Reproduction and the Maternal Body in the Alien series

Chapter Four: Alien Resurrection

The idea that our growing technological mastery is filled with moral ambiguity and capable of both vast good and catastrophic evil is deeply embedded in many cultural traditions.

– National Bioethics Advisory Commission, Cloning Human Beings Report

There are those who have understood the visitation of the Greys – with the over-large heads, small bodies and huge staring eyes, currently colonising our skies if not our skies – as the displaced manifestation of the millions of foetuses aborted since the recent spate of those close encounters began in the mid-60s. Alien Resurrection firmly rejects such guilt-ridden admonition. Even a clone has the Right to Choose.

– Michael Eaton, Born Again

In February 1997, The Observer newspaper revealed the news that scientists in Scotland had successfully created a clone of a sheep. Dolly, the cloned sheep, represented the unity of what was previously science fantasy as portrayed on film, and the reality of scientific advancements. The moral and ethical issue of whether man should play God and create living, breathing life in the form of a genetic copy was heightened by the birth of Dolly, who would become the first known mammal to be successfully cloned, living for six years – a significant scientific breakthrough. Later in the same year, Alien Resurrection, displaying a narrative that featured themes of genetic cloning, was released to an international audience. Set two hundred years after the events on Fury-161 in Alien 3, and, more significantly, the suicide of Ellen Ripley, Alien Resurrection deals with the moral and ethical issues surrounding cloning human beings. Ripley, or ‘Ripley 8’ as she has now become known, is a clone of the former working-class hero of the previous films, a “meat by-product” (Alien Resurrection) created from DNA found in the prison’s furnace, created for one purpose: the rebirth of the Alien Queen that infested Ripley’s body.

In 1992’s Alien 3 she [Ripley] had discovered that, like some deviant Madonna, she had become a host. It was unclear quite how this presence came to be growing inside her – but this only served to give her condition as alien incubator more mystique. To intensify and separate her fate from those incidental characters whose role (as inaugurated by John Hurt as Kane back in 1979) was to shock the audience when a creature bursts forth from their disposable chests. For Ripley was harbouring no ordinary alien. Her spawn was a queen, which could reproduce ad infinitum.

(Eaton, 1997: 8)

Kept alive for no specific reason other than to learn from her, or as she herself puts it, because she is “the latest thing” (Alien Resurrection), Ripley is now the embodiment of both human and alien, a transmuted shadow of her former self, with genetically enhanced physical characteristics of the alien creature. In turn, the Alien Queen that now nests in the bowels of the ship, has been given the gift of Ripley’s reproductive organs, a womb from which to breed new life. Commenting on the relationship between Ripley and the Alien Queen, Constable argues, “Alien Resurrection abandons an oppositional construction of identity. The presentation of Ripley as the monster’s mother does not simply conflate her with the queen, but presents the characters in relation to each other” (1997: 190). Despite the successful cloning of a mammal not occurring until towards the close of the 20^th Century, with a diverging scale of accuracy, human cloning had been a recurring theme of the science fiction genre since the late 1970s, and was “often fairly fantastical in terms of what cloning may possibly achieve” (Cormick, 2006: 2). Alien Resurrection, a darkly artistic film, and somewhat of a pastiche of the previous instalments, displays motifs within the narrative that indicate palpable parallels with contemporary ‘90s advancements in cloning, accentuating the moral questions raised by such scientific progress. This chapter will examine Alien Resurrection’s correlation with scientific and medical advances, specifically cloning and genetic breeding, while at the same maintaining iconography within the mise-en-scène consistent with the series’ persistent references to the uncanny, monstrous reproduction and the abject.

Alien Resurrection’s opening scene, like all three previous films, features images of regeneration and awakening. For this, the final instalment, resurgence is displayed in the guise of abstract shapes filling the screen, morphing from one intangible shape to the next. As the scene progresses, the fleshy toned contours that dominate the shot begin to slowly give way to distinct mammalian features – an extreme close-up of a set of razor sharp teeth, a closed eye, more teeth (this time bearing more distinct shape and resemblance to the dark metallic teeth of the alien), followed by an open eye, an ear, and finally, a set of human teeth and hair. As Michael Eaton argues, “Each of the Alien films has begun with an image of rebirth, as Ripley is reanimated from hyper-sleep or cryogenic suspension. This time the renaissance is literal” (Eaton, 1997: 9). As the scene draws to a close, revealed is an image more typical of the Alien franchise: an exterior shot of the starry gulf of outer space, and within it, a star ship approaching a nearby planet, a wide shot exposing a distinct phallic force threatening to penetrate the colossal womb. This is the USM Auriga, a space laboratory, the new place of birth for Ripley clone and the Alien Queen.

