Aliens and Feminism

In the movie Aliens , we see various patterns found in society. We see the gender role stereotype competitions and the motherly instinct to go to death to save a little girl. We also come across the conditioning that we have been taught for centuries Ñ* that women are weak and should leave the big jobs to men. The director uses the military as a microcosm of our world. Each character plays an important role found in society. As we see each character slowly fall to pieces, we begin to distinguish what is truly beneath the surface. The movie teaches us that women do not need to be made inferior and instead of beating them down, we should help them to grow and become stronger women and individuals.

Early in the film you notice the male superiority and arrogance. They consider the main character Ripley crazy and hysterical when she argues back about how truly dangerous these alien creatures are. The male marines make numerous comments about Vasquez, a buff "badass" girl trying to prove that she can become one of the guys. The most arrogant of them all was Hudson, who is later the first one to fall to pieces due to the fear previously hidden by his egotism.

Each character in the movie clearly represents some of the boundaries we fight in our society daily. There is Hudson - the jock, full of criticism and superiority. He quickly loses his haughtiness due to the underlining fear previously hidden by his egotism.