The iconography of the science fiction film genre includes rocket ships, aliens, flying cars, robots and ray-guns – objects of the imagination, an imagination that looks ahead to another world, another time. These generic elements, aided by special effects technology, are combined to produce what may, superficially at least, appear to be depictions of that other world or time far removed from our own. But is that really the case? Could science fiction actually be closer to home, to the real world, than might be suggested by those icons and effects? Science fiction does have something to say and what it has to say concerns the anxieties, the troubles and the woes, of the age in which we live. Mead and Appelbaum (Kuhn 1990, p. 15) argue that a common trait of science fiction films is their tendency “to disguise and thereby reveal more schematically, the social or psychological preoccupations of the moment”. This “reflectionist model”, as Kuhn (1990 p. 16) calls it, suggests that science fiction films are derived or produced from the attitudes of society at that particular time, and hence, become “evidence of these trends and attitudes”. There is a tendency, according to Kuhn (1999, p. 76), for the mise-en-scene of science fiction films to ask audiences to reflect on concerns about where society is heading with advances in technology and global capitalisation, as well as other issues, such as global warming and the ever-present threat of global war and nuclear holocaust.

Two popular science fiction films, so popular as to have achieved an almost ‘cult’ status and to have been the target of much academic debate, that exemplify these arguments that science fiction reflects societal concerns, are Aliens (1986) and Blade Runner (1982). Though both films are set in the future, other similarities are not so obvious. The former takes the audience to a distant planet besieged by aggressive aliens that use humans as hosts for their young. The latter is set on Earth and could seem, perhaps, to have more in common with a Raymond Chandler tale or Roy Huggins’ The Fugitive (1963-1967), with its trench-coated detective chasing runaway ‘replicants’ through the back alleys of a dark, rain-drenched city. But closer consideration of both the explicit and implicit meanings in these films reveals that the common element of social commentary is certainly more than ’skin-deep’. An examination of this social comment would indicate that science fiction does, indeed, produce texts of social relevance; texts that reflect the concerns and anxieties of the society at the time from which they were born. Like the Alien thrusting its way out from within its human host, science fiction films break the bounds of more conventional genres, such as the Western, the musical or the romantic drama, to present a critique of, and warning to, contemporary human society. A concern common to these films is that of the effects on society of global capitalism – the ‘corporatisation’ of the world. Both films present a situation that would not, perhaps, have arisen were it not for the perceived arrogance and greed of corporate capitalism. Another commonality, associated with this anxiety over globalisation is that, although the hero in each text completes their mission with success, neither is able to actually “deal with the fundamental evil, which remains omnipotent and unassailable” (Franklin 1990, p. 29). That evil is the corporation. But perhaps the strongest common element in these two films is, as Byers (1990, p. 45) points out, “their insistence on the dehumanization necessary for human survival in a world dominated by mega-corporations”. This ‘dehumanisation’ also raises questions of identity, of artifice, simulation and “constructedness”, another thread common to both Blade Runner and Aliens, which also pulls in “growing uncertainties over and insecurities about issues of gender, race, and sexuality” – and class (Telotte 1995, p. 10).

The very beginning of Blade Runner is ominous, as the white titles appear on a black background to a deep, slow, eerie beat under a high-pitched, almost wind-like whistle, creating an atmosphere of unease and uncertainty. A text scrolls up the screen telling the audience that this is the future; a future where a corporation, the Tyrell Corporation, has created robots, androids known as ‘replicants’, that are “superior in strength and agility, and at least equal in intelligence” to humans. These replicants are used as slaves in the establishment of ‘off-world’ colonies. Following a mutiny by some of these replicants, they were banned from Earth “under penalty of death”, a penalty carried out by a specially formed police force – the ‘blade runners’. The audience is then introduced to the city of Los Angeles, the ‘city of angels’, 2019, but it is not a cityscape of wondrous glory. Flames burst out from furnace chimneys which rise out of a gruesome-looking environment.

This scene is reflected in an eye. Rising out from the darkness of the city is the pyramid-shaped, skyscraper that is the Tyrell Corporation, the only structure remotely akin to the utopia that industry and technology may promise. The audience is taken into this building to another eye, the eye of a factory worker, Leon (Brion James), being tested by a blade runner to determine if he is human or replicant. The only way to tell the difference is by close scrutiny of the eye while the examinee is being asked a series of questions “designed to provoke an emotional response”. When the blade runner asks Leon about his mother, he says, “Mother? I’ll tell you about my mother”. Leon does not have a mother, as such. Leon is a replicant. He kills the blade runner and escapes. The situation is serious. A hero is required. The authorities re-install retired blade runner, Deckard (Harrison Ford), who will be that hero. Deckard is an emotionless, cold-hearted character for whom life is a monotone, and it is in a monotone that he provides the audience with a narration reminiscent of Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941). There are four runaway “skin jobs”, a term used as a racial slur by Deckard’s superior, who, “in history books”, Deckard tells us, would be “the kinda cop that used to call black men ‘nigger’.” And so the chase is on. But is it a pursuit of replicants, of replication, or the pursuit of what is real, who we are, a pursuit of identity? In a highly industrialised, technological society, reality can become virtual, identity blurred – unclear to the eye.

