muttrox Sorry, I didn’t mean any of that was McKay’s opinion! Just that he’s in a field that takes a lot of heat for being disreputable. My information comes from various folks in the Life Sciences Division, etc.
One of the things I’m struck by when I see sci-fi creations of Hollywood, is how often the alien differences either are anatomically unlikely, or counter-survival. So many are. Take a Wookie, for example, from Star Wars. All that fur would make him too hot in most climates, and would snag on everything in a forest or undergrowth.
I agree, there’s no reason that under some, perhaps more specialized conditions (say in planet with mostly freezing temperatures), a creature like a Wookie couldn’t evolve. I’d vote for improved vocal articulation, over Lucas’ concept, though.
The pop-culture image of alien life forms looking like some mutated form of human life goes back way farther than the 1950s, Close Encounters, etc. Melies (sp?), in his very, very early film “A Trip to the Moon,” includes aliens who are chimp-like in their appearance and movements.
Check out a book called “Watch the Skies!” I forgot the author (but he is reputable); I think the Smithsonian published it. It discusses the evolution in popular imagination of the flying saucer/spaceship and (I beleive) the alien body type.
A book I had and wish I never lent out is “The Space-Gods Revealed”, which pretty well deflated Von Daniken’s BS. I don’t know if it’s still in print, but like most books that effectively refute baloney and fight ignorance, it never got the press or sales that the books it answered did.
I am wondering if the archetype of a small body, large head, larger eyes addresses a semi-concious human need of some kind. Remember those damned “Big Eye” pictures that were so faddish in the 60’s? The tacky prints of children drawn with big heads and huge, expressive eyes? (I hated them then, too.) Anyway, whoever decided to market those pieces of crap may have been trying to tap into the same emotions that unconciously or semi-conciously produce “aliens” with small, featureless, and neutral colored bodies and very large, dark, inquiring eyes.
My take on the “grey” then is (if you haven’t guessed) that they’re imaginary (of course) and the product of a need to have big eyes that all but shout “we’re watching you” on a head and body that are basically just a stand or holder for these eyes. The anthropomorphic 2 arms and 2 legs thing is a sort of a human-centric way of indicating the creature as adanced (like us, of course).
Does anyone know of any UFO sightings where people reported seeing non-humanoid aliens? Or at least aliens who weren’t either greys or the tall, blonde “Nordic” type aliens?
But wait, there’s more. Interestingly enough, Martin Kottmeyer builds a rather strong case that the Barney & Betty Hill description/illustration comes from an episode of The Outer Limits.
So, we have a possible chicken-and-egg origin of the “gray” alien - mass media picks up the image from popular culture, who picked it up from Barney Hill, who [likely, IMHO] picked it up from The Outer Limits. Where did the Outer Limits get it from?