Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
Horror
movie monsters often have offensive capabilities modeled upon those
with which nature has equipped terrestrial animals. Sil, Species's
female alien-human hybrid created through a synthesis of alien and
human deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), is a case in point. An extended
description of her appearance and her abilities shows that, despite
her human characteristics, she is, at heart, much more alien than
human:
Her
human form is, in truth, merely a disguise and her true alien form is
an exotic, sensual, alien mockery of the human form. Her form is
chitinous and reptilian, somewhat reminiscent of the creatures from
the film Alien,
but still humanoid in appearance. Her “hair” is a mass of
prehensile tentacles which are slicked back behind her head. She
possesses two sets of teeth with the internal set being razor sharp.
Her breasts, rather than storing fat or mammary glands, instead store
long, slimy tentacles which emerge from her “nipples.” She can
use her breast-tentacles as weapons but they are also used in her
amorous mating ritual (as shown in the second film). Sil has long
sharp spines up her back that she can retract and extend at will.
These seem to be utilized as a weapon in Species
2 by Eve. Last but not
least, Sil's infamous tongue. Her long tongue is tipped with sharp
spines and is her primary defense mechanism (or weapon). When
threatened, she can simple impale her aggressor with her tongue. This
"kiss of death" is shown in each of the franchise's films
at least once. Sil’s alien form is also capable of holding its
breath underwater for an extended period (“Sil's
Appearance”).
A
conglomeration of insect, reptile, mollusk, feline or bird, and
human, Sil possesses anatomical weapons that resemble those of the
shark (her “two sets of teeth”), the octopus (her “prehensile
tentacles”), spiny lizards (the sharp spines on her back), and cats
or birds (her barbed tongue). In biological terms, she is more than
simply a hybrid, or cross-bred organism; she is, in fact, a chimera,
“an organism or tissue that contains at least two different sets of
DNA.”
The
surrealist artist H.
R. Giger, who helped to develop the designs for Sil, the original
of which, for her tongue, was festooned with shark's teeth, said, “My
original idea was for a death kiss in which Sil forces her lethal
tongue down her lover's throat, and pulls it out tearing his insides
out with it. It was not to smash through the skull as in the final
film.” From the beginning, Giger envisioned Sil's tongue as an
anatomical weapon: “My original idea was for a death kiss in which
Sil forces her lethal tongue down her lover's throat, and pulls it
out tearing his insides out with it. It was not to smash through the
skull as in the final film, exactly as it was done in Alien
and Alien3.”
Giger
also designed the spines that project from Sil's back, “hair with
flaming tips,” breast tentacles, and “claw[-]like nails.” Oh,
yes—she would be fire-resistant as well. Although he wasn't
satisfied by the way his designs were incorporated, sometimes in an
altered fashion, in the film, without his creative ideas, the movie would have been as original and as, well, surreal.
Before
his work on Species,
Giger also designed the Alien
alien that has come to be known, unofficially, as the xenomorph. The
creature's five-stage “life
cycle” (Ovomorph, Facehugger, Chestburster, adult, and Queen)
is elaborate and reminiscent, to some extent, of that of “wasps of
the Chalcidoidea
and Ichneumonoidea
families, which lay their eggs on live prey that are then consumed by
the hatching larvae.”
A
mobile ovary with finger-like appendages and a phallic proboscis, the
Facehugger
attaches itself to its host's face after emerging from an egg laid by
the Queen. After incapacitating its host with “a cynose-based
paralytic chemical,” the Facehugger uses its proboscis to implant
the creature's egg (formed during the first stage of the alien's life
cycle) in its victim's chest. It then detaches itself, “crawls away
and dies.” (While it's still attached, its “acidic blood
prevents” its removal.)
The
attachment of the Facehugger to its victim's face and its subsequent
death are somewhat reminiscent of the fate of the male anglerfish,
except that it attaches itself to the larger female, withering away
until it becomes nothing more than a pair of testicles.
This
stage of the xenomorph's “life cycle,” some contend, is a parody
of the human reproductive process, substituting rape by means of
something akin to oral sex for penile-vaginal intercourse performed
in a context of mutual love and respect. (Alien
is not
recommended by feminists.)
The
implanted egg is not only parasitic, but also tumorous in its growth,
and it's like a virus, commandeering the host's body to use the
host's DNA and other “biological material” to develop its own
body, which includes assuming some of the host's own “physical
traits [e. g., bipedalism] via a process known as the DNA Reflex.”
