Little green men

Even people very far from UFOlogy, surely at least once in my life seen the term "little green men". Usually it is mentioned with a humorous tone as the equivalent of the words "aliens", "aliens", etc. It is often found not only in colloquial speech but also in media and in pop culture (for example, the name 1 series 2 seasons of the cult TV series the x-files – "Little Green Men").

I'm sure many wonder where did this stable expression and what it means. In this article we will try to sort out these issues and this will help us study folklorist Chris ABEK (Chris Aubeck).

Now the term "little green men" is used generally in a pejorative manner, as a rule, the ridicule ;the hypothesis of the existence of aliens and their testimonies. The image of "green" in the figures similar to the classic grey aliens (small stature, huge almond eyes, disproportionate limbs), with the exception that the skin tone.

However, neglect of this term did not come immediately. This image was extremely popular in the fifties of the twentieth century. During this period in the United States, a wave of reports of encounters with the green creatures with a maximum height of meters, and sensation-seeking journalists popularized the image. The most famous of these is the incident in Kelly (ky), occurred in 1955when several people observed about 15 small creatures with greenish halo after the fall (landing) of some shining object. Later this image is repeatedly played out in various films and publications of the time. As example is the movie "Invasion of the inhabitants of the flying saucers" in 1957.

But "little green men" existed before. Green humanoids were a common image of aliens in science fiction 1920-1950-ies. They were often found on the covers and in the illustrations. As an example, the following is a page of a magazine "Fantastic Novels" from the January issue, 1951:

Illustration to the novel by Arthur Leo Zagat "Drink We Deep".

Other examples can be book the Maquis Reynolds "little green men" ("The Case of The Little Green Men", 1951), which tells about a private detective hired to expose disguised aliens living among the population, and the product of "the Green man alien from outer space" ("The Green Man: A Visitor From Space", 1946) Harold M. Sherman.

At the dawn of UFOlogy little green men broke into non-fiction literature: for example, they are mentioned in the book by F. Scully's "Behind the Flying saucers"published in 1950.

Even earlier, in 1912, Edgar rice Burroughs referred to the "green men from Mars"in his first sci-Fi novel "a Princess of Mars" (A Princess of Mars). In 1908 in the journal "Daily Kennebec Journal" was published an article about aliens, which were also low and green. And nine years earlier, in 1899, the newspaper "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" was printed tale, "the Green boy from Hurrah" ("the Green Boy From Hurrah") on a green small alien.

To name the exact date of the appearance of this term is impossible, because it exists for a long time, but until recently were not related to the aliens, and other supernatural beings: fairies, goblins, etc. are quite common in old legends, folklore and children's tales, which is reflected in the literature. For example, Rudyard Kipling referred to "little green man" in the tale "Pak from the hills" ("Pook'of Puck's Hill"), published in 1906. In the children's book "the gift of the magic staff", published in 1902, little green man helps the protagonist to meet with the cloud fairies. Even in Russia there is ustoichivoe the expression "drunk up to green devils".

Tracing the history of the term, we see that he is quite old and until a certain moment had a negative (satirical) color. For the first time in this way, the "green men" said reporter bill Barnard, ridiculing public panic after the famous broadcast of "War of the worlds" on Halloween (October 31 1938). After that, for several decades, serious and satirical image side by side. It is difficult to say what was the reason of the predominance in our time disparaging the color of the term. Probably the image of "little green man" was too far from the ideas about the alien, which needs to instill fear both on the screens and in the stories of eyewitnesses.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»