Ickapoo the lonely Alien

***Story of Ickapoo the Alien and his encounter with humanity in 2046***

It was the year 2046. In the distant and faraway planet or Yr lived a lonely alien named Ickapoo. It had no friends as all its species had been vanquished from a meteor storm. In its solitude and misery it pined for a companion. All it had for company was a stone. It named the stone Ump.

Yr was a bare and inhospitable planet. With winds blowing at 150 km an hour, it was virtually impossible to see past the blizzard and storm. Various storms alternated, ice storms, snowstorms and sandstorms. With the intense and unendurable weather conditions, it was a wonder that any life survived at all. The weather did nothing to elevate Ickapoo’s depressed mood.

Ickapoo yearned for friends and company. He wondered if any life existed elsewhere in the universe. Many a time he fiddled with his transistor radio, sending out messages and hoping for a response. Contact with another species- was that so much to ask? He sent fire launchers and rockets into space, hoping that some space traveler would find out about his existence. Ickapoo was an alienated alien. It was an inescapable fact of his existence – his loneliness. In the same way humans wondered whether we were the only species to inhabit the universe, Ickapoo felt estranged and isolated from the rest of the cosmos. He tried communicating with his stone, but the stone was as responsive as a dead person or any non-living object could be. He ended up rambling monologues and poetry about solitude. Ickapoo lived in a metallic steel capsule that sheltered and shielded him from wind, rain and sun.

One day as Ickapoo was talking to the faceless and silent Ump as usual, a crackle sounded on his transistor radio. Ickapoo shot up with excitement and anticipation. It was the first crackle he had heard in years. Ickapoo frantically meddled with the knobs and signals in order to elicit a response. After a whir of incoherent buzzes, a clear voice sounded.

“Hello?” said the voice.

“Whakasanga?” asked Ickapoo curiously.

“This is Captain Nero. We would like to establish contact.”

Ickapoo had no idea what Captain Nero meant. Nevertheless he made some effort to reply.

“Gutteripu Aiyla Mankai!”

Ickapoo was trying his best to sound friendly and welcoming.

“We’ll be landing and trying to meet you in about 5 minutes. See you then.”

Ickapoo vaguely recognized the command to meet. He hurried out in excitement. A huge space ship was landing in the snowstorm. Ickapoo put on his best snow suit and bounded up to the spaceship with quick leaps as gravity was low. Captain Nero glided down the steps and waved a flag at Ickapoo. But it was difficult to see through the blizzard. Ickapoo radiated cosmic warmth and beams and hovered over to Captain Nero to guide him through storm. Ickapoo waved nervously. Captain Nero extended his hand. Ickapoo extended his head. Captain Nero was aghast. He grabbed hold of one of Ickapoo’s tentacles and shook it warmly.

“Hi! I am Captain Nero!” boomed the Captain, pointing at himself.

“Watta Ickapoo!” chirped Ickapoo, waving his tentacle.

“Where do you live?” asked Captain Nero, gesturing the shape of a house.

Ickapoo nodded and used one of his tentacles to grab Captain Nero’s hand. They floated through the snowstorm to Ickapoo’s metallic steel capsule.

In Ickapoo’s home was a cosy fireplace. Ickapoo poured Captain Nero a cup of slime. Captain Nero eyed it warily before taking a gulp and turning green. It was not fit for human consumption! Ickapoo laughed in amusement before guzzling down the slime himself.

“Those your family?” asked Captain Nero, pointing to the figures on the wall in a 3-dimensional photograph.

“Jampat!” said Ickapoo, shaking his head sadly.

“They’re gone?” asked Captain Nero, concerned.

Ickapoo nodded.

“You must be lonely” said Captain Nero.

Ickapoo pointed to his stone. “Whaki froond!”(“My friend”)

“You are a sorry chap!” said Captain Nero, shaking his head. “We’ll set up a colony here, then you’ll have friends and a community again!”

Ickapoo nodded excitedly.

“But you’ll have to teach us first how to build houses as strong and durable as yours!”

“ Wakka! Me pleeeasure!” agreed Ickapoo.

Ickapoo levitated in delight and radiated cosmic beams that enfolded Captain Nero as a symbol of their friendship.

And Ickapoo was never lonely again as Captain Nero brought his fellow human companions to establish a space colony on the planet of Yr. Ickapoo taught Captain Nero to build a magnificent space colony of steel and gold. And in time, Ickapoo married a human lady and had baby aliens of his own. The climate and the weather may have remained as inhospitable, but the human fellowship was tangible and heartwarming.

