"With any hope, I should reach the outer rim in about 6 weeks..."
When a person has viewed a film roughly 50 times, especially one that's nearly two and a half hours with long periods of no dialogue or action, you have to wonder about the grounded-ness of the viewer. How many times can one film hold newness, revelation, or emotional potency? How can one simply stand seeing the same images, or hearing the same sequence of score or sound effect. If there is a limit, where cinematic effectiveness ceases, I'm not sure if I could hit it...at least when it comes to the Alien series.
In and around 1990, I was about 13 and fairly introverted. I had some friends at school, my best friend from kindergarten, but I enjoyed my time alone at home. I spent much of a fair amount of preteen time watching TV or reading, learning to cook or sewing crafts and growing tomatoes. When our family updated to cable in the mid-to-late 80s, our house became new movie channels - all day long. And, when we got a VCR - watch out! I could fill a VHS tape up with AMC, TNT, USA (Up-All-Night!), and the odd basic cable specials were in some ways my early social outlet. When other boys were playing sports and riding bikes, I began getting to know Anne Frank (through both the diary and the 50's film), Carol Ann Freeling, and Lt. Ellen Ripley.
These three protagonists seem like a mismatch, but they share one quality. The archetype each embody is the Survivor. Three women who share the surprise of being caught up in events larger than they know, with little knowledge or experience to help them. Nazis, ghosts, and unknown aliens are fashioned from the hands of the Gods and sent to terrorize our heroines, challenge their characters, and to present them with two options: to live or not.
Alien, though not the first of the three I was exposed to first, quickly became a magnet. In Alien, Ripley's an unassuming character among an ensemble who rose through the ranks by quick wit and action to defeat and survive. She defends agains gender expectations from he reflow crew, and for her life from an indiscriminate alien. Ripley, as survivor, continues through three subsequent movies in various stages of grief stemming from the encounter in the first film. All that she had in the first half hour of the first movie is continually whittled away by the plot points of each of the sequels. Each time she wakes up, things are worse. But, still, she survives.
As an emerging gay youth, I found affinity with this idea and picture of survival. Peer socialization was happening and all signs were pointing toward a recurring theme in my mind - "Stephen doesn't quite fit." Here was an emotionally sensitive, quiet and creative boy who would prefer to make chocolate with his sister than play baseball. Half of my extended family members have the adjectives cowboy, hunter, guitar-playew, and mason as descriptors. And the other half have Latino, masculine, non-emoter. In nearly all family settings I entered I was reminded there was no room for any of my own adjectives, especially as they paired with the pronoun "he." In some cases and situations, the reminder from my family was quiet and cutting. And in other situations, like with my brother or sister, or at school, the reminder was hostile and, in my emotionally immature stage, felt life-threatening. I was never beaten up or forced to fight, but instead made to feel ostracized when my perceived testosterone level didn't equal. Questions of my juvenile manhood were like razors in this school yard knife fight.
"Why do you walk like that?"
"Why do you dress like that?"
"Why do you talk like that?"
"Why do you smile that much?"
In 6th grade, we had to write creative small paragraphs about a selected topic. One day my passage about weddings was chosen by the teacher who read it without using my name. It was a game, where we would have to guess who we thought might have written the piece. In mine, I used adjectives most 11 year old boys didn't even know, let alone what pictures they painted. And when it finished, the class was initially quiet, and the first student reaction was, "That's got to be a girl that wrote that." It was quite the surprise to the class when the teacher pulled the big reveal. If I could go back and tell my 6th grade self something, it would be, "Being a woman is not an insult." But then, when all you're trying to do is not to stick out in any awkward ways and you've already had your masculinity questioned for a few years, hearing that even my emerging creative expression wasn't right...hurt.
In some minor chord way, Ripley found me, much like she found Newt in Aliens, in some late night version on AMC. Aliens was the first of the series I watched. Here's this mother, who's no longer a mother. A lieutenant who's let go. A survivor that's not cared for. But what did she survive? It didn't take too many trips to the Home Movies To Go to convince my parents to rent me the first in the series. And, in Alien, here's this woman in a man's world, not acting like a typical woman. The typical woman found in horror or sci-fi movies is there in the film and presents a contrast; she's Lambert and she cries through most of the movie. Ripley, on the other hand, doesn't cry. She doesn't talk for most of the movie. She watches, she studies, she susses out the self-serving motivations of others and deals with situations - even ones involving creatures from the black lagoon.
