Analysis #3 – “Disembodied Voices Deepen My Suspicious Tendencies”

Well, I’m late to the party, clearly. Please excuse me for that; I’m currently in Greece, burning my everything inside a house that might as well be an oven. However, I will be going to a beach soon, so that’s a plus, I suppose.

Not my best metaphors, but they will do.

Hello, everybody. Hope you’re well and cooler than me. I really liked this module’s movie and episode, so let’s just jump right into it.

I want to set a small baseline, if you will. The quoted title is pulled from a TOOL song, “Culling Voices”, one of their more obscure, underrated gems. It is, as per usual by TOOL standards, very vague and ambiguous, which allows the listener to attach their own meaning onto the song. In short, I like to think it’s about being unreasonably paranoid that someone is out to get you, and you think you’re being accused of something when, instead, you’ve created a reality that’s much worse than what’s actually happening.

Sound familiar? Well, if not, don’t worry, I’m terrible at explaining things. That’s why I’ll let Arrival do all the explaining.

In typical alien-scenario fashion, the governments of the world refuse to cooperate with each other because of national security, distrust, paranoia, and big cultural differences. Understandably, they are extremely terrified of the alien spacecrafts (if you can call those egg looking things that) and are certain that the aliens have hostile intentions from the get-go.

But…why is it “understandably”? If you think about it, why are we so scared of aliens in the first place? They are, sort of, making things feel worse than they actually are. Before I delve into this, a specific scene must be brought up first.

When Colonel Weber meets Dr. Louise Banks, he plays her an audio clip of two Heptapods growling. Now, my first thought when I heard them growling so menacingly and lowly (aside from, ZOMG ALIENS SO COOL) was “damn, they must be terrifying and evil,” because I associated that sound with negativity, despite not once seeing the aliens, or hearing some other sounds they could have produced, or how they behaved bodily, etc. What’s funny is that Dr. Louise did point out that it’s impossible to know what they want unless she was there to see the stuff I just mentioned (body language, appearance, etc.)

In other words, that scene puts us in the Colonel’s shoes, not Louise’s.

Like the military, my first instinct was to point fingers and quietly think, “the aliens could be evil because of their sound”. I believe this is because of “Cognitive Framing”. Due to the environment I grew up, which portrays aliens as these “end of the world scenario” capable beings, the moment I heard that growling and attributed it to the word “aliens”, I created a typical picture that helps me understand the situation, even if that picture was completely wrong (which it was).

Emphasis on the “could be evil”. We see in the movie that some countries are immediately against the possibility that these aliens could be harmless. China, Russia, Sudan, and some others I’m forgetting, were paranoid from the beginning.

So language and culture affect how we perceive certain concepts, and how we react to them. Countries like Russia and China, who are notoriously big control-freaks over what goes on in their country, clearly did not take it kindly that massive eggs started floating in the sky. Understandably…

The Star Trek episode also showcases how our language can affect our interactions with people from other backgrounds. The crew meet the Tamarians, and they (try to) talk to them. They noticeably have trouble doing so, as the Tamarians seem to speak only using historical events in their culture as metaphors to portray what is happening in that moment, or how they feel about that specific situation.

I really liked the scene where Captain Picard feels threatened by Captain Dathon when the latter offers knives to the former. Though Dathon offers them in order for them to work together, Picard thinks he wants to fight. Same thing for the crew. That’s because of the two races’ different backgrounds affect their interactions. Without prior knowledge of the Tamarian culture and history, Picard cannot properly communicate with Dathon. However, because a lot of the historical events Dathon mentions are legendary stories similar to those of Earth (two heroes fight the Beast™), Picard is able to slowly make educated guesses as to what Dathon is saying.

This episode encouraged me to think how often I use metaphors to describe situations. And…yeah, I do use a lot of metaphors, ranging from basic to profusely vulgar. In any case, metaphors do get the point across a lot better, I’ve noticed. Maybe because they’re more memorable than typical sentences.

“Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” definitely sticks better than “Two strangers, Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra when they were fighting a beast that threatened to snuff their lives”. Of course, the problem with metaphors is that not every country shares them. “Best thing since sliced bread” would never mean the same thing say in Japanese. It’d just lead to a lot of confusion.

I’d like to finish this post with a chunk of lyrics from “Culling Voices”, because I think it fits with both movies’ themes: