Reproduction and the Maternal Body in the Alien series

Chapter 3: Alien 3

If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague… It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.

                                                    – Mick Huckabee, 1992

Don’t be afraid, I’m one of the family now.

– Ellen Ripley, Alien 3

Following on from the events of Aliens, Alien 3 continues the story of Ripley’s ongoing nightmare encounters with her deadly counterpart. Unlike the decades that passed between the previous films, Alien 3 features no lengthy ellipsis between instalments, instead, the nightmare immediately continues as the nuclear family representative of Ripley, Newt, Hicks (Michael Biehn) and the android Bishop (Lance Henrickson) are violently jettisoned from the ship, the Sulaco, following a fire sparked by a stowaway alien. Upon crash landing in an escape shuttle on a nearby planet, they are found by a colony of prisoners who are confined to the penal colony/mineral ore plant Fury-161, an establishment owned by Weyland-Yutani, the company desperate to capture the alien for their bio weapons division. A hostile environment from the offset, Ripley is awoken only to discover she is the sole survivor of the crash. Not only that, but she has unknowingly not only brought with her the creature capable of creating new alien life, but is herself the host of the new Alien Queen. While all the familiar sights are there – the vast region of outer space, the terrifying abject representations of reproduction, the feminist iconography of Ripley and the phallic terror of the alien – the film taps into early ‘90s anxiety around homosexuality, and the fear of contagion, in particular, HIV. This chapter will refer to Amy Taubin’s analysis of Alien 3, as well as analyse the themes that exist within the film’s narrative, and the influence of contemporary ‘90s social reality.

Authors Kirk Hampton and Carol MacKay describe Alien 3 as having “a time, energy, and emotive vacuum so intense it makes the preceding movies of the trilogy seem like musical comedies in comparison” (2002: 39). From the cramped conditions of the emergency vehicle to the claustrophobic interiors of the prison, the planet is represented as a dangerous, unsafe space shown often in close up and using low angles to emphasis the restricting and intense conditions. Low lighting is used throughout, and while the interior of the Sulaco is shown as a white, sterile, humanistic environment, the planet is gritty, industrial and infested with lice. Film theorist Mary Pharr argues:

David Fincher’s consciously profane exercise in existential gloom and glory is set on Fury 161, a prison/mining planet so bleak that it makes one long for the creepy quiet of the first film, and the crammed sets of the second. But that’s precisely Fincher’s point: Nature howls on the outside of this storm-soaked world, and man howls within its yellowish-brown bowels. Figuratively as well as literally, everybody’s trapped on Fury, with no escape pods available this time.

(Pharr, 2002: 137)

In the previous films, audiences soon became familiar with representations of reproduction within the mise-en-scène. The interiors of the Nostromo and the bowels of the colony on LV-426 both represented the female reproductive system, as does the interior of Fury-161. The dark, slippery, labyrinthine tunnels and corridors represent the fallopian tubes of female reproductive organs, and the alien’s lair represents the womb. Taubin argues that “[t]he alien’s basement lair, with its dripping pipes and sewage tunnels, represents not only the fear of the monstrous-feminine, but the homophobia as well. It’s the uterine and the anal plumbing entwined” (2002: 10). The horrific and the monstrous, it would appear, are not only shown through the manifestation of the alien and its relationship with the abject, but also within the mise-en-scène of the film. Not only are themes of abjection are visually represented throughout, from the close up shot of the empty alien egg on the Sulaco, to Ripley’s shuttle crash landing in the waters surrounding the outskirts of the prison community, to the monstrous birth of the alien, they are shown often in close up to emphasis the disgust and fear they represent.

Alien 3 takes the external danger of the alien manifestation and turns it into an internal terror, reiterating the anxieties of childbirth and infestation. Infestation is a theme that underlines the broader narrative of the film. The planet is infested with lice, a creature constantly reproducing to ensure their survival, much like humans and the alien. Ripley is now impregnated with the alien, and not only that, the breed in question is a Queen, one capable of securing the future of the species. The audience and Ripley learn this simultaneously as she lies under a cat scan device in her salvaged evacuation vehicle. As the camera moves up and down her body, the alien is revealed on a monitor in close-up. Grotesque razor sharp teeth are displayed while it rhythmically pounds next to her heart in an uncanny foetal position. Ripley herself now is the womb in which the alien resides, reverting the external abject horror to an internal threat.

Arguably, the resonances of the third film reflect real concerns surrounding abortion rights as well as HIV. During the early 1990s, the ‘abortion wars’ was still a taboo subject, with fiercely strong opinions on the rights of mothers and their unborn babies. An article published in 1992 for the New York Times highlights public opinion on abortion, and the general consensus on the hotly debated topic:

Seventy-three percent of Americans polled in 1990 were in favor of abortion rights. Seventy-seven percent polled also regard abortion as a kind of killing. (Forty-nine percent see abortion as outright murder, 28 percent solely as the taking of human life.) These figures represent the findings of the Harris and Gallup polls, respectively, and contain certain nuances of opinion within both attitudes. But the general conclusions are widely considered valid. In other words, most Americans are both for the choice of abortion as a principle and against abortion for themselves. One has to know nothing else to realize how conflicted a problem we have before and within us.

