On this Labor Day I ponder the way we in the US treat immigrant laborers, especially the hubris of labeling them “aliens,” much less “illegal.” Our nation and its highly flawed mechanisms for dealing with immigration have a long way to go. Because we’re going backward as opposed to forward when it comes to the horrific abuse heaped on immigrants who work or are actively seeking work as day laborers—only to be snatched out of Home Depot parking lots by unidentifiable thugs who break laws themselves with seeming impunity.
And, as aways, the question arises, why are these immigrants who contribute to our communities and our economy the only ones arrested, but nary an indictment for those who hire them? If they are not here “legally,” then why are those citizens aiding and abetting the situation—actually, they’re taking advantage of cheap labor at the expense of the immigrant—never arrested for their crimes?
In times like these, another question comes to mind regarding actual aliens—of the extraterrestrial kind. This query is also posed with respect to religious figures like Jesus, and it asks, if these entities were to approach anyone in the US and claim to be from another planet or a messiah, how would we respond? How would our systems handle this potentially momentous occasion?
One movie from 2001 that I recently stumbled upon on Amazon Prime answered it quite succinctly. K-PAX, starring Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, and an underutilized Alfe Woodard, is described as a sci-fi mystery, but I was thrilled to see one description use the literary genre term speculative, as in a speculative drama. Given the story involves a man who claims to be an alien from a distant peaceful planet called K-PAX, and my Other Worldly novels about aliens are inherently speculative fantasy fiction.
But here’s the deal. The man (Spacey) who calls himself Prot—an odd name that’s never really explained—is in a New York mental institution precisely because he claims to be an alien from another planet. And that’s not speculative at all, when you just know this is how our nation would treat any being claiming to be something we cannot fathom or understand, and are therefore inevitably threatened by merely for being different from us.
Prot’s psychiatrist (Bridges) tries to figure out how to help him, eventually realizing that this self-described alien is having a remarkably positive effect on his fellow mental patients. And yet the system itself still labels Prot a dangerous threat who must remain locked away because he is deemed mentally ill.
While K-PAX often feels like it might be based on a true story, the fictional film and the novel it derives from were written by Gene Brewer, a former psychologist who used his background to make the psychiatric ward setting realistic. Indeed, the book was apparently written more like nonfiction, in a medical case study style. It got mixed reviews and a less than 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, probably in part because of one review I read online answering an inquiry as to whether it was worth watching: “It’s worthwhile if you enjoy quiet, character-driven mystery dramas that rely on strong lead performances rather than heavy special effects.”
Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, another alien film that premiered this summer, is also supposed to make you think, yet it contains many unnecessary and annoying car chase scenes requiring elaborate special effects that take away from the actual message. Perhaps Spielberg realized that they average moviegoer isn’t interested in character-driven drama that doesn’t involve a mindless explosion or two.
I found this film’s lack of special effects, devoid of typical sci-fi alien silliness, refreshing and thoughtful. It definitely makes you think, especially the ending, which has a unexpected and satisfying twist. But it’s unfortunate that entertainment of this sort would probably be less embraced today than it was in 2001, although K-PAX hit theatres less than two months after 9/11. So perhaps folks weren’t ready to think about aliens in an alternative light while our nation was hyping sinister paranoia against foreigners from other nations—and other religions.
Unlike in K-PAX, no aliens in my OW novels are committed to mental institutions for claiming to be from other planets—though the president in Alienable Rights would like to forcefully remove all aliens from the US. And nonhumans are definitely under attack by anti-alien members of Congress when it comes to their citizenship status. Plus, aliens were mistaken for gods in ancient times because of their paranormal abilities. Now folks are just up in arms (literally) about whether aliens should have the same rights as humans when it comes to voting, owning property or businesses, and running for office, with a particularly nasty, bigoted group calling itself HUMANS FIRST. Sound familiar?
We humans seriously need to do better on how we treat each other, especially those aiming to plunder other planets as they mindlessly exploit resources on Earth as if its their birthright. In my OW novels, alien identities aren’t validated or made legitimate by where they were born.