Unacceptably New

The headlines of April 8, 1998 left little room for negotiation: "Marsromantics face the truth -- there's nothing out there" (The Australian);"Images form Mars scuttle face theory" (Courier-Mail). According to thereports, the infamous Face on Mars mystery has finally been solved. But hasit? Such forceful pro-NASA/anti-anomaly media coverage should, rather thansettle us into complacency, set mental alarm bells ringing. We should beasking the (interestingly portentous) question: if NASA did discover a Faceon Mars, would they admit it? This paper suggests the answer is 'no'.In his essay "Social Intelligence about Hidden Events", sociologist RonWestrum noted that if a person perceives a phenomenon that the person'ssociety deems impossible, then the socially determined implausibility of theobservation will cause the observer to doubt his or her own perceptions,leading to the denial or misidentification of the phenomenon (McLeod et al.,156). When Europeans arrived in Australia and sent back descriptions of aparticularly bizarre creature they encountered here -- eventually named a'platypus' -- biologists initially refused to believe it existed. AlthoughAustralia was (to Europeans) an alien environment in which new, and perhapseven radical, discoveries were expected and desired, an egg-laying furryunderwater animal with a duck's bill, four webbed feet and a poisonous spikeon its heel was just too much to handle. It was 'unacceptably new'.We have, as this example shows, heavy expectations about the future and thenew, and are often reluctant to accept developments which differ radicallyfrom those expectations. For western culture, the exploration of space --the final frontier -- has become synonymous with progress, with future andthe new, and with moving away from a past and towards or into a future aboutwhich we already have many expectations. One particularly brutal violation ofthis conception of progress and the comfort of a confinable and predictablefuture would be the discovery of a 1.5 mile long, 1.2 mile wide humanoidface carved into the surface of Mars, staring back out into space (as wasapparently photographed by the NASA Viking probe in 1976). It's hardlysurprising, then, that the social institution perhaps most entrusted withpropagating the dominant construction of the new and the future -- NASA --should be the most ardent anti-Face voice in the controversy. (Readersinterested in NASA's role in 'playing down' public curiosity in the Face andadjoining pyramids are recommended Professor Stanley V. McDaniel's TheMcDaniel Report, in which he cites many examples of NASA's deliberatemisrepresentation of the geological and geometrical data gathered concerningthe Cydonia region on Mars).Official confirmation of artificial pyramidal and humanoid structures on Marswould essentially dissolve dominant constructions of human civilisation'spast and future. We would be forced to confront the possibilities that humancivilisation has either had contact with extraterrestrial life some time inits past, or that humans have been capable of space travel andinterplanetary colonisation before humans were thought to have even existed.Our 'present' would be equally damaged; our most cherished 'new' technologieswould re-appear as inferior versions of those already developed -- theywouldn't be 'new' at all. The cultural (not to mention psychological)repercussions would be extreme. It is highly unlikely then, were suchobjects photographed clearly enough to remove uncertainty as to the natureof their origin, that NASA would release those photographs, since such adiscovery would severely threaten its claim (and the scientific tradition itrepresents) to a monopoly of true descriptions of the nature of the physicalworld and the public position of science (Westrum, "UFOs" 272).I suggest that NASA's role in the public debate about the Martian enigmasshould be approached with extreme scepticism. NASA's treatment of the Vikingframes has indicated its willingness to misrepresent the data in a deliberateattempt to suppress public support of further investigation. Some reasons whyNASA might take this course of action have been suggested above. We need notsuccumb to 'conspiracy theory' to explain NASA's behaviour, as conventional,if discomforting, sociological explanations are both simpler and more easilyapplied. Depending on how much power we afford prestige, we may or may notchoose to accept the most recent NASA photographs of the Face as definitive.What we should not overlook, though, is that we do have a choice.ReferencesBull, Sandra. "Images from Mars Scuttle Face Theory." The Courier-Mail 8April 1998.Leech, Graeme. "Mars Romantics Face the Truth: There's Nothing Out There."The Australian 8 April 1998.McDaniel, Stanley V. The McDaniel Report: On the Failure of Executive,Congressional and Scientific Responsibility in Investigating PossibleEvidence of Artificial Structures on the Surface of Mars and in SettingMission Priorities for NASA's Mars Exploration Program.. Berkeley: NorthAtlantic, 1993.Westrum, Ron. "Social Intelligence about Anomalies: The Case of UFOs." SocialStudies of Science 7 (1977): 271-302.Westrum, Ron. "Social Intelligence about Hidden Events" (1982) qtd. inMcLeod, Caroline, Barbara Corbisier, and John E. Mack, "A More ParsimoniousExplanation for UFO Abduction." Psychological Inquiry 7 (1996): 156-68. Citation reference for this articleMLA style:Adam Dodd. "Unacceptably New: Cultural Factors in the 'Face on Mars'Controversy." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.1 (1998). [your date ofaccess] .Chicago style:Adam Dodd, "Unacceptably New: Cultural Factors in the 'Face on Mars'Controversy," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 1 (1998),([your date of access]). APA style:Adam Dodd. (1998) Unacceptably new: cultural factors in the 'face on Mars'controversy. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(1). ([your date of access]).