THE NEW YORK TIMES
Aliens Have Never Been More Alluring
Why pop culture now flirts with extraterrestrials as much as it fears them.
By June Thomas Jan. 9, 2024
“Every generation gets the extraterrestrial invasion its times demand. In 1938, conflicts simmering in Europe meant that a radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” became a panic-inducing news event in America. In the McCarthy era, manufactured paranoia about Communists led to movies like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956) and “I Married a Monster From Outer Space” (1958). The terrors of the Cold War coincided with the skittering xenomorph of “Alien” (1979), a conscienceless creature willing to destroy humanity to ensure its own survival.
In one work from the show, “Self-Fulfilling Prophecy II” (2023) by Cable Griffith, an abstract alien object, sketched by his 7-year-old son, floats above a neighbor’s house. The effect is disarming — the vast unknown juxtaposed with the achingly mundane surroundings of suburbia. And in “Domestic Visitation I, II, and III” (2023), a dyed-fabric canvas onto which Griffith heat transferred images of famous alleged U.F.O. sightings along with other spacecraft generated by A.I., it’s almost as if aliens were artistic collaborators. “It was important to me that they weren’t my own imaginings,” says Griffith. “The images were everybody’s and nobody’s.” One of the last things we humans have in common, after all, is the lure of the nonhuman: hope from above…”