“I
am Liz Parker, and five days ago I died; after that things got really weird.”Within the relational geography of the United States, Roswell, New Mexico, continues to function as a key fantasy site as the meeting place between the human and inhuman, so much so that a teen television series was named after it:Roswell (1999–2002). For three seasons, most of the series’ action took place within its iso- lated, hot, and desolate embrace—more specifically in three locations: West Roswell High School, the Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) Center (part archive for unexplainable incidents, part entertainment center), and the Crash Down Café, the out-of-school meeting and working place for the cast of characters. All other locations seemed to be within a one- or two-day drive. Only seldom do we find the characters on the “outside” for an entire episode—for example, when they were in New York (209, “Max in the City”) and Las Vegas (215, “Viva Las Vegas”). However, despite what appear to be confined and well-defined institutions, one senses that its characters are operating in another space and time, always moving, searching, and driving—nomadic. We seldom see the inside of a classroom, but certainly plenty of hallways, corridors, nooks and crannies, and isolated desert scenery.
Roswell presents the fantasy of another “crash site” that brings the clash of humanist and posthumanist thought together just like its characters. The serious UFO traveler, a true believer, comes to Roswell to confirm the truth of the con- spiracy and to verify the military and government cover-up. In the same magical space, the pilgrim meets the postmodern carnival of tourism—the stroller, the vagabond, and the player—each of whom is there strictly to enjoy the entertain- ment value of playing alien (see Bauman 1996). None other than Jonathan Frankes ofStar Trekfame hosts the UFO Convention (112, “The Convention”), a wink to the audience that this is all good fun and make-believe. So, believe while you are there, but don’t really believe all this nonsense.
This very contradiction between hoax and truth is played out throughout the series: the serious pilgrim, like UFO Center owner and scientist Brody Davis, meets the playful tourists who inhabit the Crash Down Café in an inverted para- noid narrative that comes off tongue-in-cheek at times in season one. But late into
season two, the wink to the audience is given up front. Starting with episode 215 (“Viva Las Vega”), Maria DeLuca, one of the alien-human alliance members, acts as a schoolteacher in front of a blackboard and begins each episode by directly addressing the audience and recapping what has happened previously. This stops with season three, as if the producers were unsure to what lengths they wished to continue to frame such a self-reflexive ironic tone.
Raising Sleeping Beauty from the Dead
The story line is about three high school undercover aliens—Max Evans, his sis- ter Isabel, and their friend Michael Guerin—who are joined by a fourth alien, Tess Harding, late in the first season (117, “Tess, Lies, and Videotape”), who will act as a foil for Max’s love interest—the earthling Liz Parker—in the manner of other teenage melodramas such as Smallville,Dawson’s Creek,andBuffy. Their crash on Earth leaves them orphaned and without knowledge of their parents or their des- tiny. Max and Isabel are found wandering in the desert and are adopted by kind loving parents, Philip and Diane Evans, while Michael suffers the fate of being in the custody of a drunken foster parent who lives in a trailer park. Tess, on the other hand, is protected by a planetary shape-shifting guardian named Nasedo (who later turns out to be a double agent). All they have been left to go on are a few alien artifacts, the Granilith (a transportation machine to take them back to their home, the planet Antar) and an indecipherable book written in their native language, which they are unable to read but which could provide them with answers. The narrative is therefore an unfolding detective story as to what their destinies are and what role each of them will play in it. They must remain under- cover and pass as humans. Culture must become indistinguishable from “nature”
if they are to be treated as authentic human beings. They are, in this respect, an uncanny, undetected element—queer folk living among “normal” human beings.
By the end of the first season, the destiny of the foursome is revealed: The four turn out to be clones of royalty from the planet Antar: Max is king, and Tess is his wife. Michael turns out to be second in command, and we learn later (207,
“Wipeout!”) that Isabel, his sister, may well be a clone of Vilandra, who betrayed Max’s family by falling in love on Antar with his enemy Kivar. The foursome sur- vived the spaceship’s crash, landing near Roswell, because they were still in their incubation pods, hatching from them as six-year-old alien-human hybrids. Their
“royal” essences had been duplicated and mixed with human DNA so that they could assume human form and be adopted. Their mission is to return to Antar and retake the throne from Kivar. As products of miscegenation (mixing alien and human blood), they are racial bastards.
