Is Ripley a 'compensatory' character that allows Scott's Alien to unleash unconscious rage against 'Mother'?

Very Freudian.

Wow, your lines are poetry, I think.

Thanks Ati - and yes, Freudian nakedlunch, but I don't take that as a negative thing. To say 'Freudian' seems to knock my ideas into a box, as if to say 'that's over there, I've named it, it needn't trouble us anymore'. But the questions, the themes in Alien (and A:C) are still there, larger than life, and it's worth thinking about them, and how they relate to our pleasure as we watch. If they weren't there, the Alien franchise would be boring and meh. What Giger did with his creature, and what Scott did with Alien, is to weave these hidden desires, fears, horrors and taboos into the visual and movie medium, for us to dine upon, be entertained and provoked by. Giger and Alien is in the realm of the obscene, transgressive desire, that lives within all of us. We are the Aliens really. . . .

wow very well written, articulate and thought provoking thread! A very interesting read murnau!! Upvoted 

'At that moment, the xeno was expressing the point of view of the audience, not its own.' -- Exciting thought, more than exciting...

'Ripley penetrates the xeno with a bolt, and triumphs. The moment is passed, the audience is lulled with peaceful music, and we forget that, for a moment there, we sat on the shoulder of the monster, wanting what it wanted, looking that way it was looking.'

murnau - Believe it or not, at the end of the movie when the xeno is falling out of the Narcissus shuttlecraft, I always feel that I am together with the monster. Not on its shoulder, but I am the monster. :) Of course, it is because of the editing and others may feel the same but the act of throwing out is so real. Yeah, don't analyse that, please. :)

I should add that I do not feel anything towards the xeno, there is no sympathy at all! And I'd like to stress that I don't like the second part of Alien at all. I LOVE the first half of it, but the second half is not for me. Perhaps these two things are connected, that's why the end of the movie seems to be uncomfortable.

Two interesting/relevant things:

Probably you know that the script of Alien was put together from two main storylines, we see two movies in one.

Ridley Scott originally wanted to kill Ripley at the end of the movie, that would have been a totally different version of the triumph you mention...

Love your analysis especially the last part regarding Ripley and Xeno. Very well put. Kudos :)

Lawrence of Arabia - What do you feel at the end of Alien? :)

I liked it. I really enjoyed seeing Weaver in those tiny panties and the crotch shots lol Scotts original ending sounds amazing though.

I never found Sigourney Beaver, sorry Weaver, attractive until Alien 3 with a shaved head. Is that weird? Never found her attractive in Alien, Aliens, or Ghostbusters 1 and 2. Yeah those crotch shots with that thick b**h, haha. This thread is dirty and I feel violated, just kidding. Great article by the way.

Dr. Curt Connors i totally agree, perhaps it was the '80s perm. The shaved head really suited her, and her look in Resurrection was also very strong but feminine. There is real strength and determination in her eyes.

Daniels and even Shaw were too doe-eyed for me. Bring in Katee Sackhoff as the next lead!!!

@lRaptus   Katee Sackhoff, hell yeah, yes please! Her in Battlestar and Riddick! I think you just cast the new Alien movie female lead, if there is another one. And yeah I think you are 100% right about the perm.

'I never found Sigourney Beaver, sorry Weaver, attractive until Alien 3 with a shaved head. Is that weird?'

Not weird at all. Probably that is your fetish. Observe your childhood and you can find its root. :)

I also found Weaver attractive in Alien 3, I love my women tough lol I've never found her cute till I watched Alien XD and yes IRaptus! Her resurrection look was badass. I do disagree about the doey eye girls, Weaver was one in 79 and, idk, cute girls being tough gets me :P

Lawrence of Arabia no worries mate. I like Katherine Waterston as an actress and hope that she continues in the Alien franchise, and be allowed to grow into the next steely-eyed heroine like Weaver lol. But until then, bring in Katee Sackhoff

Thanks for all the replies, and for the upvote! A fun conversation . . .

