From: espen.aarseth@hf.uib.no (Espen Aarseth)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.movies
Subject: Re: Alien^3: religious and pre-modern
Date: 7 Sep 92 08:32:14 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies
Organization: University of Bergen

[Sorry to go on about this, but..]

In article <5536@blue.cis.pitt.edu.UUCP>, news@pitt.edu (USENET News
System) wrote: 
["meaningful" discussion deleted]

> >sort of thing. In the particular scene I mentioned, it was not so much
> >the action of bringing down the ship as the mood of the whole setting
> >that reminded me of the gothic movement.
> 	
> 	Then not so much romance, but Gothic ATMOSPHERE is what you meant.
> While the entire genre might be able to be classed as Gothic Romances,
> when you say "the Gothic romance of the andy ..." you imply something
> romantic about that particular act.

I was refering to the well known genre of gothic romance. If you never
heard of it before, well, now you have.

And if you must quote me, at least get it right. I wrote:

[>it did have some stunning moments of gothic romance, like when 
[>the andy brought down the ship with the portable on the roof.

which means that I imply an artistic link between a scene in Aliens and
a literary genre. If you can't see this, it's not my problem.

> >Indeed, Alien seems particularly inspired by the Draculean myth, what with
> >the monster that pseudo-sexually impregnates its victims (instead of just
> >chomping them to death) and is devilishly hard to kill. (And even in
> >Aliens,
> >there are other similarities, such as the motive of the isolated village
> >haunted by Evil.)
> 
> 	One of my main objections to this kind of thing is that it appears
> to me that people go WAY too far in order to find these kind of
> interpretations. Only a rather rabid Freudian would find much sexual about
> the Alien. Dracula is a bit more understandable, since he's kissing you
> to death and at least acts and appears male and human, but the Alien shares

(To nit-pick a little, Dracula is not "kissing you to death" he is biting
you
to eternal undeath. If you'd ever met him, you'd know the difference.)

> none of these traits. If, of course, you really believe that any long,
> rigid object is penis imagery and any hole is vaginal imagery, fine, but
> I think that's ridiculous. As Sigmund himself said, "Sometimes a cigar
> is just a cigar."

If you can't see the phallic symbolism in Alien (as in the scene where
Beasty is sneaking its long tentacle up on the female crew member) you
have been missing the fun parts of the movie. And remember those nasty
doggie-style movements of Beasty on its victims in ^3? Am I the only viewer
with a filthy imagination around here? [On second thought, don't answer
that.]

Spare me the far-out-Freudian-interpretation rap. The only thing I dislike
almost
as much as vulgar Freudianism is vulgar anti-Freudianism. And I can't
really see
why you bring this issue up. I only used the phrase "pseudo-sexually" in
passing,
no big deal. It is you who start interpreting my comments in this
direction, with
words like "penis" and vaginal". Did I press a button or something?

Sorry about this, folks, I'll shut up now.

espen
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.movies