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05 September 2013
20 March 2013
Sexploration: Lt. Ellen Ripley
The book was the basis for the ideas in this blog and a lot of what I post here originated with conversations between Ximena and I. Clearly this part of the introduction fits the theme of the blog when we read "sex" as also meaning "gender".
From Alien Woman: The Making of Lt. Ellen Ripley
"One is not born, but rather becomes a woman." —Simone the Beauvoir, The Second Sex
Since Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon, 1902), the science fiction film has depicted the human male as the hero of its narratives. Whether a heroic astronaut or cool scientist (and sometimes both), it is Man who embodies the superior rational-humanistic qualities of the species as he boldly travels the deep, dark, limitless depths of space. Human females in these narratives mostly complement the males in distinctively secondary roles as love interests, nurses, counselors, and low-ranking officers. Even the few extraordinary women who manage to rise above the glass ceiling are inevitably undermined by various devices in plot, characterization, and cinematography during the course of a standard science fiction film. In Them! (1954), for example, the audience’s first view of the smart and gutsy Dr. Patricia “Pat” Medford comes in the form of her well-turned legs sexily descending from an airplane; in It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), the scientist Dr. Mary Royce cheerily cleans up the dinner table and serves coffee to the male astronauts. This trend, unfortunately, continues into our more “enlightened” times. The formidable Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) of the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series, who in the show has whole episodes devoted to her and who regularly uses her authority as a medical doctor to order even the captain about, has been almost completely written out of the Next Generation films. The beefed up Sara Connor (Linda Hamilton) of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), though more prepared to fight the machines from the future than in the first film, has become a whacked-out bad mother who pales in comparison to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s android in both killing and parenting skills. Even in Contact (1997), the motivation of the protagonist, Dr. Eleanor Ann “Ellie” Arroway’s (Jodie Foster), centers around a father fixation. When Dr. Arroway finally does get to go into the alien machine after her male boss is killed—it seems Tom Skerritt is always in the way of some woman—and travels the cosmos at faster than the speed of light to meet the aliens, the alien she encounters takes the guise of…her father; and, of course, no one believes her story. Such is the usual lot of women in the science fiction film.
Science fiction film also offers a variety of non-human females. Exotic and seductive, the weird and wonderful fem-alien comes in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. Sexy and dangerous, she is Phena from constellation Hydra (Star Pilot, 1965), Ursa from Krypton (Superman, 1978), V’ger as Lt. Ilia (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 1979), the treacherous and scantily clad Aura (Flash Gordon, 1980), the xenomorph Sil (Species, 1992), and the Borg Queen (Star Trek: First Contact, 1996). Sometimes good, more often evil, the female alien always heralds danger. Her exotic Otherness—whether it be her gigantic size, green skin, violet eyes, or three breasts—marks her as the true test of the male astronaut and, ultimately, humanity. If he can survive her (after a romantic interlude perhaps), he can survive anything.
And then there is Ripley. Born of the long and uncomfortable association between science fiction and horror, Ripley combines the survivor of slasher with the heroic astronaut of science fiction. Her confrontation with the monstrous creature includes the requisite running and sweating, but she substitutes the shrieking of her predecessors for some understandable swearing, and, in the end, she vanquishes her foe on her own.
Though Ripley was, as many critics have pointed out, a product of masculine discourse in the sense that the role was originally written by males for a male actor and Alien (1979) was directed and produced by males, the character Ripley as she appeared on the screen is, nonetheless, the product of 1960s and 1970s Second Wave feminism. Ripley may not be “feminist” per se: she does not, for example, actively fight for women’s equality and none of her arguments with the men draw attention to their misogyny, even though she is clearly the object of gender bias. However, one cannot easily dismiss the fact that her presence on the ship and the rank she holds (and eventually wields) is surely “forward looking” for the time and genre. Neither Ripley nor Alien’s other female crew member, Lambert, are secretaries in space: they do not serve coffee, do not receive special treatment or deference as “girls,” and they do not pander to the egos of the men; and, as we shall see, if Lambert betrays a tendency towards hysteria, so does her macho captain, Dallas. In essence, feminism created the context where a female could be considered not only for the post of commanding officer (a concept which Gene Roddenberry had tried to sell a decade earlier in the pilot episode of Star Trek [1965]), only to be told nobody would believe a woman could command a starship), but also as the lead in a science fiction film. Without feminism, there would be no Lt. Ripley.
Though not necessarily a feminist icon, the Ripley of Alien filled a need among women for a strong female protagonist, and her debut made an understandable impression on many female viewers. Winona Ryder, Sigourney Weaver’s co-star in Alien Resurrection (1997), recalls how exciting it was to see Ripley triumph over the Alien in 1979:
I was about eight. But I remember the impact it had on me. I had never seen a female character like that. It was the first female action hero that I had and that any of us had. It was a huge impact…. I mean, she was the survivor….I can’t think of a movie before where it was a woman…. That whole last sequence where she is trying to blow up the ship and make it to the other ship, she goes back for the cat, she’s running with the cat, and then she thinks she’s safe and then she realizes the alien’s on board… If you talk to anybody of my generation, they can recount that scene frame by frame, because it’s such a classic scene. And of course we’ve seen guys do that a lot. Guys surviving, being the hero. Girls really just being mostly the victim. And this time it was great to see a woman really, you know, kick ass for the first time.
Alien was not the last time Ripley dominated the screen. Left to grapple with a strong female protagonist, subsequent writers and directors in the 1980s and 1990s re-envision Lt. Ripley to fit differing social, political, and cultural imperatives for women but they never diminish her heroic role. Again and again, Ripley proves to be smarter, stronger, more courageous, and humane than the Colonial Marines in Aliens, the double-y chromosome convicts of Alien3, and the scientists, army men, and pirates of Alien Resurrection. And as such, she continues to speak to female viewers of science fiction, whose only other options still range between identifying with Claire Danes as the love interest Kate Brewster or Kristanna Loken as the vain femme fatale Terminatrix (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, 2003).
Ripley was, and continues to be, something new. A bastard child of science fiction and horror, she is also the proto-slayer: long before Buffy, there was Ripley. But she is much more: a woman who thwarts the destructive patriarchal desire, faces her shadow self again and again, embraces it, and ultimately incorporates the monstrous feminine into her very being. A creation of men, Ripley nonetheless rattles her chains loudly, filling the void of silence imposed on women by male narratives. She may not get entirely free, but she is seen, she is heard, and she is remembered.
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