What exactly makes space so daunting and even terrifying?
Is it that it's mostly nothing for millions of miles in every direction or is it that
we don't know what may be out there?
Is it benevolent or so foreign that what we consider to be evil is just a common occurrence?
Upon venturing out would we find paradise or hell?
In the Alien franchise it's pretty clear that the answer is hell or at least hell on
the planets where the characters look.
But what exactly drives them there in the first place and, given their motivations,
do they deserve what happens to them?
With Alien: Covenant being released, now may be a good time to study the origins of the
themes that run through the Alien franchise and see what makes them so effective in creating
a sense of horror
The original Alien deals with a lot of important questions about humanity like: what is it
to be human?
Are people really so futile and insignificant?
The cold, calculating and unempathetic android, Ash, in the original Alien is reminiscent
of the artificial intelligence HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is a reflection of the
cold, overly pragmatic and egotistical side of human nature.
Instead of having HAL and Ash be a direct contrast to the humans in 2001 and Alien,
as is done in other depictions of A.I. as a morality tale to illustrate how inhuman
humanity can become, the artificial life forms in both films seem to mirror their human crew mates.
There is an emptiness to the characters in 2001 that comes off in very reserved and void
personalities with little to nothing shown in the way of emotion.
HAL may seem to act more emotional than the people in the film
but despite this facade, HAL harbors some soulless motivations that may or may not be
a byproduct of the soulless corporation that made it.
The characters in Alien are concerned about money and overly mindful of corporate rules,
which sounds familiar because those are the standard behaviors in a workplace environment--
the narrative of the blue-collar working stiff who happens to be in space--but perhaps these
capitalist tendencies are fostering something soulless.
Ash, who is evil, corporately minded and entirely disinterested in preserving human life, should
stand out as being quite inhuman and soulless but instead he blends right in.
The crew and Ash are both bound by the same soulless corporate mindset.
HAL and its crew are also involved in the same corporate campaign that drives their
motivations and subsequent actions.
The soulless corporate mindset is an example of the lows humanity can sink to and a potential
path that people can take which can lead to their own personal, soulless existence.
HAL and Ash are representations of the darker, soulless tendencies of mankind.
HAL displays the pitfalls of fear, the use of cold, unconscionable logic and the desire
for control at the expense of others which can be seen throughout the history of
man.
Ash admires the Alien creature for its supposed purity in how inhuman it is as a survivor
and HAL thinks so little of humans that it is willing to kill them all to ensure the
success of the mission.
If HAL, which is a computer, is no different than humanity displaying both our good and
bad features such as: introspection and intelligence but also paranoia, fearfulness and murderousness
what does that say about humanity?
Given the narrative of 2001 about man's evolution from soulless ape, to human, to
the superhuman from beyond the infinite, at the human stage we find man in a stagnant
state of evolution where they are dependent on technology for every little task, arrogant
about what they have accomplished ignorant about the unknown in the universe.
Speaking of arrogance and ignorance this brings up a predominant theme in the Alien franchise:
egotism breeding stupidity.
The crew of the Nostromo, save Ripley for the most part, are, well, dumb.
Or at least not smart or adept enough to take on the horrors that await them.
The Nostromo crew as well as those aboard Discovery: One face something beyond their
egos and definitely beyond their little knowledge to combat: evil.
For the 2001 crew: a murderous artificial intelligence and in the Alien franchise a
murderous alien.
With all of mankind's efforts in trying to progress can society only produce a soulless
person who is susceptible to evil and arrogant and ignorant about the universe?
Another theme shared between 2001 and Alien to illustrate the effects of ignorance and
arrogance on humanity is infantilization.
Corporations and technology in both films have become what mankind depends on to survive,
but, unfortunately, people are too ignorant about the universe and too arrogant and self
assured to learn and adapt to what may lie in the cold expanse of space.
So we are essentially babies suckling off the teet of technology with very little ability
to survive when it comes to what is in the unknown.
In 2001 there is a scene of an astronaut, in a pair of white short, shorts reminiscent
of diapers, having happy birthday sung to him by his parents while machines pamper him
to the point where he doesn't even have to raise his head, just like a baby.
Later the astronauts are also seen eating something akin to baby food.
In Alien the name of the ship's computer, in which they receive orders, is Mother.
and when the crew of the Nostromo wakes up they are in capsules wearing the same sort
of white short, short-diapers emerging from hyper-sleep like new-born babes in the unfeeling
dark of space.
Both crews as a direct contrast to their infantilization are put through the rigors of the evil in
the unknown arena outside of their juvenile knowledge of the universe and are utterly
obliterated save our protagonists, Ripley and Dave, who are able to adapt and learn
just in time to overcome the evil.
Prometheus, upon its initial assessment, was deemed a disappointment, mainly because of
the stupidity of the characters.
The argument seems to stem from, if these characters are scientists, scholars of logical
methodology, and are supposed to be intelligent, why do they do so many stupid things?
Well, in the original Alien series and within the main antecedents of the horror genre,
the idea that man is inexperienced and ill-equipped to handle the inhuman and evil elements that
may be found in the universe is a common theme that has some very deep philosophical waters.
Around the beginning of the twentieth century H.P.
Lovecraft pioneered a philosophy called cosmic horror or cosmicism.
Cosmicism examines how people are powerless against what lies beyond our understanding
of reality.
All our claims to what is good, evil and moral are nothing but products of our ego.
"Everything will disappear.
