Infestation, Transformation, and Liberation: Locating Queerness in the Monsters of ‘Body Horror’

by Fawwaz A. AlFares

Bachelor of Arts, June 2009, Kuwait University

A Thesis submitted to

The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

May 15th, 2016

Thesis directed by

David T. Mitchell Professor of English

Patrick Cook Professor of English © Copyright 2016 by Fawwaz A. AlFares All rights reserved

ii To my family, my friends, and the strangers I have yet to meet.

iii Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the members responsible for reading and responding to my thesis for being wonderfully generous with their expertise and valuable time. A special thanks to

Professor David T. Mitchell and Professor Patrick Cook for their invaluable support during the course of the semester, and for the countless hours spent reading through my haphazard writing and proving me with feedback to improve the quality of my work. I would like to thank them both for their patience, and also acknowledge Professor

Marshall Alcorn’s guidance throughout the entire process.

I would also like to acknowledge and thank the entire faculty and team of the

English Department, without whom I would not have had the tools required for this undertaking. It was through the faculty’s dedication and encouragement that I was able to conduct my research with ease. There are too many names to list here, but I do hope that each member knows how much their contributions had been appreciated throughout each semester.

Finally, I would like to thank my fellow peers and students for their excitement and skill. It was the culmination of all these different factors was I able to enjoy the process of completing this research. I will truly miss each and every one of you.

iv Abstract of Thesis

Infestation, Transformation, and Liberation: Locating Queerness in the Monsters of ‘Body Horror’

Given the increased public enthusiasm for the genres of Horror and Science

Fiction, as well as the renewed and ever-evolving interest in indie horror films (propelling them into the mainstream), there is a noticeable increase of public eagerness to consume

films that toy with the ideas of anxiety and the body. While many of these films seem to

fit the rubric of heteronormative and mainstream Hollywood productions that occupy a neat world of perfectly defined gender identities, we can still excavate bodies that fall outside of such neat definitions. On the one hand, we are presented with a defined female or male character, thrust into a chaotic situation through which they must endure tremendous anxiety and pain and strive to survive. On the other, these bodies seem to survive and thrive despite not fitting in with the simple heteronormative worlds in which they dwell.

The purpose of this thesis is not to provide a stand-in or voice for the queer body, nor is its purpose to create an index of films that fall under the sub-genre of ‘Body

Horror,’ but to explore how films in this genre that seem to privilege performances of able-bodiedness and heteronormativity actually treat queerness and queer topics in very different ways. This thesis wishes to explore these bodies as they cruise through their respective dystopian technofetishistic worlds; as their bodies are infected, their figures transformed, and their psyches liberated as they attain physical, sexual or psychological release.

v To facilitate both observation and maintain its central focus, this paper will be divided into three main parts. The first chapter will define key terms and phrases that are the central focus of this paper. The second chapter will explore the concept of

‘Infestation,’ which will focus on the queer and disabled bodies as they are occupied, annexed, and attacked by external forces or internal strife. This chapter will consider the concept of ‘Transformation’ and further examine the manner through which the

“monstrous queer” emerges through the definition of normalcy and the anomalous.

Lastly, the final chapter will revolve around the concept of ‘Liberation,’ and review these observations in terms of how these performances reconcile and imagine their own respective ideas of queer futures. This final chapter will expand the narrative of queer futurity while also dwelling on notions of the inevitable “queer dystopia” in ‘Body

Horror’ films. The voices and scholarship in the fields of Queer and Disability Studies,

Psychoanalysis, and Film Studies will guide this reading as it seeks out these bodies and unearths the deeply affective, psychological, and physical states of transformation they undergo.

vi Table of Contents

Dedication iii

Acknowledgments iv

Abstract of Thesis v

Thesis Introduction 1

Chapter One: Defining Key Terms 6

1.1 Queerness 6

1.2 Disability 7

1.3 The Psychological and Affective Conditions of ‘Body Horror’ 10

Chapter Two: Infestation, Transformation, and the Anxiety around Aliens 13

2.1 Chapter Introduction 13

2.2 Alien (1979): Queer Flesh and the Monstrous-Feminine 15

2.2.1 The “Monstrous-Feminine” 19

2.2.2 Queer Flesh and Failure 27

2.3 The Thing (1982): Queerness and the Grotesque 40

2.4 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): The “Monstrous Queer” 53

Chapter Three: Liberation, Release, and Reconciling Queer Futurity 69

3.1 Chapter Introduction 69

3.2 Reconciling Queer Futurity in Heteronormative Cinema

and the Inevitable Queer Dystopia in Body Horror Films 70

Conclusion 76

Works Cited 78

vii List of Figures

Figure 1: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene still 22

Figure 2: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene still 22

Figure 3: Alien. Sigourney Weaver. Scene still 30

Figure 4: Alien Resurrection. Sigourney Weaver. Scene still 33

Figure 5: Alien Resurrection. Weaver and Winona Ryder. Scene still 36

Figure 6: Alien Resurrection. Sigourney Weaver. Scene still 38

Figure 7: The Thing. Scene stills: The “Thing” transforming 43

Figure 8: The Thing. Scene stills: The Thing transforming 43

Figure 9: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene stills 62

Figure 10: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene stills 62

Figure 11: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene stills 64

Figure 12: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene stills 64

viii “There looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark re-volts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and fascinates desire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects.”

Kristeva, Julia, The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection

ix Thesis Introduction

Monstrous births, deformed bodies, and deviancy from the norm have been the hallmarks of the genres of Horror and Science Fiction since the conception of monsters in early gothic fiction by notable figures such as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and H. P.

Lovecraft. Their talents spawned multiple incarnations of terrifying monsters and fascinating creatures that have transcended the genres to which they were bound. In today’s mainstream Hollywood productions, the sub-genre of ‘Body Horror’ was able to locate the intersection of horror, science fiction, fantasy, drama, and other genres. This results in performances that aim draw out every intense affective response possible by thrusting the audience member into the paranoid worlds of the films.

This scholarship began with a very simple meditation on readings of this very complex genre. It is a genre that thrived and continues to flourish around controversy, anxiety, fear, and the body that binds these three nouns to one another. A tremendous amount of research has been done around the genres of Horror and Science Fiction, as well as the category of ‘Body Horror’. But in an age which bears witness to a multitude of films that are being churned out by the second by production companies in hopes of

financial success, it might have become easy for producers as well as audience members to neglect certain layers of reading that seem to permeate these mainstream films. It becomes crucial to recover observations that might seem to slip through our fingers or fall between the cracks in the viewing process, and explore ways through which usually normative and ableist productions can offer up non-normative ideas and conceptions.

1 Films such as Alien, The Thing, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers offer up certain literary richness that begs to be re-examined in a different light. These films present audience members with bodies that traverse space, time, psychological states, and explores the endeavors of their main characters as they suffer through indignation, humiliation, and pain. Taking a page from Steven Shaviro’s The Cinematic Body, this paper hopes to travel across the disciplinary boundaries of Queer and Feminist Theory,

Disability Theory, Psychoanalysis, Film Theory as well as the multiple concepts propelled by postmodernist thinking to further explore the politics, aesthetics, and affective layers of the non-normative body in such films. The scholarship of José Esteban

Muñoz, Judith Halberstam, and others will serve as the basis for our considerations of the concepts of queerness and disability, and how they factor into to the crafted world of the

film. Their work will aid us in both locating and defining what these terms entail as well as unpack our ever-evolving understanding of concepts that seem to resist definition.

Additionally, the work of Alexander G. Weheliye will inform our reading of the politics of the gendered and branded body. Finally, no research in this area of film can be fulfilled without utilizing the works of film theorists, horror writers and the psychoanalytical in the category of ‘body horror’. The academic contributions of authors and editors such as

Steven Shaviro, Linda Badley, Bary Keith Grant, Justin D. Edwards and Rune Graulund will permeate the skeletal structure of this research paper, allowing me to explore concepts of the grotesque and anomalous in generative ways which helps us locate queerness in the monstrous and malformed creatures that dwell in the darkness as well as the characters that resist them.

2 Moreover, this paper will examine how these films, as well as their bleak and dystopian endings and outlooks, narrate and imagine different futures for queer bodies.

These films seem to deploy characters that not only resist normalization but also provide crucial commentary on the state of things within these different non-normative communities. Questions of identity surface against the backdrop of cultural, social, and economic change or hardship. Furthermore, matters that challenge heteronormative and ableist assumptions emerge as time and space are treated very differently, whereby isolation becomes paramount to these bodies’ experiences of the world. The concepts of suffering and failure become central to our perception of these films’ characters, as we are thrust into a world where suffering through transformation gives way to creativity and hope regardless of the suppression of individualism and identity. With all this in mind,

Ridley Scott’s Alien, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the

Body Snatchers serve up great examples of queer bodies and identities as they are invaded, transformed, and finally liberated by the horrors of their alternate realities.

By following these bodies through the running time of each film reel, this paper shall locate and read the non-normative bodies and gender roles in normative mainstream

Hollywood ‘body horror’ films. The purpose of this undertaking is to offer up alternative reading that wish to cut across disciplinary borders in hopes of engaging the above- mentioned bodies in new ways. By facing the monstrosities of fanatic bodies and grotesque afflictions, this paper shall investigate the construction and reception of these

films and offer up generative readings and cultural interpretations that transcend the bounds of the culture in which they are produced. While these films do not explicitly

3 focus on LGBT characters per se, they do highlight themes and plots that fall outside of the category of heteronormativity.

In practice, this thesis has three central foci that contemplate representations of queerness, disability, and the grotesque, as well as a concluding chapter observing the queer futures imagined in and represented by the three films. First, this paper will examine representations of queerness, disability, and the “monstrous-feminine” within the Alien anthology. Concepts of queer flesh, failure, and futurity will be considered as we cruise through the scholarship of Judith Halberstam, Alexander G. Weheliye, and José

Esteban Muñoz. The works of Carol Clover, Julia Kristeva, Barbara Creed and others will aid our reading of gender identities and representations of the “monstrous-feminine” throughout the film series. Second, by beginning with Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject, we will expand our reading of the grotesque, the inhuman, and the queer in John

Carpenter’s The Thing through the commentary of critic Eve Sedgwick and the observations of queer theorist, Noah Berlatsky. Bertlasky’s assessment of “Homosexual

Panic” will be critical to our continued analysis of the grotesque. The scholarship of

Justin D. Edwards and Rune Graulund on the grotesque is also crucial to our examination of the intersection of “the monstrous-feminine” and concepts of “homosexual panic” and disability. Thirdly, we will examine how Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body

Snatchers delivers the social construction of normality and the normative, considers the normal and abnormal, and presents the queer body or identity as anomalous and deviant in multiple ways. In this section, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari shall guide our reading of queerness and disability in Kaufman’s film as we navigate through the multiple representations of the queer as grotesque. Additionally, Anna

4 Powell’s volume on Deleuze and horror films will help us unpack representations of queer bodies as anomalous. Harry M. Benshoff’s Queer Cinema and Michel Foucault’s observations on the normal and the abnormal will further guide us in locating the

“monstrous queer” by probing the connection between homosexuality and

McCarthyism’s campaign against the perceived communist threat. Finally, a generative reading of queer futurity will attempt to tie these three films to one another by exploring the concept of the “queer dystopia” through the scholarship of Muñoz, Halberstam, and others.

5 Chapter One: Defining Key Terms

1.1 Queerness:

For a term that now encompasses sexual and gender identities that fall outside of the rubric of heteronormative or heterosexual norms, the word itself carries multiple meanings and has taken on multiple forms throughout its historical usage. By definition, the term “queer” would denote what is odd, strange, or peculiar. The term has also been used disparagingly against individuals in same-sex relationships, individuals whose physicality is fluid within the masculine/feminine spectrum, and as pejorative insult to a heteronormative male. The term, indeed, has been through multiple transformations, and in some ways it has become an umbrella term that refers to minorities that exist outside of the majority norm.

Having transcended these initial intended meanings, the term is now being used to encompass “queer” identities, actions, movements, ways of thinking, and even bodies and bodily functions. With this in mind, it becomes easier for individuals to draw parallels between “queerness” and another term denoting difference: “disability”. Because the concepts of disability and able-bodiedness have a longer and more complicated history that cut across cultures, economies, politics, and even systems of faith, a section will be devoted to unpack that term more carefully later on.

Merriam-Webster defines the term “queer” as being:

1 a: worthless, counterfeit , and

b: questionable, suspicious

Additionally, the second and third set of definitions covers the more conventional terms

6 we have come to familiarize ourselves with:

2 a: differing in some odd way from what is usual or normal

b: (1) eccentric, unconventional (2): mildly insane

c: absorbed or interested to an extreme or unreasonable degree: obsessed

d: (1) often disparaging : homosexual (2) sometimes offensive: gay

3 a: not quite well

Being a term that considers manifestations of external and sometimes internal and performed differences, the word has certainly evolved from its initial intended form.

