Arrival (2016): Will We Understand Aliens When (If) They Arrive?
How many civilizations are there in our galaxy? According to the Drake equation, written in 1961 by American astrophysicist Frank Drake, there could be millions. While the Drake equation might overestimate the number of potential space-faring races in our galaxy, it is pretty safe to assume that we are not alone. Or, to paraphrase another great American astrophysicist, Carl Sagan, “the universe is a pretty big place…if it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.”
Sagan himself moonlighted as a science fiction writer – his 1985 bestseller, “Contact,” adapted to the big screen in 1997, tells the story of an alien civilization reaching out to humanity for the first time. Like many other science fiction novels and films, it was built around an idea that may or may not be true: aliens share at least a few basic concepts and values with humanity. Moreover, the story assumes that we will be able to communicate with them, or better yet, that they will be able to communicate with us. Alternatively, Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, one of the top films of the Venice Film Festival in 2016 and winner of the Arca CinemaGiovani Award (in addition to being a commercial success) is based on a completely different premise. In Arrival, the aliens that come to Earth are nothing like us. As a result, we have a very difficult time understanding them.
When the Aliens Arrive
Aliens have been visiting Earth in fiction for quite some time. One of the most notable examples – and considered by many to be the progenitor of the entire “alien invasion” genre – is H. G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds.” The novel chronicles Martian invaders as they occupy the south of Victorian England. The motivation for the Martian armies marching over our planet was simple: the resources on their own planet were running out, so they needed to look elsewhere. When they discovered that Earth was rich in natural resources, they decided to colonize the planet, resulting in plenty of death and destruction. This motif has re-emerged in countless works of fiction, from novellas and short stories to movies (including The Matrix trilogy) and TV shows.
In most of these stories, the protagonists find a way to communicate with the invaders (or vice versa). While their methods can be a bit unusual – think of the “harnesses” mounted on the children’s backs in Falling Skies (2011) or the tentacle trick played by the invader in Independence Day (1996) – their motives (and their words) are not very different from our own. Even when the aliens are friendly, they are often quite similar to humans. They are capable of curiosity (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), friendship (E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial), humor (Paul), and altruism (Superman). And they all speak human…of sorts.
Real Life “Aliens”
Though we don’t often think about it, we share our planet with an alien intelligence right now: dolphins. These likable and funny creatures that perform tricks at aquariums are capable of complex problem-solving. They also understand concepts like numerical continuity, they are creative, they play for fun, and some of them even live in family-like communities. Although we share a planet with them, we still don’t understand a word they are saying. That said, researchers have proven that they do use a complex language, but no one has deciphered it yet. Now imagine a civilization that is capable of traveling across interstellar spaces and has evolved in an entirely different solar system from our own. Would we be able to communicate with such visitors – or even understand their basic concepts?
Arrival (2016)
This brings us to Arrival (2016). Based on the 1998 short story, “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, the film tells the story of Louise Banks, a linguist invited by the US Army to try to communicate with the inhabitants of one of a dozen alien spaceships that recently landed on Earth. The “alienness” of the aliens is obvious at first sight: they have seven limbs (hence their name, “heptapods”), no visible eyes, ears, or mouth. It takes the two scientists assigned to them – a linguist and a physicist played by Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, respectively – quite some time to figure out any of their messages. Eventually, they realize that the symbols the two aliens (Abbott and Costello) draw are not letters or words all, but entire enunciations. The symbols reflect the different way in which these creatures perceive the world around them.
Ultimately, the scientists reach the conclusion that the visitors are stranger than they thought; they don’t experience time in the same fashion as humans, but rather in a non-linear way. Their communication is non-linear as well – a bit like expressing an entire thought in a single “burst,” as opposed to our way of saying or reading the words one after another, from left to right.
This is where the movie dives deep into the science-fiction territory. The filmmakers use the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, also known as the concept of linguistic relativity, which states that people’s perceptions are influenced significantly by the language they speak, and that learning a different language somehow rewires the brain. They teach humanity their alien language and, automatically, their perception of time and the world. In turn, this allows humans to have “memories” of the future, thus preventing a global armed conflict and – perhaps – one day serve as an invaluable ally to the heptapods.
On Earth, each language shares the same basic structure, and all languages are built off of basic human perceptions. In every language, you’ll find a word for the Sun, water, air, and wind – everything that surrounds us. And almost every language has a spoken and written form, with each functioning as the visual or auditory representation of the other. In Arrival, the spoken and written forms of the heptapods’ language are completely unrelated. This makes understanding their language a difficult task.
As the example of the dolphins shows us, we don’t have to travel across the galaxy to find drastically different languages and modes of perception. We can’t even understand dolphins, a species that has occupied the same planet as us for thousands of years. So, compare this to the difficulty of understanding a species from a different solar system. Now, imagine that the alien species is far more advanced than we are – after all, it built a spacecraft capable of traveling from millions of miles away. Their language will likely be far more complex than our own. In the end, we can only hope that, if and when aliens do arrive, we will have enough common ground to be able to at least say “Hello.”
