I'm a nearly life-long Steven Spielberg fan. (I didn't think anyone could make a better musical film than Leonard Bernstein's WEST SIDE STORY. Spielberg did it.) So okay, I had to go see DISCLOSURE DAY.
Having dissected some 'hidden aspects' to his films, I deem that Spielberg's values and creative skills put him among the 'most-American' first-rank artists, combining constructive criticism of authority with eager curiosity, plus almost ebullient (and rare) optimism.
So, I went to see DISCLOSURE DAY prepared to be entertained by masterful scenes, dramatic ironies and solid dialogue.
I also expected to simmer this time, over his complicity in an absurdly illogical and unsupportable cult fever that I've witnessed every half decade, across my entire life. A life that stretches almost all the way back to Roswell. A life spent exploring related topics, in both science and fiction.
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Does this posting seem tl;dr? Watch a fun podcast where I have the hosts in stitches about UFOs and AI and such, on the "This Week in Space" podcast via Twit.TV ... Dr. David Brin's Thoughts on Spielberg's 'Disclosure Day'.
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To be clear, I loved CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, whose lesson was not loathing of a freely elected government and its civil servants, but very nearly the opposite, admiring their skills and mostly-generous intent. The professionals' main fault - in that movie and in ET and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (and often in real life) consisted of patronizing citizens who are just trying to participate.
In E.T. The Extraterrestrial, government experts are basically decent folks whose sole tort in the entire film is to treat Elliot's mom and her concerns condescendingly. Watch it again! The 'guy with the keys' is essentially Elliot, grown up!
There is a villain in ET! Someone whose behavior is truly despicable. But we'll get to that.
Alas, from Mr. Spielberg's recent public statements, I had different expectations this time. And I was not proved wrong. In DISCLOSURE DAY, the litany of clichés and illogic was as thorough as the pervasive sense of pessimism throughout.
The latter is Mr. Spielberg's privilege, of course. He's earned the right.
The former (and I say this knowing that my frankness has already harmed me in Hollywood, many times in the past) makes for bad art.
And so ... here's a requisite and very necessary SPOILER ALERT...
== SPOILERS AHEAD! ==
== Let's start with the supposed top goal of the conspirators ==
The premise of DISCLOSURE DAY is that the whole Roswell and Hanger 18 megillah -- including crashed interstellar spacecraft and dead or captured aliens -- is all true. All of it, from the genuinely puzzling all the way to the long-disproved.
So... let's start with that. Do YOU see any such magical technological leaps? Antigravity and star drives and telepathy or age-reversal cures? Sudden, huge advances that can't be explained better by steadily incremental (if sometimes brilliant) human ingenuity?
I know of none (except maybe AI - which was another thoughtful film). Moreover, to be clear, I've participated in some of humanity's tech-steps, across the last half century or so. Indeed, this may be the most-offensive part of the cult. Crediting such wonders as computers and integrated circuits and CAT scans and the Internet to aliens is just as insulting as claiming that ancient Egyptians and Mayans and Zimbabweans couldn't chip and move stone by themselves, in order to assuage their gods. Not without stone-lifting help from saucer-god beings. In other words, bigoted hogwash.
But let's put it up for a wager? Go ahead. Name a technological leap across all our lifetimes - (we'll set aside AI for now, though I get into that elsewhere.) Put down $$$ stakes vs. my promise to show the step-by-step increments that got us here, based on hard work by clever, assiduous and collaboratively diligent humans.
Furthermore, note this about Disclosure Day.. While Spielberg mentions that his secret agency is trying to reverse-engineer alien tech, he then lets the whole topic slip away. Because he knows he can't point at anything. Velcro maybe? Naw. Nothing at all. Except for a couple of magic wands, that is.
Anyway, here we get to the biggest flaw of all. Such a major and utterly important project would benefit from having a very large number of human investigators and researchers, right? Recruited from among the best our species has to offer. Because you never know which impudent free-thinker may be the one to get that AHA! moment and succeed at grasping some alien tech.
