ALIEN: Questioning Better Worlds
Understanding the allure and impact of horror as a film staple in many ways requires an understanding of the term, abject. According to Bulgarian-French philosopher, Julia Kristeva abject refers to feelings of revulsion due to a “loss of distinction between subject and object, or between the self and other”. So like the sudden response to seeing something so harshly unexpected gets to the heart of deep seated anxieties we all share. And in the history of film, the concept of the abject has seen numerous permutations as fears and concerns of the public shift with social progress. With the silent era, filmmakers employed the painting of light and shadow occasionally inspired by live theater to inspire fear from an audience already startled by the very concept of dancing forms on a thin, illuminated surface. Years later, Jacques Toruneur utilizes the advent of sound along with diabolical editing to create what many consider to be the first jump scare with Cat People(1942), as he weaved a tale of not so thinly veiled sexual terror. Leap forward to 1968 in a time of rapidly growing social upheaval and profound change when up and coming Pittsburgh commercial maker turned director shocked the world with a political hand grenade in his seminal zombie opus, Night of the Living Dead(1968) granting the genre an edge beyond long-standing perceptions of horror as an often disposable corner of cinematic output. Soon, the 1970s careens from the fall of the majors to the rise in underdog films by smaller studios, ready to transgress to meet demand in moves that ultimately opened the door to the rise of the slasher subgenre. And throughout all of this, the thread binding our attraction to movie screens like a controlled rollercoaster remains the reality that there will always be a new, ever pervasive anxiety about our place, and what could be just around the edges of our experience.
And in the 1970s, it wasn’t hard to open one’s eyes without absorbing levels of unnerving realities almost consistently vying for our personal bandwidth. Seemingly endless reports from the war in Vietnam continued on whilst the after effects of the Civil Rights movement echoed in changes to the voting landscape. The counterculture of the 1960s evolved into new factions and corners of social awareness as causes exploded in a number of directions including a reckoning with what would constitute gender roles. This included concerns over labor safety, energy protests, not to mention the expansion of second wave feminism which began to reach beyond the household and into the workplace. The oil crisis had begun to affect several major nations including the United States which led to an astronomical increase in price to numbers in the roughly 300%. And to top all of this off, we had a nation reeling from a brush with authoritarianism in the form of what would soon be known as Watergate. To say that western culture found itself in a smoking, tumble dried daze of distrust and resistance would be an understatement.
Enter what would become Ridley Scott’s ALIEN (1979) which began as a seemingly simple genre exercise only to become one of the most influential hybrids of science fiction and horror the medium has ever seen. But its seeds of inception began in the mind of USC Film School grad, and soon to be prolific screenwriter Dan O’Bannon, who’s fingerprints found themselves upon numerous milestones of science fiction and horror. And yet these early days had been beset by difficulty despite the amazing connections and collaborations he would make over the years. After his film school collaboration with soon to be genre icon John Carpenter expanded from short narrative into awkward full length sci-fi with DARK STAR(1974), and his grand follow-up in the collapsed unfilmed adaptation of Frank Herbert’s DUNE with Alejandro Jodorowsky, O’Bannon found himself penniless and on the couch of fellow screenwriter, Ronald Shusset. A lifelong sufferer of Crohn’s Disease, O’Bannon attempted to channel his pain into something commercial to help him bound back from these circumstances. His antipathy for authority, including that of medical professionals led him to consider ideas that were both transgressive, and perhaps even in tune with the tone of an era disillusioned with ideas of order. And when thinking of how his rookie effort, the space comedy DARK STAR failed to make audiences laugh, he wondered if he could instead make them scream. And what would form into the pod that would become STAR BEAST, O’Bannon and Shusset considered the concept of parasitic life, and the potential shock of the birth of a new, and visceral type of movie monster unlike anything the moviegoing public had ever seen. In his daily suffering, the inspiration for a creature that gestates inside a living host only to burst at the dinner table was an idea that must have felt equal parts terrifying and bleakly hilarious- and perfect for this new script.
