Alien Analysis
I watched Alien last night and didn’t finish up until after 11pm. My wife is out of town so I have the whole house to myself. Besides being freaked out by the little noises of the house, I spent some time thinking about the movie and something that was a little strange.
When Ripley discovers that the crew is expendable and returning the xenomorph is the only priority on the mission, she throws Ash up against the wall, injuring him slightly. He starts acting strangely, and we see for the first time that something is physically different about him; he’s leaking white fluid instead of blood, and Ripley notices. Ash begins behaving erraticly and starts beating the stuffing out of Ripley. Ash isn’t just trying to kill her; he’s throwing her around like a rag doll. Ash has tremendous, inhuman strength, and Ripley is completely outmatched.
Ash could have killed her easily by simply crushing her trachea or breaking her neck. Instead, he tosses her around like he’s a Globetrotter in front of an audience and Ripley is the ball. Then, he switches gears; he grabs a magazine, rolls it up, and attempts to stuff it in her mouth.
I guess I glossed over this scene before when I watched the film (it’s been a long time; forgive the young their shallowness) because I never questioned it before. But now, at the ripe age of Picking Up Speed, I look at this scene and wonder what the writers were thinking.
My only hypothesis is that Ash admires the creature (as Lambert says later after Ash is beheaded and being interrogated) so much that he is aping its initial attack on Kane with a symbolic and inevitably fruitless oral rape on Ripley.
Ash: You still don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.
Lambert: You admire it.
Ash: I admire its purity. A survivor … unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.
I believe Ash wishes he could be the alien. He has been restricted by his programming for the entire trip; at first he is meek and submissive as evidenced by giving up his seat when Parker complains, but grows bolder as the movie progresses. Once Special Order 937 allows him to transcend his human disguise, he immediately thrashes Ripley in an unhurried fashion and follows up with the magazine. He is acting out the hostility and resentment of being a slave for the pathetic humans that created him, and imitating the creature he wishes he was. “Perfect.”
