rape culture/victim culture

since alien, yes.i actually had a text book in my women's studies course on gender roles in science fiction. it devoted the better part of a chapter to "alien." it posed the film as a battle of the genders: a strong woman against a monster with a giant phallic head.now, i'm a big fan or alien, and anything hr giger really. the chapter grossly disgusted me in regards to the feminist re-interpretation of the facts. the most glaring of which was assigning a gender to the alien.the alien is, as stated by just about everyone involved with the creation of the film, androgynous. no gender. their reproduction was designed as asexual (until james cameron anyways). so assigning it a gender role is incorrect and reading too much into it.and secondly, if one were to look at giger's concept art, it becomes immediately apparent that if we ARE to assign a gender to the alien, it should be female. it was not drawn with a masculine figure at all, and one of the original pieces from "the necronomicon" which the producers requested that he reference has breasts.third, ripley's dominance at the end was not originally intended at all. captain dallas was supposed to be the sole survivor, but they thought they'd suprise the audience by making the last remaining crew member a woman. the idea has since caught on.

Regardless of whether Dallas or Ripley were to be the final hero, Ripley was a strong character throughout, even from the beginning.Other than some sexual joking, power struggles within the crew were based on rank and businesss issues, not sex. That IMO continued the Star Trek view of simply treating women as expected equals, and not go into time explaining why they should be thought of as equals (or more).Any interpretation of the alien as overtly male, is sort of strange. As far as victims go, there are more men than women and two are (in the uncut version) "impregnated" by the alien. At the very least one is used to harbor eggs in the released version.In that women's study book, did they have anything to say about the entire crew going to "mother" to get their orders, and that's essentially who ran the ship? Fer gosh sake it even had a female voice.

---

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

In the first sequel, Aliens, the maternal aspect of both the 'mother' alien and Ripley is enhanced quite a bit. Ripley adopts a young girl to protect, and the mama alien is protective of her eggs and visibly upset at their destruction.I think these maternal roles made for a strong conflict, with the "most dangerous animal in the world is a mother protecting its young" theme going strong.I do believe that the sequels to Alien maternalized Ripley - first sequel, she adopts a young girl; second sequel, despite being masculinized with a shaved head and celibate environment, she is impregnated; in the third sequel I believe she takes on a mother/mentor role to a teenager.I'll agree that feminist (and other -ists) critiques of pop culture often go awry with hyperbole. One theme they seem to misconstrue is a fairly common one, the theme of "protect/avenge a woman violated at any cost" - where often violence against a single women sets up a conflict resulting in a plot of violence against many, many men.I remember a scathing feminist critique of "Unforgiven" because of the way the conflict of the film is established: A young prostitute has her face carved up, and rather than jailing the perpetrators, the sheriff forces them to pay the prostitute's manager for income lost by her disfigurement. The feminist critique stated that this was a glorification of violent use of women-as-property, and a mirror of contemporary society.Of course, in order to make that statement they had to ignore the bulk of the film, in which countless men are shot to death in order to make good the crime of a scarred face.a women scarred = a dozen men deadDoesn't seem like a movie where women are devalued.

I seem to remember a quote from one of the designers that the facehuggers were suppose to represent every man's secret fear of the Vagina.

was this a temporary unemployment or a permanent one. you tell me what i was referring to mr swiftie.

Alien may have been the first horror movie that didn't "punish" characters who acted in a sexually liberated way, but it wasn't, by any means, the first horror film to display a strong female role. I don't really see how it started a trend in that regard. The alien reproduces by the forced implantation of material into other beings. How can you see that as ungendered? It's so hypermasculine that it emasculates the male victims by comparison; and then is defeated by the feminine. It's very gendered. That's enormously common in horror, and that's what I was referring to. It was so common, that's why the Evil Dead movies are unique - it's the virtuous, dopey male lead that is the sole survivor.

quote:

---

Originally posted by crashfrog:

The alien reproduces by the forced implantation of material into other beings. How can you see that as ungendered? It's so hypermasculine that it emasculates the male victims by comparison; and then is defeated by the feminine. It's very gendered.

---

it reproduces in two separate cycles, like a moss. how is that male?
female hornets of many carieties lay their eggs inside of or on a paralyzed victim. they're still very female.
i see no reason for your assertion that the creature is male especially based on knowledge of the intentions of the producers etc.

You need to stop thinking like a biologist. The biological reality that the creature is unsexed is irrelevant. I'm not saying the alien is male, I'm saying that it's masculine. The intentions of the producers are irrelevant.The creature reproduces by raping humans with a phallus and then abandoning them to bear its offspring. You couldn't get more masculine than that if it wore flannel and watched NASCAR. It's a stand-in for the worst aspects of masculinity as envisioned by feminism - sexual violence and abandonment of child-rearing to the child-bearer.

you need a hobby.

This is it.

i was actually going to comment on this earlier, but i cut it out of the thread. ripley is a strong character throughout. she's often the voice of reason and stability. it's NOT just when the position is thrust upon her.however, she not exactly portrayed in a positive light. she's is not meant to be a likeable or even sympathetic character in the beginning. simply stated, she's a bitch. it just happens that she's right about the quarantine, and would have saved all their asses. no, it spent more time talking about how the portholes on the alien ship looked like vaginas. actually, i don't recall. i'd look it up, but i got rid of that book as quickly as possible.

that's why i said "until james cameron." he needed something bigger and badder for the sequel, and thus reinterpretted the aliens as a HIVE structure with a queen. the drones are still neutral gender, and there are presumably males somewhere. whoever, this is NOT the model in the first movie.but yes, it did make for good conflict in the movie, and her role is maternal later in the movies. a cut scene in the secone movie talks about her daughter, and explains partly why newt comes to fill that role.

are you kidding? it doesn't IMPREGNATE the hosts. it lays eggs in them. the alien is parly based on the pompilidae wasp. and i assure, the gender of the wasp that lays the egg in the spider is FEMALE.this is what we call societal gender bias. you're reading something that just isn't there. this is what feminism should be fighting. i mean, i could be wrong. what came before it?

Hi brennakimi!Well... I am quite a loser...mick

i do have some knowledge of the intentions of the producers. let's look at them.these are the two pictures from "necronomicon" that o'bannon and co requested giger reference: notice the breasts on the first one? and no, that's not a penis on the second one, it's a baby.here's one of giger's early designs: those curves look masculine to you?i'll try and work on finding some good quotes too. i'm reasonably sure the lack of specific gender was important to the producers themselves. giger wanted to be damned sure it didn't just seem like a guy in a suit, and removing obvious gender was a good way to do it.giger, however, is prone to female forms. a lot of his work is about female subjugation, interestingly enough.