My last columns argued that “Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing” was bad fluff because it oversimplified UFO subculture. “Seeing” erased both the respectable National Investigative Committee on Aerial Phenomena and the flamboyant contactees from its history of UFOs. This eliminated two priming discourses that provide a ready-made interpretation of ‘strange lights in the sky’ as being ‘not of this world.’ Instead, “Seeing” presented a parade of solid citizens whose sightings forced them to conclude that UFOs were real.

Oversimplification resurfaced in the segment on Roswell, where the profusion of Roswell stories was pared down to one account dealing with Major Jesse Marcel, Sr. That particular story was sadly ironic: Marcel was right about the cover up but wrong about what was being covered up. Jennings concluded solemnly that Roswell believers “cling to the myth.” But UFO believers cling to, and argue about, different Roswell myths featuring different narratives, details, twists, heroes, and outcomes. And here the seeing-believing trope breaks down. For the Roswell stories, nobody has seen the wreckage for decades; the ‘original’ crash sites show no visible evidence of an intergalactic disaster. Here, believing depends on an interaction between us as audience members, the relevant players (Jennings, PJ Productions, Springs Media, ABC News, and Disney), and the people whose stories provide the raw material for “Seeing.” Believing becomes possible without seeing.

Besides contradicting the program’s title, that claim returns us to UFOlogy’s interpretive communities, particularly the contactees who recounted multiple, positive encounters with Nordic aliens trying to warn humanity against self-destruction and to foster greater spirituality. Spirituality also emerged in the abduction stories of Betty Andreasson (Fowler, 1979). Instead of meeting Nordics and chatting, Andreasson claimed to have experienced the ‘classic’ abduction scenario a la Betty and Barney Hill (Fuller, 1966): bright light, paralysis, floating, physical exam — all conducted by short, gray aliens with pear-shaped heads, huge ‘wrap-around’ eyes, and smooth skins, who took her to a taller but similar being. Andreasson received spiritual wisdom from this ‘Being of Light.’[i] In contrast, Betty Hill’s tall gray showed her a star map. The Hills’ accounts emphasize fear, trauma, and pain. The Hills-Andreasson split still reverberates in abductee tales.

The Andreasson tendency combined with Nordic-style concerns about environmental degradation surface in the abduction stories collected by Dr. John Mack (1994, 1999) at Harvard Medical School. Mack’s writings on abductions are distinctly ‘New Age,’ focusing on raising consciousness and spirituality. Mack’s view was not presented.[ii] Instead, “Seeing” focused on traumatized abductees and artist/UFOlogist Budd Hopkins, who has long retrieved stories mirroring the Hills’ version (Hopkins, 1981, 1987, 1996). Hopkins’ writings argue that the grays exploit humans in an attempt to renew their genetically damaged species. However, both Hopkins and Mack emphasize the consistency of the classic scenario: paralysis upon waking, a strange presence in the room, flashing lights, buzzing sounds, a feeling of being floated out of the room, a feeling of being probed.[iii]

Hopkins argues on camera that consistency in abductee tales is one proof of their reality.[iv] His claim would be weakened if “Seeing” reported the Andreasson-type stories and Mack’s work. The contrast in story-types raises questions about experimenter effects: which came first — being an abductee or being hypnotized by someone who believes in alien abduction?

“Seeing” addresses this question by pitting Hopkins and victimized abductees against two Harvard psychologists. The ‘both sides’ approach ignores the other side in the abductee community and the other side at Harvard. Jennings introduces the segment by stating that the two psychologists believe that “your average abductee is no more psychiatrically impaired than the average person in the population.”

Cut to an extreme close up of a young white woman wearing sunglasses, her face shadowed to protect her identity. Her voice seems stressed as she states: “We’re perfectly normal people…your co-workers, your family, your friends…we’re having quite extraordinary experiences and we’re all trying to understand….” Cut to a close up of a drawing showing the classic gray alien, followed by a cut to a young white man looking directly into the camera as he tells a classic abduction story, intercut with drawings of such an encounter, noting along the way: “I thought I was going to die … It is really, really disturbing to be in a room with something that isn’t supposed to exist … I can’t talk about what was done there (examination room) because it’s too personal.” Cut to him silent, apparently recalling the event, blinking with a hand to his face. With the standard abduction sequence so widely circulated in the media, most viewers already know the narrative trajectory and the things that are too personal to disclose. The trajectory plays out later with subsequent abductees whose sincerity and consistency lends the drawings credibility as viewers get their first chance to see believers “up close and personal.”