From being used solely in a disparaging and insulting way during more conservative time periods where bodily and gender difference were marked quite negatively, the term is now being used with a wider acceptance amongst individuals within the queer community and also in the world of academia as a neutral umbrella term to refer to the non-heteronormative community as a whole.

1.2 Disability and Able-bodiedness:

Because the terms “queerness” and “disability” cannot be used interchangeably, it is crucial for us to define disability to note the glaring differences in usage. First and foremost, the prefix “dis” to the word literally denotes a “lack” or a state of being without something. The term itself is literally marked by a disadvantage, or even a flaw or defect.

The simple definitions of the term “disability” is defined by Merriam-Webster as being “a condition [such as an illness or injury] that damages or limits a person’s physical or mental abilities.” Limitation is another marker to make a note of here, and it certainly reflects an inability to perform as well as it is expected from an unharmed individual or

7 person. Furthermore, another definition considers a program that awards individuals

financial support to compensate for their “disability,” and this is a term that harkens back to the early days of insurance and capital finance systems of the European trade traditions that awarded compensation for injury and death.

Merriam-Webster also includes multiple definitions of the term that we should make note of, such as:

1 a : the condition of being disabled

b : limitation in the ability to pursue an occupation because of a physical or mental

impairment; also : a program providing financial support to one affected by disability

2 : lack of legal qualification to do something

3 : a disqualification, restriction, or disadvantage

In order to tie the concept of “disability” with the term “queer,” we must look at another disparaging and offensive term that is also a marker of physical or psychological difference and that is the term “cripple”. Sometimes used in academic fields for its profound affective depth, the term “cripple” is often offensively used to refer to a person living with a disability. It becomes curious, though, how cultures brand such a term as offensive when the word “disability” itself is also a marker of difference that often indicates a flaw or imperfection that is often taken on by ableist perspectives.

8 With the above-mentioned definitions in mind, it becomes easier for us to draw parallels between the concepts of queerness and disability. Both seem to be denoting a condition that is “not quite well,” and both stem from instances of discrimination.

Additionally, queerness and disability can be physically visible or invisible, and affect individuals in profoundly different ways. While heteronormative and ableist conceptions have received substantial pushback from multiple groups and communities, these forms of resistance are still met with a continued and often violent perception of deficiency and imperfection. Regardless of the politics of language, it is difficult not to grasp the strands of comparable similarities that invite us to both unite and redefine these terms.

For the purpose of this project a more fluid definition of “queer” will be used to refer to more than one marker of difference. For instance, Ellen Ripley, the androgynous female protagonist of the Alien film franchise, is “queer” for challenging the heterosexual norm set up by the film’s crew and socio-economic and political atmosphere. The alien- infiltrated all-male Antarctic outpost in The Thing posits homosexual undertones as well as anxieties which might also be deemed “queer”. Invasion of the Body Snatchers offers up a different performance of alienation and isolation and presents audience members with queer bodies that do not seem “quite right”. Each of these films present us with anxieties that often regard any form of difference with dread and violence. Their themes revolve around sexuality, sex, and gender but are performed in very different ways.

Gender and sexuality permeate these performances as we are driven deep into the intimate isolation of the private sphere. Glances are stolen, touches are exchanged, and innuendo is allowed to fly free as these films blend their verbal and visual performances of normalcy and difference.

9 1.3 Psychological and Affective Reflections on the History of ‘Body Horror’:

This brings us to the genre of ‘Body Horror,’ which is quite difficult to define for it encompasses themes that traverse most genres. From horror to science fiction, from drama to adventure films, the term ‘body horror’ revolves around any performance of bodily difference that is meant to shock or horrify and even amuse. The genres of Science

Fiction and Horror in particular have proven to be ruthless and formidable in their treatment of the body, which can be found trapped within the intricate webs their stories weave. Viewers and audience members are presented with both glorious and terrifying transformations, with the abject, the monstrous and the queer nestled comfortably in its tentacles.

‘Body Horror’ is one such sub-genre that focuses on distorting, destroying, deforming and devouring the human body through various methods and ordeals. The genre thrives on images of the decaying human mind and body and other repulsive representations that shock and horrify viewers. The cinematic element becomes crucial to inspect here, as ‘Body Horror’ is shown to have a long and turbulent history that begs to be examine.

Since the 1950s, films within this genre have presented us with spectacular endeavors into the macabre, mostly inspired by the paranoia and fear generated by conflicts after World War II; the tensions of the Cold War between the US-led Western powers and the Soviet Union in addition to other communist nations only heightened the state of fear and allowed the manifestations of these fears to come alive on screen. But it is not only politics or socio-economic anxieties that breathe life into the monsters, for the body itself produces its own set of anxieties that conjure up the monstrous-feminine, the

10 grotesque other, the ‘monstrous queer’ and identities of queerness and disability. As the physical forms in these films undergo irrevocable changes, so will our attempts to address the different variations within the sub-genre and attempt to understand the intricacies of each body as it is portrayed. Therefore, it is essential to trace the development of contemporary cultural anxieties around the body and its relation to the definition of public and private spheres, and the manner through which the body morphed into an object of regulation, submission and control. For the purposes of facilitating this undertaking, this essay has been divided into three central parts, with the following two sections addressing and expanding the central elements of queerness within the guiding manifestos of film theory and criticism, queer theory, and psychoanalysis.

11 We may call it a border; abjection is above all ambiguity. Because, while releasing a hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it — on the contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger.

Julia Kristeva, The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982)

12 Chapter Two: Infestation, Transformation, and the Anxiety around Aliens

2.1 Chapter Introduction

The focus of this chapter will be to document and examine the many afflictions that affect the different bodies being considered, and to extrapolate a “queer” reading of these films as their characters resist invasion. The three selected films for this chapter share very common threads, for they each revolve around an extraterrestrial threat encountered in an isolated setting. Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), as its title clearly indicates, centers on the crew of the towing vessel Nostromo’s encounter with a single alien that gestates inside a living human host. The plot of John Carpenter’s The Thing

(1982) focuses on an all-male team set in an Antarctic outpost that accidentally welcomes a shapeshifting alien masquerading as a dog. Finally, the premise of the Philip Kaufman directed paranoid thriller Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) revolves around an alien invasion threatening to replace each person with a perfect copy devoid of any human emotion.

Each film approaches the subject matter differently while utilizing concepts of the morbid and the grotesque in very inventive ways. Invasion of the Body Snatchers feels somewhat reserved in its use of blood, guts and gore, and yet it is able to achieve a sense of dread rivaling the other two. It is also more explicitly philosophical with its treatment of its central themes, utilizing extensive dialogue and exposition, as well as carefully curated scenes, to further develop the arguably political undertones of the film. The Thing is a rather peculiar film, for it also carries the glaring undertones of Cold War paranoia but paints the threat as less ominous and more violent than ‘Invasion’. Scott’s Alien is

13 more careful with its treatment of the alien, choosing instead to blend theology and the ills of colonial expansion.

The above mentioned films deal primarily with the concepts of fear and anxiety, while also offering up a reimagining of queer futurity that seems to reach through violent death and extreme failure. Although some characters in these films go through a more explicit form of personal transformation that offer up different queer readings, they also provide us with an arguably more nuanced and less horrifying representation of an imagined queer futurity. The readings of these films often overlap as shared themes and motifs encourage us to probe areas of intersectionality. Therefore, contrapuntal perspectives must be addressed in order to further enhance a critical reading of each film, and a final chapter reflecting on utopias and dystopias can help strengthen our considerations of queerness is imagined and performed in ‘body horror’ films.

14 2.2 Alien (1979): Queer Flesh and the Monstrous-Feminine:

The Alien franchise is a series of films which revolve around a confrontation between deep space travelers and aliens that threaten to wipe out all living organisms with the primal goal of breeding more of their own. The main protagonist of the four main films of the franchise, Lieutenant Ellen Ripley, is a rather peculiar character to examine. Her ideology, mind and body are put on display and forced through multiple existential threats only to persevere through gumption, strength and intelligence. Her androgynous body offers up an alternative performance to mainstream representations of the female body exposed to the male gaze on film. Exploitation, racialization, multidimensional social commentary, and anxieties all play a role in these films’ treatment of the body. But the body here often resists definition as it offers up alternative performances.

On primal and fundamental levels, the Alien films are ones that prey on fear and anxiety, sharing a similar formula and platform with another genre favorite John

Carpenter’s The Thing. The Thing is also about a team of explorers trapped in an isolated outpost, battling a long-dormant alien they have unearthed, which starts picking them off one by one. What ties these films together is the bodies that are marked as monstrous, capable, incapable, distraught, in pain, and in continuous transformation.

Because the Alien films are generally exploitive in nature, with their representations of the alien lifecycle and reflections on the inhuman and otherness, we cannot disregard representations of the female and maternal body as abject. The voices

15 of Barbara Creed, Julia Kristeva, Laura Mulvey and others are crucial here to form a shrewd observation on the performance of voyeurism and spectatorship in the crafting of the “monstrous feminine”. These films also offer up a different strata of narratives, providing generative performances that directly invoke Judith Halberstam’s views on failure as productive in exploring alternative states of being in popular culture and the tensions which build as a result. The films also conjure up Alexander G. Weheylie’s observations on political violence, recialization and the human element as they appeal to his reading of the flesh operating as a “vestibular gash in the armor of Man, simultaneously a tool of dehumanization and a relational vestibule to alternate way of being,” as well as performances of sexual difference (Weheliye 40). This essay will argue that his observations on the flesh can provide an alternative reading on exploitative pop culture sci-fi blockbusters, specifically the attendance to the flesh as the “living, speaking, thinking, feeling, and imagining flesh” (40).

The Alien films draw inspiration from earlier experimentation in the world of

Science Fiction, conjuring Lovecraftian visions of gothic horror and the grotesque.

However, it is the evolving representations of these bodies throughout the anthology that beg to be examined. Moving through multiple transformations, the first film invokes images of the silencing of Ellen Ripley’s queer body. The second film allows her bodies to adopt an audible voice, allowing for the character in transition to plead and ask for help. The third, controversially, explores one character’s literal battle with the monstrous outside and within herself, allowing for the construction of a sacrificial identity which is successful at containing and rejecting evil. Finally, the fourth installment challenges all of

16 its predecessors by literally putting the broken, disfigured and failed bodies on display in a medical setting, with one of the failed experiments in cloning resulting in a disfigured body pleading for assisted suicide. All these representations ask us to accept them with a grain of salt. Regardless of what the intended message of each film might have been, viewing them with an inquisitive eye can open up multiple dimensions of reading.

The intersection of queerness and disability shines a light on multiple parallels that stitches these two different fields, theories, and states of being together. But in order to locate the intersection of queer and disability theories, and further explore the concepts that dominate these continued literary and academic conversations around queer studies and the concept of queer futurity, this essay will explore such themes as represented in the Alien Saga. All four films, written and directed by different teams, diverge in tone, plot, and aesthetics. However, central elements of ‘body horror’ that speak directly to the continued conversation of representations of ability, disability, and the performance of queer states of being are unmistakably present in these films.

By using these resources it is possible to explore depictions of able bodies, abject bodies, excess, and fear in Alien. This paper will begin with a brief summary of the films, layout the methods used to explore the anthology, and unpack the interplay between popular culture and alternative representations of the body rejecting all forms of normativity. The analysis of this essay itself is organized under three categories of reading the monstrous feminine, queerness and disability. This essay will also argue that these films generate both generic and highly specific sensations that urge us to invoke the

17 complexities of psychoanalytic concepts on identity and selfhood, while being very aware of the cultural relevance of the continued discourses of ability and disability.

Before moving on to the pulp of this reading, a brief introduction into the world of

Alien is imperative. Alien (1979) remains one of the most prolific, effective and terrifying films, drawing audiences all over the globe. The first film begins with the towing vessel

Nostromo, carrying cargo back to Earth. The crew are in “hypersleep,” hibernating during the long and strenuous journey back home. But when the crew are awakened much earlier than expected, they discover that the ship has not arrived on Earth yet. It was the vessel’s onboard computer, conveniently named ‘Mother,’ that receives a distress signal from a nearby planet, which urges the crew to land and explore the source of this mysterious signal. The viewers are taken on an adventure that inspire both shock and wonder, as the vessel is rerouted to the rock planet LV-426, an uncharted world at the time. The distress signal, however, is discovered to be a warning and not a call for help. The planet had gained the interest of the Weyland Corporation, owners of the towing vessel, who planted an android on board without the knowledge of the crew. As the crew explores the planet, they begin to realize the dangers lurking in the shadows of the derelict spacecraft and within the Nostromo that threaten not only their lives, but also the lives of all mankind.

