CONTACT

The motion picture Contact addresses a hot theme in popular culture: humanity's first contact with extra-terrestrial life. The film was adopted from Carl Sagan's novel, and it focuses more on the events on Earth than on the science of the protagonist's journey to the stars (The star is Jodie Foster, who plays an astronomer named Ellie Arroway). Clearly, Sagan grounded his fiction in scientific realities, making sure not forget the science of his science fiction. The movie, as might be expected, de-emphasizes the scientific details in order to focus on the human drama and love story that unfolds. In this case, popular culture reveals its true feelings for science: the film uses science only as much as is absolutely necessary. The director includes only enough science to convince the audience that the plot action falls within the realm of possibility. He uses Einstein's famous Theory of Relativity and other catch-phrases to prod the audience to suspend its disbelief. As is the case with the X-Files, the science leaves more questions than answers, and invited the viewer to speculate about what occurs when we reach the limits of our scientific knowledge.

Interestingly, Contact actually acknowledges the problems of science fiction within the plot. When the protagonist apparently travels through a wormhole, the audience experiences that ride with her: the film follows her and leaves Earth behind. At the same time, however, Sagan includes among the main characters the figure of a strong skeptic, a man who points out that the Einsteinian theory that predicts the existence of wormholes is unproven. He seems to be addressing the audience directly when he warns that wormholes are more the subject of science fiction than of real science. Here, Sagan (and the film's director) admit that the science they are using is weak: they invite each individual viewer to make his/her rational judgment without implying that the scientific basis for the wormhole is more than theoretical.

At the end of the film, the reader learns that Sagan (and the director) believe that Ellie's trip actually occurred. Here, the audience is asked to believe in the science fiction based on hard evidence from the supposed trip through the wormhole. While dozens of cameras recorded Ellie's flight pod's uninterrupted descent into the ocean, her own head-set recorded 18 hours of static. This detail implies that while she was dropping to the ocean she was also speeding through the galaxy. Like the X-Files, this film suggests that one can exist in two places at once without fully explaining the mystery behind that suggestion.

For more information on the movie Contact visit here

  • Click here for X-Files

  • Click here for Star Wars

  • Click here for Star Trek