Mirage in the sky

 

 
 

U.F.O.s!    Conspiracies!    Giant penises in the sky!

 

These are a few of my favourite things. Ahem...where was I?

Oh, that's right. I can't remember the last film I watched in the cinema; it's certainly not in the three and a half years I've lived in New Zealand. Nor can I remember the last DVD I watched that wasn't a childrens' movie.


So I'm going to do something post-modern, recommend  a documentary film I haven't seen. I have read the book of the same name though; in fact on the plane that brought me to New Zealand.

Both the book and the film are about U. F. O. conspiracies. Yes, my favourite combination-U.F.O.s AND conspiracies.

A slight digression about the term  'U. F. O.'
U.F.O. means Unidentified Flying Object. Unidentified means you don't know what it is so you can't use it as shorthand for alien spaceship or similar because if you knew that's what it was, it wouldn't be unidentified.


 Both the book and the film of Mirage Men, were written by Mark Pilkington and the latter directed by John Lundberg.



What is really important about it (I can't be bothered saying both of them all the time; so I'm treating them as a single artefact. So there...) is the way they examine the U.F.O. phenomenon from the inside out. It's not looking at what they are or where they (?) come from but instead the development of the phenomenon  from the 1940s and who has been involved. Many years ago, when I read a couple of (American) books on the subject, I found it strange that so many people with an interest in U.F.O.s had military and/or intelligence connections.

The attitude of the standard UFO buff is that THE government, usually the US, is covering up the truth about aliens etc; Pilkington and Lundberg's argument is that there is considerable evidence that American state agencies, in particular, the C.IA., have played an extensive role in creating and developing what we know as the UFO phenomenon.

Pilkington has set out a completely different narrative of U.F.O. history from its early post war days, by sniffing out and exposing decades of disinformation that continues to this day. It's also interesting that some of the alleged key documents about the subject, for instance Majestic 12, appear to have been the inspiration behind much of the X-files series. There seems to have been a continual interplay between those promoting U.F.O.s and Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment industry. To the extent that a number of sci-fi films had extensive support from the military.

An interview with Mark Pilkington here gives a good flavour of the Mirage Men project. It's definitely worth reading/watching.