Hi, I'm intersex and the definition of intersex you use at 3:30 is misleading - it implies being intersex is physically evident at birth. Most intersex people don't start showing signs of being intersex until puberty, where things go differently than for perisex (non-intersex) people. While most intersex variations are known to be congenital, that doesn't mean they're detected at birth. This matters because a lot of conservative, gender-binary policing people are pushing a narrowing of what intersex means, to narrow it down to what you have defined (or even further). This serves to keep the numbers of intersex people down, to pretend we are rare, not a threat to the sex/gender binary, and to keep intersex people disconnected from one another. You linked to InterAct in the video description - they explicitly note in their definition of intersex that "some traits are noticed at birth. Others don't show up until puberty or later in life." InterAct bolds this text because it is important. Isolation is a huge theme in how intersex people face oppression. Using narrow definitions makes it harder for intersex people who don't fit the steretotype to realize that they're intersex and to find community. Please update the definition in the video. A lot of people, like myself, are now finding the video thanks to hbomberguy & Kat Lo's youtube list. For a lot of people this may be the only definition they ever see from a queer authority, and it's honestly disheartening to see it be a definition that continues common misconceptions.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. i regret writing my own definition of intersex rather than just using one from an advocacy group. not sure what i was thinking there-it was a foolish and arrogant thing to do. i can only assume that i was trying to emphasize the harm that is done to babies identified as intersex, but in doing so i completely erased and failed to acknowledge the harm that is also done to intersex children and adults. i can't apologize enough for this oversight. i had no intention of trying to be reductive but i can see now that was the effect of my word choice. i absolutely intend to be more careful with my language in the future. unfortunately there is no way for me to edit this video directly but i'll be pinning this comment and i have added a card to the video at that timestamp linking to the interACT definition page, and stating that my definition is not a good one (in the limited character space youtube allows).
@maxteeth Thanks for the speedy reply! The card didn't show up for me in firefox but does show up in chromium so I think one of my adblockers hid it? I'd add a note in the video description for those who'd miss the card. I do wanna say that I appreciate that you acknowledged that intersex people have our genders scrutinized and policed in ways that have commonality with trans people. BTW the term I've seen most commonly for the oppression of intersex people is intersexism. I also agree with you that Lambert is probably intersex. You hedged a lot in the video and I personally have none of that hedging in my interpretation - to me the information presented in Lambert's file very straightforwardly reads as intersex. John Money's treatment protocol from the 1950s that established the widespread "correction" of intersex infants also stresses psychological monitoring, since it is ostensibly to spare the child from ever having doubt about their gender. Lambert's file feels very in line with this paradigm. Given how common these practices are in our own time, this seems far more likely to me than "somebody just wanted the baby to be a girl". Also: if somebody wanted a designer baby that was a girl, there are much easier and more reliable ways of doing this, like IVF. IVF in nonhuman animals was established by the time Alien was written, the first cases of IVF in humans were in the late 70s (just before Alien's release), and by the time Aliens rolled around the idea of a "test tube baby" was definitely in the cultural imaginary. Why other than an unexpected intersex variation would future doctors go through the trouble of converting a baby when they could intervene upstream?
@@elizabethpatitsas565 it's weird that the card doesn't come up in some browsers! but good idea on adding it to the description, i've now done that as well. thanks again for bringing this up. it frankly hadn't occurred to me that narrowing the definition of intersex could be used as a tactic to isolate and further marginalize intersex people, but it makes perfect sense that that would be the case. those are great points about designer babies and psychological monitoring as well. to be honest since making this video my interpretations of Alien and Aliens have continued to evolve and that’s definitely gonna be something to think about. i’d love to revisit the topic at some point, especially to amend some of the mistakes i’ve made here.
gotta say even though i am a biology nerd and if you had asked me if intersex has to be apparent at birth i would totally have said no, i still didn't catch it. goes to show that it's always important to have people in the conversation instead of only talking about them as we too often do.
Me talking out of my ass because I liked newts inclusion in aliens: Ripley becoming a mother through becoming a protector of life rather than a giver of life is the queer experience in becoming a parent. and then she beats the shit out of be ‘fruitful and multiply” showing just because you can produce doesn’t make you a guardian
oh don’t get me wrong i really did enjoy Aliens, and i thought the plotline with newt was sweet. i think you make a good point that they make a very non-traditional/found family and that’s cool as hell.
I literally just watched Aliens for the first time today (lol) and I definitely agree with this take! It didn’t feel like a nuclear family type of motherhood at all to me. I’m addition, I think that since Ripley and Newt were the only ones to have experienced the aliens at that point, they were able to form a closer bond. It wasn’t just “this is my role” it was “I know what this child is feeling and I know I can protect her”. Also the fact that Ripley actually listened to Newt made it feel like such an atypical family bond, but maybe I’m just jaded by all the terrible parents in media :/. (This comment thread is super old, I’m sorry!!)
now i wonder if max _reading_ that relationship as a typical mother role is in itself due to certain expectations. like, would a kid these days necessarily read it as an expression or motherhood after having been exposed to a male protector role like in The Last of Us? (not meant as a character attack of course, i'm just genuinely wondering)
The part where you talk about Alien being an inversion of the typical horror trope by impregnating/attacking men isntead of women, that was SO SMART. I have never thought of Alien as overly sexual but now I can't unsee it!
@@lampad4549 i think Sinno is referring to the part of the video where i mentioned the slasher trope of women being murdered or assaulted in sexually suggestive ways. even though men die in those movies too, it’s usually not nearly as dramatic or sexual. in the Alien movies, though, men are subject to the same type of sexualized violence as women. not ONLY men, of course, but in much greater proportion than you’d see in a lot of the films it took cues from.
Gender Studies major here and I can confirm that the COUNTLESS academic articles over-analyzing sexual themes in Alien are so weird (why is Freudian feminism still a thing ?) Amazing and super thoughtful points! Subscribed and looking forward to your content
It's still a thing because a mix of approaches and models is intellectually enriching and important. You are not the customer of your university. It's not up to you to say what parts of a text are meaningful to other people.
Thank you for this interesting exposé. My son is trans and this provided some insight to the differences between intersex and transgender. I look forward to seeing more from you!
I have such complicated feelings about the term "natal female." It always sends me on such a psychedelic mind journey. I mean I have complicated feelings about all gendered phrases but "natal female" always seems to take me on a Magic Schoolbus trip. Also lol @ "genitals or gonads" Also also Alien is such a brain-bending exploration of sex-related anxieties, it's no wonder we keep looking back at the movie as our societal conceptions of sex/sexuality/gender evolve. There's so much here xD
yeah i found it quite difficult to find the right terms to use for some segments of this, because it doesn't necessarily have an exact analog in real life. hopefully it still made sense 😅 initially when i was making this i was like "ok come on do we really need another Alien analysis?" but like. we definitely do!
