The Spiritual Significance of Carl Sagan’s Contact (1997)
A Jungian Analysis through archetypes and the collective unconscious
Some movies can be deep, … very deep. Perhaps that deep that we initially don’t understand it at first glance. I remember I watched this science fiction movie with one of my neighborhood friends when I was 12, we rented it from our local video store. At the time of watching I just saw it as another story on space, technology and aliens. Nevertheless, the story hid itself somewhere in my memory, stored as it were, to reveal itself to me again later in life. I was 23 now, and one day I felt the urge to download some films from the internet which I just really hád to see! The name of the film reappeared to me from memory. I downloaded it, I watched it, I cried.
Contact is the 1997 SF-movie starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey based on the equally named novel by Carl Sagan. I advise you to watch the film as I will go into more detail in the next paragraph (https://yuptorrents.com/Contact-1997-torrent-7565). Here, a brief summary of it:
The story features a female astronomer, Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway, in search for extra-terrestrial life. Sabotaged by her boss, she struggles to finance radio-telescope projects for this only goal. As her research team is just months away from bankruptcy, they finally receive a signal from outer space. The artificial message contains information to build a transportation device to a world light-years removed from Earth. The first design is destroyed in a terrorist attack killing her formal boss, nevertheless she is assigned to go on a secret second device. She travels to another planet, meeting the aliens and then travels back to Earth. However, the trip only appeared to have happened in her experience, as for the perspective of everybody on Earth the transportation device malfunctioned and she didn’t appear to go anywhere. She defends her experience in front of a committee of truth that sees no evidence for believing her “psychotic” story.
This is the story in a nutshell. But if you see it only in this manner, you’ve barely scratched the surface of it. This is not your average sci-fi picture. It’s much more than that. I’d say it is deeply religious, mythological and spiritual in nature. I will try to depict this in the coming paragraphs, but I’m going to face the same problems as Arroway did, explaining her story to the truth tribunal; you might also disdain my explanations as delusional or psychotic.
But before I tell you my story, let’s investigate the main thread of the motion picture.
Ockham’s Razor
A returning theme in the story is the conflict between the systems of Science and Religion. Both systems exclude each other, as science is based in proof and religion is based in faith. The friction between these opposing systems are constantly played out in the motion picture. Let’s summarize.
Eleanor falls in love with Palmer Joss, a priest / spiritual person. Though they love each other they have radically opposing ideas. Palmer explains Ellie, their first night, that he had a religious experience in which he dropped all fear and met God. Elli scientifically replies to his story that he might have been delusional or psychologically in need of that experience. Palmer replies that it was way deeper than that and that his intellect couldn’t even touch it.
Their next clash is later when Ellie cites Palmer’s new book on spirituality and concludes that he is saying that science killed God. She then introduces the concept of Ockham’s razor, a scientific solution finding principle (law of parsimony), that states that the simplest solution is most likely the right one. Following up, she says: “So what’s more likely? An all-powerful, mysterious God created the universe, and then decided not to give any proof of his existence? Or that he doesn’t exist at all and that we created him, so we wouldn’t have to feel so small and alone. ”. Palmer replies: “I don’t know. I couldn’t imagine living in a world where God didn’t exist. I wouldn’t want to.”. Eleanor: “How do you know you’re not deluding yourself? I mean, for me, I’d need proof.”. Palmer finishes the discussion (and implicitly stating that religion is an inner experience and not an outer phenomenon) by asking her if she can prove her love for her father. And of course, … she can’t.
That little conversation is the essence of the whole movie. From the scientist’s perspective, God simply cannot exist as it is not logical and measurable by any means. Believers, in their eyes, are simply keeping themselves stupid. From the religious point of view, scientists are just only focussed on the outer world, missing the inner. They’re in a way autistic or insensitive to the greater and have distanced themselves from their hearts by prioritizing mind over feeling. They are completely different standpoints and they think of the other with contempt, declaring them handicapped either by being stupid or insensitive. Obviously there’s a big disconnect between the two now, which destroys their relationship in Arroway’s test at the selection committee on “who gets to go” on the transport. Palmer crushes her chances when he asks her if she believes in God during the assessment. She makes herself not the ideal candidate by indirectly saying that she doesn’t believe. And she therefore would not be a good representative candidate according to the committee as about 95% of the world population is religious.
