cover image: Humans meet aliens in anglophone contemporary sci-fi cinema : <i>District 9</i>, <i>Arrival</i>, and <i>Annihilation</i> as distinct representations of our relationships with the unknown

20.500.12592/19ej8ds

Humans meet aliens in anglophone contemporary sci-fi cinema : <i>District 9</i>, <i>Arrival</i>, and <i>Annihilation</i> as distinct representations of our relationships with the unknown

1 Jan 2022

It has been 53 years since humans first stepped on the moon. Since then, space exploration has been thriving as our interest in the universe has kept growing. In December 2021, the James Webb Telescope was sent into space and it now allows us to set our eyes on new things we could hardly discern in the past. “What is out there?” is a question we want an answer to and it is in science-fiction that our imagination attempts to illustrate give possible answers. In this study on the encounter between aliens and humans in contemporary science-fiction movies, we try to grasp the different representations of the unknown through three movies: Arrival (2016), Annihilation (2018) and District 9 (2009). In a first part, we focus on the arrival of aliens on Earth as perceived from the point of view of the protagonists and discuss the extradiegetic and intradiegetic purposes of their arrivals, the most important one being to challenge the preconceived ideas of the spectators. The second part puts a spotlight on the alternative apartheid presented by Neill Blomkamp through his satirical portrayal of his native Johannesburg in the mockumentary District 9 constitutes. The cosmic horror of self-destruction in Alex Garland’s Annihilation, and the biases as obstacles to the protagonist’s desire to understand the Heptapods in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, with TV & the Internet as sources of chaos, feeding the vicious cycle of human conflicts, in a time when global cooperation is required in the context of an enigma originating from Heptapods, which, of course, draws link with the context of our world at the beginning of this 21st century. The final part focuses on the newfound identities of the protagonists as they transcend their humanity after their contact with aliens or alien forces, raising the questions of potential insights into the future, our biological mortality and potential metamorphosis or further evolution. The aliens in the given representations act as distorted mirrors of ourselves; they are uncanny, and the unknown we relate them to is something that has always been within us. Therefore, the unknown does not exactly lie within the aliens themselves, but in the future ahead of the protagonists altered by these foreign creatures or forces from afar, an open future inviting us to imagine other visions for our own future.

Authors

Yohan Zueras

Bibliographic Reference
Yohan Zueras. Humans meet aliens in anglophone contemporary sci-fi cinema : District 9, Arrival, and Annihilation as distinct representations of our relationships with the unknown. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2022. &#x27E8;dumas-03933267&#x27E9;
HAL Collection
["Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour - E2S UPPA", "Pau et Pays de l'Adour (UPPA)", 'DUMAS', 'uppa-oa']
HAL Identifier
3933267
Institution
Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour
Laboratory
['Arts', 'Langages : Transitions et Relations']
Published in
France

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