Same-sex relationships

Xenomorph King

MemberOvomorphMarch 25, 20123805 Views52 Replies

Hi, guys and girls. I’m new here, so be please go easy on me. LOL. I don’t know if a topic like this has been posted before, or whether there’s been any sort of discussion about this, but, as a gay [i]Alien[/i] fan (a rare breed?), I’d like to know how you’d feel about same-sex relationships (romantic or strictly sexual) in [i]Prometheus[/i] or any future [i]Alien[/i]-related movie. The reason why I ask this is because I was listening to the [i]Alien[/i] audio commentary ([i]Alien Quadrilogy[/i] edition) the other day, and about the 1:15:36 mark Ridley Scott begins to (surprisingly enough) talk about casual relationships of both a hetero- and homosexual nature in space. I include here my transcription of this particular bit of the audio commentary. Ridley Scott: “I thought, Why not? Relationships would be discouraged. You know, the idea of casual sex would be normal – for obvious reasons. ’Cause if you’ve got seven on board, someone’s gonna get left out. Right? And so, casual relationships – whether it’s male or female, male with male, female with female – seems to be okay in space when you’re locked away in a big tin can for years on end. Could be years, plus hypersleep. So it might feel like a year. You might be away ten years. So I tried to instigate that, and there was a suggestion of that with Dallas and with Veronica. An idea of, ‘Should we infer something here? Should we have an inference of, you know, a lesbian, a gay relationship or not?’ It would have been kind of interesting. Today I’d probably do that, just to thicken up the layers in the characters.” Now, I’m not saying that Ridley will go as far as to do something like this with such a massively expensive, high-profile film project as [i]Prometheus[/i] (or, rather, that the film studio would permit such a thing), but again, as a gay fan, I’d dearly like to see some variation in a genre that consists of mainly heterosexual relationships. I mean, not everyone is heterosexual, right? So, would you be alienated (excuse the pun) by even the “inference” of a same-sex casual or romantic relationship in a film like [i]Prometheus[/i]?

Xenomorph King
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March 26, 2012

@ FoulOleRon Oh yes! That scene between Ripley and Lambert was one of the deleted scenes. I don't think it was in the novelization, though. (I read it for the first time a few weeks ago.) Thanks for mentioning it. Yes, that definitely established the possibility of casual relationships on the Nostromo. And I also remember that the word "natural" was included in parentheses alongside each person's sex in the Nostromo crew dossiers included as an Easter egg on the 1999 DVD edition of [i]Alien[/i] (the 20th Anniversary edition?). Interesting. Again, thanks for bringing this up.

Xenomorph King
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March 26, 2012

@ Gigeresque You make a very good point about stereotypes. I think lot of people will be surprised to know that MANY homosexuals are completely "straight-acting". Effeminate gays/masculine lesbians in film and television are [i]so[/i] last century. Anyway, I'm glad to see another gay voice added to the conversation.

alteredstate.
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March 26, 2012

i personally dont mind the sexuality of the crew members or if it is shown it just adds to the texture of the characters and wont be something i think that will be lingered on for long but if it is thats fine . I live in a city that's defined as the gay capital of europe and its fine i take people on their personality and what they are like as people sexuality doesn't even enter the mind when meeting new people unless im specifically asked and i tell them i'm straight and thats it. I never have prejudice against it because you can alienate some damn fine people just because of a silly thing as sexuality .

Jeremy
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March 26, 2012

@Xenomorph King: I thought I was the only one! haha :)

Heustess
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March 27, 2012

I said; ''Brego since When is Evolution a Position? It's A FACT! And don't believe that the Creationist movement is some sort of retard, obscure and medieval cult: Look up Zizek's veiws on this or look at 5;23 to 7:90 of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpgRHm7BOMQ'' And you craigamore and Brego conclude that I believe that God and science cannot Coexist within a person? What about Mendel and his Laws, father of all genetic studies? Was he not a monk? I talked about today's rise religious fundamentalism as a modern phenomenon which was not led by primitive cavemen, but people you can met up with any time. I NEVER denounced religion as a whole. After all brego you said : "Re Christianity, I couldnt care less what they think because Im an Evolutionist. Christians, and for that matter people of most faiths have some very strange, archaic ideas that simply dont seems to go away. Its funny that we live in so called modern times and yet there are still people (sorry America) who think the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Come to think of it, prometheus is gonna piss a lot of these people off, nothing to do with sexual orientation, more to do with Creationism." To this I disagree. I believe that today's Christians are up to date with current affairs, fundamentalists or not. And the example I gave was that of a guy who denounces both Richard Dawkins and his "vulgar atheism" and religious fundamentalists who believe in intelligent design... Also Brego your answer is ambiguous, did you understand that I believed that all religious people were against evolution, or that not all fundamentalists were against it. In any case Fundamentalism is the demand for a strict adherence to specific theological doctrine and a literal interpretation of the scared texts. So yes, if you consider your self a fundamentalist[b] in this sense[/b], in any case then you are against evolution.

genjitsu17
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March 27, 2012

Times are changing, even now. I have no doubt that by the time we can colonize space, we will be accepted as normal. I live in Georgia, butt hole of the south, and I can see it happening now. People can't afford to keep this inequality going. I enjoy peoples' differences. It makes life more interesting. Thank you to everyone for showing that this forum can be a mature, understanding place!! (Even if we don't agree on how this movie will go.) LOL

I may work for the company, but im really an OK guy.

Gehirn
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March 27, 2012

[quote]What about Mendel and his Laws, father of all genetic studies? Was he not a monk?[/quote] There are plenty of Gaia worshippers too fighting in the name of "science"!

Xenomorph King
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March 27, 2012

Wow. I'm amazed at the overall response to this topic. Glad that you other gay fans don't feel so alone anymore. LOL. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who's taken the time to reply to this topic. Your thoughts and opinions are very much appreciated. And hey, hopefully I can contribute more interesting topics in the future. *crosses fingers*

Lord Ennio
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March 27, 2012

In my humble opinion, to put an issue such as this one front and center(in a film such as this one), would be alienating certain characters, and thus taking away from what they have to offer overall. The idea would be to focus on their skills as crew members first, and everything else second. I remember reading an article online by J.J. Abrams about the same issue. He basically said that it would be a cool idea to have a gay character in a Star Trek film, but as with Ridley Scott's response, the idea is not to put them center stage, as one of you here put it, but "to contextualize it."