Feminism: an 'Alien' Ideology?

By Dean T. Moody

Ever since the days of silent pictures, science fiction and horror films have been standard genres of filmed entertainment. Watching a monster, human or not, man-made or otherwise, stomping through the countryside threatening lives, property and social stability has been a regular pleasure to the movie-going public for decades. Often, said monsters are seen carrying helpless, screaming women in their arms or tentacles, only to be later dispatched and the woman rescued by a strong, handsome hero. Women's roles in such films have usually been thus: the weak, ineffectual, and hysterical victim. How female characters in films like these are supposed to respond to the male characters, to other women, and to the monstrous threat at hand can be highly illustrative of the overriding composition of values, mores and expectations of roles and behaviors in a society...

Some shifts in these characterizations have taken place in recent years, however: the films Alien, directed by Ridley Scott (1979) and Aliens, directed by James Cameron (1986) are considered by many to be signature departures in the way that female characters in science fiction and horror films are typically portrayed (for the purposes of this argument, I am considering only the first two films of the four-part series, as the subsequent sequels derail the story arc in significant ways and are substantially inferior). When compared to earlier science fiction/horror films, the Alien films present us with strong female characters. However, there are still problematic aspects in these portrayals, and they are fraught with ambiguity and ambivalence. In some ways, they actually support the patriarchal mindset that, on the surface, they seek to undermine.

Although science fiction and horror films are generally thought of as discrete genres (both have been, in the past, equally marginalized by 'serious' film discussion) there are significant points of overlap, such as the Alien films. Interestingly, they are often viewed by critics as allegories for the times in which they are released and often reflect concurrent attitudes and commentary on social issues. Good examples are Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) both of which hint at the persecution of the openly gay male in Hollywood in the 1930s as experienced by director James Whale; the original film Godzilla (Ishiro Honda, dir., 1954) that, along with countless other cheesier imitations, has much on its mind regarding the dangers of atomic testing; and the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, dir., 1956), which many consider an allegory on Americans' fear of Communism in the 1950s. In this vein, both the film Alien, directed by Ridley Scott (1979), and Aliens, directed by James Cameron (1986) are, in some ways, reflective of their times: the first film came at the end of the turbulent 1970s, with an American public overdosed on post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, Three Mile Island-inspired paranoia, reflecting both a wariness of institutionalized human endeavors and suspicion of technological advances. Aliens, released seven years later, was a product of Reagan-era jingoism: director Cameron was a co-writer of Rambo (1985), the archetype of mindlessly patriotic moviemaking. This attitude came through in the film: hyper-militaristic and hyper-violent, hearkening back to WWII era war pictures (Greenberg, Fembo 166).

In both films, representations of the female are categorized in interesting ways. In the first film, the characterizations essentially come from the acting itself, as the roles, created by screenwriter Dan O'Bannon, were not specified by gender; any of them could have been either male or female (Penley 73). Ripley, second officer of the freighter Nostromo and portrayed by actress Sigourney Weaver, is presented to the viewer as the strong female character in Alien, a tough, no-bullshit type, especially when compared to the other female characters in the film. Lambert, the navigator for the Nostromo, is high-strung, panicky and hysterical---in other words, she embodies the typical movie-female response to fear. Ripley, on the other hand, doesn't buckle or freeze under pressure as Lambert does when faced with the Alien: instead, her fight-or-flight instinct is highly honed, and she reacts as calmly as possible under the circumstances. The presence of a typically out-of-control woman character serves to point up this difference: compared to Lambert, Ripley is a rock. As a result of this portrayal, and its novelty, the viewer (typically male and typically 18-35) is already thinking in terms of Ripley being 'different' in some way, and difference then becomes one thing she has in common with her enemy, the Alien itself (Torry 352). In this way, the apparent feminist agenda of the film is already being undermined.

Not all of Ripley's enemies are alien in nature, however: the third female character in Alien, the Nostromo's mainframe computer, dubbed 'Mother,' deserves blame for getting the human crew in this fix to begin with (Kavanaugh 76). 'Mother' is a disembodied presence onboard the ship, responsible for regulating her 'children's' environment, health and welfare while in hypersleep and waking them up when needed. The only time 'Mother' has a voice is when the self-destruct mechanism has been activated toward the end of the film. Then, like the HAL 9000 computer in 2001, A Space Odyssey, it is a cool, detached voice, devoid of any emotion, even as she is about to be destroyed. However, 'Mother' is another enemy that Ripley must contend with; indeed, it is a tossup as to who's worse, 'she' or the Alien, as both are equally detrimental to the health of the Nostromo's crew (Creed 140). Instead of being a strictly industrial mining expedition (as Ripley eventually discovers, to her horror), the Nostromo's prime directive is to seek out and gather alien life that the Company might find useful for its weapons research. The crew is expendable. In this way, the first film's ideological vision of motherhood is presented as anything but warm and fuzzy: any mother who lies to her children and sets them up to be sacrificed for financial gain would hardly qualify for Mom of the Year. And yet, 'Mother,' like HAL, is still only a tool. Nevertheless, 'she' is also a fine example of technology gone awry, particularly when saddled with a female persona: when Ripley tries to rescind the self-destruct order, 'Mother' blithely ignores her and continues the countdown. Furiously shouting, 'You bitch!,' Ripley then is not only tasked with killing the Alien drone, she must also do away with 'Mother.' She accomplishes this (she thinks) by using the only tool available, that most virile of weapons: the nuclear bomb. Ripley is asked to reject the feminine (and, by extension, herself) by embracing hyper-masculine weaponry. Only by accepting and internalizing the male power at her disposal is her survival ensured. And once again, the feminist schema that the film proposes to support is weakened.

