Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 4

September 1, 2025: Fall Semester Previews: Honors Lit

[Thisweek, I start my 21st year at Fitchburg State! So as usual, I’lloffer some previews of the semester ahead, this time focusing on individualmoments I’m looking forward to in each class. Leading up to a weekend update onmy plans for season 2 of my podcast!]

It’s beena few years since I had the chance to teach my Honors Literature Seminar onAmerica in the Gilded Age, so I’m very excited for every moment in this longstandingfavorite course offered for our phenomenal community of Honors Program students(many of whom I taught in my Spring2025 Honors First-Year Writing section). But since I’m drafting this seriesin mid-June, with the Los Angeles protests unfolding as I write, I’m particularlylooking forward to beginning the class with our first long text, Helen HuntJackson’s Ramona.Besides being a multilayered historical novel that teaches really well, Jackson’snovel reminds us that Southern California (like all of America, but in particularlystriking ways) has always been incredibly diverse, and that those who want to “return”to a homogeneous white America are quite simply fantasists.

Nextsemester preview tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo y’all have coming up?

August 30-31, 2025: August 2025 Recap

[A Recapof the month that was in AmericanStudying.]

August3: Birthday Bests: 2010-2011: My annual birthday series kicks off with 34favorites from my first year of AmericanStudying!

August4: Birthday Bests: 2011-2012: 35 from year two!

August5: Birthday Bests: 2012-2013: 36 from year three!

August6: Birthday Bests: 2013-2014: 37 from year four!

August7: Birthday Bests: 2014-2015: 38 from year five!

August8: Birthday Bests: 2015-2016: 39 from year six!

August9: Birthday Bests: 2016-2017: 40 from year seven!

August10: Birthday Bests: 2017-2018: 41 from year eight!

August11: Birthday Bests: 2018-2019: 42 from year nine!

August12: Birthday Bests: 2019-2020: 43 from year ten!

August13: Birthday Bests: 2020-2021: 44 from year eleven!

August14: Birthday Bests: 2021-2022: 45 from year twelve!

August15: Birthday Bests: 2022-2023: 46 from year thirteen!

August16: Birthday Bests: 2023-2024: 47 from year fourteen!

August17: Birthday Bests: 2024-2025: And the newest birthday post, 48 favoritesfrom the past, fifteenth year of AmericanStudying!

August18: University of Michigan Studying: Founding Histories: With my youngerson Kyle off to the University of Michigan, this year’s post-birthday seriesfocused on Wolverine contexts, starting with three foundational moments.

August19: University of Michigan Studying: Three Presidents: The series continueswith takeaways from the terms of three 19th century presidents.

August20: University of Michigan Studying: Football: Three early moments thatchart the rise of a perennial pigskin powerhouse, as the series studies on.

August21: University of Michigan Studying: Famous Alums: Five famous Michiganalums, in honor of my future one.

August22: University of Michigan Studying: Uncle Peter: The series concludes witha quick tribute to my prior connection to Michigan.

August23-24: University of Michigan Studying: Kyle’s Plans: And a special weekendfollow-up on three of the many things I’m excited about during Kyle’s time atMichigan!

August25: Alien Nation: Roswell: For the 30th anniversary of Fox’s AlienAutopsy, a series on our fascination with aliens kicks off with thelongstanding & problematic sides to one of our most enduring conspiracytheories.

August26: Alien Nation: E.T. and Aliens: The series continues with friendly &hostile extraterrestrials, and the real bad guys in each case.

August27: Alien Nation: Close Encounters and Contact: Two superficially similarfilms that feature distinct portrayals of both aliens & America, as theseries probes on.

August28: Alien Nation: Alien Autopsy: On the 30th anniversary of itsfirst airing, two cultural contexts for a historic hoax.

August29: Alien Nation: Recent Revelations: The series concludes with how we canmake sense of the dramatic rise of “UFO” sightings in recent years.

Fallsemester previews start Monday,

Ben

PS. Topicsyou’d like to see covered in this space? Guest Posts you’d like to contribute? Lemme know!