As for influences, ALIEN is at its heart a classic tale. It’s a story seed that goes back to the beginning of what we understand as a story, to the Greeks and tales of the furies, avengers of the natural order. The tale of the discovery of a ghost ship, of even your classic haunted house, ALIEN echoes in the tradition of the Gothic Horror. Complete with the novel parasite concept, the film began life as STAR BEAST. DARK STAR where the workaday lives of a blue collar space mining survey is tasked with responding to a distress beacon on a thought to be uninhabited rock, only this time the pesky alien menace wouldn’t be an extended sequence of the writer as actor chasing a painted beach ball around a home made set. O’Bannon knew that majors wouldn’t take it, but shopped it around thinking this would be perfect material for low budget producing legend Roger Corman. Thankfully, the completed script wound up in an unexpected place to an unexpected reaction. This is where inception meets the machine in a game of telephone that transforms this oft told yarn into something altogether different, and with greater dimension than perhaps intended.
And from the moment O’Bannon and Shusset’s screenplay quite literally landed through a window and onto the desk of producers Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill, a game of creative telephone began that transformed this novel bit of genre writing into something more. The late 1970s was a tumultuous time where the major studios found themselves gravely out of their element as a new breed of film making seized hold of the public beginning with Hopper’s low-budget, but wildly influential Easy Rider(1969) through the rise of what would later be known as the film school brats in DePalma, Spielberg, Milius, and one George Lucas who’s third effort, the modestly budgeted space fantasy Star Wars(1977) had burst onto the scene creating a ravenous appetite from producers ready to ride this newly tapped vein. And while Carroll, Giler, and Hill of Brandywine Productions thought very little of this Star Beast script, they couldn’t deny the audacious power of the chestburster scene. And since there were yet to be a glut of scripts set in outer space, this one screenplay suddenly looked to have potential. Admittedly, Hill found the draft they received to be lacking in what would constitute a studio-worthy release, and as thus began a process of rewrites after the deal ink was dried. The development process itself became the stuff of legend where O’Bannon, now freed from worries of starvation, began to scout talent from familiar pools - largely from his time working on DUNE with Jodorowsky. Enter nightmare industrialist art master H.R. Giger, and his unique brand of psychosexual imagery becoming not only one of the film’s great identifiers, but of the whole of the story's largest sources of conscious and subconscious power.
In an undisclosed, but not too distant future deep into blackest space, the seven member crew of United States Cargo Starship Nostromo are awakened from hypersleep by the ship’s central computer, Mother. The cause of the early awakening seems to be company orders to respond to a beacon emanating from an uncharted, foreboding planetoid with seemingly no indigenous life. Right away the ghost ship mechanic comes to mind as the blue collar crew gripe about how far they remain from Earth, not to mention lingering discussions about unpaid bonuses by their employers. Another revolutionary addition to the ALIEN lore is the unglamorous approach to space travel. So wildly unlike the pristine, clinical space of Kubrick’s 2001, we are now in Blue Collar space where in the far flung future, space travel will simply be another victim of credit pinching capitalism. The Nostromo is a hulking tow craft complete with a haul of ore to bring back home where the workers seem more like truckers than astronauts, and the tech on hand isn’t quite on the up and up. Filled with dark corridors adorned with compartments, gear, tubing fully exposed. Like a body with no skin, the entire craft is dark, shadowy, and even laden with the occasional moisture and steam throughout the film. There is even an interlocking system for the hauler to separate from the cargo for lighter landing known as the Umbilicus. The only section that seems contrary to the industrial madness of the ship is the home quarters of Mother, the central CPU watching over all the stasis functions of the craft. A space covered in beige flesh tones, meanwhile emitting an ominously quiet breathing sound, as if to further imply the ship as an organism. Before we even leave the ship to respond to the signal, we are host to ordinary people trapped in this almost living machine with nothing outside to escape to. The antithesis to the old Haunted House saw, “Just get out of that house.”
