Seeing the xenomorph, Giger’s alien in the context of machinic modernism

Abstract

This article contextualizes H. R. Giger’s influential alien designs and the extended Alien mythos, represented by the popular films, with what has been called machinic modernism. That twentieth-century aesthetic is examined here in fine artworks and related literature by artists with distinct relations to so-called desired dehumanization, including Wyndham Lewis, Jacob Epstein and Michael Ayrton. The research outlines the ways in which particular social forces cohere to influence common aesthetic decisions evidenced in the art practices discussed. The analysis indicates that an anti-humanist position is incubated in the alien designs and in the extended mythos, and how this is politicized in relation to ideas of heroism, leadership and social organization as proto-fascistic. The designation ‘proto-fascist’ in this article is not intended to defame the creatives involved in the creation of the Alien mythos, or the audiences that have enjoyed and engaged with it – of which the author is a part – rather, it is used to describe a common world-view, and a type of fantasy operational in many nationalistic narratives and aesthetics, and widely consumed by the public. It is an aim of the research, in exploring the problematic but compelling aspects of the Alien mythos, that what is later described as fealty to primitive and atavistic patterns in popular culture can be resisted in the name of a reflexive and complex subjectivity.