In spite of dreadful reviews, the 2020 film PROXIMITY available on Amazon Prime still charmed me. Instead of horror and dread, it was one of few sci-fi’s about alien encounters that dared to teeter on edgy science and human psychology instead of monsters. The questions are familiar. Why do aliens seem to appear and disappear at will before eye witnesses? Where do their vehicles come from and where do they go? Are they from space or another dimension? Quantum physics is sketched into proposed answers. Perhaps a more humanistic observation is how random people react to beliefs or discoveries that challenge what they accept before they insist others adopt their ideas as absolute truth.
The film PROXIMITY is as much a raised curtain on human nature as sci-fi, which is probably the reason I find it appealing. On a vastly more complicated level, the award-winning film SINNERS stares without flinching at the consequences of beliefs and traditions that dominant societies have forced on less powerful peoples throughout history…because they could. Doctrines are cemented into culture, the authorities often deliberately misinterpreting text for maximum control. Scorning or erasing information that doesn’t fit their adopted version allows the manipulators to feel unassailably superior. When disagreement becomes uncomfortable, offenders are executed either symbolically or physically to protect the “right” belief by “admirable” people. The major religions and cultures embraced on Earth have all harbored cells that can be brutal in defense of their opinions.
Free will is not universally accepted as a value. Creative thought can be dangerous. Spiritual answers to religious questions are inevitably woo-woo. Workers shouldn’t be allowed to say no. Societies are created by God to have superior and inferior members. The superior members may secretly try to take advantage of insights they don’t publicly entertain while punishing subordinates who espouse them. Faith can be defined as blind acceptance of both rituals and beliefs—a value to be rewarded by the group. Belonging binds followers together.
In PROXIMITY, the young scientist who can verify his claim to alien abduction with film is still mocked as were real people who have claimed to have been abducted in the past. Proof, it seems, lies in the eyes of the beholder and any “fact,” including eye witness accounts, can be dismissed as tainted anecdotal evidence. The inexplicable should be ignored so it doesn’t irritate normalcy. Like others in reality, the PROXIMITY scientist is branded by some as a tool of the devil for the demise of civilization. Likewise, lines between good and evil blur in SINNERS.
Children often ask questions that can be uncomfortable because they haven’t yet learned that humans have their hierarchies settled and don’t want anyone to rattle them. There’s a reason many cultural/technological advances spring from an idea by someone who has little status. Those who live on the edge of society–including women, children, LGBTQIA, the differently abled, and immigrants—are often the ones who dare to question the concrete answers they’ve been fed. Those with less flexible imaginations are instantly threatened, so they find a way to attribute the advances to someone who’s more “normal.” Or perhaps they bury the inventions so established profit structures won’t be compromised. Or they imprison the upstarts. Or they start a war to enshrine the status quo.
