spookyparadigm
Skilled Investigator
On the Socorro episode of the show.
Anyone have an idea what that is?
Anyone have an idea what that is?
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Roswell through Anthropology Book Mentioned by Chris O'Brien?
- Thread starter spookyparadigm
- Start date
Free episodes:
UFO Crash at Roswell: Genesis of a Modern Myth by Benson Saler and Charles Ziegler and Charles Moore
Amazon.com: UFO Crash at Roswell: Genesis of a Modern Myth (9781568527079): Benson Saler, Charles Ziegler and Charles Moore: Books
Amazon.com: UFO Crash at Roswell: Genesis of a Modern Myth (9781568527079): Benson Saler, Charles Ziegler and Charles Moore: Books
spookyparadigm
Skilled Investigator
Oh.
That's about 12 years old. And basically has one worthwhile chapter, while the rest is just boilerplate fluff about myth and religion.
The problems with that book are what made me do this (note it is in several parts, just follow link at the end of each section).
Spooky Paradigm: Evolution of the Crashed Saucer Legend: Serialized for the 60th Roswell Anniversary (Part 1)
According to Amazon the book came out in 2008. I have read excerpts and it seemed to me that the book was much more than just "boilerplate fluff about myth and legend," as you put it.
Cosma Rohilla Shalizi, an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, has written over 100 book reviews for the Bactra Review and this is what he observed about the recent book The Roswell Incident: Genesis of a Modern Myth:
The authors classify the Roswell folk narrative as a myth because it is (1) not regarded as fiction by its tellers and (2) concerned with a ``transcendental’’ subject, namely the existence of non-human intelligence. In fact it falls under entry number A1481 in Stith Thompson’s standard index of folk-tale motifs: “A malevolent monster (the government) has sequestered an item essential to humankind (wisdom of a transcendental nature, i.e., evidence-based knowledge that we are not alone in the universe). The culture hero (the UFOlogist circumvents the monster and (by investigatory prowess) releases the essential item (wisdom) for humankind.” Not only that, but it serves the social functions outlined in Malinowski’s classical theory of myths, that of a "charter’’ for the beliefs and practices of the subculture, and indeed an example to be imitated. Among other things, it warrants suspicion and hostility towards the US government, if not others, in part explaining its recent popularity outside the circle of dedicated believers... the authors have shown that that truth one way or the other has nothing to do with why people believe it. (his emphasis)
Cosma Rohilla Shalizi, an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg, has written over 100 book reviews for the Bactra Review and this is what he observed about the recent book The Roswell Incident: Genesis of a Modern Myth:
The authors classify the Roswell folk narrative as a myth because it is (1) not regarded as fiction by its tellers and (2) concerned with a ``transcendental’’ subject, namely the existence of non-human intelligence. In fact it falls under entry number A1481 in Stith Thompson’s standard index of folk-tale motifs: “A malevolent monster (the government) has sequestered an item essential to humankind (wisdom of a transcendental nature, i.e., evidence-based knowledge that we are not alone in the universe). The culture hero (the UFOlogist circumvents the monster and (by investigatory prowess) releases the essential item (wisdom) for humankind.” Not only that, but it serves the social functions outlined in Malinowski’s classical theory of myths, that of a "charter’’ for the beliefs and practices of the subculture, and indeed an example to be imitated. Among other things, it warrants suspicion and hostility towards the US government, if not others, in part explaining its recent popularity outside the circle of dedicated believers... the authors have shown that that truth one way or the other has nothing to do with why people believe it. (his emphasis)
spookyparadigm
Skilled Investigator
That's a republication by different publishers. The original was a Smithsonian Institution Press volume published to coincide with the 50th anniversary.
Here's the Amazon record for that version (apparently a paperback version came out in 2002, which I was not aware of)
http://www.amazon.com/UFO-CRASH-ROSWELL-SALER-BENSON/dp/1560987510/ref=sr_oe_4_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254893801&sr=1-4
I call it boilerplate because other than two chapters (the main section early on that details the "six" versions of the tale, though in reality a couple of those are minor variations by the same authors, with subsequent editions/modifications in press; and the section by Moore on the Mogul experiments) the rest is virtually all generic discussion of myth, and trying to cram Roswell in there.
You might argue that Roswell became something like a charter myth, but retroactively, decades after both the supposed events AND the creation of the larger saucer/UFO myth. Of course, one might then note that that crashed saucer stories, not tied directly to Roswell, were circulating around since perhaps as early as 1948, and definitely by 1950. Why not start there? Well, because that would require more research on the part of the authors and probably not getting the book on shelves by mid-1997, but it also would make it harder to explain why such stories went virtually unnoticed for thirty years.
Instead, Roswell makes more sense as a reactionary story. It's no accident that crash stories and government intrigue take hold in the late 1970s and 1980s. First, they are a direct rebuttal of the hoodoo (what everyone else would probably group as Fortean) approach to ufology that was gaining ground in the 1970s with proponents like Vallee (sort of indirectly), Hynek, Keel, at the time J. Clark, and others. They do provide a purpose and something to chase, and yes, there is a hint of following in the footsteps of Watergate.
But they're also reflective of the rise of the conservative movement in the US, just as the fortean approach to ufology occurs during and trailing after the most prominent years of the counterculture. Heck, even the personalities involved, regardless of their politics, fit the stereotypes of the counterculture and the Reagan era: the Forteans have freethinkers, intellectuals, gonzo journalists going on about other dimensions with a hint of eastern philosophy (tulpas anyone?), while the crash investigators are engineers and military folks chasing government spooks. Crash tales, just like the politics of the Reagan years, dive right back into the Cold War, with objects that can be quantified and exist, instead of being nebulous, all of it behind cloak and dagger of spies and moles and informants. Even the big bad government element aligns nicely with the small government rhetoric of the Reagan revolution and the modern conservative movement.