The following scene reveals the interior of the Auriga’s laboratories, and with it, the spectator’s first glimpse of Ripley. As the camera tracks forward, delving deeper into the interior of the heavily guarded labs, a huge glass tube is revealed at the end of the corridors, and inside it, a naked sleeping child. As the camera pulls in further still into a close-up of the child’s face, a voice over is heard repeating the lines as once said by Newt in Aliens: “My mommie always said there are no real monsters. No real ones. But there are” (Aliens). The face morphs into Ripley’s, and as the camera pulls back as the voice says “But there are”, scientists are shown moving around the laboratory. Like previous films, the laboratory is pristine, sterile and starkly lit, Ripley’s voice-over insinuating that the doctors are the monsters she describes. Eaton argues that

the image of Newt the girlchild from Aliens is deliberately invoked by a voiceover that echoes a child’s anxiety that, though her mother told her monsters only exist in stories, her mother was wrong. After saving Jones the cat in Alien, Ripley had been given the role of surrogate mother when she cradled Newt in Aliens; at the end of Alien 3 she was giving succour to the baby alien within her (“to prevent its escape but also to nurture it,” in Taubin’s words). In Alien Resurrection, this surrogacy will be actualised.

(Eaton, 1997: 9)

Constable furthers the analysis of the opening scene, and of Ripley as clone, by arguing that it goes against Kristeva’s theories of the abject that feature so heavily in the previous films. She argues that Ripley’s manifestation in the tube compromises her identity, thus establishing “an intersection point”, arguing that Ripley

is altered by giving birth to the queen just as the queen will later display the nature of Ripley’s bequest to her. Within a traditional psychoanalytic model, these points of intersection would constitute a breakdown of the oppositional structures of identity […] This conception of a subjectivity formed through permeable boundaries clearly contrasts with Kristeva’s conception of a subject permanently fighting to maintain its borders. Moreover, the valorisation of patterns of flow sets up a very different conception of the body. For Kristeva, the concept of the body as a container relies upon the abjection of the viscous physicality of both inside and outside.

(Constable, 1997: 190-191)

While Kristeva’s theory of the abject appears less readily applicable to Alien Resurrection, along with elements of the uncanny, it continues to remain an element of the narrative. Instead, themes of the uncanny are more evident to the narrative. Freud’s theory of the uncanny refers to the double, which Ripley (and the Queen) represents. He argues that “the ‘uncanny’ is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar” (Freud, 1909: 1-2). The Ripley figure as presented in Alien Resurrection is both a continuation of the previous character as well as a new being. While featuring identical physical attributes, characteristics and, in some cases, memories, as the previous hero, she is not the same person who sacrificed her life some two hundred years earlier. Indeed, she is a copy, a non-biologically reproduced construct of the scientist, whose DNA has been spliced with that of the Alien Queen. This integration of genes is evident in a number of specific scenes in the film. Firstly, as Ripley awakens for the first time, a wide aerial shot of her room reveals her lying on the floor in what appears to be a white amniotic sac, a shroud worn by her from which her resurrection comes to materialise. A series of fading shots show her slowly emerging from the shroud, each one closing in until finally a close-up of her face shows a wide-eyed expression alluding to that of a baby’s first glimpse of the world. Her unnatural manifestation is evident in the scene in which she receives a visit from Call (Winona Ryder). Ripley’s fluid movements allude to her animalistic attributes, a trait passed on in the alien DNA which she appears to have incorporated into her own genetic make-up. As Call produces a knife which she intends to kill Ripley with, believing the Queen to still be inside her, an over the shoulder shot shows Ripley take the knife and push it though her hand, the acid blood sizzling as it drips to the floor.

The manifestation of Ripley as uncanny is exemplified mid-way in the narrative, when Ripley discovers the room filled with the previous unsuccessful cloning experiments.

There is a scene right in the middle of Alien Resurrection, the fourth Alien movie, when the dominant narrative impetus – to flee from and destroy the rampaging otherworldly creatures – is temporarily halted. Ripley stops when she sees a room of to the one side of the escape route, marked ‘1-7’. On her arm is tattooed the figure ‘8’ – is she perhaps the latest in this as-yet-unknown series?

(Eaton, 1997: 6)

Eaton continues his analysis of the scene:

This sequence of narrative stasis seems somehow the omphallic centre of the picture, suddenly making physical the film’s themes of scientific experimentation, monstrous birth and genetic hybridization and acknowledging – as none of the previous three films had done directly – one of the increasingly widespread tensions of these pre-millennial times: the myth of alien abduction.

