Quote from: Bishop2 on Aug 29, 2007, 02:13:17 PM
If you're not interested in intense film analysis for symbolism and larger themes, boy, have I got a book that's NOT for you. The people who are still intrigued by reading a work that explores Ripley as a feminist icon and how the imagery of the films evolved along with her, though? I can't imagine it's gonna get much better than this.
i wanted to STAB the person who wrote the last feminist literary criticism of
alien that i read. seriously, it was in a textbook for class, and it was such an atrocity i THREW OUT the book.
Quote from: Bishop2 on Aug 29, 2007, 02:13:17 PMUnlike some film analysis books I've read, this one completely avoids any personal opinions from the authors. There are no reviews here, just straight-up looks at the characters and scenes of Alien up through Resurrection. Some of the stuff is obvious: Everybody knows the facehugger is basically an equal-opportunity rape machine, and that aliens have oddly phallic heads. Other stuff is less so. Is Ash, as a robot, essentially a eunuch? Does him trying to cram a rolled-up magazine down Ripley's throat basically amount to his own wack form of rape? And so on.
yes, that sort of dreck. and aliens are male because they impregnate people, and the whole concept is that the male crew members are emasculated and turned into women, and that men are by definition alien to females, so for something to be alien to the human race it has to be "hypermasculine."
nevermind that it's the FEMALE wasp that lays its eggs in spiders. or that the alien is just hyper-sexual period, and is designed to have a mix of masculine
and feminine features. it's like they take what they want to see, run it through a bunch of stereotypes, and pretend this crap's serious. and this "women = victim of a man's penis; baby factory" idea can't be healthy for women. it's like a paranoid victim-complex; they're the ones enforcing the stereotypes.
Quote from: Bishop2 on Aug 29, 2007, 02:13:17 PMin the first introductory chapter, they try to explain why putting a woman in the lead was so new for sci-fi.
that was the "unexpected twist." revolutionary in that it went against what people were expecting, not in that it was trying to be feminist.
Quote from: Bishop2 on Aug 29, 2007, 02:13:17 PMAnd in the process, they suggest that the first Star Wars was actually an assault on the feminine, because the X-Wings represented sperm that were trying to destroy a gigantic ova (Death Star). And I'm sorry, that's some f**king inane shit.
yeah, that kind of garbage. i mentioned above something i needed for a textbook -- i was in a feminist perspective on science and technology (and sci-fi) class. sounded interesting, made me want to kill myself. my favourite story from the class involves me running the professor around in the circles for an hour over another hr giger creation: sil.
we watched
species 2, arguably the second worst movie ever made, in class. it clearly demonstrates the "male as alien, turning women into baby-factories" idea. clearly, explicitly, violently. points all around, everyone agrees.
"wait" says i, "are we forgetting that this is a sequel? why not watch the first movie, which btw is a much, much better movie and that's not saying alot, where the alien is FEMALE, and runs around raping men for procreation?"
cue the double standards. post-modern academic femism (as opposed to the equal-rights bra-burning variety of yesteryear) is apparently about having your cake and eating it too. something can prove your point, but so can its exact opposite.
