Contact 1997

TheLiteraryBrain

In 1997, three years after Congress definitively cut federal aid to the SETI extraterrestrial intelligence search program, Warner Brothers released the film adaptation of a Carl Sagan novel titled Contact (1985), which recounted the first contact between mankind and an alien species through the airwaves. The book had remained among the best sellers of 1985, but it would not reach theaters until the summer of 1997. It was Robert Zemeckis who would be in charge of its realization based on the adapted script by James V. Hart. At that time, the SETI program was in force thanks to the public funding. However, during the fifteen years that the film project remained stagnant in Hollywood, Sagan's fiction became reality when in 1994. The basic plot had remained intact around the investigation of Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), a young scientist who was developing her career on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence through radio telescopes of long-range. After an introductory sequence focused on the doctor's childhood, the action begins at the Arecibo radiotelescopic station in Puerto Rico. There, after several years of enthusiastic dedication, the scientist loses the support of National Science Foundation (one) and, as a consequence, the federal financing of his studies. The decision has been weighed by the opinion of David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt), presidential scientific adviser, who considers SETI a useless enterprise, of little value to science and a real obstacle to Ellie Arroway's career. Thanks to her tenacity, the doctor obtains financing from the millionaire S. R. Hadden (John Hurt) and settles in New Mexico, at the Argus Very Large Array radio astronomical observatory, where she continues her work of cosmic tracking through its one hundred and thirty-one giant antennas. One afternoon, Ellie Arroway detects the emission of a series of signals emitted from Vega, in the constellation of Lyra, which are repeated as a succession of prime numbers. After verifying that, indeed, the signal conforms to a rational pattern coming from an extraterrestrial emitter, the government is immediately interested in the finding and Drumlin goes to the radio telescope headquarters to closely follow the investigation (two). 

Since the 1950s, both the presidential figure and the space agency had been linked in the American imagination to the expansion and defense of the national home, and their use in space exploration films had contributed to the verisimilitude of the story. Of course, Carl Sagan himself helped rewrite the script. The space agency, however, was replaced in the film by the International Machine Consortium (IMC): the international organization that promotes the stellar traveler program, whose logo was inspired by the emblematic Man of Vitruvian drawn by Da Vinci. The scene introducing candidates, including Ellie Arroway and David Drumlin, took place in front of the massive Assembly Building of Vehicles, close to the launch complex. The scene in question seemed inspired by those NASA protocol acts that, at the time of the Apollo program, evoked in Norman Mailer the alliance between political power and megalomaniac architecture. Along with the scientific factor, the film used the historical factor as a reinforcement of dramatic verisimilitude (three).

The presidential icon of the moment, as well as the images of locations related to NASA, contributed in Contact to the construction of an unusual fiction in which the space enterprise undertaken in the 60s was resumed to bring it to full fruition in the 90s, thanks to extraterrestrial contact. Together with the two icons of the national home described above, the production also founded the credibility of the argument on the close union between the space dream and the American dream, which was expressed through various resources of historical perspective. In fact, in the first sequence of the film, the camera moved away from the American coast and from planet Earth in a dizzying journey that, after leaving the solar system behind, entered the depths of space through galaxies and nebulae, until reaching the iris of Ellie Arroway: a nine-year-old girl trying to contact other radio amateurs. The stellar journey involved a journey through the recent history of the United States, through a collage of radio and television broadcasts made in time rewind. The chosen broadcasts coincided precisely with crucial moments in the evolutionary stages of the American dream (four).