The next sequence shows the regression: medium long shots depict a modest, pleasantly cluttered room. Hopkins sits on a wooden folding chair and a young man lies on a couch. The room is darkened but warm. Hopkins speaks gently, sometimes leaning forward, other times obscuring his face with his hand or shielding the man from the camera. Shown in close-ups from the side, the man calmly recovers memories. When the session ends, they exchange words of support. We have seen and what we have been allowed to see suggests that we ought to believe.

As the sequence ends with individual abductees reiterating the classic scenario, Jennings introduces the “other side.” Clancy and McNally reject hypnosis, noting that the hypnotists’ beliefs affect what their subjects recall. They explain the physical sensations of the classic scenario in physiological terms: people awakening from REM sleep may still be in a state of sleep paralysis, which normally accompanies REM. Brain activity triggers the various feelings interpreted as alien abduction. Sleep paralysis is visualized through shots of a bedroom with a four-poster bed, an extreme close-up of a person’s eye opening, the room’s ceiling, a corner of the room suddenly bathed in bright light, etc.These images cannot compete with the regression for impact. If seeing is believing, “Seeing” makes sleep paralysis unbelievable.[v]

But “Seeing” could have shown it. Dr. Michael Persinger (Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada) has developed an apparatus that can induce sleep paralysis in people who are wide-awake. How do I know this? I saw it on TV in a documentary 8 or 10 years ago: a dashing scientist investigating UFOs ended up strapped into Persinger’s apparatus in his lab. By manipulating her brain’s exposure to magnetic fields, Persinger induced, and our heroine reported, the classic abduction sensations: paralysis, the cold presence in the room, flashing lights, buzzing sounds, floating, the feeling of being probed. Just imagine Peter Jennings undergoing that after Clancy and McNally explained sleep paralysis!

How easy would it have been for “Seeing” to find Persinger? According to his CV posted on the web, Persinger has appeared on 16 television venues (12 US) including ABC’s 20/20 and Nightline, CBS’ 48 Hours, CNN, NBC Nightly News, and PBS’ Nova (Persinger, 2003).[vi] In the US, his work has been covered in Discover, New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Omni, Psychology Today, Readers Digest, and Wired. His Neuroscience Research Group has “…been filmed by approximately 100 different groups of television journalists or writers within the last 15 years” (Persinger, 2003). He also has a chapter in David M. Jacobs’ collection, along with Mack and Hopkins, whose views Jacobs’ shares (Persinger, 2000; Jacobs, 1992, 1998).And now for the eternal question: so what? It’s just a bit of fluff that misrepresented the abductee community by erasing NICAP, the contactees, priming discourses, consistencies between the contactees and Andreasson. It just ignored Mack’s enlightened abductees and evidence from within the abductee community that a hypnotist’s beliefs might influence the outcome of hypnotic regressions, making it appear that only scientists questioned hypnosis. It skipped over minorities within the scientific community by excluding Mack. It apparently avoided Persinger and the possibility of getting some striking footage to balance the abduction segment. Some implications of its findings contradict its title.“Seeing” lacks the intelligence, curiosity, and professionalism necessary to produce good fluff — and, for that matter, good news. It is disheartening to see such bad fluff connected to Peter Jennings, emerging from work routines at PJ Productions and Springs Media, bearing the imprimatur of ABC News, and occupying two hours of prime time on Disney’s ABC while wars rage in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I recognize the difference between Jennings producing fluff for ABC and Jennings reading the news on ABC, between ABC trying to hype its ratings during sweeps week and ABC running a news operation, even between fluff and news. Yet there are continuities: both may originate from the work routines of commercial news operations. That is cause for concern.

Remember the WMDs.

Works Cited

Bullard, Thomas E. “UFOs: Lost in the Myths” in David M. Jacobs, UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge. Lawrence: U of Kansas P, 2000.

Fowler, Raymond E. The Andreasson Affair. New York: Bantam. 1979.

Fuller, John. The Interrupted Journey. New York: Berkley, 1960

Hopkins, Budd. Intruders: The Incredible Visitation at Copley Woods. New York: Random House, 1987.

—. Missing Time: A Documented Study of UFO Abductions.New York: R. Marek, 1981.

—. Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions. New York: Pocket Books, 1996.

Jacobs, David M. Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

—. The Threat. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.

Mack, John. Abductions: Human Encounters with Aliens. New York: Scribners, 1994.

—. Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters. New York: Crown, 1999.

Persinger, Michael. 2003. Curriculum Vitae, p 36-37. (accessed 10 July 2005)

—. “The UFO Experience: A Normal Correlate of Human Brain Function.” in David M. Jacobs, UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge. Lawrence: U of Kansas P, 2000. 262-302.

