Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
Speaker 1: Mama never told you production of I Hear Radio's House
Speaker 1: to works. And today, finally, finally, I have waited so long,
Speaker 1: we are talking about Alien Alien Aliens. Yes, I already
Speaker 1: corrected there. I've been yelled at a few times actually
Speaker 1: in the last week, not only by you, but the friend.
Speaker 1: He continues like it's alien. Well, and I was saying,
Speaker 1: I completely understand that mistake because I actually saw Aliens first,
Speaker 1: because I didn't realize it wasn't a one two situations.
Speaker 1: The sequel is Aliens with an S directed by James Cameron,
Speaker 1: but that's not the one we're talking about today, although
Speaker 1: we will mention it. Um, we're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about the nineteen seventy nine release Scott film Aliens. So
Speaker 1: if you somehow, some way haven't seen it and don't
Speaker 1: want to be spoiled, then you may want to skip
Speaker 1: this one. Trigger warning too for sexual assault and rape
Speaker 1: and discussion of disturbing sexual imagery. Yes, um, and I
Speaker 1: know longtime listeners of this show should be celebrating for
Speaker 1: me because I said I think in the very first episode,
Speaker 1: I just want to talk about alien and here we
Speaker 1: are and here we are yes, because it is the
Speaker 1: fortieth anniversary of Alien correct right, and it is back
Speaker 1: in theaters for a few days beginning October. So this
Speaker 1: is a chance to see it on the big screen
Speaker 1: if you want. Um, and we of course went or
Speaker 1: will be going depending on when you listen to right
Speaker 1: um for research. This is some of the best research.
Speaker 1: I will say. Yes, we started our research, Arlie. Yes,
Speaker 1: because I refused to do this episode until I watched it,
Speaker 1: because I knew this was going to be a probably
Speaker 1: four hour episode with your excitement and your um what
Speaker 1: is it? Zeal? Zeal, thank you to continue and to
Speaker 1: talk about it, and I'm really excited with you. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, cool, let me watch this. And I
Speaker 1: did watch it. I didn't have commentary, but there was
Speaker 1: a lot of commentary from both sides of me because
Speaker 1: I'm like, what's happening? Okay, what? Okay? What? To a
Speaker 1: lot of explanations, to a lot of here it comes
Speaker 1: moments are that a few times? Um? So I did
Speaker 1: we did already kind of do a view, yes, um,
Speaker 1: but it's not going to be It wasn't in theater.
Speaker 1: So and I promise to keep quiet. I'm really glad
Speaker 1: you had the chance to be able to get all
Speaker 1: of your excitement out so that when we're in the
Speaker 1: theater you wouldn't do that, right. I still want to
Speaker 1: do one viewing and you don't have to go, but
Speaker 1: I want to do one with a theme like cocktail
Speaker 1: that's red, and just the whole thing is discussion and hey,
Speaker 1: you know I'm always down with alcohol. Just be sitting
Speaker 1: there and nodding, Just let me get it out, get
Speaker 1: it out, like yes, we go. Um, And yeah, this
Speaker 1: was something I was very excited to share with you
Speaker 1: and with anyone who hasn't seen it or has only
Speaker 1: seen it once or twice in passing. And you haven't
Speaker 1: taken this critical feminist lens to it because you will
Speaker 1: not be able to unsee all the stuff we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So if you happen to not want to watch it
Speaker 1: with feminist lens, maybe skip it as well. But I
Speaker 1: think it's fun, and yeah, I have told the story
Speaker 1: on the show before, I think. But um, thanks to
Speaker 1: a truly epic and very mean and honestly successful prank
Speaker 1: my older brother played on me, I was terrified of
Speaker 1: aliens like the trope the thing the monster and movies
Speaker 1: and so fairly fairly recently. I didn't see ET and
Speaker 1: Independence Day until I think a couple of years ago. Um.
Speaker 1: My friends made me watch ET after we wrote the
Speaker 1: ET Ride at Universal, and I was like, wait, what
Speaker 1: is what? What? Yeah, it's very different than the movie.
Speaker 1: I've got to say, the Ride the only movie I've
Speaker 1: ever walked out on because the fear was lost in space.
Speaker 1: And yes, I know that's not a great movie, but
Speaker 1: I was scared and I left. Um and I almost
Speaker 1: walked out on signs. I would have walked out if
Speaker 1: my friends hadn't been there and I was too embarrassed.
Speaker 1: I will say, of all three of these movies, I've
Speaker 1: only seen E T really Yeah, because you know, I
Speaker 1: kind of told you already I'm not a big sci
Speaker 1: fi fan, so the idea of aliens has never been,
Speaker 1: uh something that I've been really really interested in seeing.
Speaker 1: The vampires, give me ghosts, give me demons, you know,
Speaker 1: all of those all day, but technically aliens, I'm like, okay, whatever, sure, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what UM and I did have on my list?
Speaker 1: I had two movies that because I was trying to
Speaker 1: get over this fear actively and the two movies they
Speaker 1: had at the top of my list working my way
Speaker 1: up was Event Horizon and Aliens, because again I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that there was an alien before that, and I
Speaker 1: cried during Aliens. I was so afraid, but I got
Speaker 1: over it and you love it. Yeah. Now, I was
Speaker 1: like wow with this, and I was fortunate enough to
Speaker 1: get to walk through this really scary alien set piece
Speaker 1: at the movie um in London. That was pretty cool. Alright,
Speaker 1: So that is a lot of exposition. Let's get into
Speaker 1: the episode here, because we do have a lot to say,
Speaker 1: or I have a lot to say in Samantha's very
Speaker 1: patient with me. To start with. Alien is Yes a
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine sci fi horror movie distributed by twentieth
Speaker 1: Century Fox, directed by Ridley Scott, written by Dan O'Bannon
Speaker 1: and starring Sigourney Weaver. Amazing Sigourney Weaver. Yes, and I
Speaker 1: watched Kevin in the Woods last night and I forgot
Speaker 1: she's in it. That was one of the prime moments
Speaker 1: of Candid Yes, Yes, Yes, um okay. So O'Bannon, the writer,
Speaker 1: was looking to ride the success of Star Wars with
Speaker 1: a different type of space story. It was pitched as
Speaker 1: Jaws in Space. I can see that. Ridley Scott described
Speaker 1: it as Texas Chainsaw massacre, but science fiction, and we
Speaker 1: should mention he gets sold credit. Abandon does for the script,
Speaker 1: but a handful of others made pretty big contributions with
Speaker 1: which led to a lot of tension. Yeah, of course. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the story involves the crew of the Nostromo, a commercial
Speaker 1: spaceship kind of like a space tow truck, and their
Speaker 1: encounter with the quote perfect organism alien. The main character,
Speaker 1: though you probably wouldn't know it for the first act
Speaker 1: of the film, is Sigourne Weavers Ellen Ripley, the capable
Speaker 1: and cool headed senior officer. One of the posters came
Speaker 1: with the iconic tagline in space, no one can hear
Speaker 1: you scream. Okay, I guess that's right unless you're in
Speaker 1: although in the movie you don't hear them scream. It
Speaker 1: gets yeah you did somehow. There's a moment where I
Speaker 1: think they were playing with it, but then you do
Speaker 1: hear them screen, so I was like, well, it was
Speaker 1: like it's very muted though, or music is blaring over it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that was a choice. It was a choice,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if it was like for a reason, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Um the poster also, by the way, that is just
Speaker 1: an egg on the front. Okay. Both audiences and critics
Speaker 1: praised the film, and it went on to win the
Speaker 1: Oscar for Best Visual Effects, three Saturn Awards, and a
Speaker 1: Hugo Award. Several film critics regarded as one of the
Speaker 1: best films of all time. It gross about two hundred
Speaker 1: million at the box office. In two thousand two. The
Speaker 1: Library of Congress added it to their National Film Registry,
Speaker 1: calling it culturally historically are esthetically significant. The American Film
Speaker 1: Institute placed it at seventh place on their list of
Speaker 1: best sci fi films. In two thousand eight, an Empire
Speaker 1: put it into thirty third place when ranking best movies
Speaker 1: of all time. Also, speaking rides, there used to be
Speaker 1: I would love if a listener could write it and
Speaker 1: confirm this, But I feel like there was a ride
Speaker 1: called Alien Encounter, and I remember it being in Magic
Speaker 1: Kingdom where Leelo and stitches now, but that can't be right, right,
Speaker 1: that can't be right. It was in Magic Kingdom. What well,
Speaker 1: super producer Andrew confirms it, and my mind is blown.
Speaker 1: I just feel like it was really scary for Magic Kingdom.
Speaker 1: It is very scary. Um. Yeah, it was for people
Speaker 1: who don't know. You were in a chair and like
Speaker 1: there was the alien was in the in a tube
Speaker 1: in front of you, and then of course it gets
Speaker 1: out and you feel it breathing on your neck and
Speaker 1: then you get sprayed with blood as it kills somebody.
Speaker 1: It was very intense. I can see why they may
Speaker 1: be replaced it with Leelo and Stitch, where it's now
Speaker 1: kind of a funny ride. Um. Anyway, my mom and
Speaker 1: dad used to tell me about their experience seeing this
Speaker 1: movie in the theaters for the first time, which I
Speaker 1: find funny for several reasons. But they also went on
Speaker 1: to get married on which is the day that it premiered,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure is a coincidence. But they told me
Speaker 1: people were running, puking, screaming, um, that they avoided looking
Speaker 1: at the poster after seeing it because it scared them
Speaker 1: so much. Yeah, my dad popcorns up in the air. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about it, not too many
Speaker 1: things at the time. People haven't seen too many things
Speaker 1: like that. Wasn't that in the same era as Halloween?
Speaker 1: And it was Yeah, all that though it was close. Um,
Speaker 1: but like in space people passed out during a New
Speaker 1: Hope because the spaceship in the beginning just kept going on. So,
Speaker 1: you know, interesting. And I am playing the video game
Speaker 1: Alien Isolation right now, which is a game where the
Speaker 1: alien can hear you as in the player, as in me,
Speaker 1: whatever is happening in my real life environment, and it
Speaker 1: uses that in the game. And I've died any many times.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the recommendation to you about sit wearing headphones
Speaker 1: so you can hear even louder, Yeah, because it's surround
Speaker 1: sound and you can hear it in front of you.
Speaker 1: So this film success went on to inspire a franchise
Speaker 1: seven more films to date, if we include the Alien
Speaker 1: Versus Predator films, which I also haven't seen those. Not really,
Speaker 1: they're fun, not really. The books, comics, video games, and toys.
Speaker 1: Pretty impressive for R rated film. Yeah, the toys thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't think of too many other our movies. I
Speaker 1: guess like serial Killers or you know, like Monsters. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there wasn't actually like Halloween, Jason Toy, Freddy
Speaker 1: Cougar Toy, which is really weird. Yeah, I'll think about
Speaker 1: that later. Um, and yes, Alien has thieves of motherhood, abortion,
Speaker 1: fear of sexual assault, post humanism and sex in general, machines,
Speaker 1: corporations putting technology, weaponry, and scientific discovery about the welfare
Speaker 1: of people. Some people have even interpreted the film as
Speaker 1: a metaphor for women's refusal to bear children. So, yes,
Speaker 1: there is an actual reason why we're talking about it.
Speaker 1: It's not because I'm just a huge fan. It has
Speaker 1: a lot of feminist issues and just kind of right
Speaker 1: anxieties around well, as you have already discovered because researching
Speaker 1: there's so many articles and YouTube videos of these theories
Speaker 1: of how this is portraying the patriarchy as well as
Speaker 1: versus like feminism. What is this whole idea of one
Speaker 1: woman being independent, being a leader, all of these different
Speaker 1: And of course I know you were talking more about it,
Speaker 1: but birthing and vaginas, but yes, yes, specifically burning gam
Speaker 1: vaginas no joke. Yeah, I am definitely not the only
Speaker 1: one who has put some thought into this by far.
Speaker 1: And I'm actually really relieved because I was watching that
Speaker 1: movie SIMI recently. I'm like, I think this is a
Speaker 1: got a lot going on with vaginas and stuff. And
Speaker 1: then I wasn't wrong. I wasn't way off base with
Speaker 1: that one um from Tom shown over at Slate. Quote
Speaker 1: Alien has issues. It has mommy issues and sex issues
Speaker 1: as a thing for strong women who it also likes
Speaker 1: to ugle in their undies. It's a hot mess of
Speaker 1: Fordian fever dream with its crabby and post coital atmosphere.
Speaker 1: It's rebirthing imagery. It's queasily gynecological production design. It's night
Speaker 1: sweat of male anxiety, a particularly horrifying confusion of the
Speaker 1: sexual gynecological with the gastro intestinal, wrote James Kavanaugh from
Speaker 1: Son of a Bitch, Feminism, Humanism, and Science, and Alien,
Speaker 1: of the famous John Hurt birth scene in which a
Speaker 1: quote razor tooth phallic monster gnaws its way through his
Speaker 1: stomach into the light. A kind of science fiction foulst
Speaker 1: in tatus. Oh yeah, mm hmmm. So the movie came
Speaker 1: out during a tumultuous time in our society. So rod
Speaker 1: versus Wade had just recently passed, and gender and social
Speaker 1: politics are changing rapidly with the help of the Second
Speaker 1: Way feminism. Not only that, but people increasingly had environmental
Speaker 1: concerns from pesticides, chemicals, in our foods and cancer is
Speaker 1: caused by humans. Yeah, like human whatever we're up to. Um,
Speaker 1: So yeah, let's let's talk about the feminism of this movie.
Speaker 1: If you search for most feminist harmonies of all time,
Speaker 1: Alien is almost guaranteed to make the list. And if
Speaker 1: you just search this movie and feminism itself, yeah, you
Speaker 1: will find pages and pages of thing pieces about it,
Speaker 1: some lauding its accomplishments, some decrying its flaws. This movie
Speaker 1: is frequently examined through a feminist lens, seeen as progressive
Speaker 1: for its time, while nitpicked for not going far enough.
Speaker 1: Are sometimes in the context of how little the rest
Speaker 1: of the series has come in terms of feminism since
Speaker 1: that first one, once described as quote, a rape movie
Speaker 1: with male victims are an examination of the monstrous feminine.
Speaker 1: And yes, before you write in, we all know men
Speaker 1: can be and are the victims of rape as well,
Speaker 1: but this is how people have described it. Dan O'Bannon,
Speaker 1: the writer himself, claimed that to him, the movie examined
Speaker 1: the male fear of penetration, in which case I suppose
Speaker 1: we could add in homophobia in the general conversation here. Um,
Speaker 1: here's a quote from him. One thing that people are
Speaker 1: all disturbed about is sex. I said, that's how I'm
Speaker 1: going to attack the audience. I'm going to attack them sexually,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to go after the women in
Speaker 1: the audience are going to attack them men. I'm going
Speaker 1: to put in every image I can think of to
Speaker 1: make the men in the audience cross their legs, homosexual,
Speaker 1: oral rape, birth. The thing lays its eggs down your
Speaker 1: throat the whole number. So that's the creator himself. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: And that scene where it attacks like attaches to that
Speaker 1: guy's face, what's the character ash, that's the Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's right Kane's face. That was really felt like and
Speaker 1: very very disturbing in every sense. Right, And and I
Speaker 1: want to go into that, but before it will make sense,
Speaker 1: let's talk about how this creature works and embrace yourself
Speaker 1: perhaps terrifying this thing is. So the queen lays eggs
Speaker 1: and you actually don't see that until the second one,
Speaker 1: but there's this big queen. She lays eggs. When the
Speaker 1: eggs hatch, the resulting creatures are called face huggers, and
Speaker 1: they find something living and in this case um humans
Speaker 1: to latch onto. As the name applies. They usually latch
Speaker 1: onto someone's face, wrapping their tail around the victim's throat
Speaker 1: and inserting their proboscis down their throat and forcing them
Speaker 1: to become the host for their baby. If you can
Speaker 1: call it that organism, I guess it's a frightening, disturbing act,
Speaker 1: very very close to oral rape. And I believe in
Speaker 1: the second one, you get a closer look at it,
Speaker 1: and it does look very vaginal, and then there's a
Speaker 1: probuscus that looks very phallic. So it's kind of been
Speaker 1: described as this combination hugger because I was going to say,
Speaker 1: when they examine face hugger, it looked a lot like
Speaker 1: the Clinton of vagina, and I was like, what, what's WHOA, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very very obvious. It is quite obvious. The first
Speaker 1: victim was deliberately chosen to be male, and yes, his
Speaker 1: name was Kane ash Um, who you later find out
Speaker 1: is an android, but he's the science officer on the ship.
Speaker 1: He refers to the organism inside Kane as Kane's son,
Speaker 1: a reference to the biblical Kine, whose sons were born
Speaker 1: outside of God's laws and were therefore quite lunch risk
Speaker 1: I did not pick up on this until this last
Speaker 1: time we watched it. Once the organism is ready inside
Speaker 1: the its host stomach, it burst out of the victim's
Speaker 1: stomach and this is called a chest burster. This was
Speaker 1: also famously parodied and Spaceballs, which you was the one
Speaker 1: I remembered. I was like dining diner, and and then
Speaker 1: my friend was the one that said, what's the scene
Speaker 1: where the tap dance? Yes? Hello, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right. And then from there it grows very very rapidly,
Speaker 1: like hours, into a full grown creature called a zeno
Speaker 1: morph And I'm sure Now I'm not sure at all
Speaker 1: because all of you listeners probably don't traffic in the
Speaker 1: same nursery that I do. But I see a lot
Speaker 1: of YouTube videos that's like explained the morphology of the
Speaker 1: zeno more of our the life cycle of Xeno moreph
Speaker 1: because it is kind of confusing, right, but those are
Speaker 1: essentially the life that's the life cycle, is it? I
Speaker 1: would never question it because I'm like, a's an alien?
Speaker 1: What rational Like what kind of rationale do you put
Speaker 1: to that? As an alien? How do we know something
Speaker 1: that we don't know? I think it just confuses people
Speaker 1: that the face hugger essentially dies. It puts your egg in,
Speaker 1: it puts its egg in you. That was twenty tho
Speaker 1: questions I did ask him, like, wait, why if that's
Speaker 1: the egg, why isn't the egg the thing? And why
Speaker 1: does it need to do one more extra step than
Speaker 1: just doing that? Because what it means a gestation period
Speaker 1: in it. It's sometimes enough other movies it like takes
Speaker 1: the DNA of the host of I guess because I
Speaker 1: was very confused, like, if it's already in the egg
Speaker 1: then and it's been birthed out of that egg, which
Speaker 1: hatches out of it's been birthed, So why is it
Speaker 1: doing it again? What is happening? We did have that moment,
Speaker 1: we did, and um. One more thing about them is
Speaker 1: they bleed acid. And this was done on purpose because
Speaker 1: the director and the writers were like, why would they
Speaker 1: not just shoot them? Oh I know, they bleed acid
Speaker 1: and we'll destroy your space shap Yeah they worked. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that establishes the alien some of the things that
Speaker 1: we're talking about. UM, but we do have a character
Speaker 1: that's been pretty big in the genre since then. But
Speaker 1: first we have a quick break for word from response
Speaker 1: and we're back. Thank you sponsor. And another thing that
Speaker 1: comes up when you're talking about feminism and alien is
Speaker 1: of course Ripley, who. For listeners who have heard, I believe,
Speaker 1: the first episode I ever did as full time host
Speaker 1: was Final Girl. She is frequently pointed to as one
Speaker 1: of the original Final Girls, which is someone usually virginal
Speaker 1: who a woman who survives to the end of an
Speaker 1: onslaught in horror movies. So when it comes to our
Speaker 1: main protagonist, Ellen Ripley, many of you have probably heard
Speaker 1: um Ridley Scott asked for both male and female actors
Speaker 1: to read the part. It wasn't gender. They were like
Speaker 1: bringing whoever, and they went with a then unknown Sigourney Weaver. Also,
Speaker 1: by the way, Ridley Scott identifies as feminist cool yeah
Speaker 1: um yeah. So she is someone who is strong and
Speaker 1: capable while still maintaining her femininity, although not too much
Speaker 1: of it. But I personally when I read that, I
Speaker 1: was like, she, um, you will apparently she kind of
Speaker 1: it's the cat that most people point at the fact
Speaker 1: that she cares about the cat, saves the cat very
Speaker 1: I guess a feminine trait. She has been described Ripley,
Speaker 1: not the cat, as the divine mother and protector of
Speaker 1: all life. The final shot in the movie, some people
Speaker 1: see us very Virgin Mary, resembling Virgin Mary. She is
Speaker 1: also for much of the beginning of the movie largely ignored. Again,
Speaker 1: you might not know she is the main character for
Speaker 1: a while. Um, she's ignored by her male co workers
Speaker 1: and even the other female one. When she cites quarantine protocol,
Speaker 1: the thing that could have saved them from the alien,
Speaker 1: she's ignored, completely ignored. They're like, Nah, that's terrible. You're
Speaker 1: a terrible person. We're bringing bringing Cane in with this
Speaker 1: mysterious being attached to his face. Uh, horror in itself.
Speaker 1: Let's bring it in. Everything's fine. Yeah, I think we're
Speaker 1: very chill about it. They really were. I feel like
Speaker 1: that's a lot of the sci fi and horror movies.
Speaker 1: They're like, that's cool. Things that have to everything's just fine.
Speaker 1: So attached to his face and okay, they're bleeding out
Speaker 1: every orpus. Let's just let's just talk to them, called
Speaker 1: comfort them. Yeah. Run uh. And this other female character,
Speaker 1: her name is a Lambert, who is played by Veronica Kurtwright.
Speaker 1: Kurtwright has publicly complained about the character of Lambert, who
Speaker 1: if you don't know, she's sort of spends the last
Speaker 1: part of the movie crying and upset. Yeah, she says
Speaker 1: she was told that Lambert. The actress was told that
Speaker 1: Lambert was supposed to represent the fears of the audience.
Speaker 1: In the sequel Aliens, it is revealed that Lambert was
Speaker 1: a trans woman. Um A screen briefly shown reads, despite
Speaker 1: conversion at birth from male to female, so far, there
Speaker 1: are no signs of suppressed trauma from gender reassignment and
Speaker 1: of popular fan supported theories that Lambert died of via
Speaker 1: violent rape. Yeah, that was really horrible because she the
Speaker 1: last thing you see of her that we saw of
Speaker 1: hers her panciless, because all you can see is the
Speaker 1: leg and then the blood dripping down, which by the way,
Speaker 1: also represents many a many times. We talked about administruation
Speaker 1: and penetration all that, but it was really wows As
Speaker 1: quiet as the death was, it seemed like it snaps
Speaker 1: away real quick. You see it a little bit and
Speaker 1: then that's it, essentially. I used to have the tentacle, yeah,
Speaker 1: the tail. Uh. Yeah. And apparently in the game, which
Speaker 1: I haven't gotten to this part yet, apparently you find
Speaker 1: her body and it is covered in blood. Maybe I'll
Speaker 1: report back on that um. Both women in the movie
Speaker 1: had to wear tape over their nipples so as not
Speaker 1: to offend of yours in other countries when they come
Speaker 1: out of their like space hyper sleep thing. Many scholars
Speaker 1: argue that the character Ripley did so much to toughen
Speaker 1: up female heroines quickly and eventually led to characters like
Speaker 1: Buffy Um. Sigourney Weaver reprised her role as Ripley and
Speaker 1: Aliens Alien three and Alien Resurrection, and yeah, we're not
Speaker 1: really talking about those to day, but but briefly, her
Speaker 1: character arc takes her from sole survivor to mother their
Speaker 1: motherhood is all the thing and Aliens to alien queen,
Speaker 1: to a transformation into the other. She becomes a clone,
Speaker 1: not quite human, not quite alien. In Resurrection, Clone Rimpley
Speaker 1: describes herself as the monster's mother. When that movie ends,
Speaker 1: it's to not quite human women that witnessed the New
Speaker 1: Dawn that rod into the future with a Ripley that
Speaker 1: has rejected humanity and the alien instead chosen herself. She
Speaker 1: goes from mother protector to mother destroyer another time. Well,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, it's kind of how we talked
Speaker 1: about all the monsters. Female monsters and we were talking
Speaker 1: about the one being the protector, a bubble bubba yoga
Speaker 1: babba yaga that sounds very similar into that same realm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's really fascinating. And as we we talked about
Speaker 1: in that episode, well, that episode doesn't come out, so
Speaker 1: this is a preview. We're doing one of female monsters.
Speaker 1: We do have, apparently in our society a lot of
Speaker 1: anxiety around motherhood, and we've talked about that before and
Speaker 1: you can see it a lot in this series. And
Speaker 1: here's one I love this. One of the taglines for
Speaker 1: the third film was this time, it's hiding in the
Speaker 1: most terrifying place of all, which is a woman's body,
Speaker 1: because it's in Sigourney Weaver spoiler spoiler spoilers, a woman's
Speaker 1: body is really terrifying sometimes. Apparently, apparently myself and and
Speaker 1: the many others did take issue with the underwear scene
Speaker 1: at the end of Alien, Specifically, she sort of thinks
Speaker 1: she's safe and she strips down to pretty much her
Speaker 1: underwear and like a top. But I'm actually torn about
Speaker 1: it because me, it makes sense you'd be stripping down,
Speaker 1: but it's hard to see it any other way because
Speaker 1: women are so objectified in film. It just this it's
Speaker 1: hard not to be like really right. And I think
Speaker 1: at that time an age because when we saw them
Speaker 1: waking up at the very beginning scenes are in diapers
Speaker 1: essentially right, and I guess he's getting ready to go
Speaker 1: to bed, and to me that seems completely normal, but
Speaker 1: maybe the anticipation of the you know, something's not completely ended.
Speaker 1: So why are you acting? Why are you acting like
Speaker 1: you're okay? Right? And that's a big complaint when it
Speaker 1: comes to Final Girls. Is sure you have this strong
Speaker 1: well not always, but you have a woman who survives
Speaker 1: and seems to be capable, but usually you're witnessing it
Speaker 1: kind of voyeuristically through the the killer or the monster,
Speaker 1: so you're you're more connecting with the monster than you
Speaker 1: are with the woman typically, So that's part of my
Speaker 1: problem with it, I think, is that it suddenly has
Speaker 1: that feel of like the alien is watching you and
Speaker 1: you're undressing, which um again kind of makes sense, but
Speaker 1: I do get a little I'm a little toorned about it.
Speaker 1: I will say, when I've had a long day fighting aliens,
Speaker 1: I also want to step down. Does happen often? So
Speaker 1: many times? Annoying? Now I understand. I'm glad you've rade it.
Speaker 1: This long is long, um, And there are critiques of
Speaker 1: Ripley's um nurturing nature and her sexual appeal um that
Speaker 1: make her and her feminism at large, and feminism at
Speaker 1: large in this movie, I guess not so threatening to
Speaker 1: the patriarchy. So they like took those steps, but they
Speaker 1: did it in a way where men wouldn't freak out,
Speaker 1: I guess is the easier way of saying that. From
Speaker 1: Alien Woman The Making of Lieutenant Ripley by Jason Smith
Speaker 1: Kimana Gallardo quote in the final scenes of Alien Ripley
Speaker 1: meets not just an alien creature, but a dark, physical
Speaker 1: and psychological mirror of herself, like a woman with a flamethrower.
Speaker 1: That alien is a fallicized fetish object, a creation of
Speaker 1: the male psyche of masculine fear and desire. Thus, the
Speaker 1: film ultimately pits the body against her own shadow self.
Speaker 1: But they go on to say, in a world where
Speaker 1: men can be subjected to the monstrous feminine, becoming pregnant
Speaker 1: and give birth to monsters, where women can become the
Speaker 1: heroes and soul survivors, the male comes superfluous, assumed to
Speaker 1: be outmoded form and Ripley's confrontation with and final destruction
Speaker 1: of the alien. The object of desire of the military
Speaker 1: industrial complex gives voice to the contemporary feminist goal of
Speaker 1: saving humanity from the destructive impulses of patriarchy, telling you
Speaker 1: there's a lot to be said, we need that right now.
Speaker 1: And then here's something that you were curious about. Mother.
Speaker 1: It's basically the computer, the ship's computer that's in charge
Speaker 1: of everything, and it's they call it Mother, but it's
Speaker 1: actually m U slash T slash you are six thousand
Speaker 1: and UM. This ship is what wakes up to the
Speaker 1: crew who was not really supposed to stop this planet,
Speaker 1: but wakes them up early to investigate a signal coming
Speaker 1: from LV four to six, which is where things go
Speaker 1: terribly wrong. They change it to five or an aliens.
Speaker 1: I think there's always like a computer sort of thing
Speaker 1: running it. And I've been interested for a while. And
Speaker 1: like when we talk about Mother's ship and why we
Speaker 1: refer to ships as she, space is frequently seen as
Speaker 1: the vast empty womb of a woman, like just giving
Speaker 1: these gender specifiers too. I was tempted to call mother
Speaker 1: she you know, things like that, Um when the crew
Speaker 1: was first awakened by Mother. It is as if they
Speaker 1: are children emerging from her room like the diapers. Like
Speaker 1: you said, Um, Mother does not have your best interest
Speaker 1: at art. She is a cold, artless bitch, except not technically.
Speaker 1: But this is a computer but she's like, Um, I
Speaker 1: guess the people who programmed her are from the movie.
Speaker 1: I love this quote Mother. I've turned the cooling unit
Speaker 1: back on Mother. The ship will automatically distruct and T
Speaker 1: minus five minutes and yes, that's when Ripley like starts
Speaker 1: throwing up at the computer main dream. Um. This is
Speaker 1: an argument between Ripley and Mother. Also, Mother's co conspirator
Speaker 1: Ash and Ash is the android character played by sir
Speaker 1: Ian Home and I do I feel like in every
Speaker 1: single alien movie are almost all of them, the android
Speaker 1: character has some weird thing for the final girl, because
Speaker 1: most of these do have a final girl anyway. He
Speaker 1: tries to kill Ripley by shoving a rolled up porno
Speaker 1: magazine into her mouth, which also feels very reminiscent of
Speaker 1: oral rape. Um. I've read that that scene is like
Speaker 1: he represents toxic masculinity. Um. I never noticed there was
Speaker 1: all this porn in the background until I did this
Speaker 1: research from the monstrous feminine film feminism psychoanalysis. The science
Speaker 1: fiction horror film Alien presents a complex representation of the
Speaker 1: monstrous feminine as archaic mother. Mother. Alien is primarily a
Speaker 1: terrifying figure, not because she is castrated, but because she castrates.
Speaker 1: Her all consuming, incorporating powers are concretized in the figure
Speaker 1: of her Alien offspring, the creature, whose deadly mission is
Speaker 1: represented as the same as that of the archaic mother,
Speaker 1: to tear apart and reincorporate all life. It is the
Speaker 1: notion of the thick und mother as abyss that is
Speaker 1: central to Alien. It is the abyss, the cannibalizing black
Speaker 1: hole from which all life comes, into which all life returns,
Speaker 1: that is represented in the film as the source of
Speaker 1: deepest terror. Significantly, there is an attempt in Alien to
Speaker 1: appropriate the procreative function of the archaic mother to represent
Speaker 1: a man giving birth, to deny the mother as signifier
Speaker 1: of sexual difference. But here birth can exist only as
Speaker 1: the other face of death. When one of the Alien
Speaker 1: creatures orally rapes Kane, one of the male astronauts, it
Speaker 1: implants its embryo in Kane's stomach, but the primeval mother
Speaker 1: does not need the male as a father, only as
Speaker 1: a host body. In the alien creature murderously gnaws its
Speaker 1: way through Kane's belly. It's birth leads to the male
Speaker 1: mother's death. The archaic mother is present in all horror
Speaker 1: films as the blackness of extinction death. The desires and
Speaker 1: fears invoked by the image of the archaic mother as
Speaker 1: a force that threatens to reincorporate what it once gave
Speaker 1: birth to, are always there in the horror text. All pervasive,
Speaker 1: encompassing because of the constant presence of death. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of birth and death. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: space is a great background to devote that against. And
Speaker 1: we have to talk about the art. Yeah. Swiss artist H. R.
Speaker 1: Guy Years design in this film is a huge component
Speaker 1: of this whole conversation. This guy was big on very
Speaker 1: bio mechanical sexual imagery and well versed. An expressionist German
Speaker 1: horror painting by Francis Bacon called three Studies for Figures
Speaker 1: at the Base of Crucifixion served for a lot of
Speaker 1: Geiger's inspiration when it came to the design of the alien,
Speaker 1: or the xenomorph as it's called, and seriously check out
Speaker 1: the painting and you will see it right away. The
Speaker 1: resemblance it's there. Bacon's work was an interpretation of the
Speaker 1: Greek myth around the goddesses of vengeance that chase life
Speaker 1: and the living. The furies, who we will be talking
Speaker 1: about in an upcoming episode, seems very appropriate for this
Speaker 1: whole design. Geiger specifically wanted to take something that is
Speaker 1: and long has been generally associated with pleasure sex and
Speaker 1: turn it into something horrific. He had done something similar
Speaker 1: in his collection of pieces called Necronomicon. Some of his
Speaker 1: design were so overtly sexual that the studio turned them down,
Speaker 1: which blows my mind because the ones that are in
Speaker 1: there are pretty overtly sexual. Also, US Customs held Geiger
Speaker 1: after seeing his artwork for Alien and being highly disturbed.
Speaker 1: I think Ridley Scott somebody on the movie had to
Speaker 1: come and be like, no, he's working, It's all good.
Speaker 1: The first version of the Egg, the egg that the
Speaker 1: face Heecker comes out of, it had one slit for
Speaker 1: the opening, and Ridley Scott allegedly l old race thought
Speaker 1: because he thought it looked exactly like a vagina. Back
Speaker 1: to the drawing board and the opening became the X
Speaker 1: that were more familiar with today, and the fully grown
Speaker 1: alien is very phallic and designed both its head and
Speaker 1: the little dude that pops out of his mouth and yes,
Speaker 1: pews acid, sort of like semen um. Some say it
Speaker 1: combines both the phallic and the vaginal. Roger Ebert once wrote,
Speaker 1: Alien uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh.
Speaker 1: Throughout the movie. It evolves the nature and appearance of
Speaker 1: the creatures, so we never know quite what it looks
Speaker 1: like or what it can do. The first time we
Speaker 1: get a good look at the alien as it burst
Speaker 1: from the chest of poor Cane. Is unmistakably falic in shape,
Speaker 1: and the critic Tim Dirk's mentions it's open, dripping vaginal mouth.
Speaker 1: M also forgot to mention about ash he spews all
Speaker 1: the semen esque stuff because he drinks. It's not milk, right, No,
Speaker 1: I originally thought it was milk because I was like,
Speaker 1: what he actually I've read if you pay attention to
Speaker 1: the whole movie, he never eats our drinks. He's just
Speaker 1: kind of there, but he drinks the milk in that
Speaker 1: one scene, or the white substance. I thought it was
Speaker 1: milk because I like this is theies of course, are
Speaker 1: drinking milk right like like out of nowhere. But and
Speaker 1: then you start seeing him sweat and you're like, oh
Speaker 1: something that that's not what that is? Um and trivia
Speaker 1: shredded condoms were used for the aliens. Jaw tendons Um
Speaker 1: also shouted condoms. Is it looks very much like the
Speaker 1: thing that what's his name picks up right before he
Speaker 1: gets murdered. It's like the shadded skin and alien um.
Speaker 1: And then the slime, the alien slime is ky jelly,
Speaker 1: lots and lots of k y jelly. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that. Even even the props they used are pretty
Speaker 1: sexually suggestive. And then the ship, the ship they discover
Speaker 1: on l V four two six was pretty phallic in
Speaker 1: shape and other parts of it resemble a giant womb.
Speaker 1: When the explorers or you could say invaders enter the ship,
Speaker 1: they are in suit that make them appear like their
Speaker 1: sperm entering the vaginal opening in the ship. And yes, seriously, seriously,
Speaker 1: uh you won't see it, I promise. Once inside, Kane
Speaker 1: finds a womb slash tomb of alien eggs. Then came
Speaker 1: the orm in this case witnesses and egg open the
Speaker 1: face hugger latches onto his face, transformed him into a womb.
Speaker 1: The creature cannot be removed until it has deposited its seed,
Speaker 1: and that is very violent rape. Um. And then the
Speaker 1: victim is forced to carry the organism to term and
Speaker 1: birth it and even though it will kill the host
Speaker 1: read even at the risk of the mother. Some also
Speaker 1: see the scene of the alien person out of Kane's
Speaker 1: chest as representative of the general male confusion and fear
Speaker 1: around birth right comes out of the stomach, lots of
Speaker 1: blood by very violent exactly how it happened. Um and
Speaker 1: uh and every movie there is, I believe there's a
Speaker 1: scene of like it's called the labyrinth, but it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be like the fallopian tubes in the womb and
Speaker 1: the labyrinth of a woman's body. Um. And most space
Speaker 1: movies are seeing yeah, as male explorers entering the womb
Speaker 1: of space. That has changed as we get more and
Speaker 1: more female representation, But for a long time, Veronica Cartwright
Speaker 1: said of the set, it was so erotic. It's big
Speaker 1: vaginas and penises. The whole thing is like you're going
Speaker 1: inside some sort of womb or whatever sort of viscerule.
Speaker 1: So there you go. There it is, there we go. Um,
Speaker 1: we do have some more for you, but first we
Speaker 1: have one more quick break forward from our sponsor and
Speaker 1: we're back. Thank you sponsoring. So I was going to
Speaker 1: go into my theory, my personal theory, which I believe
Speaker 1: forces the male viewer to think about the impacts of
Speaker 1: sexual violence and being unable to abort the resulting child,
Speaker 1: and anxieties about being forced to pay for childcare. Because again,
Speaker 1: this is when Roe we Wade is passing, women are
Speaker 1: getting more sexual agency, starting to enter the workforce. I
Speaker 1: think it was a lot of anxiety around it. Um.
Speaker 1: And I am again not the only one who thought that,
Speaker 1: but I feel like we've touched on a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff that I that was in my personal theory. Um.
Speaker 1: It's been in and hundreds and hundreds of essays and books.
Speaker 1: It's been examined as a parable about motherhood, a feminist allegory,
Speaker 1: and examination of abortion. So yeah. So, Joseph Campbell wrote
Speaker 1: in his book Primitive Mythology about Alien there's a motif
Speaker 1: occurring in the certain primitive mythologies as well as in
Speaker 1: modern surrealist painting and neurotic dream, which is known to
Speaker 1: folklore as the tooth vagina, the vagina that cast rates. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The screenwriter himself, Dan O'Bannon, said he wanted to make
Speaker 1: male audience members confront the realities and horrors of sexual
Speaker 1: assault and rape, the fear of force, pennetration, and pregnancy.
Speaker 1: And yes, I've said it before, I say it again.
Speaker 1: One of my personal theories is that most horror movies,
Speaker 1: all to a lee, are about fears of something about women,
Speaker 1: usually ad menistruation, or pregnancy, our sexuality in general. That's
Speaker 1: just me. Film blogger Flick Philosopher founder Mary Anne Joe
Speaker 1: Hansson told broadly, do men really require a science fiction
Speaker 1: scenario to understand how horrific unwanted violation of the body is.
Speaker 1: Maybe if our culture treated mail and mail rape like
Speaker 1: the horror it is, men wouldn't need to turn to
Speaker 1: science fiction movies to understand the problem. Even if some
Speaker 1: men require such a prompt for their empathy, the Alien
Speaker 1: franchise still isn't one that offers much in the way
Speaker 1: of true access to women's relationships with rape, and I
Speaker 1: do think it is it's interesting that for women Alien
Speaker 1: is frightening, but we do have to deal with this
Speaker 1: fear that much more real and regular way than men do.
Speaker 1: So all of the thought pieces are not all of them,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them are, like it makes men
Speaker 1: face the truth of sexual violence, but it totally ignores
Speaker 1: like women um or men that have dealt already with
Speaker 1: sexual violence like this will this will really scare them
Speaker 1: in Yes, they're only really petrified by women power, blood,
Speaker 1: specifically administration and child our thing and then then being penetrated.
Speaker 1: I guess to be fair, yes, that's petrifying in the
Speaker 1: penetration part. Y'all not. I don't know about everything else
Speaker 1: who knew that so much? We would have so much
Speaker 1: to say, mostly me would have so much to say
Speaker 1: about Alien. I've been ready. After you started writing, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, here we go, and I cut out
Speaker 1: two pages two pages. Um. I would love for anyone
Speaker 1: else who has strong thoughts about really any movie, but
Speaker 1: any horror movie and Alien. UM. I would love to
Speaker 1: hear from from all of you. I am. I'm loosely
Speaker 1: toying with the idea of doing like a spoiled Saturday. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think i'd be a great idea where we do
Speaker 1: more recent horror movies because they're has been a lot
Speaker 1: of I think movements in horror movies lately when it
Speaker 1: comes to feminism, are a lot of interesting things to
Speaker 1: be said, right And definitely people are understanding a lot
Speaker 1: of these kitchy things that have been happening, specifically towards
Speaker 1: females and the female protagonists or even onto antagonists. I
Speaker 1: guess um they're starting to kind of trying to flip
Speaker 1: that on this head. I think it's really interesting. I
Speaker 1: do too, And kind of going off of that, I
Speaker 1: did want to say that I'm going to be on
Speaker 1: Movie Crush, which is another podcast on our network hosted
Speaker 1: by Chuck Bryant of stuff you should Know once for
Speaker 1: the Slasher edition, where I will be talking about some
Speaker 1: of those movies that turn things upside down because those
Speaker 1: are some of my favorites that play with all of
Speaker 1: the tropes. And then I will be on it again
Speaker 1: in November and I have to pick my my movie,
Speaker 1: but maybe I'll do Alien because I've already done all
Speaker 1: of the research. Whyre you started there? Yep, yep, yep um.
Speaker 1: And then we did want to shout out um a
Speaker 1: listener who wrote in Um Kathy she wrote a few
Speaker 1: episodes ago you asked listeners to give you names a
Speaker 1: podcast with lady host. I happen to host one. My
Speaker 1: husband and I are the host of a little known
Speaker 1: podcast called patron Saints of Pop Culture. We discussed the
Speaker 1: themes of recent movies and TV shows mostly, but we
Speaker 1: will also occasionally discuss video games and music videos. Since
Speaker 1: we were in the beginning of the spooky season, our
Speaker 1: recent episodes have been on horror movies. We thought that
Speaker 1: was a perfect one to shout out for this episode,
Speaker 1: and then just one more because of the nursery that
Speaker 1: is happening and all of it. Um, Black Girl Nerds
Speaker 1: is also one that you should I'm sure people have
Speaker 1: already started looking at, but like that would be one
Speaker 1: more to catch in if you want to go deeper
Speaker 1: into the nerd. Um. Oh, yes, I do, clearly, clearly. UM.
Speaker 1: I really am so happy that we got to do this.
Speaker 1: I hope that listeners enjoyed it at least as a
Speaker 1: little bit as m since I did. Look, I just
Speaker 1: watched it it and I know you're a fan, and
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it. Um. And this actually was a part
Speaker 1: of a while ago. We had this idea for something
Speaker 1: called feminist movie Fridays and would be once a month
Speaker 1: and we would look at all they were all horror
Speaker 1: movies because that's just how I am. Well, I'm putting
Speaker 1: Heathers in there, obviously, because you know, I've already discussed Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've already discussed the fight that you need to watch this, um.
Speaker 1: But to put in there as a maybe, I don't
Speaker 1: know how well that's fair. That's always a scary thing.
Speaker 1: I have so many movies that were my favorites when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and now I watched them and
Speaker 1: I just I can't even do right, even like with
Speaker 1: shows that that we're just recently, I was watching some
Speaker 1: of the Dirty Rock and that really hasn't held up either, surprisingly,
Speaker 1: and you would think because it wasn't that long ago,
Speaker 1: and at that point in time, it was getting into
Speaker 1: the trend of like being feminist and being a writer
Speaker 1: a head writer and what that looks like. And it's
Speaker 1: still kind of like, oh, things have moved pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: right are um. But we would love to hear from listeners.
Speaker 1: If you have recommendations for our next feminist movie Friday,
Speaker 1: throw them into the ring. You can email us at
Speaker 1: Stuff Media Mom Stuff at I Heart Media dot com.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast
Speaker 1: or on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You. Thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our super producer Andrew Howard Andrew, and
Speaker 1: thanks to you for listening Stuff I've Never Told You
Speaker 1: his production of I Heart Radio's House Step Works for
Speaker 1: More podcast from my Heart Radio is the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.