Alien - Analysis of the Movie - part 1: Introduction; rel. to '2001: A Space Odyssey'

CATEGORY: MOVIES; WARNING: THIS ANALYSIS CONTAINS SPOILERS!!

[Image at left from the Wikipedia 'Alien (film)' page; "Alien movie poster",[a] licensed under fair use via Wikipedia.]














Welcome to the analysis of Alien. Buttons at the bottom of each post enable navigation through the parts of the analysis.

Alien is a 1979 science-fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. The film's title refers to a highly aggressive extraterrestrial creature that stalks and kills the crew of a spaceship. Dan O'Bannon wrote the screenplay from a story he wrote with Ronald Shusett, drawing influence from previous works of science fiction and horror.[b]


There are visual similarities, as well as similarities of theme, between Alien and Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, as described below.

Near the end of Alien, with Ripley aboard the shuttle (above left), we see a view through the shuttle's window of the spaceship Nostromo exploding (above right). As the shuttle moves away from the exploding ship, part of the blast and light from the explosion travels outward and overtakes the shuttle, resulting in the pattern of yellow light shown at left being visible from the shuttle.







The above pattern of yellow light from Alien, is meant to be reminiscent of the portion of the Space Odyssey 'stargate' shown at left. In A Space Odyssey, the stargate includes a streaming series of varied colors and shapes that astronaut David Bowman, the film's protagonist, sees as he moves rapidly through space from the area of the planet Jupiter, toward Earth, aboard his EVA pod.

The bright white light coming from the thrusters of Ripley's shuttle (pictured at left), is patterned after these two bright white images (below left and right) that David Bowman sees, after having passed through the streaming portion of the stargate.

  

Top left: Dallas squats in one of the Nostromo's narrow passages while in search of the alien creature. Top right: Lambert holds a position sensing device which displays Dallas's physical location on a screen. Above left: The dot approaching from the left (leaving a 'trail' behind) on the viewing screen of Lamberts's position sensing device, indicates the physical location of the alien creature in relation to that of Dallas (whose location is indicated by the right-hand dot), and shows that the alien is getting closer to Dallas. The grid, dots, and dashes on the screen give it an appearance reminiscent of the play area screens of some of the video arcade games of the period (late 1970's/early 80's). Above right: The play area screen of the 1980's video arcade game, PacMan. [Image afrom the Wikipedia 'PacMan' page, licensed under fair use via Wikipedia; edited for clarity.] Note its rough similarity to the image on the Nostromo crew memeber's screen, in that it consists of lines and dots arranged in a grid-like pattern. Basically, what Ridley Scott is doing here is inserting humor into a serious situation (the situation with Dallas), by drawing an association between this situation, and scenarios in video arcade games. Scott is effectively making light of the situation in his film. This corresponds to Kubrick's occasional insertion of humor into, and thus making light of, serious situations in his own films (see below).

From A Space Odyssey: For a brief moment while David Bowman is disconnecting the Discovery One spaceship mission computer, HAL, not long after HAL has killed the other four astronauts on the spaceship, the top of Bowman's green space helmet looks somewhat similar to a top view (i.e., a view from above) of the head of Kermit the Frog. This is an example of Kubrick inserting humor into a serious situation (the disconnection of HAL is one of the most crucial events of A Space Odyssey. See the analysis of the film on this blog for a description of its plot, underlying themes, etc.).



a. Poster for Alien: The poster art copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, 20th Century Fox, the publisher of the film or the graphic artist.
b. Wikipedia, 'Alien (film)'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film).

Alien analysis - part 3: Representiation of Jungian archetypes in the film

CATEGORY: MOVIES

Jungian psychology (also known as analytic psychology or analytical psychology) is a school of psychology incorporating the ideas of Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1971). Jungian psychology emphasizes the primary importance of the individual psyche and the personal quest for wholeness.[a] In Jungian psychology, the collective unconscious is a form of the unconscious (that part of the mind containing memories and impulses of which the individual is not aware) common to mankind as a whole and originating in the inherited structure of the brain. It is distinct from the personal unconscious, which arises from the experience of the individual. According to Jung, the collective unconscious contains archetypes, or universal primordial images and ideas.[b] In this final post on Alien, we will discuss the representation in the film of two of Ripley's Jungian archetypes, her shadow and (the dark side of) her Self.

In Jungian psychology, the shadow is an unconscious complex defined as the repressed, suppressed, or disowned qualities of the conscious self.[c] Among the Nostromo crew, Lambert is the 'personification' of Ripley's shadow, as suggested by her weak, instinctual nature (see screencaps below).

As the chest-burster begins to erupt from Kane's chest (above left), Lambert displays a primitive, child-like emotional reaction upon being spattered with blood (above right).

Above left and right: Lambert goes into a state of complete hysteria when she is directly confronted by the alien creature.


Lambert is effectively the personification of that part of Ripley that is weak and instinctual, and that can result in hysterical behavior; that is, for Lambert herself, these qualities are dominant. Within Ripley, however, they remain repressed, and/or are actively suppressed by her, allowing her to behave in in an efficient and effective manner throughout most of the film. Certain events bring about 'panicky' behavior from Ripley, such as when Ash attempts to choke her by ramming a rolled-up magazine into her mouth (see below), but she is able to control herself and keep from lapsing into complete hysteria during such events.