The second film revolves around Lieutenant Ripley once more, the lone survivor of the Nostromo. After escaping and eradicating the alien Xenomorph in the first film,

Ripley drifts through space for decades in Aliens (1986). She loses years of her life, her friends, and her own daughter who has died of old age. The treatment of time is curious and effective in delivering a narrative on skewed temporality. In the third film, Alien³

18 (1992), we follow Ripley once again, who crash-lands an escape pod on Fiorina “Fury”

161, a sort of off-world prison for violent criminals and sex offenders. She is accompanied by her new surrogate daughter from the second film ‘Newt,’ the scarred and wounded Corporal Hicks, and the damaged android Bishop. It is in this film where the mother-child or parent-child relationship is taken a step further with Ripley being impregnated by a “facehugger” alien during this crash landing. Ripley sacrifices herself at the end of the film, depending into the fiery pits of molten metal, taking the alien queen which bursts from her chest down with her. After several failed attempts to clone

Ripley along with the gestating alien queen inside of her, Alien Resurrection (1997) provides us with much more visible and clearly defined representations of disability and queerness. New characters are introduced, gender roles are disrupted, and the anxieties of sex are taken to new heights.

2.2.1 The “Monstrous-Feminine”:

According to Barbara Creed, there are multiple ways in which a horror film can illustrate abjection, and that is through the numerous shifts and changes in exploring the bounds of repulsion. Creed examines the roles of women in the genre of horror as those which provoke and challenge patriarchal view, which positions the female as the victim.

She elaborates in her study that while the female is often equated with the monstrous, she conjures that up though the functions of maternal figures. According to Creed, the

“monstrous-feminine” is interlaced with the females ability to reproduce, and the focus on the reproductive body is the focal point of her study and she examines the term the

“monstrous-feminine” in hopes of transcending the perceived standard duality between

19 the masculine and the feminine. In her analysis, she merges feminist theory with psychoanalysis to explore Freud’s theory of castration. She transcends the central view of the female being a castrated figured and explores the male-driven anxieties of the female’s ability to castrate. Her theory thrusts us into the outlandish yet familiar worlds of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Alien, and The Thing.

According to Barbara Creed the “monstrous-feminine” reflects the notion that the female is seen as monstrous due to the patriarchal male’s anxieties concerning the female body. Utilizing Freud’s theories on the fear of castration, she further develops her argument that both literature and film have allowed the monstrous feminine to develop

(Creed: 1-3). Creed additionally references the work of Julia Kristeva in her argument on the Monstrous-Feminine. Kristeva’s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection refers to the “abject” and states how it is often excluded, referencing Western society’s concern with the abject as something that threatens the living subject. She explains that when experiences are incapable of reconciling the boundaries between the self and the other, the horrors of the other are amplified. Therefore, excrement, bodily fluids, and corpses are images that vex and displease the mind. Kristeva further explains that it has become a ritual of certain societies to respond to their initial contact with the abject elements by exclusion.

“There looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark re-volts

of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an

exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the

possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite close, but it

20 cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and fascinates desire,

which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive,

desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects.” (Kristeva 1)

According to Kristeva, there lies “within the practices of all rituals of defilement, polluting objects fall into two categories; excremental, which threatens identity from the outside, and menstrual, which threatens from within” (Creed 68). Considering Philip

Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, we find that both the excremental and the menstrual are utilized as means of crafting the monstrosities on screen. Through narration, the pods are discovered much later in the film, but the products of these pods are encountered much earlier. This representation of the excremental poses an external threat to the characters that are being replicated and replaced. As the slow infiltration of urban life unravels, so does the internal threat to partnership, sex and reproduction.

The “menstrual threat” is reinforced through the presence of the pods as clear representations of a violent birthing scene, which threatens everyone. An interesting choice of filming or editing resulted in only one scene in which the main character

Matthew falls asleep in his backyard, and the audience witnesses his replica being birthed through one of these pods, while other characters’ copies are witnessed emerging from other womb-like cocoons as well. These pods “hatch,” and reveal replicas of the main characters, producing a perfect copy right down to the finger prints and injuries, as seen in Figures 1 & 2.

21 Figure 1 & 2. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene stills: Pod opens up and “gives birth” to the alien replica or clone. Dir. Philip Kaufman. United Artists, 1978. Wikimedia. Web

In the film Alien, the audience is exposed to many images of the abject. After his encounter with the “facehugger,” the character Kane (John Hurt) begins to sweat profusely as he struggles with the pain vibrating from within his chest. The other crew members pin him down, believing him to be having an epileptic seizure. Viewers are forced to take in the horror they are about to witness. As the alien bursts out of Kane’s chest, the viewer is bombarded with images of blood and torn flesh in a manner that borders on voyeurism and fetishism. Kristeva elaborates on how “the fetishist episode [is] peculiar to the unfolding of phobia” (Kristeva 37). And the phobia of violent birth, male oral rape and the maternal body are evident here. This idea of the abject being viewed as a fetish has come from existing Freudian theory of the abject being capable of evoking fear and forming enjoyment. The audience might be truly horrified but the gratification of viewing such horrors lingers still.

Linda Badley’s scholarship becomes of importance here in respect to these observations, as she considers horror to be a gendered issue since the Early Modern period of Gothic Revival, and references Kristeva calling horror a “crisis of narcissism on

22 the outskirts of the feminine” (Badley 101). She elaborates on how horror has worked for the masculine white male subject as a method of purging or “repassing through abjection and of distancing oneself once again from the power of the mother” (102). The role of horror in reinforcing stereotypes to maintain its standing in popular culture is almost irrevocable, as it seeks to punish transgressions on normative and conventional gender roles and this can be witnessed clearly in Scott’s adventure aboard the Nostromo in Alien.

Mother, the Artificial Intelligence aboard the towing vessel Nostromo, plays a very active role in the regulation, punishment, and demise of its crew. It is her commands, originating from the Weyland Corporation, which halts the ship and reroutes it to the planet LV-426. The mother becomes an active menace, a threat that is capable of giving life and taking it away as easily as one were to swat a fly. These observations invoke Freud’s theory of the ‘Fecund Mother,’ or the female ability to be fertile and reproduce. Creed explains that the Fecund Mother refers to the notion “that is central to

Alien; it is the abyss, the cannibalizing black hole from which all life come and to which all life returns that is represented in the film as a source of deepest terror” (Creed 25). The mother is capable of both giving and taking life, and although the presence of her character is physically absent, it is visually represented in the womb and fallopian tube- like visual construct of the film sets. The alien queens in the three sequels become literal surrogates of the figurative mother in the first film. The labyrinthine tunnels take the representation of life, death and decay to the limits of excess. The characters in Alien descend through what seems like a “birth canal” to discover the eggs and the parasitic organisms that occupy them on the derelict spacecraft. In Aliens, the rescue team arrives at the now defunct colony of ‘Hadley’s Hope’ on LV-426, and discover its interior to be

23 very similar to the derelict spacecraft in Alien. Sites of creation and destruction.

However, Ellen Ripley is spared from being a representation of the “monstrous- feminine” in Alien. Being the only character untouched and uninfected by the creatures in

Alien, she becomes the only female to escape the representation of the “monstrous- feminine” once more. Although this creates an indisputable opposition to Kristeva’s theory of the woman being monstrous, it nevertheless reflects a “crossing” of the borders of the abject.

Creed explains “there is, of course, a sense in which the concept of a border is central to the construction of the monstrous in the horror film; that which crosses or threatens to cross the ‘border’ is abject” (Creed 11). Instead of the abject merely represented through an entity representing the monstrous-feminine, it crosses that border when the male characters are impregnated. They become male mothers, further developing the representation of abject as horror, by expanding the fears of the female body as abject and directly transferring those fears onto the body of the male. The male body is forced to endure the pain of childbirth, only to meet it with death. It is at this point where our definition of “queerness” begins to expand, for anything crossing that border and becoming anything “other” to the patriarchal white male can be deemed queer. It is at this point where we begin to see Ripley not simply as a female, but as a queer female.

Ripley is not represented as a monstrosity, but her body is depicted as “pleasurable and reassuring to look at” (Creed 23). She is appears soft, white and almost angelic in the opening sequence of the film, only to subvert the gender norms later on as her character develops. Ripley is not depicted as a loving, caring and emotional maternal figure, but the contrary. She opposes Kane being brought back on board after having the “facehugger”

24 attach itself onto his face. Her adherence to protocol does not reflect the “sensible,”

“caring,” or “maternal” figure, but a dominant and commanding woman who fears for safety and security. She does not become emotional, and carries herself with great conviction and strength. The visual narrative, additionally, casts a veil of androgyny over

Sigourney Weaver’s character, for she isn’t the busty, frail damsel-in-distress, but a strong-willed woman battling the alien threat with all her might, with the film culminating in her blasting the alien out of the airlock. Ripley is strong and triumphant, but never threatens the viewer or any of the characters with her sexuality. Ripley becomes the counter “archaic mother” to the one represented by the alien beings. As the alien cycle reflects the need for the continuation of their species, so does Ripley’s determination for the preservation of humanity. The film pits mother against monstrous-mother, only allowing one to prevail. We understand Ripley to represent Carol Clover’s concept of the

“final girl,” who resists the male gaze and is rewarded rather than punished by it. Clover explains “the female exercise of scopic control results not in her annihilation […] but in her triumph; indeed, her triumph depends on her assumption of the gaze” (Clover 219).

Clover further explains while this is a rarity in the horror genre, it works only through desexualizing Ripley’s body as explained above.

Quoting Walkowitz, Badley describes the world as a dangerous place for women, especially that moment when “they transgress the narrow boundaries of home and hearth and dare to enter public space” (Badley 102). What better examples to take in than Ellen

Ripley in the Alien Saga, as we bear witness to her being punished sequel after sequel.

Demoted, lied to, forced to fight the threat she once beat, and sacrificing herself to eradicate the threat only to be resurrected and punished once more. Laura Mulvey

25 manages to provide a shrewd observation in her Screen magazine article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), where she notes that horror did overtly what all film did intrinsically. She noted that sadism demanded a story, which “depends on making something happen, forcing a change in another person, a battle of will and strength, victory/defeat, all occurring in linear time, with a beginning and an end” (Badley 103).

What further supports Mulvey’s observations is the continued presence and dominance of the male “gaze” in the entertainment industry generally, and in the genres of Sci-Fi and

Horror specifically. With the camera’s “gaze” being inherently male, Badley via Mulvey notes that the patriarchal unconscious helped structure the film form, gender its narrative modes of performance, and highlight the role of the spectator, with the woman being the object of the gaze and the man being the holder. Badley further explains that women on screen were either fetishied or punished “as targets of male sadism” (103). Narrative cinema continued its achievement and success, garnering viewership and faithful audiences; it cemented itself as a staple in popular culture that resisted change and thrived on controversy while also being very much aware of its voyeurism.

When considering how the patriarchal unconscious has helped structure the film form, our observations begin to pin a generic idea of the patriarchal male against any and all forms of its “other”. The straight while male seems to always represent the self of the audience, through which the encounter of any form of otherness is met with similar shock and disgust. Queerness, disability, the female or feminine all seem to occupy the same realm of “difference” as they oppose or threaten the living subject of the patriarchal male.

Therefore, gender and sex become the essence of any performance of the abject, and it is the spectator that assigns accordingly to what is performed visually.

26 2.2.2 Queer Flesh and Failure:

Indeed, popular culture has always been a powerful conduit for channeling the abstract and almost undefinable. The above mentioned films put forth representations of the female and maternal body as abject. As Creed attends to the performances of the female body, abject horror, the monstrous-feminine in her scholarship, it becomes difficult not to conjure up the voices of Julia Kristeva and others when tackling the subject matter of these films. The fascination with this “monstrous-feminine” and otherness becomes increasingly evident with each sequel, as the role of the queen and

Ripley as mothers and their progeny becomes paramount to the central mythology of the entire series. With H.R. Giger taking on the creation of the biomechanical aliens, along with their grotesque lifecycle, the audience is thrust into a world of abject horror and primal fear. These cinematic representations of ‘body horror’ reflect on the human, the non-human and even the post-human, giving the series a prime position in the performance and perception of self and otherness. It is this “otherness” which becomes the central strand that ties Weheliye’s flesh as well as Halberstam’s failure together in a performance and ascription of queerness and disability in Alien.

Weheliye’s scholarship opens up a reading of the thematic layers of both race and the human. Although his reading of suffering is centered on the black body, the language he uses can help us draw parallels other bodies that occupy a similar realm. There are certain connections to be made between the female body and the black body, for example, for both can be seen as marginalized, exploited, and sexualized entities that are predicated on the performance of these bodies within the general heteronormative social sphere.

27 Another parallel can be drawn with the queer body as well, as we consider how the queer community was marginalized and seen as sub-human or lacking in many aspects. It is hard not to conjure up historical moments through which blackness and queerness both needed to break down walls and cross boundaries in order to exist within this heteronormative world. Both the black body and the queer body are regarded with apprehension and fear, as both have been and continue to be stigmatized by society for the ills and diseases which they bring. As the black body continues to be viewed as sub- human, so is the queer body regarded as in-human.

