Know your Role

While taking a closer look at the two films, Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985, Britain) and Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979, US), one can notice certain similarities in the worlds that are created by the directors of these films. One is the patriarchal societies within which each film is set. The society in the movie Brazil is run by a patriarchal, bureaucratic military called the Ministry. Alien focuses on a crew that works for “the company”. How big this company is does not matter as much as how loyal the crew is to this company. The second similarity has to do with the female leads and how they survive in these male driven social orders. It is this second similarity on which I will focus on mainly. I would like to explore how these women function in the male society by “performing” more of the male role.

Let’s begin by exploring the social structures of each film. In Brazil the world is run by agencies. These agencies are filled with mostly male employees; the only females you see are secretaries, wives, and nuns. The only exception to this we see is the female lead named Jill, who is an independent truck driver. We’ll return to Jill in a bit. The agencies are split up into different levels and there is a social hierarchy to the whole thing. It is run like the military in such that you don’t question authority. These are all signs of a male dominated world where logic and cold hard facts justify actions taken. The emotional responses of the people working in this system all are self centered. One example in Brazil is when the lead Sam Lowry is about to be tortured by, a person who used to be, his good friend. Sam pleads “I’m scared.” to which his friend replies “How do you think I feel?” So whether these people are androids or not…which they’re not, they blindly obey the man in charge for fear that they could be labeled as terrorists. The dominant male social structure of this world is one point of Sam’s struggle. He doesn’t want or is incapable of achieving a dominant role and is content to stay at his position in the hierarchy. That is until he needs the “power” of a promotion to help him get Jill.

In Alien the crew is lead on the ship by Dallas, who reports to “mother”, the ships main computer. “Mother” is a creation of “The Company” which sounds like it is a major company maybe affiliated with the government or private military. Dallas defers whole heartedly to the company no matter what. “Standard procedure is to do what the company wants you to do.” Dallas tells Ripley when she questions his actions. Again this seems to be a male dominated society of military like responses.

Now that we have an idea of the social implications going on in these films let’s explore the roles of the female leads. Let’s start out with Jill from Brazil. Initially we see her as part of a dream. She is floating in the sky as the male lead flies around her on wings. Here I believe her presence suggests a “moral purity”, which Judith Newton, in her article about Ripley in Alien, contributes to a nineteenth century “ideology about middle-class woman, which maintained that women, as outsiders to the world of early capitalist competition, retained a moral purity which might redeem it”. (Newton) His dream shows Jill being blocked from him by raging monoliths and trapped in a cage. This happens after Sam finds out about a mistake that was made by the ministry that resulted in a death. His involvement in this strange case leads him to the real life Jill whom he pursues for the remainder of the film. Jill could represent Sam’s own moral purity being put into question knowing what has gone wrong. I think to answer that we have to look at Sam a little more closely.

Sam Lowery is a dreamer in a dreamless society. Although he has a relatively cushy job at the ministry he seems to lack self confidence and is timid. In this patriarchal society those attributes would most likely hold him back. But Sam’s mother happens to be a person of great influence in this society due to her over exaggerated commitment to her femininity. A great scene that showcases this is while Sam is meeting with his mother for the first time. Mrs. Lowery is at a plastic surgeon’s office getting her face literally tugged, while Sam is whining to her to stop interfering with his career. This cuts to a scene of them going to lunch and Mrs. Lowery inferring to a sexual relationship with the assistant minister. This sets up Sam to be a man still controlled to some degree by his mother in a patriarchal society. It starts Sam’s search for what he actually wants in life to make him happy, which is either Jill the girl of his dreams, or to reclaim his own masculinity.