In this postmodern Sleeping Beauty story, 16-year-old Liz Parker, while wait- ressing at her parents’ restaurant—the Crash Down Café—is accidentally shot while witnessing an argument between two customers. Max awakens her from death (sleep), not by a kiss but by placing his hand over her wound, thereby heal- ing it. The experience bonds them irreparably together in love—a bud-light form of Vulcan mind-meld—as each is able to feel and imagine the other’s memories
during moments of heightened awareness; this becomes useful during the unfold- ing saga. Eventually, Liz finds out that Max, his sister, and his best friend Michael are aliens, and she eventually shares the secret with her best friend Maria DeLuca, and much later with Alex Whitman (107, “Blood Brother”). The cell of six forms friendship bonds and uneasy love relations with one another: Michael with Maria and Alex with Isabel, the latter of which is less than successful. Thrown into the mix are the town’s sheriff, Jim Valenti, and his son, the football star Kyle, Liz’s early love interest. As the series progresses, both Kyle and his dad come to protect the aliens. Jim Valenti acts as their surrogate father.
Paranoiac Split
Roswell began broadcasting on the Warner Brothers (WB) network in October 1999, just before the new millennium, and it ended in May 2002, a few months before 9/11, a time frame that rode the end wave of alien paranoia in the 1990s, best exemplified at the time by The X-Files, which began broadcasting in 1993 (Burns 2001). Jason Katims, its creator, executive producer, and writer, should be credited for its success, in line with Kevin Williamson for Dawson’s Creek,Joss Whedon for Buffy,and Paul Feig for Freaks and Geeks.Unlike the paranoiac ter- ror ofThe X-Files, however,Roswell’s ironic meditation on paranoia itself exposes its structure as a projection of the divide within us. In Lacan’s terms, the very struggle surrounding identity is one engaged with a problematic split-in-belief.
At the basis of paranoia itself, which nevertheless seems to us to be animated by belief, there reigns the phenomenon of the Unglauben. This is not the not believing in it, but the absence of one of the terms of belief, of the term in which is designated the division of the subject. If, indeed, there is no belief that is full and entire, it is because there is no belief that does not presuppose in its basis that the ultimate dimension that it has to reveal is strictly correlative with the moment when its meaning is about to fade away (Lacan S XI,Fundamentals, 238).
This split within the subject is most clearly illustrated by Max, who specifically states, “My whole life I’ve been thinking that this alien side of me was this bad thing. This thing that made me a freak. This monster” (218, “It’s Too Late and It’s Too Bad”). As a hybrid human-alien, he is placed on the border of Lacan’s division of the subject. He has no “home,” or rather he has only a vague recollection of his alien planet, and is torn between wanting to return to it or remaining human and staying on Earth. Memory flashes trouble all the aliens as haunts of the past, of hav- ing led another life that they can’t quite fathom. Their enemies are certainly human beings. “In paranoia, the primary function of the enemy is to provide a definition of the real that makes paranoia necessary. We must therefore begin to suspect the paranoiac structure itself as a device by which consciousness maintains the plural- ity of the self and nonself, thus preserving the concept of identity” (Bersani 1989, 109). So while paranoia may appear to be an epistemological angst, addressing the reliability of knowledge, evidence, and history, it is more deeply an ontological problem in which the subject endeavors to determine the nature and security of his
or her own existence. Too great an insistence on the static security of identity can plunge the subject into an aggressive form of paranoia.
Max’s paranoia is played out through his romantic involvements, between his earthling romance with Liz Parker and his alien romance with Tess Harding.
