Artigo sobre análise de filme.

2. David Sutton
David Sutton is Professor of
Anthropology at Southern
Illinois University When
not watchingfilms, he does
research in Greece on issues
offood, mem01y, the senses
and the Creek crisis. His
email is dsullon~iu.edu.
Fig. 1. (right). Amy
Adams seeks to initiate
communication with aliens in
thefilm Arrival by Paramount
Pictures, 2016.
Fig. 2. {below). Book cover
ofHoll ywood blockbusters:
The anthropology of popular
movies (Sui/on & Wogan
2009).
Arrival
Anthropology in Hollywood
Over the past five years, I have become increasingly aware
ofreferences to anthropology in films, television and other
popular culture products. This includes not only the ubiq-
uitous forensic anthropology popularized by the show
Bones, but common references to cultural anthropology
- typically used to refer, fairly accurately, to the study of
the world view/way of life of a particular community -
and even occasional references to linguistic anthropology,
such as in True detective, season 1, when the character
played by Matthew McConaughey opines: 'Certain lin-
guist anthropologists think that religion is a language
virus that rewrites pathways in the brain and dulls critical
thinking' - perhaps an oblique reference to the work of
cognitivists like Dan Sperber and Pascal Boyer.
When Peter Wogan and I published Hollywood block-
busters: The anthropology ofpopular movies in 2009, we
were mostly interested in using anthropology to provide
new insights and innovative readings into classic popular
films like The godfather and Jaws. But at the time, we
had come across few Hollywood films that focused on, or
even referenced, anthropology. 1
Thus, it was with some
delighted surprise in late 2016 that I watched the holiday
science fiction blockbuster Arrival. The film features
Louise Banks, a linguist,2 as the main character (played
by Amy Adams), who must communicate with aliens who
have landed on earth.
Not only does the film centre on the question ofcommu-
nication, but the plot hinges on the Sapir-Wharf hypoth-
esis, perhaps the first to do ~o in the history of Hollywood
films. At the same time, in looking at the film, the script
for the film and the story on which the script was based,
it became clear to me that Arrival was interesting both for
what it gets right and for some of the things that it doesn't
quite carry off, anthropologically speaking.
So, spoiler alert! If you haven't seen Arrival, I suggest
that you do. I will be providing a summary of the plot
below, along with the film's big plot reveal. I will argue
that the film raises three key themes and interweaves them
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 34 NO 1, FEBRUARY 2018
in interesting ways. The first is Sapir-Whorf, or more gen-
erally the issue ofrelativity and the lack oftransparency in
communication across languages. It ties this theme rather
originally to the cultural construction of temporalities and
the relationship between time and language. Finally, it
potentially gets us to think about the role of writing as
practice. Not bad for a film that was nominated for Best
Picture and seven other Academy Awards and as of this
writing has grossed over $200 million at the box office!
Plot summary
The plot ofArrival revolves around the landing of 12 alien
ships in various locations around the world. The different
governments and militaries concerned must then attempt
to interpret the reason for the alien landing and decide
whether to cooperate with each other or simply declare
war on the aliens. Louise Banks, a linguist trained in field
methods, is sent to learn the aliens' language and translate
their purpose to the US military and civilian authorities. In
an atmosphere of chaos, panic and a bit of suggested 'fake
news', Banks must convince the army colonel (played by
Forest Whitaker) that learning another language takes time
and patience, and that there is much possibility of ambi-
guity in the process of translation.
With the help ofa physicist, (played by Jeremy Renner),
Banks discovers that the aliens have come to offer a gift to
the human race: their language. The language is divided up
into 12 pieces which are distributed between the different
landing sites. Learning the language involves combining
all of the pieces, thus necessitating cooperation between
the various governments. But the significance of the alien
language is that it allows one access to an understanding
of time that is not linear. As Banks learns the language,
she is increasingly able to see future events, including the
birth, childhood and early death of her future daughter.
This access to the future turns out to be crucial to Banks's
ability to interpret and act on events happening in the pre-
sent, and to avert the eventuality of war with the aliens.
