This exposes the national-egocentric plotting at the heart of so many science fiction films, when the aliens land, and announce “We have studied your language” we like to assume that they were as focused on the US as the US is. Surely they only studied English!! And not always completely. In TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE, the human looking aliens are almost completely fluent, but they still say stuff like “man of science” for scientist, and “man of medicine” for doctor. Just to remind the audience that they still think like ‘aliens.’
This exposes the national-egocentric plotting at the heart of so many science fiction films, when the aliens land, and announce “We have studied your language” we like to assume that they were as focused on the US as the US is. Surely they only studied English!! And not always completely. In TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE, the human looking aliens are almost completely fluent, but they still say stuff like “man of science” for scientist, and “man of medicine” for doctor. Just to remind the audience that they still think like ‘aliens.’