Unpicking the monstrous: A Psychoanalytic and Marxist analysis of Alien.
Contents Title Page: Page 2 Analysis: Pages 3-12 Conclusion: Pages 12-13 Bibliography: Page 14 Name: Liam Stott English and Film & Media Studies Level Two Unit Title: FS299 - Critical Approaches to Media Research Unit Tutor: Marc O' Day Course Leaders: Marc O' Day/Melanie Selfe Assignment 2: Negotiated Essay 'Unpicking the monstrous: A Psychoanalytic and Marxist analysis of Alien.' Barbara Creed states that the convergence of psychoanalysis and cinema studies initiated at the end of the nineteenth century. Since the 1900s, psychoanalysis has endured a complicated history because of its elusive concepts and theoretical influences, particularly in post-1970s psychoanalytic film theory. Throughout the 1970s, psychoanalysis informed and contributed to other cinematic critical approaches such as post-colonial theory, queer theory, feminist film theory and body theory (Creed in Hill and Gibson, 2000: 75-77). Alien (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979) is a significantly psychoanalytic film, symbolically underpinned by a range of psychoanalytic notions such as sexuality, the unconscious, phallicised, primal phantasies (Lebeau, 2001: 7), the woman as an actively sadistic monster and the cinematic voyeuristic male gaze at the expense of female sexual objectification (Taylor in Jancovich and Hollows, 1995: 151). However, Alien cannot only be interpreted through the critical approach
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