It is mostly skewed by our own fiction writers at that.
The assumption that we can communicate on any sort of common level is baffling. We have many languages and methods of transmitting them here on earth where the vast majority of inhabitants don't understand each other.
How would we pretend to understand a communications from a civilization where we have no common references? We are conditioned to believe that those alien cultures are vastly more intelligent and they would initiate communications with us.
It only happens in the movies.
Yes. Science fiction.
Your points are good.
It’s not a non-interesting topic. I have ideas how to do a base communication using physical principles that would be common to all life. It’s science fiction, though. Based on scientific knowledge.
How would we pretend to understand a communications from a civilization where we have no common references?
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Mathematics, geometry & music are all ways to communicate without language, as is 1s and zeros.
The chemical elements, the laws of physics, mathematics, geometry are universal constants and therefore a common reference. Whether that's enough to enable meaningful communication is a separate question ... but we absolutely do have common references.
We are conditioned to believe that those alien cultures are vastly more intelligent
"We"? Who's "we", Kemosabe? Any regular reader of science-fiction will have encountered stories with aliens ranging from barely smarter than a dog to super-geniuses, and ranging from like us enough to be nearly carbon-copies to so utterly different as to be completely incomprehensible.
They would be able to learn our language than we would be able to learn their language.