Editing UFO conspiracy theories (section)

====''Close Encounters of the Third Kind''====
[[File:Allen Hynek Jacques Vallee 1.jpg|thumb|right|J. Allen Hynek (left) and Jacques Vallee were both involved in ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'']]
In 1974, the film ''[[UFOs: Past, Present, and Future]]'' dramatized an ostensibly-historical meeting between humans and aliens who land after being summoned.<ref name="Peebles"/>{{rp|207}}<ref name="MirageMen"/>{{rp|ch 12}} The filmmakers reported being told by military officials that a UFO had landed at Holloman Air Force Base.<ref name="MirageMen"/>{{rp|ch 12}}<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2009/sep/04/district-9-ufo-hollywood | title=District 9 is lucky to have avoided a close encounter with the Pentagon | work=The Guardian | date=4 September 2009 | last1=Alford | first1=Matthew | last2=Graham | first2=Robbie }}</ref> The depiction of a landing in the blockbuster ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' has been called a "thinly veiled reference to the Holloman landing" story.<ref name="MirageMen"/>{{rp|ch 12|quote="The climax of Close Encounters of the Third Kind is an elaborate, disco remix of the alleged event"}}<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vHlZAAAAMAAJ|title = Saucer Movies: A UFOlogical History of the Cinema|isbn = 9780810835733|last1 = Meehan|first1 = Paul|year = 1998| publisher=Scarecrow Press }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HWYvNErLKHsC | title=Project Beta: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth | isbn=978-1-4165-1339-1 | last1=Bishop | first1=Greg | date=15 February 2005 | publisher=Simon and Schuster }}</ref>{{rp|202}} The Holloman story would be later promoted by hoaxer Richard Doty.<ref name="MirageMen"/>{{rp|ch 12}}

On December 14, 1977, the Spielberg blockbuster film ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' premiered and brought UFO conspiracy theories to a global market.<ref name="Barkun2006"/>{{rp|30}}<ref name="Gulyas2015"/>{{rp|44}}<ref name="Peebles"/>{{rp|234}} The film opens with a United Nations recovery of [[Flight 19]], lost in the Bermuda Triangle some 32 years prior, in Mexico's Sonora desert; Since Keyhoe's 1955 book ''The Flying Saucer Conspiracy'', theorists had linked Flight 19's disappearance to flying saucers.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wxXYEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA74 | title=Alien Abduction in the Cinema: A History from the 1950s to Today | isbn=978-1-4766-8827-5 | last1=Meehan | first1=Paul | date=17 August 2023 | publisher=McFarland }}</ref>  <!--Early in the film, power company lineman Roy Neary is dispatched to investigate nighttime power outages;  Loss of power had been associated with UFOs since 1951's ''The Day The Earth Stood Still'' and the 1957 [[Levelland UFO case|Levelland case]]. After witnessing a series of UFOs, Neary suffers a 'sunburn' -- sunburns has been included in UFO reports since at least the 1957 case of James Stokes. Neary attends an Air Force press conference, where the sightings are dismissed and ridiculed.

Meanwhile, in Mongolia's Gobi desert, UN researchers discover the [[SS Cotopaxi]], lost in the Bermuda Triangle in 1925. In India, UN researchers record a brief musical motif from villagers who claim they heard it from a UFO. A specific recorded audio signature emitted by a UFO, and used to summon them, had previously been featured in the 1956 film ''Earth vs. the Flying Saucers''.

By broadcasting the musical signature, UN researchers receive a reply directing them to Devil's Tower, Wyoming. To clear the 'ranching country' of civilians, authorities consider faking an anthrax outbreak before ultimately deciding to create a cover story of a train derailment leaking nerve gas.

After his encounter, Neary begins obsessively sculpting a peculiar shape, which he later realizes is Devil's Tower. Alien "contactees" receiving telepathic contact, psychic vision, or 'downloads' had been part of UFO conspiracy lore since the 1940s and 1950s, exemplified by Meade Layne and George Adamski. --> The film's subplot of an "exchange program" of humans visiting aliens would later resurface in conspiracy theory as [[Project Serpo]].<ref name="MirageMen"/>{{rp|ch 12|quote="The climax of Close Encounters of the Third Kind is an elaborate, disco remix of the alleged event, which also formed the centrepiece of the Serpo story thirty years later."}}{{rp|x|quote="Beyond the main event of the ET–human exchange, there really wasn’t anything in the Serpo story that wasn’t already present in the UFO lore. Any movie buff could also point out the obvious parallels to Steven Spielberg’s UFO epic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which climaxes with the landing of a colossal disco-ball UFO at a secret site near Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. Here Richard Dreyfus’s character joins twelve military personnel who board the ET craft, presumably to be taken to the benevolent aliens’ planet"}}

Legendary French  filmmaker [[François Truffaut]] played a character inspired by French UFO investigator [[Jacques Vallee]], an advisor to the film.<ref name="PaleHorseRider"/>{{rp|x|quote="An early sign of slippage occurred when he agreed to sit for an interview with with Jacques Vallée, the single-most-respected investigator in the history of the field. Educated at the Sorbonne, an astrophysicist and futurist, model for the part played by François Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Vallée brought a rare touch of continental class to the US military/nerd-dominated ufology subculture."}}Real life debunker-turned-believer [[J. Allen Hynek]] made a cameo in the film.<ref name="MirageMen"/>   In coming years, conspiracy figure John Lear and others would allege that powerful insiders had "subtly promoted" ''Close Encounters'' and other films to 'educate' the public.<ref name="Barkun2006"/>{{rp|30|quote= "In a 1987 press statement, John Lear, the estranged son of inventor William Lear, claimed not only that the U.S. government had close and continuing contacts with extraterrestrials, but that an inner circle of powerful officials had “subtly promoted” the films ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' and ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' so that the public would come to think of extraterrestrials as benevolent “space
brothers.” Somewhat similar claims were made by conspiracy writer
Milton William Cooper, who said that the films were “thinly disguised”
descriptions of contacts that took place in the early 1950s between extraterrestrials and the government.}}
<!-- Spielberg would return to the theme in E.T. -->