UFO Casebook. no date. “The Pascagoula, Mississippi Abduction (Hickson/Parker). (accessed 5 July 2005).

Worley, Don. 1997. “The Beautiful Blondes and Their Incredible Flying Machines,” UFO Universe, Winter issue
posted by the Burlington UFO and Paranormal Research and Education Center. (accessed 5 July 2005)

Notes

[i] Stories of Nordic aliens with spiritual messages and dire warnings continue to circulate in some portions of the UFO subculture. For an example, see Worley, 1997.

[ii] The web site for the John E. Mack Institute states that Mack was interviewed for “Seeing.” The interview was his last on the subject; he died 28 September 2004. Evidently, the Institute has no copy and no rights over the interview. For details see [ii] The web site for the John E. Mack Institute states that Mack was interviewed for “Seeing.” The interview was his last on the subject; he died 28 September 2004. Evidently, the Institute has no copy and no rights over the interview. For details see the web site for the John E. Mack Institute, (accessed 5 July 2005.)

[iii] Not all grays are alike. In 1973, Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker claimed to be abducted by grays who were wrinkled and eyeless; with neckless, bullet-shaped heads; and “thin, conical objects sticking out, like carrots from a snowman’s head.” See UFO Casebook, no date, for a typical account of their story.

[iv] Folklorist Thomas E. Bullard points out (2000) that consistency in narrative structure across multiple story-tellers is no guarantee of empirical truth, no matter how reflective it may be of community or cultural beliefs.

[v] The show winds down from this climax with a segment on the possibility of intergalactic travel followed by a profile of Peter Davenport who operates the National UFO Reporting Center from his home in Seattle, WA.

[vi] Persinger’s CV states that his research has been reported in: “…Omni, Psychology Today, Newsweek (Japan), Equinox, MacLean’s Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Wired, Newsweek(U.S.A.), Reader’s Digest, Discover, New Scientist, Saturday Night;” that he has been on “NOVA”, ABC’s “20/20″, ABC’s “NightLine,” “60 Minutes” (Australia), “That’s Incredible,” “48 Hours” (CBS), Unsolved Mysteries, The Discovery Channel, UltraScience, MTV News Special, The Unexplained, CNN News, NBC News, The Learning Channel, Arts and Entertainment Channel, Japanese T.V.”

Links
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
Coast to Coast AM with George Norry

Image Credits:
1. UFO

Please feel free to comment.

Roswell autopsy

In The X-Files’ episode “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space,” these words are spoken by Blaine, an UFO enthusiast, as he grapples with a police detective trying to keep him out of the morgue where Scully will autopsy an alien. Mulder stops the altercation, inviting Blaine to tape the proceeding. When released, the tape has been edited to show the autopsy but without Scully’s interesting finding: the air force pilot inside the alien suit. Once more, the media has ill-served the public’s right to know.

My interest here is in Roswell, the people’s right to know, and how news and good fluff uphold that right while newslessness and bad fluff deny it. Last time, I argued that “Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing” was bad fluff because it erased two sources of priming discourses about UFOs: the carefully mainstream National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena and the flamboyantly eccentric contactees of the 1950s and 1960s. Here, I turn to the documentary’s treatment of Roswell to further illustrate how “Seeing” oversimplifies Roswell’s stories and the people who argue about them.

For “Seeing,” Major Jesse Marcel Sr. is the hero in this Roswell story. Stationed at Roswell Army Air Force Base, Marcel responded to a phone call from Mack Brazel, who had found strange debris in a remote pasture of his ranch. On 7 July 1947, Marcel drove to the ranch and gathered up the materials. Impressed by their odd appearance and properties, Marcel believed them to be extraterrestrial. He drove home and woke up his wife and son, Jesse Jr., to show them the debris. The next morning, Marcel delivered the materials to the base. By noon, base commander Colonel William Blanchard approved a press release: a UFO had been recovered and would be shipped to Wright Field, Ohio, for further examination. On 9 July, General Roger Ramey’s press conference rescinded that announcement. Newspapers ran headlines like “General Ramey Empties Roswell Saucer,” often accompanied by a photo of Marcel handling a damaged weather balloon. This tale emerges through clips and voice-overs featuring Peter Jennings, Jesse Jr in late middle-age, conspiracy historian Professor Robert Goldberg, and the Roswell-debunking UFOlogist Karl Pflock. The Marcel/Roswell story is not the only version of the Roswell Incident. In UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth, Benson Saler, Charles A. Ziegler, and Charles B. Moore deftly analyze Roswell’s basic story and its many permutations. Several Roswell stories make Brazel the hero including stories from sites maintained by David Rudiak and the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell.

