FILM ALIEN DIRECTOR RIDLEY SCOTT
Morphologies of identity,
Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) — Part Two
Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) — Part Two
The second explanation, then, one that's more narrative-driven (not convention-driven) and thus more arresting as a concept, is simple: like a cat, the alien seeks out a darkened space where it can die; the Narcissus becomes, effectively, the creature’s deathbed. The theory is founded on an assertion that the alien has reached the end of its life cycle, that it has achieved full maturity over the course of the film. This naturally raises its own set of theoretical questions, not least regarding the condensed and shortened life span of the alien in the context of ‘real time’ (as far as it can be determined by us, as spectators, over the course of the film’s 117 minutes). What good, indeed, is the “perfect survivor” as a specimen if it lives only for several days?
To the morphological phases in the alien’s life cycle, then. The violent processes of the alien’s general reproduction (the facehugger’s aggressive capacity to penetrate and impregnate, together with the embryo’s accelerated growth rate once it has brutally extricated itself from the carrier host) can be seen to conform to a not uncommon model of reproduction in various short life-span insects, beginning with the two or more references to grubs and insects by Ridley Scott on the DVD-commentaries. Some species of mosquito — which undergoes a similar metamorphosis to the alien — have a life cycle as little as 4 days; male wasp colonies die away during a typical year, leaving the young mated queens alive to hibernate and then begin nesting again in the spring. (James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) follows a similar tack by revealing a eusocial colony housing a single breeding female.) In the director’s cut of the film, released by Fox theatrically in 2003, the alien’s sexual and asexual reproductive cycle conforms to the parasitic model of some insects. Parasitic reproduction is hinted at by the larvae covering, and presumably devouring, what remains of Brett’s face and body, his entire cadaver being reduced into the leathery organic matter of the egg in which he sits. While it can’t be asserted that these larvae may pupate within whatever remains of Brett’s body after decomposition in order to produce another non-alien species, we might assume that these larvae are part of the alien reproductive cycle. Either an incidental by-product of the alien’s secretions, or a natural consequence of typical bodily decomposition.
With such a high emphasis placed by the film’s makers on the naturalistic reproduction and life cycle of the alien itself (doubtlessly done to increase the monster’s credibility as an extraterrestrial life form with an audience, because ... hey, we’re all suckers for a mutilating killer with some degree of intelligence), it seems trite to return now to explanation (1) where we proposed that the alien has global domination in mind at the end of the picture ... It’s fair to say, then, that the film’s makers use this paralleling, or mirroring, to underline the species type of the alien (dubbed a “Xenomorph” in Cameron’s Aliens Complete Illustrated Screenplay, and formally “a primitive form of encephlepod” [sic] in the Alien shooting script); so the highly modified facehugger, an endoparasite, shares a defence mechanism with certain toxin-producing plants — its bodily fluid is acid — enabling it to first implant an embryo and then sustain the host body for the length of time required for its successful development, after which it appears to retreat from view and die. (In fact, the facehugger famously uncoils from its spot on a ledge and drops harmlessly onto Ripley, causing shock moment #2 for its very tense audience.) My argument would therefore go that the unexpected death of the facehugger prefigures an almost identical death for the monster alien later on. Like the male wasp, its life cycle ends after mating.
So the film — in its conceptualisation of the alien’s maturation into a seven-foot, self-sufficient adult — draws on a received understanding regarding sexual and asexual reproduction, but it truncates and intensifies this form of reproduction in line with a hyper-Darwinian mode of evolution, resulting in a speeding-up of the ‘life’ in essence. The alien’s intensely hostile, colonialist mission would consequently seem to be dictated by its highly accelerated growth rate, as evidenced in the film by the creature’s moulting and ever-increasing size.
Is this thesis supported by the film’s makers? The motivational ambiguities of this scene are compounded by Ridley’s confession (on the ‘03 commentary) that he’d actually considered, however frivolously, a downbeat (and altogether lunatic) ending in which the alien not only prevails in its battle with Ripley, but after expelling her body is able to fathom the ship’s controls, and send a convincing radio message to the frontier, à la the Predator (John McTiernan, 1987), confirming explicitly its imperialist intentions with regard to colonising planet Earth.
Even without this ridiculous proposition in mind, it’s still quite plausible that in the final film the alien has deposited itself in the darker recesses of the Narcissus with a similar goal in mind. If it is indeed a “survivor” in this most fantastical sense, then a desire to continue this unsophisticated killing spree doesn't seem too out of the question. It merely confirms the alien belongs to the cinematic tradition of armoured, unstoppable horror killers ... which would be a big disappointment. Not only does it disambiguate the alien’s status as antagonist, it at the same time fractures our understanding of the creature as a distinguished species with a limited life expectancy. For if the alien understands that it must, and can, get to Earth, then doesn’t that simply align it with increasingly indistinguishable, recurrent cinematic killers like Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger?
