#cosmic fear

[gebo4482]

Cosmic Fear

Gameplay Demo trailer

Website / Steam

[fuckyeahtoilets]

Cosmic Fear

[bjasamuel-blog]

Alien and Cosmic Fear

Alien – (1979) - Dir Ridley Scott

“…children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars…”  H.P Lovecraft

Alien (1979) is an effective horror film.  Despite its age the film still sends a shiver of fear down the spine of anyone with “a mind sensitive enough to the hereditary fear” at its core. Written by Dan O’Bannon (a self confessed Lovecraft fan) the film communicates a deep-seated fear rarely expressed in film, ‘cosmic fear’.  Lovecraft’s stock in trade was the fear of the enormous scope and breadth of the cosmos and mankind’s insignificance within it. He coined the phrase ‘Cosmicism’ to describe his fiction.  Alien is one of the few films to exploit and successfully express this fear.  

Until Dark Star (1974) and then Alien (1979), Science Fiction protagonists were usually scientists or the ‘brightest and best’, special individuals with the mental strength, agility and training to face the particular stresses of space exploration.  Apollo 11 was only 10 years previous to the release of Alien.  It also makes sense that if we are to explore the vast realms of space that we will require men and women of strength and ability to push the boundaries of human endeavor, to pit their ingenuity and skill against the frontiers of human experience.  

Smartly dressed in colourful uniforms the crew are ready for the challenges of space travel. 

Films such as The Forbidden Planet (1956) and television shows like Star Trek (first broadcast in 1966) express a humanist philosophy where humankind has transcended Earths confines using the power of technology and now explores the cosmos.  Humans travel through space in wondrous ships that move at great speeds, foreshortening the vast spaces that lie between planets.  These men and women overcome any obstacles they face using their rigorous training and by applying scientific method to these obsticles.  This view of space exploration ignores the scale of what faces us in the infinity of space and the precarious nature of our existence in a universe entirely indifferent to our existence.  The fiction of Star Trek does not imagine a real universe of which we are an infinitesimal part, but instead it shows us an extension of the Earth.  Alien races are stand-ins for different races and cultures found on Earth, metaphors for weird cultures and races, intrinsically human despite their outward appearance and moreover they envision a future where humanity is one coherent entity.  This implies that all cultures will move in one direction, towards homogeny, cohered by common goals.  Alien presents a universe very different to that, one in which we remain essentially human despite technological advances.

The crew of The Nostromo shocked and frightened wearing dishevelled clothing.

The Enterprise, large in the frame orbiting a planet.

The Nostromo orbiting the unknown planet. Very small in the frame against the planets.

In Alien, blue-collar workers maintain a haulage ship through the vast depths of space. These people are not the ‘brightest and best’, their ship is dirty, lumbering, industrial and liable to breakdown, two of the crew are mechanics.  They sleep in pods as the ship slowly hauls its payload through the expanse. They are awakened from their sleep believing that they have returned to Earth and to a payday.  They work for a corporate entity simply called ‘The Company’.  

Everything in the film from the production design to the music, to the performances expresses the fear and fragility of their position.  The Nostromo is essentially an industrial factory, dripping with oil and throbbing like a steel foundry (Ridley Scott grew up in Sheffield, a major industrial town).  The scale of the ship dwarfs the crew.  The crew is tasked with travelling to an unknown planet to locate and decipher the meaning of a distress signal that their computer has picked up.  The landing sequence expresses the difficulty and danger involved in landing the ship.  The ship is laborious rather than slick and agile.  Though the ship dwarfs the crew, the planet they must land on dwarfs the ship.  The crew are not trained or equipped to face the challenges ahead, they are frightened and inexperienced and they bicker with one another.  Captain ‘Dallas’ is not up to the task.  This is cosmic fear.  This is man dwarfed by the infinity of space, his technology faulty and inadequate and his relations with others fraught and fissiparous.  

