The Alien Inside: A Neurodivergent Rereading of Men in Black

What if the aliens weren’t invaders, but metaphors? What if the memory-wiping agents, the sugar-craving skin-wearers, and the smallest alien guns were telling a deeper story—a neurodivergent one?

Rewatching Men in Black (1997) recently hit differently. It felt like tuning into a hidden frequency—something submerged beneath the sci-fi and sarcasm. What surfaced wasn’t just nostalgia. It was a parable.

This wasn’t just entertainment. It was resonance.

Identity in Disguise: The Skin That No Longer Fits

Early in the film, Edgar the farmer is overtaken by a crashed alien ship. His body becomes a suit—worn by something else. He returns home, distorted. His wife no longer recognises him. He doesn’t recognise himself.

He demands, “Sugar… in water.”

This isn’t random. It’s metaphor. A symbol of dopamine hunger, of a nervous system out of sync. Of being in your body but no longer feeling at home in it.

Neurodivergent folk know this intimately:

• Masking until the mask becomes you

• Dysregulation mistaken for absurdity

• Feeling like a stranger in your own skin

Testing the Norm: Executive Dysfunction and Adaptation

Agent J (Will Smith) is tested alongside rigid, uniformed candidates. They sit perfectly still. He fidgets. Struggles to find a place to write. Can’t hold a pencil. Drags a noisy table across the room to make space.

It’s classic executive dysfunction—but with adaptability. J doesn’t fail. He reconfigures the environment to suit his mind.

Neurodivergence isn’t inability—it’s a different rhythm. One that carves its own path when boxed in.

The Little Girl with Quantum Physics Books

Then comes a defining moment: the target range. Everyone shoots monstrous aliens. J fires once—at a little girl holding quantum physics books.

“Middle of the ghetto? Quantum physics? This time of night? She’s up to something.”

It’s played for laughs—but it’s a tonal truth bomb.

He’s not reacting to appearances—he’s reading patterns. Questioning the obvious. Seeing what others miss.

That’s pattern-based intuition. One of the most undervalued neurodivergent strengths.

Sugar and Memory: The Cost of Erasure

Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) carries the neuralyser—a device that wipes memories. It’s how he protects people. But it’s also how he disappears.

He’s load, seasoned, emotionally detached, quietly respected—but ultimately forgettable. Over time, he becomes someone who leaves no trace.

For many neurodivergent people, that’s not fiction. It’s lived experience:

• Misunderstood

• Forgotten

• Masked until invisible

And then there’s the Noisy Cricket.

When Agent J is finally deemed ready, he’s handed a weapon barely the size of a stapler. A joke, he thinks. But the moment he fires it—he’s blown ten feet backward. Left stunned, flat on his back, shocked by its unanticipated power.

It’s not just a gag. It’s a metaphor.

For many neurodivergent people, this is what the first dose of the right medication feels like:

• Tiny.

• Unexpected.

• Transformative.

• And overwhelming at first.

The neuralyser isn’t just sci-fi tech. It’s dual metaphor:

A symbol of the social cost of not being seen—and the potential impact of being precisely met.

Running From Recognition: The Rooftop Scene

One of J’s first action sequences involves chasing a suspect who’s fast, erratic, frightened. Cornered, he leaps from a rooftop.

It looks like evasion—but it lands like despair.

This is what it feels like to be misread by every system meant to help you:

• Undiagnosed

• Criminalised

• Unreachable

That fall isn’t just literal—it’s a metaphor for the edge of hope.

Speaking the Language of the “Other”

K’s fluency in alien languages stands out. No translator. Just intuitive understanding.

He doesn’t decode—he tunes in. Can spot them by how they vibrate.

That’s what neurodivergent perception can offer:

• Fluent empathy

• Pattern recognition

• The ability to hear what others ignore

Coexistence, Not Assimilation: MiB Headquarters

Inside headquarters, humans and aliens coexist. No one flinches at tentacles or tech. Everyone has a role.

There’s no performance. Just presence.

It’s not utopia—but it’s honest.

It’s what neuroinclusion could be: difference normalised, not erased.

Celebrities, Monitoring, and the Teacher Who Knew

Later, K shows J a screen of tracked celebrities—musicians, actors, public figures.

“We keep tabs on them. Most of them are aliens living among us.”

It’s played as satire. But it hits deeper:

The eccentric, the brilliant, the misfits—they’re not just unusual. They’re from elsewhere.

That’s how society often treats neurodivergent people:

• Exceptional in narrow lanes

• Misunderstood in the everyday

• Admired, but always othered

Then J sees someone unexpected: his old primary school teacher.

Not a celebrity. But someone who got him.

That moment says everything:

• His difference was recognised—not pathologised

• She wasn’t strange. She was in tune

• Her presence confirms something J always wondered: “I wasn’t wrong. I was just early.”

The Architects Behind the Curtain

Reflecting on who made Men in Black—Steven Spielberg—you start to see the deeper thread. Add George Lucas, James Cameron, and others—and suddenly, you’re pointing to the tonal engineers of modern myth. They didn’t just build worlds—they shaped how generations interpret reality, identity, and the experience of being different.

And here’s the resonance:

Many of their films—E.T., Star Wars, Close Encounters, The Abyss, Terminator, Avatar—centre on the outsider. The visionary. The misunderstood.

And the creators themselves? Often described—or self-described—as:

• Socially offbeat

• Singularly obsessed

• Vision-driven to the point of rupture

Sound familiar?

When Spielberg produces MiB, or George Lucas writes an entire galaxy around misfits—you start seeing it:

A boy named Luke resisting the dark legacy that claimed his father.

Han Solo—sorry, Mansolo—a scruffy intergalactic cowboy on the run from bounty hunters, never quite belonging anywhere. His co-pilot? A non-verbal, shaggy dog-warrior named Chewy. Together, they fly a rusty heap of bolts held together by loyalty and grit.

And then there’s Cameron—diving into deep-ocean loneliness, writing human-AI empathy long before it was fashionable, crafting worlds of transcendent beauty you can only reach by leaving your body behind.

These weren’t just action flicks.

They were emotional blueprints.

They were encoding neurodivergent storylines in plain sight—for the kids who thought sideways, felt too much, or never quite landed in the dominant orbit.

Final Transmission

Men in Black may never have set out to be a neurodivergent fable—but that’s the power of metaphor. It travels beneath the surface.

From sugar water to neuralysers, from the rooftop to the cricket gun—each moment whispers:

“You’re not alone. Your difference isn’t danger. It’s design.”

And in the right light?

It’s a gift.