Can Aliens Teach Us about Alienation?

Aliens in science fiction often look strange, want to eat humans, or take over our world. In that sense, they embody crude prejudices and fears about human migrants. But they can also offer more creative responses to difference. Take the concept of alienation, which Karl Marx diagnosed as estrangement of the worker from his labor and even from his species. How is that complicated by being a newcomer to a society? John Sayles’s film “The Brother from Another Planet,” with its mute black alien entering the informal economy of 1980s New York, can help us view alienation more realistically.