HOW ALIEN IS LIKE THIS PANDEMIC

Sigourney Weaver, Harry Dean Staton, Yaphet Kotto, & Tom Skerritt in Alien

Watching the documentary Memory:  The Origin of Alien from director Alexandre O. Philippe during this COVID-19 pandemic is astonishing because this timeless masterpiece speaks to the political and social fabric of the late 70s.  Imperialism was the foundation that allowed for those political, economical and social issues to bloom when Alien was released.  The Vietnam war was already behind director Ridley Scott and the rest of his film crew and they were entering the beginning stages of a Cold War with Russia.  Communism was the evil regime that needed to be stopped primarily by Westernized or developed nations.  Times were uncertain when Alien was released because the battle with communism only begun and still continues today with communist China and the coronavirus.  The levels of uncertainty and anxiety that swept across the globe once patient zero was detected and documented in Wuhan was historical and like no other.

The ship of Nostromo in Alien is a representation of Western thought and inadvertently imperialism.  It journeys into uncharted territory when it receives a distress signal from an alien vessel on a moon LV-426.  Company policy is for the crew to investigate any distress signals so a team of three is assembled.  Kane who is played by John Hurt is then attacked by an alien life form that attaches to his face and has to be brought back to Nostromo for further investigation.  The protocol sounds familiar as when the first discovery of COVID-19 in Wuhan occurred when Chinese authorities had to quarantine and isolate patient zero before the worldwide spread of the virus.  As the story goes, the virus was transmitted from a bat in a wet market in Wuhan or that it was created at a bioweapons lab near the wet market.

Wet Markets in Wuhan

It’s sensible that the virus came from a wet market in Wuhan because its been there for many generations serving the livelihood of the Chinese people and being part of a billion-dollar industry all across the globe.  Live animals have been captured and killed and sold at wet markets for consumption and entertainment purposes.  It has never been acknowledged that the wet markets are highly unsanitary and unethical because of the way animals are treated.  We have neglected to think that wet markets pose a serious threat to global health which is why it never surfaced into mainstream media until now when we are in a pandemic.

We have not experienced anything like this since the Spanish Flu of the early 1900s.  The difference today is the technology that has enabled us to gain all the information that surrounds COVID-19 and how to prevent the infectious disease from spreading.  It has caused the type of panic that unravels on Nostromo and its crew once they received that distress signal from an alien vessel. Kane, Dallas, played by Tom Skerrit, and Lambert, played by Veronica Cartwright, explores LV-426 where the nest of eggs of the mother Alien is discovered.  It is synonymous with the wet markets of Wuhan where it is slimy, dirty, mystic, unethical and historical.   Animals are in distress in wet markets because they are locked up tightly in cages with many more of its kind causing a high probability of transmitting an infectious disease with flu-like symptoms.  Distress is a foreshadow of what is to come and unfortunately for Kane who had a baby alien attached to its face, the rest of the crew of Nostromo were not in for a happy ending.  Patient Zero would have experienced that same distress from a bat in which the animal was able to transmit COVID-19 and also being in a distressed state.

The struggle to let back Kane into the vessel is exemplified in a scene between Dallas and Ripley,  played by Sigourney Weaver.  Ripley is in for the defence of the ship and having no one infected whereas Dallas believes the alien can be contained and eliminated while life is preserved that is Kane.  In this scene, the film presents a stigma about infectious diseases and a protocol to follow quarantine procedures in which Ripley stands firm.  This is the type of conversation that had to been discussed in Wuhan at the beginning stages of the pandemic amongst those involved with patient zero and all Chinese authorities.   Our knee jerk reaction remains the same when an infectious disease shows up in our backyard.  Our fear of it from spreading in such a form that it would impede any form of our liberated life will cause us to live in extreme and desperate measures.

Ripley’s decision is overridden by the cyborg Ash, played by Ian Holm, who tries to preserve the alien lifeform to fulfill his agenda.   He represents our global yet powerless technological infrastructure which has unintentionally allowed the coronavirus to grow and develop into a pandemic.  This is through our left and right-wing media narratives, our lack of research and funding on infectious diseases, lack of ventilators, masks, PPEs and our lack of preparation of a pandemic.  We have allowed it to become the entity that it is because of the fear that has set in on the human race. COVID-19 is conquering our domain which no longer belongs to us. It has made us our bitch just like the way the Alien made the members of Nostromo hers.

Writer Dan O. Bannon and designer H.R. Giger helped Ridley Scott in making this horrifying xenophobic creature that became the iconic Alien.  The creature was rooted in Greek and Egyptian mythologies, underground comics, parasitology, H.P. Lovecraft weird fiction and the art of Francis Bacon.  As mentioned in the documentary Memory, Alien wasn’t only a science fiction adventure into the future but it was also an exploration of an ancient past of the repressed and the forgotten.  COVID-19 was repressed and forgotten because it came in another form belonging to the coronavirus family called SARS at the turn of the century.  We were able to contain SARS and we quickly forgot about it not knowing that it would surface again in a deadlier form nearly two decades later.

COVID-19 is downright scary when you catch it and its a body horror that you don’t want to imagine.  Not being able to breathe, violent coughing, having high fever, being stuck on a makeshift ventilator and people in hazmat suits taking care of you is not the scenario you want to be in.  Just like the Alien, the coronavirus starts within your body and makes you a host to the disease.  Then it mutates within your body in hopes it will find another human to infect.  Once the disease becomes widespread it continues to make humans and the rest of the world its domain or host.  That’s what Aliens and diseases do.

