August 2021

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Alien, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant. 

Do We Deserve the Xenomorph?

Do we deserve the Xenomorph? Consider our present situation:

The GOP and their cheerleaders on Fox News deliberately spread misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and the pandemic in general (alongside misinformation about the 2020 election results). This was deliberately done with the expectation that doing so would prolong the pandemic and result in more death. Undermining the Biden administration’s response to the pandemic was a higher priority than the lives of even their core voter base (which comprises a huge portion of the unvaccinated population). While it is acknowledged that some GOP politicians and Fox News commentators eventually encouraged vaccination, the bulk of vaccine hesitancy remains high amongst supporters of Donald J. Trump, a man who contracted the virus as a result of sheer arrogance and then later received the vaccine himself privately. We know this because we know that GOP strategists and Fox News programmers are not stupid enough to believe their own propaganda. In other words, they are “unclouded by conscious, remorse, or delusions of morality.” 

But then again, that’s the brutal logic of neoliberalism. It is the way of Weyland Yutani. 

“There is an explanation for this, you know.”

For the record, no I do not believe that we deserve the wrath of a hostile creature from a distance planet (as if I really need to make that point clear). I pose this question because, after recently re-watching Alien, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant, it is clear that the pandemic has ushered in new subjectivities and new questions relevant to these films and their cultural significance. The central question I grappled with was why the Engineers wanted to make a weapon to destroy us, and why Weyland Yutani and the android David (Michael Fassbender) wanted to harness this destructive technology? Let me begin by saying that I did not dislike Alien Covenant as much as other people did. Additionally, I was lukewarm towards Prometheus at first, but I have since come around to it. Sure, they may not measure up to Ridley Scott’s masterful 1979 film Alien, but there are certainly enough interesting ideas at play in the two prequel films to justify at least a modest appreciation. Yes, there are some that believe that the prequel films created a new mythology that undercut the original Alien’s exploration of the darkness at the heart of human nature (conversations that are clearly still relevant). To some extent, I agree with this position. Yet, at the same time, the prequel films stand alongside Scott’s original film in their exploration of our darkest recesses whether we like it or not, and as such, they will be a part of my analysis on how the cultural significance of Scott’s cinematic universe has shifted. 

[SIDE NOTE: there will be no analysis here of Aliens, Alien 3, Alien: Resurrection, or any other of the franchise’s films or media. Maybe that’ll be for a different day. However, I do welcome any thoughts on how these films tie into or pose a challenge to the observations I will be making here.] 

First, I’m not interested in exploring old territory. Scott’s Alien films have been analyzed so thoroughly – in print, online, and in documentary form – that I don’t want to revisit ideas that many of you, no doubt, have already been exposed to. If indeed you are interested in unraveling the mysteries behind these films, I recommend starting with the film Memories: The Origins of Alien (Alexandre O. Philippe, 2019). For now, what I would like to do instead is consider some ideas for how to read these films in relation to the events of the last two years. Since the catastrophe of this pandemic revolves around issues of science and hubris, let us first consider Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a more suitable companion piece to Alien (and the prequel films) than films such as John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). This isn’t a novel approach to the Alien films, by any stretch. The Philippe documentary touches on it, and there are plenty of other web articles that do as well. However, I want to start off with it, as it may help us to unpack why David and the Engineers felt that humans were “unworthy of their creation.”

“There was a boy…. A very strange, enchanted boy…. They say he traveled very far….”

The original 1818 Shelley novel begins with a series of letters that Robert Walton, the youthful explorer-to-be, writes to his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. “I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves, and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling?” I ask, do you understand this feeling? This is “the sublime,” a key element in Gothic literature and Romantic Art: something that communicates physical greatness and evokes a sense of awe. In the face of the sublime, the mind feels overwhelmed by, or swoons in the face of, something greater than oneself. Casper David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818) is typically cited as a visual exemplar of the sublime, and echoes Walton’s feelings that his impending journey to the Arctic circle, in search of the fabled Northwest Passage, “induces me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery upon his native river…. I feel my heart glow with the enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven.” The word here is “discovery,” as this is the key element at the heart of the horror genre, according to Noel Carroll. In The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart, Carroll asks how anyone could be frightened by what they know does not exist? Additionally, Carroll asks: why would anyone be interested in such an unpleasant experience such as being frightened? The answer to both, Carroll argues, is that the genre is linked to such a deep-seeded desire for discovery, which allows for “horror objects” (or the things that we find scary) to represent an idea or thought that we can believe in. In horror stories, such as Frankenstein, our emotions ideally run parallel to the emotions of the characters, and through Walton’s letter’s, the audience is invited to seek out the “heavenly bodies” that undoubtably exist in “those undiscovered solitudes.”