I hope you got more into the alien franchise. More fans are always welcome. There are plenty of books, comics, audio dramas to sink your teeth into. If you’re looking for a lesbian hero I suppose I’d recommend alien resurrection. But it’s kind of a very late 90s movie 😂 There’s some trivia I could share but it’s a bit off topic. But I would suggest watching the deleted crab walk scene. It’s cutting room floor so the canoniness is debatable. But it’s a lambert scene I didn’t see referenced. May interest you.
I have to say that the beginning of Aliens really impacted me. I really connected to Ripley’s displays of trauma and how she was constantly being brushed off. Definitely there’s an element of her being a woman surrounded by men, but I think anyone could receive the kind of disregard she did. I kind of viewed a lot of the movie through the lens of trauma, which made me like Ripley’s arc with Newt a whole ton. They both went through very similar, horrible events, and Ripley was dead-set on giving Newt the opportunity to leave that behind. It’s like breaking a cycle of trauma I guess. This doesn’t exactly have to do with the gender stuff, I just wanted to put in my view on the Ripley motherhood arc. Although I guess this lens makes it a little more gender-ambiguous, since there’s lots of media where a jaded man ends up saving a child. I absolutely loved this video! :)
hey thank you for watching! i think the relationship between Ripley and Newt really carries the film; it definitely stuck with me more than most of the action sequences. imo the movie would have been a lot more successful if it could have explored that relationship in a way that was less tied to motherhood. that’s a great point that men also get this plot line a lot, i’d be curious to do a survey on how often those male characters had lost a child prior to the events of the film. because i think it was a mistake to add the backstory that Ripley’s daughter had passed away-this way, instead of being the hardened action hero who reluctantly adopts a kid, she almost ends up coming off like this desperate woman who needs to fill the baby-shaped hole in her heart. which isn't inherently bad but is a little less rad!
Your humour and delivery had me giggling a lot! Stay hydrated! Very smart insights! John Hurt is of course the voice of the dragon in BBC's Merlin 2008-2012 ✨💛✨
This was such a great video! After watching I find it so interesting that the only characters in the film that Ripley gets physical or has any real agro confrontation with are Lambert and Ash, the two characters who have had their gender identities physically forced upon them rather than socially (Lambert at birth and Ash being a male presenting, and id imagine therefore programmed, AI). Both characters also displaying some of the negative media stereotypes of their genders more so than their counterparts as well (Ash as the overly calculated logic pervert and Lambert as the horror movie scream queen). And then to top it off you even have Ash, the factory desgined man trying to stop Ripley by shoving a literal porno mag down her throat like "No, you be this. We didnt have a choice so neither do you". not really sure what my point is, just got me thinking and I had to express it. Thanks for this video!
Awesome video, this is insanely well done and your delivery of your perspective and analysis is very easy to understand. I am glad I found this gem of a channel, excited for the next video.
Hey, motherhood and lesbianism aren’t mutually exclusive, and I can’t say that I recall anything in the text of alien or aliens that would conflict with any particular reading of Ripley’s sexuality, unless a specifically gendered spouse was mentioned alongside the mentions of her daughter. Also, in terms of queer representation, frost, one of the marines, has an arrow pierced heart drawn on his chest plate with the name “Heath” written inside. A small detail which I think also arguably straddles a line between being innocuous enough to convey normalcy, or subtle enough to convey a lack of commitment to the message on the part of the creators, but one which I feel rather positive about
Thank you! I was going to comment the same thing. I'm a huge fan of Ripley and I didn't find problematic at all that she was shown to care for a child in the sequel. I mean men can care for children too! Caring for the young of our species should be a celebrated instinct for all genders/sexualities.
Yea, the Lambert case is mainly flavor text meant to indicated that the futuristic society of the Alien films is a Brave New World type setting where designer babies are common.
Want to preface this comment with just a couple things: 1. I NEVER comment on ANYTHING so this video was simply great enoughenough that it drove me to commenting, just because I loved it that much 2. I am physically incapable of formulating my thoughts so this will be more than just a rambling mess. This is why you leave the intelligent thoughts and well formulated statements to the professionals kids :,) But with that out of the way, this is a *fantastic* video. I had this on as background noise at first but I kept getting so interested in what you were saying that I kept pausing what I was doing to rewind and listen. This feels like something I could take notes on and use as proof were I writing an essay, cited and all. Your point on Lambert's "Despin Convert" status and how it felt less as if she was trans and more as if it could be read as her being intersex was exactly how I felt when I found that out. So many articles labeled her as trans, and while it made me happy I always found that it was a strange thing, especially since it happened at birth (though I do agree reading her as trans is more than viable, maybe it's just a funny future way of saying trans or something, who knows). Originally, it had been why I clicked on the video in the first place, to hear more takes about a character I love, and to find more content for a franchise I have recently fallen in love with. All that is just me saying that I agree wholeheartedly with your points. And that's just one aspect that you covered! Alien, to me, feels like an unintentionally queer text, in that it might not have been the *intent* but it's certainly there and it's not going away. And just a very important note, Ellen Ripley is badass and even if she's pushed towards that motherly, caregiver role I love her all the same :^) All this rambling and messy words aside to say fantastic video, most certainly subscribed, excited to see more from you and I'm glad to see a favorite movie of mine looked at so thoughtfully. Wholeheartedly agree with what you said about Aliens seemingly saying "look where gender ambiguity got you," and... Yeah! Fantastic video! Wonderful! Absolutely great to watch! And apologies for how this comment most likely makes zero sense, I again typically don't comment and it's also late at night hfhdjfdfdd very excited to watch other videos by you, definitely subscribed
so glad you took the time to make this comment! it did make sense to me! 😄 i agree with regard to a lot of this stuff being unintentional despite being so seemingly present-i think that says a lot too about how certain attitudes toward gender and sexuality are so ingrained that they come out without even thinking about it. now i hope i’m making sense lol. but yes ripley is still a badass, of course
First off John hurt is an icon! SHAME🛎SHAME🔔SHAME📢 Second... I feel its simply about rape. And stalking and how it feels to feel powerless. And no I've never watched an analysis on it. I've just grown up watching and LOVING IT. My dad was a super fan of the movie and frankly he was super analytical an he would make me think during movies. THEN AGAIN, although I have two queer children. I'm only an allie🤷🏿♀️my oldest is a trans woman and my youngest is asexual woman so they my also see this thru queer lenses. Idk. I feel like you can spin anything thru certain lenses if you try hard enough. I could probably make it about systemic racism if I think about it.
i do think we bring a lot of ourselves into our interpretations of movies! there is definitely a lot of commentary in Alien (and a lot of horror movies) on powerlessness, and for me, powerlessness makes me think about LGBT identity-probably in large part because i am LGBT. can absolutely see how it could also connect to racism or any number of other topics depending on where the viewer is coming from. thank you for watching regardless!
