I label this process “Copization,” to parallel it to the evolutionary biology phenomenon of “carcinization”: there are a complex of evolutionary pressures that lead ten-legged arthropods to develop into remarkably crab-like forms. Copization, on the other hand, is the phenomenon whereby genre stories that feature violence as a central component have a tendency to evolve into a form that more closely resembles a police procedural.
Read MoreThe past thirty years has been quite a ride: in the 1990s, one of the biggest phenomena on television was the X-Files, which wrestled with the hidden weirdness of the 20th century (mostly in the form of aliens.) At the core of the UFO mythos was a nominally apolitical distrust of authority – the government was hiding something from us. They were hiding the truth. Of course, much of this distrust was coupled with (the publicly disavowed) white supremacist ideology. This gave us what could be called the Interbellum Consensus, sitting as it does between the Cold War and the War on Terror: the UFOlogical Weird and the Militiaman Hauntological.
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