#20 From the Twitter archives, part 5: Fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage

Socioeconomic critique in the Alien films.

No more heroes

One of the themes of 70s Hollywood productions, outside the burgeoning blockbuster genre, was an antiheroic vision of life. Ordinary, flawed people in tough, often existentially unsettling situations. In Alien, spacefaring has become a mundane job.

Expendable

The crew are essentially proletarian caretakers of their employer’s starship. Thanks to its onboard computer, ‘Mother’, it’s a craft that largely flies itself. Mother awakens ‘her’ skeleton crew from hypersleep only in obedience to some special Company orders.

Cradle to grave

The fact the characters only ever refer to their employer as ‘The Company’ suggests it may be so vast and monopolistic, no more specific name need be mentioned. Alternatively, perhaps it has no other name. In Aliens of course it is normalised somewhat, becoming the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.

Life in the 4HL

The characters are notably unenthusiastic about their jobs, although they do exhibit an attention to detail and some professional pride—for example, in the landing sequence. But they seem entirely unenthused about the prospect of ‘boldly going’, of investigating the mysterious beacon.

Incentivised

An intriguing thing for me is the line ‘total forfeiture of shares’—it seems each employee has a (no doubt tiny) stake in the Company. Does this mean they are part of a workers’ cooperative, something many Leftists have long argued corporations should be turned into?

It’s war

The first sequel’s more of a blockbuster of course, with the sympathetic characters behaving with largely voluntary, not reluctant, heroism. As for the slimy, decidedly unsympatheti Burke, this Weyland-Yutani Corporation executive represents the 80s’ new breed of amoral corporate yuppy.

Really an okay guy

Cameron’s film retreats from the out-and-out anticapitalism of Scott’s: here the Company’s portrayed as stupid rather than evil. Burke’s presented as a bad apple acting alone, though it’s implied the system tends to produce people like him: “You know Burke, I don’t know which species is worse. You don’t see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage.“

A substantial dollar value

The Military-Industrial Complex. In this future the Industrial, in the form of Weyland-Yutani Corp (and presumably others), seems to have become very much the dominant partner. The chief Marine Corps officer on the expedition is a lowly Lieutenant with hardly any combat experience.

Tough hombres

It appears the US military has become merely a tool of capitalism (though Marxists would argue it has been ever thus). Cameron clearly fetishises the military—he loves the marines’ swagger, their ultra-high-tech arsenal, their nukes. A simplication, then, to see him as simply a Leftist.