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two things can be true at once:
1) capitalism is bad, and
2) every bad thing we deal with today is not capitalism or even best understood related to capitalism and it is deeply unserious, performative, and reflective of a specific kind of ignorance born of privilege to use it as a catchall.
Content warning: blood, gore, sexual content, sexual assault, parasites and body horror
This is a heavily modified version of an essay I originally wrote for a literary theory class and then turned into a script for a video essay that I never finished.
Enjoy :)
One of the things that really bothers me about the critical conversation around Alien (1979) is the long-running idea that the alien and its various forms are so enduringly horrifying because they break the sexual/gender binary.
The worst example I can find is this excerpt, from Alien Woman: The Making of Lt. Ripley, by Ximena Gallardo and C. & C. Jason Smith:
The Alien species disregards the sexual difference that is so essential to our definition of what it is to be human. The male body is repositioned to correspond to the female body: the male mouth becomes the vagina, the chest the womb. The dichotomy male/female is broken down, as all humanity is female (a womb) in the face of the alien.
I get that this was published in 2004, but Gender Trouble had already been around for over a decade, so that’s not much of an excuse for weird ass gender essentialism in academia.
Art by AlexanDraxleean ↑
The idea that the xenomorph and its various stages are scary because the gender binary is being broken down is comically disregarded by the simple fact that trans people (like myself) ALSO find the damn thing scary. We are living embodiments of a shattered binary, but we aren’t shitting ourselves over our own existence (usually). I contend that the alien is scary not because of a violation of gender or sexual norms, but because it utilizes a much more widespread and visceral kind of horror: that of the parasite.
Most other animalistic horror monsters rely on the fear of the predator: monster wanna eat you → you run away → get caught → get eated. This is an oversimplification, obviously, and if you want a really good exploration of how the fear of predators effects us, read Val Plumwood’s Eye of the Crocodile. For real, my fav ecophilosophy book.
No, instead of the more straightforward horror presented by the predator, the alien uses the inescapable, cloying, and violating horror of parasites and parasitoids. Where the predator hunts, kills and eats, the parasite clings, defiles and tortures. When the predator catches you, you’re dead. When the parasite catches you, you don’t know what is going to happen. Is it going to bury inside you? Is it going to feed on your body? Is it going to lay eggs in you? You literally don’t know, and that’s what makes them so scary. Hell, they could get inside you without you even knowing. It isn’t just the fear of death, it’s the paranoia of violation AND the fear of the unknown. This makes Alien akin to a Lovecraftian horror in many ways, but instead of the fear of race-mixing or disabled people, it is the fear that whatever you do, wherever you go, there are beings that can enter your body and use it against your will.
Hell, the whole premise of the movie, at least according to the screenwriter, came from the thought “what if ichneumon wasps laid eggs in us instead of in worms?” That basic idea is glossed over constantly in analysis of Alien in favour of more Freudian explanations that rely heavily on antiquated notions of gender essentialism. When early screening audiences were throwing up in their seats in 1979, were they thinking about how “this monster really transgresses gender norms :/” or were they thinking “fuck what if that thing was growing inside me?!?!”
The only time I agree with these old school interpretations is when they view Alien through the lens of sexual assault. The fear of sexual assault and the fear of parasites are fucked up sisters in a way. They are both fears of bodily violation that induce a strong paranoia, and their symbologies easily feed off one another. Sexual imagery (e.g. a penis shaped head with a mouth on the end) combined with parasitic imagery (e.g. a creature grabbing a hold of you and doing unknown things to your body) are both niggling at the part of your brain that is repulsed by internal invasion.
However, I’ve seen arguments that Alien specifically targets fears for cis men being sexually assaulted, and I think that’s a very limited approach to the movie. The idea of a creature latching onto you, ignoring your autonomy, and using you as an incubator is pretty universally scary if you ask me, and I think for most people, that idea connects to a primal and often unaddressed fear of parasites far more than sexual violation. Just look at videos of botfly maggot removals and tell me you don’t get the same yucky feeling as when you watch Alien.
