Pinkerton on ‘Contact’ and Faith

I wonder if James P. Pinkerton saw the same movie (“Contact”) as I did (“ ‘Contact’ Gives Scientist Sagan’s Legacy of Faith,” Column Right, July 10).

Jodie Foster’s character did not meet the Almighty. The “aliens” wanted to introduce themselves to her in the most pleasant, nonthreatening manner possible. So, they probed her memory banks and used the images of her beloved, dead father (who happened to be a white male--Pinkerton also made an issue of that) and a beautiful, tropical beach as “masks” to present themselves in. Pinkerton then launched into a sub-thesis about God archetypes in the arts, based on his own misinterpretation of who Foster was interfacing with in the alien world.

Basically, Pinkerton missed the point. He must have had a hot date and didn’t pay much attention to the flick, but decided anyway to shake his sectarian finger and proclaim “Aha!” over Carl Sagan’s supposed conversion to believer.

ANDREW SCHERMERHORN

Tujunga

In his attempt to say Sagan (albeit unconsciously) finally came around to the view of the religionists, Pinkerton fails to mention one point. Sagan wrote “Contact” as a work of fiction about what might be or could be. If the religionists would say the same about their religions and their bibles, then the comparison might be closer.

Still, they would need to get rid of, or treat as metaphor, some of their most egregious fairy tales. Even in a novel, there are limits to what is believable.

JAMES C. DALY

Laguna Beach

Pinkerton’s column resorts to a tired cliche around the terms “political correctness” and “multiculturalism.” The choice of Angela Bassett to make this point shows remarkably little understanding of the concept of culture. The last I knew, Bassett was a lifetime American, which probably makes her culturally a peer with Pinkerton.

I think it’s time to put down yesterday’s political campaigns and wake up and look around at the racial composition of America. If Jodie Foster is believable as a scientist making major decisions, my best hope is that someday Angela Bassett will be believable to the rest of America as a prominent figure in the White House.

ELAINE R. BROOKS

La Jolla

So Pinkerton thinks “Men in Black” shows “the low of the human spirit.” Maybe so, but interestingly, it does portray the average alien getting on with its life like any ordinary human, unlike many other recent sci-fi movies such as “ID4” and “Mars Attacks.”

GRAHAM C. NORRIS

Port Hueneme