‘Alien’ and weird sex, part 2 of 2: Stuffing up maternity. (potentially NSFW)

So last week we took a look at how the aliens in the eponymous movie quadrilogy are, above all, good ol’ fashioned disturbing because of the confused sexual imagery that surrounds and forms them.

This week we’ll be looking at how the movies subvert our expectations of reproduction (which I did touch on in the last post) and maternity.

If you don’t actually know how the aliens reproduce, allow me to elucidate you. The aliens begin their life as an egg, layed by the queen of their hive/brood/I-can’t-remember-what-it’s-called. When they hatch, they are a small-ish, almost reptillian creature with a body reminiscent of a horseshoe crab, this phase of their life has famously been reffered to as a ‘Facehugger’. The creepy little critters will then attach themselves to the face of a host, and impregnate them via their mouth. They will eventually detach, the host will wake up and, in time, will “give birth” to a bouncing baby beast, a xenomorph. The xenomorph will grow and shed it’s skin until it has reached full size, and the full capacity for destruction.
So that’s the xenomorph reproductive process, yuck, am I right? The fact that the way the  alien’s reproduce is (when we break it down) weird, bestial, face-rape, is unsettling, and more than enough to disgust us on our own. As with the appearance of the aliens themselves, their reprduction takes something we are familiar with (sex) and (most of us) view in a positive way, and uses it to freak us out by turning it on it’s head and turning it into a terrifying, disturbing and weird process. But they don’t stop at the subversion of human sex, no sir, they take what should be the most secure, safe and comfortable place (physically and psychologically) and pervert it as much as they do sex. What I’m talking about is, of course, maternity.

The emphasis on the perversion of maternity is particularly evident in in both Aliens and Alien: Ressurection, but moreso that latter.

Whilst Aliens still presents a perversion of human maternity, it uses it mainly as a contrast to the relationship between Newt and Ripley. One of the main focusses of the film is the mother/daughter dynamic that their relationship has. They clearly care about each other, and Ripley fights relentlessly and self-sacrificially to save Newt. Having ‘lost’ her own daughter (or rather her daughter lost her) when she was a similar age to Newt, Ripley takes on full responsability for the orphan. It’s clear in every way that essentially Ripley has become Newt’s mother.

It’s my belief that the xeno queen was introduced in Aliens solely to contrast the relationship between the heroin and her ward. Sure, it introduces a new threat that is greater than the normal xenomorphs, so the fight at the end has more of an epic feeling, but size and danger alone aren’t good ways of raising the stakes in a story, there needs to be an emotional facet to the conflict too, which the queen provides brilliantly.

Alien: Ressurection is where things get real weird. Ripley isn’t really Ripley, she has an alien “child” of sorts, and her maternal instincts are now directed towards a person that isn’t really human. Instead of having two different mother/offspring-type relationships like we did in Aliens this time we actually have two conflicting offspring type characters. Call isn’t (by any stretch of the imagination) anything close to a biological daughter to Ripley, firstly, they aren’t related, secondly, (and slightly more importantly) Call is a robot. Despite not being a ‘real’ person, Call has very human qualities and characteristics, so much so that I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to say that she is, in her own way, human. Conversly, Ripley and her alien bub are indeed related in a biological sense, but in no way does this creature share the same human qualities as it’s mother, or even it’s rival artificial sibling.

This film doesn’t give us a stark contrast between wholesome mother/daughter relationship and a perverted and monstrous form of reproduction, it slams them together. No longer do we have a human duo to root for, knowing full well that they are the epitome of good in the movie. Nope, now we have a skewed relationship that despite having touching moments, is deeply unatural, and wholly unsettling.

There’s a lot more that can be analysed in the Alien films, and I’m sure at some juncture I’ll end up writing more about them, but for now that’s it, I hope you enjoyed reading.

‘Alien’ and weird sex, part 1 of 2: Alien naughty bits (this post contains creepy space creature genital stuff, potentially NSFW)

In my opinion, Ridely Scott’s ‘Alien’ and it’s successors have had one of the greatest creations in the horror genre, H. R. Giger’s (and later Tom Woodruf jr’s) terrifying aliens.

The aliens are scary and unnerving, they are scary and unnerving because they are brilliant, they are brilliant because they take things that we’re familiar with (and in certain situations, are aroused by), and pervet them until we want to cry.

Here is a very bad photo I took of some of the concept art of ‘Alien’ drawn by H.R. Giger. If anything in those pictures looks like a robotic human reproduction organ, worry not, you don’t have a dirty mind, it’s meant to look like an androids junk.

If you’ve seen any of Giger’s art before, you should be able to get a pretty good idea of what he was trying to evoke in these pictures. Much of Giger’s art (particularly Necronomicon) contained elements of warped sexual imagery (and by ‘warped’, I mean seriously warped. If you’ve ever wanted to see a picture of an androgynous critter giving fellatio to its own tail/genitals/whatever-the-hell-it-is, you should definitely check out his work), as ‘Alien’ was strongly influenced by Necronomicon it has a very similar aesthetic. This weird, psuedo-sexual imagery through all of the films is what makes them so brilliantly unnerving.