Rudiak’s site includes a section titled Newspaper Stories About Mack Brazel’s Interview, Roswell Daily Record, July 9, 1947 (Afternoon), “Harassed Rancher Who Located ‘Saucer’ Sorry He Told About It.” In this story, a thunderstorm blew through on the evening of 13 June. The next day, Brazel and his son Vernon found the wreckage while checking their sheep, which grazed on the leased J.B. Foster Ranch. Brazel saw a “large area of bright wreckage made up on rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks” with “no sign of any metal in the area.” Brazel mentioned the debris that evening to his wife and daughter, Betty. On 4 July, the family brought some debris back to the ranch house. Three days later, Brazel went to Roswell to sell wool and mentioned his find to Sheriff George Wilcox, who contacted the base. Marcel and a man in plainclothes responded, accompanying Brazel to the ranch, where they tried unsuccessfully to reassemble the wreckage. Marcel took possession of it; later Brazel heard about the press release and its recantation. Brazel is quoted thus: “”I am sure that what I found was not any weather observation balloon.”

The IUFOMRC offers two versions. The first has Brazel accompanied by the son of Floyd and Loretta Proctor, who leased their ranch to Brazel. Brazel noticed “unusual pieces of what seemed to be metal debris, scattered over a large area. Upon further inspection, Brazel saw that a shallow trench, several hundred feet long, had been gouged into the land.” Noting the “unusual properties of the debris” and “after dragging a large piece of it to a shed,” Brazel decided to tell the Proctors. They urged him to contact Wilcox, believing the debris was either extraterrestrial or top secret. After a day or two, Brazel did and Wilcox informed Marcel, who commandeered the site. Removing the wreckage took several days. On 8 July, at 11 a.m., the base’s public information officer, Lt. Walter G. Haut, issued the historic press release with Blanchard’s approval. Hours later another statement rescinded the UFO claim.

The IUFOMRC also summarizes an account from Don Schmitt and Kevin Randle’s A History of UFO Crashes. This time the UFO crashed on 4 July and was witnessed from afar by William Woody and his father. By the 5th, military had cordoned off the area. Next day, Wilcox contacted Marcel, who drove to Brazel’s ranch with intelligence officer Captain Sheridan Cavitt. Arriving that evening, they stayed at the ranch house and examined a “large piece of debris that Brazel had dragged from the pasture.” The next morning, they surveyed the debris, which covered three-quarters of a mile and included pieces of indestructible metal and short I-beams marked with symbols. Impressed, Marcel took some debris and, before delivering it to the base, showed it to his wife and son. Later, Haut issued the press release; Blanchard sent Marcel to show the debris to Ramey. Ramey had Marcel leave the material in Ramey’s office while they went to the map room. Returning they found the debris gone, replaced by a wrecked weather balloon. Ramey had Marcel photographed while handling that debris.

Disregarding contradictions within and across stories, Saler et al.’s point should be clear: people proliferate Roswell stories, shifting emphases and adding details along the way. All storytellers have reasons for their particular selections from the dozens of Roswell stories circulating. After telling the Marcel/Roswell story, “Seeing” debunks it, revealing the truth about the military cover-up: Ramey wasn’t covering up a UFO crash but the crash of a 650 foot long assemblage of plastic pipe and weather balloons launched by the top secret Project Mogul to monitor Soviet bomb tests. Ironically, Marcel outed the wrong cover-up, setting the stage for Roswell-mania with folks producing increasingly sensationalized accounts which In Search of …, Unsolved Mysteries, Larry King Live, Alien Autopsy, and The X-Files exploited.

Jennings states: “Jesse Marcel’s unproven story was now primetime mythology.” Referring to hard-core Roswell believers, he closes the section on Roswell: “They cling to a myth, a myth that here outside Roswell in 1947, the question of are we alone was finally answered. It was not.” Ironically, Marcel’s misunderstanding became enshrined as mythology; sadly, he never learned the truth about the real cover-up.

Thus “Seeing” lays to rest the Marcel/Roswell version. But the sad irony surrounding Marcel depends on his credibility, which has been questioned by the same Karl Pflock who helped “Seeing” construct its Marcel/Roswell story. In “Roswell in Perspective” and in “Karl Pflock’s Real Roswell Views”, Pflock claims that the elderly Marcel lied about his educational record, civilian accomplishments, and military record. Since the Marcel/Roswell story depends on Marcel’s veracity, Pflock’s charges deserve some screen time. But that would have destroyed the poignancy of the Marcel/Roswell story as told by “Seeing.” By oversimplifying the story and going for pathos, “Seeing” essentially fictionalizes Marcel. By papering over the controversy, it similarly fictionalizes the UFO community. This treatment of Roswell targets our ability to feel, not our right to know. To know, we need the facts in all of their complexity as people discover and develop them through time via research, argumentation, and narrativization. In the end, the facts do matter to the public’s right to know even when that right addresses fluff.

