- Steven Spielberg, his obsessions, my takes on some of his films, and the upcoming film Disclosure Day;
- NYT’s M. Gessen on how the White House identifies dangerous “aliens” with immigrants.
It’s hard to criticize a beloved film director like Steven Spielberg, even though I’ve never been a Spielberg fanboy. Too often his movies are crippled by sentimentality, even in otherwise very serious productions. Glancing down his film list, here, I may like his second feature, Duel, as much as any of them, in part because it was filmed in areas I knew well from my bicycle riding and drives to the high desert, but mostly because it’s existential and symbolic, and utterly without any kind of sweet ending. I liked Empire of the Sun, except for the scene in the middle that makes it look like a stay in a Japanese prisoner of war camp is a lot of fun. Saving Private Ryan worked until the over-the-top scene in he cemetery at the end. Was there a problem with Schindler’s List? Well, yes, it’s when Schindler breaks down over the thought that he could have saved so many more! Give me a break.
And I thought his two acclaimed early science fiction movies, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, were childish nonsense, both indulging in cheap skiffy tropes and bogus ‘evidence’ of alien interventions. Those World War II pilots turning up inside the mothership? Please. (I didn’t like Stars Wars either, on similar grounds, so feel free to dismiss my opinions on pop culture sci-fi.)
I fear that his much-anticipated new movie, Disclosure Day, is more of the same. He was interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning this morning.
CBS News, Ben Mankiewicz, today: “Disclosure Day” director Steven Spielberg on aliens: “I absolutely think that they have been here, and they are here.”
Fortunately this seems to be a full transcript from what was a 5 or 7 minutes piece on TV.
“‘Disclosure Day’ is about how, if somebody had the power and if somebody had possession of the entire archive of visual evidence of what’s been happening for the last 80 years, what would happen if they decided to do a data dump across the entire world all at once?” Spielberg said. “And the people who are trying to stop that data dump from happening, that is basically the core of this chase movie.”
It’s part chase flick, part ’70s thriller, and part big tech conspiracy, all colliding to make “Disclosure Day’ a sci-fi story for a modern audience.
In an extraordinary comment, he claims everyone is behind his conspiracy-mongering:
“I can’t speak for the entire audience, but there are certain things that unite us. And one of the things that unites us, one of the places we can find common ground, is our united belief that the extraordinary is possible, and the impossible is possible. And I think UAP, UFO, the whole phenomenon is something that everybody across any spectrum – culturally, politically – can agree on.”
No they don’t. Any number of books have been written in recent decades about how the supposed evidence for UFOs as alien ships simply doesn’t exist, or is rumor misrepresented. See Sagan, Tyson, Frank et al.
The photo of Spielberg holding up a 1951 issue of Galaxy magazine is cute, but it only illustrates that his mindset is stuck in the ’50s, or maybe the ’70s.
The interviewer asks, has Spielberg ever experienced a sighting himself? No. Of course not. And then the interview finishes:
“That leads to – I mean, this seems a crazy question, I can’t believe I’m asking it, but I’m asking it seriously. Have aliens been here, and do you think they might still be here?”
“Based on the circumstantial evidence of everything that I’ve gathered throughout my whole life, everybody I’ve listened to and every documentary I’ve ever watched and all the testimonies in Congress that I’ve heard, I absolutely think that they have been here, and they are here,” Spielberg said. “And who knows, maybe they’ve always been here.”
Nope. This illustrates a spectacular lack of imagination, and lack of knowledge of the potentials of the real world. That aliens should be just like us, having infiltrated our culture? Nonsense.
Am I a spoilsport? I suppose. It’s just that there exists a vast universe out there, which is unlikely to correspond to the protocols of 20th and 21st century American life. Frankly, I think this commitment to belief in alien being infiltrating our culture is rather like religion. I could go on about this, but I won’t.
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Analogously, not exactly coincidentally. This is about conservative bigotry and paranoia.
NY Times, opinion by M. Gessen, 5 Jun 2025: The White House’s Latest Provocation Is ‘Grotesque and Terrifying and Juvenile’
“They walk among us.” The glowing green letters emerge ominously against a dark backdrop. Above them hover the words “aliens” and “declassified,” suggesting the release — long awaited in some corners of the internet — of secret government files concerning extraterrestrials. Slowly, tantalizingly, more text appears: “For 60 years, the U.S. government has kept a closely guarded secret.” Then the big reveal: It’s not the trailer for a horror film; it’s a White House web page, posted last Thursday. And the scary creatures in question aren’t extraterrestrials; they’re the other kind of aliens — the immigrant kind, the kind hunted by ICE.
Then,
“Aliens have been walking among us, living in our neighborhoods and interacting with us in our daily lives,” the page announces. “They’ve shopped in the same stores, attended the same classes as our children and lived seemingly normal human existences.” That’s the joke: Human beings are described as nonhuman invaders. Fascism, but make it a troll.
It’s notable, and says something about human nature, that such “aliens” are always perceived as a threat.