Turning first to some key concepts that require further investigation, it becomes essential to locate these queer bodies through Weheliye’s scholarship. According to

Weheliye, “blackness designates a changing system of unequal power structures that apportion and delimit which humans can lay claim to full human status and which humans cannot” (Weheliye 3). In Ridley Scott’s Alien, the central human characters are caught in a “changing system of unequal power structures,” having their bodies forcibly moved literally across space in service of a multinational terraforming and deep-space excavating conglomerate the Weyland Foundation. Their bodies are transported, put to sleep, pushed to work and completely controlled by the commands carried out by the

Artificial Intelligence “Mother”. It is later revealed that the “distress signal” was actually a warning, and it was the greed of the corporation that leads these bodies to their demise.

What connects these bodies to the radicalized ones is the concept of agency, or lack thereof. Agency articulates the sociopolitical system of this crafted world quite well, where finance capital and material wealth translates into disposable bodies that can be

28 discarded if necessary. Ellen Ripley is one such body that problematizes our reading of the films, for she resists the conventional representation of the female body, confronts patriarchal authority, and defies normative gender roles. Her body transcends “normalcy” as it is the only one allowed to move through time and space almost unscathed.

In Alien, we find Ellen Ripley questioning Mother’s authority along with the ship’s male commander, Dallas. Several instances depict Ripley being wary about the planet and what lies beneath the surface of things. Her central role is defined early on as the crew descends into the bowels of the derelict spacecraft on the planet. When one of the crew members is attacked by the face hugger that emerges from its womblike egg, it impregnates him by inserting a phallic appendage into his mouth, depositing the alien embryo into his chest cavity. When the crew panic and return to the ship, Ripley refuses to open the pod bay doors, and insist on following quarantine protocol to protect others from possible infection. The crew both inside and outside the spacecraft attack Ripley physically and verbally, disregard her authority as a lieutenant, and open the doors. The crew is now left exposed and vulnerable to an entity they do not understand. . Much like blackness, it is this performance of the lack of agency that ascribes difference to these bodies, for they are not in complete control of their destiny. They are literally guided like sheep by their shepherd into inevitable destruction.

According to Weheliye, “In the context of the secular human, black subjects, along with indigenous populations, the colonized, the insane, the poor, the disabled and so on serve as limit cases by which Man can demarcate himself as the universal human” (Weheliye 24). And just like blackness, gender is a visible marker that defines

29 who a person is and what he or she experiences. In his effort to assess the experiences of being, and his attendance to the antiquated protocols of Freudian theory, Weheliye urges us to alter our views of considering what falls within the definition of Man and what exists outside of it. Ellen Ripley is viewed as a strong female lead in the genre, subverting normative gender roles and resisting the power structures imposed upon her body by the social sphere and those who dwell within it. But she is not Man and must be punished for transgressing on the clearly defined limited of gender roles. For instance, when Ripley is clever enough to identify Ash as an android planted on board by the company with ominous intentions, she is attacked and almost killed by the android. In this seminal scene, we see Ash rolling a pornographic magazine and trying to shove it down Ripley’s throat in an attempt to silence her from revealing the true motivations of the company, as seen in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Alien. Sigourney Weaver. Scene still: Ripley is attacked by Ash with a Rolled-up

Magazine. Dir. Ridley Scott. Twentieth-Century Fox, 1979. Wikimedia. Web.

30 The corporeal is central to our reading of the human body as it becomes a main theme in this exploration gendered subjugation. Much like how the black subject’s entire state of being is determined by the patriarchal male so is the female body. If we are to consider the black body to be a stark mark of difference to the patriarchal white male, then we can also view Ripley’s body as occupying and further “otherness” than simply the female. As mentioned above, Ripley character does not reflect the generic image of women in horror. Her femaleness is different and we are reminded by that constantly.

While race and gender can sometimes be visibly identified through physical appearance, it is not what is on the flesh that is indicative of true difference in Alien but what is beneath it. As Ripley battles the white male Ash and overpowers his non-human physical strength, she and another crew member are able to disarm and decapitate the android. Ash’s white internal fluids gush out like milk or semen, representing the synthetic horror devised by the sociobiological presence of his creators. Ripley’s battle, therefore, signifies overcoming such hegemony by allowing her non-normative androgynously “queer” frame to subvert normative gender roles.

Ripley is queer in the impressions she leaves, she resists being sexualized by the crew, is androgynous in her appearance, and subversive of normative gender roles as she becomes the sole survivor and only member capable to annihilating the alien threat. This brings us to Weheliye’s exploration of the flesh. Wehelye writes,

“In the absence of kin, family, gender, belonging, language, personhood,

property, and official records, among many other factors, what remains is

the flesh, the living, speaking, thinking, feeling, and imagining flesh: the

31 ether that holds together the world of Man while at the same time forming

the condition of possibility for this world’s demise. It’s the end of the

world—don’t you know that yet?” (Weheliye 40).

In the fourth installment, Ripley is isolated from everything she is familiar with; for she loses everyone she knows, and is reborn into a new world without even the ability to speak let alone imagine her own being. She is forced to re-experience life anew. Newly birthed into a world she left behind in the previous film, she is forced to endure an even more complex and insidious horror than her earlier self did. What remains of the original

Ripley, however, still remains encoded within her genetic material, as her freshly grown flesh participates in her new environment with preserved memories and enhanced physical capabilities.

This parallel to inscription of blackness appears in Resurrection as the inscription of “otherness,” Ripley’s flesh in the film is marked by the number “8,” referencing the number of trials required to finally produce a successful specimen as seen below in

Figure 4. Her body is literally colonized, tortured, and imprisoned, as racialized assemblages prescribed onto her body as a definite marker of difference appear. Ripley is literally dehumanized by the predominantly male characters and is often referred to as

“it,” underestimating her intelligence, and questioning her judgment. While Ripley is a white female in the films, she undergoes several transformations throughout that literally change her appearance. In Aliens, she is battered and has shorter hair giving her a more masculine look. In Alien³, she shaves her head, and in Alien Resurrection she is a hybrid clone with dark nails, enhanced physical endurance and acid for blood. Although these

32 representations point to “the “profitable ‘anatomizing’ of the captive body,” Ripley’s new body quite literally represents assemblages of queer sexualization which draw inspiration from previously established distinctions to social life (Weheliye 43).

Figure 4. Alien Resurrection. Sigourney Weaver. Scene still: Ripley inspects the tattoo on her

new body. Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Twentieth-Century Fox, 1997. Wikimedia. Web.

Furthermore, opposing the insidious and clearly male humanoid android in the first film is the character Call (Winona Ryder) in Alien Resurrection. Call’s compassion, turn to religion and empathy become a driving force behind the fourth film’s narrative, and the manner through which her skin must be penetrated in order for her to reach

“Father” on the secret military research vessel USM Auriga is intriguing. These representations and actions elicit many questions regarding the films’ central themes around maternal and female signifiers. These “inhuman” androids, Ash in Alien, Bishop in Aliens and Call in Alien Resurrection, develop a larger narrative of the flesh which reflects Weheliye’s assertion that, “there can be no absolute biological substance” (Weheliye 65). Weheliye's observations on the manner through which beings

33 can “be transmuted into bare life are scripted onto the bodies of the dysgenic so that their expulsion appears both deserved and natural” is another area worth examining (73).

Much like the black body, the queer female bodies in these films are definitely seen as

“dysgenic” and therefore disposable. In Aliens, Ripley is tasked to return to LV-426 to solve a mystery. She is extorted and lied to into making the trip because she was seen as expendible. We also find Ripley losing her hair in Alien³, which an essential social construct representing femininity, which can represent a reduction of her individuality and personhood. She also has her first sexual encounter with man in this film, losing her

“onscreen chastity”. Finally, the alien queen gestating inside her body further suggests that her body is now corrupt and therefore disposable.

In an attempt to make sense of these observations around how these bodies are treated, we now turn to Judith Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure. This book has proven to be an indispensable resource in reading pop culture and regarding alternative performances of failure as generative modes of producing queer and disabled bodies as means of escaping the “punishing norms that discipline behavior and manage human development with the goal from delivering us from unruly childhoods to orderly and predictable adulthoods” (Halberstam). Failure dwells over Ripley like a dark cloud, following her through both time and space. By exploring how it is performed throughout each film, we will locate failure in the Alien anthology both as an enforced condition and as an inevitable fact of life. In an attempt to bridge the gap between two fields of queer and disability studies, an initial focus on the second film in the saga Aliens might prove to be beneficial for our reading of failure.

34 In Aliens, Ripley wakes up after 57 years in hyper-sleep and learns that the company has lost all contact with the colonized and terraformed planet, LV-426.

Recuperating from the failure of keeping her promise by returning home in time for her daughter’s 11th birthday, and fearing that she had failed in eradicating the alien threat, she decides to accompany a group of colonial marines in hopes of rescuing the colony of dozens of families. Her failure leads her to what would become her surrogate daughter,

Newt, and first non-homicidal android friend Bishop, forming a new queer family that resists the subjugating efforts of conventionalism.

Additionally, the manner through which Ripley develops across these four films shows how her transformation or evolution as a non-human and even post-human subject is undoubtedly “queer”. The characterization of the female protagonists in Alien

Resurrection, for instance, points to queer unions that share common interests and goals.

Call, the female android, infiltrates a pirate ship to access the private military vessel USM

Auriga in order to eradicate the alien that threatens humanity’s existence. Ripley awakens with the knowledge and determination that the aliens must perish as well, even through she was never exposed to these aliens in her new body. Both develop an intimate kinship, and it is one that is generated from share interests and curiosity.

Halberstam's observations are beneficial to our reading of failure here, as we navigate through the queer relationship of Call and Ripley on board the Auriga.

Halberstam states that “[i]f we were all already normative and heterosexual to begin with in our desires, orientations, and modes of being, then presumably we would not need such strict parental guidance to deliver us all out common destinies of marriage, child

35 rearing, and hetero-reproduction” (Halberstam 27). Throughout the film we see both Call and Ripley failing to fit neatly within the mold of the norm by being resistant to parental authority, often having to be regulated, scolded, and controlled.

Figure 5. Alien Resurrection. Sigourney Weaver and Winona Ryder. Scene still: Ripley grabs then caresses Call’s Face. Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Twentieth-Century Fox, 1997. Wikimedia.

Web.

As seen in Figure 5, the interaction between Call and Ripley operates on queer non-normative interactions. The meet and clash, and while initially meeting with distrust, they both share a common interest and unite because of it. Although the term “lesbian” is limiting by its association to the patriarchal definitions of “straightness,” its erotic layers are put on display in the fourth film and lesbian existence is defined by the strength of physical, emotional and even spiritual commonalities. When considering this specific performance of queer embodiment, it is difficult not to compare it to that of the second film, Aliens. In the second film, the efforts at disassociating Ripley from any association with homosexuality are clear with the introduction to Private Vasques, a butch, short-

36 haired and tough Latina. Along side one another, Ripley’s performance of feminine whiteness is extenuated and becomes even more visible even with her shorter haircut in comparison to the first film. However, the introduction of this lesbian stereotype in Aliens does not stop Riley from challenging the conventional notions of femininity, as she confronts, battles and defeats Xenomorph soldiers and queen and building her non- normative family of the crippled android Bishop, the orphan Newt, and the burned and disabled Corporal Hicks.

In the second chapter of The Queer Art of Failure, Halberstam speaks of resisting the dominant conventions of feminism and points to the utilization of “evacuation, refusal, passivity, unbecoming, unbeing” as alternative methods of using negativity as a form of feminist protest (129). This is evident through the character of Ripley and the group of misfit mercenaries, which board the Auriga with contraband and attitudes resistant to authority. Johner is quite a large man with an almost giant look, Vriess uses a wheelchair loaded with shotguns and weapons, and Call is a pessimistic android with a mission to save humanity from the alien threat. Representations and performances of masculinity and femininity are at odds here, for there is a bled of hyper-sexualized bodies and others that resist on establishment conventions.

Failure is a central element of Alien Resurrection, and it is one that draws both queerness and disability into the forefront. During the course of the film, Ripley 8 stumbles upon a laboratory housing the failed experiments in cloning of both her and the alien queen gestating inside of the chest of Ripley in the previous film, which can be seen in Figure 6 below. She walks through a hall of large glass tubes containing grotesque

37 hybrids and disfigured bodies of clones one through six. After passing these tubes into the back of the large room, Ripley and her companions discover Ripley 7 laying down on a metal slab with tubes and wires protruding through her abdomen and chest. The chimera of alien and human DNA mumbles to Ripley and pleads for her to kill her. Ripley “8” literally faces representations of past failures in these bodies of abject horror, as she ignites her flamethrower and torches these abominations.

