Cultural Fears in Science Fiction Movie: Alien


Cultural fear is a feeling of overwhelmed anxiety or being afraid that is shared by many people living in the same society, culture, or area. The emotion is generated through people's belief and biases that the society is unsafe and hazardous. This behavior is a human’s natural defense mechanism against unknown agents that can harm their existence. However, when this emotion becomes so overwhelming, it overruns people's ability in reasoning. It puts individuals into panic attacks and quickly causes them to loose sense of reasoning. In fact, in a panic, a person may not make a useful decision because the brain is too busy questioning, debating, and conflicting its own thoughts. In addition, because of its widespread in society, the panicking person does not have a chance to find a calm person to help them calm down and think wisely. Thus, cultural fear turns into an harmful and lethal factor.

Produced in 1979 by Ridley Scott, the movie Alien has the setting in a far future when humans can travel between planets. The commercial spaceship, Nostromo, is on its way return back to the Earth after its mission for “the company.” Then, the main computer on board, “M.O.T.H.E.R,” receives a command from the company requesting the crew to investigate SOS signals from a strange planet. When exploring the environment there, they discover another spaceship that contains a dead body of an alien and a huge chamber of a large amount of bizarre eggs. One of these eggs is hatched to a mysterious creature, attaches its hooker to one of the crews, Kane, and makes him a host for its parasitic embryo. Later, the embryo inside Kane's body grows to an organism, penetrates his chest and escapes. The incident leads to the death of Kane and other crewmembers of the spaceship because of the attack of the Alien. Ripley is the lone survivor of the crew. In the end, she blasts the Alien into space and put herself into stasis waiting for rescue.

In the movie, the disastrous adventure of the Nostromo’s crews are evolved and developed around two antagonists of the story, the Alien, and android Ash. The alien is an extraterrestrial organism that exists beyond human knowledge. On the other hand, human-like android Ash is created by human knowledge and technologies. Both of them are non-human characters, which is the main reasons casting fear and leading to the deaths of most of the crewmembers. According to The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, David J. Skal states, “Alien is all about “the dark side of technology, of science” (Skal) to imply the consequences of advanced technology and machines in the further future. As a result, the Alien symbolizes human’s terror before the unknown of nature, and the android represents the fear of machine’s domination. Thus, the movie Alien successfully connects those fears with the related cultural fears that happens and overruns humanity into constant worry and dismay in the contemporary society. Therefore, cultural fear is no better than a toxic poisoning and decimates humanity, both spiritually and physically.

Clearly, the Alien is a representation of the nature because its characteristic lies outside the scope of understanding of the spaceship’s crews, who all are experienced explorers traversing across the vastness of space. The monster only appears in the movie in some brief moments and spends most its time hiding away from the human. This type of behavior exists in the nature of a predator attacking with swift fatal force at unmentioned moment. As a result, it strikes fear on the entire crewmembers and causes them to start to react unconsciously. More than that, the monster just jumps into action when an individual is away from the group. Hence, the alien only brings an assault on singled out and irrational person. From those gruesome and violent scenes with horror film techniques such as low lighting, many dark corners, rapid and suddenly movements, Ripley Scott shows the fear of nature is a cultural fear that makes people dismay, panic, and irrational. Thus, the cultural afraid in regard to nature’s factors is not healthy and safe for any human.

Throughout the movie, the Alien has many stages in its life cycle and transforms to four versions of organisms. It begins with an egg, becomes a parasite within a human’s body, and then dies after laying an embryo inside the host. It later rebirths and grows into a full-sized body. Until the death of the Alien at the end of the movie, each time the Alien undergoes a cycle of birth, the deaths of each crewmembers follow. In the article Critical Analysis: Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), Andy Buckle discusses, “[the Alien] attacks the crews because they threaten its survival and because they provide the means for its continued survival” (Buckle) to explain the behaviors of the Alien. Whenever the Alien transforms to a new version of organism, the life of the crews in the spaceship are replaced by the terrified and painful death. Thus, the existence of the Alien, which is a non-human creature, and human’s life is opposed and never compromises to one another.

Likewise, the most notable scene in the movie that depicts cultural fear vividly is the scene when the Alien penetrates Kane’s chest and kills him immediately afterward. The Alien uses Kane as its host for its source of food and energy to grow up, eats him inside out, then pierces his body to escape. When witnessing Kane’s death and Alien’s rebirth, the entire crewmembers become staggering and feel panic, so they hesitate to act promptly and let the Alien escape.

