We associate the word "legend" with something quite ancient, fanned, so to speak, with the breath of centuries. Legends usually tell about mysterious castles and their long-dead inhabitants, about protected places and historical figures. Legends are told to attentive listeners by gray-bearded elders with wise eyes …
Uncles in black are good, guests from Mars are bad
So, nothing like that. Legends are born right here and now. Among the noisy cities crowded with cars, on fields choked with modern agricultural machinery, at airports and at cosmodromes, real legends are literally born before our eyes.
Men in Black is one of such urban legends, which appeared relatively recently - almost simultaneously with flying saucers and big-eyed "green men".
Since all sorts of guests from outer space literally invaded the worldview of earthlings, people (organization) must have appeared, ready to protect compatriots from these sudden raids. The appearance of the opposing forces is determined by an unwritten law: the black knight is fighting against the white knight, the forces of good painted in the colors of the rainbow always act against the dark forces of evil. Consequently, typical representatives of the human race, dressed in black suits, snow-white shirts, and should come out (since it so happened) to fight the uninvited "green men", orange guests from Mars and God knows what colors and shapes visitors from other galaxies. with strict ties. Such incorruptible customs officers of our planet, border guards, the "iron curtain", a wall,protecting the peace of mankind from the invasion of unwanted elements that are ready to do God knows what, it is only worth letting them on Mother Earth.
Joining the ranks …
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It is impossible to cope with the influx of intergalactic tourists and emigrants alone, therefore, it must be a powerful, financially secure and necessarily state organization. (It is more than unreasonable to outsource contacts with aliens to private traders. What if some employee's roof goes down and he decides, with the help of alien invaders, to become the ruler of the entire Earth? No, such a service should only be a state one.)
Of course, the organization is highly classified. A person from the street cannot get there, the selection of future employees is carried out stricter than for the post of duty on the "nuclear button". The employees of the organization, not only have high mental qualities and physical endurance, but also have unlimited financial support from the authorities, almost complete freedom of action, plus all sorts of cunning things, knowledge and skills, intercepted along the way from the aliens. That is why the people of the Earth can sleep peacefully while the people in black are at their post - the intruders will be caught and driven away, their dark designs are guessed and warned. and ordinary people will only read about it in the yellow press. Happy end!
This is how an optimistic version of the legend of the Men in Black looks, talentedly embodied in the film of the same name, the first part of which was filmed in 1997 by director Barry Sonnenfeld.
Protection … for whom?
But there is another option, forcing ufologists to scream at night and regularly take a strong sedative. And all because, according to a more pessimistic (if not tragic) interpretation of the legend, there is no government organization (more precisely, it exists, but has nothing to do with earthly leaders). There is no "iron curtain". protecting the peace of mankind, there is no and never was a border locked between the Earth and other planets - so, a thin dotted line in the form of telescopes and satellites and a dozen space agencies, more concerned about commerce and purely earthly problems … But people in black are.
Only they are not people. More precisely - not really people. And their goals are completely different: not to protect the peace of our co-planets, but in every possible way to hide the presence of aliens on Earth.
If any of the intergalactic guests "pierced", the people in black are right there. They will push aside the police, severely threaten witnesses and journalists with a finger (yes, they will threaten them so much that they will completely forget not only what they saw, but also their own name); they will carefully clean up and hide all the evidence. With particularly stubborn witnesses, the conversation is shorter - the statistics of missing persons confirm this.
Interplanetary bureaucracy
Of course, even among the people in black themselves, not everything is complete without punctures and overlays. Take, for example, their appearance. It is clear that. when these people (or nonhumans) appeared in the 50s (or later) of the last century on our planet as scouts, a cover group and someone else, they needed to disguise themselves. A careful analysis of the "average" representative of the earthly civilization (most likely - the "standard" American) showed them that the most invisible against the general human background is the manager's business suit. Quite expensive, prestigious, but not falling out of the general stream is the classic black sedan. So it has been since then.
The alien bureaucracy does not understand that a black suit is appropriate in Manhattan, but not in the plains of Texas. And the 1960s Cadillac-styled car is getting much more attention now than it was 40 years ago. But this is their problem.
The earthlings' passion for increased secrecy works into the hands of people in black. Indeed, everyone seems to have heard of an organization seriously dealing with anomalous phenomena, but no one knows how to find its leaders. And therefore, if it occurs to some sheriff to get to the bottom: who is it that is driving around his site in black cars and helicopters without identification marks, and he, having reached the doors of the White House, will begin to ask questions, and will be sent further away, then he there is no reason even to be offended - secrecy is secrecy, and there is nothing to sniff out here.
Although in reality an honest, but curious sheriff will not be told anything, not because "it is not supposed", but because, in fact, there is nothing to tell. Earthly governments know nothing about the activities of people in black. But they do not strive to show their dullness - after all, every president or congressman always has elections on his nose, and voters are mostly conservative people, and if a candidate begins to utter vague words about "flying saucers", then he will not see a state post until the end of his life.
Why do we need them?
There is another option: the people in black are aliens, and earthly governments know about this. They know, but they cannot do anything, because the dialogue between the Earth and its guests is far from being equal.
And the change of government is taking place under the same flag. If the president has become disagreeable to guests from other galaxies, for example, he shows an increased interest in them or opposes any conditions set by the "tourists" - here he is gone. And the docile - on the contrary, they feed them, leave them for a second term (or even for life) and occasionally throw some know-how from Alpha Centauri, which has long been discontinued there.
It's just not clear why all these interplanetary travelers need our Earth? Do they rest on it? Getting something extremely useful, but extremely rare elsewhere? Just watching? Experiments on us? Or maybe all at once? Who knows…
Konstantin Karelov. Secrets of the 20th century magazine