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Erschienen in:

2019 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

3. Horror Vacui and the Critique of Visual Society in Alien and Terminator Films

verfasst von : Artur Skweres

Erschienen in: McLuhan’s Galaxies: Science Fiction Film Aesthetics in Light of Marshall McLuhan’s Thought

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

In conclusion of the work covering the process of creation of the Alien quadrilogy, Salisbury described the films as “zeitgeist-capturing classic.” One can assume that part of the allure of the Alien series is the stress on the low-tech, the use of tools which seem to imply that the monster appears in normal reality, even though set in the future. Certainly, the threat of technology is particularly well visualized in Alien and Terminator franchises. Their heroes and heroines are working class people, and in both cases, their fictional universes depend very strongly on the establishment of the atmosphere of tension in relatable, industrial locations. The plans and ambitions of the characters are mostly down-to-earth, and depart from the democratic grandiosity seen in the epic stories of space adventures in Star Trek or Star Wars, the grand world-saving destinies of the characters in The Matrix, Avatar or Terminator, or the beatified industrial aesthetics of Blade Runner. It was this ordinary and run-of-the-mill presentation of the future that made Weaver appreciate Alien: “I felt what we were doing was turning over a new leaf in science fiction. I loved the fact that this was a real world, that we were real people, talking about our wages and not getting along. But I don’t think any of us expected the movie to still be so unique.” (p. 8). In this chapter, characterizing Alien and Terminator films as dealing with the danger found in the midst of normal and mundane environments will be the starting point for the discussion of the notion of the anxieties caused by the invisible and yet considerable influence of the new media on society.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Star Wars as an Aesthetic Melting Pot

Nächstes Kapitel The Digital Natives and the Implosion of Humanity in The Matrix and Avatar

While only the two films will be discussed in terms of the horror vacui, there are numerous other films that build their suspense on the space in which somewhere lurks evil, ready to attack, especially narratives involving terrifyingly secluded and depopulated as the wastelands of post-apocalyptic narratives of the future in films such as The Matrix and Terminator, Waterworld, The Road (2009), Mad Max films, I Am Legend (2007) or Book of Eli (2010). Interestingly, in those works the antagonists are presented as wild and uncultured, either as the “undead” or as tribal savages. Due to their great numbers and ubiquity, instead of the alien monsters, the emptiness and disorder itself conveys the invisible threat lingering in the boundlessness of acoustic space.

Richard Edlund, visual effects producer stated that the absence of high technology was not accidental and was connected with Luddite sentiments and religious fear of punishment: “Vincent has had a deep, abiding interest in Luddite monks, and had done a great movie called The Navigator, where these monks dig their way through the earth, coming out into the 20th century…the original idea was that this was a wooden planet built by the Luddites and in the bottom of the planet, symbolically, the reactor was kind of hell. The technology that kept this thing going was emanating from the bowels of Lucifer. What drew me to the project first was that it wasn’t a retread kind of sequel. It was a completely new idea, and some of it survived in the final script.”

Although it has to be added that the film’s lighting and dark visuals adhered to the guidelines set by the preceding films, e.g. Thomson states in the film’s Blu-ray commentary track that he tried to keep he scenes “fairly shadowy so that it looks moody.”

It should also be mentioned that the manner in which the Terminators are presented also serve as metaphors of their visual character. For example in Terminator 3, when the female machine uses her looks as a weapon much more than Schwarzenegger’s character, although he also cares much about the cohesion of his disguise as a member of a motorcycle gang. The idealized physique of Schwarzenegger’s T-800 Terminator is consistently stressed throughout the franchise.

Both the eponymous automaton and his or her human opponent sent from the future to protect John Connor.

In another analogy to the technological infection of the human which completely changes him or her into an artificial creation, John Connor in Terminator Genisys was turned into a Terminator himself. This was achieved by Skynet by means of “infecting [him] with machine-phase matter [which] restructures and rebuilds human tissue on a cellular level for maximum combat utility.” Hence, he becomes a hybrid being, built out of matter which “coheres using a magnetic field” allowing him to be disassembled and reassembles magnetically.

