There are a couple approaches one could take in assessing how certain celluloid creations have been able to frighten the collective imagination. Similarly, techniques well known to be conventions continue to succeed in getting under our skin, and into our nightmares, even if the outcome is always known ahead of time. One attempt at an explanation ignores historical specificity in favor of taking broad swipes at the “human condition,” hopefully arriving at someplace “universal.” This inevitably leads to shallow insight about our fear of death, of the dark, and of the unknown. Geiger’s Alien design becomes frightening only because it lurks in places we can’t see, leaving us helpless and hunted. But there has to be something about its look, its shape, its excretions that make it so repulsive and threatening. And if that is the case, why does it bother us so much? Robin Wood’s seminal contribution to the topic argues that fear is ultimately an expression of what is repressed in a historically specific social order. That which challenges the dominant ideology established by the possessing class is projected outward onto the Other for public repression. The Horror genre succeeds precisely because it plays on the anxieties and insecurities that threaten pre-defined “normality,” and therefore plays a reactionary role in allowing the social order to punish what undermines it. However, two films in particular work to turn the concept of the Other on its head, Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (1997) and Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend (2007).
First it is necessary to establish what exactly threatens the current social order. The contradictions of bourgeois society have always been this: to break the constraints of divine right the bourgeoisie declared inalienable rights for all, yet presided over a social system that is inherently unequal. There had to be justifications for why some men were plantation owners and others were slaves, why some men had enough capital to take the “risk” of starting a business, while others could only sell their labor power, and why women, now part of the labor force, still must privately bear the responsibility of childcare. Dominant ideology is what justifies and normalizes these social relations, and as Wood notes, “is the process whereby people are conditioned from earliest infancy to take on predetermined roles within that culture,” that being productive members of the nuclear family. Horror’s obsession and repression of what is female comes from the fact that women’s oppression is inextricably tied to society’s predetermined roles.
Marx’s essential insight into ideology was this: before we can have ideas, we have to eat. As society organizes itself to produce its survival, ideas emerge to justify and normalize its way of doing things. From there, ideology develops with a life of its own, but still within the parameters of society’s particular property relations. Freudian theory has provided a fascinating look at how ideology has played itself out in the bourgeois epoch, with its emphasis on all things male, and the perceived inadequacies and fears of all things female. What frightens us about Geiger’s Alien has much more to do with its sexual ambiguity (both male and female parts) and nods to the specifically female act of childbirth. The eggs, the fluids, the Queen—we can’t help but be disgusted. Julia Kristeva’s concept of the Abject locates a particular disgust with “bodily fluids and waste,” qualities most commonly associated with female sexuality (menstruation, birth/reproduction), that must be expelled. The Alien is especially horrific because of the way it reproduces (face huggers force its way into the victim, waiting until a mature embryo can break out of the victim’s chest). If the threat to the bourgeois/male social order causes such anxiety, the audience demands catharsis, the restoration of the dominant ideology. The Queen and her lair of eggs bring to mind everything we hate about this creature, and the audience only finds relief when Ripley sets it all on fire. Attempts made at undermining the role of the Other often makes the audience uncomfortable, as it fails to resolve societal anxieties in favor of provoking and challenging them. One obvious example is the original ending of 2007’s I Am Legend, an ending that found test audiences unsatisfied, forcing the studio to go a more conventional route for the sake of box office success.
I Am Legend begins in standard form as we follow Neville’s attempts at restoring order to a world overrun by the Infected. Neville is seemingly the only one immune to the virus, the only person able to maintain his boundaries from infiltration. The virus stands in for various societal fears (AIDS/homosexuality, the racist propaganda about disease “coming over the border”), and so it’s no wonder Neville’s search for a cure echoes attempts at “curing” homosexuality, or that his home is rigged in ways that racists fantasize about building along the border. The Infected, or the Other, act out their role as Legend—those who threaten “normalcy.” Though Neville concludes in his medical diary that the Infected no longer retain any semblance of humanity (they act in ways that go against their basic survival), the film tries to say something else. As it’s revealed that the Alpha male was after the woman Neville captured, it becomes clear that their humanity is indeed intact. That what distinguishes humans are concepts of courage and sacrifice, of living for something more than basic survival. Neville then looks at the photos of the Infected he has killed and “realizes that he is the monster of their legends; the infected think of him as someone who hunts down and kills their people.” Neville realizes that he has become the Other. Much like the ending of the novel, “Neville realizes that the standard of normalcy is a majority concept: in the new world, he is the abnomal one, the lone monster who comes without warning to destroy loved ones without mercy. He is Legend.” This reversal of the Other didn’t sit comfortably with test audiences and so another ending was put together, turning Neville into a sacrificial figure, as the war on the Infected continues.
While the theatrical version of I Am Legend failed to challenge the social order by deviating from its source material, Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers works to undermine the concept of the Other by mocking its source. As JP Telotte noted, Heinlein’s work “emphasizes the sort of dictatorial, authoritarian figures he saw as necessary for survival,” leading those like Barton Levinson to conclude, “in the clearest sense of the word, his political and ethical beliefs were fascist.” Verhoeven strips the story of militaristic fetishism by farcical exaggeration. Instead of being a story about courage and service, it is a story of ignorance and obedience. Verhoeven breaks up the narrative into hyperactive news reports and recruitment videos which as Tolotte makes clear, “offer no pretense at argument. Instead, they provide us with exaggerations, sloaganeering, and cheerleading, as if the audience were much like the fans we see earlier rooting for Johnny Rico’s football team. “ The opening recruitment video tells of the threat of “invading” bugs from Klendathu, though the video clearly shows it’s the humans who are invading. The newsreels demonstrate how the Other is constructed and sold to a population through fear and dehumanization (the value of a bug’s life). A great example is the:
…footage of a cow being slaughtered by a captured bug to demonstrate the species’ capabilities and its ferocity; interestingly, much of the slaughter occurs behind a “censored” patch across the screen. In turn, another feed shows a bug, perhaps the same one, being blasted to bits by soldiers who are instructed how to hit its central nervous system in order to make a quicker kill—and here nothing is censored.
It is a telling illustration of just what this culture sees as obscene, as censorable reality, and a clear indication of how it has set about sanctioning a most horrific violent response to the bug foe.
Once the final bug is captured (a giant brain/the Abject), Carl, a telepath, is asked what the giant brain is thinking. He reads the bug and finds out that “It’s afraid! It’s afraid!” As the soldiers cheer, we’re again asked to question who is the Other. Who is the monster in this film? Verhoeven calls attention to process of constructing the Other, and then shows how far from reality it is. The bugs are thinking, feeling creatures that are defending Klendathu from the actual invaders. Both I Am Legend and Starship Troopers begin with the Abject/Other archetype, only to show that it’s the social order itself that is monstrous.