(Eaton, 1997: 8)

Ripley’s loneliness is underlined as she enters the room. As she is shown in medium close up apprehensively walking into the laboratory, over her shoulder her companions are shown waiting outside. What Ripley is met with is a scene of the uncanny grotesque. Displayed in large glass tubes are the seven unsuccessful clones that came before her, each in different stages of ‘birth’. With the exceptions of the tubes, each of which is lit by an overhead light in each cylinder, the room is dimly lit with intensifies the sense of venturing into the unknown. Each tube is filled with a clear liquid representative of amniotic fluid, which contains and preserves the diseased clones, ranging from embryo to near fully-grown woman. Close-ups of Ripley’s face emphasis her disgust and sorrow, while close-ups of the clones’ mutated bodies elicit a sense of repulsion surrounding advancements in human reproduction at the hands of the scientist. A series of point-of-view shots examine the contents of each cylinder – sharp teeth framed by a malformed face remind the audience of the opening scene in which the abstract shapes slowly form human features, making it apparent that this was a display of the clones’ monstrous manufacture.

The scene highlights concern surrounding selective breeding in IVF treatment, and the termination of the killing of embryos due to genetic problems such as Down Syndrome. Furthermore, it alludes towards concern surrounding stem cell research, and the morality of discarding a foetus for medicinal purposes.

Is it ethical to utilize medical technology to harvest embryonic stem cells when the embryo itself is discarded? The nature of this debate is largely centered on the question of whether an embryo is classified as a living being or not. We have determined the answer is yes, a living being can ultimately become a human, which one can associate with having conscious thoughts, feelings, and actions. The contrary suggests the answer is no, an embryo cannot be considered a living being, and therefore is insignificant enough to use for research purposes. The stem cell sources under debate, or in this case the embryo, should be classified as alive solely based on the fact that the extracted cells are totipotent, and therefore can become persons. An opposing side to our argument is that abortions are legal in the United States and therefore choices are already available to women regarding killing a human fetus. Even though this medical technology exists, it is believed the concept is unethical in practice.

(Rogers and Peterson, 2007: 2)

As Ripley further explores the room, she is met with the seventh clone, alive and laid on a table. Tubes protrude from beneath her naked skin, and mutated limbs emphasise the suffering of an abject birth. As the camera subjectively looks over her traumatized body, she stares directly at the audience, a close-up of her face exemplifies her pain as she begs Ripley to kill her. The presence of the mutated Ripley clone may stimulate audience memories of the thalidomide catastrophe of the late 1950s and 1960s, which New Science Journalism describes as “one of the worst pharmaceutical blunders in modern medical history” (Fatimathas, 2010). The drug was promoted as a sedative to combat nausea for mothers-to-be, however it was withdrawn after it tragically caused deformities in babies’ limbs (New Science Journalism). The scene, through the abject horror of mutated birth displayed in the contents of the cylinders, and the suffering of the still living clone, is a poignant reminder of the atrocities surrounding genetic breeding.

Additional to Ripley’s uncannily remarkable new attributes of the un-corporeal, her human DNA has been passed on to the Alien Queen, who has developed a human womb. In contrast to the egg sac as seen in Aliens, the external womb has the ability to reproduce an alien-human hybrid.

If the alien mother bequeaths Ripley a new physicality, the nature of Ripley’s bequest to her is made obvious in the birth scene. Gediman tells Ripley that the queen has developed a mammalian reproductive system. The long shot of the queen taken from over Ripley’s shoulder shows the dense, swollen belly she has developed. Unlike the sac in Aliens, which was light and translucent, showing the movement of the eggs as the mother laid them, this belly is a dark heaving flesh.  The contrast shows the development of the queen as a species type. The insectual image of the queen bee appears to have given away to a human reproductive system. There is a cut to a close-up of the queen’s jaw as she throws her head back and screams. The sound is guttural, indicating pain. It is a sharp contrast to the sinister hissing sound directed by her predecessor at Ripley in Aliens.

(Constable, 1997: 194)

While the Queen in Aliens showed no pain while producing the eggs, the manifestation of a human womb has now bought pain to her body. A shrill screech dominates the scene showing her writhing in agony with the womb between her legs, pulsating and fleshy. It appears it is she who has suffered from the perils of cloning, while Ripley, the human, reveals no signs of sharing the physical pain she endures.