Figure 6. Alien Resurrection. Sigourney Weaver. Scene still: Ripley sees herself. Dir. Jean-Pierre

Jeunet. Twentieth-Century Fox, 1997. Imagearcade [imgarcade.com]. Web.

This performance seems to represent the destruction and rejection of the “broken” or disabled body, counteracting the progressive and generative narrative of the observations made earlier in this essay. It is a rather dark and poignant performance of rejecting “the presence of queer characters,” rather than a form of resistance to the urge of wiping the slate clean for non-normative bodies (Halberstam 119). However, Ripley

7’s demise comes at the hand of her compassionate and distraught doppelgänger, which could represent Halberstam’s notion of forgetting and how it becomes “a way of resisting

38 the heroic and grand logics of recall and unleashes new forms of memory”. Ripley’s rejection of memorialization becomes an affirmation of “disorderly histories,” which topples the rituals of power enforced by the military personnel of the Auriga, and therefore resisting the status quo (15). Failure here gives birth to perseverance and survival.

39 2.3 The Thing (1982): Queerness and the Grotesque

In John Carpenter’s The Thing, the hallmarks of ‘body horror’ are even more apparent and appear much less contained than those in the Alien franchise. The violent terrifying sequences toss more than a handful of grotesque creatures with multiple orifices and congealed appendages reaching out to get you. This isn’t the controlled and contained world performing an intricate and regular alien lifecycle, but a haphazard world of shape-shifting terror. Many bodies are infiltrated and infected as we bear witness to how the men in the film are repeatedly assaulted and defiled by an alien creature unearthed from beneath the ice, having crash landed thousands of years prior to the events of the film. The creatures’ unorthodox methods of “reproduction” conjures up a similar male-driven anxiety with the female body to the ones presented in the Alien film series. However, while the Alien films present us with a more contained, if not neat and methodical, alien reproductive life-cycle, The Thing delivers a messy and ominous reproductive cycle which defies both logic and reason.

Concerning the “monstrous-feminine,” the slits and openings of this repulsive organism is met not with fascination but with fear. Multiple parallels can be drawn between this extraterrestrial entity and the ones in Alien. Additionally, the film draws many other parallels with certain diseases such as cancer and others carried by animals we keep or consume. The universal fear of the body being desecrated and deformed by disease is ever present here, as the creature must consume the body whole in order to produce a perfect mimic. The original bodies of the characters in The Thing’s world are effectively destroyed. But one of the most glaring parallels to the world as we know it is

40 one that stems from the nature of the films casting choice; all the characters in the film are male, thus opening up an avenue for a queer reading of its plot, characters, and content. Therefore, it is the purpose of this section to examine John Carpenter’s film through an identifiably queer lens, while also bringing the methodologies of psychoanalysis and disability studies to bear on its meanings. By beginning with Julia

Kristeva’s theory of the abject, we will expand our reading of the grotesque, the inhuman, and the queer through the commentary of critic Eve Sedgwick and writer Noah Berlatsky.

The scholarship of Justin D. Edwards and Rune Graulund will also be central to our inspection of the grotesque that seems to connect the presence of the “monstrous- feminine” with notions of “homosexual panic,” and disability “terror”.

This reading of John Carpenter’s The Thing will consider the multiple manifestations of queer bodies or identities and also explore the concept of illness and affliction as markers of difference. The choice of having an all-male cast was an intriguing one made by the production team, as it differs from earlier adaptations of John

W. Campbell, Jr.’s novella Who Goes There? Not including female cast members was a rather unconventional choice that might have been a contributing factor to the film’s lackluster box-office performance, for clear love interests in film might garner a more eager audience. However, being a more faithful adaptation to its source material, the film allows us to examine an area neglected by earlier adaptations that decided the films needed a female component in order to enhance the sense of dread and draw audiences in.

Even the 2011 prequel to John Carpenter’s film also opted to include two female characters and go down a more conventional sci-fi slasher route ending with the final girl’s predictable survival. John Carpenter’s adaptation, however, presents us with twelve

41 men holed up at an Antarctic research outpost, with the closest city being thousands of miles away off the coast. The only female presence in this film is the voice heard on a computer while the main character MacReady (Kurt Russell) plays chess with the virtual character, as well as female contestants on an old VHS tape watched by some of the team members to quash boredom. Under the guise of darkness, the men find themselves trapped with an entity capable of absorbing their bodies and producing perfect replicas virtually indistinguishable from their former selves, fulfilling the film’s tongue-in-cheek tagline “man is the warmest place to hide.”

Before exploring these themes, a brief introduction to the films plot is necessary.

Set in 1982, the film revolves around a group of men working at a research outpost in

Antarctica who come into contact with an alien creature capable of absorbing their bodies and producing perfect physical replicas. The film’s first scene after the title card reveals a sled dog being chased by a helicopter from a nearby Norwegian research facility, with the passenger attempting to shoot and kill it. The dog manages to make it to the American compound, and the two teams exchange fire that ends in the demise of the two Norwegian men. The American team decides to investigate the Norwegian camp and make a startling discovery; charred disfigured remains, frozen corpses, and many videotapes containing footage of a craft buried deep beneath the ice. The dog is taken in by the bulky yet reserved Clark (Richard Masur), who inadvertently introduces it to his dogs in the kennel.

Chaos ensues and the creature is revealed shortly after, trying to absorb the remaining dogs, and is attacked with a flamethrower. Later on, the team puts two and two together, recognizing the grotesque creature’s extraterrestrial origin and formulating a plan for its destruction. Distrust permeates this paranoid thriller through scenes of intense violence

42 and anxiety about who could have been infiltrated and replaced, culminating in a battle for humanity’s survival.

Julia Kristeva and Barbara Creed’s seminal work on the abject, the “monstrous- feminine,” and the grotesque can help us shed light on the power dynamics presented in

The Thing, as we come to consider the monstrosity as a representation of the female

“other”. With the absence of the perfect female body, we are presented with multiple incarnations that conjures up fear of the female in diverse shapes as well as functions, for the shape-shifting organism is able to mimic the likeness of any living organic entity it comes into contact with. The dog-creature at the beginning of the film presents the audience with a flower-like face opening up to reveal rows of teeth leading towards the opening of its mouth. Another iteration of this “vagina dentata” appears in the scene where the character Copper (Richard Dysart) attempts to resuscitate his friend Norris

(Charles Hallahan) after a heart attack. Just when Copper makes contact with the defibrillators to Norris’ chest, his torso opens up to reveal large oval-shaped jaws with sharp teeth that seize Copper’s arms and bites them off.

Figures 7 & 8: The Thing. Scene stills: The “Thing” transforming and destroying. Dir. John

Carpenter. Universal Pictures, 1982. Wikimedia. Web.

43 These representations exhibit only some instances where “patriarchal gender codes related to corporeality” are subverted by the appearance of the “monstrous- feminine” through ingestions, excretions, pregnancy and illness (Edwards and Graulund

32). The “infected” and transformed characters here deliver us with grotesque images of pregnancy, birth and rebirth, as well as an obsession with the primal scene. The argument posited by Barbara Creed’s work is that Sci-Fi and Horror films are usually focused on a

“reworking of the primal scene in relation to the representation of other forms of copulation and procreation” (Grant 48). It is these forms or copulation and reproduction are ever-present in The Thing, although substantially different to what we can see in

Alien. Even in a film that lacks the presence of female characters, the performance is not spared representations of the “monstrous-feminine”.

With Norris’ body now desecrated, tentacle like appendages burst out of his large belly and spurt out a white pus-like fluid that squirts across the room. Norris’ head also detaches itself from his body, falls to the ground, and sprouts eyes and legs like an arachnid, scurrying off towards the door to escape. These are just some of the forms of mutated “births” that conjure up Creed’s scholarship on the primal scene as well as Laura

Mulvey’s observations of the camera’s use to guide the “male gaze”. The camera lingers on the image of Norris’ head slowly detaching itself from the body and falling to the floor with an audible squelch. The presence of an overtly violent treatment depicting female genitalia on screen becomes almost unmistakable when comparing the methods of extraterrestrial reproduction in both Alien and The Thing. Not only does this Norris- monster’s abdomen deliver on that performance, but it also literally “castrates” the character Copper by chopping off and devouring his arms, effectively depriving him of

44 physical power and emasculating him. Or perhaps, these phallic appendages and white ooze are mere representations of inherently violent male urges, unleashed in the male- dominated isolation of the Antarctic outpost. But that is a tale for another paper.

In their collected volume titled Grotesque, Justin D. Edwards and Rune Grualund both turn to Kristeva's essays on abjection and her theories on the “monstrous-feminine” to expand their concepts of the female grotesque. Their essay makes note of how the female body is a “corporeal manifestation of horror, a feeling emanating from the fear of reincorporation into the mother, as well as a fear of the mother’s generative power” (33).

Moreover, Kristeva’s psychoanalytic paradigm become crucial here to our reading of The

Thing, for it not only calls forth an analysis from a maternal perspective but also presents us with a breakdown of binary oppositions, pinning the image of the “pure virgin” against that of the “grotesque whore”. Considering the lack of presence of female characters, the

film itself isn’t completely devoid of the feminine or female, for it always resurfaces through performances of patriarchal repression.

As mentioned earlier, the two instances that communicate a female presence is the female-voiced talking “Chess Wizard” played by MacReady and the female contestants on the VHS tape playing on a television set. The voice on the computer sounds soft and almost soothing, perhaps even a little seductive, as MacReady reaches the end of the game. When he loses the chess match to the computer, he opens up the front latch and pours his drink down its internal components, effectively punishing what he calls a

“cheating bitch”. This scene sets the stage for the forthcoming collision course of male pleasures and anxieties with the slits, slots, and orifices of the “monstrous-feminine”.

What’s more is how we regard the “corporeal manifestation of horror” in this film, for

45 visceral fear of “reincorporation into the mother” can be seen in a performance of queerness. Queer men, in general terms, are often regarded as feminine men. They are men who are seen as embracing the ascribed feminine ideals of gentleness and delicacy.

In other words, feminine men are seen as effeminate, girlish, and therefore, unmanly. We can assume that just as the “monstrous-feminine” is viewed in opposition to the patriarchal male, the queer identity constructs another opposition as well.

This brings us to the concepts of the “inhuman” as developed through the representation of the “monstrous-feminine” as the grotesque “other”. Edwards and

Graulund turn to art critic Kristen Hoving to examine how performances of the grotesque are about the transgression of limits and boundaries, and how it opposes defined identities by collapsing any representation of form onto itself. Hoving states that the grotesque functions through “‘parasitic prefixes [sucking] life from what it is not, becoming misshapen, deformed, unfocused, indistinct, disintegrated, and antithetical,’” effectively transforming the human into the inhuman (Edwards and Graulund 86). This “parasitic” organism is present throughout the film, as it is seen absorbing and deforming multiple bodies as it seeks to assimilate. Much like this horrifying organism, the queer male is viewed as one that has transgressed the limited and boundaries of the heteronormative binary, occupying a third state which problematizes the state of things.

The film here forces us to question what is human and what is not, for the creature only seems to attack when it is threatened by death and destruction. The organism only seems to try and assimilate when it is afraid, choosing to escape rather than confront the band of men. This observation seems to collapse our perception of what is human and what is not, for the organism seems to desire seclusion and safety rather than seeking out

46 trouble. The dog at the beginning is seen running for safety, choosing only to absorb the other dogs when humans are there to bear witness to its transformation. The organism also assimilates the character Bennings in secret, only to be discovered and torched by the team as it escapes out into the frozen landscape. The creature does possess the ability to split and fracture into multiple entities, with even its blood being sentient and moving around freely. It can be assumed that if the creature truly wanted to assimilate the entire team, it would have been able to do so freely.

These concepts of the “inhuman” pave the way for our consideration of the “post- human,” which is often demonized, but sometimes celebrated, for its difference to the norm. Edwards and Grauland reference the manner in which the concept of the

“inhuman” often denotes “a lack of humanity and great cruelty” and “coldness and unfeeling,” posing the inhuman “in direct opposition to humanity, situating it at the opposing pole of a continuum” (Edwards and Grauland 87). The grotesque, as they explain, attempts to circumvent this simple binary by both problematizing and complementing theories of the post-human, and thus presenting us with bodies that fall outside of what is traditionally considered to be the norm. This conversation around the inhuman, post-human, and assimilation brings us to a third avenue that complicates the perception of the male heterosexual identity proposed by our earlier readings of the

“monstrous-feminine,” offering up a complex reading of queerness, otherness, illness, and disability. Much like the alien invaders in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the “thing” in The Thing also seems to lack humanity and is cold and unfeeling in its treatment of the characters. These two different performances still point to an “otherness” opposed to

47 humanity, declaring it a danger. The abject, once more, is depicted as something that threatens the living male subjects.