@@maxteeth ahhh, that does make sense. And I just reread what I wrote. I was joking about the job hurt part but it doesn't look like it I think. And the rest of it reads very asshole like, so my apologies. I sometimes come across that way I think. Thank you for your analysis.
@@AKilahVamp it didn't come off asshole-y to me, especially with the comment you left on my other video! i am always down to hear how other people interpret films, even if they disagree with me. so no apology necessary. and don't worry, i was (kind of) joking about john hurt too 😂
Having seen these movies as a kid, the characters genders never really mattered to me and whatever uncomfortable feeling male viewers were supposed to feel went right over my head, as the Xenomorph was always the reason why I would rewatch the movie to begin with. I read the profiles when we upgraded to DVDs from VHS and having read about the characters 'transition' it never really stood out to me as something that was important, almost like it was added just to fill out the text. Later I learned that the characters were 'written' to be for no specific gender, I retroactively viewed the profiles aforementioned 'transition' as simply a reference to this prefilming trivia. Although I grew up to really like Sigourney's character, the characters genders never mattered to me and it felt a bit strange that it mattered enough to someone that they needed to include it in the profile.
I'm way WAY late to the party, I know (just discovered your channel) but I wanted to comment anyway. I was reminded of a discussion some friends and I - all cis male, varying expressions of queer - had after a re-watch of "Alien". We ended up talking about gender roles and expression in the crew. Lambert being the only reasonable one and thus dismissed as hysterical, Brett being really really passive and wife-like, etc. Then came this question: would a male character have to make their last stand in their underwear? Answers included this being a way to feminize Ripley after her bold assertive behavior, showing her abandoning technology for a primal fight to the death, and c'mon it's Sigourney Weaver. The consensus we arrived at was interesting though; it was agreed that if Parker was the last one, he might have been depicted stripping down for the fight. Because he's Black. Which sent the discussion in all sorts of directions, naturally. I'm not saying we arrived at any great insight that night, or that it's overly relevant to your video. I was just reminded of it and wanted to share.
@@mrzfunk well yeah, they get shirtless for a reason . . . Skin sells! Also, this came out in, when? '78? '79? Letting the Black guy be the sole survivor would have been as innovative as having it be the unknown actress. So, Yaphet Kotto in tighty whiteys? Singing under his breath while a glistening thing made of tubes & spikes stalks him in a cramped space? I could see it
I just saw Aliens for the first time last night and went straight to RUclips hoping to find any analysis of it through a feminist lens. The first video I found was (of course) made by a man who had a clumsy understanding of the subject at best. Now this video has given me all I hoped to find on this search and so much more! Excellent work!
this video should have way more views after two years! it's really well done (apart from the mishap with the intersex definition as was noted by another commentor, which i believe was an honest mistake)
Comment for the algorithm. As a fan of the entire schlocky mess (even the nonsense AvPs) I enjoyed this focused breakdown of the first two movies. There's a bunch for me to chew on here but even at first bite I would like to throw something into the mix to see what others think. Citation unfound but if I'm remembering correctly a different Aliens examination contained the argument that whereas Scott's Alien presents Ripley as strong more subtly Cameron's mid-80s return loudly announces the strong woman archetype in the newer, at the time, and contextually-relevant shoulder-pads business suit style. I don't see it as conflicting with your points here. I mean that in the first movie Ripley is one of several tired, blue-collar space truckers who happens to get lucky and survive a horrible situation using experience and savvy in her home-away-from-home. Meanwhile Cameron's characterization starts with the initial framing of Ripley frustratedly talking to a room full of "suits" who aren't taking the problem seriously and continues with the replacement of Ash as the secret robot corporate asset with Burke's very human corporate asset. Both cause problems and move the plot along in conflict with the other characters but in different ways which match the presentation of the two Ripleys to the audience. Cameron's "feminism" even has Ripley roll up her sleeves to impress the Marines with her command of a power loader and various other bad-ass quotable moments topped off with calling the Queen "you bitch." See also badass Sarah Connor. Anachronistic hashtag-girlboss tags for all the gifs. With that in mind I wonder if the retcon of Lambert for Cameron's take wasn't also informed by the same sort of earnest but misguided mid-80s ideology and moment before being sidelined in the actual production process? I too had actually completely forgotten about this "easter egg" since the quad realease and I appreciate the examined revisit. Long comment, hope it made sense. New to the channel, looking forward to more essays in my sub feed.
yeah, i think overall Cameron's Aliens is way more bombastic and on-the-nose-about everything, but gender especially. it does seem plausible to me that this was intended as a well-meaning nod toward some of the changing social mores around gender and sexuality in the 80s, especially combined with that line about the Arcturians. i really need to check out the rest of the movies to see how they continue to iterate on these themes (if they do at all-i think it's kind of inevitable though).
@@maxteeth Prometheus really soured me on the series so I've ignored that storyline for some time. I'll have to go back with an eye for these themes myself. FWIW I don't think Cameron succeeded, well-intentioned or not. That lens certainly isn't intersectional. But you've definitely inspired me to do some actual digging into this small corner of the production! I hope you enjoy however much of the rest of the series you do consume. I can see some good (potentially accidental) critique of "masculinity" in the original Predator if you weren't thinking to watch that. And again, thank you for getting my mind going.
@@cdixonweekes oh i agree, cameron missed the mark. it’s a fun movie but you hit the nail on the head with “hashtag girlboss”. i’ll definitely add the predator stuff to my list too. thanks for your comments, you’ve given me plenty to ruminate on too! even just a few months later i think there is a lot i would have changed about this video, so i hope i can return to the series at some point.
you watch Alien and i'll read the complete works of Sarah Kane (youtube keeps CENSORING a slightly different version of this comment so if i've replied to you 3 times it's not my fault)
Something something Hbomberguy. Have a comment and a like to help with the algorithm at least a teensy bit. Ah fuck the BSJS (Ben Shapiro Jump Scare) got me good. Very interesting though! Very succintly broke down all the over-analysing whilst providing your own insight. Great work.