In the published Hill/Giler script, revising O’Bannon’s instruction only slightly, the stage direction reads thus:
To the morphological phases in the alien’s life cycle, then. The violent processes of the alien’s general reproduction (the facehugger’s aggressive capacity to penetrate and impregnate, together with the embryo’s accelerated growth rate once it has brutally extricated itself from the carrier host) can be seen to conform to a not uncommon model of reproduction in various short life-span insects, beginning with the two or more references to grubs and insects by Ridley Scott on the DVD-commentaries. Some species of mosquito — which undergoes a similar metamorphosis to the alien — have a life cycle as little as 4 days; male wasp colonies die away during a typical year, leaving the young mated queens alive to hibernate and then begin nesting again in the spring. (James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) follows a similar tack by revealing a eusocial colony housing a single breeding female.) In the director’s cut of the film, released by Fox theatrically in 2003, the alien’s sexual and asexual reproductive cycle conforms to the parasitic model of some insects. Parasitic reproduction is hinted at by the larvae covering, and presumably devouring, what remains of Brett’s face and body, his entire cadaver being reduced into the leathery organic matter of the egg in which he sits. While it can’t be asserted that these larvae may pupate within whatever remains of Brett’s body after decomposition in order to produce another non-alien species, we might assume that these larvae are part of the alien reproductive cycle. Either an incidental by-product of the alien’s secretions, or a natural consequence of typical bodily decomposition.
With such a high emphasis placed by the film’s makers on the naturalistic reproduction and life cycle of the alien itself (doubtlessly done to increase the monster’s credibility as an extraterrestrial life form with an audience, because ... hey, we’re all suckers for a mutilating killer with some degree of intelligence), it seems trite to return now to explanation (1) where we proposed that the alien has global domination in mind at the end of the picture ... It’s fair to say, then, that the film’s makers use this paralleling, or mirroring, to underline the species type of the alien (dubbed a “Xenomorph” in Cameron’s Aliens Complete Illustrated Screenplay, and formally “a primitive form of encephlepod” [sic] in the Alien shooting script); so the highly modified facehugger, an endoparasite, shares a defence mechanism with certain toxin-producing plants — its bodily fluid is acid — enabling it to first implant an embryo and then sustain the host body for the length of time required for its successful development, after which it appears to retreat from view and die. (In fact, the facehugger famously uncoils from its spot on a ledge and drops harmlessly onto Ripley, causing shock moment #2 for its very tense audience.) My argument would therefore go that the unexpected death of the facehugger prefigures an almost identical death for the monster alien later on. Like the male wasp, its life cycle ends after mating.
So the film — in its conceptualisation of the alien’s maturation into a seven-foot, self-sufficient adult — draws on a received understanding regarding sexual and asexual reproduction, but it truncates and intensifies this form of reproduction in line with a hyper-Darwinian mode of evolution, resulting in a speeding-up of the ‘life’ in essence. The alien’s intensely hostile, colonialist mission would consequently seem to be dictated by its highly accelerated growth rate, as evidenced in the film by the creature’s moulting and ever-increasing size.
Is this thesis supported by the film’s makers? The motivational ambiguities of this scene are compounded by Ridley’s confession (on the ‘03 commentary) that he’d actually considered, however frivolously, a downbeat (and altogether lunatic) ending in which the alien not only prevails in its battle with Ripley, but after expelling her body is able to fathom the ship’s controls, and send a convincing radio message to the frontier, à la the Predator (John McTiernan, 1987), confirming explicitly its imperialist intentions with regard to colonising planet Earth.
Even without this ridiculous proposition in mind, it’s still quite plausible that in the final film the alien has deposited itself in the darker recesses of the Narcissus with a similar goal in mind. If it is indeed a “survivor” in this most fantastical sense, then a desire to continue this unsophisticated killing spree doesn't seem too out of the question. It merely confirms the alien belongs to the cinematic tradition of armoured, unstoppable horror killers ... which would be a big disappointment. Not only does it disambiguate the alien’s status as antagonist, it at the same time fractures our understanding of the creature as a distinguished species with a limited life expectancy. For if the alien understands that it must, and can, get to Earth, then doesn’t that simply align it with increasingly indistinguishable, recurrent cinematic killers like Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger?
In the published Hill/Giler script, revising O’Bannon’s instruction only slightly, the stage direction reads thus:
So clearly, the alien is positioned within this scene by the writers according to the conventions of horror logic . . . or to cite Morris Dickstein, the “aesthetics of fright” , wherein a cheap shock is offered by the sudden unveiling of the monster again. (O’Bannon’s original script being particularly monodimensional in this regard.) But this passage doesn’t provide authority for anything, let alone creative intention; we need to see the shooting script carried through production, Ridley’s thoughts on the scenario (if he had the presence of mind to put them down on paper), and his instructions to Sigourney Weaver and Bolaji Badejo about creature motivation in rehearsal and on set. In all likelihood, it’s possible that the only open conversation conducted between Ridley, Sigourney and Badejo concerned the creature’s passive interest in Ripley as the bearer of sexual difference, now that she is fully dis-integrated from the communal, egalitarian space of the Nostromo. (cont’d.)Ripley watching the final destiny of her ship and crew mates. A very long moment. Then, behind her, the lethal hand emerges from deep shadow. The Alien has been in the shuttle-craft all along.
16 November, 2007
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