Women in Alien 3 :: essays papers

Women in Alien 3 This morning I was struck by the realization that Ive beengoing to movies for fifty years now starting when I was eighteenmonths old, my receive would take me on a streetcar every Thursday togo shopping, have lunch, and go to a matinee and stage show at thePantages or the Orpheum in downtown Los Angeles. Clearly I likemovies and I usually find something enjoyable even more or less bad ones.I can hardly remember a time when I have seriously consideredwalking out of a film. But I considered it yesterday afternoon asI was watching Aliens 3 I was thinking it was the mostunremittingly unpleasant film believe experience I could remember. This reaction has to be seen in the context of my own tastes andbiases. Science fiction and horror films are my least favoritegenres. I dont enjoy be frightened in the movies, as somepeople clearly do. Nonetheless, knowing that nearly every memberof the womens community in Tallahassee where I lived at the timewas wildly enthusiast ic about Sigourney Weavers Ripley, I didbring myself to see Aliens the second film in this series, and Ihave to admit, I too, was entertained and pleased by the sight ofthis powerful female hero doing her Rambo number against what womens rightist theoretician Lynda Zwinger called the uncanny alien bugmother. Since Ripleys ongoing battles against this monstrosity and againstthe greedy machinations of the Company back home, which wants tocapture the monster and use it as a biological warfare weapon, havebecome sort of feminist cult films, I figured Id better be amongthe first to check out Aliens 3 and see what happened to Ripleyand Newt (the little girl she rescued from the monster at the endof Aliens). Well, theyve fallen on hard times. They crash landnear an island used as a prison for 25 of the hardest corecriminals on earth--murderers, rapists, etc.--all of whom havebecome members of a kind of Christian fundamentalistic cult thathasnt done a thing to temper their rampant misogyn y. Everyoneelse on the space capsule bringing the sleeping survivors of theNostromo back to earth has died except Ripley. Shes been asleepfor 50 years or so and has been shaken up in the crash, so sheslooking a little the worse for wear with a black eye and deathlypallor. what is more in this latter day version of a medievaldungeon shes landed they dress her in convict gray and shave herhead which makes her fit right in with the inmates.