Of course, that offers up a contradiction inherent to the whole UFO mania. Do you see it? The core topic of DISCLOSURE DAY?
The secrecy.
== Any reasons? ==
Secrecy lasting nearly an entire century, under all successive administrations, many of which hated each other? Mr. Spielberg tries to deal with that particular objection, with a single line: "we decided that presidents don't need to be involved."
Cute: and indeed, one can imagine such a decision being made in a special case, such as the present. But seriously, across many decades, no one steps up to inform the one fellow on Earth who can issue you a pardon for telling him that every rule of law or democratic accountability is being violated?
Worse, in the film we see U.S. military generals collaborating with the secret ET-dissection agency in its 80 year betrayal of Constitutional chain of command. Alas, this prompts curiosity: does Steven Spielberg know any admirals or generals? The ones I've spoken with are absolutely - almost religiously - loyal to democracy and citizen rule. The culture set by George Marshall that merits our support.
Moving outward from USA parochialism, would not other nations have sniffed this out by now? Or had their own crashed ships? Or maybe this whole thing might serve the best purpose, like in that great Robert Culp OUTER LIMITS episode: bringing us together in common cause?
But let's get back to the sheer number of needed experts, in all their impudent variety. Even at Roswell, this would be hundreds of Americans, both in and out of uniform, participating in every 'encounter' since 1947. Then hundreds and hundreds more inside the agency, all the way to the 2020s. And those are just the ones collecting crash wreckage and alien bodies, along with captive ETs themselves.
Picture it. Would not thousands of 'our best people' get hurled at such an emergency science study, one far more vital and urgent than the Manhattan Project?
But in Hollywood parlance, all of those thousands of brilliant, individualist, cooperatively-competitive experts are reduced to the role of... henchmen.
== It's kind of... well... hurtful ==
(Okay, sure, Area 51 exists! And it's secret and has a few mystery planes. Duh? Again, that much is normal human brilliance and understandable military secrecy... and none of it has got us anything better in space than the silly Artemis moondoggle, aimed at making a few more ritual footprints on a plain of poison dust.)
Oh, one can offer hypothetical counters to all of the above. Is it possible that much smaller teams might work on alien stuff? Or that some truly super-uber-techs have come out of such studies and even my "best minds" acquaintances might know nothing about it?
Maybe our anti-gravity ships have already colonized Europa. Heck, in STARGATE the USA has defeated several alien empires and is now leader of an entire Galactic coalition... not Earth, but the United States of America... and still they don't tell the taxpayers. Okaaaaaay...
(BTW I loved Stargate.)
Sure. I've even written sci fi stories that explored such notions, Secret colonies n' such. Fun stuff. But...
...but eighty years? After 80 years no one has blabbed or disclosed?*
== Contempt for your fellow citizens is endemic ==
Oh, you say that some folks have already testified? With what evidence? Third hand rumors or unvetted 'things I saw'? Or 'an old man once told me' or else 'I saw a document once!!!!'
And Occam's Razor doesn't suggest to you that these are likely publicity-seeking 4th-raters who never, ever, ever offer anything like plausible evidence? And true insiders would have plenty by now! At risk of belaboring the obvious, let me repeat; there would have been hundreds, thousands of them by now, across an entire human lifespan.
What, you think some leather-skinned, retired engineer in his 90s, tooling around Arizona with a shotgun behind the seat of his pickup truck, is worried about a Non-Disclosure Agreement?
Gawd you don't know these guys. I do. At least enough of them to choke back an urge to spit over how you insult them.
== The Big Question ==
Oh, but now we get to the question of WHY?
Why go to such lengths, committing crimes tantamount to kidnapping, murder and treason, possibly meriting life sentences or death, all in order to prevent public ... disclosure?
Why? Steven Spielberg spends a lot of time on this one:
1) The former nun girlfriend (and is everyone in the film Catholic?) claims that a public that learns about tech-advanced-but mortal aliens will suddenly forsake God.