Now back to Jill. The real life Jill is a more rugged looking woman. She wears male clothing and drives a truck. She is unwilling to give up her freedom to the patriarch society so instead plays more of a male role in life. This alludes to an idea of “gender identity as performed” (Mendlesohn, 2000) which is discussed in a piece written about the T.V. series “Third Rock From the Sun”. The paper discusses the idea of a separation between the mind and the body which would suggest that our roles in society as male and female are to some degree only a performance to help us achieve a goal. Although her job may seem more masculine in essence it gives her more freedom and allows her access to the open road and nature to keep her as far from the center of the patriarchy as possible. Her view of the ministry and distrust in it makes her an outsider to it. When she tries to help her neighbor by trying to get the woman’s husband back she gets herself into trouble. This is an instance where her feminine need to protect the people around her has come in contrast with the patriarchal society’s need to preserve its credibility. Her need to help and protect her friends has made her a threat to the ministry and this has gotten her labeled as a terrorist. Sam is an insider that is beginning to awaken to the real world. His naivety to how the world works keeps getting him and Jill into more trouble. They represent two sides of the spectrum, Jill is reluctant to Sam but he thrust himself upon her by hopping into her cab. She repeatedly tells Sam to exit her vehicle but he insists to the point where he threatens her with a gun, well not so much a gun as his two fingers, but he uses his authority as an employee of the ministry to force his way into her world. At this point in the cab there is clash of gender roles. Jill is being assertive and forceful, while Sam is trying to reason with Jill and inform her of the situation she is in. His fear of getting into trouble and losing the girl forces his to become assertive in his posture towards Jill. Although he does show a more masculine “take charge” attitude for that moment, it is quickly countered with Sam proclaiming his love for Jill. Jill plays along and strokes his male ego just enough to catch him off guard and throw him out of her moving truck. Sam holds on for dear life and eventually his determination pays off and she stops and gives him a chance. The ease at which Jill seems to give over to Sam seems to reinforce the stereotype “of independent women as lonely, neurotic, and nostalgic for sexual attention from men” (Badley, 2000) Even though this is not a horror movie, it seems to employ one aspect that relates to females in horror films. There is a transition in Jill from the time when Sam brings her back to his mothers flat where he thinks she will be safe. They begin to get intimate but Sam must leave to protect what he now seems to possess. While Sam is gone Jill begins to admire all the Egyptian fineries and things belonging to his mother like a wig and her clothes which are more on the seductive side. Sam proceeds to break into the ministry and erase Jill from the computer by telling it she was dead. While Sam is gone heroically saving Jill she changes into the fantasy girl that he dreamed of and when he returns he see a transformed Jill. She has long hair now like in his dreams and is wearing a shear nightgown. It seems too good to be true. This is where the horror movie aspect comes into play. By accepting her role as Sam’s fantasy girl and trusting him to keep them safe she has doomed them both. The ministry finds them and is now after Sam for tampering with the records, but when they begin to take him away Jill fights back and is killed.

Alien’s Female heroine, Ripley, on the surface looks very much like Jill. They both appear in more masculine clothing. Although in Ripley’s world of deep space mining there is not the sense of commercialism and glamour that fills the streets of Brazil. There is commercialism in the sense that we understand that they are in space to make money, this is made clear by the two mechanics who always want a bigger bonus. So we know that profit is part of this world. The Crew of the Nostromo is lead by Dallas but Ripley is second in command. Ripley tries to assert her authority on the mission by ordering Ash, the medical personnel, not to let the infected crewman onto the ship. Ash disregards her order. Initially we may think that the disobeying of her order may have something to do with her authority as a woman on the ship. But later this is disregarded when we find out that Ash is an android placed by “The Company” and is following the orders of the computer.

This company they work for has deemed the crews lives as expendable. Not only does Ripley have to fight off the masculine Company and its non-human androids, but she must contend with the “Archaic mother, phallic woman and castrated body” (Creed) represented in Alien species that is brought on board. Although Ripley is a company woman she distrusts Ash. Her feelings turn out to be right when Ash tries to force a magazine down her throat. This can be seen as a phallic image of rape. After Dallas the crew leader dies Ripley takes over as leader. After they find out that Ash is a robot and that “Mother” finds their lives expendable they decide to blow up the station with the alien in it.

Now I find it important to point out that Ripley has no love interest in this film. She does not show any emotional attachment to the crew. In fact the only feminizing aspects to her character would be her maternal instinct to find the cat (which either dooms the other crew mates or keeps her alive), her reluctance to let the alien on board to protect the ship and crew, and at the end of the movie when she strips down to her underwear. Even the striping down can be seen as either “Creed’s notion of Ripley as the reassuring face of womanhood” or “Clover’s idea that Ripley actually represents an adolescent male” (Cornea, 2007) I think both these readings are accurate. Ripley like the Alien has an androgynous quality that makes them superior. They can call on the gender traits that best suit them in order to survive. In this film Ripley’s ability to salvage her independence and to stay pure to her androgyny, keeps her alive. I argue this because later in the Alien Series when it is alluded to that Ripley has sex, is when she actually dies.

In my summation, the leading woman of both movies perform more of a male role in life and try to suppress their feminine qualities in order to either fit in or avoid fitting into the male driven social order of their realities. When a deviation from this norm in their lives happens the male dominated social structures of these films sense this perceived weakness and attempt to control or eliminate this opposing force.

Works Cited

Badley, L. (2000). Scully Hits the glass ceiling: Postmodernism, Postfeminism, Posthumanism. In E. R. Helford, Fantasy Girls (pp. 61-90). Rowman and Littlefield.

Cornea, C. (2007). Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality. Rutgers University Press.

Creed, B. Alien and the Monstrous-Feminine.

Mendlesohn, N. M. (2000). The Cartesian Novum of 'Third Rock from the Sun'. In E. R. Helford, Fantasy Girls (pp. 41-60). Rowman and Littlefield.

Newton, J. Feminism and Anxiety in Alien.

