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A human disguise is a concept in mythology, religion, science fiction, and cartoon animations, where non-human beings (e.g. gods, angels, Satan, demons, monsters, robots, or aliens) are disguised to look like human beings. The deception has been depicted in storylines as a means used to blend in with people, and has been used to raise the question of what it means to be a human being. The phrase is also used critically to describe real people who are not what they appear to be.

In religion and mythology

In the the Old Testament apocryphal Book of Tobit, Raphael is an archangel who takes on human disguise and the name of Azarias.

Zeus's human disguises have been compared to Plato's use of communicating through alternate characters as a means to express that the "essential philosophical nature is divine rather than human" and "cannot be represented without some element of human "disguise". John Milton's poem Paradise Regained has Satan disguised as an old man.

Monsters like vampires and werewolves were purported to be able to take human form at certain times, and lore gave warnings of how to detect or drive away these seeming human beings. Various devils were said to appear in human form to offer tempting deals for one's soul. Perhaps not quite so malevolently, stories told of fairies and even mermaids walking in human form. And then there were human-seeming angels, as appeared to Lot in Sodom.

In literature

The gods "of whom the minstrels sang" in Homer's Iliad watched the "human spectacle" as partisans, and came down to Earth invisible or in human disguise to interfere, sometimes to protect their favorites from harm. They were sometimes hurt in conflicts.

The Changeover: a Supernatural Romance is a young adult novel by the New Zealand novelist Margaret Mahy that includes a character a vampiric lemur named Carmody Braque who masquerades as an antique dealer.

Aliens in science fiction

Aliens disguised in human form have been described in various works of science fiction. The recurring plot device is used in several stories about alien invaders, the theme of alien infiltration being particularly prevalent during the Cold War. David Buxton's Avengers to Miami Vice discusses the use of human disguise in The Invaders. The mannerisms of aliens using human disguises are sometimes portrayed as awkward, indicating that the aliens are not comfortable in their false skin.

Jack Finney's 1955 novel The Body Snatchers, and the films made from it, involve aliens not only looking generally human, but replacing specific human beings, an intensely frightening prospect because one's own neighbors, friends, and family must now be suspected. It has been suggested that this conveyed the paranoia of the McCarthy era.

Martian Manhunter, one of the main characters in New Frontier is "a shape-changing alien who adopts human disguise because he knows his alien form would scare people." The character illustrates the fear of outsiders that occurred during the Cold War.

Galaxy Quest, The Thing, Star Man, V, They Live, Third Rock from the Sun and Meet Dave also use the meme. In the science fiction series V, the reptilian aliens wear human suits to pass as humans, trying to make them feel more comfortable around them. In Meet Dave : A group of aliens arrive in a spaceship shaped like a human being, and pilot it, to interact with the humans, without getting noticed. In Star Man, the alien appears in human form, explaining it was so "you not be a little bit jumpy." In Third Rock from the Sun features a group of aliens, given human bodies, to observe aspects of human society.

In the Men in Black movie, based on a comic book, aliens disguised as humans inhabit Earth. The alien prince of the Arquillian Empire in Men In Black was in a human suit, living as a human being, with a pet cat. There was also a large alien found with illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico into America, which squeezed itself into a human suit. In Men In Black II, the alien known as Ben is found selling alien weapons in his store; when his fake human head is shot off, it rapidly regrows.

Director Albert Kodagolian produced a short film called Human Suit, to help promote the Sci Fi Channel.

Martian Manhunter, one of the main characters in New Frontier is "a shape-changing alien who adopts human disguise because he knows his alien form would scare people." The character illustrates the fear of outsiders the occured during the Cold War.

The Furon character Crypto, a gray-skinned alien, in Pandemic's Destroy All Humans video game uses a holographic human disguise to infiltrate 1950s suburban America. "In human form he cannot use weapons but is still able to use his mental powers to hurl objects and hypnotize people into becoming obedient slaves."

In the 1982 British Sci-fi film Xtro, a father is abducted by an alien spaceship and an alien returns disguised as him. The alien rapes the man's wife and she gives birth to a fully grown man in what author Barbara Creed describes as being a primal "phantasy" where man is born fully grown and completely independent of its mother.

Criticism

Gary Westfahl wrote that a standard argument of Stanislaw Lem and other writers is that "science fiction writers, as human beings, are inherently incapable of imagining truly alien beings, meaning that all aliens in science fiction are nothing but disguised humans."

Another author states that confidence in religious explanations for events has waned, conspiracy theories about small groups and hidden networks have gained a foothold. These imaginary cabals of humans and alien overseers disguised as humans, have been described by believers as influencing the direction of history. The Weekly World News supermarket tabloid got in on the concept with a story about tens of thousands of aliens infiltrating the highest levels of government, industry and academia.

Robots

In the movies Artifical Intelligence, and the Alien series, robots are made to look and act human. In The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger played a cyborg that wore a human disguise.

Isaac Asimov considered humanoid robots (androids) in the novel Robots and Empire and the short stories "Evidence" and "The Tercentenary Incident", in which robots are crafted to fool people into believing that the robots are human. In Asimov's novella The Bicentennial Man, the robot Andrew gradually replaces his mechanical body with organic components, but only on the 200th anniversary of the start of his organic conversion, when he allows his positronic brain to "decay" and thus abandons his immortality, is he accepted as "human".

