A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

The cadences of Barney’s recollection, with its repeated opening (and…and…and), recall
both oracular speech and the child’s shaggy dog tale. It is, of course a bit of both. Barney was
doubly infantilized/rendered passive by his initial experience and by his vulnerability under
hypnosis. The wildly implausible content of the tale recalled childhood’s fabulist modalities.
The modes of communication discussed in the preceding chapters all lent themselves to oracular
speech and all required a “receptivity” that was feminizing if not outright infantilizing. They all
involved a surrender of self as an act of will. Abduction works its dissipation against the will.
Barney’s recitation rendered a narrative that offered a strangely occluded vision of the human
future. While the preceding modes of the displaced utopian imaginary offered clear visions of
the recognizably human in an achieved utopian context, abduction offered visions of a future no
longer recognizably human.
It was with the next visit on the seventh of March that Betty’s recall began. Betty
remembered two groups of “men” approaching the car, three on either side. In recalling these
events, despite Dr. Simon’s constant reassurance, Betty was clearly frightened and her speech
was punctuated by sobs. Seeing Barney behind her, she called out to him. He seemed to be
sleepwalking and would not respond. She balked at entering the craft and was reassured by one
of the figures. “Only one spoke, the one who was on my left...He had sort of a foreign
accent...but he was, you know, very business like.” 264
Said figure is repeated across iterations of
the abduction narrative. Dubbed “the doctor” or “the leader” by abductees, the figure is
generally closer to average human height than its lieutenants and often has skin closer to a
Caucasian hue (versus the ashen pallor of the rest). Both in its marginally increased resemblance
to the human and in its willingness to “speak,” the doctor stands as an exception to the overall
264 Fuller, 158.
178