Consider Jerry Goldsmith’s leitmotif from Alien as the film glides through “heavenly bodies” in search of “undiscovered solitudes.” Leaving aside the fact that this was not Goldsmith’s intended score for the film, these notes are echoed in Jed Kurzel’s theme for Alien: Covenant, and both films use this theme to evoke a sense of sublime and the infuse the films with what Lovecraft termed “cosmic fear”: horror as an exhilarating mixture of fear, moral revulsion, and wonder. The key word here is “wonder,” used in stark contrast to “revulsion” in these films to create a space within the viewer through which they can renegotiate their “fear” of the unknown. Alien begins with a delicately, slow left-to-right pan across the cosmos as Richard Greenberg’s “disjointed version Helvetica Black” form the film’s title, instilling a “sense of the foreboding, the letters broken into pieces, the space between them unsettling.” Alien: Covenant begins with a conversation between the newly created David and his creator Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce) in a sparsely decorated modernist conservatory room, with a sublime vista that could easily exist below the sea of fog in Friedrich’s painting; a Bugatti throne chair, a Steinway grand piano, and Renaissance art are the “wonders of art, design, and human ingenuity” that, according to Weyland, are “all utterly meaningless in the face of the only question that matters….Where do we come from?” The film fades into a return to the Greenberg title font over the deep reaches of space as Weyland and David commit themselves to quest of discovery – evoking the same sense of fear and wonder. Eric Marcy notes that the sublime is a key element that underscores feelings of terror and dread in the prequel films, arguing that in Covenant the sublime, an “aesthetic principle” obsessed over by the Romantics, “dismembers not merely human emotion but humans themselves.” All three film refuse to “allow either the religious or materialistic viewer to remain comfortable in their own belief or unbelief.”  

So where can we see examples of the sublime and cosmic fear during the age of the pandemic? The first images that spring to mind are cities free of pollution, traffic, and pedestrians (sometimes with freely roaming animals). Cities notorious for their hazy skies (Los Angeles, New Delhi, Rome, etc.) were photographed throughout March and April of 2020 as clean, crystal clear, and quiet – existing as sites of art and wonderment as if after an apocalyptic event. In some respects, these city scenes were what Freud called the uncanny: an experience that is unexplainableor strange, yet at the same time leads us back to a strangely familiar place or familiar feeling. The familiar feeling evoked by these images, for many of us, comes from apocalyptic cinema – movies depicting the aftermath of a nuclear disaster, environmental catastrophe, zombie uprising, or a global pandemic. Yet, at this point, I think we need to question this feeling further and ask: what made these post-apocalyptic films, which made recent events feel familiar, feel plausible when we originally watched them? They feel prophetic now, but they also felt familiar when they were released. A recent U.N. scientific report shows the devasting effects of climate change to be now unavoidable, so from the present-day vantage point the real human interaction upon the real world has removed the “fiction” from “science fiction.” But what about films like On the Beach (1959), La Jetée (1962), and the first two adaptations of the novel I Am Legend (1964 and 1971)? Though we can attribute some of the familiarity evoked by these scenarios to religious thinking, it is likely that our familiarity with darkest human impulses, interwoven with an inherent drive for discovery and sense of awe, that made readers and viewers readily accept the premise of these stories. 

“You are my lucky star…lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky”

Alien may be categorized as “sci-fi horror,” but it is a monster movie as well (one reader of an early draft of the script described it as “Jaws in space”). Returning to the work of Noel Carroll, monsters must possess certain qualities to function as “horror objects,” and Carroll lists six central characteristics: 1) monsters are physically threatening – they must be lethal and dangerous, 2) monsters register a feeling of disgust or repulsion in the beholder, 3) monsters are also threatening psychologically, morally, or socially, 4) they must transgress categorical distinction (i.e. inside/outside, living/dead, insect/human, flesh/machine, etc.), 5) monsters trigger underlying, deeply rooted fears, and 6) monsters are impure – creating conflict between the beholder and their values and beliefs. At this point, I’m sure you are thinking about how the xenomorph (and other monsters, such as Dr. Frankenstein’s creation) meets these criteria. But we should also ask why the xenomorph does not felt out of place, both today as it did in 1979, as a stand-in for real world horror? For that we need to go back to the 1920s and talk about some of the ideas that were circulating in literary circles about why genres function in the way that they do and how genre conventions are reinvented in response to generational change. 

Students who take my classes will eventually encounter this term: genre memory. In a nutshell, genre memory is the process by which genres constantly reinvent themselves by a) remembering past usage (tropes, devices, narrative strategies, visual motifs, etc.) while at the same time b) drawing upon the resources of the present to say something new. In some instances, “the resources of the present” can mean contemporary social/political discourse or shifting cultural values, but it can also mean new technology for bringing these stories to life. The concept of genre memory was developed by Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, but over the last few decades, the concept has been applied effectively to film, television, theater, new media, and other works of narrative visual art (see the “Further Reading” section at the end). I am certain that some of you are already thinking of at least a few examples of this process off right now, given our familiarity with movies that cite other films or older genre conventions through visual allusions or direct quotation. In the case of Prometheus, for example, the “past genre usage” being remembered is, of course, from earlier science fiction films, in terms of narrative and thematic content. In this regard, it is not just films like Alien that are being evoked, but also films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, Blade Runner, and The Man Who Fell to Earth – films that use the trappings of science fiction to pose existentialist questions. The “resources of the present” that Prometheus draws upon are contemporary conversations about the role of faith in scientific knowledge, artificial intelligence, and biological warfare/terrorism. On the technological side, the “resources of the present” are 3-D filming practices (cameras, sets built to accommodate the depth required, and CGI imagery) and the exhibition/projection capabilities of modern-day movie theaters and home theaters. 

