By Michael R. Allen

In this time of deep political and social pessimism, in which multiple new Cold Wars seem to deepen, viewing Close Encounters of the Third Kind offers a strangely utopian experience. Steven Spielberg’s meditation on alien encounters emerged in a post-Watergate era in which full disclosure and the people’s right to know what their government knew were in full swing.

Yet Close Encounters contrasts sharply with today’s proto-fascist conspiracy theory movements, from Make America Healthy Again to the warped psychosexual Pizzagate cult. In Close Encounters, aliens are less frightening than puzzling, and their points of contact on the planet include startling but largely benign appearances in and around Muncie, Indiana. Of course, the unseen life forms abduct a child and begin depositing captured airplanes and warships, setting up potential threats to the heartland and the homeland.

Spielberg diverts paranoia and hateful othering. The investigations into the UFOs and aliens are led by an international committee straight out of UNESCO headquarters, led by a kindly French scientist, not a pack of rabid nativists working for the US military or CIA. The aliens speak in music, and when they finally appear the aliens want peace and release all of the captives who seemed to have enjoyed their cosmic journeys. A telephone company repairman gets to tag along for a new galactic trip, and the aliens and the earthly scientists seemed sad to see each other go. Paranoia is transformed into love and the possibility of a galactic politics of peace.

Michael R. Allen is a writer, historian and activist who lives in Morgantown, West Virginia. He has taught at Washington University in St. Louis and West Virginia University, and edits Peripheries: A Journal of Place and Position.