More recently, 2009's District 9 held a mirror to the 21st century's refugee crisis, while 2013's Dark Skies reflected America's fear of random violence, such as school shooters and terrorism. With the Cold War over, The X-Files echoed the rising government skepticism of the 1990s as it posited the government was concealing proof of alien life. Alien, which came out right at the end of the '70s, extrapolated the crumbling labor movement as a group of blue-collar workers were exposed to a lethal workplace hazard by the profit-focused Weyland-Yutani corporation. This acceptance became an appetite, and by the 1970s, the kitschy, less overtly violent aliens of The Twilight Zone were replaced with the murderous creatures of John Carpenter's The Thing, The Predator, and the Alien franchise. With television coverage of the Vietnam War, the 1968 Democratic National Convention riot, and the Manson Murders, Americans became accustomed to violence - and seeing it televised. During the jovial post-war period, The Twilight Zone intrigued the public with tales of spooky and disturbing extraterrestrials - frequently examining issues like racism and paranoia, but never overstepped the nation’s standards with explicit displays of gore and violence.īut, as the post-war buzz faded into the Cold War, the image of creatures from outer space darkened. In 1938, Orson Welles's radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds struck a nerve in a population deeply afraid of the military buildup of Nazi Germany, causing widespread panic. The parallel between alien fiction and current affairs isn't novel. Inspired by reality, writers will surely match future works of alien-fiction to the world their audience knows, while omitting the sci-fi tropes that no longer seem realistic in a post-2020 world. In 2020, there’s a lot to extrapolate from, as the year has been uniquely jam-packed with events and phenomena that have the potential to drastically alter society. “It's about extrapolating what might happen based on the current moment." "At its best, science fiction isn't about predicting the future,” says Connor Southard, co-host of the popular science fiction and fantasy podcast Podside Picnic. No one has ever been stalked by the Predator or woken up to see a spaceship hovering over Los Angeles, but by grounding the story in a familiar political and social climate, writers and directors help the audience connect with the story through shared experiences. So, to bring extraterrestrials down to earth, science fiction creators have found ways to apply contemporary issues and social woes to their outlandish tales, giving readers and viewers something to identify with even if they haven’t had a close encounter. The central task of storytelling is creating narratives and characters the audience can relate to, but there are few experiences less relatable than aliens - literally beings from a totally different world.
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