Barbara Creed’s “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine” first talks about the mythological creature Medusa and Freud’s interpretation of her sexual meaning. She then goes into great detail about an essay entitled Powers of Horror by Julia Kristeva, where Kristeva gives a historical and religious side of abjection, where the corpse is the ultimate representation of abjection. This is also present in cinema. She then describes horror films as a form of abjection with the precense of vampires, ghouls, zombies, witches, and werewolves.
There are three ways that abjection is tied into horror films. One is the corpse, the second is this idea of having a border between good and evil, human and inhuman, or between normal and abnormal sexual desire is crossed. This is the central theme in many horror films such as the Carrie, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the Cat People. The third way is the maternal figure being abject. This is present in films such as Psycho and Carrie where the mother has trouble letting go of their child and the absence of the father figure makes the mother even more monstrous.
In the movie Alien many of these forms of abjection are present, the main idea being the abject maternal figure. This is represented by the life support system on the Nostromo happily named mother and the unknown spaceship being shaped as legs and the crew mates enter in through the “vagina”. This is also represented by the alien itself being the monstrous abject maternal figure.

Key Terms:
Abjection- idea of being cast down
Archaic mother- mother having trouble letting go of her offspring and nurtures them to much.
Semiotic chora-the maternal body becoming the site of conflicting desires.


Questions:
1. Is the face hugger alien represented as a father or mother figure?
2. When Kane enters the “womb” of the foreign ship and becomes impregnated, how does this signify “incestous desire”?
3. How does the alien represent a maternal figure?