(Rosenblatt, 1992)

Ripley’s abortion rights are rescinded, and with them, her freedom, as she has no choice but to birth the beast in the most horrific forced caesarean. As past encounters have proven, including that of Kane in Alien, Ripley is fully aware she will not survive the birth. While the Queen gestates inside of her body, Ripley and the prisoners strive to kill the creature that is terrorizing Fury, formulating a plan to force the alien into the furnace, which ultimately becomes the place of Ripley’s death. The very being that Ripley has spent decades trying to escape from and destroy is now coalesced with her body, becoming part of her from which there is no escape and no chance of survival. As Taubin argues, “There is evidence to suggest that Alien 3 is, in its entirety, Ripley’s nightmare […] a nightmare from which she never awakens” (1992: 10).

The first occasion the spectator is witness Ripley’s integration with the prisoners takes place in the dining room. As Ripley stands in the doorway, she is framed within the centre of the screen from a low angle, in what should give her a domineering presence. Instead, her body language suggests she is nervous and unsure of her surroundings, as emphasised by showing her nervously scratching her arm and looking around at the all-male inmates. Wearing clothing identical to that of the convicts, her head has also been shaved, as witnessed in the previous scene, to protect her from the lice, which allows the spectator to observe her transformation into asexual inmate. This image cuts to a wide shot showing the prisoners as they sit in silence, observing Ripley as she awkwardly picks up a tray of food and finds a seat, including several close up shots showing their reaction to seeing a woman for the first time in years. The scene utilizes the male gaze, however, not to sexualise Ripley, but instead to objectify her as an outsider. Taubin argues that “[t]he film charts Ripley’s emotional course from despair to beyond despair to brief moment of rebirth (in community)” (1992: 10), which this scene depicts. However, the scene could be used to mediate early 90s’ gender equality in the work place. One could also argue that it suggests that Ripley herself has become a contagion, an external danger that is threatens to disrupt the order of the prisoners, and their “promise to God” (Alien 3) to banish both sex and women from their lives.

As exemplified, infestation is a theme that is prevalent throughout the film, a theme which Taubin compares to unease surrounding AIDS and HIV. The first case of AIDS was diagnosed the United States in 1981[F1] , (Morbidity and Morality Weekly Report, 2001) just eleven years before the release of Alien 3, and at the time of the film’s release, was still a significant threat to the homosexual and heterosexual communities.

AIDS is everywhere in the film. It’s in the danger surrounding sex and drugs. It’s in the metaphor of a mysterious deadly organism attacking an all-male community. It’s in the iconography of the shaven heads. Exhorting the prisoners to defy The Company, Ripley shouts, “They think we’re scum and they don’t give a fuck about one friend of yours who’s died”, an AIDS activism line if ever there was one.

(Taubin, 1992: 10)

In a poll organised by the Gallup Organisation in 1992, 57% of the voters agreed that homosexual lifestyle was not acceptable. An article in the Huffington Post revisits Mike Huckabee’s 1992 statements on homosexuals and the AIDS crisis, and his claims that the carriers of the disease should be isolated:

Huckabee said Saturday that his comments came at a time when “the AIDS crisis was just that – a crisis. We didn’t know exactly all the details of how extensive it was going to be. There was just a real panic in this country. If I were making those same comments today, I might make them a little differently.” In 1992, Huckabee wrote, “If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of the plague.

(Demillo, 2007)

Both the all male community that Ripley is incorporated into and Ripley herself represent the AIDS carriers that surrounded early ‘90s anxieties with the disease. Additionally to this representation, the needle that medical officer Clements (Charles Dance) uses to sedate Ripley furthers the narrative of AIDS infestation, along with an implied sex scene between the two. In close up, the audience is twice witness to Clements injecting Ripley as the needle penetrates her skin and an unknown fluid is injected into her, which both furthers unease around shared needles, and has specific phallic connotation. At the morgue, Ripley asks to see Newt’s body, and then requests that Clements performs an autopsy to certify how the child died. Unwilling to disclose information on the existence of the alien, Ripley states that the child may be the victim of cholera, a disease Clements states has not been reported in over two hundred years. Nonetheless, he performs the autopsy in the starkly lit, sanitary morgue. As the two stand over the body, saws and knives are shown in extreme close up hacking into the young girl, blood pouring out of her body and down the drain. Eventually, Clements breaks through the rib cage and opens her body, revealing organs that appear unaffected by any disease or infestation.

In her article, Taubin argues, “the film is all about the AIDS crisis and the threat to women’s reproductive rights” (1992, 10). Ripley’s very being is threatened by the alien that now gestates inside her, an allegory of abortion rights. The body that once bore a child of its own, as well as becoming a surrogate mother to the child Newt, is now under threat through a mutation of reproductive rights.

It’s whatever images surface on your dream screen when what’s really terrifying you is AIDS, or being pregnant with a monster, or being forced to carry a foetus you don’t want to term, or never being able to have a baby though you desperately want one because this is the end of the industrial age which is also the end of the age of movies, the end of pleasure and unpleasure, the end of the world as we know it.

(Taubin, 1992, 10)

The film ends with Ripley sacrificing her own life to save that of humanity. The final scene depicts her falling backwards into the furnace, arms outstretched with religious implications, a reminder of the sacrifice made by Jesus’ crucifixion. As she falls, the Queen bursts from Ripley’s corrupt body, and as the two are shown falling towards the fire, Ripley is seen holding the creature to her breast, two mothers falling to their deaths in unison, soon to be swallowed by the engulfing flames. Any threat of infection spreading to the rest of humanity is now prevented, and the prison is left as empty, a series of shots show a barren network of corridors and tunnels are all that remain.

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