The eye is a recurring motif throughout the film, a metaphor for reflection – how we see ourselves; how we visualise reality, but also, perhaps, for the “all-seeing” eye, the omnipotent God, the creator – the Tyrell Corporation, representative of the multi-national corporations that spread their wings around the globe in the 1980s and continue to do so today. In search of answers to questions of their morphology and longevity, Leon and Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), the leader of the replicants, go to see one of the genetic engineers – the eye-maker, Hannibal Chew (James Hong). Chew says he knows nothing of such things; he just does eyes. Roy says, “If only you could see what I have seen with your eyes”. When Chew tells him that only Tyrell knows the answers, that “he knows everything…he designed your mind, your brain”. Roy says, “Not an easy man to see, I guess”. But what has Roy seen that Chew has not? Other than ‘off-world’ colonies, artificial worlds, artificial realities, Roy has seen the proverbial light. He knows he is a replicant and he knows that it will soon be “time to die”. He knows that the replicants have a built-in limited lifespan. He has come to see his maker, his father. Roy is not a happy android. But then, this is not a happy world. The streets are crowded, the buildings old and dirty. The constant rain falls from a constantly dark and polluted sky. ‘High-tech’ video billboards hover above the streets, inviting inhabitants, those at least wealthy enough and healthy enough, to leave this place and move ‘off-world’. It is, as Staiger (1999, p. 100) claims, an “entropic” place, a place in disorder, “characterized by debris, decay, and abandonment”. It is a place not dissimilar to the urban spaces of the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, as described by Franklin (1990, p. 23):

high above the pot-holed streets, sleazy porn districts,
decayed public transport, dilapidated small business,
cockroach-infested housing, violence and squalor have
soared…banks and corporate headquarters in glittering
futuristic skyscrapers.

Those glittering corporate headquarters are represented in Blade Runner by the Tyrell Corporation, a brightly-lit pyramid that recalls the might, majesty and arrogance of the pharaohs.

Staiger (1999, p. 114) suggests that the “high-rise or the nostalgic pyramid-peaked skyscraper” signifies “the dangers of the hierarchies and elitism” produced by capitalism. When Roy finally gets to meet his maker, the God of ‘bio-mechanics’, he is told nothing can be done, that death is out of the creator’s jurisdiction. Roy kisses then kills his father by pressing his eyes into his skull. But there is no suggestion that this is either the end of the corporation or a victory for the replicants, who still must face the agent of their maker, Deckard, who is just as relentless in pursuit of the replicants as they are in pursuit of their own continuance. In a climactic scene towards the film’s end, where Roy is about to die after just saving the life of Deckard, Roy tells Deckard, “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe”. Indeed, Roy, having met his maker, has quite probably realised something people would not believe – or, perhaps, do not want to believe – the cold usurpation that is the nature of corporate capitalism.

This cold usurpation is equally spine-chillingly depicted in Aliens. Though this text takes the audience ‘off-world’, it is still a tale of the earthly monster that is the corporation, here referred to only as ‘The Company’. The opening title of the film is an animation of metallic coils transforming into the word, “Aliens”, a signifier, perhaps, of the cogs of industry, the foundation of corporate capitalism, metamorphosing into the ruthless, cold-hearted creature that is the Alien, described by a Company board member as “a creature that gestates inside a living human host…and has concentrated acid for blood”.

The opening scene is of a small craft adrift in the emptiness of space. The occupant of this vessel is Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) escaping her previous encounter with both the Alien and the corporation in the precursor to this sequel, Alien (1979). Her drifting, her isolation, in this scene is symbolic of her position throughout the film as an outsider. As a representation of the divisions that exist in contemporary society, she does not fit in with the Company; she does not fit in when she joins the military outfit sent back to the planet from which she has just come (Constable 1999, p. 184). As with Deckard, Ripley becomes the unwilling hero, the unwitting emissary, for the corporation. The corporation in this case wants the Alien, not eliminated because it is a threat to humanity, but captured to then be used as a weapon for the complete control of humanity. The Alien, which is a parasite, using humans for the incubation of its young, would be an ideal tool for the Company that is depicted in this text as little more than a leech on society. Like a child admiring her or his image in a mirror, the Company has an admiration for the Alien, indeed, a lust not unlike that which Adonis had for his own reflection. The creature is a reflection of the Company. The Alien is, as Byers (1990, p.41) describes it, like the corporation, “a structural perfection matched only by its hostility, and geared solely for survival, unclouded by conscience or delusions of morality”.

