American Cosmic
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1990s and 2000s. The memes incorporate a fundamental be-
lief that there is other intelligent life in the universe with a
concomitant recognition of doubt, thus brilliantly preserving
the potential believers’ credibility and sidestepping the issue
recognized by Jung: that no sensible person would admit to
belief in UFOs. Belief in the possibility of extraterrestrial life,
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however, is another thing altogether. Apparently, that belief
seems much more sensible.
Video and media productions about UFOs use
techniques that foster belief by creating realistic- appearing
images and scenarios, in the very sense that Zacks warned
about and that Brad Dancer referenced when he said that
“movies portraying aliens” are becoming increasingly con-
vincing. How could that be? An alien has never been found
that we know of, so how could production companies make a
product that is convincing? And just who is being convinced?
A clue to the ways in which audiences are being con-
vinced to believe in UFOs lies in a newish media genre called
specialist factual programming.14 Its focus is on making fac-
tual or historical events “special” with the help of digital
technologies. The mechanisms of fostering belief, such as re-
alist montage and “based on real events” taglines, are very ev-
ident in their products. The very name, “specialist factual,” is
full of irony, as Philip K. Dick uses a similar term in his 1966
short story “I Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” which
inspired the Total Recall movie franchises. The evil company
in Dick’s story produces “extra- factual memory,” implanting
virtual memories in people. Did the person who coined the
name of this new genre read Dick’s short story? In any case,
many contemporary production companies have units de-
voted to specialist factual programming. The genre, by de-
sign, uses the very techniques that foster the mixing of the
real and the unreal. It is appropriate to wonder how human
memory is affected by these kinds of productions.
The production company known as Impossible Factual
focuses exclusively on specialist factual productions, using
digital technologies to recreate historical events. They
claim to have “broken new ground in Specialist Factual
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programming, science, history and drama documentaries.”15
Their clients include National Geographic, the History
Channel, and the Smithsonian, all of which are known
to produce historical and other presumably factual
programing. One of their products, a documentary- style
film, splices digitized (and Photoshopped) extraterrestrials
into the very fabric of world history. What is the fabric of
world history? The pictures and narratives that we use to
remember it.
In the movie The Great Martian War 1913– 1917,
Impossible Factual uses realist montage to simulate World
War I, creating a war with an alien race that (obviously)
never real y happened. The movie took social media and tel-
evision by storm. Tellingly, the company describes its film
as a documentary, a designation usual y reserved for fac-
tual productions. In the overview the production company
mimics the tone used in descriptions of films about real- life
events:
A world- wide catastrophic conflict fought 100 years ago
between humankind and a savage race of extraterrestrial
invaders. A cast of modern- day historians and aging veterans
tell the story supported by a fusion of historical archive and
dazzling special effects. This unique allegorical tale of the
horror of war is a tribute to the real- world events of World
War One.
The producers offer the disclaimer that the film is an
“allegory,” but they also rank it with other, more factual
work: “Last year he [the CEO] originated a 90 minute fake
documentary/ drama telling the story of the Martian Invasion
of 1913 and a Four- part series about World War One for
History US.” This side- by- side placement (realist montage)
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establishes a relationship between these two things, one fac-
tual and the other fictional. The relationship is solidified
by an image in which the two are captioned in a similar
way: WWII’s Greatest Raids: TV Series Documentary and The
Great Martin War 1913– 1917: 2013 TV Movie Documentary.
How must the viewer interpret these images, so seam-
lessly presented, side by side? We know it is not real, but
Zacks’s research shows that our brains process the informa-
tion and then categorize these productions as equal y real-
istic. And what about young audience members, some of
whom believe in the survival of the extinct prehistoric shark
Magaledon because they have seen it portrayed in specialist
factual programming? How do they interpret the company’s
promotional pitch for The Great Martian Invasion?
UFOs and extraterrestrial scenarios lend themselves
to “fictionalized factual” productions for many reasons.
They’ve become a part of our lives through television
programs like Star Trek, movies like Star Wars, and a host
of others that came before and after these iconic American
productions. Cultural authorities like spokespersons from
NASA make regular announcements about potential non-
human life in the universe (albeit microbial or bacterial),
thus lending credibility to the existence of extraterrestrials.