Our crew of overworked and underpaid employees consists of not only character types, but of analogues for a variety of hapless hamsters simply doing their best on a capitalist and social politics wheel. At the head of the crew is Captain Dallas (Tom Skeritt), who is a responsible, but exasperated middle manager. Next is Executive Officer Thomas Kane (John Hurt) who is equal parts level headed company man, and resident daredevil with a bit of an almost accidental colonizer’s curiosity when it comes to discovery. Right after Kane is Navigator Joan Lambert(Veronica Cartwright) who is not the kind to stick around when things get tense, and also serves as audience surrogate as she (formerly male btw in a clever bit of additional writing) voices what we’re all thinking once there’s danger afoot. On lower decks are our ever busy engineers in Parker and Brett (Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton), a pair of regular Joes who understand the ins and outs of the Nostromo, but continue to advocate for a long neglected bonus. Next comes the ship’s icy Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm) who not only has the hardest time cracking along with the camaraderie of his team, it is so as he’s The New Guy. Which brings us to Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley(Sigourney Weaver), a young and by-the-book, harried professional type who remains troubled that her career out in the deep black is preventing her from being an engaged young mother. So what we have are a number of workers of diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, gender identities, and dispositions suddenly at odds with a biomechanical horror reminiscent of not merely sexual, but of economic traumas reinforced by structures and programming designed to extract a profit - at the cost of everyone’s lives.
In short, when a system is rigged in such a manner- everyone’s screwed.
Crew: Expendable.
Keeping in mind that even before the alien menace enters their vessel, the threat of full forfeiture of shares is imminent should they not comply with their company’s order to respond to that signal. And Middle Manager Dallas is instantly ineffectual on the part of his crew, simply eager to just do as told and be done with this. So when he and two other crew members don heavy spacesuits to enter that foreboding derelict spacecraft despite all the deeply disturbing, almost organic structure and architecture inside, they do so without a backward glance. Which of course traverses red flag levels the moment Dallas’ away team returns at the ship’s airlock, eager to bring in a fallen Kane with something alien and hostile attached to his face. An action that breaks with quarantine protocols to the dismay of Ripley. The normalization of such calls to action despite all the warning signs speaks to a culture that has chosen to view such work as expected despite all potential occupational hazards not unlike working on an oil rig or nuclear power plant. And this is the only time in ALIEN we are ever outside the ship. Once back on, everyone (and we in turn) are residing in a Haunted House with no instantly discernible way out.
The crew of the Nostromo, and its claustrophobic environment owe a great deal more to the socioeconomic rollercoaster that was America in the 1970s than of anything Giger had envisioned. As the Nixon administration shocked the world with not only regressive policies, but later scandals that shook a population’s general trust in government. This was also the era of the decline in manufacturing stateside, and the start of occupations shipped overseas. And to many in the nation’s workforce, matters weren’t terribly rosy either as unemployment skyrocketed, while many in employ found much to be improved in workplace conditions. Which of course also helps forment the first real wave of the feminist movement, as well as ongoing struggles for the marginalized. In the years after the Delano Grape Strike, Cesar Chavez, and the United Farm Workers helped pave the way for greater protections in the continuing labor movement. The energy crisis between 1973 and 1974 sent everyday people into frenzies of panic buying as the US economy dropped significantly for the first time since 1929. And in the years prior to these seismic shifts, films had become the domain of smaller outfits eager to experiment in hopes of finding new audiences unshackled by previous assumptions leading to stories focused not on the wealthy, or even romanticized heroes, but of everyday people facing extraordinary situations. From JAWS(1975) to ROCKY(1976), at the dawn of the blockbuster, it was clear that the industry had found that relatability was a crucial element in reaping in audiences who were tiring of the aging stars of Hollywood past, who at the time were the filler on the poster of many a big budget disaster picture. Which leads to Lucas’ Star Wars (1977) making for a massive turn for an industry hurting for a new direction. A film that tinkers with our relationship with fairy tales, but through the eyes of the occasional everyperson (Han Solo, Princess Leia- who are not portrayed to the genre letter as the rest of the cast-the franchise’s secret weapon for many.). By taking the fantastical, and merging with a grittier, more grounded central cast suddenly seemed like a sure bet for producers. The public welcomed escapism, but with a tacit understanding that they too could find themselves combatting occasionally overwhelming, even terrifying circumstances. Our characters in ALIEN connect to audiences simply by being everyday people of the latter 1970s, trapped in a situation beyond comprehension in an environment where simply running away won’t be as easy as it sounds.