Next time: abductees.

Image Credits:
1. Roswell autopsy

Links
SETI
A critical evaluation of abduction experiences

Please feel free to comment.

When Frank Rich nails media wastrels, they stay nailed. In his recent meditation on the life of Hunter S. Thompson and journalistic venality in the 1970s and now, Rich noted:

“What’s missing from News is the news. On ABC, Peter Jennings devotes two hours of prime time playing peek-a-boo with U.F.O. fanatics, a whorish stunt crafted to deliver ratings, not information.”[1]

Rich then savages Brian Williams’ relentless self-promotion and mainstream journalism’s current enthusiasm for Newslessness. Using Thompson’s work, Rich contextualizes this phenomenon in terms of the co-dependency of Washington reporters and politicians, which fosters an unwillingness to investigate political scandals from Watergate to ‘Gannongate.’[2] With Rich having nailed Newslessness, I thought I’d lost my angle on the two hour special Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs — Seeing Is Believing (24 February 2005; PJ Productions and Springs Media). Then I realized that Seeing deserved consideration on its own terms as a piece of fluff.

Given Jennings’ status as a veteran journalist and anchor for ABC World News Tonight, I expected Seeing to present serious fluff: a reasonably accurate and revelatory account of some aspect of UFOs. This expectation was reinforced by Jennings’ statement on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (repeated in promotional interviews and appearances) that the project took a year to complete, suggesting that Seeing would surpass the quickie-UFO shows so common on FOX and cable.

Of course, Jennings is not solely responsible. From ‘Rathergate,’ we understand that much of Seeing’s content depended on executive producers Mark Obenhaus and Tom Yellin and staff. Further, February is a sweeps month for Nielsen ratings — a time when networks commonly run sensational programs. Within these contexts, Seeing’s script and Jennings performance were low-key and sympathetic towards individuals reporting anomalous experiences. Besides experiences, the show featured professional believers, professional skeptics, scientists, computer animations, and videotape. The usual mix but with gravitas.

That said, Seeing failed to meet my criteria for good fluff. Based on my viewing of the broadcast and the transcript available via Lexis-Nexis,[3] the program is divided into three parts: people who see UFOs, the reported UFO crash at Roswell, and abductees. I’ll start by summarizing the section on sightings and then delve into each of these areas separately in order to argue that Seeing doesn’t qualify as good fluff. This is the argument’s first installment.

Since businessman Kenneth Arnold saw the first flying saucers over Washintgon’s Cascade Mountains in 1947, solid citizens and ‘first responders’ have seen things in the sky which some believe to be extraterrestrial craft. Nowadays, the government doesn’t investigate these reports. President Truman instructed the CIA to determine how the Air Force should handle UFO reports; the CIA convened a panel of scientists (called the Robertson panel after its chairman), which decided that the Air Force should downplay and debunk any sightings. The Air Force created a PR unit (Project Bluebook) and hired one civilian scientist, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, to do that. Eventually, Hynek came to believe that UFOs were extraterrestrial, resigned as a debunker, and launched the Center for UFO Studies. Given the low reliability of eye-witness testimony, other scientists were loathe to join him. Contemporary scientists — even those at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — agree.

This version of UFO history fits well into Seeing’s format of alternating positions: first the people who saw and believe, then the people who haven’t and don’t, next more people who did and do, etc. The resulting history of UFO sightings is peopled with solid civilians, honest police officers, and stalwart military men seeing UFOs that the government first debunks and then ignores. The validity of their sightings is reinforced by Hynek’s resignation. This steady line of level-headed observers across the generations lends credibility to the sightings and to the notion of UFOs as extraterrestrial. That, however, ignores a good chunk of UFOlogy’s early history.

Early UFOlogy was not simply a matter of individual people being in the right place at the right time, seeing the right light, and trying to report a UFO. Early on, sighters and believers coalesced into interpretive communities. Some communities fit Seeing’s solid citizen mold. Based in such a community was the National Investigative Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), founded by retired Marine Major Donald Keyhoe, which had a national office, board, and dues-paying members. NICAP argued that UFOs were physical craft of extraterrestrial origin — dubbed the ‘nuts-and-bolts’ position — and lobbied for a full-blown governmental investigation. NICAP fits Seeing’s mold but is referenced indirectly in a brief image of one of Keyhoe’s books.

