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Alien Organicity In Alien

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An Assessment of Organicity in Alien
Question: In Alien, is organicity portrayed as beauty or repulsiveness? In Alien, a film directed by Ridley Scott in 1979, a crew boards the Nostromos to explore a distress signal. However, once an alien is brought onboard, the crew struggles for their individual survival. There is a constant juxtaposition between the organic and inorganic, and the organic is often heavily associated with the abject, which entails messiness and even violence. Beauty refers to the visual aesthetics in the film, as well as pure, inner qualities of an organism. Organicity is defined as organisms that appear in their most raw form, are unaltered by social constructs, or has the ability to think. The main theme of the abject is put in conversation with gender and technology in order to understand the complexity of both beautiful and repulsive portrayals of organicity. Although organicity often has a repulsive connotation in Alien, the instances in which they are beautiful teaches us to embrace the abject. The moments of beauty found in organicity offers viewers an opportunity to change their perception of the abject. Towards the end of the movie, when Ripley thought she was alone on the shuttle, she began taking off her clothes. However, when she was surprised by the presence of the alien, she carefully slipped into a spacesuit. The smooth texture and warm color of her skin are shown slowly and clearly in a close-up shot, and unlike the rest of the scene

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