Fear and Fascination The alien series and the ‘other’ What would be more ‘foreign’ than the concept of the alien, and its representation of humanity’s deepest fears? Elaine Scarrett, author of a forthcoming book (written as of March 2009) on the Alien quadrilogy, considers the symbolic and psychological meanings and cultural impact of the aliens of Scott, Cameron, Fincher and Jeunet, and how they are constructed for audiences. Monsters have always defined the limits of community in Western imagination. Donna Haraway, a Cyborg Manifesto (1985:180)
‘Others’ and aliens Alien (d. Ridley Scott, 1979), Aliens (d. James Cameron, 1986), Alien 3 (d. David Fincher, 1992), and Alien Resurrection (d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet,1997) are a continuing series despite the different screenwriters and directors with their characteristic authorial styles. The main threads of continuity are Ripley played by the same actress, Sigourney Weaver, and the alien designs. The serialised narrative across the individual texts chronologically charts Ripley’s story. Her character and the audience’s relationship with her, unusually for film, are given time to evolve, which makes the notion of ‘otherness’ in her all the more unsettling – that’s when her clone is impregnated with a alien seed later in the series. First we have to consider the concept of ‘Other’, and how useful it is as an analytical tool. In psychology, the Other is a concept in identify formation, which extends to cultural groups. We define ourselves by what we are, and by what we are not. This does not necessarily mean that we stigmatise what is different; identifying oneself as say female not male enables heterosexual relationships. Establishing boundaries creates a secure sense of self; however those boundaries are vulnerable, may be threatened, and need to be asserted. ‘Otherness’ is used in Social Science to understand the process by which societies and groups exclude ‘Others’ who do not fit into their own society or whom they want to subordinate. Edward Said in Orientalism (1978) for example, shows how Western societies ‘othered’ people in the East to exert control over them.
Science-Fiction films relish the concept of otherness as a
structuring narrative element. Aliens are a staple ingredient of science-fiction/horror; they provide clear-cut narrative function sas the villain and are a device to drive narrative action with spectacle and shock, and narrative enigmas – who will be killed and in what order, will it be completely conquered, and how? As well as motivating cracking spectacular action, malign alien extra terrestrials traditionally represent the Other; what is feared most by the dominant culture can be reasserted. Connotations of what the aliens represent can be read differently in different historical contexts. War of the Worlds (1953) echoes fears of global invasion in a post- World War II era and a new world of space exploration in which it was populalrly believed that there was life on Mars. The 2005 Tom Cruise re-make was made in a post-9/11 fear of a terrorist threat.
Post 9/11 contexts Looking to the skies – for aliens in planes?
War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005)
Q. Do we see ‘The Family’ in a different light in today’s context? Or are the messages and values still relevant?
Q. In I am Legend have the contexts changed? How are they referenced differently?
Alien – noun (a naming word) or adjective – (a describing word) As nouns, aliens have come from elsewhere and are foreigners or strangers to their surroundings, a notion playfully treated by Men in Black (1997) in which both illegal Mexican immigrants and extra-terrestrials are hunted in America. As an adjective, alien, describes
something so foreign or different it is incomprehensible or incompatible. Evil threats from space or mutated earth creatures are a variation on the wild beasts and monsters in ‘the forest’ of myths and fairy-tales in which dramatic conflicts are created by the binary opposition of civilisation and the mysterious wilderness. As non-humans, aliens go beyond the boundaries of rational and understandable behaviour; awareness that we cannot control what we don’t know creates fear of the unknown. Symbolic places of the unknown – the dark, the forest, space - are inhabited by creatures some of which are so beyond incomprehensible and terrifying they cannot be named – It! The Terror Beyond Space (1958), Them! (1954). The really effective aliens have a fabulous visual and aural impact, but they also disturb us. Some gain iconic status through the personal responses they provoke and the cultural and political ideas they convincingly represent. The character of the alien in the film series is denoted by a single word that distils all these connotations. The creature radically and rapidly changes as it matures so the ship’s crew, and the audience, don’t know what form or size of creature they’re looking for. Aided by the build up of suspense, cryptic editing and close-up shots we, like the crew, are repeatedly completely shocked each time the alien fleetingly appears. Each time it looks like something never imagined before.
There are recognisable elements form Earth creatures in the aliens’ early developmental stages, but they are life forms that repulse many people or inhabit environments alien to humans: crustaceans (the face-hugger), snakes (the chest burster) and insects (the eggs, hive, drones, and the queen).
Q. What references to ‘our world’ are apparent in the representation of Matthias and ‘the family’?
In Alien, during the extended tracking down of what turns out to be the adult alien, the audience does not have its usual horror film privilege of knowing more than the characters.
Q. Can this be said for The Omega Man? Explain.
Q. Can this be said for I am Legend?
The alien is also unsettling because it transgresses boundaries; we cannot categorise it neatly into how we think the world works, which gives us a post-modern perspective on the alien’s world; the old certainties have gone. (ref: fin de siecle, vampire origins)
Meltzer (2006) proposes that the alien embodies culture’s fear of Mother Nature, its power, ferocity, regular transformations and resistance to control. As well as the exoskeleton the life cycle designs are highly sexualised and externalise what humans see as ‘private’ reproductive organs. The eggs have fallopian tube shaped petals, the penis shaped head has a powerful visual force and challenges notions of decency.
Other buried
The sexuality and violence of the alien invites a Freudian analysis of it as the bestial pleasure/pain seeking human id unfettered by a rational, socially-aware ego. Ash the android (a robot built to appear human) admires the alien as a survivor and for its purity ‘unclouded by conscience, remorse or delusions of morality.’ The amoral cyborg machine and alien Other provide a thrill and fascination through an imagined unleashing of what we are morally and socially obliged to control, and are secretly afraid of in ourselves, the deep within.
Q. Can either notion extend to I am Legend ?
Adapted rom MediaMagazine, courtesy of Elaine Scarratt. MediaMag can be found in the LRC