What elements of cultural anxiety do the Aliens films represent?
I’ve heard the second film described as a sort of “vietnam in space”, the aliens are “charlie”, the marines don’t know where they are or where they are coming from. As for illegal immigration, I think some people have read too much into the line “Somebody said “alien” she thought they said “illegal alien” and signed up!”, which is merely an in-joke about the actress who played Vasquez, who showed up to the audition thinking the film was about illegal aliens.
I think your sister’s film professor was giving the filmmakers a bit more credit than they deserve. There’s no master plan at work here: each film was driven by a completely different creative team, and each only really existed because the previous one was a financial success, not because there was some new theme they wanted to tackle. The first film is about anxiety, but it’s not a cultural anxiety — it’s a more universal anxiety about sexuality and reproduction. The film is notoriously rife with sex and childbirth imagery, from the design of the monster to the fact that the crew retreats to a round room with soft, padded walls and warm, diffuse light to connect with the ship’s computer — which is called “Mother”. This imagery was actually toned down; Giger’s original design for the alien eggs was rejected as being too obviously vulva-like. The second film plays it much more straight. Thematically, it’s about the maternal instinct and the nature of female strength, but you don’t hav
All horror movies reflect some kind of anxiety, and most anxieties are based in cultural norms. Think about it for a second – if the anxiety was supposed to be produced by relating to people’s fears of alien attack whilst aboard a starship, no one could relate to that at all, because no one goes on starships.
I don’t think I buy Alien3 as being “about” AIDS. It just doesn’t fit — there’s no contagion, there’s no spreading sickness, there’s no wasting. There’s nothing there that fits the pattern of AIDS, near as I can tell, except a bunch of men. There’s just a monster with big damn teeth. I don’t mind people reading in meanings to a movie that the filmmakers might not have consciously intended, but this one feels like a real stretch. I usually think of them as being about Ripley (and others) learning/doing different stuff. Not from consistent intent on the part of the series-makers, but just sort of by happenstance. Alien is about surviving and escaping. Aliens is about fighting back and defending others. Alien3 is about sacrificing yourself and rising above what you’ve been. Alien Resurrection is about self-indulgent shots of you clawing your way out of a big milky plastic bag while bare-assed nekkid so we know you’re still hot even though you’re fiftywhatever.
