The Scariest Thing About ‘Alien’ Is How Real It’s Become
Ridley Scott’s space horror classic just turned 40. It’s never been more relevant to our debates over sex, gender, and reproductive rights.
When Alien debuted in 1979, the sexual revolution seemed like a done deal. It was released in a post-feminist, post-birth-control-pill, post-Stonewall universe, when a gender-egalitarian future seemed not only possible, but likely. Director Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi/horror mashup, which turns the wonders of the cosmos into a haunted house, is getting its 40th anniversary rerelease this month. Yet Alien has become so ingrained in the pop culture firmament that we scarcely pause to reflect on how it reflects the politics of its era. That’s a shame, because Alien has never been more relevant than in 2019.
Alien was released six years after the Supreme Court legalized Roe v. Wade, seven years after the court made it legal for unmarried people to use birth control, and 10 years after the Stonewall riots kicked off the LGBT rights movement. By the end of the ’70s, the youth counterculture of the ’60s had long since normalized casual and premarital sex. The ferocious Christian anti-choice movement, the anti-feminist backlash, the AIDS epidemic, and the great rightward shift of the Reagan years…
