Aliens at 30 – in praise of James Cameron’s… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Aliens at 30 – in praise of James Cameron’s fem­i­nist masterpiece

17 Jul 2016

Words by Lara C Cory

Close-up of a person wearing protective gear and holding a tool in a smoky, fiery environment.
Close-up of a person wearing protective gear and holding a tool in a smoky, fiery environment.
Thir­ty years on, Sigour­ney Weaver’s icon­ic hero stands as a defi­ant sym­bol of gen­der equality.

In 19 min­utes, this area’s gonna be a cloud of vapour the size of Nebras­ka,” warns Bish­op dur­ing a piv­otal scene in James Cameron’s Aliens. Injured and exhaust­ed, Rip­ley (Sigour­ney Weaver) straps her­self with a pulse rifle, a flame throw­er, and the loca­tor Duct-taped togeth­er – plus some M40 grenades and M‑94 mark­ing flares – and sets out into cer­tain death to res­cue her sur­ro­gate daugh­ter Newt. This scene doesn’t exact­ly scream mater­nal instinct” but that’s exact­ly what it por­trays and one of the rea­sons why the film remains a potent exam­ple of fem­i­nist cinema.

One of the most suc­cess­ful R‑rated films ever, Aliens was prob­a­bly nev­er intend­ed to become a bea­con of fem­i­nist hope. The fact it pass­es the Bechdel test is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal, but it’s because of these rea­sons, not in spite of them, that this genre clas­sic became such an pos­i­tive sym­bol of gen­der equal­i­ty. Aliens is not a women’s sto­ry, but it is a woman’s sto­ry, and this was per­haps some­thing the film’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox didn’t think they could bank on for a sec­ond time. The stu­dio orig­i­nal­ly request­ed that Cameron write Ellen Rip­ley out due to a pay dis­pute. Instead, thanks to the director’s per­sis­tence, they end­ed up pay­ing Sigour­ney Weaver 30 times more than what she earned for Alien.

From the start, Weaver intend­ed to play the role of Rip­ley with a mat­ter-of-fact­ness. She felt that Ripley’s beliefs were rat­tled when, as she put it, she sud­den­ly has to work on instinct and emo­tion rather than intel­lect.” This is what makes the char­ac­ter such a endur­ing fem­i­nist icon: Rip­ley isn’t tough like a man, she’s tough like a woman.

To high­light the dif­fer­ence, take Jenette Goldstein’s incred­i­ble turn as Pri­vate Vasquez. Butch, mus­cu­lar, aggres­sive and fear­less, Vasquez plays the stereo­typ­i­cal gun-tot­ing tough chick; bad-ass because she is more mas­cu­line than fem­i­nine. Rip­ley, on the oth­er hand, doesn’t run grace­ful­ly, can’t throw a strap of grenades very far, is phys­i­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble and rather emo­tion­al – and yet she is also a force to be reck­oned with, not only to her col­leagues but to her supe­ri­ors. She earns respect as an indi­vid­ual irre­spec­tive of her gen­der, for her courage, deci­sive­ness, lead­er­ship, sta­mi­na and iron will.

In con­trast to most horror/​action films, the female lead in Aliens is not there for our view­ing plea­sure, recum­bent and defined by the male lead. Rip­ley is there to car­ry the sto­ry and take us on a jour­ney. She isn’t made-up or dressed in flat­ter­ing clothes, her hair doesn’t bil­low and while she does make an appear­ance in her under­wear, so do the men. And unlike the tit­il­lat­ing strip scene in Alien, Ripley’s semi-clad scene at the end of Aliens isn’t gra­tu­itous; it sig­nals the end of the ordeal as opposed to her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Rip­ley isn’t seduced or dom­i­nat­ed by any of the male char­ac­ters, instead she func­tions as an equal, and because of her per­son­al qual­i­ties and expe­ri­ence takes the lead amongst the group.

Final­ly, there’s the issue of moth­er­hood. It’s true, women can and do have babies and it is a for­ma­tive ele­ment of many women’s lives. And it’s true that many women, includ­ing non-moth­ers, pos­sess the instinct to nur­ture and pro­tect, virtues that aren’t typ­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with strength and pow­er in action/​horror cin­e­ma. But in this 1986 genre block­buster, Rip­ley unashamed­ly dis­plays all of these typ­i­cal­ly fem­i­nine char­ac­ter­is­tics and they’re not con­de­scend­ed to, ignored or even incon­ve­nient; on the con­trary, Ripley’s rela­tion­ship with Newt is a dri­ving force of her char­ac­ter and the narrative.

While Rid­ley Scott’s orig­i­nal might have paved the way for the char­ac­ter as an unlike­ly action hero, it was Cameron’s Aliens that solid­i­fied her as a cham­pi­on for gen­der equal­i­ty. Aliens stands as a cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant fem­i­nist arte­fact because of the fact that one sex doesn’t tri­umph over anoth­er. Wom­an­hood is not com­pro­mised to fit into a man’s world, even in the face of a ter­ror­is­ing alien species. Both gen­ders play an equal role in the fight for survival.

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