Why Alien’s gen­der pol­i­tics run a lot deep­er than Ellen Ripley

Strip away the goth­ic, space-bound hor­ror and Alien is about a ratio­nal woman fight­ing to be heard in an irra­tional, male-dom­i­nat­ed world. Yet look beyond Sigour­ney Weaver’s icon­ic per­for­mance as Ellen Rip­ley and you’ll notice that the film has far more com­plex things to say about gender.

Joan Lam­bert, the only oth­er female crew mem­ber on board the doomed Nos­tro­mo, in some ways rep­re­sents the antithe­sis of Ripley’s pro­gres­sive fem­i­nist val­ues. She spends most of Rid­ley Scott’s sem­i­nal sci-fi hor­ror yelling out ideas that are unsound at best. When ter­ror first strikes, Rip­ley keeps her cool. Lam­bert, mean­while, barks: ​“I say that we aban­don this ship! We get the shut­tle and just get the hell out of here! We take our chances and… and hope that some­body picks us up!” No one listens.

Yet when you con­sid­er that Lam­bert (played bril­liant­ly as a bag of nerves by Veron­i­ca Cartwright) is a trans woman, the film enters far dark­er territory.

When Rip­ley is debriefed by her employ­ers at the Wey­land-Yutani Cor­po­ra­tion over the destruc­tion of the Nos­tro­mo in James Cameron’s pitch per­fect 1986 sequel Aliens, a vital blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment occurs. The inhu­mane cap­i­tal­ist firm is skep­ti­cal of Ripley’s claims that an Alien killed the ship’s entire crew in the pre­vi­ous film. As they sar­cas­ti­cal­ly dis­miss her, short biogra­phies of each of the deceased flash up on a com­put­er screen. Lambert’s bio reads: ​“Despite con­ver­sion at birth from male to female, so far there are no signs of sup­pressed trau­ma from gen­der reassignment.”

Rewatch­ing Scott’s 1979 orig­i­nal with an aware­ness of this cru­cial char­ac­ter twist shifts the film’s tone quite dra­mat­i­cal­ly. When the Nos­tro­mo first lands to inves­ti­gate the space sig­nal that ulti­mate­ly leads to its crew’s demise, the male deci­sion-mak­ers debate whether they should leave the safe­ty of the ship to inves­ti­gate. Through­out this exchange, the cam­era lingers on a silent, deject­ed-look­ing Lam­bert, who seems resigned to what­ev­er fate her male supe­ri­ors decide upon.

Is her gen­er­al lack of deci­sive­ness in fact fuelled by the ​‘sup­pressed trau­ma’ allud­ed to in Aliens? In this claus­tro­pho­bic envi­ron­ment where women are expect­ed to fall in line – some­thing lat­er proven when Ripley’s exec­u­tive order to lock out the con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed crew is over­rid­den by male android Ash – Lambert’s inac­tion becomes telling in light of this rev­e­la­tion about her true gender.

In Alien’s most icon­ic scene, John Hurt’s Kane chokes and con­vuls­es in pain before the Xenomorph bursts out his chest with bru­tal pre­ci­sion. A scream­ing Lam­bert is drenched in blood – a gen­uine shock reac­tion from Cartwright who feint­ed dur­ing film­ing, suf­fer­ing a head injury in the process – the twist­ed ret­ro­spec­tive irony being that she is a trans woman who is unable to men­stru­ate; her body, like Kane’s, unex­pect­ed­ly and invol­un­tar­i­ly altered.

Lambert’s even­tu­al death is arguably the most con­tro­ver­sial in the entire fran­chise. As she gath­ers oxy­gen tanks which will enable the sur­vivors to flee the Nos­tro­mo in its shut­tle, the Nar­cis­sus, the Xenomorph ambush­es her – the creature’s mon­strous, phal­lic tail sug­ges­tive­ly slides between Lambert’s legs as she’s paral­ysed with fear. A hor­ri­fied Rip­ley lis­tens in on a radio speak­er as Lam­bert lets out a series of whim­pers, before a final blood-cur­dling scream rings out.

It has long been sug­gest­ed by Alien fans that Lambert’s death is in fact a hor­ri­fy­ing rape. On the Alien Anthol­o­gy com­men­tary, Scott sug­gests there is some cre­dence to this the­o­ry, ask­ing: ​“Was that some dread­ful end­ing? Was that some ter­ri­ble inva­sion of her body? A rape?” And as a fan ser­vice, a rape is all-but-con­firmed in Cre­ative Assembly’s mas­ter­ful sur­vival hor­ror video game Alien Iso­la­tion, when Lambert’s corpse is shown with a blood­ied crotch.

A trans woman being mur­dered by hav­ing her gen­i­tals sex­u­al­ly vio­lat­ed by a mon­ster is a fate so dis­turb­ing, it makes the ​‘chest­burster’ scene look like child’s play. Espe­cial­ly when both Lambert’s bio and actions strong­ly indi­cate that she could be suf­fer­ing from gen­der dysphoria.

In the orig­i­nal draft of Alien’s screen­play, the char­ac­ters are all writ­ten as gen­der-neu­tral, so per­haps there’s an ele­ment of con­fu­sion to this entire argu­ment. But watch­ing Alien under the assump­tion that Lam­bert is a trans woman cre­ates an entire­ly dif­fer­ent view­ing expe­ri­ence. Yet the ques­tion remains: why was Lambert’s gen­der changed at birth? And when her bio reads ​“so far, shows no sign of sup­pressed trau­ma” is it hint­ing that she is hid­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ment from her colleagues?

If noth­ing else, Lam­bert poten­tial­ly rep­re­sents one of the ear­li­est trans char­ac­ters in a major block­buster, and is also proof that Scott’s mas­ter­piece still has the pow­er to pro­duce unex­pect­ed sur­pris­es almost 40 years later.