Sigourney’s role within the film is much like that of a male action hero, but without being inconsiderate and still keeping her feminine traits. She manages to be on one hand very strong and think logically like that that a man would be expected to in the cases of making plans to capture the alien, but also risk her life in the scene where she goes back to get the cat. Thus showing that she still has her feminine caring side.
It may also be said that the film goes as far to show men as being vulnerable and there is a strong sense of mothering in the film and sexual reproduction. Men are shown as vulnerable in that of Kane the first to die, who was impregnated with the alien in the beginning. The alien attached itself into Kane by forcing a penis like probe into his throat, a male audience would have identified with the victim as it was symbolic as rape.
The sense of mothering came about at the beginning of the film when the crews sleeping capsules opened much like that of eggs to reveal them vulnerably whilst waking up, the ships computer was also called mother adding to the theme. The use of the computer being called mother also adds to the shock when Ripley finds out that computer has betrayed them all by knowing all about the companies ulterior motive.
There is one other female aboard the ship called Lambert, whose stereotypical female timidity and tendency to nag acts as counterpoint to Ripley’s incarnation of woman. This exaggerates Ripley’s tough image, and ability to deal with stressful situations.
At the point of the final showdown, Ripley is in a state of extreme vulnerability after she has removed her overalls in what she thought to be the safety of the escape shuttle. The removal of her clothes is an intimate reminder of her femininity. However, this is not a scene that has been designed for the male voyeur. It transcends gender differences by placing the audience, regardless of gender, into the scenario in which nakedness is the ‘universal’ symbol of defencelessness. Everyone identifies with her predicament, as she suddenly becomes aware that she is, once again, at the focus of the predatorial gaze of the creature, whose Look is one of aggression and indifference to her fear. Its gaze is one of pure objectification in which she appears as nothing more than its prey. Ripley utilizes the hostility of the environment, to which she has been victim, to protect herself – a kind of passive violence. She saves herself by opening the airlock, which causes the creature to be blown out into the vacuum of space.
Aliens did in one respect help to change the stereotype of women, but only because it was realised that Hollywood needed to change with the times and mirror what was going on in the real world in the film industry. Although it could be said that although this film was ground breaking in the stereotypes of women being changed it didn’t change the strong stereotypes of a blonde woman because Weaver is a brunette and the typical brunette is and was still thought to be more down to earth and calculated compared to a stereotypical blonde.
In the clip from the film galaxy quest we see Sigourney Weaver playing a complete opposite to that of her role in alien. Weaver takes on the role of a typical blonde woman being able to do nothing more than repeat the computer, and be supporting role to the main protagonist which is the stereotypical male.
This would have shocked people who had seen Weaver in alien because it again like alien breaks the image of her being a strong hot headed new age woman, but by doing this and playing a ‘blonde bimbo’ the sense of humour in the film increases.
Personally I believe that the media changes when it sees the real world changing in order to give people the media that they want to see. In the 1960’s and 70’s Hollywood had to change to portray the changes in society, and this has created another stereotype, that of 21st Century women who can and will do anything a man can do just as well.