If Alien Resurrection is reflective of the developments of cloning contemporary to its release, thematically, cloning has been ubiquitous in science fiction cinema for many years. Craig Cormick (2006) argues that there are five distinct categories that feature narratives involving cloning: Contemporary Social Realism, Future Social Realism, Comedy, Gone and Forgotten (films that performed poorly at the box office) and finally Science Fiction and Fantasy, in which Alien Resurrection is included. Sleeper (Woody Allen, 1973), The Boys From Brazil (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1978), The Clonus Horror (Robert S. Fiveson, 1979), Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) and Godsend (Nick Hamm, 2004) are significant examples of human (and animal) reproductive cloning forming the grand narrative of a film’s story arc prior to the advancements that lead to the successful production of a mammal. However, these films alluded towards the progression of non-biological reproduction, arguably influenced by the cloning of plants, and, in particular, of animals, which had been happening since 1952 when tadpoles were first successfully cloned (Cloning Goes To The Movies). At the time of Alien Resurrection being in production, it foreshadowed the ethical, moral and practical anxieties concerning cloning that would occur in the very year of its release. As Cormick argues,

The most common key messages from the cloning films examined is that corporations or scientists operate in their own interests and outside of regulation, and are willing to kill to cover up what they’ve done. A second key message is that cloning is interfering with nature and is likely to lead to dangerous outcomes. The third predominant message relates to the human rights of a clone, or how a clone might relate to the original human he or she was cloned from.

(Cormick, 2006: 31)

There is arguably little doubt that the scientists of Alien Resurrection, who in their uniformed appearance of sterile, minimal attire (typical plain white coats, short, grey hair), represent the unified force that is evil, the ‘real monsters’ as insinuated by Newt/Ripley. However, in acquiring both the Alien Queen and Ripley, their greed is their demise, their lives the ultimate price to pay at the hands of the very creation they have constructed. Cormick continues by questioning the principles of human cloning:

The negative depiction of cloning in films that play upon the worst stereotypes of evil and uncontrolled scientists, fail to challenge us to think seriously about cloning, or consider the types of questions that would have to be considered if human reproductive cloning ever did become a reality. These include issues such as, what would be the rights of a clone? Who should decide who would be cloned? Or how might clones fit into society?

(Cormick, 2006: 33)

Despite public concern relating to cloning, in 1997, scientific breakthrough was accomplished when The Observer newspaper (February 23, 1997) announced that a Scottish scientist named Ian Wilmut at the Roslin Institute had created a mammal clone in the shape of Dolly the sheep. A report from the National Bioethics Advisory Commission comments on the step forward:

The idea that humans might someday be cloned—created from a single somatic cell without sexual reproduction—moved further away from science fiction and closer to a genuine scientific possibility on February 23, 1997. On that date, The Observer broke the news that Ian Wilmut, a Scottish scientist, and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute were about to announce the successful cloning of a sheep by a new technique which had never before been fully successful in mammals. The technique involved transplanting the genetic material of an adult sheep, apparently obtained from a differentiated somatic cell, into an egg from which the nucleus had been removed.       The resulting birth of the sheep, named Dolly, on July 5, 1996, was different from prior attempts to create identical offspring since Dolly contained the genetic material of only one parent, and was, therefore, a “delayed” genetic twin of a single adult sheep.

(Cloning Human Beings Report, 1997: 1)

The news was a significant scientific advancement, and one that could be argued as a clear influence on the final instalment in the Alien franchise, if not the actual birth of Dolly, then certainly to recent steps leading to the event.

As argued in this chapter, the presence of the abject, while a strong theme within the narrative framework of Alien Resurrection, shares position within the narratology with contemporary advancements of cloning. It is stated that there are “three types of cloning technologies […] (1) recombinant DNA technology or DNA cloning, (2) reproductive cloning, and (3) therapeutic cloning” (Human Genome Project, 2009). The manifestation of both Ripley and the Alien Queen represent recombinant DNA cloning, and arguably, human greed. After successfully creating Ripley 8, Gediman (Brad Dourif) is given permission to “keep her” (Alien Resurrection) by the military. This could be concluded to represent another caution toward the ethical concerns surrounding non-biological reproduction, an allusion of greed over moral principles. An element to the mise-en-scène that features significantly more in Alien Resurrection than in the previous instalments is the presence of the uncanny. The uncanny emerges in the embodiment of Ripley, a doppelganger of her former self. It is in the room filled with aborted grotesque Ripley clones and the presence of Call, an android (and the first female robot of the series). The uncanny is also prevalent in the character Vreiss (Dominique Pinon), a man paralyzed from the waist down, his mechanized wheelchair reflective of the part human/part machine cyborg that Ripley transgressed into during the climatic final scenes of Aliens. Above all, one can arguably deduce that Alien Resurrection is a message of social concern relatable to developments in human cloning, and the question of moral responsibility accompanying it.

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