Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 7 No. 20, August 2003
Jon Baldwin
Other Bother:
The Alien in Science Fiction Cinema;
Sardar and Cubitt's _Aliens R Us_
_Aliens R Us: The Other in
Science Fiction Cinema_ Edited by Ziauddin Sardar
and Sean Cubitt London: Pluto
Press,
2002 ISBN 0-7453-1544-5 (hb)
0-7453-1539-9 (pbk) 208 pp. In a speech to the United
Nations in the late 1980's, Ronald Reagan, then President of
the USA, announced a certain desire: 'In our obsession with
antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites
all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside,
universal threat to make us recognise this common bond. I
occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide
would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside
this world.' [1] A decade later science
fiction film delivers Reagan's hope, a universal threat from
the other that creates assimilation. In _Independence Day_
President Thomas J. Whitmore addresses a press conference,
in response to an attack from aliens: 'Good morning. In less
than one hour planes from here and all around the world will
launch the largest aerial battle in the history of Mankind.
The word has new meaning for all of us now. We are reminded
not of our petty differences but of our common interests.
Perhaps it's fate that today, July the Fourth, we will once
again fight for our freedom. Not from tyranny, persecution
or oppression, but from annihilation. We're fighting for our
right to live, to exit. From this day on, the fourth day of
July will no longer be remembered as an American holiday but
as the day that all of mankind declared we will not go
quietly into the night. We will not vanish without a fight.
We will live on. We will survive.' Whitmore's stirring
delivery, and pastiche of Dylan Thomas, ensures that Mankind
does indeed unite in the attempt to exterminate the alien
threat. The Rest is assimilated to the West in military
unity and shared persecution of the other. The American
holiday of the fourth of July becomes a holiday for all.
Calendars are to be in line with American concerns. America
is to be the peacekeeper as well as the timekeeper of the
world. Independence is to be celebrated as being independent
from everything except American influence. This scenario affirms that
much sci-fi serves Western ideology. As the authors of the
collection of ten essays in _Aliens R Us: The Other in
Science Fiction Cinema_ stress, Hollywood representations of
the alien often serve Western prejudices and fantasies about
otherness. Ziauddin Sardar, co-editor, informs in the
Introduction that: 'Science fiction is a very particular
possession of just one tradition -- Western civilisation'
(2). In sci-fi film light is not the only thing projected,
'science fiction employs the particular constellations of
Western thought and history and projects these Western
perspectives on a pan-galactic scale' (2). As this
collection makes abundantly apparent, the consideration of
sci-fi film has come a long way since its summary dismissal
as just a juvenile exercise in special effects. Sci-fi
offers morality tales about science, technology, and the
future. It has provided large-scale speculations on the
future of modern society. The contributors to this book
demonstrate that sci-fi can both reinforce and reflect
dominant cultural and political assumptions. The future is
written with today's agenda in mind, thus sci-fi artefacts
are complicit with contemporary ideologies, struggles,
policies, and political discourse. Sci-fi film,
significantly, also deals with the concept of *the alien*
(as well as encounters with aliens). It is therefore well
placed to offer metaphors and allegories of difference and
the self/other relationship. As Sardar has it: 'Difference
and otherness are the essence of aliens.' (6) Sci-fi offers
images of the other that reflect a society's attitude to the
other. The mise-en-scene of sci-fi film typically adds
another layer of otherness in that it presents a futuristic,
uncanny, alien landscape. In the encounter with the other
sci-fi film presents a frontier mythology that reveals
attitudes to colonialism. It has been suggested that ray
guns and rockets have replaced Smith and Westons and wagons.
