Very Large Array - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

The image of the VLA has become nearly iconic in American culture, though most persons do not know where it is located or what exactly it does. But it has appeared repeatedly in pop culture since its construction, as discussed below.

• The VLA is the setting for the beginning of the 1984 film 2010. Here the Soviet scientist Dmitri Moiseyevich meets with Dr Heywood Floyd to suggest a joint mission to Jupiter.
• For the 1997 film Contact, much of the outdoor footage was shot at the VLA site with the number of dishes visible on screen artificially increased by CGI, and the canyon depicted as being in the vicinity of the VLA is actually Canyon de Chelly in neighboring Arizona.
• In the 2009 science-fiction film Terminator Salvation, the VLA is the location of a Skynet facility. At the beginning of the film the site is attacked by Resistance forces.
• New Jersey rock band Bon Jovi shot the music video for "Everyday", at the VLA and a "dish" can be seen on the cover of the album Bounce. Likewise Matt Harding can be seen dancing at this location in his second video.
• The cover for the Night Ranger album Dawn Patrol, the Dire Straits album On The Night, and the At the Drive-In album In/Casino/Out feature the VLA.
• The VLA featured prominently in Carl Sagan's 1980 documentary Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.
• The VLA features in plans to save the world from satellites being pulled from orbit in the second volume of the comic book series G.I. Joe: America's Elite published by Devil's Due.
• The VLA could be visited in Auto Assault, a massively multiplayer online game that was set in post-apocalyptic America.
• In the British Broadcasting Corporation series "Luther", Alice Morgan states that she has always wanted to visit the VLA.
• The VLA appears at the beginning of the movie Transformers: Dark of the moon, incorrectly shown as existing before it was actually constructed.
  • It also appears in an episode of Transformers: Prime, when the Decepticons intend to use it to help aim a long-range teleporter to Cybertron.
• In Arthur C. Clarke's novel, Imperial Earth, the male protagonist's estranged bisexual male lover is killed when one of the VLA telescopes' elevation gear suddenly activates.