At 10:49 AM 11/20/97 EST, you wrote:
>In response to Barbara Benesch' post of Nov. 20.
>
>Full agreement on Ripley as a powerful female SF character.
>
>In Alien, she is the only one with the intelligence, determination,
>bravery, and assertiveness to survive. She also makes the hard decision
>that would have saved everyone else - to keep the away team quarantined
>in the airlock until they figure out what happened to Kane. 'Course Ash
>overrides her order....
>
>Aliens:
>
>> Then, when she was sent on with the marines to Acheron,
>> she continued to pull her own weight with the rest of the crew,
>> and refused to be cowed in the face of marine bravado.
>
>True, but she actually goes way beyond this. First, she is
>singlehandedly responsible for rescuing half of the team from their
>disastrous first trip in. Then, she is primarily responsible for keeping
>them together and putting together a plan to get them out of there. A
>civilian, she still virtually takes command. Personally saves Newt,
>personally kills (?) the Queen, etc. Hicks is a great guy, and tries,
>but is clearly outclassed. Noone else comes close.
>
>> Ripley managed to avoid all of those traps, and while the movie
>> does have Ripley fighting another female (thus reducing the
>> end battle to a "cat fight") over a child (appealing to the idea of
>> "maternal instincts" causing her ruthlessness), she's still a better
>> feminist role model than most movie women at the time.
As to the maternal stuff, the question that comes to mind is: while that's
certainly there to some extent, would you be bothered by the same line in
the same circumstance coming from a man? I see your point about the cat
fight, but I can't consider it so because I just took the fight as human
vs. alien, not female vs. female.
>That bothered me somewhat, particularly the line "Get away from her, you
>Bitch!", emphasizing this idea. And these are _clearly_ the two
>strongest characters in the film - Ripley and the Alien Queen. By the
>way, by strongest characters I mean in strength-of-action, not
>strength-of-character.
>
I dunno. I'd have to go with Ripley and Newt there.
> (Also, Vasquez, the *really* gung-ho female marine, was a
> pretty good feminist character as well, having established her
> place as a member of the squad, and the men treated her
> accordingly.
>>Again, I think you're not going quite far enough. I love Vasquez, and
>>she's not just taking a "place as a member of the squad," she's clearly
>>the most hard-core of the bunch. And, as you say:
> And for a gung-ho marine, I have to say she didn't come
> across as "butch" as they could have made her.
Definitely.
I think they made her too gratuitously butch. Not that I'd have them
soften her, but her whole aura, at least for the first two-thirds of the
film, was "Look at me, I'm butch!" whereas Ripley just came across as tough
(though not butch) without having to advertise it. This is one of the
reasons I like her so much.
That bothered me somewhat, particularly the line "Get away from her, you
Bitch!", emphasizing this idea. And these are _clearly_ the two
strongest characters in the film - Ripley and the Alien Queen. By the
way, by strongest characters I mean in strength-of-action, not
strength-of-character.
-Sean
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:07:31 PDT