Because of this frontier element and because the alien
stands in for the other, sci-fi can be subjected to the
postcolonial analysis and critique usually applied to
colonial texts. The critical investigation of the
representation of the other is a key preoccupation of the
authors of the texts in the collection. European, Asian, and
American cinema comes under scrutiny. Also of concern are
issues of globalisation, European identity, Orientalism,
technology, the cyborg, militarism, xenophobia, and the
politics of ecology, race, sex, and gender. Toshiya Ueno's
contribution to the collection illustrates the virtue of the
geographically diverse series of perspectives in the
collection. The contributors are from New Zealand, Dublin,
Glasgow, Delaware, Belfast, Hong Kong, Lyon, Manchester,
Liverpool, and London. Ueno is from Tokyo and brings this to
bear in his discussion of Japanese sci-fi animation. This
discussion results in the neologism Japanimation in the
delicious title of his essay, 'Japanimation:
Techno-Orientalism, Media Tribes and Rave Culture'. Ueno
complains of the problematic imaginary Japanese culture that
has been constructed by non-Japanese scholars. Ueno's
specific target is those thinkers overly fascinated by
illusions and images of Samurai and moral codes based on
Shinto and the spirit of *hara-kiri* or *kamikaze*. Ueno
claims that this scenario is a stereotype and has 'never
existed but has been constructed as an interface for
understanding the heterogeneous culture' (99). Ueno
convincing reveals the political economy of Japanimation,
and relates manga and anime culture to rave culture. Both
rave culture and Japanimation have progressive attitudes
towards women, Ueno suggests. Japanimations often feature
female protagonists with a 'cyborg subjectivity' possessing
superior powers, and in rave culture (unlike disco culture),
'women are no longer treated as the target of sexual
pick-ups' (107). All this points towards an alternative
politics exploring the potential of cyber feminism and
cyborg politics. Ueno also celebrates the rave DJ and likens
their position to that of the shaman of archaic societies;
the 'antagonism of ravers can only be resolved around the DJ
as mediator and techno-shaman' (107). This notion of the DJ
as hero seems odd until one reads in the 'Notes on
Contributors' that Ueno, as well as being Associate
Professor, Wako University, Tokyo, is also 'a sought after
DJ of Psychedelic Trance techno music' (182). Jan Mair's contribution
considers _Independence Day_ in terms of postmodernism. She
is prescient in pondering: 'If _Top Gun_ prepared us for
'Operation Desert Storm' with its high tech military
hardware, then what kind of apocalyptic future does
_Independence Day_ warn us to expect?' (35) Given the recent
events in Iraq, it can be suggested that if _Top Gun_
prepared us for 'Desert Storm', then _Independence Day_
prepares us for 'Saving Jessica Lynch'. Mair competently
discusses the inter-textual elements in _Independence Day_,
relating it to _The X Files_, _Alien_, _The War of the
Worlds_, and the cult surrounding the incident at Roswell.
Muir ends with a chilling warning: 'The future is the old
Western frontier: all that does not submit will be
destroyed. When the Other is eradicated insularity becomes
total.' (49) At face value Christine
Wertheim's input to the collective is peculiar insofar as
she does not seem too enamoured with her subject matter,
_Star Trek: First Contact_. She describes it as being
'neither interesting nor original' (74), finding that 'the
basic plot of this saga is as dull as dishwater' (75). To be
sure this may well be true, but the cult of Star Trek
ensures that its audience will typically be deeply engaged
with the text rather than offering the detached critical
viewpoint of the academic. This points to a potential
problem with the methods of the essays in the collection --
there is an absence of empirical audience research. We
discover how postcolonial critics read and react to the
other in sci-fi film, but there is no consideration (just
the odd speculation) of how cinema audiences read and react
to the other in sci-fi film. For instance there is no focus
group research, often no discussion of the contemporary
reception of the film, and little discussion of qualitative
or quantitative research findings. This omission, whilst not
at all invalidating any aspect of the book, means that we
are not, for instance, given elaboration on the thesis
suggested by Richard Kearney, following Timothy Beal, on how
and why sci-fi films work for audiences. In symbolically
eliminating the ethnic, sexual, ideological, or political
other, sci-fi film resolves the problem of the other by
simply blasting it away. The threat of the other is
eliminated and the audience can sleep safely. In this way