This topic of the computer network’s virtual omnipresence, omniscience and Godlike power is explored further numerous productions, such as Wally Pfister’s film Transcendence (2014), starring Johnny Depp. However, this notion is explored to a much deeper degree in the critically acclaimed, philosophically intriguing Person of Interest serial (e.g. see Skweres (2016: 73–86) for a discussion of the series in light of C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, which analyzes the theme of human servitude to waring AIs and the choice whether to strive to remain true to humanity or abandon it in favor of servitude to the newly-created deity.)

This manipulation extended to the actors as well, as the fear and surprise of the actors in the alien reveal scene is genuine, since Scott purposefully kept them from seeing the monster beforehand (Salisbury, p. 17).

See especially E. Michael Jones’s analysis in Monsters from the Id: The Rise of Horror in Fiction and Film (2000), in which he argues that the Xenomorph, like many other monsters in horror films, is an expression of the desire to abort the unwanted pregnancy following misuse of sex.

The relation between the “obsolete” function of males as protectors of women is especially stressed in the Terminator franchise. In Terminator, a man travels from the future to protect a woman, from Terminator 2 onward, this role is ceded to the machine, which itself is a Terminator. Thus, Reese is the first one to be replaced by a more capable entity, with the T-800/850 Terminator soon becoming obsolete as well. Apart from sexual politics, the notion of the succession of generations of new technologies outperforming the previous ones is a theme which appears in many of the discussed works, not only the Terminator series but also the Matrix films (where upgrades replace older “agent” programs), and in Alien films (the films can be seen as a commentary on the theory of evolution).

Also John Connor, the other male hero of the film, is shown in a negative light, unlikely to survive without help. He is effortlessly defeated by his female peer, Kate Brewster, who regards him as a junkie—she easily disarms him, shoots him with his own weapon (a paintball gun), and puts him in a dog’s kennel. Their positions are incomparable—without any property to call his own, John is caught using dog’s medicine and trapped in an animal cage, while she is both educated and well-off, a soon-to-be-married veterinary who works at an animal hospital. When she mentions that they went to the same high school, John is embarrassed. The juxtaposition of the two highlights the difference between the maladjusted man and the well-adjusted woman who was not forced to abandon the system. The same paradigm is repeated throughout the film when the self-repairing Terminatrix repeatedly damages the machinelike Terminator played by the iconically masculine Schwarzenegger.

This association is preserved throughout the franchise. For instance, when in Terminator 3, after being shot and badly damaged by the Terminatrix, Schwarzenegger’s T-850 regains “consciousness,” he stands up to the sound of a truck being started at the same time by the female Terminator.

This may be an allusion to the iconic hacking tool of the eponymous Robocop (1987), which was an iron spike emerging from his hand.

The Xenomorph’s blood is a highly corrosive acid, which gives the alien organism both offensive and defensive opportunities.

The theme of obliteration of the past is prominently featured in the time-travel narratives of the Terminators. While the desire to prevent the present or future events from occurring is very common in science fiction, such as in Philip K. Dick’s “Minority Report” made into a film under the same title, the film also contains parallels to the wiping of history found in reality. For instance, the desire to banish history from memory (and thus from influencing the present and the future) was physically applied in the Roman practice of damnatio memoriae of past rulers (for instance Emperor Geta) or leaders of unsuccessful conspiracies (such as Lucius Aelius Sejanus). Also in the more recent history, Stalin famously wiped his political opponents from photographs. Finally, in the newest history of the USA we are currently witnessing the removal of Robert E. Lee monuments in the USA, e.g. in New Orleans (Jarvie), or the attempts to ban historically significant works such as Gone with the Wind (1939) due to the presentation of racial inequality (Thomas).

Not accidentally, the discussed scene’s use of outdated technology correlates with similar themes of the necessity to resort to old machinery to fight the new one, featured prominently in Star Wars (e.g. the obsolete space ships of the rebellion) or the Matrix films (e.g. mechanized defenses mounted against the high-tech swarms of the Machines).

Titel: Horror Vacui and the Critique of Visual Society in Alien and Terminator Films
verfasst von: Artur Skweres
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Buch: McLuhan’s Galaxies: Science Fiction Film Aesthetics in Light of Marshall McLuhan’s Thought
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-04103-8

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-04104-5

Copyright-Jahr: 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04104-5_3

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