Atlantic Magazine contributor Noah Berlatsky’s paper on “Fecund Horror,” published on the blog The Gay Utopia back in 2007, is successful at locating queerness in the John Carpenter film by focusing on multiple binaries such as those of gender identity, emotional expression and physical intimacy, as well as health and illness. Homosocial bonds are pinned against homosexual undertones of the film as his paper considers subtle yet suggestive language, homoerotic scenes, and the increasingly problematic concept of how homosexuality or queerness is treated and considered. Eve Sedgwick and Julia

Kristeva are central to his analysis of the theme of “homosexual panic” and the fear of what goes against heteronormative traditions of the generally preferred sexual orientation that is deemed normal. By utilizing some of Bertlasky’s arguments as a starting point, we can further develop a more explicit connection to this panic by extrapolating the signs and “symptoms” of homosexuality from the films opening scene, its use of blood as a form of diagnosis for affliction, and utilizing the grotesque as a form of resisting the queer “other.”

Turning to the opening scene as an example, we are introduced to a flying saucer crash-landing on earth before the title burns through the frame in a stunning spectacle of white light and a jagged font. Perhaps this “terror which comes from above” is meant to reflect the nuclear threat from the Soviet Union, positioning the film as commentary on the perceived Communist threat to the US during the Cold War. Or perhaps this fiery crash-landing is a representation of the “wrath of God” coming down as an act of ritual purity meant to destroy whatever “deviant” behavior might be stirring in the secluded all-

48 male outposts of the antarctic. Berlatsky makes note of the “lack of emotional display” between the male characters and explains how both language and camera-work, not physical intimacy, is suggestive of queer desire. One of the most charged examples is of both MacReady and Childs (Keith David) laying down in the snow on opposite ends, sharing a bottle of liquor and intense eye contact. When Childs asks MacReady what he thinks they should do, after surviving the final confrontation with the “Thing,” MacReady responds with, “Why don’t we just wait here for a while? See what happens”

Furthermore, the isolation experienced by the twelve men in the film gives rise to paranoia as well as the fear of death looming over the unknown. Berlatsky points to a scene where the character Child’s asks an important question, “If I were an imitation, a perfect imitation, how would you know it was really me?”. Berlatsky pushes the concept of the portrayal of emotion even further and points here to the question of intimacy. How would we know one another when what is visible to us, the thing’s immitation, is a perfect imitation of what we know? It is, therefore, the concealed parts of their minds and bodies that generate a sense of anxiety between the characters. They instantly become distrustful of one-another, as the feeling of being exploited by the queer male fuels paranoia. Only through intimate bonds can they truly know one another, and therefore, the suggestion of physical intimacy between the men shakes them to the core. Moreover,

Berlatsky references Eve Sedgwick’s scholarship on how the heterosexual/homosexual binary, only further problematizes our conception of both. He draws out other binaries discussed by Sedgwick, chiefly those pinning the public against the private as mentioned above, as well as health and illness. While Bertlasky dispels the connection between the anxiety surrounding the AIDS epidemic and the “thing’s” infiltration of the outpost, the

49 film’s portrayal of the “thing” as a carrier of disease can further develop the emotional force of Bertlasky’s reading of “homosexual panic”. Be it through the use of blood as a tool for testing who might be infected, to the close up scenes of needles piercing through the skin of the characters, the film provides us with ample room to explore such a reading even further.

A little over a month prior to the film’s release in 1982, an article was published in

The New York Times with a headline reading, “NEW HOMOSEXUAL DISORDER

WORRIES HEALTH OFFICIALS” pointing to the then newly discovered GRID [Gay-

Related Immunodeficiency Disease], more commonly known as AIDS. The cause of the disease and a complete list of probable symptoms at the time were still undetermined but was known to be mainly spread sexually and through intravenous drug use and needle- sharing. This, in turn, enhanced the level of panic amongst the public and increased the stigma and fear that had attached itself to intravenous drug users and gay men in particular. In the films audio commentary, the director explicitly mentions this connection and makes note of how the organism in the film can be seen as a stand in metaphor for the AIDS epidemic. For this reason, it is difficult to ignore this connection which allows us to theorize the parallels that can be drawn out by simple observation of the film’s plot line as well as the tools used to perform fear and anxiety surrounding homosexuality and even drug use. This reading pairs queerness with disability, as the idea of the male being tarnished by femininity or tainted by the “dirty” blood of AIDS reinforces the heteronormative idea of the queer as being disruptive if not destructive.

The subverted flesh makes another appearance worth noting here, and it is one that affirms Berlatsky’s readings of “homosexual panic.” In a scene where MacReady

50 introduces the idea of testing each person’s blood by burning it with a hot needle and see if it reacts he says, “Ya see, when a man bleeds, it's just tissue, but blood from one of you

‘Things’ won't obey when it's attacked. It'll try and survive... crawl away from a hot needle, say.” The “normal” is poised against the “queer,” as MacReady’s words echo the resistance of LGBT rights movements of the 60s and 70s in their fight for survival. This seems to be a blatant example of how the grotesque “illustrates how the normal is defined in relation to the abnormal” or the deviant (Edwards and Graulund 8). Just before this seminal scene, the suspected characters are each bound to a couch next to one another as their thumbs are sliced and their blood is drawn. These scenes only complicate concepts of the “normal” and “abnormal” as symbolized by homosexual/heterosexual binaries noted by both Sedgwick and Berlatsky. As Edwards and Graulund explain it, observing the distinctions between what is normal and abnormal does not necessarily produce mutually exclusive binary oppositions. In fact, questions arise that problematize and challenge concepts of the normative world even further. As Edwards and Graulund explain it:

“For to understand grotesquerie and all its complexity we must acknowledge that

it provokes two key questions: what is normal? And by extension what is

abnormal? These questions are posed but not easily answered and, as a result,

they lead to ambivalence about the abnormal. In this, the ambivalently abnormal

is part of the state of uncertainty where predetermined conditions and ways of

seeing the normative world are challenged” (Edwards and Graulund 8).

It is precisely in this violation of the natural order of things posed by the alien creature that we find the lines separating these binaries to be blurred, much like the

51 “thing’s” amorphous appearance. Berlastky suggests that the “thing” has come to represent the rejected, unwanted or repressed parts of masculine identities representing

“homosexual panic.” But we have also come to see the “thing” as being a representation of the “monstrous-feminine” that is capable of violating, castrating, and even feminizing the characters of the film. With gender identities challenged and binaries collapsing all around us, it becomes rather difficult to discern whether it is the thing itself or fear of the thing that truly represents Berlatsky concepts of “homosexual panic”. This “thing” has come to represent numerous “others” to the dominant masculine identity of the characters, and it is this intersection of the abject and “homosexual panic” where these bodies are located. The characters of this film seem to occupy both genders and none at the same time, and so we find the “ambivalently abnormal” not only challenging our perception of the normative world but also subverting it in a fashion only ‘body horror’ is capable of achieving.

52 2.4 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): The “Monstrous Queer”

The horror genre constantly seeks to subvert an established system, and it has done so quite dramatically through tales of “evil coming from above”. In this tradition we come to Philip Kaufman’s reimagining of Jack Finney’s 1955 Science Fiction novel The

Body Snatchers, retitled Invasion of the Body Snatchers. At first glance, the title change seems to summon a sense of dread stemming from an invocation of occupation, annexation, and assault. However, when we dive deeper into its intricate plot, looking at a community being infiltrated by an other-worldly threat, the film ultimately becomes a tale of paranoia and fear. We are presented with a film that probes the social construction of normality and of the normative, examines the normal and abnormal, and presents the queer body or identity as anomalous or deviant. In this section, Michel Foucault, Gilles

Deleuze and Felix Guattari shall guide our reading of queerness in Kaufman’s film as we navigate through the multiple representations of the queer as monstrous and grotesque.

Additionally, Anna Powell’s volume on Deleuze and horror films will help us unpack representations of the queer body as anomalous. This reading will attempt to extrapolate what we could only call the “monstrous queer” by probing the connection between homosexuality and McCarthyism’s campaign against the perceived communist threat by primarily working with Harry M. Benshoff’s Queer Cinema and his observations on the normal and the abnormal.

With the above considerations and goals in mind, we must note how the monstrous entities presented in this film offer up multiple readings, which often resist the boundaries such as those generated from gender binaries as we delve into the

53 observations of Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari. As with earlier parts of this chapter examining the worlds of Alien and The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers manifests monstrosity in a multitude of ways as we come to discover that the multiple singularities present within the film blend with one another. For instance, the alien threat in this film can be read not just as a representation of queerness or the fear of homosexuality but also as a performance of authoritative power and control, which seeks to fix what it deems broken in society. Furthermore, the “monstrous-feminine” makes another appearance in this film, further complicating our reading of the anomalous. Finally, it is the “monstrous queer” that makes a bold statement in this film, illustrated through both imagery and discourse. Before we delve into such considerations, we must first begin with the concept of normalization and the state of the heteronormative bodies presented early on in the

film.

The opening scene of Kaufman’s adaptation begins with a grainy close-up of something orange, and as the camera’s lens slowly zooms out the actual image starts to come into focus. A seemingly barren and desolate landscape, much like that of the planet

Mars, can be seen. In the backdrop of this landscape the orange object becomes even clearer and can be identified as a large sun-like star with another planet or moon suspended in space. But what is more outlandish is the thick, white, viscous substance

floating in sticky stands above the surface of this Mars-like planet. The scene then cuts to a close-up of translucent, almost transparent, gelatinous formations, which look and move like circular or oval jellyfish in the wind. The thick white substance seen earlier now appears like smoke, drifting or sailing through a light breeze. Bubbles form within these gelatinous “creatures” (which look a lot like termite eggs) as we see them move and twist

54 while they are bathed in the white smoke. Then, they float, as if propelled by a powerful but unseen force of nature off the ground and up into deep space. The thin strands of the viscous smoke-fluid slime down the rocky structures of the planet as we witness the departure of the jelly-like creatures or eggs up into space. The title of the film appears as the sinister sounds of space and a magnificent orchestra guide these “eggs” towards Earth and down to the city of San Francisco. It rains, the camera moves from scene to scene quickly, shifting from images of the suburbs to the plants being bathed by the rain, and

finally, to the glutinous substance mingling with the water and soil. A single leaf then comes into focus, with the viscous substance sprouting some sort of string-like veins forming a thin membrane throughout the body of the leaf. The translucent glob grows, then hardens into a green-brown cocoon, and finally sprouts a single flower. The petals turn from red to pink, revealing what appears to be a bright red ovule holding the eggs of this “flower.” This opening sequence is dramatic, almost poetic, in its treatment of what appears to be an alien invasion, setting an unnerving tone for the psychological terror of this adaptation. The people, who are just going about their day in rainy San Fransisco, are blissfully unaware of the danger that is about to befall them.

A thrilling, if not disturbing, adaptation of Jack Finney’s source material,

Kaufman’s film was able to benefit from the period in which it was produced. Almost unscathed by the Motion Picture Association of America’s continuous and growing obsession with ratings and censorship, the film was able to explore new grounds in the arenas of the bloody and grotesque, while also being allowed to reach a larger audience.

This had been achieved by the support of individuals such as Jack Valenti, then president of the MPAA, as he introduced a system of “voluntary rating,” allowing film directors

55 and producers to exercise more creative freedom in their work. The film was able to get away with a “PG” rating and steer clear of the dreaded “X” rating, while also introducing several scenes of bloody violence and some nudity. The finished product was released at a time sandwiched between the ultra-sexualized exploitation horror films of the eighties and the more reserved and restrained, yet also risqué, horror productions of the sixties.

The final product acts as a metaphor for urban alienation as well as social and sexual anxiety. The purpose of this section is to explore these themes more deeply, and dwell on what seems to be causing the paranoia and fear in the film by unpacking the images and language of the production.

The central theme running throughout the film is one which focuses on one binary and that is of normalcy and abnormality. The social construction of normalcy plays out through the performance of multiple interactions and relationships in the film, with some being more intimate than others. Single individuals, couples, complete strangers, all seem to clash with one another as the atmosphere and dread of difference grows. Social structures are broken down, the family is threatened, and the perception of the heteronormative gender binary collapses as we are driven deeper into this strange yet oddly familiar state of fear.

The first central character we meet is Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams), as she plucks one of the tiny alien flower-pods up and smells it. As she moves up the street, a schoolteacher guides her charges towards the park and says, “There’s some more flowers, kids. Go pick them,” exposing them to something hiding in the bushes. She turns around and glares oddly at Elizabeth while encouraging the children to “take some home” to their parents. A silent priest (Robert Duvall) swings back and forth on a swing next to the

56 children, regarding the teacher carefully with a watchful and inquisitive eye. The stage is set. It is both familiar and at once unnerving. Why does a casual day at the park feel so foreboding?

