"Nostromo, first published in 1904, is arguably Conrad's greatest and most complex novel. It tells the story of a Central American state whose silver mine serves both Literally and metaphorically as the source of the country's value. The novel was written at the time of the development of the Panama Canal." I found this info on the Internet, I thought it might shed some light on Alien and the theme of the movie and the idea behind the ship name.

The crew dichotomy is much like the war movies from the 40's and 50's. This dichotomy is expressed by characters who have too much courage--Parker--, are afraid--Lambert--, leader as martyr--Dallas--, and the main hero--Ripley--, and the skeptic or enemy-Ash. One could also apply these stereotypes to that of characters in horror movies, where people who are too brave, die, people who are too scared, die, only the character with modesty and intelligence will survive.

The second thing I want to discuss is the idea of sexuality. The alien ship that they first encounter, is not only a ship but also some sort of organic alien. This may seem strange and graphic but after all H.R. Giger did design the set, the ship, when first seen, looks to be in the shape of an oval, thus symbolizing the female. Once inside the ship, Cain encounters the pods deep within the ship. I know that the idea of the pod is at its root, feminine, but if we look at this space where the pods are kept, we can also view this area as a sort of testis. The alien in its initial embodiment is in the shape of a sperm, complete with head and tail. The alien enters Cain, grows, and exists through the stomach in a twisted c-section fashion. This most clearly reflects the workings of the human reproductive system. One of the main fears of this film, is that of penetration. The Alien is most obviously a phallic symbol. He kills by opening his mouth and "tongue-ing" his victim, penetrating him or her and leaving them for dead.

The most interesting death scene is that of Lambert, where the alien slides his tail up Lambert's leg moving toward her torso. This is the most suggestive scene in the movie, the alien, standing fully erect, doesn't just kill her but also seeks to satisfy some sort of sexual desire. WhenRipley hears the screams, she runs down, and when she is standing in the corridor, sounds of the Alien grunting in a sexual manner, and of Lambert's screams are present. It's only a guess, but I believe that the alien attempts or does have sex with Lambert, because it would complete his maturing process. The Alien is growing up; progressing through the infant stages (Cain's chest-eyes closed) to the large full-bodied pubescent Alien in this scene.

The last scene, which seems to be sexual, is the last section of the movie where the alien is on board the escape ship. The alien appears to be sleeping when Ripley first encounters it. His hand falls down, his mouth opens and out comes the alien tongue which seems to kiss

the air, reminiscent of the tongue as it kills Parker and Ray(?). I believe the alien is having some sort of sexual dream. This scene comes immediately after the alien kills Lambert. The entire confrontation of Ripley and the Alien is sexual, she is at first half-naked, and once she begins to shoot the alien, she begins to grunt in a sexual manner. It is also ironic that

Ripley kills the alien by penetration (the spear), in a similar killing fashion to that of the alien.

The other weird sexual scene is the battle between Ripley and Ash. The room where the battle takes place, the walls are covered with porno-mag centerfolds. Ash attempts to strangle Ripley by inserting a rolled up porno-mag into her mouth. Draw your own conclusion!

"I Know What You Did Last Summer" adopts a similar style of hiding the phallic shape killer (raincoat and rain hat). The movies are also similar in the cast/crew dichotomy and the final scenes where the hero is shocked to find the killer hidden in their safe surroundings.

There is so much going on in Alien that I hardly know where to begin. I think I've figured out what the cat means though. It involves a little psychoanalysis, which I'm not big on, but I think this film was made with Freud's ideas in mind. I don't think I'm reading in stuff that's not really there.