Digital technology, utilizing techniques like realist mon-
tage, place extraterrestrials within images of ordinary life,
thus naturalizing their presence. The Great Martian War
1913– 1917 is just one among innumerable digital efforts to
insert UFOs, aliens, and galactic visitors into real cultural
histories. In my research, I came across so many examples
of this development that I am willing to label it a trend. The
trend is both “top down,” in that companies like Sky Cinema
have produced short videos that insert Star Wars characters
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into ordinary life, and “bottom up,” as private citizens have
created websites and other productions that do the same.
The result is that there are a slew of videos and other visual
media of extraterrestrials that live side by side with our most
familiar and important historical events— and within the
fabric of our ordinary lives.
One of the best examples of this trend can be found on
the popular website If Star Wars Was Real (ISWWR). The
website features iconic photographs of well- known events
such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the explo-
sion of the Hindenburg blimp. Characters from Star Wars,
such as the robot R2D2 and stormtroopers, are expertly
introduced into the photos to look as if they were present
when these events happened. It is
at first quite difficult to
pick out the alien characters because they look so natural and
are so expertly Photoshopped into the American landscapes.
The creator of ISWWR’s tongue-
in-
cheek mission
solicits others to embark on a journey to reveal a hidden his-
tory. He wryly invokes the potential realism of the project
and asks others to help in the mission of locating the lost
“real” photographs of the characters from Star Wars:
If you’re a Star Wars fan, you probably, often think of it and dis-
cuss it with your friends as if Star Wars was real. So much infor-
mation exists on planets, species, technology and the force, that
it might as well be! In fact, you may know more about Star Wars
than you do about the “real world.” We all know what a creative
genius George Lucas was as a story teller, and we also know of his
passion for history, which caused us to ask the question: “How
much of Star Wars is influenced by real events in the past?”
To answer this question we began contacting historians,
libraries and archives all over the world and were sur-
prised to find that many of them actual y knew of
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photographs or documents that could definitely be the
“ancestors” of objects and/ or creatures in the Star Wars uni-
verse. However, in each case the evidence seemed to have
disappeared sometime in the early 1970s. As we continued
to probe into this further more and more national archives
in several countries closed their doors to our investigation.
Then individuals started coming forward with personal items
such as, photographs, artifacts, even old currency that gave us
evidence that, not only was Star Wars influenced by history,
some of it may actual y be real! This website endeavors to cat-
alog and display any proof we can find that Star Wars is real.
If you have evidence of this amazing fact, please share it with
us. Though national archives around the world are choosing to
keep it quiet, you can help us expose this global secret and add
to the phenomena that is Star Wars.16
I reached out to the creator of ISWWR. He wanted me to
know that he was ful y aware that Star Wars is not real, and
that the characters are fictional. He did not want me to write
that those participating in the quest to “uncover” the lost Star
Wars photos believed it was true in any way. I assured him
that I wouldn’t, as I believe him and I also believe that the
people who make the specialist factual productions are aware
of the distinction between what is real and what is virtual y
real. That was not the focus of my interest in his project, in
any case. My point is that researchers find that our brains
process visual and digital imagery in a different way from
what we suppose. Exposure to films and media that mimic
real life fosters belief and can impact memory.
In another example of the “Star Wars in ordinary life”
trend, photographer Thomas Dagg created a project he
called “Star Wars” in which he recreated the scenes of his
youth, with the addition of characters from Star Wars. He
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explains how he imagines his childhood: “If it was a blizzard
outside I always thought of Hoth. If I saw a jogger I would
imagine them with Yoda on their back like Luke Skywalker.
That was my childhood.” Dagg was surprised by the pop-
ularity of his project: “Since it was such a personal project
I didn’t expect it to blow up, but it’s been crazy how many
other people have identified with it.”17 Dagg, twenty- four,
relates that it was Star Wars that motivated him to become
an artist.
Yet another example is a short video that mimics the
genre of the Russian dash cam videos, a popular form of
voyeuristic entertainment. Usual y, these videos record car
crashes in snowy conditions on slippery highways. The
stormtrooper version opens like a typical dash cam video.
The viewer sees that the car is fast approaching a crash.