I don't see Aliens as critical of gender ambiguity as much as critical of masculinity. I don't really see the characters remotely gender ambiguous in Aleins; all of the characters sans Ripley are coded extremely masculine, even Vasquez. Aliens was a "feminist movie," but is also 30+ years old. Having a horror protagonist be a woman and not be "the virgin" archetype was pretty unique for the time, but replaces one strongly-coded gender role for another. It's very second-wave-y with it's "all these manly man men couldn't stop the alien, but it takes a tough, badass mother to save everyone" message that, with a bit of hindsight, feels a bit "eesh." The gender ambiguity themes of Alien I feel are absent in Aliens, preferring to talk explicitly about masculinity (via the soldier archetype) and femininity (via the mother archetype). There's also the "mom kills penis aliens" subtext.
completely agree that Aliens has a very shallow interpretation of feminism. i think it’s a fair point that all the adult characters in the movie fit neatly into one side of the mother/solider dichotomy rather than leaving any ambiguity. but i think regardless of whether there is any androgyny in the movie itself, Aliens does bizarrely contradict the gender ambiguities of Alien precisely because, as you said, those themes are pretty much absent. this is weird because Aliens takes place several decades in the future, which sort of implies that human social organization was (during the events of Alien) not particularly concerned with binary formulations of gender, but then pretty quickly (and for no clear reason) started to re-binarize just in time for the events of Aliens. it just makes the movies feel like they take place in completely different universes with no continuity.
Deconstructive readings can be irrelevant reaching and confirmation bias (admittedly a bit like the Aliens reading here, not that Aliens is a good movie) but this was a well made video and I do appreciate the lampooning of overly horny Alien analysis, especially when the alien's design is first and foremost a parasaurolophus fossil, at least to me :)
i think the sexual readings of Alien just come from Giger's end of things influencing their thoughts. his art is extremely sexual. as is made obvious if one just looks at it lol.
Don't be fooled! Dan O'Bannon knew exactly what he was doing with this script & monster. I highly recommend watching some interviews, he's a delightfully twisted weirdo and to paraphrase him would make me look crazy lol
Wow, I knew nothing about Lambert's "gender alteration" and I question its relevance. However I have to say, this is an interesting piece that has made me think of both movies: Alien and Aliens in a different way. But I have to ask, how could have directors Ridley Scott and James Cameron done it better? The story, the imagery, and the characters? And keep in mind, the first movie came out in 1979 and the sequel in '86. Gratuitous shot of Weaver in her skivvies aside, you'd be hard pressed to find both smart and completely badass female characters like Ripley and Vasquez in those days. Gasp, who's John Hurt??? Tut tut!
I’m gunna be real honest I read ‘Despin Convert’ as a saucy little sci-fi way to say trans in this world. Like how we say they’re transgender, assigned _ at birth, they’d say despian convert at birth (mtf). (While amab/afab seem more popular now compared to mtf/ftm, it was definitely popular use specifically for trans people at the time of the pic’s release and is directly lifted from real life)The word convert did not in my mind, make me think she was ‘converted’ in the same was we use transgender but are not transgendered. I didn’t even think it implied surgery let alone the stuff intersex kids are subjected to but I definitely see how it brought you there. I do wonder how name misnomers affect n impact perception this way (like how cis folks say we’re transing their kids’ genders🙄 lmao) and also how you assumed that a similar naming feature make u assume Despin Converts were intersex. Idk it’s all very interesting n I really like your analysis. Also a completely unrelated note-Despin Convert just really tickles me in the way that the term Boston marriage does anyway have a good day 😌
actually, that’s a great point! i kind of glossed over the way the language itself obscures and comments on gender and identity. i think to me, it’s still hard to read the “at birth” part as anything but someone else deciding for her (i know we say amab/afab but usually you wouldn’t say “trans at birth”), but i think it is a valid read, especially because the filmmakers probably did not have a good grasp on the language used by and about trans people at the time (perhaps apart from the term “mtf”). also huge thank you for teaching me the term “boston marriage” 😂
It's okay. Hurt is from a better time. It's okay to forget. It's okay. Also, I don't think I can let go of the Alien Queen thinking of her not as a mother? Aliens had maybe 46 aliens, all from the Alien Queen. She's definitely a mother. It's odd to think of this as sex this, sex that, but well, I ALSO HAVE SEEN GIEGER'S ARTBOOKS. *looks down at old things, sad as also an old thing*
18:52 It's too bad that you'd only watched the first two at this point because Resurrection is an extremely queer film, almost completely reversing the bury your gays trope.
Aliens is it’s own thing and doesn’t have to reenforce the same ideas as Alien. Both films are perfect IMO but Alien is definitely more progressive and Aliens is more conservative in general.
Alien is my fav movie. I didn't know about this. My theory is the significance of Lambert's gender is to reflect the extent to weyland utami runs everything, including people's identities, they assigned her gender (probably for a cynical logistical reason like what you said [lack of women maybe]) I think weyland utami and the xenomorph both represent ultra-hegemonic masculinity / capitalism. They disregard identity and dominant and exploit. Brock's plan and the xenomorph's impregnation of the crew coalesce. Brock is a parasite, just as the xenomorphs are. So i'd like a marxist text that accidentally vears into transphobic tropes, (snowpiercer does the same thing). Lambert seems like ok representation though. I think a Ripley's relationship serves as the first unalienated relationship, and it's significant that it's by way of found family.
I'm not sure if it's because I'm ace or nonbinary or perhaps just an idiot but I never saw Anything sexual about Alien. Aside from Ripley stripping at the end, obviously. Every gory alien detail was just beautiful, not vaginal or phallic or whatever.
And? She was Intersex, and had surgery. Big difference from the stuff happening today with lunatics changing sex. This was at birth, not at 12 or 13 like crazy people are allowing.
Hi, I'm intersex and the definition of intersex you use at 3:30 is misleading - it implies being intersex is physically evident at birth. Most intersex people don't start showing signs of being intersex until puberty, where things go differently than for perisex (non-intersex) people. While most intersex variations are known to be congenital, that doesn't mean they're detected at birth.
This matters because a lot of conservative, gender-binary policing people are pushing a narrowing of what intersex means, to narrow it down to what you have defined (or even further). This serves to keep the numbers of intersex people down, to pretend we are rare, not a threat to the sex/gender binary, and to keep intersex people disconnected from one another.
You linked to InterAct in the video description - they explicitly note in their definition of intersex that "some traits are noticed at birth. Others don't show up until puberty or later in life." InterAct bolds this text because it is important.
Isolation is a huge theme in how intersex people face oppression. Using narrow definitions makes it harder for intersex people who don't fit the steretotype to realize that they're intersex and to find community.
Please update the definition in the video. A lot of people, like myself, are now finding the video thanks to hbomberguy & Kat Lo's youtube list. For a lot of people this may be the only definition they ever see from a queer authority, and it's honestly disheartening to see it be a definition that continues common misconceptions.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. i regret writing my own definition of intersex rather than just using one from an advocacy group. not sure what i was thinking there-it was a foolish and arrogant thing to do. i can only assume that i was trying to emphasize the harm that is done to babies identified as intersex, but in doing so i completely erased and failed to acknowledge the harm that is also done to intersex children and adults. i can't apologize enough for this oversight.
i had no intention of trying to be reductive but i can see now that was the effect of my word choice. i absolutely intend to be more careful with my language in the future. unfortunately there is no way for me to edit this video directly but i'll be pinning this comment and i have added a card to the video at that timestamp linking to the interACT definition page, and stating that my definition is not a good one (in the limited character space youtube allows).
