The Monstrous and the Horrible in Alien Resurrection1
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“Return of the Repressed” 37 Feminist Studies in English Literature Vol.21, No. 3 (2013) “Return of the Repressed”: The Monstrous and the Horrible in Alien Resurrection1 Ho Rim Song (Pukyong National University) I. Introduction The fourth and final film of the Alien franchise, Alien Resurrection (1997, Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet), begins with the heroine Ellen Ripley’s monologue, in which she repeats the words of the little girl Newt in Aliens (1986, Dir. James Cameron): “My mommy always said there were no monsters. No real ones. But there are.” This monologue does not just reconfirm the consistent concern of the franchise—a direct confrontation of human beings with alien monsters, but it seems to reveal something different from the previous installments by saying that the film now talks about real monsters, ones that are of course different from what Newt meant. Indeed, Alien Resurrection attempts to provide a new understanding of monster, which does not count the horrible Aliens as “real” monsters. In that 1 The title “Return of the Repressed” is borrowed from Kelly Hurley’s article, which is cited in this article, but the phrase is originally Freud’s. 38 Ho Rim Song understanding, monsters are not related to such superficial conditions as their appearance, pugnacity, or origin, but rather their ability to evoke horror in human beings/the audience: the film foregrounds the very monstrosity that has been represented through the Aliens in the first three films. Alien Resurrection does not create new monsters, but discusses what makes things/people monsters. Therefore, the monsters newly presented by the film are real ones unlike the fictional Aliens. The audience should now be ready to meet the real monsters and treat the real horror caused by them. The Alien franchise gained both public popularity and— albeit not much deeply and expansively studied—academic attention. The fans of the SF horror film frenetically responded to the new type of alien monsters and surface horror caused by them, and the academic attention was mainly put on the alien-ness that the monsters symbolized and its horror. In fact, the previous three installments—Alien (1979, Dir. Ridley Scott), Aliens (1986, Dir. James Cameron), and Alien 3 (1992, Dir. David Fincher)—emphasized such alien-ness by setting up their background in space and by foregrounding the confrontation between the alien monsters and the human characters. The sense of alien-ness has an ambivalent meaning in the franchise: one is for creating alien horror in a novel setting and the other is for providing a sense of safety with the audience on Earth. The audience would not confront the alien monsters because Ripley, the powerful and smart female protagonist of the Alien franchise, defeats them. In this sense, as Ripley states in her monologue, it seemed that “there were no monsters.” However, in Alien Resurrection, Ripley and the audience face the real monsters, which newly emerge, or now come to our realization. “Return of the Repressed” 39 Ripley turned out the only survivor in the first three installments. Yet, at the end of Alien 3, when she found a baby (queen) Alien inside her, she dove into lava so as not to leave any trace of herself and the monster. The last scene of the third installment demonstrated the end of the monster that was not a real monster. However, Ripley returns in Alien Resurrection. She is cloned some 200 years later in order to harvest the queen embryo that was incubating inside of her by the United Systems Military, which wants to breed Aliens for military and economic benefits. The Aliens bred and grown by scientists in the spaceship Auriga escape the containment cell, killing human beings. Ripley (Ripley 8) and the mercenaries of the spaceship The Betty fight against the Aliens to escape the Auriga: the mercenaries are the leader Elgyn, his partner Hillard, the first mate Christie, the mercenary Johner, the disabled mechanic Vriess, and the newly hired crew Call. The mercenaries of The Betty kidnapped and sold human beings, who would be used as the hosts of Aliens babies, to General Perez of the Auriga. In this way, Alien Resurrection depicts how monstrously human beings produce monsters to keep their power. The cloned Ripley 8 is no longer the human Ripley of the first three installments though she retains all the memories of the dead Ripley: Ripley 8 is a hybrid between the human Ripley and the Alien, possessing superhuman capabilities as a result of the hybridization with Alien DNA. From the moment she utters the opening monologue, the sure difference of the fourth installment from the previous ones is only Ripley herself. Although the mother in Aliens who denied the existence of monsters was initially Newt’s mother, the mother who told Ripley 8 that “there are no monsters” must now 40 Ho Rim Song be the original Ripley. As a hybrid, Ripley 8 acknowledges her