7

3. Thanks to my constant
collaborators, Peter Wogan
and Leonidas Voumelis for
their prodding and stimulation
in helping me think through
Arrival, and for their editorial
suggestions.
I. Exceptions might
include films like the Indiana
Jones series that reference an
older stereotype of colonial
explorer/archaeologist (see
Pels 2017) and an occasional
spoof like Krippendorf's tribe
(see Sutton & Wogan 2009
for a discussion).
2. The film-makers
consulted with three linguists
at McGill University in
preparation for the filming,
including one who had done
ethnographic fieldwork. Their
reflections on the process are
recorded in several interviews
here:
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=AkZzUWSiyn8.
3. See also the unusual
teaser/trailer for the film ,
which plays on this theme:
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=h0Cr0Qzf9p8.
4. See https://www.quora.
com/What-is-the-literal-
translation-of-the-Sanskrit-
word-for-war.
5. Of course real Trekkies
(fans of the show) will
know that the universal
translator often does not
work, or at least is of limited
usefulness in many episodes.
For example, in the Next
generation episode 'Darmok
at Tanagra', the starship
Enterprise encounters a
people who speak only using
historical analogies, making
translation almost impossible.
6. I will discuss this term
further below.
7. http://www.slate.
com/articles/podcasts/
lexicon_valley/20 16/12/
john_mcwhorter_on_the_
linguistics_of_the_movie_
arrival.html.
8. See the discussion with
Jessica Coon, one of the
linguists who was consulted
on the script ofArrival.
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=AkZzUWSiyn8.
9. See also Ingold's (2004)
discussion ofAndre Leroi-
Gourhan's contrast between
writing and the 'graphism'
that preceded it, in which
'every graph spirals out from
a centre, its rhythmically
repeated elements arranged in
concentric rings'- a strikingly
fitting description of heptapod
ideograms. As Ingold goes
on to note: ' Writing, by
contrast, is fundamentally
linear - each graphic element
following the next as do the
sounds of speech to which
they correspond -and
where writing dominates
the linguistic awareness
of a society this linearity
inevitably imposes itself upon
other aspects of experience'
(2004: 120).
8
As part ofthe time paradox of the film, it is suggested that
Banks must make the decision to give birth to a child who
will die young in order to save the world.
Translation and non-transparency
One of the things that Arrival accomplishes effectively is
to introduce the notion that translation is difficult and that
learning an alien language would be a process fraught with
challenges. From early on in the film, the military com-
mander, Colonel Weber, wants quick answers: what are
these potentially threatening creatures saying? Dr Banks
explains from the very start that you cannot learn a new
language from an audio file; you cannot learn it at all
without interacting with speakers of the language.3 Here,
and throughout, Weber stands in for the general viewer
who might assume that linguists perform some magic by
which they can tum random sounds into words, phrases
and meanings.
Banks also immediately attunes us to metaphorical
meanings when she outdoes another linguist who is being
considered for the mission by providing the broader asso-
ciation of the Sanskrit word for 'war' as 'a desire for more
cows', rather than 'an argument' 4
Already, 15 minutes
into the film, the viewer is introduced to the idea that dic-
tionary translations are not straightforward and the sugges-
tion that words might in fact reflect a broader world view.
In an essay titled 'Alien tongues', David Samuels
describes some of the ways that scientists and science fic-
tion writers have imagined alien communication: from a
simple lexical transcription of English (or other earth lan-
guages) to a corresponding gibberish, to more complex
imaginings and attempts in the SETI (search for extrater-
restrial intelligence) project to communicate through music
(as a language of emotions), mathematics (as a universal
logic) or whale calls. Samuels notes that the assumption
behind much popular thinking on alien communication has
been that technological advancement is accompanied by
communicative transparency- that Martians will 'speak'
telepathically, with no need for metaphors (2005: 104).