August 29, 2025: Alien Nation: Recent Revelations

[30 yearsago this week, the pseudo-documentaryfilm Alien Autopsy aired. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy thatmoment and others that reflect our enduring fascination with the possibility ofalien life, leading up to this post on recent revelations!]

On how tomake sense of the dramatic rise in reputable “UFO” sightings in recent years.

Firstthings first: what crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947 was apparently anAirForce high-altitude balloon (part of the top-secret but now declassified ColdWar Project Mogul), not an alien spaceship. I haven’t studied in depth allthe other “UFO” sightings across the centuries that are highlighted on thisWikipedia page, but I’m willing to bet that every one has a similarlymundane (or at least earthbound, as I suppose a top secret Cold War balloonproject is pretty interesting in its own right) explanation. To wit: inDecember 2024 there were a ton of reportedUFO sightings across the Northeastern U.S., and from what I can tell theywere almost certainly all drones,perhaps even private-use ones that people had gotten as holiday presents andwere trying out.

In manyways, that paragraph might seem to be an argument for fewer “UFO” sightings inthe 2020s, since we now know a lot more about the various (temporarily)unidentified flying objects, past and present, natural and human-produced, thatwe could potentially misidentify as alien ones. But somehow, our increasedawareness of those realities has been complemented by an increase in the numberof alleged UFO sightingsin recent years—and, even more strikingly, an amplification of the U.S.government’s willingness to take such sightings seriously, as it did forexample with numerous “drone”sightings between 2019 and 2020. As that latter date indicates, thepandemic was a particularly prominent moment for such reports, and that’s alogical enough explanation to be sure—but not one that’s close tocomprehensive when it comes to alleged sightings over many more years than justthe Covid ones.

So whileideas and images of alien arrival aren’t at all new, as I hope this whole serieshas made clear, they do seem to be on the rise here in the 2020s. And while Idon’t think we can attribute that to the pandemic (at least not as an originpoint, since for example that 2019 rash of sightings predated Covid), I wouldargue that our broader sense of imminent, ifnot indeed ongoing, apocalypse has a lot to do with why we seem to beseeing aliens everywhere. In part I mean that it would be helpful, psychologicallyanyway, to be able to blame the strong sense that the world might be ending onextra-terrestrial causes, as so many of our pop culture texts across thecenturies have already done. But I also and especially mean that, when we seemso incapable here on our shared planet of doing what’s necessary to save it, itsure would be nice for a deux ex machina to come on down and help out. “Take usto your leader?” Nah, little green dudes, y’all better lead the way.

AugustRecap this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

August 28, 2025: Alien Nation: Alien Autopsy

[30 yearsago this week, the pseudo-documentaryfilm Alien Autopsy aired. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy thatmoment and others that reflect our enduring fascination with the possibility ofalien life, leading up to a post on recent revelations!]

On two culturalcontexts for a historic hoax.

30 yearsago today, Fox broadcast for the first time Alien Autopsy: Fact orFiction? The hour-long special, hosted by Star Trek: The NextGeneration actor Jonathan Frakes, got such high ratings that it would be re-broadcasttwo additional times, to even bigger audiences. In my bracketed series introabove I called the film a “pseudo-documentary,” but the truth is that it wasentirely staged, its footage fully fabricated, as its creator, the British filmand record producer ,would finally admit 11 years later (although Santilli has continued to claimthat the film was based on real events from Roswell). Its “aliens” were plastercasts filled with garbage and raspberry jam; its “laboratory” was a cheap setconstructed in a living room; its “experts” were either paid actors or hadtheir interviews severely edited and their perspectives badly misrepresented.But despite all that, the ratings were through the roof as I noted above, and Time magazine noted that the film wasbeing viewed “with an intensity not lavished on any home movie since the Zapruderfilm.”