After the Cold War ends, the meaning shifts again to some degree (with all the mythmaking by Doty and others, Roswell becomes the moment of a Faustian bargain, when America gives up its principles and establishes important secrets against its own people, ultimately selling them out to abducting aliens, sort of like how with the creation of the National Security State also starting in 1947 with the National Security Act and the CIA), and while it becomes more popular due to the inertia and snowballing of books and most importantly the 1994 Roswell film for Showtime, it doesn't resonate in quite the same way. It is at this time that Roswell becomes a charter myth, especially on the popular level, and you have as the review notes, all the copies of it in different crash stories, with the exception of a few that existed independently (Kecksberg, Shag Harbor, for example).
I think that's actually interesting, instead of just hand-waving Roswell off as myth divorced both from the history of ufos, and from the larger cultural context.
Also thinking about this, tangentially I'd note how weird it was to visit the Roswell festival in 2002, and have on the one hand vague feelings against government actions complete with the military making death threats against civilians, woven right in with 4th of July celebrations (it is noteworthy that the date of crash changes in one of the Randall and Schmidt versions and then is picked up by others, in the early 1990s, to the 4th of July) lots of nostalgic military-centric 1940s imagery and themes, flag waving, and the like. Even in the discussion of the incident, other than the death threats, the secret doesn't seem so bad, and the stock line "people didn't question the government back in those days" seems less like a statement of fact or even a criticism/lament, and more like wistful reflection on the current state of affairs. Corso's book is probably the clearest expression of this sort of turnaround (though the most famous version is in the film Independence Day, where the secrecy of the Roswell craft saves the world), where keeping the secret allows America to become prosperous and technologically superior, wins the Cold War, and saves the human race from alien threats.
Here's the Amazon record for that version (apparently a paperback version came out in 2002, which I was not aware of)
http://www.amazon.com/UFO-CRASH-ROSWELL-SALER-BENSON/dp/1560987510/ref=sr_oe_4_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254893801&sr=1-4
I call it boilerplate because other than two chapters (the main section early on that details the "six" versions of the tale, though in reality a couple of those are minor variations by the same authors, with subsequent editions/modifications in press; and the section by Moore on the Mogul experiments) the rest is virtually all generic discussion of myth, and trying to cram Roswell in there.
You might argue that Roswell became something like a charter myth, but retroactively, decades after both the supposed events AND the creation of the larger saucer/UFO myth. Of course, one might then note that that crashed saucer stories, not tied directly to Roswell, were circulating around since perhaps as early as 1948, and definitely by 1950. Why not start there? Well, because that would require more research on the part of the authors and probably not getting the book on shelves by mid-1997, but it also would make it harder to explain why such stories went virtually unnoticed for thirty years.
Instead, Roswell makes more sense as a reactionary story. It's no accident that crash stories and government intrigue take hold in the late 1970s and 1980s. First, they are a direct rebuttal of the hoodoo (what everyone else would probably group as Fortean) approach to ufology that was gaining ground in the 1970s with proponents like Vallee (sort of indirectly), Hynek, Keel, at the time J. Clark, and others. They do provide a purpose and something to chase, and yes, there is a hint of following in the footsteps of Watergate.
But they're also reflective of the rise of the conservative movement in the US, just as the fortean approach to ufology occurs during and trailing after the most prominent years of the counterculture. Heck, even the personalities involved, regardless of their politics, fit the stereotypes of the counterculture and the Reagan era: the Forteans have freethinkers, intellectuals, gonzo journalists going on about other dimensions with a hint of eastern philosophy (tulpas anyone?), while the crash investigators are engineers and military folks chasing government spooks. Crash tales, just like the politics of the Reagan years, dive right back into the Cold War, with objects that can be quantified and exist, instead of being nebulous, all of it behind cloak and dagger of spies and moles and informants. Even the big bad government element aligns nicely with the small government rhetoric of the Reagan revolution and the modern conservative movement.
After the Cold War ends, the meaning shifts again to some degree (with all the mythmaking by Doty and others, Roswell becomes the moment of a Faustian bargain, when America gives up its principles and establishes important secrets against its own people, ultimately selling them out to abducting aliens, sort of like how with the creation of the National Security State also starting in 1947 with the National Security Act and the CIA), and while it becomes more popular due to the inertia and snowballing of books and most importantly the 1994 Roswell film for Showtime, it doesn't resonate in quite the same way. It is at this time that Roswell becomes a charter myth, especially on the popular level, and you have as the review notes, all the copies of it in different crash stories, with the exception of a few that existed independently (Kecksberg, Shag Harbor, for example).
I think that's actually interesting, instead of just hand-waving Roswell off as myth divorced both from the history of ufos, and from the larger cultural context.
Also thinking about this, tangentially I'd note how weird it was to visit the Roswell festival in 2002, and have on the one hand vague feelings against government actions complete with the military making death threats against civilians, woven right in with 4th of July celebrations (it is noteworthy that the date of crash changes in one of the Randall and Schmidt versions and then is picked up by others, in the early 1990s, to the 4th of July) lots of nostalgic military-centric 1940s imagery and themes, flag waving, and the like. Even in the discussion of the incident, other than the death threats, the secret doesn't seem so bad, and the stock line "people didn't question the government back in those days" seems less like a statement of fact or even a criticism/lament, and more like wistful reflection on the current state of affairs. Corso's book is probably the clearest expression of this sort of turnaround (though the most famous version is in the film Independence Day, where the secrecy of the Roswell craft saves the world), where keeping the secret allows America to become prosperous and technologically superior, wins the Cold War, and saves the human race from alien threats.