In the following scene, we follow Elizabeth back to her home where we meet her boyfriend (Art Hindle) sitting on the couch, sipping on a can of beer, and watching a basketball game. “Too much trouble to pick the mail up off the floor, Geoffrey?” she asks. We notice that he is wearing headphones to watch the TV. He snaps his fingers, waves her over, and pulls her down to his lap and kisses her. The kiss is passionate and intimate, which disarms Elizabeth and she gives in. Seconds later he yells out a triumphant, “All right!” and points at the tv. A three-pointer? Perhaps it was a perfect slam dunk. Regardless, it feels normal, American, and safe.

Michel Foucault’s cultural criticism in the regulation and normalization of bodies becomes essential to our analysis of these particular scenes, and of the film as a whole. In

Edwards and Graunlund’s Grotesque, they explore Foucault’s observations on how power of different institutions is utilized to exercise disciplinary measures in order to regulate what is perceived to be a deviation from the normal. In this space of reading, the alien threat seems to represent a heteronormative institution, which seeks to mend what is broken in Elizabeth’s relationship with her boyfriend. This plays out with the first two scenes involving both Elizabeth and Geoffrey.

Later that night in their bedroom, Elizabeth is still preoccupied with the flower- pod, while Geoffrey attempts to distract her with another kiss. Elizabeth won't have it and wants to continue her research about what this flower might be. After suggesting taking a trip to Vail, and she responds with a dismissive “Ok, maybe. Sure.” Annoyed at one

57 another, the scene ends with Geoffrey listening to the playoffs and Elizabeth heading downstairs to continue reading. These scenes set the conditions, if not the standards, for the world we are being exposed to; one of simple female and male gender binaries, establishing simplistic yet familiar heteronormative dynamics of power. While there seems to be something amiss with their relationship, their lives do seem quite “normal”.

Edwards and Grauland further explore Foucault’s observations on power and

“power-knowledge matrices” which form our realities. In examining these mechanisms of power, Edwards and Graulund explore how these matrices “are founded in the vast network of conflicting and inter-validating discursive practices that constitute reality” (Edwards and Graulund 27). They go on to explore the complex Foucauldian term of “discursive practice” and explain how it is essential to how the “dominant” reality comes into being, and thus is a capable of determining what is normal and what is not.

The power relations and dynamics in heteronormative relationships is determined by the interaction between Elizabeth and Geoffrey. While their exchanges, mannerisms, and physical interaction with one another fall well within what is deemed “normal” by many social standards, it seems however as if the power dynamics have shifted in their relationship, calling forth the dominant power of heteronormativity to swoop in once more to repair their broken “normalcy”. The organism has already, unbeknownst to the characters in the film, infiltrated their home, actively planning on repairing their normalized state of being.

With the object of Foucault’s observations being the mechanics and bureaucracies of state institutions, we can consider the alien life forms to be a representation of the

“administrative machine” which seeks to regulate the bodies of any community into

58 conformity. Much like the institutions Foucault speaks of like prisons, asylums and hospitals, the robotic and emotionless regulated bodies produced by the alien pods seek to eradicate personality, individuality, and free will. Multiple “snatched” characters are seen in suits, working in groups and coldly plotting something sinister, further developing the assertion of the aliens being bodies of regulation and conformity.

This specific performance of the alien bodies representing the “administrative machine” seeking to regulate and control all becomes even more apparent later on, when we witness multiple characters saying, “My husband is not my husband,” and when

Elizabeth says, “Geoffrey is not Geoffrey,” expressing their fears and concerns that their loved ones are somehow different. Subsequently, the psychiatrist Dr. David Kibner

(Leonard Nimoy) attempts to calmly and logically offer a reasonable explanation for these strange occurrences and to dismiss them as a form of Capgras Delusion, in which a person thinks a loved one has been replaced by an imposter. Jack Bellicec (Jeff

Goldblum), a man not particularly fond of Kibner and envious of his illustrious writing career, responds with “Kibner wants people to fit the world”. Even earlier on in the film,

Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland), Elizabeth’s fiend and confidant, dismisses her concerns by suggesting she see a psychiatrist. The fear and alarm of the characters expressing concern over the imposters is characterized here as an illness of the mind, which disrupts their ability of seeing things as they really are. They are, effectively, viewed disabled and relegated to a status of incapacitation. Therefore, their bodies and minds are deemed abnormal and “abnormal bodies and behaviors must be normalized or, failing that, forgotten” (Edwards and Graulund 31).

59 At this point, the boundaries that our minds seek to establish for the world the characters live in and the world the alien organism occupies seem to dissolve the more we examine and probe their specificities. As these simplified binaries become problematized, many questions arise. Is the alien organism a part of the “administrive machine” which seeks to regulate the “broken” heteronormative relationship of Elizabeth and Geoffrey, or is the alien organism seeking to subvert and change it? Is the alien organism a representation of resistance to dominant ideologies? And if so, does the grotesque and monstrous behavior of the abnormal bodies of the imposter refer to something else entirely? Therefore, if we were to consider Elizabeth and Geoffrey’s relationship to be absolutely normal, and does not require repairing, the alien imposters begin to represent another threat entirely.

As with many films within the sub-genre of ‘Body Horror,’ narratives often offer up alternative readings that problematize simplified concepts performed on screen. One of these nonconformist readings which ties in with representations and behaviors of the grotesque is what I choose to refer to as the “monstrous queer”. By that I am referring to a central theme throughout this paper that regards the queer as not only different and anomalous, but also dangerous and menacing. The themes and motifs of paranoia become central to our ability to locate queerness in the film, which is sometimes implicit but often explicit through both imagery and discourse. The unfolding of the phobia surrounding queerness becomes more apparent as we begin to suspect and witness the transformations on screen.

During the first night of bringing the flower-pod home, Elizabeth falls asleep next to Geoffrey, both embracing one another gently. She wakes up the following morning to

60 find him cleaning up the broken glass which held the sprouting flower on the nightstand next to his head. He is cold, calm, and acting quite odd. She heads off to work and meets up with Matthew, and expresses her concern that Geoffrey seems “weird”. Later that night, Geoffrey tells Elizabeth that he has a meeting, and when she hugs him and asks him what is wrong, she notices something is different and off. The intimate contact they had the night before has changed, and only by attempting to be intimate once more was she able to notice the difference.

Elaborating on the scholarship of Foucault, Edwards and Graulund go on to say explore the flexibility of power. In their words,

“Power is fluid. As such, it is itself a sort of monster, an organism that can exceed

the control of individuals of groups or individuals. Power is a force that eludes

boundaries and controls as regularly as the deviants it is meant to regulate. In

this, power is often grotesque” (27).

This twisted conception of the fluidity of power as a monster conjures up the monstrous power of queer movements of the sixties and seventies, as they were successful in exceeded the control by the administrative machine enforcing the norm. Geoffrey and

Elizabeth’s heterosexual bond represents an unchallenged normalcy, until the alien organism begins to threaten their very way of life. Edwards and Graulund’s scholarship points to how certain discursive practices of normalization can and do open up spaces for resistance, exceeding the control of hegemonic structures. They explain, “where there is a dominant discourse, there is also a counter-discourse; where there is classification of subjects, there is also the potential for the formation of a community that can resist the dominant discourses power” (27). If we were to consider the dominant power in the film

61 to be that of heteronormativity, then we can look at the alien as a form of resistance to the normative representing queer identities, challenging the hegemony of those in power, and unraveling the normative structures in society.

This unraveling of the heteronormative “order of things” in San Francisco begins to manifest itself towards the middle of the film, through both the visual and verbal, as we receive several hints that seem to draw a parallel between the fear of the alien and the anxiety around a “homosexual agenda”. When Elizabeth Driscoll returns home one day, after Geoffrey begins exhibiting odd behavior, she finds a plant with a card on one of the tables. The rainbow colored border of “for you” card is unmistakable in its symbolism, as it is nestled within the leaves in the middle of the screen, as can be seen in Figures 9 & 10 below. While the viewer has yet to actually witness any sort of monstrous bodily change onscreen, the glaring undertones of queerness begin dropping visual hints early on in the

film.

Figures 9 & 10: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene stills: Geoffrey leaves Elizabeth a gift at home. Dir. Philip Kaufman. United Artists, 1978. Wikimedia. Web

62 The dialogue exchanged between characters draws an even more explicit parallel.

At one point, Elizabeth turns to Matthew in his car and says, “I keep seeing these people all recognizing each other. Something was passing between them all. Some secret! It's a conspiracy. I know it.” Later on she says, “Look at them! Right out in the open,” to which

Matthew responds with, “that’s how they do it. That's how they spread it. All those people are changed.” The language revolving around the threat of the alien can be compared to the language often used by those with an irrational fear regarding queerness or homosexuality. The word “spread” connotes an exchange of diseases or maybe of a contagious “lifestyle”.

It is not only dialogue that highlights these parallels, but also certain scenes. In one particular scene Jack Bellicec heads to ‘The Bellicec Mud Baths’ run by his wife

Nancy Bellicec (Veronica Cartwright) and himself. In this particular scene, the viewer follows Jack as he sulkily walks down a hall of half-naked men; some lying face down on tables, while others are submerged in mud baths of volcanic ash. The male body is on full display in this scene, while one of their clients lies in a mud bath reading Immanuel

Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision, a possible allusion to the queer and heteronormative worlds colliding. Later on in the scene, after falling asleep somewhere in the bathhouse,

Jack wakes up to the screams of Nancy after finding a grotesque corps on one of the beds under the sheets. The “monstrous queer” makes its first appearance. It is in the bathhouse where Jack Bellicec is exposed to queerness. He wakes with a bloody nose, which could reflect the inherent volatility that may arise when someone first confronts unwanted queer desires.

63 Figures 11 & 12: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene stills: Male bodies on display and transforming at ‘The Bellicec Mud Baths’. Dir. Philip Kaufman. United Artists, 1978.

Wikimedia. Web.

But how do we unpack this presence? How are we to consider this “monstrous queer”? Does it represent a visceral male fear of becoming queer? Or does it represent female anxieties of their husbands or lovers becoming queer? In order to locate the

“monstrous queer” performed in this film, we must first unpack certain concepts of the

“anomalous” and unnatural “other,” in order to extrapolate how the presence of these anomalies onscreen represent a subversion of the norm.

Anna Powell’s theoretical contemplation of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy on aesthetics to approach a new reading of horror films can be quite useful here. Her work attempts to diverge from normative psychoanalytical approaches that have dominated

film theory and criticism in favor of a more visceral reading of the aesthetics of fear and desire. It is through this reading of the body “becoming” or transforming into the anomalous “monstrosity” that she explores how the human and inhuman mutations interact in horror films from a Deleuzian perspective. She writes of how this “becoming” is mobilized in creative cinematic machines through the figure of the “anomalous” and

64 unnatural entity in any given system. By utilizing Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the

“anomalous” entity — forever changing, moving, becoming, and “maintaining its transformative potential” — Powell points to this transformation’s ability to mobilize desire through its focus on molecular or corporeal change. She goes on to explain that because of the “anomalous openness” of these becomings, they disrupt and “challenge the ‘natural’ order, stimulating the creation of new appendages,” which can also be

“micro political” (Powell 67).

This opens up an entirely new reading of the alien invasion as a representation of the “monstrous queer”. The paranoia surrounding the presence of a gay agenda becomes ever present as we can derive its own micropolitics from performances and representations of bodily change on screen. The fluidity and ease through which these organisms are able to duplicate the body speaks directly to the anxiety of how some people can easily be “turned,” or become, queer. The concept of “turning” people ties in with ideas of disease and infection, as well, heightening the intensity of the anomalous’ ability to cause unwanted change. Because what is human can easily become inhuman, what is normal can easily become abnormal and anomalous. Nancy, Elizabeth, and others’ concern over their loved ones’ transformation is both performed through their dialogue and the imagery onscreen as it is mentioned above. Furthermore, even after

Geoffrey’s transformation, Elizabeth is gifted with that same flower-pod, suggesting her boyfriend’s desire for her to change as well. Desire to become the “other” offers up another layer that invokes paranoia, as the characters are drawn further away the essentialist and structuralist tendencies of the heteronormative into the undefinable world of the “monstrous queer”.

65 In Queer Cinema: The Film Reader, Harry M. Benshoff turns to critic Robin

Woods’ suggestion of how the thematic core of the horror genre can be reduced to three interrelated variables: “normality (as defined chiefly by a heterosexual patriarchal capitalism), the Other (embodied in the figure of the monster), and the relationship between the two” (63). Benshoff explains how, in addition to how these monsters can represent a fear of a racial, political, or ideological “other,” they are frequently structured around the sexual “other” to the patriarchal male (women, homosexuals, bisexuals). It can, therefore, be assumed that such grouping could allow us to identify the “monstrous- feminine" as a form of the “monstrous queer,” or vice versa. Considering how these monsters are often structured around concepts of sexuality, it becomes inevitable for us to contemplate the physiological process of change and activities connected to intimate physical connection. Gender, sex and the grotesque — as well as all of the implications of these concepts — blend almost harmoniously with one another to create irregular and erratic “assemblages” of entities and their expressions.