@maxteeth Thanks for the speedy reply! The card didn't show up for me in firefox but does show up in chromium so I think one of my adblockers hid it? I'd add a note in the video description for those who'd miss the card.
I do wanna say that I appreciate that you acknowledged that intersex people have our genders scrutinized and policed in ways that have commonality with trans people. BTW the term I've seen most commonly for the oppression of intersex people is intersexism.
I also agree with you that Lambert is probably intersex. You hedged a lot in the video and I personally have none of that hedging in my interpretation - to me the information presented in Lambert's file very straightforwardly reads as intersex. John Money's treatment protocol from the 1950s that established the widespread "correction" of intersex infants also stresses psychological monitoring, since it is ostensibly to spare the child from ever having doubt about their gender. Lambert's file feels very in line with this paradigm.
Given how common these practices are in our own time, this seems far more likely to me than "somebody just wanted the baby to be a girl". Also: if somebody wanted a designer baby that was a girl, there are much easier and more reliable ways of doing this, like IVF.
IVF in nonhuman animals was established by the time Alien was written, the first cases of IVF in humans were in the late 70s (just before Alien's release), and by the time Aliens rolled around the idea of a "test tube baby" was definitely in the cultural imaginary. Why other than an unexpected intersex variation would future doctors go through the trouble of converting a baby when they could intervene upstream?
@@elizabethpatitsas565 it's weird that the card doesn't come up in some browsers! but good idea on adding it to the description, i've now done that as well. thanks again for bringing this up. it frankly hadn't occurred to me that narrowing the definition of intersex could be used as a tactic to isolate and further marginalize intersex people, but it makes perfect sense that that would be the case.
those are great points about designer babies and psychological monitoring as well. to be honest since making this video my interpretations of Alien and Aliens have continued to evolve and that’s definitely gonna be something to think about. i’d love to revisit the topic at some point, especially to amend some of the mistakes i’ve made here.
Thanks- this is a lesson for most of us.
gotta say even though i am a biology nerd and if you had asked me if intersex has to be apparent at birth i would totally have said no, i still didn't catch it.
goes to show that it's always important to have people in the conversation instead of only talking about them as we too often do.
Me talking out of my ass because I liked newts inclusion in aliens: Ripley becoming a mother through becoming a protector of life rather than a giver of life is the queer experience in becoming a parent. and then she beats the shit out of be ‘fruitful and multiply” showing just because you can produce doesn’t make you a guardian
oh don’t get me wrong i really did enjoy Aliens, and i thought the plotline with newt was sweet. i think you make a good point that they make a very non-traditional/found family and that’s cool as hell.
I literally just watched Aliens for the first time today (lol) and I definitely agree with this take! It didn’t feel like a nuclear family type of motherhood at all to me. I’m addition, I think that since Ripley and Newt were the only ones to have experienced the aliens at that point, they were able to form a closer bond. It wasn’t just “this is my role” it was “I know what this child is feeling and I know I can protect her”. Also the fact that Ripley actually listened to Newt made it feel like such an atypical family bond, but maybe I’m just jaded by all the terrible parents in media :/. (This comment thread is super old, I’m sorry!!)
She was a giver of life Amanda.
And then newt instantly dies in the next movie
now i wonder if max _reading_ that relationship as a typical mother role is in itself due to certain expectations.
like, would a kid these days necessarily read it as an expression or motherhood after having been exposed to a male protector role like in The Last of Us?
(not meant as a character attack of course, i'm just genuinely wondering)
The part where you talk about Alien being an inversion of the typical horror trope by impregnating/attacking men isntead of women, that was SO SMART. I have never thought of Alien as overly sexual but now I can't unsee it!
They attack women as well what are you on about. They tried to attack ellen and newt, they will impregnate anything near them.
@@lampad4549 i think Sinno is referring to the part of the video where i mentioned the slasher trope of women being murdered or assaulted in sexually suggestive ways. even though men die in those movies too, it’s usually not nearly as dramatic or sexual. in the Alien movies, though, men are subject to the same type of sexualized violence as women. not ONLY men, of course, but in much greater proportion than you’d see in a lot of the films it took cues from.
It's not really smart just memory. The creators back in 79 said the exact same stuff. This is just the creators words being used by this youtubers.
Gender Studies major here and I can confirm that the COUNTLESS academic articles over-analyzing sexual themes in Alien are so weird (why is Freudian feminism still a thing ?)
Amazing and super thoughtful points! Subscribed and looking forward to your content
It's still a thing because a mix of approaches and models is intellectually enriching and important. You are not the customer of your university. It's not up to you to say what parts of a text are meaningful to other people.
Thank you for this interesting exposé. My son is trans and this provided some insight to the differences between intersex and transgender. I look forward to seeing more from you!
wow it’s so awesome to hear that! thank you for watching!
I have such complicated feelings about the term "natal female." It always sends me on such a psychedelic mind journey. I mean I have complicated feelings about all gendered phrases but "natal female" always seems to take me on a Magic Schoolbus trip.
Also lol @ "genitals or gonads"
Also also Alien is such a brain-bending exploration of sex-related anxieties, it's no wonder we keep looking back at the movie as our societal conceptions of sex/sexuality/gender evolve. There's so much here xD
yeah i found it quite difficult to find the right terms to use for some segments of this, because it doesn't necessarily have an exact analog in real life. hopefully it still made sense 😅
initially when i was making this i was like "ok come on do we really need another Alien analysis?" but like. we definitely do!
@@maxteeth Haha oh yeah the term didn't take me out of the video, just commenting xD
I hope you got more into the alien franchise. More fans are always welcome. There are plenty of books, comics, audio dramas to sink your teeth into.
If you’re looking for a lesbian hero I suppose I’d recommend alien resurrection. But it’s kind of a very late 90s movie 😂
There’s some trivia I could share but it’s a bit off topic. But I would suggest watching the deleted crab walk scene. It’s cutting room floor so the canoniness is debatable. But it’s a lambert scene I didn’t see referenced. May interest you.