By erasing NICAP, Seeing erased that organization’s informational campaign which included press releases, books, speeches, appearances on radio and television, etc., by Keyhoe and others. That campaign earned NICAP coverage in mainstream media including Life magazine and CBS Reports. NICAP’s discourse was echoed in films like The Day the Earth Stood Still or Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, which Seeing mentions. Thus NICAP’s campaign became a priming discourse: it prepared people to interpet unidentified flying objects as alien spacecraft.

NICAP represented only one community. Others existed in UFOlogy in the 1950s-60s, including one that NICAP abhorred: the contactees. These folks maintained telepathic communication with Nordic-looking aliens, went for rides aboard UFOs, and returned with philosophical messages from the ‘Space Brothers.’[4] Among the contactees were George Adamski, George Van Tassel, and Orfeo Angelucci.[5]

Adamski claimed to have visited Mars, Venus, and Saturn; photographed UFOs in the Mojave Desert; and took plaster casts of footprints left by his initial contact, Orthon from Venus. Van Tassel was building a Venusian-style rejuvenation/time machine and hosted the annual Spacecraft Convention (1954-1977) at Giant Rock. The event attracted thousands of people as well as the occasional journalist or camera crew from a ‘reality’ television program.[6] For academics, the most interesting contactee may be Orfeo Angelucci, on whom Carl Jung spent an appendix in his Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky (1958). Similarly well traveled, Angelucci was more self-effacing than Adamski or Van Tassel. These contactees and others like them claimed to communicate with a steady stream of extraterrestrials.

Contactees provided a second discourse for UFO-media and mainstream media, though the latter generally ran these materials with a smirk. To the degree that contactee discourse reiterated nuts-and-bolts discourse by identifiying UFOs as alien spacecraft, the two primed sighters to see the same thing.

None of this is covered in Seeing. The simplification of UFO history creates an impression that people perceived and interpreted independently — without cultural frames. Seeing erases the priming discourses, thereby decontextualizing the phenomena, the sighters, and their interpretations. Also erased are the contactees — the historical progenitors of the abductees — whose flamboyant presence would undercut the implicit claim that all witnesses were solid citizens.

Seeing’s first section fails as good fluff because it oversimplifies. It ignores the delicious contradictions that put the ex-Marine Keyhoe and the scamp Adamski in the same cultural territory. By failing to take the contactees seriously, Seeing reproduces NICAP’s judgment about whose sightings count and whose don’t. The resulting history of UFOlogy is not reasonably accurate. Because Seeing does not engage the conflict between nuts-and-boltsers and contactees, it provides no insight into that conflict and no context for subsequent developments. Further, oversimplification sets up Seeing’s next problem: confusing what happened in Roswell with the Roswell Incident. More about that next time.

Notes:
Rich, Frank. (6 March 2005). “Gonzo Gone, Rather Going, Watergate Still Here,” New York Times, Arts & Leisure, section 2, page 1.
This contrasts with the overwhelming coverage of pseudo-crises like the Clinton Administration’s ‘Travelgate’ and ‘Monicagate.’
Show: Special Report (08 PM ET) – ABC, ABC News Transcripts, American Broadcasting Companies, 2005.
Although Space Sisters appeared in contactee stories, the community generally referred to the aliens as Space Brothers.
Full disclosure: Orfeo Angelucci’s nephew, Dominic Angelucci, and my husband, Alfred Babbitt, were boyhood friends. Dominic remains our friend and has no interest in UFOs.
The reality show You Asked for It (1950-1959) ran a segment on the convention in response to a letter from a viewer.

Links:
Frank Rich’s article (requires signing up for NY Times website)
ABC’s official page for Seeing
NICAP homepage

Please feel free to comment.

I beat the Rugrats to Paris by two years. In December, 1998, I was on an Air France flight from Houston to Paris. Rosy-fingered Eos was rising over Europe and our French flight attendants were distributing breakfasts. In the middle of the tray was a large container of applesauce whose foil cover was emblazoned with the faces of the Rugrats plugging their first movie. Like dozens of fellow travelers, I ripped off the cover, squenched it in my fist, and thereby helped delay another incursion of US corporate cultural imperialism into France. At least, that’s what I like to think.

The Rugrats are a good example of how almost any television program can become a franchise when the intellectual property is owned by a transindustrial media conglomerate. Creators Gsapo Csupo and Arlene Klasky pitched The Rugrats to Viacom, which acquired the property. The series premiered on Viacom’s Nickelodeon cable channel starting in 1991, running on Nick’s daytime schedule targeting children. Around 1994, Viacom reran it on the evening schedule targeting nostalgic but cool adults. Viacom built its Nick at Nite operation on such recirculation of television programs, relying on adult audiences to read old texts or texts meant for children in a different manner. That’s one form of synergy and it encourages the creation of new programs that are designed as polysemic and targeted for multiple types of consumers currently demanded by advertisers.