But the crash does not involve a car or truck. Instead,
a stormtrooper stands on the side of the road next to his
crashed imperial TIE fighter; if you blink, you will miss it.
But it was there. The video, which lasts only thirty seconds,
boasts over two million views. The credits on the video link
it to Lucasfilm, and it’s possible that it was created as adver-
tising for the Star Wars franchise.
Videos featuring Star Wars characters spliced into or-
dinary life are so popular that they have generated a new,
grassroots genre. One of the best examples is “Death Star
over San Francisco,” created by Michael Horn.18 The video,
which has over three and a half million views, shows various
objects from the Star Wars franchise in ordinary scenes in
San Francisco. The Death Star hovers over one of the street
demonstrations that are common in San Francisco. People
play on the beach as TIE fighters hover nearby. All of this
looks quite ordinary, and none of the citizens take notice.
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The realism of the video has attracted a lot of attention, in-
cluding an interview with Horn in Wired. “Lucas has not
called me yet,” Horn says, “but if he did, I’d certainly express
my gratitude toward him for making my childhood so mag-
ical. His cultural and technological legacy is enormous. My
favorite Star Wars films are the original trilogy, and of the
newer trilogy, I’d oddly have to say Phantom Menace was my
favorite.”19
Early in my research I interviewed a computer pro-
grammer who was working on Oculus Rift, an immersive
virtual reality program contained in a headset, which was
subsequently sold to Facebook. Due to the nature of his
work, he requested anonymity. He was filled with excite-
ment about the potential of the project— he said that he was
working on a revolution. One thing he said struck me as very
significant; it had to do with his experience working in the
headset environments:
I work hard and I’m in the set (the IVR set) for a good portion
of the day. Sometimes I remember things and then I realize
that what I’ve remembered is not real. It happened in the set,
or maybe it never happened. This experience feels like a déjà
vu, but what’s scary to me is that I am not real y sure, was it a
memory of something that real y happened, or, did it happen
in the set? I just can’t remember.20
I do not take these productions to be metaphors. They
are real- life examples that reveal how fictional characters
from Star Wars, as well as other intergalactic objects like
UFOs and extraterrestrials, exist as realities that inhabit
our childhood and adult memories and inform our future
behaviors. They are cultural realities, infused with meaning
and emotion.
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A N E W F O R M O F R E L I G I O N
As a professor of religion, I am often asked to present my
research to community groups. On one occasion, I gave a
presentation on the interpretation of aerial phenomena in
several religious traditions. There were about fifty people
in attendance. Toward the end, I mentioned the religion
Jediism, which is inspired by the Star Wars franchise.
Usual y when I speak of Jediism, people laugh, and this
occasion was no different. For the record, I do not laugh
at any religious tradition. After the presentation was over
I was approached by a man and his son. He waited until the
people around me dispersed, and then he told me that he
was a practitioner of one of the religious traditions I had
mentioned.
“Buddhism?” I asked.
“No.”
“Christianity?”
“No.”
I then immediately knew he was a Jedi, and I felt bad the
audience had laughed when I had mentioned his religious
tradition.
“You are a Jedi!” I exclaimed.
He smiled proudly. He was a Jedi Knight.
Star Wars characters not only inhabit our virtual land-
scape but also have inspired a religious movement. In 2002,
I became aware that a group of people had claimed Star Wars
as their religion on a census in the United Kingdom, as a
joke. I used this as an example to show my students that de-
fining religion is not easy, but I was certain that it wouldn’t be
relevant in another year. Yet this event, along with other, in-
dependent developments, soon became part of a movement
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that endured, and now there are official religious groups
that claim Star Wars as their sacred “scripture.”21 Critics
claim that it is not a real religion because it is based on a
movie. Religions general y propose truth claims regarding a
transcendent, or supernatural, element. Movies do not. Yet
thousands of practitioners of Jediism believe that there is a
transcendent and supernatural element within Star Wars—
the Force. Of course, the Force is only one of many themes in
Star Wars movies, but practitioners of Jediism reserve unique
autonomy for the Force, apart from its fictional status.
According to Jedi practitioners, George Lucas based the
movies on religious philosophies including Daoism and Zen