In the article Bursting with Excitement, Tim Brayton describes “how fleshy and solid and real it is, a terror from hell to match the grounded, hugely prosaic future world presented by the rest of the movie” (Brayton) to indicate how effectively Scott uses film techniques to make the movie terrified. The Kane’s bloody and painful body that stands out the white surrounding, screaming sound that comes from the members when they see Kane in agonies, and later a dead silence when they observe the existence of the Alien portrays the endangerment of a bizarre extraterrestrial life-form. The death of Kane leads to the crews’ traumatic state and their death because it hits straight to the humans’ cultural fear. Hence, due to the Alien’s disgusting appearance with the high level of gore, the movie Alien successfully relates those fears in the movie with the humans’ cultural fears.

In contrast to the space monster, the character Ash is a working success of human’s science knowledge and engineering. However, it posts a thread that a machine on which human put their trust, and it can become very strong and intelligent to dominate humanity. In the movie, Ash receives the command from “the company” to send the crewmembers to investigate and collect a sample at any cost. When Kane is attacked and attached to the alien on his face, the android betrays the rule of quarantine to bring the victim with the unknown organism into the ship. Furthermore, it disguises such action as an act of sympathy that is one of human’s main defining characters. Also, as a science officer, Ash ignores all of the scientific methods and logical approaches in Kane’s case in order to hide the organism from the eyes of human crewmembers and let it grow freely inside Kane’s chest. When the command to Ash is discovered, it tries to kill Ripley when she wants to interrupt the order of “the company.” As a result, Ash turns into a symbolic for the cultural fear that machine leads human race to extinction.

In most of topics of the horror science fictions, people often deal with difficulties and threats that come from mysterious factors and bizarre creatures, which are beyond humans’ knowledge. Terrorization of advanced technology is one of these crises. In the article Alien (1979) – Film Analysis, Hector Franco wrote that, “the danger comes from an extraterrestrial creature that is feared both for its dangerous abilities, and its unpredictable hostility” (Franco). He explains that when the technology is out of control of humans and beyond their knowledge, it can become harmful and threatened to humans’ life. Actually, in the movie, when the crewmembers want to explode the spaceship to kill the Alien, Ash attacks Ripley to prevent her from intervening into the company’s interest, which is bringing the Alien back to the Earth. The android Ash is programmed to only obey the orders of the company. Hence, Ash is willing to get risk of anything that can hinder his purposes.

When Ash is destroyed and later interrogated about his special order, he clearly says that “bringing back life-form. Priority one. All other priorities rescinded.” His statement and betrayed actions proves the fact that the technology can become harmful to a human’s life. When Ash loses his common functions, suddenly betrays Ripley, and later is revealed his true identity is the most twisted and shocking scene in the movie. By using horror setting and fast movement, the movie successfully stirs cultural fear in audiences. In human's perspective, a computer is merely the machine that is programmed according to algorithms. Yet, Ash’s ability is beyond humans' knowledge and normal functional machines. He disguises himself as a normal rational person that can act on his own and deceive the crewmembers to gain his personal advantage. As a result, the audiences do not expect Ash is an android that can become dangerous and harmful. Thus, through the image of Ash, Scott implies the danger of the artificial intelligence to humanity when it is out of control or if it is taken advantage for heinous purposes.

Through the movie Alien, Ridley Scott portrays human’s cultural fear and its consequences by using movie settings and techniques. In the further future, when the technology becomes more advanced and intelligent, humanity will be benefited, but at the time, threatened and unsecured. Nostromo is destroyed, most of the crews are killed by the space monster, and only one person survives and lives on with her uncertain future. It is truly a disaster. The main causes of this entire are the two antagonists, the Alien and Ash. Both of them are not human. One belongs to the unknown of nature which human cannot know the organism's behavior, and the other is a product of humanity of knowledge and technological advantages which people put all their faith and confident in. Yet, they cast fear and panic across the human counterpart on the spaceship. This depicts the cultural fears in the society that people are afraid of nature because humans are powerless before nature, and machines take over humanity. The fear strikes hard on people minds and leads them to panic attacks. Some let the emotion overrun, so they end up just like the majority of Nostromos's crews. Therefore, cultural fear is harmful and endangers humans’ society.



Work Cites

Skal, David J. “The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror”. Book. Faber & Faber. 2001.
Buckle, Andy. “Critical Analysis: Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)”. Web. 25 March. 2011. http://thefilmemporium.blogspot.com/
Brayton, Tim. “Bursting with Excitement”. Web. 5 June. 2012. http://antagonie.blogspot.com/
Hector, Franco. “Alien (1979) – Film Analysis”. Web. 12 May. 2011. http://ryuhawk.hubpages.com/