To understand the cat, you have to look at it as a symbol of one of the two struggling sides in Ripley. The first is her masculine side that tries to ensure her success in a masculine centered society, and this is represented by the alien (thus the huge phallus). I'll explore this more fully in my research project, but now back to the cat. The cat comes to represent her feminine side (come on guys, it's a "pussy" cat), a side which she tries to repress but keeps reemerging throughout the narrative of the film. Look at the scene in which Ripley is seeking the alien, her macho attitude, with the motion detector (another phallus which she holds in her crotch), but her femininty jumps out when the cat emerges. This is one of the scenes in which Ripley displays raw and irrational emotion. It takes one of the ship's repairmen to point out that it is just a harmless cat, hardly threatening in their masculine dominated ship. Other than the scene in which Bret is mauled, the cat does not reemerge until near the end of the film. Correspondingly, Ripley displays no more raw emotion without the cat, with possibly the exception of when Ash shoves the magazine (another phallus!) down her throat. The cat reemerges in Ripley's first physical encounter with the maturing alien, and thus we have the final showdown in which she must recognize that she cannot rely merely on her masculine instincts, but that she must learn to balence her attributes. This goes back to the class discussion about how Ripley is the only one who knows which rules to follow and which rules to break in the corporate structure in order to survive. She cannot rely simply on the corporations rules (the macho code), nor on simply raw emotion (the blundering horror film female). She must meld the two in order survive. Incidentally, the alien does not kill the cat in its face to face encounter, either symbolizing how it perceives the feminine side as being too weak too bother with, or how it is necessary to its own existence. I think the power of the feminine side would have been more highly dramaticized if the scene in which the cat warns Ripley had been left in the film. Ripley ends up using both emotion and a phallus (the gun) in order to expel the male dominance that has ruled her life, and the film ends with her stroking the cat in her lap at the end, displaying her repressed feminine side's reemergence.

While I am on psychoanalysis, I want to look at one other image that is relevant to my discussion, and that is the construction of the ship. It has some huge towers on top of the ship (the phalluses), and quite a few domes on the bottom of the ship (breasts). The phalluses are the dominate feature, much as Ripley's dominant mode of thought is her masculine side. The breasts are on the bottom, visually representing their repression beneath the phallus. It should also be noted that there is a clear line between the two structures, and also that the phalluses are on top (considering there is no "up" in space). This image becomes very important in the scene in which the ship is destroyed. The explosion occurs as a horizontal line between the two predominant structures, destroying that line between what is masculine and what is feminine. This symbolizes Ripley's transition from the masculine repressing the feminine into the careful coexistence of the two. Only after this line has been destroyed can Ripley expel the dominating creature into space (a vagina, but I won't go into that).

Well, that's all the psychoanalysis I can handle for one morning. That's Ripley, believe it or not...

One of the interesting points of this movie is the "Company". Now, we all know that part of this movie is meant to show how big business gargantuan, all-powerful corporations are bad, but it really shows it as downright evil and dangerous. I think the best way to realize this is by realizing that this ship and its crew were sent out on a dummy mining operation for the sole purpose of being rerouted and awakened to discover this alien. The Company must have known something about it before the ship left...they put Ash on the crew. So it wasn't like the Company just happened upon an opportunity and sent the Nostromo to do the dirty work (and die), which is bad enough; it actually premeditated this plan and set up the entire crew years in advance, knowing they would probably die. Alien shows one of the most extreme cases of the capitalist system gone wrong.

I'd also like to mention the ships (I'm using Alien as one of my movies to write about just this subject). There are several points that can be made. First, most of us have heard that Alien is a movie about "truckers in space", and indeed they are. The living quarters are pretty nice and clean (if cluttered), but the workings of the ship are ugly, dark, run down. wet, and falling apart. The characters are very rough, their clothes are dirty and shoddy (no real uniforms), and they are basically all manual laborers. This is a far cry from the clean ships of Star Trek and other Sci-Fi films which rely somewhat on the ships. Second is the alien ship, which was just amazing. There are some wonderful contrasts between the two ships. In the Nostromo, there are wires and tubes and whatnot that form patterns and symmetry, but their makeup is still discernable from the organic forms of the crew. In the Alien ship, walls were smooth and shiny and had a more lifelike look to them. What I'm saying is the Alien ship looks more alive than Nostromo, and the Aliens themselves look more mechanical than the humans. This point comes to its climax with the scene that shows that the pilot and the ship are merged together, making the animal/machine connection all too clear. Also, I'd just like to mention the fact that both ships were, in places, wet. We discussed the importance of this in regard to the hero's quest, and I think it applies...the dangerous areas are the wet ones. What I found interesting was that the Nostromo was only wet in places, and only by accident (broken pipes, water condensing on cold parts of the ship) but the Alien ship was wet everywhere, and it seemed to be that way out on necessity...it had to be wet in order to function. Another animal/machine connection, and a way to creep people out.