"You've been in my life so long I can't remember anything else" : into the labyrinth with Ripley and the alien

This essay, commissioned by two leading American film scholars, both well known for their work which links cinema scholarship with gender studies, queer theory and postcolonialism. Their anthology set out to challenge the dominance of textual analysis within film studies through an investigation of the contribution of cultural studies to film scholarship.

My essay discusses all four Alien films. Although there has been considerable discussion of individual films, this was the first essay to examine the entire quartet. It was also unusual in seeking to locate the analysis of the films in relation to patterns of consumption and contemporary forms of fandom.

The research was concerned to answer questions about the ways in which the four films reworked similar material while moving increasingly in a ‘transgressive’ direction. It also sought to examine how the series was sustained by a large internet fan base and how the fans’ accounts of the meanings of the films diverged from those of academic critics. In doing so, the research also sought to explore how the films achieved a new significance through the various interpretations that were attached to them.

The primary sources of the research are the films themselves and material on the film’s critical reception and discussion by fans, which involved primary, detailed research of internet fan sites. The analysis involves a combination of textual analysis with theoretical work drawn from feminist theory, queer theory, post-colonial theory and cultural studies’ work on audience.Thus the essay seeks to extend the discussion of the Alien films through examining the ways in which they have been appropriated by fans and popular critical writing.

Pamela Church Gibson

Research Interests

Film and fashion, History and heritage, Cities and consumption, Gender and spectacle

Current Research

I have continued my work around the complex relationship between film, fashion, fandom and the contemporary star system. I am now moving into new interdisciplinary territory as I examine the relationship between cities, cinema, consumption and gendering the post-war period as part of my contribution to and role within the ESRC funded project, ‘Shopping Routes’ for which I have two articles awaiting publication and am helping to organise an exhibition at the V&A. In the wider remit of gender studies, contemporary critical theory and cinema, I have completed and published various essays. I have also published a complete reworking of an earlier BFI anthology, this one entitled ‘More Dirty Looks: Gender, Pornography and Power’ (2004) for which I commissioned twelve new essays, half of them from American academics, while myself writing a completely new 'Introduction'. I am also currently writing a book entitled ‘Cities, Cinema and Consumption in the Post-War Period’.

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