Another form of synergy involves moving the same symbolic universe intact across different media. (I’m looking for a term to describe this form of synergy and would appreciate suggestions.) Using this form of synergy, Viacom moved The Rugrats from television into film with The Rugrats Movie (1998). Two filmed sequels were made: Rugrats in Paris (2000) and Rugrats Go Wild! (2003). The last brought together the Rugrats and Viacom’s Wild Thornberrys, a Nick cartoon featuring a nuclear family. (The Internet Movie Database identifies the working title as Rugrats Meet the Wild Thornberrys.)

All this synergy allowed Viacom to ensure that its multiple operations would have recognizable products. Let’s take Rugrats in Paris as our core example and consider some of the products derived from it. Four products involved repackaging: taking all or part of the core product and generating ‘new’ products that reproduce some or all of the experience of the original. The film Rugrats in Paris was repackaged as a video and DVD — a fairly direct process in which the original product undergoes very little manipulation. More manipulation is involved in generating Rugrats in Paris: The Movie Storybook and the CD soundtrack. Storybooks typically use sections of the storyboard and script; soundtrack CDs use a film’s musical soundtrack. In both story books and CD soundtracks, the point is to reiterate the film, to promote the film, and to earn revenues for the film’s product line. It’s worth noting that Viacom had operations repackaging films as DVDs and videos (Paramount Home Entertainment), publishing books (Simon & Schuster), and renting DVDs and videos (Blockbuster).

Viacom also owned television venues, giving it the opportunity to recirculate Rugrats in Paris across its pay channels, digital channels, basic cable channels, and its broadcast networks, UPN and CBS. In recirculation, a product moves from one venue to another like from theaters to pay channels to basic channels to networks. Multiple recirculations fill the schedules of different venues with internally owned products. Viacom’s nostalgia operations — the TV Land cable channel and the Nick at Nite programming block — reposition very old products as pop culture classics.

Another form of synergy is recycling: incorporating parts of one product into another as with Viacom’s The Making of the Rugrats in Paris. Like any ‘making of,’ this one lifted bits of the Paris film and placed them in a new context. I don’t know if Viacom ran The Making of the Rugrats in Paris on its pay channels, which is standard industry practice. The piece did run as an episode on the VH1 series Behind the Movie, thus updating that channel’s targeted 18-49 year old audience on a film targeted for children. The Making of the Rugrats in Paris was subsequently released on video — another example of repackaging.

Finally, I’d like to go back to the original Rugrats and note one more type of synergy: spin offs. As everybody knows, these are television series derived from previous series. They typically maintain the armature of the original’s symbolic universe and one or more of the original characters. But, while keeping the same cultural rules, assumptions, presumptions, values, narrative structures, and character types, spin offs move to a new fictive site. For the Rugrats, the idea was floated in the special Rugrats: All Growed Up (2001). The premise was that the Rugrats had, as the title suggests, gotten older. Their post-Rugrat adventures were then presented in the 2003 series All Grown Up on Nick.

There is another type of synergy that Viacom has yet to apply to the Rugrats: redeployment. That is where the armature of a symbolic universe is lifted, emptied of its original characters, and used to generate an entirely new — yet, totally familiar — series. Having bought Paramount and its Star Trek franchise in 1993, Viacom has experience in redeployment from its Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. Imagine what could it do with Rugrats!

Oh — on my return flight originating in Paris, I was given two pleasant meals, neither involving licensed cartoon characters. I like to think of that as a gift. Viva la France!

Links:
Viacom
Nickelodeon
Rugrats on Nick
Paramount Home Entertainment

Please feel free to comment.

May is always hectic for folks in higher education. Last May brought the usual round of exams, term papers, graduations, and conferences as well as the last episode of Friends and an intense promotional campaign saturating television with ads for Van Helsing. Promising that “adventure has a new name,” the ads featured moody landscapes, a scary and scantily clad CGI vampire, and a moody Hugh Jackman shown variously with his gun, cross-bow, and a set of whirling blades reminiscent of power tools. The ad’s quick cutting made the film look like a romp through Dracula-land — exactly the kind of movie to wrap up a tough semester.

Despite good box office on its opening weekend, Van Helsing tanked. Even in Baton Rouge, where I live, the film was in trouble. A few weeks into the run, only two theaters listed Van Helsing in their newspaper ads: one screening at midnight, the other at 11:30 a.m. When I went to buy tickets for the morning show, I was told that Van Helsing was no longer on the schedule. Costing $200 million to produce and promote, Van Helsing was nowhere to be seen.

