This thoughtful and penetrating volume is the newest contribution to a suddenly fashionable exploration of the UFO subculture in academia, this time in a cultural studies vein, but with high potential interest for folklorists and other social scientists.
Beginning with the publication in 1966 of Betty and Barney Hill’s report of abduction, examination, and release by extraterrestrials, and accelerating madly after the publication of Whitley Strieber’s best-selling Communion in 1987, the idea of UFO abduction smells of nonsense and fantasy to many Americans. But it is the core narrative of a well-established subculture that perpetuates itself through interest and support groups, UFO investigation organisations, and print and electronic media, embracing hundreds or, quite probably, thousands of supposed “abductees” nationwide. Brown attempts a cultural analysis of this phenomenon, drawing on fieldwork and interviews with abductees in the New York City area.
This book offers no startling new theories, but takes on major themes in the abduction mythos in thought-provoking ways. Especially incisive is Brown’s analysis of the shady business of “recovered memory” hypnosis—the most prominent source of abduction narratives. She quite rightly casts doubt on the reliability of hypnotically retrieved memories and relates the phenomenon to more high-profile debates about recovered memories in (quite earthly) sexual-abuse cases. She draws parallels between the paralysis, mind control, and emotional scars inflicted by abducting aliens and the dynamic between the same (typically female) abductees and their (usually male) hypnotists. This parallel is curiously neglected in most of the academic and non-academic literature on the subject.