In the television series Star Trek: the Next Generation, the android Data's desire to become more human was used as an ongoing source of commentary on the human condition. (Data's positronic brain is a nod to Asimov's stories.) An earlier pilot film by Star Trek's creator Gene Roddenberry, The Questor Tapes, had featured an android left on 20th century Earth as the last of a series of advanced alien technology, with the same subtext.

In the remade series Battlestar Galactica robots known as the Cylons have evolved to be able to make bodies that appear quite human. When killed, they transfer their consciousness from one body to an identical model elsewhere. This seeming immortality, the uncertainty of who is really human and who is Cylon, and the love between characters who are revealed to be human or Cylon, are used for discussion of what it means to be human.

In cartoons

Human disguises are sometimes used in animation for cartoon characters. In a short story by Haitham Chehabi a human disguise is worn by Trix, a cartoon rabbit. In cartoons aliens are sometimes drawn in human disguise.

Outside fiction

Outside of fiction, a human disguise is used as a metaphor to describe a real person who is pretending to be something they are not. Former Kenyan Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta was described by a Kenyan judge as a "monster in human disguise". Doug Parker, chairman of US Airways was described as a "Klingon in a human disguise", after he "vaporized much of what was left of USAirways in Pittsburgh." [sic] The human disguise does not always carry negative connotations, Manoel de S. Antonio, (Bishop of Malacca between 1701 and 1723) was refered to as an "angel in human disguise" for his conversion of 10,000 people to Christianity.

See also

• Humanoid
• Reptilian humanoid
• Plot device
• Stock character

References

1. Holden, Stephen (May 31, 1996). "Film Review: The Arrival (1996)". New York Times. Alien invaders in the movies tend to fall into two types. There are monsters from outer space ("The War of the Worlds," the forthcoming "Independence Day") and infiltrators ("Invasion of the Body Snatchers") who slip in using human disguise.
2. Raphael Encyclopedia Brittanica
3. Ruby Blondell The play of character in Plato's Dialogues pages 230 and 325
4. John Milton, John Leonard The complete poems Penguin English poets Penguin classics Classics Series Penguin Classics, 1998 ISBN 0140433635, 9780140433630 Length 982 pages page 13, 912
5. Louis Ropes Loomis Introduction to Homer's The Iliad The Iliad Issue 77 of Classics illustrated Translated by Samuel Butler Publisher Wildside Press LLC, 2007 ISBN 1434488926, 9781434488923 Length 428 pages
6. Anita Silvey The essential guide to children's books and their creators page 284
7. Peter, Lev. Transforming the screen, 1950-1959, Volume 7 of. History of the American cinema. Vol. 7. University of California Press. p. 177. ISBN 0520249666. Invasion films were common in the 1950s featuring a variety of aliens portrayed as superior to earthlings both in intelligence and technology . In these films, aliens represent what some Americans feared about the Soviets. Invaders, friends or enemies, and often with the help of robots, either come to warn earthlings or destroy them with superior technology. Sometimes the invaders use the strategy of infiltration, taking over the minds of the people, making slaves of them or appropriating their bodies, thus making war unnecessary.
8. David Buxton From the Avengers to Miami Vice: form and ideology in television series Cultural politics Manchester University Press ND, 1990 ISBN 0719029945, 9780719029943 170 pages 46-56
9. Jonah Goldberg (June 14, 2000), Is Gore An Alien?, National Review
10. Whitehead, John W. (2001). "Invasion of the Body Snatchers: A Tale for Our Times". Gadfly Online, 2001-11-26.
11. Tim Clodfelter VIDEO TAKES A LOOK BACK AT ORIGINS OF POPULAR SUPERHEROES (METRO Edition) Salem Journal (Winston-Salem, North Carolina) February 28, 2008 page 5
12. ^ Brad Munson Inside MIIB: Men in black II
13. Albert Kodagolian's spot Human Suit for Sci-Fi
14. Tim Clodfelter VIDEO TAKES A LOOK BACK AT ORIGINS OF POPULAR SUPERHEROES (METRO Edition) Salem Journal (Winston-Salem, North Carolina) February 28, 2008 page 5
15. Charles Herold Aliens in the Suburbs, Surrounded by Stupidity July 16, 2005 New York Times
16. Barbara Creed The monstrous-feminine: film, feminism, psychoanalysis page 44
17. Gary Westfahl What Science Fiction Leaves Out of the Future #2; The Day After Tomorrow March 2009 Internet Review of Science Fiction
18. Michael A. G. Michaud Contact with alien civilizations: our hopes and fears about encountering extraterrestrials Springer, 2006 ISBN 0387285989, 9780387285986 460 pages page 260
19. Feb 23, 1999 Weekly World News page 46
20. Boag, Keith (September 9, 2008). "Who is afraid of the Terminator now?". CBC News. Retrieved 2009-10-29.
21. Haitham Chehabi Trix Are For Kids? January 6, 2008 LA Times
22. Steve Barr 1-2-3 draw cartoon aliens and space stuff: a step-by-step guide
23. "Enigma of Jomo Kenyatta". Ebony (August 1961): 83.
24. Kalson, Sally (December 30, 2007). "A pop quiz for Pittsburghers". Puttsburgh Post Gazette. Retrieved 2009-10-29.
25. Schulte Nordholt, H. G. (1971). The political system of the Atoni of Timor. Vol. 60. p. 176.

• Deception
• Suits (clothing)