Indeed, the same thinking seems to go into science fiction
standbys like Star trek's 'universal translator', which 'has
been theorized to contain massive dictionaries and gram-
mars of every known language in the Star Trek universe'
(2005: 116).5
For a mainstream Hollywood film, Arrival
distinguishes itself in pushing back against this facile
image of linguistic transparency.
In Arrival, the plot is advanced at various points by
demands from Colonel Weber to hurry the translation
up and explanations by Dr Banks of the complexities of
communication. Each of these examples emphasizes the
importance of context and contact in making translation
possible. It is only by some immersion in the world of the
aliens that communication is possible. Thus, Banks is the
first to decide to take off her protective suit so that the
aliens can see (through the glass barrier separating them
from the humans) that different humans look different -
perhaps an oblique reference to the SETI project's inclu-
sion of a drawing of a naked male and female (white
European, adult) form. While these scenes extend the
theme ofcommunication through interaction - and indeed,
the two aliens are given personalities and names ('Abbott
and Costello') by Banks and her main collaborator- the
problems of interpretation remain. As Dr Banks notes in
response to one ofWeber's demands that what they want to
know (i.e. what is the aliens' purpose?) isn't complicated,
Banks replies:
To get there, we have to make sure they understand what a ques-
tion is, and the nature of a request for information along with
the response. Then there is clarifYing the di fference between a
specific 'you' from a collective 'you' . We don't want to know
why Joe Alien is here, we want to know why all ofthem landed.
Purpose requires an understanding of intent. Which means we
have to find out ifthey make conscious choices or iftheir moti-
vation is so instinctive they don't understand a 'why' question,
and biggest ofall, we need to have enough ofa vocabulary with
them so we understand their answer.
How much easier things were in all the films in which
aliens simply demanded 'take me to your leader', or didn't
communicate at all, except by shooting weapons.
If Arrival thus raises all kinds of interesting questions
for the viewer about intentionality, identity and context, the
last question of vocabulary also allows the film to explore
the classic Saussurian issue ofcategories. This arises when
the research team finally reaches the level of competence
to ask the question of the aliens' purpose. The pregnant
response, 'offer weapon', is immediately complicated by
the fact that, as Dr Banks insists, the same word could
refer to weapon or to 'tool'. As she puts it in the original
script: 'Our language, like our culture, is messy. In many
cases one thing can be both'. As with the Sanskrit word
for 'war', here the film again emphasizes the problems of
translation across non-overlapping semantic domains.
Alien writing
Indeed, it is this notion that motivates the rest of the film,
in which we learn (with explicit reference to the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis as 'the idea that the language that you
speak determines how you think') that the alien language
unlocks a different understanding of time itself as non-
linear. Banks does not focus on the aliens' verbal com-
munication, which the film suggests is meant only as
emotional expression. The aliens' language communi-
cates with complex 'logograms',6 which are 'written ' on
the barrier separating the aliens from the humans. This is
writing, in the sense that it is pictorial, but doesn't seem
to involve any intermediary tool or instrument such as a
pen. It is writing_Fom the body- that is, from one of the
octopus-like limbs of the 'heptapod' aliens. It appears on
the barrier briefly, and perhaps like a mandala is quickly
washed away (the humans take a video of it so that Banks
can analyze it later).
Each 'logogram' comes out not as an individual word,
but as a circular structure that represents something like
a completed thought, a sentence. It also might suggest an
ouroboros, that tail devourer, classic symbol of wholeness
and infinity. The film script describes the heptapod writing
process as, 'he begins at opposite ends [with two 'hands']
and then writes phrases and symbols in a perfect pair of
arcs so that they connect as a circle at the end'. Banks's
recognition of this begins to unlock the idea of non-linear
thinking: that words don 't come one after another, but all
together. It is a recognition that begins to open up the idea
of a non-linear temporality which is, in fact, the aliens'
tool, their gift being offered to humanity.