Even for people like me who find these creatures fascinating, I still get that skin crawly feeling when I look at images of them for too long. And it isn’t just a short-lived disgust reaction happening, it’s also that feeling of paranoia that it could be happening to you right this minute. This is all a part of what is called the behavioural immune system, which is the brain’s first line of defense against infection and why most people are grossed out by signs of disease on the body (pus, rashes, body odours, etc.).
We really don’t like thinking about parasites, and it shows across our culture. Deadly predators of all kinds have been worshiped all over the world, but is there anyone in history who paid fealty to the tick? Who invoked the name of the roundworm for strength? Are there cartoons about anthropomorphic scabies and their kingdom of flesh? (If any of these exist and I just don’t know it, please tell me.)
I’m not saying that this is an innate feeling in all of us (the human experience is about as diverse as it gets, and I’m sure some people just don’t have this reaction and never have) but I do think it’s widespread enough and so infrequently felt that when this parasite repulsion is triggered it makes for a horror that is far harder to shake than any socialized fear of gender violation. Far more than any Freudian psychosexual imagery, the horror of the parasite is what I believe has made the xenomorph such an enduring cinematic monster.
I wanna leave this post off with one of my favourite quotes about parasites from Annie Dilliard’s book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:
It is the thorn in the flesh of the world, another sign, if any be needed, that the world is actual and fringed, pierced here and there, and through and through, with the toothed conditions of time and the mysterious, coiled spring of death.
It’s so obvious how Hiccup loves Toothless too, y'know.
And in HTTYD 3 we do get to see that… But it’s somehow portrayed as though he’s clinging to Toothless somehow. And he’s not! He’s NOT! He’s just being the same Hiccup of Httyd 1 and Httyd 2! He’s not isolating himself, he’s trying to focus on the village too, he’s only struggling with overcrowding. He’s worried about Toothless, but OF COURSE HE WOULD BE! It’s Toothless! Unlike Stoick and Hiccup in HTTYD 1 (something referenced by Gobber on Dragons 3), we NEVER see this relationship being portrayed in a negative or controlling light.
Hiccup singlehandedly carries the weight of that friendship on his shoulders and his scenes are what save the movie for me, but at the same time it still hurts because it feels like an unrequited thing. It’s not supposed to be but that’s the feeling I got from it, and from I’ve seen around the internet, I’m not the only one.
More so. Httyd 2 spends SO MUCH TIME showing how Hiccup didn’t really “choose dragons over people” in the first movie. That “I’m not one of them” of the first movie was not him siding with the “enemy” as Stoick thought. Hiccup turns his back on being solely a dragon protector as well. He’s neither Stoick NOR Valka, he’s the one who believes both sides can live in harmony… And the third movie completely steps over this. From the beginning, we see Hiccup is already “grounded”. Even his scenes with Toothless (before he practically forgets all about Hiccup in his chase after a sparkly tail) are on the ground. He’s on a ship, he’s on Berk, he’s in the clearing where Toothless first met the light fury, he’s in the Great Hall, he’s grounded on New Berk. While of course we have flying – with stormfly, a bit when they were moving islands – Hiccup and Toothless are SEPARATED through most of the movie.
I just can’t wrap my head around this being marketed as “the friendship of a lifetime” when more than half of the movie is spent with the friends being separated. It’s wrong. It feels wrong.
Look. I’m not just a HTTYD-movies person. I own all the books from Cressida Cowell’s series. I know how the story was meant to end and I know HOW it ends and WHY it makes sense. I was prepared for it. I was expecting it. I knew that for all Hiccup being set apart as someone who thought differently… He was going to fail.
Thing is, this movie does NOTHING to explain why he should fail. Suddenly an “idea” is enough to send them all running? The threat of enemies? Please, at the end of Httyd 2 Hiccup was EXCITED to continue spreading the word about the dragons. If anything, facing Drago and loosing loved ones only hardened his resolve. And then Grimmel… Sends him running? I was expecting a good reason, I would have been fine with this separation if I had a good reason. But I don’t. It just feels like Hiccup is sending the dragons away because he assumes Toothless will be happier without him… And judging by Toothless’ behavior in this movie, can we blame him?