In the first film we see Ripley still very much a novice, stickler for rules. In the last, she's a rogue, half human with knowledge and memory from all the movies emblazoned on her genes. In the second, she traumatized and struggling to find her old life or start a new. And in the third, she's accepting of death and at peace that her best offense might just be to give up.
Carol Ann in the Poltergeist films was also a cable refugee I picked up. This was definitely a USA (Up All Night!) moment that I watched on my bedroom 13" black & white television. It's story, though not as grand or detailed as Alien, was for me not only an emotional powerhouse with creepiness factor installed, but as a drama with currents of family strife and loss of innocence trickling throughout. There are actually two protagonists in this film. One is Carol Ann, played by a very young and not very adept actress, who becomes a perfect blank canvass for the viewer to project onto. She's our hero and she is sent out into the paranormal world, where we don't follow. At the point of her departure, the family becomes the protagonist - headed up by the mother, Diane.
I grew up in what I'd later know to refer to as a blended family. If you've seen the Lucille Ball film "Yours, Mine, and Ours," then you have the image. I had a half-brother and two half-sisters, who because of having family of their own, came in and out of our home at times. My father worked out of town five days a week from when I was in 2nd grade through my 2nd year of college. Also during this time span, my mother played bingo 5 nights of the week, and later played poker for up to 72-hour stretches. Looking back, there were many times I was Carol Ann in my own home; except no one was looking for me. Maybe, in my house, the story was reversed. I was the one who stayed behind looking for my family. It was in these years, self-reliance wasn't a trait I developed. It was me. I didn't need other people, and in some ways even now, I could get by quite well on my own.
By the end of the first Poltergeist film, when the camera pulls back on a second floor door of a motor motel room somewhere on a highway, leaving our family together in the safety of a room with no TV, and the score of a chorus of children "La-la-la'ing" the musical theme, it would almost never fail to make me cry - they'd found her. Silly movies. There are two more Poltergeist films in the series, though neither holds a candle. Part II is pretty good, the family is still the focus and they have to travel to the other side together (minus the older sister who was murdered in real life and not replaced in the film) to save Carol Ann from Kane. Kane, who just can't seem to get enough of her innocence that he comes back again while Carol Ann is nearly a teenager visiting her Aunt & Uncle in Chicago. All this plague on family is enough to make me never want to have kids. Or go to Chicago.
The last of the protagonists is the realest of our heroines that I found almost simultaneously through both her published diary and on AMC. Back then, on AMC they would do a much better job at introducing each film with Clooney's dad saying a few minutes worth of history of the film or the real story. In my fairly frayed memory, it would sound something like this, "This 1950s version was based on the stage play and certainly highlights the innocence of a young girl contrasted with horrific world events. The film shows how even innocence can be fierce in the face of confinement, hiding, threat of death. The film shares the belief in the human spirit that Anne Frank had, and scores it orchestrally, shoots it in black & white, and has it come to life with the beyond precocious Millie Perkins." Oh Millie, even Anne might have had trouble not wanting to smack you when you talk that way.
Again, the theme of family is present, though not as a the same survival unit. The family in this film represents a larger Jewish family under assault. I would read the diary, then watch the film looking for the same scenes. My parents never seemed to worry about me and my fixation on watching this story for years. The colloquialism "Fake it, until you make it" comes to mind. Maybe I was watching Anne and trying to emulate some of her interest, care, or concern for others. And maybe I was trying to uncover the secret of how she could care even in the face of such circumstances. My own unhappy family had me checked out already - praying for divorce, wondering about how to become emancipated, and dreaming of being older and not having to rely on anyone. What a falsity that last one is. The older I get, the more I seem to need people.
Flashing images on a 70 foot high theatre screen or 13 inch, black and white TV screen both offer a mirror and a window. And for those still developing, depending on the films, this can be quite shaping. Though it would personally make me ill to have watched, I can certainly see why some parents stock the shelves with Disney films and keep their kids from watching anything R-rated. On the other hand, the richness and example of the characters I grew up with can't be ignored. I didn't have Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, or Snow White, but I had three women of my own that seemed to do by me just fine.