UFOs as Pop Art & Mythology

Nothing so captures the popular imagination as the idea of extraterrestrial visitors to our planet. With the opening by the French Government of their UFO files to the public, we thought it would be fun to take a look at UFOs as pop art and contemporary myth.

Joseph Campbell wrote that the awe-inspiring distance between man and his gods "is the one great story of myth; that in the beginning we were united with the source, but we were seperated from it and must find a way to return." Much of science-fiction, from H.G. Wells War of the Worlds to the Monolith of 2001 -A Space Odyssey on, and the belief in extraterrestrial visitation and observation are a manifistation of our need for a contemporary mythology.

Posted by Jason McManus. Check out earlier posts: Orson Wells & His Mercury Theater Broadcast of War of the Worlds and Natural or Extraterrestrial Phenomena?