seriously?
despite all the good press for district 9, i confess i remain on the fence. though not so much about the plot, which seems very cool and somewhat timely. what annoys me is this: i have to imagine that the best part about making an alien movie is having free reign to decide what they look like - literally, the cleanest slate in the world from which to work [pun averted]. which is why im always baffled when cinematographers trot out the same bogusly chimeric humanoid+scales/trunks bullshit time after time. in deference to star wars, they didn’t have access to modern CGI, so they’re somewhat forgiven. but seriously: who decided that every extraterrestrial has to be a) slimy/scaled; and b) extremely ugly; while c) maintaining discernable and familiar body parts like heads, limbs, and facial features? luckily, the aliens in district 9 meet all the requirements.
enter mark hauser, offering a possible evolutionary explanation for our intergalactic lameness [and totally stealing my thunder]:
But here’s the rub on science fiction: it’s all basically the same stuff, one gimmick with a small twist. Look at all the aliens in these movies. They are always the same, a bit wispy, often with oversized heads, see through body parts, and with awesome powers. And surprisingly, this is how it has been for 75 or so years of Hollywood, even though our technologies have greatly expanded the range of special effects that are possible. Why the lack of creativity? Why such a poverty of the imagination?
The answer is simple, and reveals a deep fact about our biology, and the biology of all other organisms. The brain, as a physical device, evolved to process information and make predictions about the future. Though the generative capacity of the brain, especially the human brain, is spectacular — providing us with a system for massive creativity, it is also highly constrained. The constraints arise from both the physics of brain operation, as well as the requirements of learnability.
What is exciting about these ideas is that they have a family resemblance to those that Noam Chomsky mapped out over 50 years ago in linguistics. That is, the biology that allows us to acquire a range of possible languages, also puts constraints on this system, leaving in its wake a space of impossible languages, those that could never be acquired or if acquired, would never remain stable. And the same moves can be translated into other domains of cultural expression, including music, morality, and mathematics. Are there musical scores that no one, not even John Cage, could dream up because the mind can’t fathom certain frequencies and temporal arrangements? Are there evolvable moral systems that we will never see because our current social systems and environments make these toxic to our moral sensibilities? Regardless of how these questions are resolved, they open up new research opportunities, using methods that are only now being refined.
granted. but still: the extant instances of cinematic brilliance when it comes to portraying aliens leads me to think we could be doing significantly better on this front.
