Ridley Scott’s Alien is often renowned as one of the first feminist sci-fi films. With its powerful central female character and motifs around reproduction and sexual violence, the film is lauded as being a cornerstone of feminist film theory.
The film is also super gay. Not only is Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) the strong, androgynous femme fatale we can all swoon over, it is also a film that - according to David McIntee, author of the Alien study ‘Beautiful Monsters’ - “plays very deliberately with male fears of female reproduction”. The male characters are emasculated in various ways, suffering blows to their male ego or experiencing things women are expected to. Through a queer film theorist lens, this film explores gender, sexuality and bodies in a way revolutionary even for today.
Alien came out in 1979, a time where being a woman on screen meant you were often a scantily clad damsel in distress. Far from the representation of James Bond’s Dr. Goodhead (I mean, come on) in Moonraker, released in the same year, Ellen Ripley has no romantic interest throughout the film and there are very little indicators to her gender and sexuality. She shows no maternal instincts, except toward the ship’s cat, which is kind of the gayest thing I’ve ever heard.
The crew are constructed as gender neutral through the use of identical genderless uniforms and the use of only their second names - stripping the femininity or masculinity given through first names. The ship’s mechanics complain about being paid less than everyone, including the ship’s two female crew. This was in a time where women were earning just 60 percent of the wages of their male counterparts. Ripley’s personality is constructed as quite neutral, and she doesn’t lean into docile femininity or ego-driven masculinity. She’s strong but empathetic; courageous but sensitive. She’s stripped of sexuality and gender, making her a queer protagonist who deconstructs the gender norms of the time.
Film critics argue that Alien explores the anxieties and fears men have in response to empowered women and a future of sexual equality. Ripley’s gender neutral character, stripped of motherhood, romantic dependency and other typically female expectations, is in stark contrast to the aliens in the film.
When Ripley asserts authority in the team after Dallas is caught by the alien, Ash, the ‘male’ robot, feels threatened and attempts to dominate over Ripley to regain his masculinity. He’s a genderless robot, however he exemplifies constructed toxic masculinity - aggression, a fragile ego and stubbornness. He attacks Ripley, who’s exemplifying gender neutrality and sexual equality, by beating her.
He shoves a porn magazine rolled up into a phallic shape down her throat - symbolically raping her. A queer reading could suggest this is ‘corrective’ assault to attempt to quash the queerness and sexuality of women. The pornographic nature of the magazine suggests he is trying to make her succumb to her ‘truth’ as a woman - a sexual object. The patriarchy is battling queerness here, before Ash is defeated.
Kane is attacked by the facehugger, and it orally rapes him and impregnates him through an act of sexual domination. Later, Kane is again penetrated when the alien bursts out through his chest in the infamously horrifying birth scene. Kane is the powerless male - destroyed and emasculated by giving birth or being ‘penetrated as opposed to penetrating’ - highlighting the panic society reacts to gender diversity and challenging stereotypes and norms with.
The alien is constructed as having both phallic and vaginal imagery - the gooey and soft mouth with erect tail, head and inner jaw, complete with oozing white liquid. The overt and grotesque sexual imagery in the alien is designed to evoke fear and anxiety, which is how society was already responding to sexual openness and breaking out of what it means to be typically ‘male’ and ‘female’. The alien’s phallic and vaginal components are used together in stark contrast from the traits and qualities usually assigned to them, thus deconstructing notions of gender. The alien’s body is overtly sexual and blurs our ideas of anatomy. The horror and sexual violence from the alien, including the penetration of Lambert and forcing Dallas into a womb-like egg as an allusion to motherhood, suggests that having one pair of genitals doesn’t make you inherently violent, but that society’s construction of gender is to blame.
Ridley Scott’s Alien is a queer text throughout - exploring notions of gender norms and stereotypes, gender neutrality, sexuality and bodies. The famous last scene where Ripley is in tiny panties and a tight singlet for the first time has baffled queer and feminist film theorists. Why is she only now, with no humans around, being sexualised? My answer is that maybe after all the intense dialogue and analysis, we deserve to get a bit of eye candy for our hot queer hero.
