Alien
June 22nd 2008 19:42
This blog is more about the deeper meaning to the legendary film Alien.
Alien’s legendary status both commercially and artistically is very unusual. The basic plot premise isn’t really anything new. A group of people encounter a space creature, which then kills them off one by one – hardly original. Many films before and since Alien’s release, have followed the same basic format yet are laughed off as exploitation films for brain dead audiences.
So what made Alien so different? Well, lots of things – some obvious, some not so obvious.
The most blatant aspect that made the film stand above its competitors was the fantastic visuals. The combination of Ridley Scott’s stylized direction, H. R. Giger’s mind-blowing design of the alien creatures
Give me a hug!!
In particular, the design of the alien creature was a crowd pleaser. The idea of face hugger creatures planting eggs into human hosts, that would later eat their way out of the host from inside, was terrifying and completely original. A genius stroke from original script-writer Dan O’bannon. Giger’s inspired design of the humanoid alien with its elongated head and jaws within jaws was also out of this world – completely unlike anything we’d ever seen.
But amazing visuals alone are not enough to give a film the kind of stature that Alien has been elevated to. Plenty of other sci-fi and horror blockbusters have rivalled Alien for visual inventiveness, yet have gradually faded into public memory. So it seems that there was something else going on that has maintained the fire of interest in this classic film.
One element, which has also helped films like The Thing, The Exorcist and Blade Runner to endure the test of time, is the careful attention paid to the depiction of human beings. Our disbelief in the exotic monster of the film is counter-balanced by human interaction and dialogue that is all too realistic. in alien, just like in the ordinary lives of the audience, there are no dashing heroes jumping to the rescue. The characters are bureaucratically locked into slave-wage employment by employers who consider them expendable for profit. They repeat the same laborious chores, and are hence over-familiar with their factory-like workplace. This also means that the advanced technology they live with has become not only boring, but a sort of prison system from which they have no exit. There is a pervading sense of distrust, jealousy and resentment and there is no intimacy. These people are so cold and cynical that they can’t even put their personal issues aside when their lives are in danger. So when critics assert that the human characters in alien are bland and lifeless, they are missing the point. The characters gaping imperfections and lack of redeeming qualities gives the narrative a feeling of reality.
Added to this we have the science officer casually spouting scientific jargon with apparent impatience at the crew’s lack of insight, “it has a funny habit of shedding its cells and replacing them with polarized silicon, giving him enhanced resistance to harsh environmental conditions.” The crew and the audience have no choice, but to believe his rantings. This is all good narrative psychology thanks to the uncredited script reworking by Walter Hill and David Giler.
So we have a good outline of what makes the story effective in Alien, but there seems to be yet more going on. The whole movie has an unsettling feel, even before the alien makes its appearance.
The opening shots offer some hints. The title screen with its hollow humming is snail-paced and sleep-inducing. This is followed by equally sleepy shots moving around the lifeless corridors of the Nostromo vessel
The opening shots, with their organic sound effects, and the hypersleep room are also depicting the tranquillity of the womb. An interesting notion, but how does it tie in with the rest of the film? Well, it ties in quite simply. The themes of Alien repeatedly play on what is called perinatal psychology, or to be more specific, birth trauma. The basic notion is that all human beings have repressed or unconscious memories of their own birth and that these memories are severely traumatic. As a consequence psychologists have theorised that humans have a lifelong subconscious desire to return to the womb.
The film Alien is awash with references to these duel states of womb comfort and birth trauma. The soundscape of the entire film, and especially the Nostromo ship, bombards us with heartbeats and other muffled organic sounds similar to what the submerged ears of an unborn baby would hear. These are contrasted with sudden blasts of hard loud noise such as the ferocious winds of the desolate moonscape
The most comfortable spaces of the ship have an organic and flesh toned décor with virtually no hard metallic edges. Contrast these with the cold, wet steel structures of the rest of the ship. The interior of the crashed alien vessel is definitely organic looking, but looks more like dead and decaying flesh. Like the mother computer interface room, the bizarre set of the space jockey is also spherical, like a womb, with the foetus-like dead alien organically connected to its mother ship. Its face looks suspiciously human, and once again, like a crying baby.
The crew emerge from the landing ship into the moons harsh atmosphere through a circular doorway, as if exiting a womb. Vaginal doorways, corridors and orifices show up repeatedly in both the alien vessel and the Nostromo. Some doorways are also very anal in design, espescially the circular doors seen inside the dirty airshafts where dallas is killed.
Breathing and suffocation are also recurrent themes, possibly with direct reference to breathing difficulties during birth. Ripley is almost suffocated by a magazine being shoved down her throat – a strange way for such an intelligent android to commit a murder - while she claws at not just the air, but a collection of dangling toys like those seen in a baby's crib.
Another suffocation reference is that the space jockey has something growing out of, or suffocating, its face, which is a subliminal setup for Kane’s encounter with the egg. The face hugger, clamping its giant fingers around Kane’s head
The marketing campaign for alien also offered some hints. The poster and trailers showed nothing of the actual film. The posters showed an alien egg with a Y-shaped crack of light emerging from it, but think about this for a moment. Why does the crack emit light? It’s a strange campaign. I suspect that this is cutting straight to the core psychological theme of birth trauma. Consciously, we are looking at a crack in an egg, but unconsciously it is a reminder of our terrifying emergence from the peaceful darkness of the womb into a cold world of bright light and terrifying sound. The more horizontally shaped crack of light in the film's trailer is slightly different and features a pounding heartbeat. This could be a reference to a baby's experience of first opening of its eyes to a bizarre world of light and colour. So the title "Alien" has a subtext meaning that refers to the alien world outside the womb.