The production design by ‘H R Giger’ is truly bizarre and unfathomable, the planet howls with wind and the surface is littered with strange rock formations releasing gases, everything surrounding the crew is ‘alien’, form and content in perfect alignment.  When the crew stumbles through the alien vista of the planet they bicker and gripe.  Eventually they find the ship where the signal is emanating from.  The derelict spacecraft is a marvel of production design.  The crew explores the craft for an opening.  We see the scale of the derelict ship against the crew.  We have been shown the crew as small against the Nostromo, then the Nostromo as tiny against the alien planet.  We have been given a true sense of scale and now as we enter the ship we are shown the bizarre and unsettling set design and props, dimly lit and almost organic looking.  

As the terrified crew explore the ship they discover what has become known as ‘The Space Jockey’.  The set design is simply stunning, totally alien and utterly baffling.  The ambiguity (later undermined in prequel films) is the films greatest strength.  

We have been given a sense of the scale of space, now ‘the space jockey’ gives us a sense of the scale of time.  ‘The Space Jockey’ has been fossilized in its moment of death.  It’s death occurred so long ago that it perhaps predates human existence.  This element is a truly Lovecraftian idea.  The space jockey was killed by an unknown entity long before the crew of the Nostromo even existed. Much has occurred in the universe without our knowledge or understanding, our characters have no idea what they are looking at and the fear is ratcheted up yet another notch. Cosmic fear.  The moment of ‘The Space Jockey’s’ discovery is the peak moment in the films expression of cosmic fear the ambiguity of its origin and meaning compounds the sense of isolation and insignificance and sets the stage for the horrors of the Alien’s reproductive cycle to be unleashed.  The strange sexual and body horror elements of the next two acts expands on the cosmic fear, expressing the fear internally as well as externally.  Something truly Alien has taken over not only the characters surroundings but also their bodies, taking what it needs and leaving the carcass behind.  Alien explores these concepts through its editing, production design and direction.  Form and content together, eliciting the fear of an infinite and incomprehensible universe.  

The film is the antithesis of the humanist philosophy of Star Trek and the notion that man can transcend the confines of the Earth and transcend himself. Alien shows a universe where man has entered the void but essentially remains human. Alien expresses the profound fear of a universe, indifferent to man’s existence a vast abyss of nothing bridged by hostile planets and life forms more ancient than man and more hostile than our worst fears can imagine.  The film expresses this hostility more profoundly than almost any other film. The only exception might be  2001 : A Space Odyssey.

40 years on audiences still “tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars…”  

[gebo4482]

Cosmic Fear - Gameplay Demo trailer

Website / Steam

[gebo4482]

Cosmic Fear Release Date Trailer

Website / Steam

[atthevoidsedge]

Based on the few fleeting glimpses of this new Silent Hill I've seen, I may want to avoid the Silent Hill tag altogether until I get a chance to check it out. I want no spoilers at all. I want no real clue what I'm walking into whatsoever. I want the experience of entering the unknown, where damn near anything can happen at any given time.

Only the films of David Lynch have ever spooked me as an adult, and only the Silent Hill survival horror gaming series has evoked that rush of Lovecraftian "cosmic horror" I've craved like a narcotic high since experiencing Twin Peaks in the early '90s.

I've been disappointed before, but I'm still willing to love again.

[thedreadexhibition]

Like our ancestors, we are overwhelmed by fears oozing from the vast void between the grandiosity of the challenge and the paucity and flimsiness of our tools and resources - though this time we don't truly believe that sooner rather than later the void can be bridged. We experience what people must have felt when they were overwhelmed by Mikhail Backtin's 'cosmic fear': the sight of giant mountains and boundless seas evidently immune to human efforts to scale them and blind and dwaf to human cries for mercy. This time, though, it is not the mountains and the seas, but human-made artefacts and their impenetrable by-products and side-effects that exude the most sinister of our fears.

Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Fear, page 93/94