The first fragment that appeared in the initial sequence corresponds to the intervention of the public affairs officer of NASA in 1986, Steve Nesbitt, in his immediate appearance after the explosion of Challenger. Then the program Dallas is played, followed by disco music from the 70s and a famous speech by Nixon on television, in which he denies his involvement in the Watergate case. The trip back in time through the broadcasts launched from the United States into the cosmos continues with the news of the shooting of Robert Kennedy in 1968, followed by the phrase with which Martin Luther King closed his 1963 speech "I have a dream" and with the announcement of the assassination of JFK. The succession of historical events is interrupted by the haunting tune of the Twilight Zone, then picks up immediately with a rebroadcast of congressional interrogations during the 1950s witch hunt, and is interrupted again by the cry of "Hi-yo, Silverlight!" of the Lone Ranger. Then the words of President Roosevelt are heard during the "day of infamy", announcing the country's entry into war after the attack on Pearl Harbor, which later give way to Walter Winchel's homey greeting "Good evening Mr. and Mrs. North America and all", a radio classic from the 1930s. The last intelligible words of the sequence correspond again to Roosevelt and are taken from his first inauguration speech, which occurred in 1933, in which he urged the population to free themselves from fear to proceed with the reconstruction of a nation devastated by the crisis of the Great Depression. There is no doubt that the script for Contact went beyond a mere fiction about aliens and aimed, among other objectives, at proposing a reflection on the American ethos itself. It is striking that this selection of historical phrases corresponds to critical moments in American history, interspersed with sound references to popular culture throughout seven decades. It is also symptomatic that the broadcast that opens the cosmic journey corresponds precisely to the Challenger accident (five) which, in addition to the commotion caused at the beginning of 1986, caused a stagnation in space exploration and revived the questioning of NASA programs. The journey through the cosmos and national history is an attractive synthesis of both evolutions, that of the space dream and that of the American dream, whose trajectory finally converges in the attempt of a girl to establish communication with distant interlocutors. The subsequent jump from a child Ellie Arroway to another adult, delivered to the SETI program in Arecibo, alludes to the childish look and the capacity for wonder, intrinsic features of the spirit of adventure in all exploration. The doctor shares the same principle of those who inspired the SETI program: given the impossibility of traveling to stellar systems located light years away, contact with extraterrestrial intelligence could at least be attempted thanks to the permanence of electromagnetic waves and their expansion in the cosmos. When considering the number of stars present in the universe—estimated at around ten thousand trillion—Ellie expresses Drake's equation with a recurring phrase in the film: "If it's only us in the universe, how much space wasted" (six). In Ellie Arroway's adventure there are two parts, each corresponding to an action plot with its own dramatic dynamics. The first one, developed in the form of a search and an enigma, covers the first half of the film and concludes with the reception of the message emitted from Vega, interpreted as an invitation to a trip. The second plot consists of the stellar journey itself aboard the extraterrestrial design machine, and its objective is to solve the enigma of the invitation itself.
In the first part of Contact, Ellie fights to defend her research despite opposition from Congress and misunderstanding from the National Science Foundation. The search is rewarded with the appearance of the message, which contains a call to explore unsuspected frontiers. Zemeckis's film points to the political and scientific controversy over the SETI project as the most contentious part of space exploration. Furthermore, the script extends the consequences of this controversy to the space dream and, therefore, to the American dream itself, so that both Sagan and the defenders of the closed program make the search for extraterrestrial life a part of the epic.

After the rejection by Congress, the SETI project continues and achieves its results thanks to private initiative, a factor that is also part of the traditional search for prosperity. Later, when the IMC-powered accelerator machine program is sabotaged (nine), the private initiative will once again reveal itself as the definitive resource in the exploration of the cosmos (ten). Rooted in her nation's scientific and exploratory milestones, Dr. Arroway's private American dream is reconsidered in the film's final episode , during investigations by the congressional committee tasked with assessing the disappointing results of her voyage. However, arriving at this scene, the concept of prosperity has transcended any scientific or pragmatic consideration to acquire an anthropological dimension, in tune with the metaphysical facets of the American dream. Happiness, pursued as a citizen's aspiration and right, is presented at the same time as a discovery that goes beyond borders nationals. This is how Ellie Arroway responds to the investigative commission: Dr. Arroway: I have received something wonderful. Something that has changed me. A vision of the universe that made me see clearly, in an overwhelming way, how small and insignificant we are. and to same time, how weird and tiny we are. A vision that shows us that we belong to something much bigger than ourselves.

The stellar journey of the protagonist in Contact fulfills, on the other hand, the access of the female explorer to the space dream, something that has not happened in the history of cinema since 1929 with The Woman in the Moon, by Fritz Lang. Ellie Arroway demonstrates throughout her exploration that the right stuff is not an exclusively masculine quality and that, on the other hand, it is not necessary to demonstrate it in a competitive selection process. At the film's climax, Ellie Arroway displays a daring that surpasses the daring of the Mercury and Gemini pioneers. If they were capable of sitting on top of a missile to follow a pre-established and rehearsed protocol, the scientist submits to the dangers of an unknown journey, devised by an alien intelligence, whose technology allows them to travel distances of light years through the universe (eleven). Perkowitz refers to the character's breaking of the feminine cliché in this way: While Ellie travels in the alien machine through wormholes and cosmic scenes, accompanied by spectacular visual effects, there is no doubt that Contact remains in the science fiction realm. But within this framework, Ellie's life as a scientist is shown in believable terms. She's smart and attractive, devoid of implausible glamour, and dresses appropriately for a woman of science. Her childhood also presents convincing traits. Many women who succeed in science, business, and other male-dominated fields have supportive fathers who have helped them develop self-confidence. It is also credible that Ellie may choose work over love relationship (twelve). 

Ellie's character is supported by a sense of mission that in the film extends to all of humanity. The lack of faith on the part of the scientist establishes a controversy in the approach of the space dream and the sense of mission, in contrast to the providentialism of John Glenn and his Mercury companions in The Right Stuff, or in contrast to the religious references of Apollo 13. Ellie Arroway's romance with Palmer Joss, theologian and spiritual advisor to the White House, highlights a tension between faith and reason (thirteen) that accompanies the protagonist throughout the story, and who expresses Sagan's own vision. However, upon returning from the trip, and in the absence of video images, the scientist will be unable to offer the commission data that proves her eighteen-hour odyssey, which on Earth is reduced to an instant. Unable to provide them with a single empirical data, the doctor will be forced to ask them for a leap of faith (fourteen).

Translations: Italian - Spanish

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