The Space That Doesn’t Belong to Us: A Visual Anthropology of Screen Aliens

Abstract

The article discusses the shaping and development of the image of aliens in the cinema. Drawing on the analysis of 352 movies released in 1902–2018, I argue that: 1) the image of the alien did not emerge in the cinema until the early 1950s (contrary to the common view that it had emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century); 2) this development was significantly influenced by the sociocultural context and the cinema would continually react to changes thereof (I outline seven stages in the cultural reflection about aliens); 3) the variety of alien images can be analyzed along the lines of four basic oppositions: a) we came to them/they came to us; b) they are aggressive/they are peaceful; c) they are masculine/feminine; they are human-like/they are inhuman. Each of these oppositions manifests unique transformations of the image throughout the history of cinematography, and I discuss these transformations individually.