Seeing is Believing

Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985 U.K.) is not filled with mind blowing special effects, but like a lot of movies what effects it does use is meant to enhance the viewer’s experience. One key special effect that was used in this film was the use of miniatures. The key to working with miniatures is to work them in with real footage and blend the two so that it all seems as real as possible. Brazil uses these miniatures to both “enhance the realism of the fantastic narrative” AND to separate the “real” world from the fantasy world.


There are places in the movie where miniature footage and real footage were used together to enhance and enlarge the overall set. When you see the outside of Sam Lowrey’s apartment complex, the buildings far away and the surrounding area is filled with miniature footage that help create the illusion that the apartments are very high up and close together. Another scene were the miniatures are used as “real” landscape is when Sam and Jill are driving out of the city and on both sides of the road are a vast long line of billboards and outside of the billboards is a desolate landscape. This is another use of the miniatures to help as part of the set and scenery to make this “real” world look more real to the viewer.
In opposition to the use of subtle effects that help create the “real” world in which the narrative takes place, there was the use of a miniature to create the illusion of Sam flying. In this instance the special effect is used specifically to give us a feeling of Sam’s dreams. The fact that he is flying in addition to the pink and purple sky with clouds swirling as he flies through them tells us that this is not reality. This is proven to us to be a dream when he wakes up and the world is a dreary shade of grey again and Sam has no wings to fly. In this case the special effect is used as a means to separate fantasy from reality. Gunning accuses early trick films of using a story to “simply provide a frame upon which to string a demonstration of the magical possibilities of the cinema.” (Cornea pg. 250)In today’s day and age we are familiar with what cinema can do. When we see a movie we should go into it with a slight suspension of disbelief. Even though we are familiar with special effects, if they don’t look “real” to us we feel cheated. I except to see some sort of camera trick or special effect in almost any movie I see, but if it blends into the story and is not just purely a spectacle, the audience is more willing to accept it as a “real” part of the film.


I don’t think that the use of special effects comment in any way about how the movie feels about technology, at least not specifically. The movie itself sets up an opinion of technology that shows it as unreliable. The miniatures when used are just a way to symbolically show what is happening in Sam’s mind or to enhance the realism of the scene. It is true that in these scenes there is a separation between the reality of the film and the dream world of the main character. It is also true that Sam is battling some form of bureaucracy mixed with technology, but I see the special effects as a means to an end. It’s function in any film is to show what cannot be captured in real life at all or would cost too much money. I see film experience much the same way as Baudrillard sees Disneyland. After viewing a film your perceptions on what is real may change. Much like Disneyland the images are “neither true nor false” (Baudrillard pg.175) but merely a distraction from what is real. Special effects are used to make us see things we want to believe are real, if not just for that time we are in the theater. Special effects when used correctly are part of the story and are sometimes needed to help us believe the story is or could be “real”.



Christine Cornea, “Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality” , (Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ 2007) page 250
Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and simulations” Course Reader, page 259 of reader, page 175 of original text.

Repressed Femininity

While taking a closer look at the two films, Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985, Britain) and Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979, US), one can notice certain similarities in the worlds that are created by the directors of these films. One is the patriarchal societies within each film is set. The society in the movie Brazil is run by a patriarchal, bureaucratic Military called the Ministry. Alien focuses on a crew that works for “the company”. How big this company is does not matter as much as how loyal the crew is to this company. The second similarity has to do with the female leads and how they survive in these male driven social orders. It is this second similarity on which I will focus on mainly. I would like to explore how these women function in the male society by repressing their femininity.

Let’s begin by exploring the Social structures of each film. In Brazil the world is run by agencies. These agencies are filled with mostly male employees; the only females you see are secretaries, wives, and nuns. The exception to this is the female lead named Jill, who is an independent truck driver. We’ll return to Jill in a bit. The agencies are split up into different levels and there is a social hierarchy to the whole thing. IT is run like the military in such that you don’t question authority. These are all signs of a male dominated world where logic and cold hard facts justify actions taken. The emotional responses of the people working in this system all are self centered. One example in Brazil is when the lead Sam Lowry is about to be tortured by, what used to be, his good friend. Sam pleads “I’m scared.” to which his friend replies “How do you think I feel?” So weather these people are androids or not…which they’re not, they blindly obey the man in charge for fear that they could be labeled as terrorists.

In Alien the crew is lead on the ship by Dallas, who reports to “mother”, the ships main computer. “Mother” is a creation of “The Company” which sounds like it is a major company maybe affiliated with the government or private military. Dallas defers whole heartedly to the company no matter what. “Standard procedure is to do what the company wants you to do.” Dallas tells Ripley when she questions his actions. Ripley is the Second female lead I would like to discuss.