Anthropology of temporalities
Non-linear temporality, or 'going back/forward in time', is
ofcourse a staple of many science fiction plots. But this is
usually posed as an issue ofphysics, with various resulting
temporal paradoxes being explored. Unrecognized in such
science fiction speculation is the fact that anthropologists
have..,become increasingly interested in how non-linear
temporalities can shape experience in many societies, even
if they coexist alongside linear temporalities. Ursula Le
Guin was an exception, drawing on her anthropological
knowledge to critique Western notions of temporal pro-
gress in her short essay ' Science fiction and the future '
(1997).
Le Guin plays with the idea that the future lies ' in front
of us', noting that for Quechua-speaking people of the
Andes, things are quite reversed: it is the past that is vis-
ible ' in front of us' and the future which is unseen, only
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 34 NO 1, FEBRUARY 2018

4. Fig. 3. Amy Adams and
Jeremy Renner discuss the
interpretation ofheptapod
writing in Arrival. Logograms
in background
10. Note that Ingold 's
argument is not the same
as Goody's (1986) on
the cognitive and social
implications of writing for
society. As part ofhis larger
critiqueofWestern scholarship
and Western modernity more
generally as caught in mind-
body dualisms, ~1gold wants to
distinguish within tl1e idea of
writing between writing with
toolsand writing with distancing
technologies such as typewriters
and computers. Ofcourse, such
strong distinctions may leave
him open to someofthe same
critiques that have been levelled
at Goody ofnot fully taking into
account cultural differences.
II. See the discussion of
speech and writing in Sutton
& Wogan (2009), chapter
on The godfather. See also
Wogan (200 I).
12. In the special features
included on the DVD, both
the author of the original story
and the consultant linguist
on the film recognize that
language does not determine,
but simply innuences thought.
It is interesting to speculate
on how this insight was
transformed in the course of
making the film.
13. See, for example,
'The anthropologist
on the street' podcast:
anthropologistonthestreet.
com. Many of the ideas in
this article are discussed in an
episode of that podcast.
glimpsable, 'over your shoulder' . Thus, Le Guin also
stresses the role of metaphor in shaping our ideas about
temporality. But she seems to step back, at least in that
essay, from the idea that these ideas would in fact shape
how we actually live in the space-time continuum. Many
anthropologists, however, might dispute the objective
nature of linear, causal time.
On the one hand, Alfred Gel! (1992) distinguished
between real, 'objective' time, which he referred to with
the philosophical concept of 'Series B' time, and sub-
jective cultural constructions of temporality (Series A).
But a number of anthropologists have brought into ques-
tion Gel!'s easy acceptance of the 'truth ' of physics. In
Greece, for example, Charles Stewart (2012) and Nadia
Seremetakis (1991) have both shown how ordinary, linear
notions of time coexist with non-linear notions of the pos-
sibility ofknowing the future through dreams and religious
revelation. They argue that the notion that the past, present
and future are in constantly shifting, unstable configura-
tions is not simply a cultural construction but an equally
valid experience of how time works. In my own work in
Greece, I argue that the notion ofthe past ' recurring' in the
present is not simply an idea imposed onto 'reality', it is
itself a reality reflected in all kinds of practices, including
metaphor and analogy, ritual, kinship and embodied expe-
rience (Sutton 1998).
Benjamin Lee Whorf was a precursor here in devel-
oping the idea that language shaped the perception of
time among the Hopi. Suggesting that there is nothing
natural about 'our' notions of linear time, Whorf writes:
' [The Hopi] has no general notion or intuition ofTIME as
a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the
universe proceeds at an equal rate, out ofa future, through
a present, into a past; or in which, to reverse the picture,
the observer is being carried in the stream ofduration con-
tinuously away from a past and into a future' (Whorf 1956:
57). In the same work, Whorfessentially describes a world
of emergences, in which events are classified into those
manifested or not yet manifested. In relation to Series A
and Series B, Whorf also suggested that Hopi temporality
is closer to the presumed true understanding of physics
than Western linear time.
Non-linear temporality is not simply an abstract idea in
Arrival. Rather, it cuts deep. It is only towards the end ofthe
film that we find out that what seemed to be flashbacks to
Louise Banks's past life with her 'now' deceased daughter
were actually 'flash-forwards' to a future to which she is
gaining access through learning the heptapod language.