In the end, she finally does go and comes back. And something happened in between. Or didn’t it? Anyway, she has to defend herself on what really happened to her at a truth committee or inquisition.
Well, in short, the Ockham’s razor principle is fired back on her now. Arroway defends her religious experience against the scientific method which requires proof for belief. As reflected by one of the committee members: “Dr. Arroway. You come to us with no evidence, no record, no artifacts. Only a story, to put it mildly, strains credibility. Are you really gonna sit there and tell us that we should just take this all … on faith?!?” It’s a complete turnaround and her own former arguments are being used against her. Now, she’s the delusional and psychotic one with the ‘incredible’ story. Even worse, it might actually all be a big hoax orchestrated by her funder, who just wanted to pull a trick on the whole of humanity before he died. Almost parallel to when your parents just told you Santa doesn’t exist. You just feel incredibly naive and stupid. “No we’re so sorry! This wasn’t your biggest revelation in your live! It was just a show, and while you were being played, you imagined you met your dead dad again and have some crazy cosmic experience.” Ouch!
Psychosis or Truth: The Appingedam Station
Now I’ve said that this movie had a religious, mythological and spiritual dimension to it. But the depictions so far have been only theoretical and all that can be religious or spiritual is, honestly at this moment, only hypothetical. It was until now only an intellectual game, at least for the perspective of the scientific reader.
But I want to confirm the religious side of the story. I’m gonna be the Palmer Joss now and tell you my story. Unfortunately, I don’t have any proof that backs up my experience. But it all really happened.
I just broke up with girl friend at that time. I felt trapped and I wanted out. However, in this period it became clear to me that I broke up with her for the wrong reasons. I escaped the intimacy out of fear.
In the time we were apart I felt a strong attraction towards her, so we ended up seeing each other even though we were officially not a couple anymore. One day, on a sunny afternoon in summer, we met for a short period but then she had to to go to a concert of her parents in the north of the Netherlands in a town called Appingedam. She had to take the train, and I wouldn’t want to waste a second being with her, so I’d figure I’ll cycle with her to Amsterdam Central station. On the platform we waved goodbye, I was gonna go back home. But then when I turned around, in a flash, I realized I need to be on this train. It was leaving without me and I had to be on it. In a split second, the doors of the vehicle were closing on me, I jumped, the doors closed, I was on for the ride.
Together now, we went to the concert in Appingedam. We saw the concert, had lunch with her family, enjoyed the weather, it was perfect. It was too perfect!!! … At least, according to my mind. On the way back to Appingedam train station my mind started screaming. This whole experience was way too good, it couldn’t be true that I could be so much in love with this girl. It started to scare me big time. It was in fact the same feeling or reasoning that decided me to break up with her in the first place. This negative feeling resurfaced itself like it never did before and split my mind into two opposing sides, one trying to connect, the other trying to escape. One had to win.
We had to wait for the train and set down on a bench at the platform. The war in my mind had reached its climax. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I spoke out to her and acknowledged my fear. I don’t know anymore what I said or what she said, but in that very moment it happened. For a few seconds, all fear dropped. And I mean all fear, including the fear of dying. It was like I was being dipped in an ocean of love, no more strings attached, I dropped in full. Actually, I didn’t drop into it, it dropped into me. The best way I can describe it is that there was a huge cosmic ball of love, having been there all my life, floating above me, that I suddenly allowed to crash into me. It was a magical and life changing event.
I was brought up as an atheist. And from my perspective believing in let’s say the Christian God, was believing in an old man with a beard on a cloud, and you’d meet him when you’d be dead and lived an honest life. It would be easy for a scientist to dismantle this story and prove it invalid, because anyone believing that Bible story literally would be very stupid indeed. But I discarded that system as a whole as it literally didn’t make any sense to me. But I was throwing out the baby with the bath water. I had experienced the heaven on earth. Then I knew, there was an essential spiritual meaning in the dogmatic religions and that this was the essence of it. You could call it a God experience, but the term God is such a polluted word. God can be caught in a web of dogma and literal explanations, which just don’t hit the mark.