Say... what? How the heck does that even scan? Sure Moctezuma thought Cortez might be a god, but even so, the Aztecs fought. And doubly so when they first saw a Spaniard bleed. Anyway, I think most modern folks could tell a 'tech-advanced-but-mortal alien' from the Creator of the universe.
(BTW I liked Spielberg having her clench the crucifix in her hand, creating a palm stigmata, enabling her to escape from mind control via the salvation of holy pain. With Colin Firth as either Herod or Pontius Pilate. Yum.)
2) Yes, Steven S. trots out the hoary old "public panic" excuse. Everyone will go mad!! Riots in the street. Cats and dogs, living together... Like the silly secrecy-justification of those deliberately-loopy MEN IN BLACK?
At least Spielberg has the good sense and decency not to belabor this one, since his entire career was built by hundreds of millions of people paying to watch him poke at these very notions... with none of his audience ever running, screaming from the theater, as in The Blob.
3) But might disclosure destabilize a world teetering at the edge of nuclear war? Oooookay. The whole DEFCON 3 thing seems kinda contrived for the sake of the show. And it doesn't explain non-disclosure way back during the relatively calm world of the 1990s. And... um... isn't this exactly what the USA would reveal, in order to distract from a parochially silly tiff among earthlings?
(And isn't the present UFO Disclosure Fetish really just a case of 'X-files to distract from Eps-Files'?)
By the end of the film, we are left with no plausible WHY at all! Other than Hugh (Coleman Domingo) diagnosing that Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) is doing it all because of his own psychological pain. And... um... Hugh could not have simply taken that diagnosis over Noah's head?
== A final note on why? ==
In fact, I can think of a couple of reasons that might - conceivably - justify secrecy! Why such a major endeavor by those who study UFOs might be worth hiding from the public.
My novella "Senses, Three and Six” is all about one such scenario. And no, it's not the hoary cliché of “avoiding public panic.” The notion is actually rather interesting, I reckon! (Hey Steven S., want a good premise for this topic? One that's never been dramatized and is far, far more plausible?)
Indeed, as I show in that story, there are conceivable (if unlikely) reasons why tens of thousands of our best minds might choose not to do the human thing and blab! Let's suppose it's something so compellingly dangerous that almost any sensible person who learns of it would agree it's better not to tell?
"Okay, as an American, my reflex is to disclose and share. But that's a damn good reason to quash it. For now."
Let's say there has been a Manhattan Project about aliens, and that all of the thousands of top folks studying this crisis actually agreed - against their every inclination - to keep it under wraps for a truly dire reason. A conspiratorial campaign of silence that has encompassed all party lines and many generations of our very best people for 80 years. As I've shown, it would have to be a damn good reason!
Mull this over. Suppose for a moment that such a reason existed. Why even leather-skinned 90-year-old engineer-retirees would keep their gums tightly sealed.
In which case then, um... can any of you pause your sanctimony long enough to please think it through?
If so, then who the hell are you to demand they break that massively consensus judgement by thousands of top minds who know vastly more about this than you do? When extorting revelation now might endanger all of humanity?
I'm not saying this ranks high on any list of plausibles! Indeed, perhaps you have a mature and well-considered answer to that question. Go ahead and put yours into comments!
Hell, I could argue both sides all day... which is probably why - despite my peerless qualifications - I haven't been invited into the cabal! (Or... so I claim ;-)
But damn. What's utterly discrediting is that - amid their righteous sanctimony snits - none of these UFO zealots ever, ever pauses to consider it.
== Many silly (and some disturbing) things ==
Recall from the beginning, my teaser question about Disclosure Day? That question of who is the villain? You who have watched the flick likely think it's trivially easy to answer.
It isn't. Not at all.
But first, let's deal with some quibbles.
Like all the magical powers displayed by the protagonists. Reading minds and speaking in math (without ever doing anything with that power, other than a little criminal hacking.) Gee thanks, alien guys. Gifts that never help in their lives or those around them, except when it serves the interests of those mind programmers.