Unfortunately, this bifurcation of love partners repeats the virgin/whore dichotomy made visually famous by the “two Marias” in Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic Metropolis. Liz Parker is pure, saving her virginity for Max. Tess, on the other hand, is always scheming and succeeds in becoming impregnated. She is presented as a femme-fatale; not only can she mind-manipulate, and hence seduce men, but she also knows exactly what she wants—to return home as queen with Max as her king. Further, she kills (her intentionality is deliberately obscured) Alex Whitman, a member of the alien-human alliance. In the final episode (318, “Graduation”), she is required to sacrifice herself by becoming a suicide bomber in order to destroy a military base so that the cell can escape pursuit. Only then is she “sym- bolically” forgiven.
What is further troubling is that Tess (like the Skins, who are branded as evil aliens) represents the abject alien part, that part which crosses the line of human acceptance. Betraying Max, Tess is allowed to return home (pregnant) to Antar via the Granilith transporter, but only by the narrowest of margins, when the alien- human alliance is asked to vote on her fate (221, “The Departure”). She is ejected from the symbolic order like those young women in the past who had their out- of-wedlock babies some distance from school and home to avoid familial shame.
Max is left behind, enabling his romance with Liz to continue.
Ultimately, the aliens are more drawn to “human” culture than to their own alien planet, not unlike second-generation children who were very young when their parents left their home country to stake out another life. Such children are caught between two words: the traditional world of their immigrant parents and the new culture they find themselves in. Roswell’s aliens are no different when searching for their identity. Isabel in particular ends up feverishly desiring the married life with Jesse Ramierz, a lawyer in her dad’s firm (306, “To Have and to Hold”). Her feelings of guilt at being unable to tell Jesse that she is an alien finally make her snap, and she imagines what their marriage would be like if her secret was finally outed. This is ironically staged through a dream sequence with a 1960’s feel. Isabel becomes the figure of the witch Samantha Stephens, reenacting the tel- evision series Bewitched(1964–72), with shades ofI Dream of Jeannie(1965–70).
Jesse plays Darrin Stephens complete with brown suit, briefcase, and pipe, and like Toni on the I Dream of Jeannieseries, Isabel (unlike Jeannie) is not his Master try- ing magically to make his every whim come true. Rather, Jesse is constantly annoyed and confused by her magical antics (311, “I Married an Alien”). Her inde- pendence as the decorator and ruler of the household is firmly maintained both in this dream sequence and in their lived life, which only leads to more problems.
Michael, on the other hand, must learn from coworkers what friendship and responsibility are all about (302,“Michael, the Guys, and the Great Snapple Caper”).
The famous July 9, 1947, military “cover up” of the UFO crash is revisited early in the second season (204, “Summer of ‘47”), when the characters are able to reen- act, again with tongue-in-cheek, what might have happened through a flashback
recounted during an interview that Michael conducts (for a school project) with a veteran World War II survivor, Captain Hal Carver, one of the original mem- bers of the 509th Bomb Group that had investigated the crash site. Besides retaining the mystery of the crash (it was only a radar-tracking weather balloon, not a “flying disc”1), the episode sets up the plot arc of season two by introduc- ing their dopplegänger doubles—Captain Carver tells Michael that there were eight pods in the crash, not four! Known as the Dupes (208, “Meet the Dupes”), Zan (Max’s clone), Rath (Michael’s clone), Lonnie (Isabel’s clone), and Ava (Tess’s clone) are presented as their vilified doubles (the allusion to “dopes” is obvious)—punk rockers whose alien guardian, unlike Nasedo, left their pods in the sewers of New York.
One way of reading this dopplegänger alien foursome is that it differentiates one alien from another, reinstating the boundary that is continually slipping between humans and the aliens throughout the life of the series. Presenting their home planet as being engaged in a war of rival monarchs also distances them from the “democracy” of the United States, but it also bestows on the teens a curious kind of status. As good, hybrid aliens of royal decent, they carry a certain dignity and command a respect that is to be welcomed. It is here that Roswell marks a distinct departure from Chris Carter’s critical revisionism of the hard- boiled, film noir detective fiction in The X-Filesto explore the cultural paranoia of ethnic and racial instabilities and racial “othering” through alien motives (jagodzinki and Hipfl 2001; Burns 2001).