A second psychological theme of the film, that is easier to decipher, is the theme of sexual fear. Remember that the characters of the film lack any kind of real intimacy with each other and there are almost certainly no sexual relations between them. The only direct sexual dialogue I could find was in the crew’s discussion about food at the start of the chest-bursting scene. The physically imposing Parker says to the frail Lambert “I’d rather be eating something else”. She looks offended. Interestingly Lambert is later threatened by the alien with Parker in the background, directly behind the alien. Her death has a clearly sexual overtone – the alien’s tale intrusively moves between her legs and upward. The hints of sexual intrusion are quite blatant, possibly with a hint of anal rape. Also,the face hugger reminds me of homo-sexual oral rape,as if the the aliens need to rape just to continue on the species.
Continuing the sexual fear theme Ripley herself is attacked by Ash. As already noted the magazine is used for suffocation, but look at the details of the set. Pornographic pictures adorn the walls and the magazine itself is a porno. Ripley eventually faces off with the Alien after she has stripped down to her underwear. Note the low angled and sexually intrusive camera angle as she steps into her spacesuit.
There are several details of the story that are possibly intending a correlation between Parker and the Alien. Parker is seen, along with his buddy, debating with Ripley about profit-shares in a pipe filled corridor roughly twenty minutes into the movie. As they argue, jets of steam are erupting from the walls and Parker has a huge grin on his face - his white teeth and eyes are prominent against his dark complexion. Later on Ripley is making her way to the escape shuttle after setting off the Nostromo self-destruct countdown. She encounters the Alien in a pipe filled corridor, again surrounded by jets of steam emerging from the walls. And as she faces off with the Alien in the escape ship, before blasting it into space with her harpoon gun, we see the Alien's phallic-shaped head approaching, again through jets of steam. Also when Parker is killed we see close ups of both the Alien's gaping teeth and his own as he struggles to escape its grip. Were these shots deliberate subliminals to reinforce Parker as an unconscious sexual threat to the women of the crew? It's difficult to tell.
Say cheese!!!
Continuing with other sexual fear symbols, we have the already-mentioned multitude of vaginal orifices in the film, but the most blatant reference of female genitalia has to be the features of the dead face hugger as it is probed and analysed by the science officer. And, in case you felt a tinge of disgust when Dallas dipped his hand in the semen-like slime in the air shafts, backtrack over the previous minute of the scene and we find Dallas and the alien depicted on the motion trackers. Dallas is seen as a white dot and the alien is seen as white dot with a tail. This visual depiction looks suspiciously like a sperm approaching an egg. The reference to doctor’s hands grabbing at a crying baby may also be present in this scene. Dallas encounters the alien in the air shafts just as the computer depicted "sperm" and "egg" merge in the motion tracker, at which point we hear the baby-like Alien screech. The alien reaches out as if about to grab Dallas by the face. Once again we have possible aesthetic associations to birth trauma.
For an absolutely undeniable example of sexual imagery take a look at the Alien itself. Its elongated head, if viewed from the side, is unmistakably an erect penis
It's also important to recognise that many of the interpretations I've given of Alien's imagery have not been openly revealed in the assorted literature or DVD-extras associated to the film. This does not discount them though. Film makers often make aesthetic choices based upon unconscious instinct without realising that they are actually creating subliminal themes. Sometimes they are aware of such subliminal embedding, but refrain from revealing the details to a public who are likely to ponder more deeply over the film if the answers aren't spelled out for them - Kubrick's work being a perfect example. Also, Giger may have brought much of this sexual symbology to Alien without the crew or director recognising it.
For a typically cryptic Giger image let's return to the space jockey scene that not only depicts a suffocated dead foetus theme, but may also have strong sexual overtones as well. A possible source of the baby-like design of the jockey's face can be found in Giger's portfolio, which has frequently featured white sperm-like creatures with crying baby's heads, and which are often depicted alongside blatantly penile objects. The giant black object sticking out of the jockey's chair is very phallic, like a penis pointing downward at the chair. If this was intentional then the design could be Giger offering a typically vulgar depiction of ejaculation and impregnation, with the jockey himself as the semen which inpregnates to form a foetus.
So the films subliminal theme of womb security and birth trauma is also infused with a fear of rape and impregnation for the females of the crew. Without wanting to sound crude, no wonder Ripley wants to protect her pussy. Once the sexually threatening alien has been dispelled, she comfortably returns to the womb-like security of hypersleep.
Ps. If anyone can figure out what the hell the alien vessel is meant to be please let me know. I’m not convinced that its design was based on a half eaten dough-nut. Suggestions that have been offered so far include baby tongs, falopian tubes, the legs of a woman giving birth (which ties in with the vaginal entrance to the ship), a toilet seat (I can't see it, but it's been mentioned a few times). Perhaps further exploration of H. R. Gigers portfolio can reveal more of the symbology of this great sci-fi classic.
One more note.
Have you never gotten the feeling that Ripley's ejecting of the alien from the ship held remarkable resemblance to an abortion? Ripley is strapped to her seat, breathing heavily and sweating. As she sits, she opens the circular door and the alien is sucked outside (note that the door lies directly in front of her, in a "between her legs" position). When the alien manages to grab the door and prevent itself from being sucked out completely, Ripley shoots it with the harpoon-like gun, which consequently sends it flying outside. But where does the gun strike the alien? In the stomach. Not only that, but the gun leaves a chord attached to the harpoon, which now creates the image of an umbilical chord. It seems very fitting that in a movie filled with undertones of sexual fear, what better way to dispose of the villain than in an abortion-like manner?.
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Comment by Ayda
Phantasmelodia
I appreaicte the effort. Keep those interesting ideas coming.