Alien Through de Beauvoir and Cixous

An Alien View

Virginia Woolf was adept at asking what if questions and then addressing them.   What if Shakespeare had a sister?  How might her life be different from her brother’s?  Woolf understood that men were unable or unwilling to grasp the environment women were forced to live.  It would not have been surprising for Woolf to ponder the question: “What would happen if men had to live in the same world they force upon women?”  Had Woolf lived in 1979, she might have found an answer in the movie Alien.   Interpreting Alien through Simone Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, and from Helene Cixous’s “The Laugh of Medusa,” reveals an environment where men are looked upon as objects by the ruling power structure, female characters are given equality to their male counterparts, an inability of men to free themselves from reproductive dominance of another being, and in the end, establishes a view for men to better understand the environment in which women live. 

The environment sets the tone for Alien.  Several people crew a large mining ship returning to earth.  They receive a distress signal that ultimately allows a hostile alien being to board their ship.  A disagreement occurs between Ripley, an Officer, and Dallas, the Commander.   Ripley questions a command decision and receives an exasperated answer, “It happens because that’s what the Company wants to happen.  Standard procedure is to do what they tell you to do” (Scott).  Although Dallas is the commander, he is compliant and obedient to the whims of the Company. Afterwards, it is discovered that the Company enabled the alien to board the ship and considers the crew expendable.  Beauvoir wrote, “To pose Woman is to pose the absolute Other, without reciprocity, denying against all experience that she is a subject, a fellow human being” (1266).  A parallel is present between the Company’s view of the crew, including the males, and Beauvoir’s account of men’s view of women when they are perceived as objects.

The crew of the ship consists of four males and two females.  There is little evidence indicating the women are stereotyped or categorized.  Ripley, the main character, is portrayed as intelligent, strong, and decisive.  That women are portrayed as either good or evil is prominent in Beauvoir’s writing (1266).  Woolf also writes that women did not have the ability to explore opportunities for work or their craft  (897).   Ripley’s portrayal breaks the mold of traditional roles assigned to women.  She is not narrowly construed as the mother, the good woman, or the object of desire.  The lack of differentiation between the men and women suggest equality, lessens the perception of femininity, and strengthens the notion of shared dependence for survival.

Perhaps the most striking imagery is the alien dominance over the men through the use of phallic symbols.  Early in Alien, the character Kane investigates eggs he finds on a crashed space ship.  An egg opens and an organism jumps and attaches itself to his face.   It forces a tube down his throat and lays an egg.  Later, an infant alien rips out of Kane’s stomach.  The imagery is reflective of a forced copulation and impregnation of a man.  In addition, the symbolism suggests that a man gave birth to a creature reflective of man’s sexual dominance.   As the creature grows, it gains a second set of teeth and a second jaw.  When the alien strikes, the second jaw emerges and kills the victim.  Not only is the creature itself phallic, but so is second jaw and the manner in which it kills.   These scenes are highly reflective of Cixous’s thoughts on masculinity, “Though masculine sexuality gravitates around the penis, engendering that centralized body under the dictatorship of its parts … “ (1955).  For the alien, functions of survival, hunger, and reproduction are all symbolized with the phallic symbol.  In effect, the alien takes on the masculine dominant role over the male crew and the audience.

 When the aspects are placed together, the environment portrays men with little authority, it equalizes the sexes, and it subjects men to the sexual and reproductive needs of something more dominant than they are.  Though extreme, it does demonstrate an environment where men are at the whims of dominant forces and severely limited in their responses and actions.  An environment reflective of what women historically went through and a scenario Virginia Woolf might consider revealing to men.   Woolf and Cixous might also appreciate that the movie is not meant to demean or attack men, but demonstrates how much alike men and women can be when they give each other the freedom to be themselves. 

            Works Cited

Alien. Dir. Scott, Ridley. Perf. Tom Skerrit and Sigourney Weaver et al. 20^th Century Fox Distribution. 1979. DVD.

Beauvoir, Simone de.  The Second Sex. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010. 1261-1273. Print.

Cixous, Helene. “The Laugh of Medusa.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010.  1938-1960. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own.  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al.  2^nd ed. New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 2010. 892-905. Print.