That finalphrase is a telling one, as I would say that Alien Autopsy has a goodbit in common with another 1990s film, OliverStone’s JFK. At the end of that hyperlinked post I mentioned themost striking and to my mind most frustrating aspect of Stone’s film, his blendingof actual archival footage with “re-created” (fictionalized) scenes, all of itpresented in black-and-white so it’s incredibly difficult for audiences to tellwhat’s what. That’s not identical by any means to Alien Autopsy, whichto my knowledge has no archival footage at all. But Santilli did subsequentlydescribe his fictionalized filmmaking as an attempt to “re-create” actual butlost such footage, and certainly his film, like Stone’s, is trying to convinceaudiences that the fictional film is just as “real” as any archive. Andmoreover, I would argue that in both cases audiences were very willing to goalong with the filmmakers (Stone’s film made more than 5 times its budget atthe box office, success not dissimilar to the high ratings for Santilli’s work),due directly to the widespread existing interest in the conspiracy theories(JFK and Roswell, respectively) that they were tapping into.

I would also contextualizeAlien Autopsy with a second, much older and quite distinct, cultural work,however: OrsonWelles’s 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds.To my knowledge Welles did not hope to pass off his fictional storytelling as “real”in the same way as Santilli and Stone, but as is well known audiencesdid respond to the broadcast that way, which makes for an interesting twiston my points in the last paragraph: a reminder that it’s not only up to artistswhether and how reality and fiction get blurry, that audiences have a significantsay in that process as well. And the terrified responses to Welles’s broadcastalso remind us that audience interest in aliens is driven by both hope andfear, as nicely engaged by Don Henley at the end of the first verse of the songI quoted earlier in this week’s series, “They’re Not Here, They’reNot Coming” (2000): “Anxious eyes turned upward/Clutching souvenirs/Carryingour highest hopes/And our darkest fears.”

Lastaliens tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

August 27, 2025: Alien Nation: Close Encounters and Contact

[30 yearsago this week, the pseudo-documentaryfilm Alien Autopsy aired. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that momentand others that reflect our enduring fascination with the possibility of alienlife, leading up to a post on recent revelations!]

On twosuperficially similar films that feature very distinct portrayals of bothAmerica and aliens.

Two of themost prominent cinematic representations of alien encounters feature similartitle images of those encounters: Steven Spielberg’s CloseEncounters of the Third Kind (1977) andRobert Zemeckis’ Contact(1997).Spielberg was a kind of mentor to Zemeckis,executive producing the younger director’s first two films (both released inthe three years after Close Encounters),and so it’s quite possible that Contact(released almost exactly 20 years after CloseEncounters) was partially intended as a tribute to the earlier film(although its title is drawn from Carl Sagan’s1985 novel on which it’s based). And the two films do follow a fundamentallysimilar structure when it comes to those alien encounters [SPOILERS for the twofilms here and in the rest of this post]: opening with a partial and uncertainsuch encounter and then following a group of characters attempting to connectmore definitively with these aliens and, in the film’s culminating scenes, ableto do so more definitively.

Yet whenit comes to both those main characters and the aliens they encounter, Close Encounters and Contact differ in striking andsignificant ways. Spielberg’s film focuses on ordinary Americans, working-classprotagonists (RichardDreyfuss’s Roy Neary is an electrical lineman and Melinda Dillon’s Jillian Guiler aworking single mother) who are unexpectedly drawn into and fundamentallychanged by the alien encounters and the broader universe they open up.Zemeckis’ film, on the other hand, focuses on scientists and parallel figures (Jodie Foster’s Dr. Ellie Arroway works forthe SETI observatory and Matthew McConaughey’s Palmer Joss is aspiritual leader with a lifelong obsession with theories of alien life) whohave long been concerned with the question of aliens and alien encounters bythe time the film opens. That difference doesn’t simply mean that the two filmsportray quite distinct strata of American society (although they certainly do).It also means that they depict the question of alien encounters through verydifferent perspectives and tones—for Spielberg’s characters, these areshockingly strange questions that reveal a universe they had never known and entirelyshift their identities as a result; while for Zemeckis’, these are questionstoward which their whole lives have been trending and the answers to which willdetermine whether their identities have been meaningful or ultimatelymisguided.