There is a thematic intertextuality here between Aliens and Blade Runner. Tyrell, too, has an admiration for the perfection of his products, and he is certainly not bothered by questions of conscience or morality. But this is not the only similarity between these texts. Deckard had retired from being a blade runner, but is re-assigned, coerced into returning, because he is considered the only one who can get the job done. Ripley has her licence as a flight officer suspended after an inquiry into what had happened to her and her previous crew. The board of Company officials doubt her statements. The head of the board tells her, “That will be all”. Ripley loses her restraint, grabs a clump of papers, a symbol of bureaucracy, and shouts, “Goddamn it, that’s not all. Because if one of those things gets down here, then that will be all. Then all this, this bullshit that you think is so important – you can just kiss all that goodbye”. She throws the papers to the floor. She has rejected the Company. There is only one conclusion the board can come to – Ripley needs “psych-evaluation”. But then, communications from the now colonised planet, LB4-26, have stopped, inexplicably. Ripley is offered re-instatement if she will travel back to that planet as an advisor with a marine unit. As the only person alive who has experience with the creature, she is considered vital for the success of the mission. She agrees, not in order to regain her licence nor as a service to the Company, but because she has been told there are families, children, on the planet. Ripley had been a mother, her child having grown old and passed away while Ripley was adrift, un-aging in the stasis required for deep space travel. Before agreeing to go, she looks in a mirror. What she sees is not an agent for the corporation, but a mother; a mother who must go for the sake of the children. She is assured by Burke (Paul Reiser), the Company representative, that the intention is to destroy the creature, not to capture it for research, but Burke knows exactly what his mission is, and all is not as it seems – or as he promises.

The marines on this mission are trained to be tough, emotionless. Their weapons are merely extensions of themselves. There is no individuality; there is no difference between them – male or female. They are all machines of power and aggression, but they are still human. But there is one member of the flight crew who is different – Bishop (Lance Henriksen). As they are all sitting at the dining table, the last supper before landing on the planet, one of the marines calls out to Bishop, asking him “to do the thing with the knife”. This is a trick in which Bishop places his hand, fingers spread out, and rapidly stabs between them. Presumably, Bishop has performed this stunt before, but this time, when he places his hand down on the table, another marine forces the hand of the marine who had requested this rendition, under that of Bishop. During the performance, Bishop nicks himself – a cut that does not seep blood, but mechanical sap. Bishop is an android - a replicant. The act of one marine, one human, forcing the hand of another under the hand of this robot can be read as symbolising the forces that exist in society for submission to the advances of technology. The fact that it is the hand of the person who initiated the act, invited that technology, makes this particular scene even more unnerving with regard to how people invite technology into every aspect of their daily lives. Bishop, himself, is not comfortable with being called an android. He prefers to be known as an “artificial person”. The oxymoron of Bishop’s identity is not unlike the Company’s slogan for its colonisation program – “Building Better Worlds”. On arrival at the colony, it is shrouded in darkness and gloom. There is a persistent rain. The interior of the colony buildings are dystopic with exposed and dripping pipes. This may as well be Los Angeles, 2019.

Ripley does regain her lost motherhood, and therefore affirm her identity and, as Constable (1999, p. 186) states, “generational continuity”, through the orphaned, colonial child, Newt (Carrie Henn). But this reclamation can only come about after a final conflict with another mother, the Alien. This creature produces offspring that are identical in their ruthlessness and appearance. They are, to all intents and purposes, replicants. But then this creature does represent, to all intents and purposes, the corporations of the world that would prefer a homogenised and, therefore, more manageable and malleable society. The Alien, however, has lost her children in a nuclear blast that has destroyed the planet. She now must fight against Ripley, not for survival, but for revenge. But her vengeance is no match for Ripley’s maternal machismo. The creature is vanquished, though not the Company, just as Tyrell dies, but the pyramid, the Corporation, still stands.

Just as Burke’s promise to Ripley was not, to be polite, exactly honest; the utopic promises of global capitalism may not be exactly honest. Just as Tyrell’s gift of life to the replicants was a life with no past and no future; the gift of technological advances may obscure our past and dim our future. Aliens is not just a war movie in space, a battle between human and alien. Neither is Blade Runner just a film noir detective story set in the future. Both films are reflections of society’s concerns about globalisation and all the issues that condition entails. Both films are typical of contemporary science fiction, with their ‘high-tech’ weapons and vehicles, and their futuristic environments. But more importantly, both films are typical of contemporary science fiction because they have something to say to their audience about what the future has in store should those concerns and anxieties that many in society have about global corporatisation bear true. Aliens and Blade Runner each present a warning about the horrors that await us should we so blindly and openly invite the technologies and ideologies of corporate capitalism, so willingly into our lives. These films tell us that there is a beast out there waiting to come in. In Aliens, that beast is physicalised by a parasitic creature for whom the human body is merely a shell, a cacoon. In Blade Runner, no one really knows who they are, or, more precisely, what they are – human or replicant. But whether it be by sheer exploitation or by loss of identity, these films tell a tale of the demise of human society at the hands of the corporation. The beast is not on planet LB4-26. The beast is shuffling papers in the boardrooms lifted up away from this Earth by the skyscrapers that threaten to penetrate the very fabric of our society like the phalluses which they are.

References

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