I cannot express how much I love the Alien films and their extended universe. Ridley Scott's original masterpiece and Cameron's fantastic follow up put me on the path to becoming a filmmaker myself. I like to think of myself as a hardcore fan of the Xenomorph as one our culture's most reticent movie monsters. I found the discussion on the motivations and gender of the creatures interesting, however the debate on the gender of Xenos is a flawed one. The Xenomorph behaves much in the same manner as the ant, a hive mentality serving that hive's queen. A little background on the morphology of the Xenomorph helps to explain their "gender." Xenomorph's do not follow human ideas of gender, they are insectile and again like ants a drone (pictured above) is the worker and most common of Xenos. Given enough time a drone will evolve into a queen in order to start a hive. A queen is the only Xeno capable of having and using sex organs. By our standards it would be considered female, they are however constructed to be sexual and to evoke uncomfortable notions of sex from their design by H.R. Giger and their method of reproduction being rape. I think it was interesting how we as an audience sought to put these creatures in our terms of gender when in many ways they supersede our terminology.
These things are inconsequential to the Xenomorph however, they have one drive, one instinct and that is to multiply, forcibly. When Ripley enters the egg chamber and the queen wards off it's Praetorians ( egg chamber guards) it does so instinctually not out of any empathy or concern for her young, When the eggs burn it shrieks because it shares a telepathic and pheremonal bond with all of her brood. The Queen is aware of every being in it's domain. Had Ripley not attacked the eggs she would have been allowed to leave the chamber but would be swarmed by warriors and drones, the lesser Xenomorphs would try to capture and cocoon Newt and Ripley for impregnation via facehugger. Xenomorphs do not want to kill they want to capture, they do not eat people or anything for that matter and do not require air, heat or any other basic tenants for life, blowing them out airlocks is a good solution but not always a fatal one.
The Xenomorph is a force of nature, sometimes called "Destroying Angels" or "Black Cancers" they are a balancing force supposedly created by the Engineers who seed life across star systems. When their creations (humans) grow to powerful the Xenomorph is introduced to that society and wipes it out so the Engineers begin again.
However Ripley as a symbol of the Female action hero is undeniably important. Lt. Ellen Ripley is my favorite movie character and for good reason she is awesome. I disagree with the reading's notion that characters like Sarah Connor and Ripley are men in drag or that their ability to fight and defend themselves somehow invalidates their womanhood. Assuming for a moment that these characters were real and found themselves in the positions they do, would any person not fight back or do all they could to prepare for facing down threats to their existence? I don't think being "Badass" invalidates them or makes them facades. I think the issue comes from our preception of what a hero is. I think Ripley acts heroically to save an innocent life from a terrible fate. Regardless of her gender or sex she does whats necessary, no one walks into a Xeno hive armed with "Harsh Language" you go in with big guns. Historically I can understand why Ripley would confuse people. I think she breaks from Rambo in many ways, she feels far more human than the lumbering mush mouthed Rambo, Ripley can solve problems without murdering a bunch of people or using big guns, see Alien. Also I don't read Ripley as a sexualized or exploited character I take her at face value, a hero facing down an implacable natural force. Besides wearing underwear in a few scenes there isn't much in terms of exploitation a far cry from say Transformers 2.
(Subtle)
Ultimately I think these movies are great examples of not only strong female characters but great films in general. People will look at these characters however they like and see what they want to see, I see a human being fighting for survival while trying to save everyone she can from a terrible fate. The eroticism of hardware and violence in Aliens is no stand up fight it's a bug hunt.
It certainly seems like you have much more knowledge about these creatures and their motives than most of us. I had never seen this movie before and am totally unfamiliar with Xenomorphs, so I did not really pick up any many of the things you pointed out while I was watching the film. I definitely never would have guessed that the creatures would have impregnated Ripley and Newt if they had been caught..that is crazy to even think about..Yikes! I also disagreed with the opinion posed in the reading that "badass" women are merely just "boys in girls clothing." If we pretended for a moment that this film were actually a reality, you are totally right that any person would do what they could to defend themself/save others. Gender should be looked at in terms of performance rather than focusing on attributes. Anyone who thinks that women cannot be badass needs a reality check! We can be just as awesome and powerful as guys :)
ReplyDeleteThis is a really fun perspective for a lot of reasons. Though I think you're misreading the gender analysis a bit. The idea about gender being a 'facade' has nothing to do with invalidation of the heroic qualities, but rather gender is a kind of role or outfit rather than anything biological or innate to person or character. And if you look at gender as something that one performs or puts on, than Aliens potentially even maybe asks us to look at humanity in the same terms, by paralleling Ripley with the xenomorph--strongly implied in Aliens and explicitly developed later. I take your point about the nature of xenomorphs--to a point. But you're citing those things as if they are somehow factual, rather than another level or layer of interpretation. They don't actually exist, and have neither biology nor psychology. There's a lot of ways of reading them, but what we have is the films themselves. I'm not sure where the backstory or back-biology you cite came from. But it's not information we have or are given in the film text, and even if it were, there are still multiple ways to interpret the film--which is why it's such a good film. It's the same problem with the "Deckard is a replicant" theory--too much retconning and speculation based either on stuff other than what the film gives or else depending too heavily on a type of interpretation that closes off meaning rather than keeping ambiguity in play.
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