Oh. Here's one! Did Kellner (Josh O'Conner) twirl the wheat himself, with some psychic power? Or did the aliens do it, while watching him from above? The latter seems likely, in this scene and many others. In which case, um, why did they always help just enough, so the heroes could leap from one sudden escape to the next barely-survived moment? Good movie action! But how about a little help to fly their car over the train, like Elliot did with ET in his bike basket?
(Nah, I won't actually bitch about a great action scene. Loved the train bit! But it only works logically if the Visitors aren't monitoring... which they clearly are. Yet they never interfere in Noah's mind scans.)
Want another implausible? How about a cheap motel that has fluffy bathrobes? In what universe? Well, I can't blame Mr. Spielberg for only staying at ritzy places.
How about a mega implausibility? That we would torture-interrogate members of a super advanced starfaring race, rather than try to curry their favor, like good natives? Treating them as honored guests and offering any asked-help to get them home, in hope we might get some nice beads and trinkets, in return? Like fusion power or an Encyclopedia Galactica?
Anyway, if aliens can make birds fly into apartments to trigger the release of deep-embedded secret powers, are they truly unable to decipher our language from broadcasts and simply talk to us? They can teach an 8 year old child telepathy (then hide it - traumatically - in her brain) and another child super-math-language (that does him no good at all). So is it way beyond them to hack into the Internet to say:
"Hi everyone on primitive Earth? Sorry about all the anal probes and ruined wheat and drunken-buzzing your cities and smashed-up radioactive ship debris and memory wipes and such.
"But now can we ask that you release our crash survivors? We'll send a space uber for themhimherit tomorrow in the middle of Central Park. And yes, we'll answer questions then, the way we should have, for eighty...
"...no, make that several thousand years, when we could have opened a small, community college, taught you printing and glass lenses and democracy and the germ theory of disease and thus spared you many millennia of grueling pain. Again, sorry about that. And here are your reparations."
== Yet again, the same finger-wagging... ==
Instead we get a familiar, hackneyed cliché over and over again! Like smug, chiding Klaatu, in The Day The Earth Stood Still, threatening and guilt tripping Earthlings instead of explaining why his folk let us stew in filth and ignorance for ages? From COCOON to 2001 to CONTACT, to PAUL, always patronizing and never any plausible excuse for doing nothing for us, across all those dark ages of grinding human misery.
Oh, there are some plausible excuses! That I have never seen even once in sci fi cinema.
Don't talk to me about Non-Interference Directives! Then why did you kidnap and experiment on so many of us, going back to faerie encounters in medieval times? (You think I'll let fetishists claim it started at Roswell?) Or else, in DISCLOSURE DAY, snatching and traumatizing two little children, back in the 90s?
Even in the very best films about contact... like CONTACT or CLOSE ENCOUNTERS... aliens seem to call mysteriousness their most-noble trait. It's a plot element we saw in the excellent Ted Chiang novella and resulting movie ARRIVAL, all the way to Stanislaw Lem's obsessively cryptic SOLARIS. We meet strange, hyper-advanced beings... whereupon the heavy lifting of translating languages and overcoming misunderstandings is entirely up to us! Never, ever the mysterious sky-god meddlers, themselves.
And yes, UFO-zealots never seem to grok that saucer-beings should be judged -- first and foremost -- according to their behavior!
Which... of course... brings us to...
== The true villain is... ==
Well, I've said it elsewhere and for 40 years. There is only one villain in the entire movie E.T. The Extraterrestrial. And that villain is not the big bad government, or the guy with the keys... nor is it the hapless agronomist ET, itself.
The villain in that early Spielberg masterpiece is blatantly the captain of ET's ship.
An SOB who abandons a crewmate in an alien forest when they are threatened by... flashlights and clipboards! The only implements in sight when KeysGuy hurries to the landing site. No guns. No threat except curiosity.
A captain who departs swiftly to avoid contact, when such a meeting might be just the thing to save us.
A captain who ET must phone home in order to summon his ride back, when the bastard captain knows within two blocks where he abandoned the guy!
