Thursday, March 05, 2015

Adam Dew... Wrong Again!

"Roswell slides" promoter Adam Dew. Photo by Robert Sheaffer.

Roswell slides promoter Adam Dew has been doing a fair bit of media lately to gin up interest and sales for the May 5th reveal event of the slides in Mexico City, hosted by paranormal con promoter Jaime Maussan, and along the way he has made a number of statements that are simply wrong. For example, he identified the military "witness" to the dead alien as a Lieutenant in his film trailer when in fact he was a Private First Class, Eleazar Benavides.

Another egregious example can be seen in Dew's oft-repeated statement that nothing in pop culture looked like the small bodied big-headed alien prior to 1947. In a recent interview with Open Minds, Dew states, "People in the late 40s were not staging aliens, as far as I can tell. That image of the big head and skinny body didn’t become popular in pop culture until the 60s. So we know that it is not a fake staged alien, as far as I can tell.”

This is Dew responding to a straw man of his own creation. Nobody is suggesting that the bodies depicted in the slides were faked in 1947. Therefore, his argument is irrelevant. Making matters worse, however, is that it is also incorrect. In fact, big-headed small-bodied strange creatures were indeed a staple of science fiction and pop culture well before 1947. If someone had wanted to fake an alien body in 1947, they could have easily drawn upon this meme.

As just a couple of examples, here are two covers from the popular pulp magazine Thrilling Wonder Stories, both from the 1930s, and both featuring alien creatures with big heads and much smaller bodies.

Thrilling Wonder Stories, Vol. 8, No. 1, August 1936

Thrilling Wonder Stories, Vol. 13, No. 3, June 1939

There are plenty of other examples for anyone willing to look. Here are two from 1940.


Thrilling Wonder Stories, March 1940

Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1940

Again, this is all an irrelevant sideshow to the basic question of whether the slides were hoaxed or not, because when people talk of a con or hoax they are invariably referring to either someone who created the slides much later than 1947, a la the "alien autopsy" film of Ray Santilli, or of someone who has used actual slides of a mummy-like human figure that may have been taken around the late 1940s and represented them as space aliens today. But Dew and his fellow slides promoters want you to focus on the straw man suggestion that what skeptics are saying when they talk of a hoax is that someone hoaxed them in 1947, which is not the case at all. However, even if it was what skeptics were suggesting, then it is clear that Dew is wrong in his assertion that there was nothing in pop culture that a hoaxer in 1947 could have drawn upon to come up with such a hoax.

In short, even when Dew is making irrelevant arguments, they seem to have a tendency to be flat-out wrong. The only question people are left to determine is whether this is the result of incompetence, or dishonesty. Given the crowd with which Dew has chosen to associate himself, either option is plausible.

Paul Kimball

10 comments:

Tim Hebert said...

I believe this goes to the heart of numerous issues concerning ufology contact meme. What is an "alien" of the ET variety supposed to look like?

The available anecdotal witness accounts provide a wide variety of shapes, colors and height. Not to mention the concept of "grays", "whites", and the psycho-pathological reptilian version.

Tom Carey was right in one aspect, we have been "conditioned" to see ET as a short, large cranium, large eyed being. Psychologically speaking, being conditioned does not mean conforming to reality.

BTW, Bragalia had been ranting at me because you wouldn't post one of his comments and supposedly links me to Ross Evans. I suggested that his comment content may have had much to do with it, but to take it up with you:)



Paul Kimball said...

Hi Tim,

It's simple re: AJB - he threatened me. I had published his comments - ridiculous as they were - up until then, but when someone does that, even if I know it to be a hollow threat as is the case with Bragalia, they lose any right to comment here, nor will I interact with them in any way privately. They have crossed a line beyond civil discourse, and I won't have it.

Best,
Paul

Kurt Peters said...

"Tom Carey was right in one aspect"

...sadly no.

Carey has a zero-sum record of correctness....

...he can only dream of being correct 50-50% of the time...

(see: "Yum Yum mashed potatoes")

Red Pill Junkie said...

I think the concept of the feebled-bodied alien goes all the way back to H.G. Wells and his essay "The Man of the Year Million," published in 1893. Based on Darwinian ideas --or at least, the way Victorians were trying to cope with them-- he concluded that physicality was at odds with technological achievement; thus a highly more advanced being --either from an extraterrestrial civilization or our future descendants-- would sport larger brains at the expense of the rest of their bodies.

PS: Maussan has been very busy promoting the upcoming Be-Witness event on several radio shows, on networks focused on younger audiences.

Paul Kimball said...

The thing about Maussan and Dew is that I don't begrudge people in the entertainment industry making money, because I know as well as anyone how hard it can be. What I hate is when they do it dishonestly by promoting a con. If you want to make money on fiction, then transition to feature films like I did and take your chances - don't try to pass off something like the slides as something it's clearly not.

PK

Unknown said...

YO Paully!!!_

I just realized WHO is actually depicted in that photo you posted of Adam Dew!

It is George Costanza!!!

And he is simply continuing with his unbroken string of failed attempts at glory...

"Architect Adam Dew"

"Marine Biologist Adam Dew"

"Roswell Slide Documentary Auteur Adam Dew"

HA!!!

Rusty L. said...

I had not picked up the link to Maussan. I've listened to all of Alejandro's podcasts and Maussan is in my top two all-time crap weasels. As you say, despite the paranoia, melodrama and defensiveness, I hope that Tony and the other barely credible members of the Dream Team disavow the two crap weasels well before cinco de mayo. I don't have to agree with them to appreciate their sincerity.

BoyintheMachine said...

@ Rusty,

They won't. They are in too deep at this point. The only thing they might do is come off of it a bit and instead of promoting it as the smoking gun evidence they might change their tune to, "Is it real? It is fake? YOU DECIDE!" Of course they would have still raked in all the dough.

Soledad de la Peña M.D. said...

I would like to know the name of the official historian of Kodak.
Let's resemble also H.G. Well with his books: The first men in the moon of 1901 and the Man of the year a million of 1893.
All that is a circus

SlideBox Media said...

Hi Paul. I hope your tshirts are selling well. Can I get a friends and family discount on a mug?

I have a serious question about the history of the "gray alien" in popular culture. Do you know of anyone purporting to showcase a body of a real alien prior to 1950? I've only been at this a short time, but I haven't found any evidence of anyone making such a claim. I never said that we had no concept of aliens in pop culture prior to 1950. My intent was to imply that the idea of the traditional gray alien being a real thing that actually crashed here wasn't common in popular culture until the 1960s. I'm not talking about comic books. I'm talking about a large portion of the population believing that creatures that looked like "grays" might be real. So far as I can tell, the slides predate that notion.

Based on what I know of Hilda, I stand by my assertion that she wouldn't have kept and hidden not one, but two slides of a body if she thought that it was a) a sideshow oddity or b) a museum mummy.