sci-fi alien films function for audiences in the same way
that monster films work: 'Hollywood monster movies
serve as vehicles for what Beal calls a 'public rite of
exorcism in which our looming sense of unease is projected
in the form of a monster and then blown away'. For even if
there is some 'collateral damage' before the battle is over,
the monster will be defeated in the end and the nation
restored to safety.' [2] Wertheim is exceptional in
offering a perspective on the enemy in _Star Trek: First
Contact_: the Borg 'are a synthesis of every cliche about
the Other: a complex (con)fusion of
insect-virus-commie-machine, with a hive mentality in which
each will is absorbed into the collective drive' (75). No
wonder that 'the Borg represent the opposite of the Thatcher
principle' (76), in terms of consisting of only society with
no such thing as the individual. Wertheim's subsequent
discussion of the Borg Queen's seduction of Data leads her
to reaffirm that 'to be a human subject is to be a sexed
subject' (80). We see this at play in her text, with
frequent sexual comments such as the hope that Data's fabled
'multiple sexual techniques will be more fully explored in
later episodes' (82), and, pace Freud, a cigar-shaped-rocket
is never just a cigar-shaped-rocket, it's an 'all thrusting
phallus', that elicits two crew members to start 'cooing
over this artefact, touching it in awe like two little boys
wanking a giant collective member' (75). Wertheim
persuasively argues that what is so problematic (from a male
perspective) about the Borg Queen is the threat of the other
to masculinity, namely the feminine position. In sexual
relations the Borg Queen 'takes for herself the active part
and puts *him* in the position of passive object' (85). This
view shares much that Stephen Mulhall suggests is
threatening and otherly in Ridley Scott's _Alien_. The
bodily invasion (the rape and distinctive attack of the
alien by attachment to the face and impregnation of the
victim via the mouth) then subsequent expulsion (in the
classic frenzied birth-giving scene with John Hurt),
'threatens the human race as a whole with the monstrous fate
of feminisation, forcing our species to occupy the sexual
role (that of being violated, of playing host to a parasite,
and of facing death in giving birth) that women are imagined
to occupy in relation to men'. [3] The book's co-editor, Sean
Cubitt, discusses the potential ecological insight of
_Delicatessen_. The rise of Green politics challenges
Lyotard's thesis of the demise of master narratives, and
'one of the few values that the film industry can appeal to
is the equation of nature with the good' (24). Cubitt has
the ambition of an extension of the work of
Habermas: 'Where Habermas restricts
interactivity to human agents engaged in rational discourse,
we must extend it towards an understanding of communication
that cannot be restricted towards an rationality because it
embraces communication with the non-human and specifically
with the natural environment.' (27) Can _Delicatessen_ realise
this 'dialogic conception of the ecological relation' (27)?
Cubitt suggests that the nostalgic 'idealisation of the
unmediated' ultimately deprives '_Delicatessen_ of a
politics, even as it provides it with an ethics' (25).
Cubitt concludes, that the film 'charms us as a kind of
futurological statement' (32). In this way the sci-fi would
find support from Philip K. Dick who provides a normative
definition of the genre: 'good' sci-fi contains the
essential ingredient of '*the distinct new idea*'. Central
to the reception of good sci-fi would be Dick's notion of
the reader invaded by a 'conceptual dislocation' -- the
'shock of dysrecognition'. Dick suggests that sci-fi
'deconstructs time, space, reality', and in this way a claim
could be made for 'good' sci-fi to be considered as sharing
the same terrain as philosophy. [4] The essay by Nickianne
Moody does not, strictly speaking, concern itself with film
and cinema. The subject matter is the television serial
_Space: Above and Beyond_. Moody discusses the failure of
the show -- it was not granted a second series by Twentieth
Century Fox. The problem was one of plot development and
genre expectation: '_Space: Above and Beyond_ wants to
explore the emotional aspects of total war at a very
different pace to other science fiction series or visual
products' (69). The serial failed in terms of popular rather
than critical or cult acclaim, but popularity is the
assessing criteria in commercial television. In discussing
the failure of this sci-fi Moody necessarily offers insight
into the success of other sci-fi. The pace of narrative, and
military gender relations in _Space: Above and Beyond_ are
compared with _Babylon 5_, _Star Trek_, and _Starship
Troopers_. The essay by Gregory B.