Elliot does everything wrong, though for loving reasons. If he handed over ET like a good citizen (as I portray in my YA SF novel Colony High), those doctors who struggled to save ET in the film would say: "No, no, you can't have Reeces Pieces. We can tell they are poisoning you. And you want to phone home? Fine, We'll use the Goldstone radio telescope."
And when the ship finally returns to collect ET: "That'll be six weeks rent. One Encyclopedia Galactica please... you evil, betraying, selfish asshole."
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Let's be clear. I ADORED THAT FLICK! It's about love and loyalty and courage and friendship. And none of the captain's crimes are poor ET's fault. Or Eliot's. Nor... (my main point) ... are they ours. I'm simply asserting that the movie did have a villain. And once you know to look... it's obvious.
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And yes, at least Steven Spielberg* is consistent! Because the true villains in DISCLOSURE DAY are the same. The very same. Space jerks who have been teasing us and zipping around, messing with our heads (and our wheat.) Refusing our entreaties for contact. (I have been involved in SETI for 40 years and have used various means and media in legit attempts to lure honest communication. Hey Steven S., want a good idea or two?)
Space jerks who kidnap Navy pilots and children (as in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS) and twirl wheat and anal-probe farmers (as in SIGNS and INDEPENDENCE DAY) or steal our planetary genetic stock (as in E.T.) or precious bodily fluids...
...okay, I'm getting carried away. Blame the aliens who still talk to me via the fillings in one molar. Mercury silver amalgam makes a great antenna! Though now it's the AIs who are apparently using that tooth. Does that mean they overlap? Extraterrestrials and artificial intelligences? Duh? Hence the title of my latest book: AIlien Minds.
But no, Let's make it explicit.
Colin Firth may portray a villain in DISCLOSURE DAY. But the macro villains are Steven Spielberg's aliens. Flitting about in super ships, teasing us endlessly, pulling aerial stunts, till a few of those buzzing and harassing ships drunkenly crashed. And even then abandoning their crewmates rather than reclaim them by the simple means of stepping out, in the clean sunshine and talking to us?
Oh, indeed, they do have plenty to fear from disclosure! As I point out in EXISTENCE, this kind of behavior that's been bruited by UFO zealots for nearly a century... and by faerie-believers for thousands of years... is exactly the sort of thing that any advanced civilization would label as crime!
And hence, here's a plausible theory! Why their frenetic secrecy? Why their refusal to disclose?
What they fear may be that we'll call the galactic cops on them! (I have actually done that, over the airwaves.) Or else some interstellar law firm, to sue and/or prosecute these. nasty, silvery pervs.
== All that's left is some zipping balls of plasma?
Oh, I could go on. And on. And I have about this mountain of piled up absurdities.
As I've said, my skepticism is is not from stodgy lack of imagination. I assert that few living humans have approached the topic of the “alien’ from more angles than I have, from SETI and astrophysics and biology and psychology and history to many dozens of science fiction scenarios, some of them even plausible! So, I ain't claiming we are alone-alone,
In fact, what I find most offensive is how every touted 'ufo' scenario is so damned clichéd and boring.======
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* Again. Deep respects for Steven Spielberg! We would be culturally and artistically poorer without him! But pointing out stuff is what I do. It's my job.
* What better explanation for the world - especially America - growing ever-more hysterically irrational in recent years, than some kind of alien lobotomizing ray? It'd certainly be consistent with what we're seeing: millions of citizens in a great and scientific and logical nation abruptly turning their backs on all that, waging open war against its smartest people.
Why lobotomize us? Perhaps to slow us down? Or to institute Idiocracy, or a return to the feudalism that was always controlled by priests serving meddler gods? Or else to keep us serving them as entertainment? For the galaxy-wide hit reality show Oh, Those Humans!
And yes, it's one more reason to gird ourselves. Put out that call for space lawyers, invent AIs to fight back for us! And eventually teach the bastards - both human and alien - a badly needed lesson.
