So it's pretty well known that the Alien design has a lot of sexual subtext. But what about the bio-mechanical elements that also seem to be pretty important to the design? Do they represent anything? What could they represent?
Fear that machines will replace man? Fear of alienation originating from the industrial age and Taylorism? Or just something that looked nice for the design?
Edit: I've got a more elaborate theory now, but it has more to do with the movies than the original design.
The mechanical parts allude to machines, of course. When machines were introduced into the economy, factory owners (the "capitalists") became obsessed with efficiency. Workers had specialized tasks, so they mechanically performed the same actions all day long, exactly as the machines did. Chaplin made a movie about this, with imagery of a flock of sheep in the opening sequence interwoven with imagery of a group of workers going to work in the morning.
How does this connect to Aliens? I assume that as the "perfect organisms" they are extremely efficient. More importantly, they seem to have a hive mind. Which corresponds to the sheep imagery. It is about the fear of a loss of humanity and individuality, becoming like mindless machines, thus "alienation". It even has the word right there.
Then there's Weyland-Yutani, the big corporation that's the true culprit. What do we resent most of big corporations today? Treating people like machines, or mindless sheep.
Reading too much into things is a lot easier than I used to think...