Lee and Sunny S. K. Lam begins with a discussion of a 1930's
Chinese sci-fi novel by Lao She. This somewhat disrupts
Sardar's notion in the introduction that sci-fi is an
exclusively Western preoccupation and genre. Cyberpunk is
also investigated but it is not until half way through the
essay that film is engaged with. On occasion the lack of
confronting the specificity of film and the rather arbitrary
choice of film selected is problematic from a film-studies
point of view. Certain films that seem apt for postcolonial
critique are not mentioned in the series of essays. In
particular _Men In Black_, with it's advertising strap-line
'Protecting the earth from the scum of the universe', seems
to warrant attention. The 'scum' are those 'illegal aliens'
who exist undercover on earth, and outstay their visa. The
film seeks the elimination or extradition of literal
'illegal aliens'. It could be argued that in this sense it
plays on and stokes up fears of immigration and asylum. It
makes heroes out of the immigration service! It also
validates the persecution of the immigrant, illegal alien,
and asylum seeker. Not for the _Men In Black_ Alain Badiou's
slogan: 'Whomever lives and works here belongs
here.' Film is likewise marginal
to the contribution by Kirk W. Junker and Robert Duffy.
Indeed their concern is a discourse analysis of the
television series _Deep Space Nine_. To this text Junker and
Duffy apply the work of Kenneth Burke on the notion of
otherness as a linguistic construction in dialectical terms
of what is same and what is other, of I and thou, us and
them, and mine and yours. The claim is that _Deep Space
Nine_, with its many alien characters, more than any other
_Star Trek_ spin-off, disrupts the simple dialectical
identification of us and them: 'who is the other in _Deep
Space Nine_?' (141) The conclusion is a confusion of
identity predicated upon an other, 'what was 'yours' could
now be called 'mine', and what was 'mine' might now be
called 'yours'' (147). Peter X. Feng contributes
to the growing literature reflecting upon on _The Matrix_:
'Banal irony: this film that supposedly celebrates the human
spirit's triumph over machines could not have been achieved
without computer technology.' (152) Feng successfully
relates _The Matrix_ to notions of false consciousness and
double consciousness derived from Marxism and W. E. B. Du
Bois. He also investigates the role of the star Keanu
Reeves. Reeves has an English mother and a Chinese-Hawaiian
father and his 'blank visage allows spectators to jack into
him' (151). Hence: 'The successful postmodern subject is an
Asian passing for white, a resistance fighter passing as a
drone, a martial artist hiding not behind Jet Li's black
mask but behind Keanu Reeve's blank mask.' (157) The final essay of the
collection by Dimitris Eleftheriotis examines European
identity. He claims that due to the historical and cultural
repression of factors contributing to the construction of
European identity this identity suffers 'collective guilt'.
Such factors contributing to this guilt include: the role of
the military; the abuse of cartography; the exploitation and
systematic destruction of the human, natural, economic, and
cultural resources of the planet; the role of reason and
objectivity in the pseudo-scientific discourses of racism;
the wars carried out in the name of democracy and/or
nationalism; and the systematic dismissal of the rest of the
world as inferior and insignificant (167). Eleftheriotis
uses Wim Wenders _Until the End of the World_ to examine
certain contradictions and attitudes in this European
identity. In summation, the
diversity of approach and focus in this impressive
collection of essays means that one cannot consider the book
as a unified work on the issue of the alien in sci-fi
cinema. Often discussion of the specificity of film is
passed over in pursuit of other considerations, and the
notion of the other is thought through the work of Stuart
Hall and Edward Said rather than Emmanuel Levinas and
Jacques Derrida. But then the ambition of the book is not to
present a unified front or to exclusively serve the analysis
of film. It will obviously be necessary for those with an
interest in film, sci-fi, and the other, but it should also
be of immense interest to those working in cultural studies,
future studies, postcolonialism, and those engaged with the
critical discourse of subjectivity, identity, and
difference. London
Metropolitan University,
England Footnotes 1. Address to the United
Nations General Assembly (42nd session, September 21,
1987). 2. Richard Kearney,
_Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness_
(London and New York: Routledge,
2003), p. 121. 3. Stephen Mulhall, _On
Film_ (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p.
20. 4. Philip K. Dick, 'My
Definition of Science Fiction' (1981), in Lawrence Sutin,
ed., _The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected
Literary and Philosophical Writings_ (New York: Vintage
Books, 1995), p. 99. Copyright ©
Film-Philosophy 2003 Jon Baldwin, 'Other
Bother: The Alien in Science Fiction Cinema; Sardar and
Cubitt's _Aliens R Us_', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 7 no. 20,
August 2003
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol7-2003/n20baldwin>. Join the _Film-Philosophy_
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