The crew of the Nostromo are themselves an alien intrusion, in a sense their actions are what serve to truly birth the creature. The alien intrusion of the creature is not even the first in the movie of course, consider the human crew of the Nostromo, navigating to the surface of the world through a narrow navigation pipeline, landing explosively in what's described as a primordial atmosphere, and sending it's people out to explore the highly vaginal crashed ship. The birth is a lethal conclusion, a horrific escape that mirrors the pain both of actual childbirth and also of living with a disease like O'Bannon experied, and the group surrounds Kane's body at the table much the same as you'd see in a seance, summoning a ghost for a haunted house. The egg and face-hugger are unsubtley - explicitly - code as feminine, while the creature itself is born as a masculine, phallic entity from a male. The entire progression, as well, comes through a queer lens where the boundaries of sexuality and gender are blurred. These concepts are not mutually exclusive either, in the same way as a (currently) incurable disease such as Chron's is debilitating and hurts the body, so too does pregnancy. The alien itself was not meant to have a hive-like drone/queen structure, but rather it would be born via the egg and face hugger, incubate in a host, then transform into a short-lived creature who would mutate other victims into new eggs.Īt it's most basic, there is an alien intrusion into a human, the literal plot of the film, and while this resonates as symbolic of pregnancy - it's also symbolic of disease or disability. The ship is operated by a computer named "Mother" on purpose, and early versions of the story proposed the entire crew was in a low-key informal polycule, that this was common for long voyages in space. Giger make the alternative sexual interpretation more overt. It's a movie that was conceptualized as "truckers in space" or a "haunted house in space," the original protagonist was written for a male actor and not changed when Sigourney Weaver took the role, it was driven in part by O'Bannon having Chron's disease, and only later would the influence of queer artist H.R. On the surface it's obvious, but placed in the context of the details of the movie, it shows some further layers to explore. Consider the most basic detail of the movie - the title. This is apparent in Alien, with multiple contributions from artists like Giger, the story concept from Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, direction from Ridley Scott, editors Terry Rawlings and Peter Weatherley, along with the actor performances, producer notes, budget constraints, and so on.Īn obvious interpretation is a movie themed around sexual assault and the horror of motherhood, but I think it goes deeper than this. Continuing the analysis of Alien, for me I see it as a multilayered film where the horror can include womanhood, but is not limited by this.įilm is an interesting medium in the way a finished product is often guided by multiple voices to an extent that there is no one driving vision.
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