Facing the Alien to the Side
Roswellagain provides us with the post-Oedipal landscape. Its narrative sym- bolizes the common fears and anxieties experienced when facing the alien Other: the not knowing who we are, the experiences of being a foster child, and of keeping secrets from parents and other authority figures. There are also the risks and trust required for making close personal connections with others, keep- ing friends, and experiencing being in or from a strange world. Facing the alien Other also presents an ethics of the Real. Liz Parker and her friend Maria DeLuca must face Max’s and Michael’s strangeness as aliens. When Max saves her from a fatal gunshot wound in the series opener, she must let his “strangeness” in, so to speak, and face her own fears. In her diary, as a record of her experiences, she tries to distance herself from, and thus alleviate, these fears; to record and con- tain them as any teenager does. The Roswellseries can be read as one long diary of a girl’s fantasy life.
The aliens in Roswell are presented as a tourist attraction, in typical cartoon fashion. The Greys appear on billboards, postcards, children’s toys, and are repre- sented by Roswell’s annual Crash Festival and sci-fi themed food served at Crash Down Café. Throughout the series, the gap between humans and inhumans is just barely maintained, for they have come to earth in the form of hybrid creatures, hatched from pod-like cocoons, a clear reference to the infamous Invasion of the Body Snatchers(1956) as masterfully explored by Neil Badmington (2001; 2004a,
135–51; 2004b). The film became infamous when the director, Don Siegel, was prevented from releasing the director’s cut by Walter Wanger (the producer) and Allied Artists, which backed the project. They refused to accept the bleak ending he had engineered in which there was no hope in stopping the alien invasion.
Roswellpresents a simulacrum of this narrative. There is a similar plot to invade the Earth by the Skins, rebel aliens led by Kivar from Antar, who are pitted against the small band of heroes. They, too, have plans to replace earthlings with clones grown in pod-like structures (206, “Harvest”). Most are represented as members of a Zombie horde. Their leader is Nicholas, a teen who is controlled by his over- bearing mother. This ironical accent is furthered by the cunning intelligence and mind-manipulating powers of Nicholas, who is hot for Vilandra. Nicholas’s kissing Isabel on a bus plays out the fantasy of every schoolboy who has fallen in love with his older teacher (207, “Wipe Out”). A renegade Skin, Courtney (206,
“Harvest”), provides insight into their mission and the clue to how the Skins might be destroyed—based on their need to inhabit human “husks.” The molting of their skin not only provides a trace of their presence, but it also further abjec- tifies their “animal” nature, distinguishing them from the royal three.
Unlike Don Siegel’s Body Snatchers,where the sudden contagion of paranoia in the small town of San Miro, California, erupts as the citizens are replaced by the unrecognizable, perfect pod-people doubles, who lack the emotion and passion that constitutes humanness, we have the inverse happening here. All three aliens show remarkable passion, indistinguishable from that of humans. Even Michael eventually becomes protective of Maria. Only he is able to reach the psychotically paranoid Laurie DuPree, who has been locked up in a psychiatric ward by her aunt and uncle to prevent her from getting her grandfather’s billions (212, “We Are Family”). Fear of the visual double creates a particularly intense anxiety for the paranoid. Aliens can perfectly mimic a human’s outer form, as could the trio’s guardian, Nasedo. But, in this episodic arc, it turns out the alien as double (Michael who looks like Laurie DuPree’s grandfather) passes as her savior-hero once she gets over the family resemblance. The dividing line between alien and human once more collapses.
Alien Love
Roswell, according to Badmington (2004a, 85), provides an example of alien love, which under most circumstances is better grasped as Alien Chic. Following Tom Wolfe’s logic in his sense of Radical Chic, the movement from hating the alien to embracing the alien Other is rather superficial, and might also be thought through as an example of postmodern racism or “neo-racism” following Etienne Balibar (1991), which is to say that the celebration of the other as Other, as being entirely distinct from the self, simply reinstates the divide or gulf between “Them” and
“Us.” In this way, difference collapses into sameness, with the tenets of humanism being reinstated again in a very clever way. It appears that there is a true interest in the Other, to the point of showing love and affection, which can just as quickly turn to hate if the alien Other does not cooperate with the generosity given or does not