Perhapsrelatedly, the two films also portray the aliens themselves in very distinctways. Close Encounter’s alienslookvery much like our most common images of extraterrestrials—oddly shaped headsatop thin necks, very long fingers, and so on—and communicate in a language oftheir own, one featuring hand gestures as well as the film’s famous musical notes (courtesyof Spielberg’s favorite composer John Williams, natch). InContact, on the other hand, we neverreally see the aliens, which is precisely the point: when Foster finally makescontact, the alien she meets chooses to take the form of her late father in orderto connect with her more individually and intimately. Although we are meant tounderstand that he is indeed an alien (rather than simply a hallucination ofFoster’s, as many of her peers believe), this choice nonetheless makes Contact’s alien encounter far morethematically focused on Foster’s character and identity than on the aliensthemselves; while Dreyfuss in particular does become similarly obsessed withaliens in Close Encounters(eventually leaving with them at the film’s conclusion), their depictionnonetheless draws our attention to their striking form rather than simply hischaracter. One more significant difference between these two cinematicrepresentations of alien America.

Next alienstomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

August 26, 2025: Alien Nation: E.T. and Aliens

[30 yearsago this week, the pseudo-documentaryfilm Alien Autopsy aired. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that momentand others that reflect our enduring fascination with the possibility of alienlife, leading up to a post on recent revelations!]

Onfriendly and hostile extraterrestrials, and the real bad guys in any case.

In theshape of his head, E.T. (star of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 film of thesame name) looks a tiny bit like a distant cousin of the mother alien (the “bitch,” that is)from James Cameron’sAliens (1986).But that slight comparison is about the only possible way in which these twosummer blockbusters aren’t wholly distinct from one another. E.T. is perhaps Spielberg’s mostkid-centered film, from its youthful protagonists to its product placements forReese’s Pieces and thegood ol’ Speak andSpell, its drunken slapstick to its underlying theme of growing up in asingle-parent household. While Alienshas to be one of the most adult, hard-R-rated summer blockbusters ever,featuring one nightmare-inducing,graphically violent and horrifying sequence and image after thenext (to say nothing of the Space Marines’ extremelysalty repartee).

E.T. and Aliens aren’t just at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comesto their ratings and intended audiences, however. They also embody two entirelydifferent perspectives on the question not of whether there is lifeother than our own in the universe (both films agree that there is), but ofwhat attitude toward Earth and humanity those extraterrestials might hold. Thesummer blockbuster Independence Day (1994),about which I bloggedhere, explicitly engages with these contrasting perspectives,featuring a number of characters who believe the aliensmight come in peace before their true, hostile intentions arerevealed. Because of its status as a sequel to a film in which the alien creaturecould not be more hostile and destructive to humans, Aliens can dispense with the debate and move immediately into thestory of how its human characters will combat the extraterrestrial threats. Andby tying his extraterrestrial’s first entrance into the film to the creature’slove of Reese’s Pieces, Spielberg similarly signals from the start that hisalien will be friendlyto—indeed, overtly parallel to—his young protagonist Elliot.

E.T. isn’t without antagonists, though—butthey’re of the human variety, the community of threatening scientists andgovernment officials who seek to capture and (if necessary) kill E.T. to learnhis secrets (and who in the original film carryguns, not walkie talkies, in that pursuit). And in that sense, E.T. and Aliens aren’t quite as far apart as they might seem—because in thelatter film’s major reveal (SPOILER alert), it turns out that Paul Reiser’s corporate scientist CarterBurke is far more overt of a villain than the aliens, who are after all onlyfighting for their own survival (rather than driven by greed and manipulation,and a willingness to sacrifice anyone who gets in their way, as Burke and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation for whichhe works are revealed to be). If there’s one thing on which such disparatesummer blockbusters can apparently agree, it’s that the powers that be—whethercorporate or governmental—represent a far greater threat, to humans andextraterrestrials alike, than any alien invaders.

Next alienstomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

August 25, 2025: Alien Nation: Roswell

[30 yearsago this week, the pseudo-documentaryfilm Alien Autopsy aired. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that momentand others that reflect our enduring fascination with the possibility of alienlife, leading up to a post on recent revelations!]

