Woke Betty and Barney Hill

 

See here for essential background: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2021/10/betty-and-barney-hill-60th-anniversary.html.
And: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2021/09/betty-and-barney-hill-sixty-years-on.html.
Following the sixtieth anniversary of the so-called "first alien abduction", several film and TV producers have announced they will be making new fictionalizations of the incident. Since it happened in 1961, the Betty and Barney Hill case has been the subject of numerous books and films, such as The UFO Incident; here's a recent high quality version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgsy9tQmzdQ. The Hills also appear in a scene in the Dark Skies TV series, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJWkihWh8YQ; and I've included them in my novel Roswell Redeemed- Humanity After Disclosure, see: http://hpanwo-bb.blogspot.com/2018/12/roswell-redeemed-is-here.html. One of the announced upcoming productions surprised me very much when I saw how mainstream it is. It is going to be on Netflix and the production company Higher Ground is behind it. This is a company founded by none other than the former US President Barack Obama and his First Lady Michelle Obama. The working title of the film is White Mountains, a reference to the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire USA, the region where the Hills' experience happened. The project is in still in early pre-production and so not much is yet known about it, except the writing team has been assembled. I can already hear the inevitable complaints about them all being "White!" Source: https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/netflix-eyes-white-mountains-movie-adaptation-from-higher-ground-productions/.
 
As always, I will not pass judgement on this film until I've seen it, but alarm bells are starting to ring. The Obama's are not renowned for their interest in UFOlogy (leaving aside the president's comments here: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2021/05/obama-mentions-ufos.html), but they are renowned for being politically correct icons. I suspect that their interest in the Hills has nothing to do with their experience, but more to do with the political aspects of their relationship. Barney was black, or "African American/BIPOC", as it is currently trendy to call it; and Betty was white. The Obamas are not alone. Bryce Zabel, the creator of Dark Skies, has stated that his own adaptation of the book Captured! by Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden is going to be subtitled: "In a world where everybody else saw black and white, they saw grey". Source: https://deadline.com/2020/06/captured-stellar-productions-teams-with-new-la-management-production-firm-alta-for-story-of-landmark-alien-abduction-case-1202953338/. I know that Bryce has a genuine interest in the UFO phenomenon and I suspect that his playing of the woke card may be motivated by virtue signalling at potential studios and distributors; after all, he knows how Hollywood works these days. Also I think, being a liberal American, he feel sincere dejection about his country's own past. It is indisputable that black Americans have faced genuine injustice throughout American history. I can't recall where I heard this, maybe one of Kathleen Marden's social media posts, but once when her aunt went on holiday to Georgia, she was not allowed to share a room with Barney because the hotel only allowed married couples to share rooms. "But we are married." Betty protested. The hotel manager replied: "I'm sorry, but in this state you are not." And we all know about the Alabama bus segregation scheme that Martin Luther King stood up against. The list of indignities goes on. Even in states where official segregation didn't apply, there was a lot of social disapproval. Betty and Barney faced huge challenges being an interracial couple that are incontrovertible. The problem is that some people who take an interest in the Betty and Barney Hill abduction do so for that reason alone; and they couldn't care less about the UFOlogy aspect, which means they are turning their back on the central context of the incident. A perfect example comes from the ridiculous interview about the Hills on the Somewhere in the Skies show with Ryan Sprague. The guest comes across as a very narrow-minded individual. He posits a thesis that the alien abduction memories Betty and Barney remembered are simply psychological denial caused by an attack from a completely human gang of racist thugs. Ryan's show is normally very good, but this programme is one of his few bad ones. He does not ask his guest what evidence he has to support his theory, but just says: "I hear you, man!" Andrew Sanford thinks he knows the truth simply because of Barney's voice on the Simon tapes and Betty's memories of being probed in the belly. I think this is an assumption on Mr Sanford's part because it tallies with what he wants to believe about white people, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyJkzkMcwjc. As I've explained many times, wokeism has nothing to do with righting historical injustice, whether real or imagined; it's about making white people in the modern world feel guilty. Well, I am white and I do not. What I hope for is that the portrayal of Betty and Barney's case in the upcoming years will focus on the factual nature of their experience and not be exploited as a plaything for 2020's anti-white identity politics. As for the writing team of White Mountains, I have a dream that they will be judged not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.
See here for additional background: http://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/political-correctness-portal.html.