Such failures are not news and Van Helsing’s failure provided no fodder for the news. A $200 million flop is no big deal when everybody knows that the real money isn’t earned at the box office but through the licensing, tie ins, merchandising, and corporate synergy that attend every expensive title. But behind Van Helsing lurked a scary tale waiting to be told: General Electric’s purchase of Vivendi’s Universal Vivendi Entertainment unit, which made and released Van Helsing. On 11 May 2004, after 11 months of negotiation, GE finalized that $134 billion deal.

Much of the deal’s print coverage focused on NBC, not on its owner GE. Stories emphasized that NBC’s acquisition of Universal Studios would give it some parity with its rivals — Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, and Viacom — which owned studios and networks. The attitude can be paraphrased thus: “Nice to see that little NBC is joining the Big Boys at long last!” But NBC was already part of one of the biggest of the big corporations that operates out of the United States. And that story deserved telling.

Since 1892, General Electric has essentially manufactured patents that have industrial, military, and consumer applications. Recruited by the Navy Department as a member of the Radio Patent Pool during World War I, GE became a major player in wireless technology. In 1919, it founded RCA and its subsidiary NBC with the hope of monopolizing wireless. Although it maintained connections to the military throughout the 20th century, GE lost control of RCA in 1931 and regained it in 1986. Then GE sold off most of RCA, but kept and started expanding NBC. By 2002, as number five in the Fortune 500, GE was a sprawling conglomerate with vertically and horizontally integrated operations in the manufacturing, finance, services, and entertainment-information sectors of the global economy. In that year, GE had total sales of $15.1 billion according to its annual report. According to Hoover’s Online, nearly half of GE’s sales came from insurance, power systems, and commercial finance with NBC contributing only 5.4%.

Consider the context of NBC’s slight contribution. In finance, GE offers property insurance, specialized financial services, commercial finance, casualty insurance, and consumer finance. For manufacturers, GE makes materials like plastics, silicones, resins, laminates, and abrasives. All of these figure in its own manufacturing operations and products: aircraft engines, centrifugal compressors, gas turbines, industrial automation products, equipment to control and distribute electricity, locomotives, nuclear reactors, steam turbine generators, transportation system products, and household appliances bearing the GE, Hotpoint, Monogram, Profile, or Profile Performance brands. Finally, GE provides service for commercial aircraft, medical and network-based information services, technical services, and equipment management.

As a highly diversified conglomerate that vertically and horizontally integrates basic industries, GE’s presence in the global economy is far greater than that of Disney, News Corporation, Viacom, and Time Warner. But make no mistake, GE’s media empire is considerable indeed.

Unlike its four rivals in television, GE has infrastructural interests in satellites. Until 2002, GE owned satellites and tracking stations. In that year, GE traded them for a 31% stake in the world’s largest provider of satellite services, SES Global. Primary customers include governments and owners of television networks, cable channels, and radio networks. Today, GE owns 54 television stations and has access to 250 stations through network affiliation contracts. GE split those holdings between NBC (29 stations, 220 affiliates) and Telemundo (25 stations, 30 affiliates).

In cable channels, GE owns Bravo, Telemundo Internacional, and MUN2. Through joint ventures, GE intertwined its interests with various firms including Dow Jones, Microsoft, Disney, News Corporation, and Viacom. Specifically, GE held interests in A&E and A&E International (with Disney); American, European and Japanese versions of CNBC (Dow Jones); History and History International (Disney and Viacom); MSNBC (Microsoft); National Geographic and National Geographic International (News Corporation and the National Geographic Society); and ShopNBC (Value Vision Media).

Programming built further alliances. Since 2001, GE has leased three hours of NBC’s Saturday morning schedule to the Discovery Channel, owned by Liberty Media, Cox Cable, and Advance/Newhouse Communications — all owners of cable systems. GE and Time Warner share the rights to NASCAR races from 2001-2006. GE has consistently licensed programming from other network owners and co-produced shows with them. In 2002, GE licensed ER, Friends, Good Morning Miami, Third Watch, and West Wing from Time Warner and Frasier from Viacom. Viacom and GE produced Ed and In-Laws. These alliance-building practices persist.

Placing NBC in the context of GE’s other properties, corporate alliances, and vested interests changes our understanding of the NBC/Universal merger. Backed by GE, NBC is far from a weakling. Given GE’s military and governmental connections, its building of NBC into a multi-media giant raises questions about how NBC’s media serves GE. I’m betting that the answers are lots scarier than Van Helsing!

Links
Media Channel
GE
RCA
NBC

Please feel free to comment.