Once the egg develops into a Chestbuster,
it bursts through the abdomen of its host and flees, rapidly
increasing in size until, within mere hours, it reaches its adult
dimensions.
In
short, Giger's design for the xenomorph's “life cycle” envisions
reproduction as a monstrous process involving sodomy, rape,
parasitism, infection, disease, and death. In his view, sex is not
lovemaking, but rape combined with sexual perversion, which leads to
death as well as birth, and may substitute a male host's abdomen for
the uterus: the fetal Chestbuster erupts from the chest; it does not
emerge from the womb. Sex, as Giger envisions it, isn't merely messy;
it is itself a confusing and contradictory mess devoid of love
and respect, involving violence, invasion, parasitism, infection, and
disease.
Daniel
D. Snyder sees the xenomorph as representing “obvious
distortions of the standard human physique.” Although I'm not sure
what he has in mind by “the standard human physique,” his
observations are, otherwise, intriguing. Giger's alien, Snyder says,
“is a filthy, primal parasite whose very
survival is contingent on it's [sic]
continued rape and exploitation of other species.” As such, Snyder
believes the xenomorph reflects the Darwinistic struggle to survive
not only by adaptation, but also through the reproduction of the
species, or as Snyder himself puts it, “the cold, mechanical
struggle to survive.”
He sees in Giger's
monstrous vision of sex, an experience that can cause “pain” and
death, and a fusion, in the xenomorph's phallic form, or “phallus
and . . monster” that suggests “that thing between your legs [if
one happens to be male] is also an instrument of evil.” The
monstrous creature of Alien
is not ourselves, exactly, but “a penis come to life [and] running
amok.” As such, it is also somehow “our own weapon [turned]
against us” to show “the terror of what we do to each other and
the creatures we torture and exploit every day as a matter of simple
survival.”
While
Snyder may go a bit over the top with his
xenomorphy-as-exploiting-human “run amok,” his understanding of
the xenomorph's phallicism is certainly on target, as I have likewise
suggested, and the creature's complex, perverse “life cycle”
obviously does parody, if not critique, sexual reproduction in
general.
In
such monsters as Sil and the xenomorph, both personification and
dehumanization are at work simultaneously, as they often are when
non-human organisms or objects are given human characteristics or
abilities and human beings are regarded as less than human. A mermaid
is a woman—in part—but she is also a fish—in part. That's why
the mermaid is extraordinary and, it must be admitted, not only
eldritch, but also horrible.
By
increasing or decreasing the quality of a person, an animal, or a
thing, we alter it. We transform it, so that it is no longer itself.
Whether, in doing so, we make it more or less than it as before, we
have meddled with its identity and its essential character. We have
played God, creating Sil, or the xenomorph, or whatever in our own
image and likeness. That which we have changed remains changed, as
does it nature, its existence, and, if it is sentient or intelligent,
its experience. Where “man-made monsters” are concerned, this is
the true and lasting horror, the horror of Pygmalion and Prometheus
and Frankenstein: the creator becomes more monstrous than his or her
creation.
Like
the bat, a pit
viper (the bushmaster, copperhead, and rattlesnake, among others)
is equipped with a heat-seeking organ located between its eyes. This
organ helps the snake to “accurately aim
its strike at its warm-blooded prey.” (The bat
uses its heat-seeking organ to locate blood.) Not only the chameleon
and other lizards, but also plenty of other animals, including
insects, fish, birds, and mammals, use various forms of camouflage,
as do soldiers, to conceal themselves from predators. Insects have
green
blood. So does Papau New Guinea's green-blooded skink. But blood
doesn't exist only in red and green; some species of octopi have blue
blood, and the ocellated icefish has clear blood. Although, as far as
I know, no animals have luminescent blood, many of them, including
lightning bugs, or fireflies, glowworms, Jellyfish, and anglerfish,
to name a few, are bioluminescent.
The alien creature in the
Predator
movie (1987) senses body heat, can camouflage itself (using a
cloaking device, rather than natural means), and has luminescent
green blood. Its traits and abilities are extraordinary, but they're
not unique. Appearing in, or exhibited by, a biped creature of
humanoid shape, these traits and abilities do seem novel, however,
making the extraterrestrial marauder seem to be truly out of this
world. They make the monster seem more nonhuman, even as its
bipedalism, use of tools, and thinking ability make it seem not
altogether unlike its human prey. Again, the monster is both enhanced
by personification and degraded by dehumanization. The combined
personification and objectification of the creature makes it seem
uncanny and, therefore, all the more horrible and frightening.