And human actions are as free and as stripped of meaning as the unfettered movements of
the elementary particles.
Good, evil, morality, sentiments?
Pure Victorian fictions. All that exists is egotism.
Cold, intact, and radiant."
If Shakespeare's claim in Hamlet is that, "There are more things in heaven and earth
than are dreamt of in your philosophy" then Lovecraft's claim is that what is not dreamt
in our modern philosophy might be the cause of our demise.
Where Hamlet thought that the ghost of his father might actually be the devil tricking
him into damnation by convincing him to kill his uncle, a Lovecraft story might have the
main character come across an entity that is neither devil nor angel but is simply foreign
and not sharing in the mores of humankind.
These entities possess abilities and powers that are far beyond basic rationale and people�s
own ability to defend themselves.
The main character's downfall in a Lovecraft story occurs when they meddle in what they
should not have meddled in or when their curiosity leads them down a path that goes straight
into the dark depths of the unknown.
According to Lovecraft, man is vastly insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe, we are
ants that other, greater beings can easily and unconscionably step on and annihilate
or do with what they please.
One of the more horrifying notions to be implied by the cosmicism philosophy is that we are
helpless against what exists in the unknown.
We cannot fathom the rationale of whatever may lurk in the universe in the same way an
insect cannot fathom the rationale of a human.
"It is ridiculous to imagine that at the edge of the cosmos, other well-intentioned
and wise beings await to guide us toward some sort of harmony.
In order to imagine how they might treat us were we to come into contact with them, it
might be best to recall how we treat "inferior intelligences" such as rabbits and frogs.
In the best cases they serve as food for us, sometimes also, often in fact, we kill them
for the sheer pleasure of killing.
Thus, warned, would be the true picture of our future relationship to those other intelligent
beings.
Perhaps some of the more beautiful human species would be honored and would end up on a dissection
table - that's all."
Cosmic horror is what the Alien franchise runs on.
The basic thesis of the movie is that the ego of mankind cannot even remotely prepare
them for the cold and inhuman evils found in the universe.
When one rolls their eyes in frustration at the scientist playing with a dangerous snake
like creature instead of running away, or the crew who think they can outsmart what
exists in the unknown, we are really rolling our eyes at the arrogance and stupidity of
the ego.
What does the arrogance that causes ignorance and stupidity lead to?
Disaster, mistake after mistake?
People headstrong to the extent that they poke their heads into arenas that they should
have never sought; the evil outside of their knowledge, continuously falling into the pitfalls
that they have ignored in the unknown.
In Lovecraft's short, Nyarlathotep, a city is afflicted with the presence of a Pharaoh
type god, Nyarlathotep, and despite the inhabitants of the city having uneasy and tortured minds
on account of the strange new figure they still crowd around him out of curiosity to
watch disturbing, magical spectacles one in which ends with them being driven away by
Nyarlathotep and enslaved in a hellish dimension.
When confronted with evil and even with a horrified presentement to warn them of the
nature of Nyarlathotep, their curiosity gets the better of them and they essentially go
to hell.
"I remember when Nyarlathotep came to my city; the great, the old, the terrible city
of unnumbered crimes.
My friend had told me of him, and of the impelling fascination and allurement of his revelations,
and I burned with eagerness to explore his uttermost mysteries.
My friend said they were horrible and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings ..."
Where curiosity is not a problem in of itself, when people are so accustomed to evil in their
own lives, living in a terrible city of unnumbered crimes for instance, they may have the audacity
to cross the threshold of something that may bring about their utter hellish demise.
According to Dante's Divine comedy, what you do on earth reflects on not only where
you are put in hell, but what type of punishment you receive, so in a Christianic, religious
sense, actions have consequences if not in life then in the afterlife.
What the horror genre accomplishes is to bring this sort of eternal damnation to the physical
and instead of sins perpetrated in the flesh being a tally towards the torment in hell,
actions have direct consequences and characters get their hell on earth.
Where Dante's hell looks like this the poster art for the new Alien movie looks like this.
Pretty similar.
The consequence of the character's actions in the Alien franchise leads them on a course
to hell where there are demonic creatures that brutally murder or essentially rape them.
In Prometheus we find out that the alien creatures came from an alien pathogen, seen in the film
as black goo, that another sentient alien race that predates humans called engineers
tested on a barren planet to make biological weapons, but instead of everything going smoothly,
the alien pathogen breaks out and kills
the engineers.
In other words, according to the tropes of cosmicism, they meddled in what they shouldn't
have meddled in and were, deservedly, destroyed.
So what did the humans do to deserve their destruction?
Meddle, be stupid and ignorant?
Yes.
But it's the reason that they are stupid and ignorant enough to meddle that is the
real problem.
Whether it's the soulless corporate mindset that leads people into dangerous places or
our own hubris, the comeuppance is the same.
In a grander sense the examination of the arrogance of people through the lens of cosmicism
might illuminate why people collectively march into disaster after disaster; from societal
problems such as wars, pollution, genocide and poverty to personal problems such as unfaithfulness,
self-destruction and interpersonal squabbles.
Is the main issue that we repeat the sins of the past and do not learn from and avoid
them leaving every evil mankind has experienced in the collective unknown to be repeated over
and over again?
Or are we just too dumb to adapt to anything outside of our egotistical comforts that we
could just walk right into a trap without even so much as knowing that we have crossed
an invisible threshold?
The narrative of the Alien franchise seems to point to our inability to learn from the
past causing our inability to properly adapt to the present.