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A Dialogic Approach to Alien Movies
- Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Volume 79, 2017
- pp. 153-167
- 10.1353/pcg.2017.0008
- Article
- Additional Information
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Drawing on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, this paper introduces a dialogic approach that draws attention to how meaning is created by viewer responses to social texts. Focusing on the depiction of aliens in popular films, this paper analyzes different representations of aliens and viewer responses to those depictions. The Avengers (2012) draws on traditional geopolitical understandings of United States hegemony to create its fictional Marvel Universe. Avatar (2009) and District 9 (2009) feature strikingly different transformations of the protagonist into the alien other. As mediascapes become increasingly fractured, popular geopolitics and related fields will benefit from engaging more closely with the diversity of viewer responses.