Sex and Alien

Halloween's on the horizon so I thought I'd topically freak you out.

What I found quite interesting  (and slightly unnerving) was that apparently Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) - here I'm talking the original, but I'm pretty sure this applies to the entire pervy franchise - is loaded with sexual imagery. 

Yes, I was once like you. 'No way, it's just a science fiction film about an alien! Next you'll be telling me Animal Farm isn't just about the farm animals!'. How innocent I was. 

This is a direct quote from the film's screenwriter, Dan O'Bannon:

"One thing that people are all disturbed about is sex... I said 'That's how I'm going to attack the audience; I'm going to attack them sexually. And I'm not going to go after the women in the audience, I'm going to attack the men. I am going to put in every image I can think of to make the men in the audience cross their legs. Homosexual oral rape, birth. The thing lays its eggs down your throat, the whole number.'"

But once I had it pointed out to me, once I began to see it, I could not then unsee it...

1

2

3
yeah.

4

5

The crashed Alien space-ship is modeled over an enormous hermaphroditic body. The skeletal inner workings resemble bones, blood vessels, etc. This creates the impression that the team are entering the 'belly of the beast', which of course could not be more true as this is the start of all their troubles (euphemism, anyone?). The ship also appears to have both phallic and yonic-connotative structures; the latter being significant as, shown in picture 2, the unfortunate astronauts enter this figurative anatomy into the 'womb' (4), if you like, and one of the team (poor sod) unwittingly plays a key role in 'fertilizing' an alien egg (picture 3, and picture 6 as the 'birth').

  

6
gutted.

If this scene (picture 6) doesn't make you feel sick you are a cyborg. And if you haven't seen it John Hurt, the guy who became impregnated by the Alien infant, finally experiences the horrific and ultimately fatal birth of the hideous sprog. This scene really plays upon what the screenwriter was saying about the male fear of giving birth, because obviously it is an entirely alien (ha) concept to the sex (bar Tom Beattie...) which makes for an inability to empathise with the experience. 

Rewinding back a bit in the 'pregnancy' to pictures 3 and 5, these instances are subsequently an allusion to the masculine fear of rape, specifically orally (5). That is not to say that a women wouldn't freak out if that absolute abomination was attached to their face, but the fact is that the filmmakers actively chose a male character to incubate the verminous organism because it would specifically ignite these fears. This was, and still remains, a particularly subversive idea in horror film, a genre which archetypically punishes the female audience by, for instance, terrorizing a slutty female character until she encounters a highly sexualised death. Take Paris Hilton in House of Wax, who is impaled through the head by a noticeably phallic pole. By contrast, Alien making the men victims of sexual destruction was different and all the more shocking because of this.

7

8

Meanwhile, the fully formed Alien itself is pretty blatantly phallic, what with the shape of its head (7) and that thing it does with its mouth (8), which only serves to enhance the rapey vibe. 

Where does this leave us? Unfortunately, most people who study film find themselves in these messed up analytical situations. But it's like in that film, The Ring, you have to pass on this weird knowledge, otherwise Samara gets you.