Wilson M. Tai

Professor Leicester

LIT 80T

May 30th, 2001

Final Paper

 

Fear of Aliens

 

     In James Cameron’s Aliens (1986 Twentieth Century Fox), camera movement is used to create space and place for the viewer. The frame is used to create a landscape for the viewer; intense and fast cutting is used for surprise and horror. The camera is turned upside down, sideways, and in circles, to create a confined, claustrophobic, and more importantly, alien-like, feel to the world of the film. In addition, turning the camera and sets upside down give the Aliens an inhuman type of motion much like a lizard. The Aliens are matched to blurred motion within the frame to help establish the Aliens supernatural speed and strength. The Aliens have inhuman silhouette and geometry completing the alien-like feel to the film.

There were only half a dozen aliens on the screen at one time. However, with editorial and cinematic effects, the viewer gets tricked into thinking that there are hundreds. Again, the very quick cuts make it very believable. The viewer is bombarded with so much imagery within the frame that the viewer has to give up any doubts and believe that there are in fact, hundreds of aliens in the environment. The technical aspect of cinematic methods and techniques were effective for me but I was more interested in the relationship between Newt/Ripley and the Queen/Aliens. Though they are binary oppositions, they share similar traits when looked at as mothers. The mother instinct is the common thread that link Ripley and the Queen together.     

     Newt and Ripley are both sole survivors who have seen and escaped the Aliens. They are both female gendered and share the same instinctive qualities. They are constantly aware of their surroundings and ironically, although they don’t have the training or qualification of the marines, they outlive them. Newt and Ripley share the same nightmare. Ripley has “nightmares” that require psychiatric attention and Newt has “bad dreams.” Both have problems sleeping – there dream landscape is the same, which makes them one. Further, Ripley lost her real daughter, failing on her promise of seeing her 11th birthday, so she uses the opportunity to “adopt” Newt as her daughter and promises to protect Newt. In fact, when the surviving group could have left to orbit without harm, Ripley stays dedicated to her promise and to Newt, and in an act of self-sacrifice and motherly instinct, goes back to the Aliens colony to find Newt.

     When Ripley goes back to the Aliens colony she is the outsider, the colony has already been established and transformed into the Aliens home. In Ripley’s case, she is the intruder and is unwelcome. However, Ripley is the “mother” and Newt is the “daughter” so she is just doing what she has to do as a mother protecting her daughter. Likewise, the Queen is doing what she has to do and that is creating babies and feeding them. The babies are the Aliens and feeding them is done with the human colonists, marines, and in this situation, Newt. When Ripley stumbles into the lair of the Queen, hundreds of eggs surround the Queen. There is a shot-reverse-shot between the Queen and Ripley. In fact, I see a duel between the two “mothers” in the scene. A close up shows their emotions and shows their communication with eye contact and actions. Both are angry: Ripley is angry because her “daughter” was taken away, and the Queen is angry because her eggs and offspring are in danger from Ripley, the unwelcome guest. Ripley uses her gun and threatens to torch the eggs if the protecting Alien warriors come any closer to her and Newt. The Queen obliges and calls the warriors off.

A deal has been made between the two mothers. Through the business transaction, the Queen Alien is shown to possess human-like thought and emotion. This makes the relationship between “mother” and “daughter” even more viable. Though Ripley is committed to her own daughter, she is not committed to the deal she has made to the Queen, torches all the eggs, the surrounding protection, and the lair itself. Her sole purpose in the first place was to annihilate the dreadful monsters. In this sense, she has violated the Aliens as a collective unit and the Queen has every right to retaliate, for her “daughter” has been attacked and destroyed.

     Though the Queen is definitely female, her offspring cannot be defined – the gender of the offspring is blurred, as the film does not ever show emotion in them. They are warriors that defend the eggs and lair. They seem to always find ways inside the colony complex and attack the marines. The character Hudson made an allegory that the Aliens are like a bee colony. It makes sense because they gather goods (humans) and bring them back to the colony to create and feed offspring. There isn’t any reference to gender except to the sole Queen – all life centers on the female Queen.

     It’s interesting to ask why Ripley would choose to go back to the planet of Aliens when she has been through so much life-threatening drama. Why would she go back and be placed needlessly into jeopardy? If anyone in the right mind would have a choice, they would not face the Aliens. The company offers Ripley a job in hopes of giving her an incentive but that is not a good enough reason. They then offer to protect her – this helps because she feels secure surrounded with a group of marines. However, the real reason for her to accept the offer is psychological. Ripley wakes up in a cold sweat clutching her chest from a nightmare of the alien “chest-burster.” She calls Burke immediately and with her inner motivation, faces the Aliens in order to kill them off. She believes it’s the only way to bring closure to her inner struggle and monstrous nightmares.

     In the end, I related to the film and was drained by the constant horror that the film maintained. There are a lot of references in the film to stereotypical human fears. They are common and universal among people; even if the viewer is skeptical about aliens or in the mise-en-scene of the film, the viewer will still be affected by primal fears such as: tight claustrophobic places, darkness, lack of clear vision, water, fire, nightmares, and the anxiety of an unknown environment.