This revelation is interesting from two perspectives. First,
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 34 NO 1, FEBRUARY 2018
from the point of view of Banks as the main character,
we see that she does not suddenly have the ability to read
the future, but through various moments of dreaming and
imaginings she is increasingly able to understand that
images of future scenes with her daughter actually have
relevance to her present reality, much as predictive dreams
in Greece do. So she must learn to 'read' these images
for their actual significance, just as she is learning to read
the heptapod logograms as complete, non-linear ideas. It
is only as she increases her interactions with the heptapods
-that is, as she spends time with them like any anthropolo-
gist would- that she begins to gain this ability. But she is
not the only one.
As viewers, we are enculturated into the grammar, or
language, of film, which (I daresay in Sapir-Whorfian
fashion) allows us to interpret the meaning of certain
scenes, given our expectation of the conventions of the
flashback (the past once again being behind us in our
memories even as it is in front ofour eyes in the flashback,
illustrated typically in gauzy, not quite clear film images).
During the course of the film, we as viewers are asked to
learn to read the clues in these scenes that eventually allow
us to understand that they are taking place in the future
rather than in the past. Thus, the 'payoff' is the sugges-
tion that not just the protagonist Louise Banks, but 'we'
the viewers can also perhaps learn non-linear temporalities
through rethinking our 'grammar'.
Critique of Sapir-Whorf
To suggest that learning a language would give you access
to a different experience of living in time seems to suggest
the strong Sapir-Whorf thesis, or popular Whorfism, in
which language not only shapes, but determines thought.
This is what linguist John McWhorter is eager to criticize
in his podcast on Arrival/ as Sapir-Whorf is one of his
stalking horses in his recent and revealingly titled book
The language hoax: Why the world looks the same in any
language (2014). (Since McWhorter is the only linguist
who has publicly commented on Arrival at the time of this
writing, I give him some extended consideration here.)
McWhorter notes that 'The Sapir-Whorf idea is true in
itself, but to nowhere near the extent that the film implies'.
While accepting a kind ofsurface idea that language can
influence thought 'to an extent', he rejects any suggestion
that language could open up different realities or world
views to consciousness. Indeed, he makes the claim that
'even though each language only concentrates on a subset
of reality, we all basically process the same reality'. This
is clearly a very different approach to that suggested in the
previous paragraph.
It is also what Anthony Webster criticizes in his review
of McWhorter's book, 'Why the world doesn 't sound
the same in every language, and why that might matter'
(2015). Webster defends linguistic relativity against
McWhorter's often casual dismissals, quoting Sapir to the
effect that 'The worlds in which different societies live
are distinct worlds, not merely the same worlds with dif-
ferent labels attached' (Sapir, cited in Webster 2015: 92).
Webster takes the point of view of poetics that not only
are categories different, but the poetic aspects of speech -
particularly the sounds ofa language- 'can and do inspire
acts of imagination'. And, '[t]he imaginative possibilities
evoked, provoked, and convoked through sound in Navajo
language poetry are lost in English language translations'
(ibid.). Not surprisingly to anthropologists, Webster con-
cludes that Navajo is 'not merely English in disguise'.
Traduttore traditore!
The phenomenology of alien writing
Webster's point about the importance ofsound leads me to
consider the significance of the visual appearance of !an-
9

5. Chiang, T. 2014. Story of
your li fe. In: Stories of
your life and others. New
York: Vintage.
Gell, A. 1992. The
anthropology oftime.
Oxford: Berg.
Goody, J. 1986. The logic
ofwriting and the
organization ofsociety.
Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Ingold, T. 2004. Andre
Leroi-Gourhan and the
evolution of writing. ln F.
Audouze & N. Schlanger
(eds} Autour de l 'homme:
Context et aclualite
d'Andre Leroi-Gourhan,
109-1 23. Antibes:
APDCA.