On thelongstanding, contemporary, and problematic sides to an otherworldly theory.

Despitespending his whole life in Europe (nearly all of it in his native France),pioneering authorJules Verne seems to have understood quite well a longstanding Americantendency: our obsession with space, and our ability to use that alien world asan escape when things are especially difficult or fearful here at home. Verneset his groundbreaking science fiction novel From the Earth to the Moon (1865)and its sequel Around the Moon (1870) in a post-Civil War America, one inwhich the adventurers of the Baltimore Gun Club hope to create a vehicle thatcan take them away from this troubled place and toward that extraterrestrialbody. 150 years later, Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s groundbreaking sciencefiction film Interstellar (2014)represents the latest version of this trend, using space travel and thepossibilities of escape to other worlds as an alternative to climate change andinevitable destruction here on Earth.

Nohistorical moment better encapsulated this trend than the first decades of theCold War. There’s a reason why PresidentJohn F. Kennedy emphasized in a 1962 speech a successful American journey tothe moon as a central goal for the decade—while that ambition was partlybased on the practical fears of Soviet space domination inspired by Sputnik and the Space Race, I wouldargue that it also gave the nation yet another way to focus on the heavens asan escape from such terrestrial fears and concerns. Fifteen years prior toKennedy’s speech, in the first years of the Cold War, a routine incident—thecrash of an Air Forcesurveillance balloon near Roswell, New Mexico—had produced an even more elaborateescapist space fantasy, the suspicions and stories of a covered-up alienlanding that would become one of the nation’s most extendedand enduring conspiracy theories. From TV shows like the X-Files and Roswell(1999-2002) to a central sequence in the film IndependenceDay (1996), the Roswell theory has become a staple of Americanpopular culture, a shorthand for both the belief in extraterrestrials and thisbroader fascination with the mysteries of space.

Thatfascination seems silly and harmless at its worst, and (as with the verysuccessful culmination of Kennedy’s and NASA’s 60s goals)productive and meaningful at its best. But NASA’s successes notwithstanding, Iwould argue that there is a more problematic side to the escapist spacefantasies exemplified by the Roswell theory (besides the suspiciousanti-government rhetoric it can engender and amplify, which is arecurring theme across many conspiracy theories). As he has done so often, DonHenley nicely summed up my thoughts on the matter, in the song “They’re Not Here, They’re Not Coming” from hisalbum Inside Job (2000). Henley notesthat such theories of alien encounters “carry our highest hopes and our darkestfears,” but recognizes them for the escapist fantasies that they are: “Now youlong to be delivered from this world of pain and strife/That’s a sorry substitutionfor a spiritual life.” That last line is a bit more preachy than I would like,but I would agree with Henley’s concluding recommendation for what we must doinstead, now more than ever: “Turn your hopes back homeward/Hold your children,dry their tears.”

Next alienstomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

August 23-24, 2025: University of Michigan Studying: Kyle’s Plans

[Laterthis week, we’ll be moving my youngerson Kyle into his first-year dorm at Michigan. So this week, through proudDad tears, I’ve shared a handful of UMichigan contexts, leading up to thisspecial post on some of Kyle’s plans there!]

As thispost drops, we will likely be moving Kyle into his first-year dorm at the Universityof Michigan (the exact move-in timing will vary a bit, but you get the idea!).One of my very favorite things ever was just how much my older son Aidan’sfirst year at Vanderbilt took me by surprise, featuring so many moments andexperiences that I never could have predicted. I hope and believe that the samewill be true for Kyle, so I don’t want to spend too much time here in theprediction business; but here are three quick things I’m excited fornonetheless:

1)     Pre-law:Kyle’s professional future is of course entirely up in the air, and he’ll be hugelysuccessful at whatever he eventually figures out. But I can’t lie, I’ve beenimagining my passionately argumentative younger son as a lawyer for a longtime, and I’m excited to see how he finds the worlds of both Political Science(his incoming Major) and Pre-Law (the advising track he’s starting on). You knowI’ll keep y’all posted!

