Vallée on MIB Imagery

by Loren Coleman ©2012

Jacques F. Vallée, Ph. D. is a great person to have at your side when exploring the hidden realm. 

Vallée, as you may agree, is a cornerstone figure in intellectual ufology, who has added his genius to the study of "flying saucers" and the reported "occupants." He gathers information from diverse fields, including fairylore, cryptid sightings, Fortean phenomena, religious visions, and astrophysics. His third book, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1969) elegantly melts many of these threads of thought into a sensible and stimulating thesis on what UFOs might be.

For more background on Jacques' ufological work, see here.

Jacques wrote me the other day, after I posted my essay on this blog about the synchromystic visualizations of Men in Black in television treatments and cinema creations.

On May 25, 2012, Jacques emailed the following:

My contribution to that imagery was in 1979 with this book [Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults (Ronin, June 1979)] cover [shown at top].
At the time, I instructed the artist to show a human walking deliberately away from a hovering saucer rather than running away or cowering in front of it.
Most readers at the time didn't like the image, too disturbing and not in line with expectations about flying saucers: the occupants shouldn't be human.
I think what was disturbing in the 'Messengers' image was the implication that some humans knew what the saucers were, and [the 'others'] were walking quietly into our world.
Warm regards,
Jacques

The French scientist Claude LaCombe in the Steven Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind  was based on my friend Jacques Vallée.

Jacque Vallée (right) and J. Allen Hynek (left)

Claude LaCombe (François Truffaut)

My Boing Boing buddy David Pescovitz mentioned the following magnifique deleted scene from the film that says some things about twilight language:

David Laughlin (Bob Balaban). Name game note: Laughlin, Nevada, in the extreme southern tip of the state, has become a modern focal meeting point for ufology conferences, anomalistic gatherings, and Area 51 researchers.


See here for more from David Pescovitz on what special phrase shows up in CEIII that is, indeed, so very Vallée.


Thanks also to Patrick Huyghe of Anomalist Books for bringing the deleted scene to my attention in 2009.