Note Ripley's panicked facial expression as Ash tries to choke her to death with a rolled-up magazine.



The Self archetype in Jungian psychology signifies the unification of the conscious and the unconscious in a person; it represents the person's psyche as a whole. In Greek mythology, Persephone (also known as Kore or Cora) was the wife of Hades, king of the underworld (i.e., of Hell). In his "The Psychological Aspects of the Kore", Jung connects the Kore with the Self, saying, "The "Kore" has her psychological counterpart in those archetypes which I have called the self or supraordinate personality on the one hand, and the anima on the other.

"The figure of the Kore that interests us here belongs to the type of supraordinate personality. ...

"Sometimes the Kore and mother-figures slither down altogether to the animal kingdom, the favourite representatives [including] the cat or the snake or the bear, or else some black monster of the underworld like the crocodile, or other salamander-like, saurian creatures. ..."[d] (emphasis in original).

For Jungian psychologist Mary-Louise von Franz, "[T]he dark side of the Self is the most dangerous thing of all, precisely because the Self is the greatest power in the psyche."[e]

The alien has the appearance of a saurian (i.e., reptilian) creature, and it is extremely powerful and evil; it represents the 'personification' of the dark side of Ripley’s Self.



a. Wikipedia, 'Analytical psychology'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_psychology.
b. 'collective unconscious'. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 16 Feb. 2016. URL = http://www.britannica.com/topic/collective-unconscious.
c. Wikipedia, 'Analytical psychology'. Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_psychology.
d. Jung, C.G. "The Psychological Aspects of the Kore" in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 9, part 1. Princeton University Press, 1969. pp. 182, 184.
e. M-L von Franz, "The Process of Individuation" in Carl Jung ed., Man and His Symbols . London: Aldus Books, 1964. p. 234.

Alien analysis - part 2: The alien creature; rel. to 'A Space Odyssey' (cont'd)

CATEGORY: MOVIES









Ridley Scott's alien creature.


The alien is an extraterrestrial species that is the primary antagonist of the film under analysis here. The aliens are predatory creatures. They violently implant their offspring inside living hosts before erupting from their chests. Their design evokes both male and female sexual images.

Having established a link between Alien and Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, in the previous post, we could theorize that the predatory creature in the Alien movie is, at least in part, a representation of the feminine alien from A Space Odyssey which, as described in the analysis of Kubrick's movie on this blog, represents a kind of feminine evil. However, as indicated above, Ridley Scott’s creature embodies a dual sexual imagery - the creature itself incorporates both male and female characteristics. The alien monsters actually represent a combination of the evil feminine and the evil masculine: they represent a 'merging' of feminine evil with the 'Satanic' forces discussed in the 2001 analysis, i.e., with 'evil Jewishness'. In sum, we could think of the alien as representing the evil hermaphroditic Jews discussed in the 2001 analysis. In Scott's movie, the alien creature brings out the worst in the crew members of Nostromo; this symbolizes the fact that in real life, evil hermaphroditic Jews have brought out the worst in all of us. This worst in us is now destroying us as a society.[a]

The life cycle of the aliens incorporates several distinct phases: they begin their lives as an egg, which hatches a creature that attaches itself to a 'host' (i.e., a human being) by latching onto its face. This creature then 'impregnates' the host with an embryo which, after a relatively brief period of gestation, erupts from the host's chest. These two parts of the alien life cycle symbolize how the evil hermaphroditic Jews are able to 'get inside of us' (i.e., inside our psyches) in order to spread their evil.

Above left: A 'facehugger'. Above right: A 'chestburster'. Note that the shape of the portion of its body shown here, suggests phallic imagery, while its teeth makes its mouth reminiscent of a vagina dentata.


The creature that erupts from the host's chest then matures to an adult phase, shedding its skin.

The fact that the physiological form of the alien creature changes, in part symbolizes how the evil hermaphroditic Jews operate like 'shape-shifters', so that it is not easy to get a grasp on them; this makes it hard to identify exactly who they are. Also, the manifestations of their evil change somewhat over time, such that we tend not to recognize their evil for what it is, and are thus unable to get to the source of it.

While Ripley is making some adjustments at one of the space shuttle's control panels near the end of the film, the alien's head (indicated by the arrow) is right in front of her, but she doesn't recognize it for what it is, because she is so close to it that from her perspective, it blends in with the surrounding pipes that are part of the shuttle itself. This symbolizes how we are unable to see the true source of the current evil in our society (the evil of the hermaphroditic Jews), even though this evil is effectively manifested right in front of us, in part because we are 'too close' to it to recognize it for what it is. It also symbolizes how the cohorts of the evil Jews, such as certain high-ranking Freemasons and Mormons, 'blend in' with their surroundings (i.e., within greater society), such that we fail to identify them as being evil.


a. Contained in part 68 of the analysis of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey on this blog, is a discussion of Kubrick's belief (as symbolized in his movie) that the hermaphroditic characteristics, as well as the evil itself, of these specific (real-life) Jews, are due to their suffering from a medical condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). Of course, this doesn't mean that the creature in Alien itself suffers from CAH. The creature's hermaphroditic characteristics are a representation of those of the aforementioned Jews.