"If it's a vagina it probably has teeth and is also a penis" AH WHY IS IT SO TRUE xD
I have to say that the beginning of Aliens really impacted me. I really connected to Ripley’s displays of trauma and how she was constantly being brushed off. Definitely there’s an element of her being a woman surrounded by men, but I think anyone could receive the kind of disregard she did. I kind of viewed a lot of the movie through the lens of trauma, which made me like Ripley’s arc with Newt a whole ton. They both went through very similar, horrible events, and Ripley was dead-set on giving Newt the opportunity to leave that behind. It’s like breaking a cycle of trauma I guess. This doesn’t exactly have to do with the gender stuff, I just wanted to put in my view on the Ripley motherhood arc. Although I guess this lens makes it a little more gender-ambiguous, since there’s lots of media where a jaded man ends up saving a child. I absolutely loved this video! :)
hey thank you for watching! i think the relationship between Ripley and Newt really carries the film; it definitely stuck with me more than most of the action sequences. imo the movie would have been a lot more successful if it could have explored that relationship in a way that was less tied to motherhood.
that’s a great point that men also get this plot line a lot, i’d be curious to do a survey on how often those male characters had lost a child prior to the events of the film. because i think it was a mistake to add the backstory that Ripley’s daughter had passed away-this way, instead of being the hardened action hero who reluctantly adopts a kid, she almost ends up coming off like this desperate woman who needs to fill the baby-shaped hole in her heart. which isn't inherently bad but is a little less rad!
Your humour and delivery had me giggling a lot! Stay hydrated! Very smart insights! John Hurt is of course the voice of the dragon in BBC's Merlin 2008-2012 ✨💛✨
ahh thank you i think this means i can officially uncancel myself!
This was such a great video!
After watching I find it so interesting that the only characters in the film that Ripley gets physical or has any real agro confrontation with are Lambert and Ash, the two characters who have had their gender identities physically forced upon them rather than socially (Lambert at birth and Ash being a male presenting, and id imagine therefore programmed, AI). Both characters also displaying some of the negative media stereotypes of their genders more so than their counterparts as well (Ash as the overly calculated logic pervert and Lambert as the horror movie scream queen).
And then to top it off you even have Ash, the factory desgined man trying to stop Ripley by shoving a literal porno mag down her throat like "No, you be this. We didnt have a choice so neither do you".
not really sure what my point is, just got me thinking and I had to express it. Thanks for this video!
Awesome video, this is insanely well done and your delivery of your perspective and analysis is very easy to understand. I am glad I found this gem of a channel, excited for the next video.
thank you so much, i really appreciate that :) more coming soon!
Hey, motherhood and lesbianism aren’t mutually exclusive, and I can’t say that I recall anything in the text of alien or aliens that would conflict with any particular reading of Ripley’s sexuality, unless a specifically gendered spouse was mentioned alongside the mentions of her daughter.
Also, in terms of queer representation, frost, one of the marines, has an arrow pierced heart drawn on his chest plate with the name “Heath” written inside. A small detail which I think also arguably straddles a line between being innocuous enough to convey normalcy, or subtle enough to convey a lack of commitment to the message on the part of the creators, but one which I feel rather positive about
Thank you! I was going to comment the same thing.
I'm a huge fan of Ripley and I didn't find problematic at all that she was shown to care for a child in the sequel. I mean men can care for children too! Caring for the young of our species should be a celebrated instinct for all genders/sexualities.
To me it doesn’t really matter what’s in the actual text (tbh I’ve never seen the movie), Ripley will always be a lesbian icon in my mind
No spoilers but in that case you should watch Alien: Resurrection! Because you are not wrong, she very much is!
Yea, the Lambert case is mainly flavor text meant to indicated that the futuristic society of the Alien films is a Brave New World type setting where designer babies are common.
11:00 so true! stay hydrated B)
hydrate or diedrate the grind never stops 😤
Want to preface this comment with just a couple things:
1. I NEVER comment on ANYTHING so this video was simply great enoughenough that it drove me to commenting, just because I loved it that much
2. I am physically incapable of formulating my thoughts so this will be more than just a rambling mess. This is why you leave the intelligent thoughts and well formulated statements to the professionals kids :,)
But with that out of the way, this is a *fantastic* video. I had this on as background noise at first but I kept getting so interested in what you were saying that I kept pausing what I was doing to rewind and listen. This feels like something I could take notes on and use as proof were I writing an essay, cited and all. Your point on Lambert's "Despin Convert" status and how it felt less as if she was trans and more as if it could be read as her being intersex was exactly how I felt when I found that out. So many articles labeled her as trans, and while it made me happy I always found that it was a strange thing, especially since it happened at birth (though I do agree reading her as trans is more than viable, maybe it's just a funny future way of saying trans or something, who knows). Originally, it had been why I clicked on the video in the first place, to hear more takes about a character I love, and to find more content for a franchise I have recently fallen in love with. All that is just me saying that I agree wholeheartedly with your points. And that's just one aspect that you covered! Alien, to me, feels like an unintentionally queer text, in that it might not have been the *intent* but it's certainly there and it's not going away. And just a very important note, Ellen Ripley is badass and even if she's pushed towards that motherly, caregiver role I love her all the same :^)
All this rambling and messy words aside to say fantastic video, most certainly subscribed, excited to see more from you and I'm glad to see a favorite movie of mine looked at so thoughtfully. Wholeheartedly agree with what you said about Aliens seemingly saying "look where gender ambiguity got you," and... Yeah! Fantastic video! Wonderful! Absolutely great to watch! And apologies for how this comment most likely makes zero sense, I again typically don't comment and it's also late at night hfhdjfdfdd very excited to watch other videos by you, definitely subscribed
so glad you took the time to make this comment! it did make sense to me! 😄 i agree with regard to a lot of this stuff being unintentional despite being so seemingly present-i think that says a lot too about how certain attitudes toward gender and sexuality are so ingrained that they come out without even thinking about it. now i hope i’m making sense lol. but yes ripley is still a badass, of course
Is Alien the greatest movie of all time? (yes)
First off John hurt is an icon! SHAME🛎SHAME🔔SHAME📢
Second... I feel its simply about rape. And stalking and how it feels to feel powerless. And no I've never watched an analysis on it. I've just grown up watching and LOVING IT. My dad was a super fan of the movie and frankly he was super analytical an he would make me think during movies.
THEN AGAIN, although I have two queer children. I'm only an allie🤷🏿♀️my oldest is a trans woman and my youngest is asexual woman so they my also see this thru queer lenses. Idk. I feel like you can spin anything thru certain lenses if you try hard enough. I could probably make it about systemic racism if I think about it.
i do think we bring a lot of ourselves into our interpretations of movies! there is definitely a lot of commentary in Alien (and a lot of horror movies) on powerlessness, and for me, powerlessness makes me think about LGBT identity-probably in large part because i am LGBT. can absolutely see how it could also connect to racism or any number of other topics depending on where the viewer is coming from. thank you for watching regardless!
@@maxteeth ahhh, that does make sense. And I just reread what I wrote. I was joking about the job hurt part but it doesn't look like it I think. And the rest of it reads very asshole like, so my apologies. I sometimes come across that way I think. Thank you for your analysis.