-201 3. Making:
Anthropology,
archaeology, art and
architecture. London:
Routledge.
Le Guin, U. 1997. Science
fiction and the future. ln
Dancing at/he edge ofthe
world. New York: Grove
Press.
McWhorter, J. 20 14. The
language hoax: Why the
world looks the same in
any language. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Pels, P. 201 7. Enchanted
reason: Science fiction,
print capitalism and the
magic of anthropology.
Anthropology Today 33(2):
10-1 4.
Samuels, D. 2005. Alien
tongues. In D. Battaglia
(ed} £. T. culture:
Anthropology in outer
spaces. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Seremetakis, C.N. 199 1. The
last word: Women, death
and divination in inner
Mani. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Stewart, C. 201 2.
Dreaming and historical
consciousness in island
Greece. Chicago:
University of Chicago
Press.
Sutton, D. 1998. Memories
cas! in stone: The
relevance ofthe past in
eve1yday life. Oxford:
Berg.
- & P. Wogan 2009.
Hollywood blockbusters:
The anthropology of
popular movies. Oxford:
Berg.
Webster, A. 201 5. Why the
world doesn't sound the
same in any language and
why that might matter: A
review ofThe language
hoax: Why the world looks
the same in any language.
Journal ofLinguistic
Anthropology 25: 87-93.
Wharf, B. L. 1956. Language,
thought and reality:
Selected writings of
Benjamin Lee Wh01f
Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Wogan, P. 200I. Imagined
communities reconsidered:
10
Is print capitalism
what we think it is?
Anthropological The01y
I(3): 403-41 8.
guage as well. Returning to the 'logograms', I would start
by noting that the depiction of these could be seen in some
ways as problematic for the potentially Orientalist com-
parison with Chinese characters. That is, the film might
be perceived to be echoing simplistic readings of Chinese
characters as simply made up of separate words, which
loses much ofthe nuance and context from which the char-
acters draw their meaning and complexity.
Here, I would note that the story on which the film is
based - Ted Chiang's ' Story of your life' (2014) - rec-
ognizes this concern. In the story, Dr Banks notes that
she avoided the 'problematic term "ideograms"'. Instead
she came up with the term 'semagrams' to focus on the
holistic meaning of each instance ofheptapod writing. The
film script turns this into 'logograms', by which it means
something similar: characters that represent whole words
or phrases, not pictograms that resemble what they depict.8
But in the film, this nuance might be lost in scenes where
Banks is shown analyzing the logograms into their com-
ponent parts.
However, once we recognize this problem, we can go
on to think about the form that the logograms take: they
are roughly circular (no doubt symbolizing non-linearity);
they appear as ink blots- almost as if the heptapods were
squirting ink on the barrier that separates them from the
humans - and they emerge almost instantaneously. In the
' Story of your life', the writing is described as 'a single
continuous line .. . [which] meant the heptapod had to know
how the entire sentence would be laid out before it could
write the very first stroke' (Chiang 2014: 123). In other
words, unlike human writing, there was no starting point
or end point. One could see the logograms as Rorschach
tests, demanding that we interpret their meaning. Indeed
Dr Banks's work- unlike that of her physicist colleague
who approaches the writing ~abstractly - seems to con-
stantly combine analysis and interpretation.