Turning back to Benshoff’s reading of the thematic tropes of narrative cinema, he makes note of the continuous demand in Hollywood productions for heterosexual romances to be depicted onscreen. Therefore, the monster in these films is often figured

“as a force that attempts to block that romance”. As such, these monsters can be viewed as representations of “some form of queer sexuality” thrusted into “the midst of a resolutely heterosexual milieu”. Benshoff also makes note of how the term “queer” here functions on multiple levels, and is to mean the strange, the suspicious, and the homosexual. Queerness here begins disrupting the balance within the narrative, interrupting variables of “normality,” and confusing the nature of reality itself” (63).

66 This sort of “monstrous queer” can also be extrapolated through the connection to the paranoia surrounding the perceived homosexual “agenda of turning” and the Cold

War culture of fifties to the eighties, for the stigma surrounding possible communists also extended to queers as sexual deviants and perverts. A movement seeking to erase of any kind of deviation from the American hegemonic construction of normality permeates this

film extensively, as the alien invasion is seen as subversive by nature. The fear of social difference is reflected in the words of Elizabeth, Nancy and others. Concepts of “turning” entered the home, and the workplace, tearing apart intimate relationships and terrifying the masses. In Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film, Harry M.

Benshoff writes of this new paranoia surrounding difference, noting the socially oppressive atmosphere of the Cold War and post-war eras fueled both the persecution of homosexuals as well as the organization of queer civil rights movements. Consequently, these movements disrupted the simple perceived binary approach of seeing queer men as being simply effeminate and queer women being manly. In turn, this magnified the hysteria and stigma surrounding queerness, for now “they” can walk among “us” freely and unnoticed. This newly discovered “invisibility” or “passibility” of homosexuals is performed in a terrifying scene in which a man (Kevin McCarthy), who played Dr. Miles

Bennell in the original 1956 adaptation, jumps onto Matthew and Elizabeth’s car and yells, “They’re coming! They're here already! You're next!” only to completely disregard the mob of people chasing him down the street.

What is curious in the differing treatment of the monsters in all three films mentioned in this paper can be viewed through their respective morphological differences. In Alien and The Thing, the aliens are either biomechaniclly grotesque or

67 morbidly formless. However, in Invasion of the Body Snatchers the transformation is often depicted as morbid and grotesque, but the final product retains much of its hosts human qualities. The human-looking, yet emotionless, pod-people in this film reflect a

“paranoid fear of both mindless US conformity and communist infiltration, wherein a poisonous ideology spreads…like a virus, silently turning one’s friends and relatives in to monsters” (Benshoff, Monsters in the Closet 128). The tension of this specific film is derived from the clear clash between the normal “us” and the monstrous “them,” whereby the actively “heterosexualized couple” is “menaced by something unknown, something queer” (129).

68 Chapter Three: Liberation, Release, and Reconciling Queer Futurity

3.1 Chapter Introduction:

Considering that all these films share very similar themes and motifs within their own genre, and considering that each film deals with representations of the morbid and grotesque in exploitative ways, one must wonder what sets these films apart in their respective performances on the "monstrous queer" with all of the connotations of lack, illness and disability. Each of these films are completely different in the manner through which the imagined future is performed at the conclusion of each films.

Alien ends with Ripley alone, having defeated the alien threat, cruising through space in a deep slumber from which she might never wake. The Thing paints a rather grim picture of the continuation of paranoia, fear and uncertainty. Invasion of the Body

Snatchers ends with the prospect of the alien threat victorious, having defeated the human population and completely destroying heteronormative reality.

With these images in mind, is it difficult not to consider these very grim endings as performances of “gay dystopias,” where uncertainty looms over the actions and fates of each character. As we navigate through the concluding images of each film, we discover that security of sleep, the prospect of death, and devastation of pain are all that is available to the communities affected with these “afflictions”. Although some of these

films allow us to draw out visions of the “queer utopia,” they often implore us to consider the opposite end of the spectrum.

69 3.2 Reconciling Queer Futurity & The Inevitable Queer Dystopia in Body Horror

In an attempt to locate José Esteban Muñoz’s narrative on queerness and queer futurity in the above-mentioned films, we must reflect on the sociable modes of living, the occupation of public and private space and the desire of a collectivity that moves, drives, disrupts and continues to challenge normative language and state of things.

Muñoz’s writing urges us to subvert the indoctrinated and conventional methods of considering queerness, and rethink how the simple binaries governing the way we see the world. He fashions alternative methods in exploring the in-between-ness of forward- drawing queerness, and disrupts the “binarized logic” of imagining a queer futurity that settles on fantasy futures in hopes of continuing to move along with the flow of our actual present and future existence.

Muñoz’s scholarship is performed in Alien Resurrection on a multitude of levels, one being located in the performances of gesture, failure, and enduring collectivity.

Beginning with the subject matter of gesture, Muñoz argues that it “signals a refusal of a certain kind of finitude,” where dance and movement become paramount to our reading of Ripley’s as a character in Alien Resurrection (Muñoz 65). In a pivotal and highly unorthodox scene for the series’ general atmosphere, which sets the tone of the fourth film apart from all its predecessors, is the Ripley’s basketball “dance” with the mercenary crew of the pirate ship the Betty. When the crew encounters Ripley for the first time, she is playing basketball in the court and shows off her astounding physical strength and agility. She challenges several male individuals to a game, not losing a grip on the ball

70 and toying with their minds. Her performance here speaks true to Muñoz’s preoccupation with dance as a performance of losing the “evidentiary logic of heterosexuality”. It is an ephemeral dance of Ripley’s life and social views, as she uses her body and skills to transcend the bounds imposed on her by dominant structures and allows her dance to become much more vocal in exhibiting her state of being. “Dance” is relevant in

Carpenter’s The Thing as well, where we see the character Nauls (T. K. Carter) rollerskating around the kitchen to Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition”. The entire film itself transforms into an intricate performance of survival by reimagining its central themes through a dance with death.

Moreover, Muñoz regards “failure” as a form of escape and a method of reaching for a certain kind of virtuosity. Alien Resurrection, as a product of Hollywood’s incredible cash-cow-milking capabilities, still succeeds even though its structure, form, script and format fail in comparison to its aesthetically and structurally superior predecessors Alien and Aliens (noting that Alien³ had its own share of problems during production). It is through this failure that the film received a large following, achieving cult classic position and spawning several fan fiction tales and stories. The film resonated with audiences and critics for its subversion of tone and dialogue, and explored certain thematic content with more gumption than its predecessors. In a very similar way,

Carpenter’s The Thing was not a box-office success like the Alien films were, although it did develop a large cult following and spawned a sequel/prequel. As productions that have arguably failed in some areas, these films have succeeded in cheating death as well.

They have survived and endured, much like their title characters MacReady and Ripley.

71 Towards the end of Alien Resurrection, Call and Ripley sit together and share a moment of affection and intimacy during the process of accessing the ship’s data mainframe in order to destroy the ship. This ephemeral connection binds their affection for one another, further extrapolating their shared hope for the survival of the human species and principles. Ripley also aids Call in killing the hybrid offspring of the alien queen that resulted from the cloning process. Ripley is seen caressing the hybrid alien before finally “setting it free,” that could represent her rejection of exploitation and conformity represented by the scientific and military experiments aboard the Auriga, as this shared experience with Call cements the virtuosity that binds them to one another. In a similar scene, Childs and MacReady share a bottle of scotch at the end of The Thing.

Although both suspect one another of being “different,” the scene seems to suggest that they have accepted and acknowledged the pointlessness of their distrust of one another.

Having survived the horrors of the previous day, they are now depicted as comrades and partners, embracing their failures and sharing a hopeful moment. Both Childs and

MacReady are denied a “fantasy future” of getting rescued, but are allowed to endure their predicament by letting go of distrust and embracing one another.

These images conjure ideas of queer collectivity, which is embraced by both the

Alien films and The Thing in similar ways. Muñoz describes queer futurity not “as an end but an opening or horizon,” and explains that the “queerness of queer futurity, like the blackness of a black radical tradition, is a relational and collective modality of endurance and support” (Muñoz 91). The future of the queer post-human characters in Alien

Resurrection account for this modality in the union of Call, Ripley and their comrades that have successfully resisted and rejected most forms of normative entities and

72 modalities. It is only after accomplishing such a task is Ripley finally able to return to

Earth for the first time across the four films. Moreover, the final scene of The Thing leaves a different kind on what the future might hold for its characters. The idea of whether or not they have defeated or embraced their own queerness is left up to fate.

However, Childs and MacReady end up sharing a drink, huddling up next to the fire, and then exchanging a smile. A sense of tolerance and support washes over the scene as the ominous heart-beat-like drumming of the film’s score guides us into the darkness.

Within all of these films, it is difficult not to envision the alien threat as the cause of the decay in society as we are met with Kristeva’s “threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside”. The Xenomorph in Alien almost destroyed every living organism aboard the Nostromo from the inside out. In The Thing, the alien could have easily obliterated civilization as we know it. Invasion of the Body Snatchers presented us with a rather bleak conclusion when Nancy walks up to Matthew looking for some help only for the viewer to witness Matthew raise his hand, point and shriek loudly at Nancy.

The scene ends with her covering her ears and crying; Matthew’s shrill alien scream signals that all hope is lost. The monsters in all of the films mentioned in this paper have no redeemable qualities, with the outlier being Ellen Ripley’s hybrid in Alien

Resurrection. However bleak each of these endings might be, they each envision what we could only call a “queer dystopia” in respect to our extraction of queer themes.

Depending on how we see it, Invasion of the Body Snatchers presents us with two possible narratives of this dystopia. If we are to consider the alien invasion and transformation of bodies to signify the “monstrous queer,” then the message of the film acts as a cautionary tale, warning viewers about the dangers of homosexuality. On the

73 other hand, if we choose to see the alien invasion as a representation of the heteronormative “administrative machine” which seeks to regulate other bodies, then the

film becomes about the regulation and erasure of difference, individuality and queerness as well. John Carpenter’s The Thing also ends with its title characters alone and vulnerable against an unforgiving landscape, but offers up two different outcomes. The men, Childs and MacReady either escaped being “afflicted” with homosexuality or embraced it completely. In Alien, Ripley signs off at the end of the film, being cursed with a death-like sleep for decades.

There’s something to be said about fluidity here, especially in terms of narrative style. The sexual fluidity of these films’ characters, as well as the importance of fluids within the process of transformation, develop narratives which seem to revolve around a fear of sexual fluidity, a realm where humans do not conform to the gender roles neatly assigned by their biological anatomy. It is this fear that informs our reading of the

“monstrous queer” and the “queer dystopia”. The degradation of the human body becomes a central theme within these films, which makes it difficult to envision a queer utopia clearly. Shame, secrecy, exclusion, fear, and disgust are concepts that not only guide the bodies of the central characters of these film but also concepts that aid in the construct ruction of the “queer dystopia”. The queer identity is often marked by such notions, which makes it difficult to celebrate concepts of “queer utopia” without being reminded of the manner in which these films perform queerness. ‘Body Horror’ films visually perform the act of coming-out of the womb and also of the closet, for they are marked by the flesh they grow and rip apart.

74 75 Conclusion

What this scholarship has shown us is that boundaries can be permeable, problematizing our neat concepts of binaries and borders. But how can this aid in the construction of an alternative and generative imagining of queer futures? I believe that is achievable when we eject ourselves “beyond the scope of the possible” and reclaim representations and performances of queerness in the most unlikely of places. We must probe the lines of intersectionality in order to fully transform the manner through which we read or view films. The performances analyzed in this research endeavor sought to trace the unfolding of fear as it is inscribed on the queer body. One must only learn where to look.

By examining terms such as “homosexual panic” and the “monstrous queer,” for example, we can find hope even in the “queer dystopia” by transcending the perceived standard duality or binary between what is straight and what is queer. It was never a simple binary to begin with, as we see sexuality and gender to be performed with such fluidity in these films. While these films seem to celebrate normality, their monsters represent an eruption of sexual desire and frustration. The invisible queer attempts to assimilate itself in The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, while taking on different forms in the Alien anthology. These films also help us embrace these monstrous signifiers in novel ways as we begin to reshape our conception of performances of resistance and struggling to maintain individuality. Rather than focusing on sexual repression, these films shine a bright light on sexual production. These “monsters” are formidable as they posit an alternate state of existing that is governed by alternative rules.

76 It is through problematizing our own understanding of the normative and non-normative even further do we begin to scratch at the surface of a singularity within any given literature.

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Alien Ressurection. Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Perf. Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron

Perlman, Dominique Pinon. Twentieth-Century Fox, 1997. Digital Download.

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The Thing. Dir. John Carpenter. Perf. Kurt Russell, A. Wilford Brimley, Keith David, T.K.

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