But to understand how ALIEN’s themes of sexual trauma intersect with the film’s delicately placed social concerns, one merely has to look at O’Bannon, who’s initial creative ideas provided the inspirational thrust that helped Brandywine and Scott in fashioning a richer tapestry than films of its ilk tended to be. “One thing that people are all disturbed about is sex. Everybody’s all in a knot about sex, so I said that’s how I’m going to attack the audience.” This coupled with the choice to make a male the initial victim of the alien face assault is an early sign that O’ Bannon’s intentions were to subvert tropes that often focused solely on women. Which is a sentiment that extended into the casting of Weaver as Ripley who readers should also know was written as a man, but changed according to a writer’s asterisk denoting that any character could be changed for appeal purposes. Couple this with Hill & Giler’s rewrites that added the character of Ash and the revelation that the green science officer was a synthetic humanoid assigned to the ship as an company extension tasked with recovering the alien. (an addition O’Bannon bemoans as a cliched “Russian Spy” trope) A character so realistic in appearance that it successfully hid itself from the entire crew until a curious Ripley begins asking too many questions leading to a scene of confusing sexual tension implying that Ash is incapable of reconciling with his lack of genitalia. Leading us to his knocking her unconscious within his private quarters as the camera captures a wallpaper of pornogaphy, and his attempted oral “rape” with a rolled up magazine, only to be undone seconds later revealing his true nature. And while the alien of the film is the title threat, two more are comprised in Ash, and later the ship’s computer Mother, who with her flesh toned abode, synthesized voice come the finale and subsequent refusal to override the self-destruct protocol making for an analog for feminine forces dependent upon violent patriarchal systems working against those of diverse ethnicities, belief systems, and gender expressions desperate to escape. To call this film thematically loaded would be a gross understatement as Scott’s ensuing filmography can at times be viewed as style over substance. In the case of ALIEN, the style is the substance.
The legacy of ALIEN, while instrumental in production and creature design throughout much of the last forty years of film, it’s vital to remember that the creative team’s heaviest hitters came from Jodorowski’s wildly ambitious DUNE project which in itself is as if not more creatively important in fashioning nightmarish dreamscapes that skirted the edge of an era’s unconscious. From the alien’s environment, to the ominous Space Jockey, and the three-dimensional industrial collage and claustrophobic tunnels of the Nostromo, ALIEN is nothing if not about spaces in which our experiences never find complete comfort in, never have a complete handle of, and are almost constantly reminded of our anxieties over the often alienating nature of our bodies. From caverns of bone, to flesh toned computer housing, to steam and secretions within narrow corridors, the story is punctuated by fears of not only our personal interfaces, but of the mechanisms tasked with supporting them. Where the reliability of our upbringings are tossed into question, including the occasionally slippery enigmas regarding a narrow gender binary. Which expands beyond the then risky casting of a then largely unknown actor who had only just done a Woody Allen picture as the green, yet sober-minded survivor of the piece. A role that too changes from the page from Captain Dallas’ third in command, and erstwhile sexual partner to a self-contained professional turned full tilt hero. The collaborative process turns a largely straightforward space chiller into a frightening flirtation with a number of social and sexual stressors which asks in its foreboding environs grander riddles about what the future holds for all of us. In an era notable for its lack of subtlety, ALIEN’s denouement makes the startling case for doing away with a violent patriarchal system’s legacy by way of an airlock based abortion complete with viscous fluids hurtling toward the camera lens. A film that uses the thematic tenets of gothic horror to suggest a way out of unregulated corporate malfeasance requires “saving the pussy”. The abject terror of losing control in an environment tasked with keeping you safe corrupted by the machinations of human greed feels like an important and timeless tale dating back to fireside stories of foreboding caverns, freighters, and castles designed to warn us of the known and unknown terrors of the adult world.