@@AKilahVamp it didn't come off asshole-y to me, especially with the comment you left on my other video! i am always down to hear how other people interpret films, even if they disagree with me. so no apology necessary. and don't worry, i was (kind of) joking about john hurt too 😂
What an incredibly insightful video! Not only did I learn more about the alien universe but I learned more about human nature itself.
Having seen these movies as a kid, the characters genders never really mattered to me and whatever uncomfortable feeling male viewers were supposed to feel went right over my head, as the Xenomorph was always the reason why I would rewatch the movie to begin with. I read the profiles when we upgraded to DVDs from VHS and having read about the characters 'transition' it never really stood out to me as something that was important, almost like it was added just to fill out the text. Later I learned that the characters were 'written' to be for no specific gender, I retroactively viewed the profiles aforementioned 'transition' as simply a reference to this prefilming trivia. Although I grew up to really like Sigourney's character, the characters genders never mattered to me and it felt a bit strange that it mattered enough to someone that they needed to include it in the profile.
WOW this was a great piece! Thank you for putting this together and sharing it for us all to enjoy
I'm way WAY late to the party, I know (just discovered your channel) but I wanted to comment anyway.
I was reminded of a discussion some friends and I - all cis male, varying expressions of queer - had after a re-watch of "Alien". We ended up talking about gender roles and expression in the crew. Lambert being the only reasonable one and thus dismissed as hysterical, Brett being really really passive and wife-like, etc.
Then came this question: would a male character have to make their last stand in their underwear? Answers included this being a way to feminize Ripley after her bold assertive behavior, showing her abandoning technology for a primal fight to the death, and c'mon it's Sigourney Weaver. The consensus we arrived at was interesting though; it was agreed that if Parker was the last one, he might have been depicted stripping down for the fight. Because he's Black. Which sent the discussion in all sorts of directions, naturally.
I'm not saying we arrived at any great insight that night, or that it's overly relevant to your video. I was just reminded of it and wanted to share.
Probably not stripping down to underwear. But make charecters do tend to get shirtless for reason.
@@mrzfunk well yeah, they get shirtless for a reason . . . Skin sells!
Also, this came out in, when? '78? '79? Letting the Black guy be the sole survivor would have been as innovative as having it be the unknown actress.
So, Yaphet Kotto in tighty whiteys? Singing under his breath while a glistening thing made of tubes & spikes stalks him in a cramped space?
I could see it
I just saw Aliens for the first time last night and went straight to RUclips hoping to find any analysis of it through a feminist lens. The first video I found was (of course) made by a man who had a clumsy understanding of the subject at best. Now this video has given me all I hoped to find on this search and so much more! Excellent work!
this video should have way more views after two years!
it's really well done (apart from the mishap with the intersex definition as was noted by another commentor, which i believe was an honest mistake)
Comment for the algorithm.
As a fan of the entire schlocky mess (even the nonsense AvPs) I enjoyed this focused breakdown of the first two movies. There's a bunch for me to chew on here but even at first bite I would like to throw something into the mix to see what others think.
Citation unfound but if I'm remembering correctly a different Aliens examination contained the argument that whereas Scott's Alien presents Ripley as strong more subtly Cameron's mid-80s return loudly announces the strong woman archetype in the newer, at the time, and contextually-relevant shoulder-pads business suit style.
I don't see it as conflicting with your points here. I mean that in the first movie Ripley is one of several tired, blue-collar space truckers who happens to get lucky and survive a horrible situation using experience and savvy in her home-away-from-home.
Meanwhile Cameron's characterization starts with the initial framing of Ripley frustratedly talking to a room full of "suits" who aren't taking the problem seriously and continues with the replacement of Ash as the secret robot corporate asset with Burke's very human corporate asset. Both cause problems and move the plot along in conflict with the other characters but in different ways which match the presentation of the two Ripleys to the audience.
Cameron's "feminism" even has Ripley roll up her sleeves to impress the Marines with her command of a power loader and various other bad-ass quotable moments topped off with calling the Queen "you bitch." See also badass Sarah Connor. Anachronistic hashtag-girlboss tags for all the gifs.
With that in mind I wonder if the retcon of Lambert for Cameron's take wasn't also informed by the same sort of earnest but misguided mid-80s ideology and moment before being sidelined in the actual production process?
I too had actually completely forgotten about this "easter egg" since the quad realease and I appreciate the examined revisit.
Long comment, hope it made sense. New to the channel, looking forward to more essays in my sub feed.
yeah, i think overall Cameron's Aliens is way more bombastic and on-the-nose-about everything, but gender especially. it does seem plausible to me that this was intended as a well-meaning nod toward some of the changing social mores around gender and sexuality in the 80s, especially combined with that line about the Arcturians. i really need to check out the rest of the movies to see how they continue to iterate on these themes (if they do at all-i think it's kind of inevitable though).
@@maxteeth Prometheus really soured me on the series so I've ignored that storyline for some time. I'll have to go back with an eye for these themes myself.
FWIW I don't think Cameron succeeded, well-intentioned or not. That lens certainly isn't intersectional.
But you've definitely inspired me to do some actual digging into this small corner of the production! I hope you enjoy however much of the rest of the series you do consume. I can see some good (potentially accidental) critique of "masculinity" in the original Predator if you weren't thinking to watch that.
And again, thank you for getting my mind going.
@@cdixonweekes oh i agree, cameron missed the mark. it’s a fun movie but you hit the nail on the head with “hashtag girlboss”. i’ll definitely add the predator stuff to my list too. thanks for your comments, you’ve given me plenty to ruminate on too! even just a few months later i think there is a lot i would have changed about this video, so i hope i can return to the series at some point.
I didn't know about the part where the cast can be male or female for the roles - I'm a wuss for horror but now I want to watch it... help.
you watch Alien and i'll read the complete works of Sarah Kane (youtube keeps CENSORING a slightly different version of this comment so if i've replied to you 3 times it's not my fault)
@@maxteeth Sounds like a deal to me!
Just discovered your channel today and I'm binge watching, your videos are so good
Something something Hbomberguy.
Have a comment and a like to help with the algorithm at least a teensy bit.
Ah fuck the BSJS (Ben Shapiro Jump Scare) got me good.
Very interesting though! Very succintly broke down all the over-analysing whilst providing your own insight. Great work.
"I don't know who John Hurt is"
.... How dare you call yourself a movie lover
jk :P
Max publicly revealed as a they/them
is it obvious
This was super interesting, thank you!
sent here by hbomberguy, great video!!
fear not! I also don't know who John Hurt is!
solidarity 😔
I AM HERE TO SAY THIS IS BAD AND GENERATE DRAMA! RRR!
(kidding)
Loved this, thanks for sharing the nuanced perspective!
HOW am i going to recover from this brutal takedown!!!
