"Alien" and the Grotesque

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Alien and The Grotesque The grotesque, it plays a huge role in several films from the past and in today’s time. The grotesque is something that our minds simply cannot grasp when we are trying to think logically. It has a characteristic about it where it makes us know that which we do not want to know. Csicsery-Ronay, the author of “On the Grotesque in Science fiction,” says how the grotesque represents fears arising from unconscious. The fear that something is illegitimately inside something else, that things that should be kept apart are fused together. Csicsery-Ronay also states how “when the elements of the conscious pierce the unconscious, we then become aware of a distinct feeling of repulsion” (Ronay). Sometimes in the science fiction horror films, the grotesque switches around that which should be male, and that which should be female. The normal balance of life is altered, making it difficult for our conscious to make sense of what we are seeing. The post-modern science fiction horror masterpiece; Alien, utilizes the grotesque in all of these ways. It is in this film where the grotesque truly stands out in many of its forms. The film Alien was released into United States theaters May 25th, 1979. The story was written Dan O’Bannon and Robert Shusett. It was directed by Ridley Scott (imdb). Several known actors and actresses played the characters of the main crewmembers in the film. These are; Sigourney Weaver (Ellen Ripley), Tom Skerritt (Dallas), John Hurt (Kane), Ian Holm (Ash), Yaphet Kotto (Parker), Veronica Cartwright (Lambert), and Harry Dean Stanton (Brett). H.R. Giger is the creator of the design of the alien species present throughout the movie. The film has a run time of 117 minutes, and in its opening weekend made $3,527,881 in box office sales. By the year 2004, Alien had made approximately $185,000,000 worldwide (imdb).
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