In Aliens, Ripley is subject to several different versions of femininity against which she must be judged: the ripped, hyper-macho Vasquez, the feral girl Newt and the Alien Mother herself. Vasquez is an admirable character to many viewers chiefly because she has rendered irrelevant the socially-accepted differences between what is considered masculine and what is considered feminine through exercise and physical training. Certainly, her biology is no hindrance to being a successful 'badass' Marine. She might represent what Lynda Birke would consider a one-person 'overlap in the population' between what is considered typical for each gender (Birke 314). And yet, in another sense, to the viewer she too is separated out from the norm and then comes to represent another version of the 'other.' This is played out in the narrative by the verbal horseplay between her and the men of her unit. It can also be considered that the character of Vasquez in Aliens serves to allow the viewer to accept Ripley not only as the mostly-asexual former second officer of the Nostromo, but as a woman with a history as a mother who recovers within herself strong maternal instincts in her adoption of Newt. In this way, Aliens attempts to imbue Ripley with female traits that the asexual characterization of Alien (outside of her almost maternal concern for Jonesy the cat) wouldn't allow for (Torry 354). In Aliens, Ripley is a conflicted figure, battling between her need to accommodate the masculine world around her and still give in to her more 'womanly' instincts. That she has to battle at all means that conflict exists where none should. This suggests yet again that the feminist ideology that the films wish the audience to see is weakened throughout by stereotypical portrayals of women.

The Alien Mother in Aliens represents a very different view of feminism: one based solely on survival, reproduction and the bare-fanged protection of its young. Indeed, there is reason to believe that she also represents the masculine view of what, from a psychoanalytic viewpoint, is frightening about feminism: fear and awe surrounding the vagina and repulsion toward the act of reproduction itself (Berenstein 56). In Aliens, the Marines' excursion into the Alien Mother's nest, situated deep in the bowels of the terraforming plant on LV486, is characterized as a long, slow trudge into an 'organicized' pathway, not unlike a vaginal tunnel (Bundtzen 14). In the film's climactic battle, the paradox for Ripley is that she must conquer the female Alien Mother (and by extension, that which is feminine as well as that which, from the masculine point of view, is repulsive). To do this she must master technology (the M41A pulse rifle, the power loader). By the final conflict between her and the Alien Mother, Ripley is forced to take a stand against that in which, for most women, lay their power: reproduction. Her primary goal is to prevent impregnation, for her and for Newt (Bundtzen 15). In this way, she must fight against the essential state of the female, motherhood; and once again, Ripley is asked to turn away from the feminine, to deny another aspect of nature that she and the Alien Mother share. The hidden ideology of the film, the rejection of the feminine, is apparent once again.

Both films are guilty of perpetuating the notion of technology being chiefly male in origin (phallic weaponry and spacecraft) whereas biological processes are the domain of the female. This notion is especially evident in Aliens' dock scene, where we see the male Marines' reaction to watching Ripley deftly operate the power loader---they are surprised and almost resort to nudging and winking at each other. Ripley, a woman, even fifty-seven years after having been a second officer on a space freighter, is apparently not supposed to be able to operate heavy machinery. So it would seem that, even hundreds of years into the future, technology is still the realm of the male and that 'woman-as-tool-user' is still considered to be an anomaly.

This dichotomy, as a social construct, has roots that go back to philosopher Rene Descartes'' notion of objectivity in which men, with so-called 'rational' minds, in order to discuss the natural world, were bound to think of themselves as 'outside' the realm of the physical. This placed rational thought in the same realm as the masculine and the irrational, therefore, with the feminine (Bordo 85).

This stance on technology and nature is expressed elsewhere as well. The film's attitude toward the Alien Mother (and by equating 'alienation' with 'mother') as well as its position on feminism in general is indicative of how tenacious the rational male/irrational female dichotomy has been since the Scientific Revolution. The Alien Mother herself can be thought of as nature 'unhinged' and out of control, akin to how Francis Bacon depicted nature and the natural world in his writings. Bacon believed that, outside of a strong masculinizing influence, Nature tends toward Chaos and the proliferation of monstrosities (Merchant 71). The Alien Mother is a perfect embodiment of a 'feminized' state of nature, as conceived by Bacon and other early scientists. This outlook, along with Descartes,' became a mainstay in the development of scientific thought in the 17th Century and in establishing a biological rationale for gender bias and sexism that continues to this day in society and finds expression in popular culture in films like Alien/s, where women and science are still portrayed in problematic ways.

Both Alien and Aliens are excellent films, each in their own way. They are considered masterpieces of the science fiction genre. Much has been written on these films from psychoanalytic and even Marxist viewpoints; however, as expressions of feminist power, they are not as successful as many think. It is important to keep in mind what is necessary for that to happen: a true depiction of feminist strength is one where women are dependent in no way on patriarchal invention, favor or permission. Although it may be science fiction at its most imaginative, that is still a story we don't see on the big screen often enough.

Works Cited:

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Bordo, Susan. 'Selections from 'The Flight to Objectivity'.' The Gender and Science Reader. Muriel Lederman and Ingrid Bartsch, eds. New York:Routledge, 2001. p. 82-97.

Bundtzen, Lynda K. 'Monstrous Mothers: Medusa, Grendel, and now Alien.' Film Quarterly. Vol. 15, No. 3. p.11-17. 1987.

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