I don't see Aliens as critical of gender ambiguity as much as critical of masculinity. I don't really see the characters remotely gender ambiguous in Aleins; all of the characters sans Ripley are coded extremely masculine, even Vasquez. Aliens was a "feminist movie," but is also 30+ years old. Having a horror protagonist be a woman and not be "the virgin" archetype was pretty unique for the time, but replaces one strongly-coded gender role for another. It's very second-wave-y with it's "all these manly man men couldn't stop the alien, but it takes a tough, badass mother to save everyone" message that, with a bit of hindsight, feels a bit "eesh." The gender ambiguity themes of Alien I feel are absent in Aliens, preferring to talk explicitly about masculinity (via the soldier archetype) and femininity (via the mother archetype).
There's also the "mom kills penis aliens" subtext.
completely agree that Aliens has a very shallow interpretation of feminism. i think it’s a fair point that all the adult characters in the movie fit neatly into one side of the mother/solider dichotomy rather than leaving any ambiguity. but i think regardless of whether there is any androgyny in the movie itself, Aliens does bizarrely contradict the gender ambiguities of Alien precisely because, as you said, those themes are pretty much absent. this is weird because Aliens takes place several decades in the future, which sort of implies that human social organization was (during the events of Alien) not particularly concerned with binary formulations of gender, but then pretty quickly (and for no clear reason) started to re-binarize just in time for the events of Aliens. it just makes the movies feel like they take place in completely different universes with no continuity.
Does anyone really think the actors even condidered this during the filming of Alien?
Fantastic stuff! Thank you for this perspective.
incredible analysis! thanks so much for this
Deconstructive readings can be irrelevant reaching and confirmation bias (admittedly a bit like the Aliens reading here, not that Aliens is a good movie) but this was a well made video and I do appreciate the lampooning of overly horny Alien analysis, especially when the alien's design is first and foremost a parasaurolophus fossil, at least to me :)
i think the sexual readings of Alien just come from Giger's end of things influencing their thoughts. his art is extremely sexual. as is made obvious if one just looks at it lol.
Don't be fooled! Dan O'Bannon knew exactly what he was doing with this script & monster.
I highly recommend watching some interviews, he's a delightfully twisted weirdo and to paraphrase him would make me look crazy lol
Wow, I knew nothing about Lambert's "gender alteration" and I question its relevance. However I have to say, this is an interesting piece that has made me think of both movies: Alien and Aliens in a different way. But I have to ask, how could have directors Ridley Scott and James Cameron done it better? The story, the imagery, and the characters? And keep in mind, the first movie came out in 1979 and the sequel in '86. Gratuitous shot of Weaver in her skivvies aside, you'd be hard pressed to find both smart and completely badass female characters like Ripley and Vasquez in those days.
Gasp, who's John Hurt??? Tut tut!
I’m gunna be real honest I read ‘Despin Convert’ as a saucy little sci-fi way to say trans in this world. Like how we say they’re transgender, assigned _ at birth, they’d say despian convert at birth (mtf). (While amab/afab seem more popular now compared to mtf/ftm, it was definitely popular use specifically for trans people at the time of the pic’s release and is directly lifted from real life)The word convert did not in my mind, make me think she was ‘converted’ in the same was we use transgender but are not transgendered. I didn’t even think it implied surgery let alone the stuff intersex kids are subjected to but I definitely see how it brought you there. I do wonder how name misnomers affect n impact perception this way (like how cis folks say we’re transing their kids’ genders🙄 lmao) and also how you assumed that a similar naming feature make u assume Despin Converts were intersex. Idk it’s all very interesting n I really like your analysis. Also a completely unrelated note-Despin Convert just really tickles me in the way that the term Boston marriage does anyway have a good day 😌
actually, that’s a great point! i kind of glossed over the way the language itself obscures and comments on gender and identity. i think to me, it’s still hard to read the “at birth” part as anything but someone else deciding for her (i know we say amab/afab but usually you wouldn’t say “trans at birth”), but i think it is a valid read, especially because the filmmakers probably did not have a good grasp on the language used by and about trans people at the time (perhaps apart from the term “mtf”).
also huge thank you for teaching me the term “boston marriage” 😂
It's okay. Hurt is from a better time. It's okay to forget. It's okay. Also, I don't think I can let go of the Alien Queen thinking of her not as a mother? Aliens had maybe 46 aliens, all from the Alien Queen. She's definitely a mother. It's odd to think of this as sex this, sex that, but well, I ALSO HAVE SEEN GIEGER'S ARTBOOKS. *looks down at old things, sad as also an old thing*
in what way does this change the meaning of the movie?
18:52 It's too bad that you'd only watched the first two at this point because Resurrection is an extremely queer film, almost completely reversing the bury your gays trope.
Excellent analysis
thanks for checking it out! :)
Aliens is it’s own thing and doesn’t have to reenforce the same ideas as Alien. Both films are perfect IMO but Alien is definitely more progressive and Aliens is more conservative in general.
Alien is my fav movie.
I didn't know about this.
My theory is the significance of Lambert's gender is to reflect the extent to weyland utami runs everything, including people's identities, they assigned her gender (probably for a cynical logistical reason like what you said [lack of women maybe])
I think weyland utami and the xenomorph both represent ultra-hegemonic masculinity / capitalism. They disregard identity and dominant and exploit. Brock's plan and the xenomorph's impregnation of the crew coalesce. Brock is a parasite, just as the xenomorphs are.
So i'd like a marxist text that accidentally vears into transphobic tropes, (snowpiercer does the same thing).
Lambert seems like ok representation though.
I think a Ripley's relationship serves as the first unalienated relationship, and it's significant that it's by way of found family.
Ripely can be a lesbian and a mom.
i personally like to believe she is both 😄 but unfortunately the movie only makes one explicit
I'm not sure if it's because I'm ace or nonbinary or perhaps just an idiot but I never saw Anything sexual about Alien. Aside from Ripley stripping at the end, obviously. Every gory alien detail was just beautiful, not vaginal or phallic or whatever.
Great video!
Very ahead of its time for 1979!
Remember alien 1979 is about rape no I’m not kidding
It is also intense body horror and about something that is totaly alien to the human nature. So I would step lightly into this hot take.
Good video
the end
No it’s literally about pregnancy lmao
Stop overanalizing it.... the three key words are male to female.
Algorithm
Haven’t even watched and based on the title I already hate you. Incredible job. LGBT community is never being the insufferable allegations
Hey thanks for commenting anyway, engagement helps the video get out there!
And? She was Intersex, and had surgery. Big difference from the stuff happening today with lunatics changing sex. This was at birth, not at 12 or 13 like crazy people are allowing.
just to be clear, you don't believe that a 12 or 13 year old can consent to gender-affirming treatment, but an infant baby can?