Rick Freed
Nov 3 · 2 min read

I’m loathe to “like” post historical era pontificating on movie meanings. A recent response I made regarding an article that tried to tie Taxi Driver and Travis Bickle — a seriously unstable PTSD laden alienated Marine war vet wreck of a man — as being a precursor to INCEL culture is pretty typical of my thoughts on these decades on analysis that are typically total complete horseshit.

Which is what I called that analysis.

Certainly terms like “Straight Washing” make me insane due to the woke theater that lies behind it, a kind of narcissistic social cache of being woke for others to acknowledge wokeness for self validation and self acknowledgement rather than actual social change or ignoring the socio political consequences of using that vapid lexicon in the first place.

That said, I agree with most of what you say.

It definitely was intentional by Ridley Scott. The choice of Geiger’s homo erotic imagery embedded with disturbing, sadistic and violent horror imagery was absolutely utilized for social commentary on multiple levels.

And the imagery of being impregnated and child bearing was obviously by intent. As was his choice to choose a female heroin to kill the “beast.” As was the explosion of blood shooting from the heart of the male victim.

And it’s Scott’s treatment of character as human, complex, and on the spectrum across a wide variety of converging biological and psycho social factors that really makes most of his movies timeless.

So it’s fair to say Scott was way ahead of his time in terms of treating mass consumed media as a vehicle for social commentary without bludgeoning it across ones head with a sledge hammer like many 1970’s and 1980’s films tend to do.

Even more so because I think you overstate the acceptance of sexual liberation at that time. The prime movers of the Reagan revolution had already taken hold in 1965 with Barry Goldwater. That was already in play. It was inevitable.

Yet Alien is a beloved movie across wide swaths of the socio political spectrum. Which means that not only was Scott intentionally subversive but managed to do so in a way that was thoroughly horrifying and wholly entertaining.

And I would say that Scott is a rarity in that respect. And while I like the movie “Aliens” also, the female characters were far more “masculinized” — boxed into stereotypes of hyper masculinity — and used as blunt instruments to get the “feminist” point across.

In that respect to say James Cameron is just not as subtle or nuanced a storyteller as Ridley Scott is a serious understatement.