Now that we have an idea of the Social implications going on in these films let’s explore the roles of the female leads. Let’s start out with Jill from Brazil. Initially we see her as part of a dream. She is floating in the sky as the male lead flies around her on wings. Here I believe her presence suggests a “moral purity” Which Judith Newton contributes to a nineteenth century “ideology about middle-class woman, which maintained that women, as outsiders to the world of early capitalist competition, retained a moral purity which might redeem it”. (Newton, p. 83)His future dream shows Jill being blocked from him by raging monoliths and trapped in a cage. This happens after Sam finds out about a mistake that was made by the ministry that resulted in a death. He begins searching for this woman. Jill could represent Sam’s own moral purity being put into question knowing what has gone wrong. His search for this woman to find her and protect her may just be a means for him to reclaim his own purity.

The real life Jill is a more rugged looking woman. She wears male clothing and drives a truck. She is uncomfortable with playing the role of a female in that society and seems to be a bit of a loner. Although her job may seem more masculine in essence it gives her more freedom and allows her access to the open road and nature to appease her more feminine side. Her view of the ministry and distrust in it makes her an outsider to it. When she tries to help her neighbor by trying to get the woman’s husband back she gets herself into trouble. Her need to help and protect her friends has made her a threat to the ministry and this has gotten her labeled as a terrorist. Sam is an insider that is beginning to awaken to the real world. His naivety to how the world works keeps getting him and Jill into more trouble. They represent two sides of the spectrum, Jill is reluctant to Sam but he thrust himself upon her by hopping into her cab. She repeatedly tells Sam to exit her vehicle but he insists to the point where he threatens her with a gun, well not so much a gun as his two fingers, but he uses his authority as an employee of the ministry to force his way into her world.

Even though this is not a horror movie, it seems employ one aspect that relates to females in horror films. There is a transition in Jill from the time when Sam brings her back to his mothers flat where he thinks she will be safe. They begin to make out but he leaves. While Sam is gone Jill begins to admire all the Egyptian fineries and things of his mothers like a wig and her clothes which are more on the seductive side. Sam proceeds to break into the ministry and erase Jill from the computer by telling it she was dead. While Sam is gone she changes into the fantasy girl that he dreamed of and even gets to make love to her. This is where the horror movie aspect comes into play. By accepting her role as Sam’s fantasy girl and trusting him to keep them safe she has doomed them both. The ministry finds them and is now after Sam but when they begin to take him away she fights back and is killed.

Alien’s Female heroin, Ripley, on the surface looks very much like Jill. They both appear in more masculine clothing. Although in Ripley’s world of deep space mining there is not the sense of commercialism and glamour that fills the streets of Brazil. There is commercialism in the sense that we understand that they are in space to make money, this made clear by the two mechanics who always want a bigger bonus. So we know that profit is part of this world. The Crew of the Nostromo is lead by Dallas but Ripley is second in command. Ripley tries to assert her authority on the mission by ordering Ash, the medical personnel, not to let the infected crewman onto the ship. Ash disregards her order. Initially we may think that the disobeying of her order may have something to do with her authority as a Woman on the ship. But later this a disregarded when we find out that Ash is an android placed by “The Company” and is following the orders of the computer. This company they work for has deemed the crews lives as expendable. So not only does Ripley have to fight off the Masculine Company and its non-human androids, but she must contend with the “Archaic mother, phallic woman and castrated body” (Creed, p. 135) represented by the Alien species that is brought on board the ship. Although Ripley is a company woman she distrusts Ash. Her feelings turn out to be right when Ash tries to force a magazine down her throat. This can be seen as a phallic image of rape. After Dallas the crew leader dies Ripley takes over as leader. After they find out that Ash is a robot and that “Mother” finds their lives expendable they decide to blow up the station with alien in it.

Now I find it important to point out that Ripley has now love interest in this film. She does not show any emotional attachment to the crew. In fact the only feminizing aspects to her character would be her maternal instinct to find the cat (which either dooms the other crew mates or keeps her alive), her reluctance to let the alien on board to protect the ship and crew, and at the end of the movie when she strips down to her underwear. Even the striping down can be seen as either “Creed’s notion of Ripley as the reassuring face of womanhood” or “Clover’s idea that Ripley actually represents an adolescent male” (Cornea, P.150) I think both these readings are accurate. Ripley like the Alien has an androgynous quality that makes them superior. They can call on the gender traits that best suit them in order to survive. In this film Ripley’s ability to salvage her independence and to stay pure to her androgyny, keeps her alive. I argue this because later in the Alien Series when it is alluded to that Ripley has sex, is when she actually dies. In summation, the leading female role of both movies tries to hide or mask their feminine qualities in order to either fit in or avoid fitting into the male driven social order of their realities.

Works Cited

Cornea, C. (2007). Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality. Rutgers University Press.

Creed, B. Alien and the Monstrous-Feminine. (Course reader)

Newton, J. Feminism and Anxiety in Alien. (Course Reader)