Ickapoo’s loneliness derives from our conception on Aliens as Others. For instance, we encounter aliens as Others in Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris. The novel Solaris reads like the perfect precursor to Baudrillard’s theories on simulation in which the copy or image of the original has effaced the original and there is no longer any possibility of distinguishing between the copy and the original. In the case of Solaris, Kevin is visited by his beautiful ex-wife Rheya only it is an alien reproduction of her from the cosmic ocean Solaris sent as an instrument of interrogation to probe Kevin’s conscience. Kevin though fearing this alien simulacra of Rheya initially begins to fall for the copy Rheya and there is no longer any ability on his part to distinguish between the original Rheya and the copies that the ocean Solaris sends him in order to probe his conscience and consciousness. What begins as a feared encounter between Kevin and an alien Other becomes a means of revisiting an old love whose suicide he had caused through neglect and whom he eventually falls more for. It could be said that the copies of Rheya that the ocean Solaris sends him hold more power over him than the original Rheya whom he had neglected and caused to take her life in his younger days.

“We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything, for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all sham. We don’t want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontier of the cosmos. For us, such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous: we don’t want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us, but we can’t accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don’t like to face up to, which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don’t leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that what is revealed to us- that part of reality which we would rather pass into silence- then we don’t like it anymore. (Lem, 1961: 72)

In seeking out alien Others thus, what we wish to see is a reflection of Man which we can appropriate for ourselves, anthropomorphizing other galaxies in terms relative to Earth, but what we are sometimes confronted with is something that not merely mirrors but disturbs us about ourselves in revealing the ugly areas of our own nature, as Solaris projects Rheya as a memory from his past that he would rather conceal, a wife whose suicide he caused through neglect. Yet while confronted with the darkness of his past Kevin also manages to overcome this darkness and transcend it into love for this alien Other that is a projection from his memory, indeed he eventually loves the alien Rheya more than the original Rheya and is forced by his conscience to deal with the ugliness within himself that had driven the original Rheya to suicide. Baudrillard’s thesis that the image or the copy has effaced the real applies here, indeed the copy comes across as more real and intoxicating than the original.

In the Ecstasy of Communication, Baudrillard once again reminds us that with the advent of television, as in hyperreality, the subject-object distinction collapses and we are immersed in its reality – “television becomes a control screen” (13). He uses the metaphor of driving to relate our relation to television- no longer controllers of a device, we are now subjected to its control, we become a “computer at the wheel”, not a “drunken demiurge of power” (13). He argues that television creates a space of hyperreality that overtakes reality and hence displaces metaphysics. Our subjectivities are dissolved- we are no longer ‘subjects of interiority” (13) in control of television but subjected to the controls of multiple network satellites. Television becomes an intrusive actor in our domestic space- that overtakes our lives from work, consumption, play, social relations and leisure. Baudrillard further explains that the hyperreal displaces the real and renders it useless. Social relationships within the home are destroyed. Reality is ‘minituarized’- television replaces our desire for human relationships or ideals and renders organic and real bodies and events superfluous (Ecstasy 14). The obscene fascinates us, and replaces the organic with the machinic. In this regard, advertising also becomes an omnipresent reality – materializes its ‘obscenity’- monopolizes public life with its exhibition. This is also precisely what television shows are: Simulations and the triumph of the hyperreal and mediated reality. Reality television demonstrates Baudrillard’s thesis that the obscene lies in the fact that there is ‘nothing to see’ and that the spectator, rather than desiring difference from others, desires sameness with the subjects that we witness on television. As Baudrillard notes in Ecstasy of Communication, all that matters now is to resemble oneself, to find oneself everywhere, multiplied but loyal to one’s formula. It is the universe of the fractal subject, dreaming of a formula to reproduce himself to infinity (Ecstasy of Communication 41). Consequently, television incarnates our desire for sameness and our fascination with the obscenity or pornography of objective reality. It is the obscenity of the hidden that is suddenly overexposed and visible. In this dissolution of the exterior and the interior, Baudrillard likens the contemporary subject to the schizophrenic – who cannot distinguish between inner and outer and is subject to all the vagaries of the external world (Ecstasy of Communication 14). The subject’s sense of individuality and distinction from external objects is dissolved. He/she becomes obscene, as is the world. The subject is total prey of hyperreality, a pure screen, a switching center for all networks of influence. For Baudrillard, both the body and the ‘self’ (both conform to images) can be divided and commodified, as governed by the capitalist/advertising code (Ecstasy 42). To see the ‘self’ as a technology possessed by the mediascape, as Baudrillard does, is to become schizophrenic. Baudrillard’s subject is therefore, completely de-centred and dominated by the image.