In the alien quadrilogy, the humans are very distinctly male or female, their ships and equipment are mechanical and modern, and we accept this as the norm. We see the clean-cut angles, smooth lines and flat surfaces as comfortable and safe in the context of the films, we’re even clearly shown early on (by way of sweaty, undressed emergence from sleep capsules) the gender of each of the human characters. These things are what our brains accept as the normal, safe things in the films, and as the aliens are everything that the humans aren’t, they are unsafe, weird and “alien” (see what I did there?).

The aliens (save the queen) have no clear form of sexual dimorphism, their architecture is strange and foreign and their reproduction is nothing short of disgusting. To add to the already foreign nature of the aliens, they actually have human-like characteristics. Initially one might think that a creature having more human-like elements, or at least something reminiscent of them, might make them seem less strange, but when put together in a certain way, they make the creature just that much stranger. The aliens are have what you might call a stereotypically feminine body, they have wider hips, small waists and ovoid ribcage, but this doesn’t make them seem feminine, the giant, phallic head makes sure of that. They are a disturbing mix of male and female that we’re not quite sure how to deal with; The same is true for their reproduction, a spider that looks like two hands with, well…   with an alien vagina that shoots a penis-y thing down people throats to impregnate them (*ahem* there’s something I never thought I’d ever write), more mixed up sexual imagery, and you know, space creature face rape, that’s a thing there too I guess…

So basically, the ‘Alien’ franchise confuses us, we don’t know how to feel about the aliens (other than scared) because we don’t understand them, which makes for an overall unsettling experience. Next week, we’ll be taking a look at how Aliens and Alien: Resurrection take what should be the most normal, safe, comfortable and familiar thing in the universe and turn it into something terrifying.

Looking to the New Year.

Hello good reader!

When I started this blog I didn’t expect much (if any) of a positive response, but much to my delight and suprise I have recieved one. So, the infancy is over, and onward we march into the new year, heads held high and plans for it like bees swarming.

Today I’m going to share some of the plans I have for the future.

This year I find myself with nearly no responsabilities, and an astonishing amount of free time, which I plan to put to good use. I’ve got plans for this blog.

I’m going to be posting a lot more, about more things, and with greater care and quality put into what I write. I’ll be finishing the series I started on The Hobbit, and starting a new one on the Silmarillion in the later half of the year. I’ll also be doing more writing on poetry and short stories (some Poe to get things moving I think), films and comics, and basically an form of story-telling that’s worth while. I’ll be writing more stuff about art, and sharing more of my own, which has been a struggle this year because of a gimpy wrist. And if all goes according to plan, I’ll be starting a youtube channel for things that aren’t really suited to being shared on a blog (which includes some art stuff) and doing some collaborations with my good friend @Ianfjay from http://ianfjay.wordpress.com/, which will be great.

This year already looks good, thanks for being part of it.

Bravely onwards into the future. Until next time.

 

The Battle of the two trilogies or, Attack of the prequels.

Hello good reader!

I was first introduced to Star Wars relativly (or rather very) late in my childhood, through it’s spinoff series The Clone Wars, wich I loved, even as a 15 year old. I watched the original trilogy with my father, who was a fan. I absolutely loved those movies, and I couldn’t wait to see the prequels, and then I watched them…

Well, dissapointed is a good word to use to descirbe my feelings. Don’t get me wrong, I liked some of the characters, the beggining of the clone wars was one of my favourite movies scenes from childhood, and seeing Yoda fight the emperor was a dream come true. But alas, a menagerie of hollow characters, some convoluted plot lines, and having to hear Anakin bitch about anything and everything that didn’t go his way ruined the movies for me. I can only hope that next years The Force Awakens salvages the broken masterpiece that is Starwars.

As the final chapter in The Hobbit film trilogy was released last week, it made me lament what The Hobbit trilogy could(n’t) have been, and what it is. As much as I want to love The Hobbit films like I love The Lord of The Rings trilogy, I just can’t. The three movies suffer from the same ailment as the Star Wars prequel trilogy, albeit in a far less offensive manner. Now I do like The Hobbit films, I haven’t yet seen the final one, but I do like the first two, but in no way do they live up to the expectation that TLOTR set for them, and I was always worried this would be the case.

Making The Hobbit films as well as TLOTR, I think, was an impossible task, so all things considered Peter Jackson did a monumentally good job. Nevertheless trying to make a children’s fantasy story into an adult-steered epic like it’s succesors could not be done. Each of the films has jarring shifts from beheaded goblins and orcs and sprays of blood, to the kidsy humour of the notorious barrell riders scene. Cutting this scene out, however, would take away any semblence of this being a children’s story, therefore not remaining true to the story itself, and making it purely a child-friendly fantasy tale would in no way fit the TLOTR trilogy. The films could never have worked perfectly, unless, just maybe, The Hobbit was made first and allowed to mature into a different, slightly more fantastical version of TLOTR (a la a grownups how to train your dragon), but that is a longshot.

As it stands The Hobbit trilogy is still a decent lot of films. With it’s fantasy scenes (such as the Wargs battle with the dwarves on the cliff) that look like Zach Snyder and Guillermo Del Toro had a really beautiful baby and made Tim Burton the godfather, the humourous dwarves, and the tale of comraderie and acceptence that emerges from Bilbo’s journey with them, The Hobbit films still earn a place in my heart (or DVD shelf as it is). So let’s not look at them as the terrible prequels that ruin a fantasy epic, but rather as the scar of not-quit-ness on the almost flawless journey.

Until next time.

That is All.