Before I start, I have a question. Was Ripley really frozen for 50 something years? It was said in the dream, but I don’t know if she was dreaming of reality, or if her dream just wanted to tell her an abstract number to make her and the viewer more scared. I’m not even sure if someone can sleep for that long and look the same without suffering any sever muscle degradation. Also, her cat doesn’t appear to age either. Technology is incredible! I really have no clue. It’s the future.
Enough of this, let’s move on to my actual thoughts on the film, shall we?
This film was probably the film that ended with the most speculation out of all of the films we’ve watched this semester. I say this because the ending was such a weird one. It was what I guess you could call a double ending. The viewer thinks everything is all good, but something completely left happens, and it leaves the viewer in a state of shock, much like it did for me. All throughout the movie, the viewer expects to see a head on fight between a xenomorph, and Ripley. Her being the only survivor of the original trip, and waking up night after night with nightmares is only proof that she needs extreme closure to come to terms with the events of her previous trip. When it finally happens, she’s in a giant badass mech-suit and takes it on head to head. THAT is how you do it! There’s a lesson hidden here. If you wanna come to terms with something, you gotta fight it head on.
Another thing with this film was the discussion the class had about the Xenomorph mother and Ripley having an unseen discussion when Ripley and Newt stumble upon the hive. The class came to a general consensus that Ripley noticed that these were the children of something, and they just want to live their lives. it may mean that a few of her friends and family will get killed, but she can only retreat at this point because she does not want to harm them anymore. In the Xenomorph mother’s mind, she is thinking that she does not want any altercation to happen because it could put her offspring in danger. Her maternal instinct kicks in pretty heavy. She even calls back two grunts who were ready to take Ripley and Newt out at a seconds notice. I think this is exactly what happens. The eye contact (Do xenomorphs have eyes??) The body language. The 2 mother figures did not want to harm each other. They both had young to watch over. When Ripley snapped, I think that she believed she was living in her nightmare, and this was the only way to wake up. Her nightmares must have been her being in the xenomorph hive a lot.
As for the reading, I can agree with a lot of the point made. I believe that Ripley was akin to a female Rambo, but waaaaaaay better. Instead of fighting against idiot cops and hunters, she was fighting giant space aliens with whip like tails and acid for blood. The fact that she actively goes into the bowels of the plant on her own shows that she’s tough too. The fact that she is acting on maternal instinct enhances this too. Not only is she acting by instinct, she is doing it better than any guy in the movie could have. Except for the one guy that survived, the other men seemed really incompetent and just plain stupid. Especially the “game over” guy. Ripley shows that anyone can do what they were assigned, and even do it better than expected. I came across this quote in the passage, and I believe it really encompasses the way I feel about what happened. “For Mulvey, the sexual difference demarcated by the active/passive split marks the cinematic gaze as a
masculine look that objectifies women as spectacles to be looked at. This masculine gaze of the camera forces female viewers to adopt either a narcissistic over identification with women on the screen or a masochistic male point of view. But the modern action heroine is far from passive. She fights, she shoots, she kills, she solves the mysteries, and she rescues herself and others from dangerous situations.” Pretty much, Ripley takes all of the bs that happens against women, rips it apart, and sets new ground rules for the way women are meant to be portrayed.
One of the things I really liked about our class discussion was something AJ had said. He gave everyone an idea of what Alien was like, if we hadn't seen it, and said that the entire Alien film is about running away from the xenomorphs, but in Aliens, Ripley literally fights off a bunch of aliens and then enters their breeding ground and, eventually, take the Alien Queen head on as well. It's a nice moral to take away from the film: to conquer your fears, you have to face them head on.
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily agree with the argument that the two "mothers" shared a moment and settled their differences through a maternal understanding. But I think, like a lot of films, Cameron wanted the audiences to have different opinions about that. It's like the ending to The Breakfast Club, we never really know what happens and I think it's much of the same thing here. We can't conclusively know whether they shared a maternal bond or what was running through either of their minds. But I like the way you worded your argument and can agree with the fact that Ripley had to act in order to receive closure and determine whether or not this was a dream or reality.
I like what you commented on my blog; that it's unfortunate that Ripley was compared to Rambo because she is WAY better and fought violent aliens instead of a small town of people. I just think Ripley is way cool as a character because she is more badass than Rambo and a lot of the men in movie, but she is able to do so while being a mother figure to Newt. She combines the best of both worlds and, honestly, how could you not like her??
I like your suggestion about the mothers having a moment too. It really is ambiguous, that moment. My interpretation was that Ripley saw the eggs and realized how she could fight the most viciously, and the xenomorph knew she knew it--also the moment of recognition that she was fighting against an intelligent being, and a mother, instead of just a monster with no motivation. But it's hard to tell for sure with no dialog, so there are several good ways to look at it. Keep in mind though that the reading isn't arguing that Ripley is like Rambo. He's pointing out that the general public made that comparison. His larger argument was about gender as performance-in this case, Ripley becomes an action hero by performing masculinity.
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