Kane played by John Hurt

We are experiencing a body horror amongst each other otherwise known as social distancing.   The virus is considered an airborne disease requiring us to remain to be six feet apart from each other to prevent the transmission of COVID-19.  It’s almost a coincidence that many of us who do wear masks to prevent transmission look like Kane when the baby alien is attached to its face.  The baby alien that comes that is born out of the stomach of Kane in the infamous dinner scene was influenced by the art of Francis Bacon.  He was obsessed with logistics of the mouth in which he drew many pictures throughout his career.  These resembled that of the Alien in which Bacon wanted to scare people which reflected his other obsession with our phobia with the human mouth.

We are frightened of what is to come out of someone’s mouth and ironically our own.  Coronavirus has made us more mindful of someone else’s germs and how violent they can erupt from their systems.   Whether it is a cough or a sneeze, it puts us in heightened attention to defend our immune systems. As creator Tim Boxell says in Memory, ”You never know when the wheels are going to fall off.  We’re all one kiss, one cough, one scratch away from global disaster.”  And here we are in this pandemic being told to cover our mouths and cough and sneeze into your elbow.  We don’t want to get infected like Kane because it can make us our bitch.  Even when he coughs as soon as the alien is removed from his face, we all know that he is not well just like the people who have become a case or recovered from COVID-19.

Imperialism factors in the oppression and exploitation of the human race and the film comments on those issues that continue today.  The film industry was becoming conscious of female oppression and patriarchy at the time Alien was being made.  This is a film based on the guilt of men as they speak of in Memory such as male rape, male fantasies, male pregnancy and male penetration.   The film is a love letter to the women who have been oppressed in the film industry in the past century.   It’s the reason why we have the main character of Ripley take over the reins in this film in which the writers had her originally planned to be male.  The result of this guilt comes in the form of the Alien acting like a karma by wiping out all the crew members of Nostromo.

COVID-19 is not only the result of the exploitation of people and land but our mother Earth in which we continually neglect.  The way we run our lives has been in an extravagant, excessive and exponential manner to which cannot be sustainable.  Whether COVID-19 was transmitted from a bat because it was being sliced for consumption or was biologically manufactured in a bioweapons lab, the virus exists because we continue to exploit mother nature.  We have let this virus and the pandemic to evolve what it is today because of the technology and infrastructure that we built and haven’t built on this planet.  It’s the little things that count and unfortunately, the coronavirus is counting deaths.

It’s like saying that you are not listening to your mother and she then separates you from her or your sibling or your even your father.  Even in the crisis in Alien, you see a separation of the class system within the ship which is monitored by a ruling computer system called Mother.  Parker, played by Yaphet Kotto, and Brett, played by Harry Dean Stanton, represent the blue-collar workers of the ship and they yearn throughout the film for extra money to be paid to them for their extra hard work,  They have no say in the matter when they enter into a state of emergency while the Alien is spreading itself all over the ship making everyone its prey.  COVID-19 has done the same in that it has disabled the lower class and their access to resources thus leading them in having no voice like Parker and Brett.  Yet they agree to disagree with the orders of Dallas in hopes that they will keep their job rather than losing it like front line workers in a hospital.   When a crisis evolves those that stand to lose the most are the poor and the lower middle class who at these times have no voice in the matter because they’re thinking of how they are going to put food on the table.

Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, is confronted by the Alien.

Memory gives us further insight into how the film Alien speaks to the family makeup of life in the late 70s.  You get a great sense of a family on Nostromo and how they all interact especially in the scenes where you hear no one talking over each other at the dinner table.  But when the Alien comes out and starts running amok on the ship you can see that their bonds start to deteriorate because they spiral into a crisis.  Films of the late 70s like Kramer vs Kramer and Manhattan were acknowledged in Memory to comment on the families that were breaking apart and how the rate of divorces started to surge because of that continued oppression on females.  It was a time of uncertainty and panic and the makeup of the American dream and the American family had begun to dwindle and a lot of it had to do with money.

How this resonates in the pandemic is you are seeing families breaking apart because of finances.  Many of whom are unemployed at this time are more likely to be involved with alcohol and substance abuse causing surges in domestics.  You see members of the family being too close for comfort especially in small spaces or starter homes.  What should be a time where families could spend more time together becomes more of an illusion as spouses are showing their true colours and not knowing what to do with their children when it comes to homeschooling.  So there is no breathing room either as if it’s not already enough that COVID-19 hits and damages the respiratory system.  COVID-19 has many households cornered causing families to the point of no return.

It is fear that director Ridley Scott builds up in his audience the very second the film begins.  He lets your imagination run wild with dark settings, eerie sounds, slow movements, tense moments, hot settings and the list can go on and on.  It is like what the mainstream media has done with us which has built up the day we discovered COVID-19.  The media has shown the panic and anxiety that everyone is experiencing and they have stirred that pot by using ingredients such as the number of deaths, cases, unemployment, homelessness and city shutdowns.  Fear has made us do silly things like hoard toilet paper, watch Tiger King and eat and drink like there’s no tomorrow.   Furthermore, within our four walls, we worry about our health, our family, our children, our friends, our jobs, our present and our future.   Alien is prophetic as to what is happening today with the pandemic but it just goes to show that we can never be entirely ready or prepared for a crisis of this nature.  It is the thing that makes us human and makes us grounded and put in our place.  We should not fear our evolution with COViD-19 but rather embrace it for there are good changes ahead despite being at the expense of others.  If fear continues to linger during this pandemic, it will ruin us and the only way that it will pass is to be like Ripley and call fear, “You Bitch.”