2)     Football: I included football in this week’sseries not only because it’s been such a defining part of Michigan sports and culturefor 150 years, but also because one of the most surprising and best elements ofAidan’s first year was his connection to the Vanderbilt community through theirsports successes. Everyone at Michigan talks about the first time they entered “TheBig House” with 110,000 of their closest friends, and you best believe I’mstoked to hear about Kyle’s first such experience!

3)     Community: That’s one definite way he’ll startto find and build community at Michigan. But I’m even more excited for the waysI can’t predict or even imagine yet. Last summer, Kyle took part in an ACLUsummer institute in DC, and he ended up forming a boy band with fellow attendees—thecalled themselves The Bamboo Boys and performed an incredible a cappellarendition of “I Want It That Way” for their fellow students. Whatever the futureholds for Kyle, I hope it includes many more such communal connections!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Advice you’d give Kyle as he starts his Michigan journey?

August 22, 2025: University of Michigan Studying: Uncle Peter

[Laterthis week, we’ll be moving my youngerson Kyle into his first-year dorm at Michigan. So this week, through proudDad tears, I’ll share a handful of UMichigan contexts, leading up to a specialpost on some of Kyle’s plans there!]

I couldn’tdedicate a weeklong series to the University of Michigan without highlightingmy other favorite member of its community, my uncle PeterRailton. Peter is just 15 months younger than his oldest brother, my late DadSteve Railton (they also have two younger siblings, my uncle Mark and auntJanet), and so for me he will always be first and foremost a wonderful reminderof so much of what I love about my Dad as well. But Peter is also one of our most important philosophers,not only academically but also in our public conversations—never more so thanin his justifiably famous 2015 DeweyLecture on his lifelong struggle with depression. I’m honored to call himmy uncle, and very excited that Kyle will be joining him in the Michigancommunity!

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

August 21, 2025: University of Michigan Studying: Famous Alums

[Laterthis week, we’ll be moving my youngerson Kyle into his first-year dorm at Michigan. So this week, through proudDad tears, I’ll share a handful of UMichigan contexts, leading up to a specialpost on some of Kyle’s plans there!]

Inalphabetical order, here are five particularly notable entries among theuniversity’s countless famousalumni:

1)     Clarence Darrow:As that article notes, Darrow didn’t complete his degree from the law school,as he was apparently already ready after just one year (1877-78) to pass thebar and get to work. But even a one-year association with the early 20thcentury’s mostfamous and influentiallawyer is worth highlighting, I’d say.

2)     GeraldFord (class of 1934): Considering how many presidents attendedIvy League institutions (spoiler: a whole lot of them), it’s pretty coolfor one of the nation’s oldest public universities to call a president an alum.But it’s even cooler that he was also a football star there, named the team’sMVP in hissenior season during which he started at the crucial position of center inevery game.

3)     Tom Hayden(class of 1961): At the other end of the political spectrum in the 1960s and70s was TomHayden, who co-founded Studentsfor a Democratic Society (SDS) while a student at Michigan, authored thehugely influential PortHuron Statement that served as a manifesto for the student activistmovement around the country, and went on to marryJane Fonda (!) among many other achievements (yes, I called that anachievement).

4)     DorothyMcFadden Hoover: Like Darrow, Dorothy McFadden Hoover started but didn’t finisha graduate degree program at Michigan (in her case, a PhD in Physics). But thatwas because she was hired by the U.S. Weather Bureau for a hugely important positionin the groundbreaking Joint NumericalWeather Prediction unit, one of countless striking moments the life andcareer of a woman who was born the granddaughter of enslaved people and went onto serve as one of NASA’s“human computers” and to become the first Black woman to achieve the rankof Aeronautical Research Scientist.

5)     Jesmyn Ward(MFA class of 2005): I’ve written aboutJesmyn Ward, one of my couple favorite 21stcentury American authors, multipletimes in this space, but I didn’t realize she was a Michigan alum (from itsgraduate MFA program) until researching this post. We all know who my favoritealum is always gonna be, but Ward definitely occupies the coveted #2 spot!

LastMichiganStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?