From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates@virtuallystrange.net>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 11:31:34 -0500
Fwd Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 11:31:34 -0500
Subject: Getting Taken

http://slate.msn.com/?id74656

Getting Taken

Steven Spielberg, paranormal huckster
By Chris Mooney

Updated Wednesday, November 27, 2002, at 12:54 PM PT

Suppose that the truth really is "out there," as The X-Files
postulated, but not exactly where you might expect. In other
words, rather than a vast government conspiracy to conceal proof
that aliens have visited Earth, perhaps the real plot lies
elsewhere. The entertainment industry, for instance, is
constantly putting out films, TV shows, and pseudo-documentaries
suggesting that Americans are being visited or even abducted in
droves by gray-skinned, strangely kinky spacemen_and that the
government wants to keep it all quiet. Dark Skies, Roswell,
Fox's Alien Autopsy special _ Could the real conspiracy be on
the part of the mass media and designed to make people believe
in UFOs because it helps ratings?

If such a plot exists, Steven Spielberg would have to be the
ringleader. After all, Spielberg planted the seeds of modern UFO
obsession with 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which
he quickly followed up with E.T. (1982). And now it appears that
Spielberg was just getting warmed up. This Dec. 2, the Sci Fi
Channel will air the first installment of Taken, a 10-part
fictional miniseries about alien abductions, for which Spielberg
served as executive producer.

A 20-hour epic, Taken blends all the staples of our modern UFO
mythology into a multigenerational tale of three families torn
apart_and brought together_by aliens and the government's
ruthless quest to understand them. In the first generation, Air
Force pilot Russell Keys and his crew are saved by flashing blue
lights after their plane is shot down over France in World War
II; Army intelligence officer Owen Crawford investigates a crash
at Roswell, N.M.; and Lubbock, Texas, waitress Sally Clarke is
seduced and impregnated by a charming stranger who appears one
night, wounded, in her barn. Two generations later, Keys'
grandson Charlie and Clarke's granddaughter Lisa struggle to
protect their gifted part-alien daughter, Allie, from Crawford's
granddaughter Mary, who also works for the military. The final
conflagration reveals nothing less than the UFOs' true
intentions for humanity.

With its slogan "Some secrets we keep. Some are kept from us,"
Taken brings the conspiracy-mongering of The X-Files to its
logical conclusion, all but demanding that the feds come clean
about Roswell and other UFO encounters of the classified kind.
Still, Taken, which was four years in the making, may represent
the swan song of 1990s UFO culture. As Aliens in America author
Jodi Dean pointed out to me recently, following 9/11, America's
UFO fixation seemed to dwindle; with real invaders to worry
about, it was hard to care about alien ones. With its allusions
to government cover-ups, alien implants, the Roswell crash, and
alien-human hybrids, Taken almost seems like a time capsule made
especially for television.


The Sci Fi Channel, however, is treating aliens more seriously
than ever. The network, which now reaches some 80 million homes,
has billed Taken as a breakout premiere that will prove it's a
"television powerhouse." Sci Fi has also prepared a slew of tie-
ins: a Roper Poll announcing that three-quarters of Americans
are prepared for the discovery of extraterrestrial life; pseudo-
documentaries titled Abduction Diaries and The Roswell Crash:
Startling New Evidence; and public events featuring UFO-
abduction gurus John Mack, Bud Hopkins, and David Jacobs. All
this might seem an odd accompaniment to a fictional TV series,
but Sci Fi has gone even further. It has launched an advocacy
group called the Coalition for the Freedom of Information, which
plans to sue and file Freedom of Information Act requests to
make the government come clean about UFOs. Of course, if the
outlandish UFO information requests received by the National
Security Agency are any indication, the coalition's chief
achievement may be to drive a lot of bureaucrats up the wall.

Such activities certainly do suggest that Sci Fi and Spielberg
are out to make people believe in UFOs. Indeed, Sci Fi's
excavation of the Roswell crash site and other gimmicks threaten
to drag Taken into a sinkhole of purportedly factual UFO-
mongering. The evidence about Roswell overwhelmingly suggests
that what crashed in 1947 was a government spy balloon;
similarly, close examination of UFO-abduction claims
overwhelmingly suggests they're best explained by sleep
paralysis and other conditions. Those who already believe
otherwise, however, will never accept these explanations. That
makes battles over UFOlogy worse than pointless, especially if
they're conducted by a network like Sci Fi, rather than through
serious scientific channels, and presented in the context of
promoting a fictional drama.

Neither Taken nor its various tie-ins present us with any new
truths, but at least the series has other merits. In a fictional
format, Taken deftly historicizes the UFO lore that our culture
has churned out since the late 1940s, in a sense merging The X-
Files with something like Forrest Gump. At times Taken even
seems aware that with UFOs, what we're actually dealing with are
the modern analogues of fairies and fallen angels.

What's also impressive_and characteristically Spielbergian_is
how the momentous events of Taken unfold against thoroughly
mundane backdrops. Sally Clarke's bizarre contraption to contact
her alien lover recalls E.T.'s "phone home" gadget. When Owen
Crawford, head of a top-secret government UFO project, attempts
to kidnap Clarke's half-alien son Jacob, the song "Purple People
Eater" comes on the radio as they drive away. In yet another
scene, we learn that one useful technology the government
acquired from the UFOs was Velcro. The concept of "taken" is
itself a double entendre_characters are abducted and abused by
UFOs, but also by the government.

The one aspect of Taken that doesn't come in for a sensitive,
historicized treatment is the UFO itself_and its supposed
activities. In one installment, a highly complicated crop circle
appears in the United States in the year 1969 or 1970, even
though the crop circle phenomenon really only got going in the
mid-1970s in southern England. Similarly, Taken's aliens are
short, black-eyed, huge-skulled humanoids known as "grays," yet
it was only in 1961 with the Betty and Barney Hill "abduction"
that aliens began to be described this way. As an "Alien Time
Line" by the paranormal investigator Joe Nickell demonstrates,
up through the 1970s, people were seeing blobs, insectoids,
hairy dwarfs, robots, reptilians, and other types. In other
words, the way that UFOs appeared to Americans was itself
historically contingent on, and highly influenced by, media
representations.

Granted, if Taken admitted this, it would also have to admit
that Spielberg himself generated much of the lore that the
series has now repackaged and dramatized. But at least the Taken
crew seems willing to joke about it. In a recent interview,
Taken screenwriter Leslie Bohem noted that Spielberg once said
to him of alien abductions, "If this isn't true, then why are
all these stories the same?" To which Bohem replied, "Maybe
because of your movies?" That's not exactly fessing up to the
existence of a vast media conspiracy_but it's a promising start.