Film Alien example essay topic

In the her text, Popular Culture, Freccero states, "Science fiction most explicitly addresses the political, representing political fantasies through the imagining of alternative worlds, and thus invites the reading of ideological critique" (Freccero, pg. 111). The film Alien: Resurrection is embedded thoroughly with representation of modern day cultural occurring's. In the film's case, it is tackling issues such as cloning and outside womb reproduction, such as test tube babies, and negative representation of women by degradation from the men. The social commentary is perfectly obvious: the bad guys are the military-scientific establishment, cold, heartless, mechanistic, oblivious to the human consequences of their actions and what happens when women succumb to blunt sexism. This film picks up where Alien 3 left off and certain people have saved some of Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) blood and it appears that they have successfully cloned her after eight attempts. Not only have they cloned her, but they have fused her DNA with that of an Alien, giving our heroine the body and mind of a human but the strength and acid blood of an alien.

The opening line of the film is Ripley saying, "My mother always said there are no monsters... but there are". You hear her say this as the camera pulls back and you see her being surrounded by scientists as they prepare to operate on her and deliver her "baby", an Alien queen that was implanted into the host, Ripley. That statement in the first 15 seconds of the film enunciates the tone and underlying message for the remainder of the film. Ripley, even though created by scientists, has sympathy towards these aliens. In her mind she knows that she must destroy them, but in her heart she feel pangs of guilt towards doing so, hence the apology to her "child" as it is sucked out the ship's window. This turns the film into more a voyage of self-discovery then a horror / sci -fi adventure.

I think the film's message is that even though she was created by scientists, she still has emotions and cloning is simply uncalled for. Freccero states, "Alien was horrified by the blurring of the boundaries between nature and technology, further suggesting that nature might actually win out in the end in revenge for humanity's audacity at having dreamed that technology would bring transcendence" (Freccero, pg. 117). I think that this film is repeating this message by showing cloning in a negative light. Freccero states, "Technology has been and is viewed as a predominantly masculine domain, indeed as defining late-twentieth-century advanced capitalist masculinity" (Freccero, pg. 102). This is very present theme in the film, as the men, both the scientists and the pirates aboard the ship, repeatedly degrade the women verbally. Over and over throughout the film, sexual ized comments are made towards the women that signal that in the future, "The feminine is constituted as a threat and an object of desire in the space of fraternal bonding" (Freccero, pg. 107).

In one scene, we see one of the lady pirates in the driver's seat of the ship. A man pirate says to her, "No matter how many times I see a woman strapped in like that... it just does it for me". I think this comment signals that even though the woman is capable of doing exactly what the man is doing, she is kept in her place, a place that is dominated by men. The text states that "The exercise of privilege over women, in the form of sexual violence, degradation, parody and selective exclusion, guarantees an important mediation between and among the men, a mediation that will keep them from turning toward and loving each other, a mediation that will prevent homoeroticism and produce homosociality instead" (Freccero, pg. 106). Homosociality is defined in the text as: ... guaranteeing the control of social space by men only, while it also ensures that the fiction of a competitive structure will persist and eventually take over once the men themselves become patriarchs (106). One might conclude that the "patriarch ism" occurs when the cloning is successful or when the queen is born from the cloned Ripley.

If she is the alien's mother, one could view the scientists as being the father. The women are viewed as sexual objects placed on board the ship for the men's amusement. The men, the pirates and the scientists, have camaraderie in bashing the women together. I think they definitely view Ripley as a threat to their male hierarchy. She beats up several of the pirates as she is playing basketball and they become very angry at Call (Winona Ryder) after they discover she has been talking with Ripley and say she is a terrorist. The pirates view Ripley as a two-sided threat: one that may be desired as well as feared.

I find it interesting that in the first Alien film, the computer responded to MU TH UR (Mother). This is a "oedipal ized relation to the mother as the first all-powerful female figure who dominates the infant boy" (Freccero, pg. 107). The film Alien: Resurrection has the computer responding to FA TH UR (Father), which could signifies that perhaps the tables have turned and the men have gained control of Ripley's character and lessened her power. The book states, "One of the ways the patriarchy guarantees its reproduction and replacement, even from within the resistive and oppositional moment of fraternal bonding, is through a certain relation to women, the female body, and femininity" (Freccero, pg. 106). This is exactly what the men strived to achieve in Alien: Resurrection: total domination over women by means of verbal and physical abuse. Overall, after analyzing this film, I think it had little to offer in the arena of cultural context.

It could have gone very deeply into several subjects, such as cloning, yet I feel it merely danced around them as to appease the mass Hollywood audience.