Amidst American Horror Story season 10’s conspiracy-ridden alien premise, Death Valley revives the famous conspiracy theory that Stanley Kubrick directed the United States’ "fake" moon landing. Following Red Tide’s vampiric government experiments with black pills, Death Valley explores President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1954 treaty with aliens while modern-day characters experience the abduction aftermath. Along the way, Death Valley has confirmed long-held extraterrestrial conspiracy theories while rewriting history by blaming notable deaths and mysteries on aliens, including the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, assassination of JFK, and death of actress Marilyn Monroe.
One of the greatest long-held modern American conspiracy theories that ties into Death Valley’s extraterrestrial secrets is that the United States actually faked the 1969 moon landing. This isn’t a minor conspiracy kept to the most devoted alien theorists, as it’s been prominent and well-known since the live broadcast of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon with Apollo 11 aired on television. The United States was in the midst of the Cold War and the famous Space Race with the Soviet Union, and America being the first nation to have astronauts land on the moon and return home safely won the competition, thereby demonstrating the country’s spaceflight superiority. While it’s long been held as one of the United States’ greatest accomplishments, some believe it was completely fake and that The Shining’s Stanley Kubrick directed the moon landing's live broadcast on a Hollywood sound stage.
Perfectly tying in aliens’ assistance in advancing America’s technological advancements with space conspiracies, American Horror Story season 10 confirms that Stanley Kubrick directed the moon landing on a sound stage in the aliens’ human holding center. According to Death Valley, the U.S. government sanctioned the faking of the moon landing to stop others from investigating space more closely - which could expose the aliens and the controversial Eisenhower alien treaty. The Death Valley episode explains that Stanley Kubrick directing a fake moon landing wasn’t based on his recent revolutionary space epic 2001: A Space Odyssey as long theorized. Rather, it was because Richard Nixon’s favorite movie was Dr. Strangelove, so he desperately wanted Kubrick’s eye. American Horror Story’s alien season takes the Kubrick involvement further by revealing he was given a “lifetime contract at Warner Brothers with no constrictions,” which explains why the director never worked with another studio after A Clockwork Orange.
Leslie Grossman’s character Calico reveals she was first abducted by aliens in 1969 after spending a night with Armstrong and Aldrin, who boasted to her about coming from rehearsals for the “moon landing” and how Aldrin cleverly pitched the line: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Calico explains she immediately knew something was fishy when seeing them because they were supposed to be in space that night, with Apollo 11’s launch being broadcast on live television a few days prior. After the government figures out Neil and Buzz have leaked Hollywood’s role in the moon landing to Calico, she’s abducted and becomes a new pregnancy test subject for Death Valley’s aliens.
Death Valley also cleverly points out why the moon landing had to be faked, even though the United States had access to alien technology that could easily accomplish the feat in reality. Calico explains that going to the moon was a waste of time and effort since it was already doable with the aliens’ assistance, so the U.S. government and the aliens decided it would ease humans’ worries into accepting that the unthinkable of grand technological advances were actually possible. According to American Horror Story, it was a way for the government to more easily introduce advancements in “velcro and computers” without citizens asking too many questions.