Is Close Encounters a Modern-Day Ten Commandments? The Return of UFO Television and American Mythology

I recently came across a UFO special on television for the first time in years.

Programs about UFOs, ghosts, and other paranormal phenomena were once a staple of Japanese television. After a series of incidents involving the occult and religious cults, however, broadcasters became more conscious of compliance concerns and gradually pulled back from this kind of programming.

This latest program repeatedly emphasized that the US government and the Department of Defense were also taking UFOs—or UAPs, as they are now called—seriously.

That made sense. It gave the broadcaster a safer way to present the subject.

Simply asking, “Do aliens really exist?” sounds dubious. Add, “The US government is investigating them,” and it suddenly begins to sound like news.

Perhaps television networks had wanted to revive these programs all along. Armed with the powerful justification of “the US government,” UFO specials had found their way back onto terrestrial television.

I found that more interesting than the UFOs themselves.

Close Encounters as The Ten Commandments

Hearing that the US government was investigating UFOs reminded me of something I once heard from a film critic.

Speaking about Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the critic said:

It is a modern version of The Ten Commandments.

In the Old Testament, Moses climbs Mount Sinai and receives the Ten Commandments from God. A being beyond humanity appears and delivers a message to a chosen person.

The climax of Close Encounters has a remarkably similar structure. An enormous spacecraft descends at a mountain, and humanity makes contact with beings far more advanced than itself.

Replace God with extraterrestrials and miracles with super-advanced science, and the scene begins to resemble a modern religious painting.

Whether Spielberg consciously intended that interpretation is another question. Film criticism is not a quiz in which we try to guess the creator’s one correct answer.

Still, the comparison feels strangely convincing.

Why Do the Aliens Always Come to America?

There is something else that has always intrigued me: aliens seem unusually eager to visit the United States.

UFOs crash in America. The American government hides the aliens. Secret American bases study them. Some stories even claim that extraterrestrials gave America unknown technologies.

The universe is unimaginably vast, yet the moment aliens reach Earth, they become remarkably partial to the United States.

Combine that pattern with the Ten Commandments interpretation, and another structure emerges:

Aliens visit America = God chooses America.

The chosen nation becomes the first to learn the truth and the recipient of special knowledge and technology.

The characters may be extraterrestrials, but the story underneath them is very old.

After the Frontier Came Space

The United States has a long tradition of describing itself as a nation with a special mission.

First came the frontier—the westward expansion across a continent. In the twentieth century, that frontier moved into space.

Once the wilderness of the Western had disappeared, outer space became the next destination.

Seen this way, the UFO conspiracy stories that grew during the Cold War begin to look different.

“The government is hiding the existence of aliens.”

“Extraterrestrials gave us advanced technology.”

“Aliens are being studied at a secret base.”

As stories, these are deeply traditional.

A god appears. Only a chosen few make contact. They receive special knowledge, while the truth remains hidden from ordinary people.

The temple has become a secret base, the priests have become government officials, and miracles have become antigravity technology.

Perhaps UFOs Were the Myths of the Twentieth Century

Just as earlier civilizations looked at thunder and the stars and created myths, people in the twentieth century looked at airplanes, rockets, nuclear weapons, and the space race and created myths of their own.

Their central characters were aliens.

That may be why UFO stories are filled with scientific terminology while their underlying structures remain surprisingly religious.

Now UFOs have acquired the more respectable name “UAP.” The US government treats them as a subject of investigation, and they have returned to television.

There is something amusing about that.

In ancient myths, the authority of a priest was needed to confirm that the word of a god was genuine.

Today, that authority belongs to the US government.

A television network may find it difficult to broadcast a program that merely says, “Aliens might exist.” But add this line:

The US Department of Defense is investigating them too.

Suddenly, the subject becomes much easier to put on the air.

The name has changed. The Pentagon is investigating. Even Congress is discussing the issue.

I do not know whether the aliens have evolved, but UFO television has certainly evolved to meet modern compliance standards.