Post by uforn on Jul 8, 2010 18:49:40 GMT 1
UFO's: Steven Spielberg And The Karla Turner Connection
While being one of the most brilliant and successful movie directors of all time, Steven Spielberg has also maintained another pursuit which is characterized by controversy. For decades since he began his meteoric career as a film director, Spielberg has followed the UFO phenomena. As a matter of fact, he has filmed three projects involving the UFO mystery. Each one of these endeavours has made a cinematic or televised impact.
His first movie to deal with the question of alien contact with mankind was the classic "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind". It is rare that a film project can actually illuminate a controversial issue with meaningful content that exerts an influence on society, but this block buster film did just that. Spielberg's somewhat documentary approach to describing a family man's struggle with a UFO sighting he has and how he finds himself compelled to become involved in something he knows little about to the point of drastically changing his life in pursuit of the truth, moves the audience. Not only does Close Encounters affect our emotions but it raises the issues of alien abduction and covert government involvement, while portraying the extraterrestrials in a benevolent manner.
It is reported by cast and crew members alike that during the filming of Close Encounters that there was an unmistakable presence. Seemingly supernatural events occurred during the filming. Unexplained lights in the night sky were observed by the actors and film crew. Freak hurricane intensity winds came up suddenly along with heavy rains. It has been revealed that at one point the director and his staff were scared badly enough to go running off the set. During the final scene where aliens make contact at the invitation of a secret scientific project on Devil's Tower, a blinking unidentified aerial object supposedly glides overhead as the scene is underway. Members of the acting cast such as Richard Dreyfus, Terri Garr, and Francois Truffaut admitted that they felt guided by an invisible but very present force that inspired them to finish the project.
The movie was named after Doctor J.Allen Hynek's terminology, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, that categorized the level of alien contact that a human being could experience during a UFO sighting. This he used as defining criteria when interviewing people who had reported their sometimes disturbing brushes with UFO's and their occupants.
Spielberg went to the Sci Fi channel in 2001 with a proposal to do a made for TV movie entitled, "Taken," which would receive awards for best TV miniseries after it's debut in 2002. This is where the paths of Steven Spielberg and Karla Turner cross as she had been releasing a number of books concerning the adbuctee experience. in fact she released a series of books under the the title "Taken" as well. Her books dealt with giving those who had experienced traumatic abductions at the hands of extraterrestrial intruders support in taking control of their lives again. Using anger instead of submission as she urged. Karla emphasized that if UFO's were a kind and benevolent force then why were people being kidnapped in the middle of the night in their homes and being subjected to painful and humiliating biological experiments? These were not the actions of a civilization that could be trusted, she advised.
Karla Turner used her considerable powers of deduction and fact finding as she interviewed her subjects to assimilate the vague and hidden agenda of their alien abductors. She reasoned that some sort of genetic experimentation was going on, perhaps cross breeding between aliens and humans as well. Karla attempted to treat her subjects as people who needed treatment, not just benign participants in an unsolved mystery as many researchers had before her. Karla Turner was one of the pioneers in the shadowy field of abduction research to not only help the victims emotionally, but to encourage them to resist and to take back their prior lives in order to return to normalcy. This admittedly would be a tough task. Karla Turner did a number of informative lectures for MUFON in Austin, Texas during the mid 1990's until shortly before her sudden and regrettable death.
Spielberg's miniseries, "Taken" is patterned after not only the hidden agenda of a very advanced alien race that needs mankind for some unseen purpose, but also reveals them to be somewhat menacing. They are capable of mentally manipulating people. Through all this our government too is not portrayed as having noble intentions either as certain officials within the sanctum of classified operations in the military are compelled to use what they have found for personal power. Abuses are noted on both sides as abductees fending for their lives become pawns on a mystifying chessboard as intelligence services play a cat and mouse game with the alien captors in an unclear struggle to obtain the upper hand. Casualties inevitably occur in this dark underworld of secrecy. Karla's insights echo through out this TV series.
Just as Karla Turner herself speaks about in her illuminating speeches given in undramatic and concise detail. She is there for the victims. Karla was not a prima donna who sought to elevate herself during the course of her investigative tenure. Her primary goal was to unravel the alien abduction mystery and lend her help to the afflicted abductees. She was a refreshing personality in light of many of the cold and self important figures who now make their presentations at UFO conventions, who come across very dramatically and arrogantly when paying audience members attempt to engage them in discussion off the podium. This is a phenomena that is enduring, complex, and in need of clarification. It should not be the province of egotists!
Steven Spielberg's most recent cinematic soiree into the landscape of the extraterrestrial contact is "War Of The Worlds". Spielberg's 2005 adaptation of the H.G Wells classic stuns the audience with symbolisms of man's futility to stop the alien conquest of our planet. Images of a burning death train rumbling down the tracks, lifelessly performing its mass transit schedule, or flaming Army Humvees in lieu of a desperate battle returning from the horror of facing a superior enemy conjure fears from our world today threatened by terrorism and the plight of refugees. The hopelessness of man in his inability to stop the planetary invaders exploits the undercurrents of our very own sense of despair when it comes modern day global conflicts.
However, I believe that there is something more revealing at the heart of Spielberg's cold and disturbing portrayal of man's conflict with malevolent powers far beyond his own. Unlike his upbeat and sometimes playful account of man's attempt at contact with UFO's in "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" where a sense of wonderment reigns. I think his knowledge of the realm of abuses, covert government exploitation, and the troubling behavior of nocturnal intruders who are terrorizing their abductee victims through Karla Turner's work in "Taken" has altered his outlook on the subject. As we have seen a more sober and cynical Spielberg in recent movie projects on other subjects, so have we seen his treatment of the alien agenda as well. Though Steven has to remain true to the classic tale of visionary, H.G. Wells, it is done with a grim appraisal of the diplomacy that exists between two different worlds much as it exists today between opposing nations, who commit atrocities against one another. Just as much as it exists with the help of Karla Turner's stark evaluation of the alien abductions and how the once gullible attitude we maintained toward a seemingly puzzling modus operandi that is now exposed for the menacing violations of people's rights that it actually is. Even as our government refuses to officially disclose what it knows or that its own citizens may be in peril as a result of exposure to UFO's or the intelligence behind them, perhaps even the movies we watch end up becoming the very reflection of our uncertainty.
Source:
www.examiner.com/x-44046-Dallas-UFO-Examiner~y2010m7d4-UFOs-Steven-Spielberg-And-The-Karla-Turner-Connection?cid=edition-by-channel-rss-Dallas-Gadgets_and_Tech