we didn't know maybe they were, but they certainly
Speaker 1: were here to do us any good, that they used
Speaker 1: us basically as research subjects. They had no compunction about
Speaker 1: coming into our bedrooms at night, or dipping into our
Speaker 1: cars or wherever we happened to be and vacuum us
Speaker 1: up and either experiment with eggs s firm. You know,
Speaker 1: none of this makes sense scientifically over decades and decades.
Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. This episode was written
Speaker 1: and hosted by Toby Boll and produced by Miranda Hawkins
Speaker 1: and Josh Thane, with executive producers Alex Williams, Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: and Aaron Manky. Betty Hill was portrayed by Gina Rickikey.
Speaker 1: Barney Hill was portrayed by Jason Williams Special thanks to
Speaker 1: the MILNS Special Collections and Archives at the University of
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, John Horrigan, w y Am in Norwich, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: John White, and David O'Leary, the executive producer of the
Speaker 1: History Channel's dramatic series Project Bluebook. Learn more about the
Speaker 1: show over at GRIMM and mil dot com. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite else