Alien: A review outline

Film's driving forces

- Opposing hungers
- Capitalist Death Drive
- Fully automated space communism

Crew as objects

- Desexed, overseen by the all encompassing 'Mother' that lives in the ships very being.
- Ash as the Company Man/Scab, undermining Ripley's authority as Warrant Officer.
- Bodies as hosts, tools and currency.

Alien as Other, threat to the normative

- Hyper-sexed androgyne - phallic head but egg making.
- Normative-masculine fear of birth.
- Amoral drone, counterpart to the company worker.

Ripley as both exploited worker and feminist figure.

- Being a fully integrated tool of capitalism is not liberation, it is a death sentence.
- Cover feminist facets of her character - feminism VS survival instincts?
- 'Final Girl' trope

Ash as the SCAB and the company Man

- Defiance of Ripley's order to enable to alien aboard the Nostromo.
- Literally wired into the company, his actions and morals are not his own.
- Assault on Ripley.

Gender in the film

- Divisions/lack of divisions.
- Lambert is trans - Marked in Aliens as 'despin convert'.

The final wrap up

- Film as a cautionary tale against mega-corporations.
- Is Alien agitprop?
- Can a film made by capitalism ever truly critique capitalism?
- Androgyne Terror as an archetype
- Readings outside of binary sexuality & gender models

Conclusions

- Build blocks for ALIENS review
- Sci-fi & Sci-horror deserves analysis as much as other genres.