Portraying Aliens (The Unknowns)

Today I asked one of my friends to describe the first image that comes to his mind when he hears the word ‘Alien’. His response was something that is really common. He said that the first image that came to his mind was: an ugly creature with multiple eyes and tentacles over his body. Most of the people imagine aliens like this. Even I did, and that’s exactly how movies and documentaries show them.

Recently my friend and I were watching Green Lantern movie. The scene where all the Green Lantern Corps gather was playing and his mom glanced at them, and her reaction was “STOP watching these disgusting films!” Of course, she meant the Green Lantern Corps. Her and his Grandma’s reaction was similar towards Men in Black series and The Independence Day and all such other films that show aliens.

That means that either we have set standards that things that don’t look like us or the animals we usually come across are disgusting, or we think that aliens look disgusting and ugly! But why so? Humans don’t even know whether potential life forms exist in the world we haven’t explored so how does anyone know what do aliens look like? How are we going to picture something we have never seen? Why not make it look just different than us? Anyways no one has seen them, so there is no one is oppose! Just make them look ugly to differentiate them from us. But then why not make them look more beautiful? Oh, we can definitely do that, but do we find everything ugly that doesn't look like us?

I say ‘different than us’ because when someone pictures aliens similar to us (just differing in skin color) we don’t find them ugly! Example: many don’t find the aliens in Avatar and Aliens from Xandar(that were blue, pink, green, etc from the movie Guardians of the Galaxy) ugly.

Another reason we picture aliens ugly is because of the fear of Aliens. I say this because once we know that the alien shown isn’t harmful, we tend to find it ‘not’-ugly example ET or Jaadu(probably Indian guys will know about him). You will say that “There was no way ET was ugly! He was cute from the time he entered!” Well, my 5-year-old brother doesn't think so because when I showed him a picture of ET and said: “Hey look how cute is he!” His only reaction was “Eeeee!!!! He is so ugly!!”

The reason that aliens seem ugly may also be that they aren't made of the golden ratio that our world is made of. You never know, they might have their own ratio as we do. So basically aliens aren't pictured ugly! They are just portrayed different, but we take them that way! There maybe someone picturing us as ugly aliens as we are
Tell me how you visualize aliens and what are your reasons of visualizing them that way!