In the wake of the train station event I have felt quite alone, as I didn’t feel courageous enough to share it. Afraid to distance myself from others, by letting them think that I was crazy. I wouldn’t blame them, because that’s exactly the reasoning I’d use before. And likewise, I reflected many times on that day and wondered whether my brain was just malfunctioning that couple of seconds. Perhaps I was psychotic, delusional and crazy, even just for an instance. It’s the fearful scientist in myself that cunningly argued to retake control.
But that day when I saw Contact again, I realized again the truth of the Appingedam experience, because the similarities between the two were for me strikingly evident. Details resonate with me, like: “they should have sent a poet”, “I had no idea” and “I had an experience. I can’t prove it. I can’t even explain it. But everything I know as a human being, everything I am tells me that this was real”. I understood the movie at a complete different level and it was like a mirror into my soul. The movie acknowledged to me my own religious experience. So, I wasn’t alone anymore. That’s why I cried.
The Mythological: Archetypes and Unconsciousness
I wanted to write out a full analysis of the movie through a Jungian Psycho-Analytic viewpoint. But I think it will take me a long time to complete that, but it is my wish to still do that and understand the movie even better. I think a lot of this movie can be explained through the archetypes and collective unconscious, though like I said I will have to study Jung better in order to do this.
I’ll tell what I can say about it now, as I want to publish this story. The animus (other part of the soul) in this story is Palmer, who tries to wake Arroway up to the subjective/spiritual truth (like Nala to Simba in Disney’s: the Lion King). It is Arroway’s desire to reconnect with the father (and maybe mother too, as her father is actually quite the feminin caring type. This could be the case as at the beginning of the movie Ellie wants a big enough antenna to contact Mum). Drumlin is the evil father or the malevolent patriarchy who tells Arroway not to embark on journeys outside the known (like Triton in Disney’s: the Little Mermaid). He gets destroyed though by an even more malevolent element, dogmatic belief in the form of a religious blonde terrorist. She doesn’t get destroyed by the machine as she walks the path of honesty and bravery.
She ends up finally in heaven where she meets her father again. She returns back home. The truth committee appears to be some kind of final test where she needs to articulate and defend her new views (like Disney’s: “the Sword in the Stone”) (like it is not enough to know, you need to behave in concordance as well).
This is followed by, in my eyes, a marriage scene where Palmer and Arroway step into a car in front of the public in the open. So after Arroway has proclaimed her view points, Palmer follows up after being asked if he believes her story. He replies that he believes her story. Almost like a “Yes, I do!” vow in the ritual of a marriage. They drive away finally united, conflicts between them have been resolved.
Now that I think about it, Arroway interacts mostly with men in this story. There’s almost no good or evil female characters. Her mother we never see (but is maybe embodied by her father?). The plethora of different men is quite rich. Blind man Ken, dictator Drumlin, fanatic blond man, lover priest, father, business man, goofy male colleagues, the president, the fearful inquisitor Kitz. It is like a journey in how to navigate the world with men, when the father is lost.
The story is super rich and there’s much more I could extract from it. I will try to update this part once I know and understand more.
18 hours of static
It is unfortunate I think that Contact included the 18 hours of static scene, where Kitz and the secretary discuss the headset images. This of course is somewhat of a proof of Arroway’s story. It undermines a bit the whole thing of not being able to proof inner events and nudges the audience towards believing that Arroway is right. But in real life, we cannot prove these things, never.
It would also more fit with Arroway’s conversation with Palmer at the beginning of the movie, where she says to him that he psychologically needed that experience. Well, given the childhood of Ellie, she really needed her magical experience as well (overcoming her trauma)! Showing again that arguments being used against her at the end were her own arguments at the beginning of the story.
It would have been better to leave it open. She could in fact still have hallucinated the whole thing and the distinction between psychosis and truth would be more clear cut. Now the audience is almost forced to believe in the religious part of the story. Though perhaps it could also mean that people remain willingly blind to the truth.
I hope I’ve been able to expose some of the deeper layers in this movie. Like I’ve said I haven’t still fully worked it out. I will update this story as my knowledge progresses. Thanks for reading and if you have question or comments then please leave a reply.