Hence the hyperreal Rheya is what television is to Baudrillard- an image which has replaced and monopolized the real. The copy or hyperreal Rheya as an image has displaced the original Rheya and dominated Kevin’s consciousness so he can no longer distinguish between the original and the copy and indeed Kevin falls more deeply for the copy than the original.This also reflects the earlier thesis that we conquer civilisations to find mirrors of ourselves only to become more obsessed with the simulations of ourselves than original man.Hence the image or copy is more compelling and grips and exercises more control over us than the original and we are in the realm of Baudrillard’s hyperreal where we can no longer distinguish between image and object or original and simulation. Hence this is what happens when youth are addicted to the internet and videogames- the simulation has replaced reality and we are firmly in the grip of the hyperreal.

Lem’s novel while being a speculative love story thus functions as a foreboding of Baudrillard’s theories of hyperreality and simulation in which the copy or image becomes more compelling and real than the original. In today’s virtual society where facebook and twitter are rapidly replacing solid and tangible relationships, this has become very much a reality of modern society- the hyperreal has replaced the real. Kevin’s romance with Rheya is thus not merely a speculative romance with an alien Other but a precursor of the current immersion in the world of the hyperreal which has replaced and indeed effaced objective reality.

We fear Aliens because we fear the Other. Christopher Nolan posits love as the element that transcends space and time and can flow across universes and galaxies to bind humanity together as a race. Specifically in Interstellar it is the love between astronaut Cooper and his daughter Murph that will eventually save humanity as they- humanity’s future descendants who have evolved beyond 3 dimensions to 5 dimensional beings will allow Murph and Cooper to communicate through the Tessaract- a construction in which space and time functions in the 5th dimension to be infinite and allow communication across time and space through a bookshelf which Cooper as a ghost who communicates to Murph having deserted her for his mission to save humanity will eventually communicate with her via morse the missing elements of Dr Brand’s equation for gravitational time travel across work holes and black holes and eventually be able to transport doomed humanity off Earth into more habitable planets in other galaxies.

Hence for all the science that the film explores including complex explanations of how worm holes and black holes work the film remains at heart a tribute to the central element that makes us human- the ability to love. In the film it is love that drives Dr Brand to seek Dr Miller her old flame across galaxies to rescue humanity. It is Cooper’s love for Murph and his son that drives him to seek to travel across galaxies to save the planet Earth. It is eventually Cooper’s love for Amelia Brand that will drive him to travel across galaxies again to initiate Plan B of the rescue mission- planting a human colony on a habitable planet.

Cooper in such a context may be viewed as a Christ figure when he sacrifices himself to travel into the black hole Gargantuan knowing it might entail his death. It is love for humanity and specifically Murph that leads Cooper to make this sacrifice, much like Christ died on the cross to save humanity from sin and out of love for his father God. Love does not feature as prominently in other religions but in the religion of Christianity, it is the fundamental core that drives the religion. Christianity defines God as love and commands believers to love their neighbours as their self. Hence while this is not explicitly stated by the film, I would infer that at the heart of film’s message- the command to love – is an implicit Christian message that it is love which will save us from ourselves- from polluting the planet to global warming till it is no longer inhabitable to saving ourselves from destruction through savior figures like Cooper Brand and Murph who risk their lives in space travel in order to save us from ourselves- driven fundamentally by love more than anything else. Hence while Interstellar is known as a science fiction film- its philosophical premise – that love will save humanity from itself – sounds more like something Christ would expouse.

The Jewish patriarch Abraham as a knight of faith acts out of duty to God and yet makes the personal decision to make a living sacrifice of his son.

Faith is constituted by paradox- it is a double gesture of love and betrayal, a dying to the self and a singular purpose, it exists only in negation of what it is not- the demonic. In conclusion Derrida writes of a central paradox that Jesus elucidates- to love your enemies and those that persecute you. It is thus assymetrical and exceeds economy. Faith is a gift- to love those that do evil to you and thus exceed the bounds of utility and reciprocity.

Derrida thus captures the essence of Christianity in his characterization of faith as a gift- a gift of love and a gift of death, it has to exceed reciprocity and to exceed self and world, towards the wholly Other and mysterious tremendum that is God.

It is thus essentially faith as a gift- a gift of love that drives Cooper to sacrifice himself by throwing himself into Gargantuan and thus reach the tesseract constructed by future humans who exist in five dimensions who will allow him to communicate across space and time to Murph who will eventually save humanity with the equation that will allow them to transport existing humanity across time and space with gravity to another habitable planet in the galaxy. For all its science thus Interstellar remains a story of love and sacrifice. What will eventually save humanity from itself is love for all beings, be they Aliens, humans, animals or robots. Ickapoo the alien is lonely because he is viewed as a freak, an alien Other. When we look at our similarities rather than differences, that is when we transcend violence, war, fear, rejection.