The Auteurs Behind UFOs
If UFOs are a form of art, what are the goals of their artists?
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Art is an interesting thing. What starts as a thought in the artist's head gets transformed into something tangible in the real world – sculpture, painting, manuscript, movie, etc. – via their hands. Just where the idea comes from is a mystery, and how it will manifest as the artist brings it to life is equally uncertain – a fact this author can attest to. As Orson Welles once said, "A director is someone who presides over accidents."
The UFO phenomenon is equally perplexing in its origin and manifestation, which is undoubtedly why some draw parallels between it and art.
In his 1990 book Confrontations, Jacques Vallée writes, "UFO encounters are complete frameworks into which the personality of the witness becomes projected. Like a movie that terrifies you, makes you cry, laugh, or perspire in anguish, the experience becomes part of the witness's reality. The ufologists behave like social researchers who, trying to understand the phenomenon of the cinema, would randomly interview people coming out of the theatres and take their testimony at face value; like the UFO witnesses, these people are not lying. Some of them have seen Godzilla, others have seen Bambi. The experience, in every case, was real to them.
"But the reality we should inquire about, the reality UFO researchers are often ignoring, is the movie projector high up in a small, dark, locked room near the ceiling. In that room is the technology that will give you both Bambi and Godzilla, Star Wars and, yes, even Close Encounters."
Vallée's comparison between film and UFOs is apt in some ways. Though, as I've often observed in similar art/paranormal phenomena metaphors, it ends at the wrong spot. The projectionist's booth isn't where the art of film originates from, that's simply how it's distributed. The movie was written, shot and directed at multiple locations across various periods of time.
A film is born from a team of artists of varied skill sets working together to bring something to life. Thus, when we compare the UFO phenomenon to art, it's time we began thinking about the artists creating it.
Movie Magic
One of the things that makes movies such a captivating and nuanced art form is that they are the culmination and combination of many different arts into one. Writing, music, photography and acting combine into a final product unlike any separate one. Likewise, while the scriptwriter and cinematographer's name will each appear in the film's end credits, what each does to bring a movie from concept to reality is vastly different.
Movies themselves vary widely as well, from experimental arthouse films helmed by auteurs to crowd-pleasing summer blockbusters, the movie as an art form doesn't adhere to any one style.
Additionally, what will make a movie successful isn't an easily deduced formula. Some strike on long-term magic, as was the case with Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), which enjoyed a long run of multimillion, sometimes billion-dollar success from 2008 to 2019. Many others are not so lucky.
However, box office returns are just one indicator of a movie's success, and many have debated whether films like the MCU should be classified as art or something more akin to rollercoaster rides.
When people think of movies as art and "cinema," it's usually work made by some form of an auteur director, people like Lars von Trier, David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. Each has distinct styles and tackles specific themes, and sometimes their works are a commercial success, but it's not necessarily the central goal of any auteur.
Take Lynch, for example. Films like Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire are filled with strange, dream-like imagery and logic that's hard for the average moviegoer to get their head around. In fact, even the greatest Lynch devotee can't tell you for certain what is happening in his films. Only Lynch knows for certain because it's his singular vision he's bringing to life for the one person that really matters – David Lynch.
Yet, maintaining a vision and creating for oneself are not limited to the classic auteur. Are the cult films of John Waters not visionary in the sense they portray Waters' transgressive worldview, even if many may find his films purposely crude? Or what about Damien Leone's grindhouse-inspired horror franchise Terrifier, where story and plot are secondary to showcasing gruesome special effects? Is Leone crafting art or just horror shows?
From Lynch to Waters and even Leone, all are artists creating something not necessarily to please the masses but themselves. They're bringing their ideas and visions to life through cinema and finding an audience after the fact. It's the "if you build it, they will come" philosophy of art. Please yourself and eventually, with some luck, your audience will appear.
The UFO Audience
With this in mind, it's time we ask the tricky question behind the artists of the UFO – are they going for an MCU crowd-pleaser or creating something for themselves?
Certainly, the phenomenon enjoys an audience. Throughout the annals of UFO history and reports, there are accounts of UFOs seemingly taking note of being noticed and then interacting with the observers.
The Betty and Barney Hill incident is a good example. What started out with the Hills observing an odd light in the sky turned into an abduction. Yet, in their account, the odd light didn't start to close in on them until they took note of it. They looked at it through binoculars and drove slowly to not lose sight of it, while at the same time, the UFO put on a more dazzling display as it drew nearer to its audience.
Was the object the Hills saw a show being put on by some celestial artist who, upon discovering someone had stopped to watch, couldn't help but pull out all the stops? Saying, "If you two like that, just wait until we get to the third act."
Of course, if the Hills knew what they were unwittingly signing up for, then they may not have opted to watch. And this might be where the real question comes in – why do some get access all the way up to the projectionist's booth while others never even step inside the theater?
When you can turn the sky into a silver screen at any given time, it's only natural some will see the show while others won't. Yet, some folks go out night after night hoping to view something and gain nothing. On the flip side, there are folks with no interest who suddenly find themselves with front-row seats to a show. Why is one group refused a ticket despite pounding on the box office windows while the other is whisked in through the VIP entrance? Is it merely a matter of luck?
I'm sure there are filmmakers out there who would love the idea of a one-time pop-up screening with little to no advance notice. If you happen to be in the theater, congratulations! If not, tough luck.
Do the artists behind the UFOs have similar avant-garde sensibilities?
It all comes down again to the question of whether the art of the UFO is made for someone else or for the artist. You would think that if the UFO artists wanted a commercial hit, they'd have put one out by now in the form of an MCU-like crowd-pleaser. Instead, the UFOs stick to the art houses, letting folks like Whitley Strieber relay the strange sights of their latest midnight screening to the masses.
Everyone's a Critic
Maybe it all comes down to this: we're not supposed to get it.
If there's one throughline between the works of the auteur filmmaker, it's that they show more than tell. Their work is presented for the conscious mind, but only the subconscious will truly grasp it, making putting what's been seen into words difficult.
If the artists behind the UFO have any goal with their performances, it must be to leave the viewers with some lasting change and new perspectives.
Of course, like any art, not everyone might get what they're trying to do or care about it in the first place. For every person who studies the minutia of Lynch's work, there's another who just wants to see Terrifier's Art the Clown saw a woman in half. Neither is wrong in their taste, but the UFO artists clearly have an audience in mind when they're storyboarding their next performance. Otherwise, every night the sky would be full of blockbusters.
To return to Vallée's analogy, while the projectionist's booth may be the wrong place to focus, he did get the angle of the misguided researcher right. If we are ever to understand the intentions of the UFO artists, we'll have to shift focus from what people have seen to how they viewed it.
As they're spoken to leaving the theater, whether they saw Bambi or Godzilla matters less than the effect it had on them. How are they a different person now from when they first sat down to view the movie? What impact did the filmmaker's art have on them, and why?
The audience might have a hard time putting it all into words, but short of a one-on-one interview with the director, it's the best we'll get for now when trying to understand the art behind the UFO.
And for all we know, the UFO artists might just be happy someone's watching.