monstrosity, and the whole film, which foregrounds the monster protagonist, proposes the meaning of monster at a deeper level than the previous installments. This article examines the codes of monstrosity in Alien Resurrection and how horror is engendered with the codes, reassessing the relationship between monstrosity and horror. The following section investigates the meanings of monster and horror and their relationship in order to show how the film sets up its understanding of monstrosity. II. Cultural Monster and Horror for Violation Rapidly developed science and technology and unique environments brought by the advanced technoscience culture let horror films imagine new types of monster, such as genetic mutations, technological variations, and extraterrestrial beings. Yet such new monsters do not necessarily provide a novel horror to the extent that monsters—whatever types of monster—are visual representations of what human beings fear for. Horror films attempt to explore human fears by making them confront the monsters. Kelly Hurley argues that the repressed content, as well as the surface content, of horror films should be revealed to “understand the real fears that horror mediates for producer and consumer” (204, italics in original): she argues that the monstrous in horror films are “indices to the contents of what might be called the cultural unconscious,” and these monsters represent what Freud called a “return of the repressed” (205). The repressed is a potential monster to the extent that the “return of the repressed” threatens the existing social order. In this way, monstrosity and horror are social and cultural. “Return of the Repressed” 41 A monster isdefined as “something extraordinary or unnatural,” “a malformed animal or plant,” and “an ugly or deformed person, animal, or thing” (Oxford English Dictionary). The abstract adjectives used in the definition of monster—“extraordinary,” “unnatural,” “malformed,” “ugly,” and “deformed”—show how subjective and arbitrary it could be to judge something/someone as monster. With these adjectives of negative meaning, the definition records unfavorable images of someone/something extraordinary 2 and different. Yet, as Bernadette Wegenstein argues that difference is “only to be seen as a differentiation,” the monster as difference is a side effect of the culture of sameness (342). Horror caused by monsters illustrates negative social unconsciousness toward difference that poses a threat to our identity and our social order. The Alien is highly commended as “one of the most iconic movie monsters in film history” (Mackinder). Indeed, the Alien franchise very iconically presents the social unconsciousness implicated in monster and horror. Not only are the appearance and power of the Aliens visually and biomechanically shocking, but their sexual and evolutionary overtones are also intriguing. Alien Resurrection maximizes horror by strategically adding social fear for difference and disorder as well as surface fear for the Aliens’ appearance and physical power. Throughout the first three installments, Ripley struggled to survive, and her survival meant the victory of humanity over alien monsters, or the victory of order over 2 Likewise, “monere,” the etymology of Latin “monstrum” for monster, means “to warn” or “to advise.” The monster, or the difference it embodies, is indeed something to warn people of (http://latindictionary.wikidot.com/verb:monere). 42 Ho Rim Song disorder: Ripley’s sacrifice to kill an Alien queen inside her in Alien 3 was the loftiest decision to save humanity. By not leaving any trace of her invaded body, Ripley wanted to eradicate the monstrosity in herself. That was her desire to keep humanity from contacting alien monsters—difference or the source of disorder. Yet, Alien Resurrection, which clones Ripley bearing an Alien queen, per se shows that monsters are born of greedy human desires seeking the One-ness. Reviewing contemporary SF horror films, Anne Jerslev argues that“ [t]he monster is the monstrous body not the monstrous character” (18). She means what people really fear for is not death but “one’s own body and its potential destruction” (18). This argument mirrors human beings’ fear of body transformation in uncontrolled ways. Uncontrolled body transformation produce samonster, representing difference or one-less-ness. According to this line of thought, a necessary question toward explaining what really causes horror in Alien Resurrection would be “who/what has the monstrous body.” The monstrous body, indeed, is a place where the audience can read monstrosity, or what they fear. In Alien Resurrection, along with the alien monsters, Ripley 8 of the hybrid between human Ripley and an Alien queen and Call of the hybrid between machine body and human mind are monsters designed to engender the body horror. Though they are not visually horrible, the bodies are still monstrous in that they are related to human anxiety about impurity: the hybridity of Ripley and Call makes them monsters.