But what is most striking about the logograms is how
clearly they are calligraphic - closer to drawing than
writing. Here, I find resonances with Tim Ingold's discus-
sion of writing in relation to drawing. Ingold describes
handwriting as a kind of drawing, which 'transforms
the draughtsman, in making the work, and it transfonns
those who follow, in looking at it' (2013: 129). He sees
both drawing and writing as 'ways of telling by hand' in
which the word 'telling' refers less to providing informa-
tion in the form of a complete specification and more to
storytelling, or the activities of an experienced person (a
master) guiding a novice or apprentice. He contrasts this
with 'writing' by typewriter or computer as distancing
and objectifying technologies, and imagines a ' return to
drawing' which would place writing within 'a continuum
of inscriptive practices, or processes of line-making,
ranging from handwriting through calligraphy to drawing
and sketching, with no clear points ofdemarcation between
them' (ibid.: 132)9
Finally, and only to summarize a complicated argu-
ment, he suggests that the power ofsuch drawn lines used
in writing/drawing is that they do not connect defined
points, but carry on along a path in which ' there are no
start points and end points. There are only horizons that
vanish as you approach them, while further horizons
loom ahead'.10
These ideas provide an interesting perspective on hep-
tapod writing, which, as noted, resembles nothing gener-
ated by computer, but is directly produced by heptapod
bodies without even the mediation of brush or pen. This
is a kind of writing that is meant to tell or to show, rather
than to explicate and specify. Thus, to learn what the
heptapods are offering- to learn their language and thus
their understanding of time in which there are indeed no
starting points or end points - Dr Banks has to be trans-
formed herself. In the film, this transformation is depicted
more in the 'flash-forward' scenes with her daughter than
in the limited scenes of her learning to read and write
heptapod.
However, a few scenes are critical and meant to stand in
for a longer process of apprenticeship. These include one
scene in which Banks is enjoined to hesitantly write a log-
ogram with the help of one of the aliens, offered from the
other side of the glass. It is only in this process of writing,
hands pressed against the glass with the 'hands' ofthe hep-
tapod on the other side, that she gains extensive access to
the 'flash-forward ' scenes of her daughter which become
critical to her interpretation. A later scene in which Banks
communicates directly with one of the aliens without the
glass barrier is also significant. Here, it is suggested that
the material source of the heptapod logograms might be
the atmosphere itself; that is, that the aliens inhale the thick
foggy atmosphere and exhale the 'ink' that makes up their
logograms.
This suggests not only a blurring ofwriting and drawing,
but of writing and speech, thus going to the heart of post-
Platonic views of the basic difference between writing
and speech which has bedevilled Western philosophy ever
since. The issue of speech and writing as respectively
ephemeral and enduring, simply melts away in a world
in which all is simultaneity and communication happens
without one word 'following' another but simply as sets of
fully formed ideas.11
In some ways, I think this addresses some aspects of
McWhorter's critique of Arrival. As he puts it: 'Amy
Adams would have had to become one of those aliens and
live among them to be able to think the way they did; just
mastering their language was not going to give her a whole
new way of thinking' . This is certainly a reasonable point;
indeed, it is in line with Dr Banks's own claims in the film
about the importance of context and interaction. But, to
defuse McWhorter's concern, the film does quite clearly
portray Banks as not simply learning the language as a
cognitive exercise but as an engaged and embodied pro-
cess of apprenticeship.
Perhaps the film 's only mistake is in one dream
sequence in which Banks actually names Sapir-Whorf as
the idea that ' language determines thought'. From discus-
sions with some linguists, I have gathered that this one line
was enough to spoil the fi lm for them. 12
This, then, is the
one simplification that Arrival stands guilty of. However, I
have argued here that the insights of the film far outweigh
this trespass. I guess you will have to see it and decide for
yourself.
Final thoughts
Arrival is unusual for a Hollywood production in its more
than passing engagement with anthropological concerns.
In putting together the relationship oflanguage and thought
with the possibility of alternative temporalities and with
different ways of writing, it has provided much food for
thought. Peter Pels bemoans the dearth of anthropologists
writing about science fiction, noting that 'science fiction
is probably one of the better ways to study modern culture
and its imaginative forms ' (2017: 10). Indeed, I couldn't
agree more, though as I've argued elsewhere (Sutton &
Wogan 2009), Hollywood fi lms hold similar potential
both as subjects of our research and as important tools for
teaching anthropological concepts.
At a time when anthropology is, as I have suggested,
enjoying increasing exposure in popular culture and new
podcasts meant to popularize anthropology are appearing
regularly,13 a film like Arrival offers a striking example
of how key anthropological insights and understandings
can be incorporated into popular entertainment, and this
should be heartening for us all. •
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 34 NO 1, FEBRUARY 2018