Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2020
Abstract
Communication is a reciprocal effort; not only is it a vehicle for conveying our thoughts, but more consequentially, it is also a vehicle by which we expose ourselves to the thoughts of our interlocutors. Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival tackles the issue of incommunicability in a novel manner: by addressing it in terms of an alien encounter. While Arrival’s narrative is centered around the establishment of harmonious communication between humans and an alien species, the premise behind the movie serves to address a deeper, underlying difficulty in communication present in human interactions with each other. If one were to take away the alien dimension, it would become evident that the premise behind Arrival is, in fact, a social commentary on an international inability to overcome geopolitical alienation. Arrival is eloquent in its complex investigation of human communication. Not only does it break down the logistics of establishing cross-cultural dialogue, it also probes into humanity’s struggle to overcome its hostile attribution bias—a barrier to communication that is exaggerated through the use of extraterrestrials. The movie emphasizes the value of intercultural communication, accepting otherness, and assuming benign—as opposed to harmful—intent from the unknown. In so doing, Arrival effectively highlights the linguistic challenges that need to be overcome for humanity to form a single, global, and intergalactic community.