And there’s such a… Somber, feel to this movie. Underneath the ships and romance (so much romance, I still don’t get why there was so much romance), it’s basically a story of failure. They just focus on the romance because if they stopped to consider how Hiccup would feel after having to give up on his dream, on his best friend, on his whole world since age 15 there would be nothing.
And there’s something to be said about HTTYD 2. I used to just see the darkness in it… But there’s more than that. Eret for example. Eret is actually a FUNDAMENTAL character for the HTTYD 2 movie to work. Because Eret *changed*– a dragon trapper and likely dragon killer. He got his own dragon, he fought happily and of his own accord to save the dragons. He was PROOF that Hiccup’s method worked. That for all the Dragos we met out there in the world, we’d still have so many more Erets. People that would be touched by dreams such as Hiccup’s.
But in HTTYD 3 we have… A wedding that was always gonna happen as a silver lining? Keeping the Hidden World’s secret? Hiccup teaching his kids about dragons and showing them the joy of flight while being implied this isn’t a permanent thing and all that WONDER and JOY in those children’s faces will be there just for a moment? That scene shows Hiccup’s method still works. He and Toothless can still touch the hearts of people- of a whole new generation. And in this world… It just feels so wrong to set this story to fail. It makes sense in Cressida’s work but I just don’t think this movie can convince me this was the best ending for the movie franchise.
Because in Cressida’s work it was shown that dragons and humans COULD INDEED coexist. Under the care of people with hearts like Hiccup’s. The dragons only ever truly left when they agreed they couldn’t trust the rest of humanity with themselves yet. Not Hiccup. Hiccup didn’t fail per se. He did his job, he spread his message, he made the world a beautiful place with Dragons and Humans as equals. And when he died, in peace because he did what was right, he left his memories and his tale so that WE, people, can learn to be like him, and the dragons can maybe one day return.
Book Hiccup didn’t just fail. He won, he succeeded. The minds of the people of the Barbaric Archipelago WERE changed. It just wasn’t the right time to make this a permanent change, because what Hiccup couldn’t predict was the future. But he did everything he could to ensure that someday his work would be done and the dragons would return. They leave, and it’s sad, but we don’t get a feeling of loss and failure.
Why did the movie went the path of “Hiccup could not, in fact, touch the people of the Archipelago and this is why they have to leave” then? It doesn’t even make sense. Grimmel acts as though Hiccup’s ideas are a poisonous thing… That could infect everyone. Why, why, WHY did the movie made him win the battle but loose the war then?
In the books, we get a feeling of hope. Yes, humanity is complicated, but Hiccup intends to have his message heard and people’s hearts be changed, even beyond death via his stories.
In the movies, they no longer try to “bit by bit [...] change this world”… They just hide and keep the secret until humanity is ready. It’s not a message of hope. It’s just a “hide until the trouble goes away” situation.
im still not over molly
Yeah actually while I’m thinking about it, I’m tired of romance subplots, especially ones that are so distracting that they take away from the main storyline. It’s very frustrating that so many people seem convinced that a story needs to have romance to be compelling, when (in my opinion at least) it’s almost always the weakest part of the story. It’s one thing if it’s a relationship that develops organically based on the characters interactions and it actually contributes to the development of the plot, but most of the time it feels like the writers are just checking a box of things they think stories are supposed to have. Idk, call me a cranky aro bastard, but it just makes me tired when I see a man and a woman* look at each other and I know that I’m going to have to sit through whatever dumb series of boring tropes they’re going to shove them into to try to convince us that their relationship is compelling and not the same mindless drivel full of toxic dynamics that plague every other piece of media.**
*Queer romance subplots generally get a free-pass from me because of the huge disparity in representation, but I still am tired of The Tropes.
**This post is about mainstream media, not fanworks and smaller scale storytellers.
Superheroes that indiscriminately kill criminals casually hanging out with heroes who explicitly have no-kill rules is bad writing
Like, this is a significant moral divide, not a pineapple on pizza debate.
SHRIEKING
"red x blue" "pastel x goth" "grumpy x sunshine" get curious about their character arcs or blow up
