Here's a new version of the Contact topic. That is, Earth people's contact with an intelligent and technologically advanced Alien civilization. However Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016) is not of the Independence Day type, but rather of the clever Contact (R Zemeckis, 1997) type. In the 1997 movie starring Jodie Foster (and based on an absorbing 1985 Carl Sagan novel) it was Science and Technology that were at the center of the stage, even if sharing prominence with some metaphysical implications. Scientist Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), after receiving a signal from Vega, manages to travel there making use of alien technology, even if her story has later to face general disbelief. And it will be a life-changing deeply emotional event she will experience over there, in outer space, on the surface of a Vega Planet (in some sort of Paradise beach, near a deepest blue sea), an spiritual experience, not unlike that of Dave Bowman in 2001, A Space Odissey.
But it was physics, astronomy and engineering that Ellie Arroway used as ways to her transfiguring voyage. In Arrival, it is not Physics leading the way, but another science is, one often neglected in this kind of movies: linguistics/philology. So the protagonist here, that is, the scientist mainly in charge and (intelectually) kicking ass does not come from a "hard" science, but from a "soft" humanistic discipline: Dr Louise Banks (Amy Adams), an expert on everything related to human languages in all their variety and complexity.
Communicating with advanced aliens: a cultural challenge
Yes. Language. Because, suppose the aliens finally come. Suppose they have an amazing technology, and a (way deeper than ours) knowledge of natural laws, and how the universe works. Well, how do we learn from them? How do we manage to communicate? Linguistics/Philology reigns in Arrival as the main science or discipline.
So aliens arrive, then. It is Arrival Day. And they hang up there amidst the clouds, in strangely shaped spaceships. But unlike Independence Day, they do not just set out to destroy human cities straight away and for the sake of it, they just happen to hang up there, apparently waiting, as if not being sure what to do next once they have made it to Earth, and finally found out there is an intelligent species over here.
What's next? Well now they (and we) have to try to establish some sort of communication. But how do you communicate with beings that do not share anything with you, no psychological or emotional traits, only the knowledge of physical laws? Sure there should be a common ground, as after all we are all biological creatures from the same universe, with the same physical and biological laws underlying us. But the abyss between us must be huge all the same.
The humanities, also within the equation
I remember this book by Evry Schatzman, The Children of Urania which was about technologically Advanced Alien Civilizations, about their chance to exist, about the (scientific) conditions for their existence, all the theoretical frame for such existence, developed once again: the Kardashev types of civilizations, the Fermi question (how come they still have not visited us if there are probably so many of them?), the impossibility for faster than light travel, and so on and so forth.
So the book went through the usual exposition of the conditions that make an (alien) civilization likely: the right size of the star, the right size of the planet, the right distance, the necessity for liquid water on the surface, or for an oxygen atmosphere...the full list of astronomical, physical, chemical demands. But there was something in The Children of Urania which I had not found in other similar books, and which was for sure food for thought. Mutations of culture as doors into science and technological development. A cultural change as a key condition for the advent of science and technology, a change or a mutation that might not have happened on Earth, that might indeed be very rare, and that... might explain our astronomical solitude.
Take human civilization(s) some 1000 years ago. What kind of civilization was it back then? Let's take a look, for instance, at West/Latin Europe. Could we consider it an advanced Civilization? What would aliens have thought of it had they arrived on Earth around 1000 AD to pay a visit and check how things were going on here in terms of intelligence and technical progress? Well, for sure, back then European civilization was an "advanced" one, in some sense. After all, it was quite a rich, sophisticated one. Philosophy, theology, architecture, literature, poetry, politics, art...were all developing at a good level. But sure Medieval European Civilization (or those of the rest of the world for that matter) were not scientific-technological. Not in the sense today we understand as such. Sophisticated they were, highly conceptual, but with a very limited knowledge of the real (material) nature of the Universe.
Well, what happened half millenia later? In the early 16th century, the so called scientific revolution took place. The modern scientific method was established and a growing body of positive knowledge of the natural world started to build-up. Around 1600, we abandoned finally the speculative laberynth that all past civilizations underwent, and managed to enter at last a solid terrain of positive knowledge. What was the explanation to this mutation? was it the emergence of capitalism? Protestant culture and ethics? The enormous building-up of classic knowledge due to the invention of printing? It was in any case a cultural mutation that might not have happened. How can we be so sure that that mutation always takes place in all alien civilizations? Perhaps we are alone, and there is no other technological civilization in the whole universe, the reason being not such things as, say, the peculiar size of our moon and the tidal force, but the astonishing and mysterious cultural change that took place in the 16 century and which led to the so called scientific revolution.
See? There is more to the Contact story than hard experimental science. Humanities and soft social sciences might be as important. The mutation of Civilization into a scientific technological one had a "humanistic cultural" basis. It might not have happened. Language, as the basis of the so-called humanities is a fundamental tool and one essential discipline in our process of contacting. Let's stop forgetting it or minimizing it.
Aliens from an advanced civilization must be "intelligent" which means not only rational, but in possession of a good set of neurons (or neuron-like cells) making them not only logical and mathematical but spiritual, thus capable of creating deep spiritual worlds of symbolism and meaning. Will we contact their spiritual world with our spiritual world?
A "feminine" aproach
Arrival highlights the importance of culture in the Contact topic. Not just physical science, but cultural approaches and transformations. Again it is a woman who leads the way (as in 1997 Contact), but this time with a "social science" as an instrument. Women are probably better at social and humanistic disciplines, so its fair enough that a woman leads the show here. Women are very good at language and communication (whereas men are probably, even if this is probably not too PC to say, better at physics). Arrival is a movie on the importance of language and communication between unbelivably distant beings, of emphasizing the necessity for building up bridges. Of solving the tricky riddle of how to connect minds and intelligences, linking psychological (spiritual) inner worlds.
Arrival is a feminine (not a "feminist") approach to the Contact topic, this being a frequent -sometimes even tiresome- topic within the SF frame. Language, and not physics is the star here. Arrival is a clever movie, with a good script, a good development, well-drawn psychologies and fine performances. But I would highlight, as its most interesting trait, its vindication of a humanistic discipline as a fundamental key to a possible future Contact. Something which reminds us the overall importance of the rest of the (so called) humanities in our (likely) future contacts with aliens, with advanced technological alien civilizations. Because they might well be a product of cultural mutations, of cultural intangible forces (not only biological ones), much as we ourselves are. Theirs being a spiritual vasteness as deep as ours, for which we will need approaches well beyond the strict reign of matter, once we have aknowledged, of course, that we both share the same rational scientific frame.