I’ve always found Weaver impressive, feminine but with androgynous characteristics, complex, elegant, intelligent, sexy as one part of her 3 dimensional persona. I think she was miscast in Ghostbusters, and too intelligent for B Murray’s smug clowning (watched it recently – Venkman would be done for sexual harassment these days, he doesn’t hear ‘no’ when she says ‘no’).

It interests me that the replies here are comfortable joking around with beaver/weaver but not comfortable acknowledging any of this topic’s ideas about aggressive, destructive desire, symbolized by the xeno. It’s as if the xeno is both visible and invisible, the horrid elephant in the room, so to speak. We all know it’s there, and our conspiracy of silence fills the space around it.

Fascinating that you see yourself as the monster falling, Ati. That’s probably personal imaginative stuff that places you there. Thanks for sharing. I haven’t looked at that scene in that way, though I’ve noticed that the moment of the expulsion/fall is a repeated moment, shown from different angles in succession – it is a kind of ‘frozen moment’, the part of the dream that keeps coming back to us.

I did know that Ridley wanted Ripley (Ridley/Ripley?) to die at the end in an earlier draft. I’m not sure what you mean by 2 movies spliced together, though, Ati. If she had died, we might not be talking about the movie after all these years. In my thoughts, Ripley being killed was ultimately unbearable for Scott because – in the dream logic I’ve sketched – that would mean that the destructive rage wins, and the guilt of that is too much. The strong compensatory female figure allows the rage to run riot, but must be suppressed at the end of the dream. Strangely, as Ripley goes to sleep in the escape pod, we the audience ‘wake up’, exit the movie/dream, safe in the knowledge that the monster has, for now, been put down. It sits there in the box, until the next movie, or the next time we watch. We want the monster to burn and rage, just as we want Ripley/Shaw/Daniels to put it back in the box for us.

The scenes in A3 and Covenant that show the point-of-view of the xeno are mistakes, I think. The xeno is empty, it is the absent space where our own dangerous horrors and urges take root. You could say that we are put inside the monster for a moment, seeing through its eyes, but this is too strong an identification, too conscious. The xeno is so extreme that we cannot sit inside it. It is totally ‘other’ – it is us, but can never be experienced by us in our waking life.

btw, check out my new film blog 'thoughts of murnau' on wordpress - review of A:C and Spiderman:Homecoming on there. . .

murnau its funny you mention the conspiracy of silence around what the xenomorph represents. To me the xenomorph is the metaphoric opposite to the idiom of the elephant in the room.  Whereas the elephant represents a large conspicuous problem that society does not wish to address, and is happy to sweep under the rug; such as social diseases like substance abuse, domestic violence, lust for the flesh, Sexual fetishes etc.

The Xenomorph is the lurking black spider that secretly wishes to embrace and indulge such desires. That is why you never really get a look at the beast in ALIEN, because no-one wants to see their demons in full, and in the light, and acknowledge its presence as a whole.

And perhaps that is why we skirt around the topics you mention, but joke about it lightheartedly instead?   

You are totally correct about Weaver being miscast in Ghostbusters. That role did not do her justice. 

'though I’ve noticed that the moment of the expulsion/fall is a repeated moment, shown from different angles in succession – it is a kind of ‘frozen moment’, the part of the dream that keeps coming back to us.' - by murnau

Perfect description of the scene! If I'm not mistaken that is the only scene in the movie where we see moments in slow motion building meaning with the help of rain/water (they used water in the scene)=death, falling=death, darkness=death - echoed in Scott's Blade Runner well-known Roy Batty scene from the end of the movie where Batty is dying, it is raining, and dream-like slow motion is used.

To the OP- Great posts on this question! I never thought of Ripley that way until Resurrection when she  made inuendos toward the crew. She was never sexed up and so that's how I saw her- I think everyone watched that climbing into the suit scene a few times. In fact, I recall less than a year ago one or two members were posting close ups of...umm....oh....what we now might call granny panties.

@murnau  You're welcome