Life After Contact
About this episode
The episode explores the complex futures imagined in Hollywood regarding humanity's interactions with extraterrestrials after first contact.
What happens after first contact—when the ships have landed, the shooting has stopped, and the aliens aren’t going anywhere? Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman explore the surprisingly complicated futures Hollywood has imagined for humanity once extraterrestrials become conquerors, occupiers, refugees, neighbors, employers, enemies—or even romantic partners. And they confront the question every one of us would eventually have to answer: would you join the resistance, collaborate with the new regime, try to play both sides—or just keep your head down and hope the lights stay on? From the guerrilla warfare of Falling Skies and the fascist occupation of V to the surveillance state of Captive State and Colony , the stories keep returning to the same uncomfortable truth: alien invasion movies are usually talking about us. Alien Nation turns extraterrestrials into immigrants. District 9 makes them refugees trapped in an apartheid system. Defiance imagines multiple species attempting to build a society together, while Pluribus offers perhaps the strangest possibility of…
People in this episode
Hosts: Bryce Zabel, Brent Friedman
Topics covered
- alien contact
- science fiction
- humanity
- extraterrestrial
- society
- resistance
- collaboration
Keywords
- alien invasion
- Hollywood
- first contact
- extraterrestrials
- society
- immigrants
- refugees
- occupation
- collaboration
- resistance
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Falling Skies, Captive State, Colony, Alien Nation, District 9, Defiance, Pluribus
More episodes of Sound, Light & Frequency
- Project Blue Book: UFO TV Creators Talk Shop
- The X-Files: The Truth Is Complicated
- ET Walks Into a Bar
- Peaks and Valleys of Woo
- Stranded on Earth
- Making (and faking) Aliens
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