Posthuman Blues

The Face on Mars, as image and metaphor, is wildly powerful, but it has yet to eclipse the dominant "extraterrestrial" archetype: the ubiquitous "alien head" that entered the idea pool upon publication of Whitley Strieber's "Communion" in 1987. The alien portrait on the cover quickly became synonymous with aliens and close encounters, and was eventually minimalized into a tapered oval with black ellipses for eyes and a straight line for a mouth (thanks, in large part, to the work of underground cartoonist Bill Barker). Today, the "alien head" icon is as pervasive as Nike's "swoosh" or Tommy Hilfiger's patriotically colored "T." It's emblematic of the unknown. By rendering it into a caricature, vendors of the "intelligent extraterrestrial" meme have fostered a communion the likes of which Strieber couldn't have possibly guessed.

Alien iconography inundates popular culture. Even children (who have never heard of Betty and Barney Hill, let alone new-wave abduction researchers such as Harvard's Dr. John Mack) immediately recognize the minimal "alien head" as something strange and portentous . . . as well as imminently stylish. It's no coincidence that the characters in recent video games and animated television series bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the "alien" a la Strieber and Barker. From Japanese anime to the Powerpuff Girls, the consummately "cute," bug-eyed motif has played a quiet but important role in demystifying what was once unthinkable. Like a fish with embryonic lungs, the alien meme has crawled ashore and flourished, populating the zeitgeist with consumer-friendly weirdness.