 [SIDE NOTE: A common criticism of Prometheus’ use of these present-day technological resources is that it creates a stylistic discontinuity between the film and Alien (which is meant to be set more than thirty years later). While not officially stated by the filmmakers, this discrepancy may suggest an economic crisis or galaxy-wide recession that takes place between the two films as a plausible explanation.]

In the case of Alien, the Philippe documentary explores the “past genre usage” quite thoroughly, but it also makes a few observations about the “resources of the present” that may have provided these genre conventions with a new meaning: the end of the Vietnam War, the serial killer media phenomenon of the late 1970s, economic downturn, the threat of global terrorism, and visible signs of environmental destruction. Plus, let’s not forget that Alien’s psycho-sexual elements, exemplified strongly through H.R. Giger’s designs, are widely read as tapping into the “collective guilt about patriarchal violence against women that resides in the cultural subconscious.” At the same time, the documentary also suggests that the terror of the xenomorph has not faded into obscurity since the film’s original release, largely for the reason that these “resources of the present” are still very much a part of our own present. Take a moment to ponder this last point. It was easy enough to suggest this in 2019. Two years later….  

The theory of genre memory also cautions us about reading the reaction given to a film at the time of its release as the final verdict. We see this with practically all films directed by Stanley Kubrick from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Eyes Wide Shut, in which films that initially receive a mixed critical response eventual achieve a much higher level of appreciate through an organic process of film-fandom (incidentally, the same was true for Alien). The flipside would be films that depreciate in value due to shifts in cultural values and societal change (Gone with the Wind being an obvious example). This way of reading a film’s place in history, or measuring it against current events, is a reminder of the importance preserving cinema as a non-disposable art form. It may be more difficult for some to view Prometheus and Alien: Covenant in this regard alongside the original 1979 film, as the prequel film’s genesis as franchise films may raise questions about the genuineness of their artist merits. While I am somewhat sympathetic towards this argument, it is nevertheless important remember what these films, through the genre memory process, can teach us about the way that storytelling devices make human behavior patterns more visible and emotionally relatable.  

“If you are receiving this transmission, make no attempt to come to its point of origin.”

Take a big exhale! This is what I have always loved about the original Alien. Many of us, out of impulse, turn a film off within thirty seconds of the ending credits. While I can’t say that watch the full end credits of every film that watch, I always watch Alien to the end of the credits without exception, and I always encourage my students and friends to do the same (that includes you, dear reader). My reason for doing this is linked two ideas about horror and emotions that are relevant to rethinking these films in relation to recent history – ideas connected to the big exhale the film makes at end to Howard Hanson’s Symphony No.2, “The Romantic.” 

The first is “poetics of affect.” Poetics, a concept first articulated by Aristotle, is the study of the laws and principles behind how art works, whereas affect is a set of observable manifestations of a subjectively experienced emotion. Put it together, “poetics of affect” is the study of a work of art’s mechanisms for registering emotional responses in the spectator. The other concept is “body genre,” a concept developed by film theorist Linda Williams: genre or group of films that place a corporeal experience at the center of the visual and narrative pleasure. Body genres find their narrative strength in “the spectacle of the body caught in the grip of intense sensation and emotion.” A crucial component of a body genre is that the “display of bodies on screen is designed to register effects in the bodies of the spectator.” In her essay “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess,” Williams identifies three “body genres”: horror, melodrama, and pornography; I have argued, alongside other scholars, that the war film is a body genre, and other scholars have made a case for musicals to be consider body genres. Taken together, poetics of affect and Williams’ notion of body genre remind us that Alien and its prequel films use a cinematic language of emotion and corporeal experience to connect its viewers what we fear the most and, ultimately, the sublime.  

Take another exhale! And ponder these thoughts while listening to… 

Works cited

Carroll, Noel. The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. NY: Routledge, 1990. 

“Interview with Richard Greenberg: Alien.” The Art of the Title. Written by Lola Landekic. September 17, 2013. Web url: https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/alien/

Marcy, Eric. “God is Dead but the Shadow is Long: Ridley Scott’s Alien Covenant.” Bright Lights Film Journal. May 24th, 2017. Web url: https://brightlightsfilm.com/god-dead-shadow-long-ridley-scott-alien-covenant-horror/#.YRFHqy1h3q0

Williams, Linda. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” Film Quarterly 44.4 (1991): 2-13.

Further Reading on Genre Memory

Morson, Gary Saul and Carl Emerson. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of Prosaics. Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 1990. 

Stam, Robert, Robert Burgoyne, and Sandy Flitterman Lewis. New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and Beyond. NY: Routledge, 1992.