David Denneny
“It seems to me that the most widespread assumption of our time is that if a thing can be done, it must be done. This seems to me wholly false. The greatest examples of the action of the spirit and of reason are in abnegation.”
—J.R.R. Tolkien1
Alien and its sequel Aliens pit small groups of humans against a foe that knows only violence. The constant presence of this single‐minded, parasitoid adversary reveals something much more fundamental, though, than just the historical persistence of thoughtless, instinctive violence. Both films carry their horrified audiences toward the spectacle of social disintegration, from the destruction of small groups to that of the greater public at large. The Xenomorphs are nasty creatures, easy to blame, but both of these films ask us to consider who is really responsible for the mayhem. Political forces are at work behind the on‐screen events, and most of the characters are ignorant of what truly affects their fates.
Actually, much of what goes wrong in these films is due to confused beliefs the characters hold. In this chapter, we’ll use the approach of an American philosophical school of thought known as pragmatism, and its foremost defender John Dewey (1859–1952), to critically address this problem. Pragmatists insist that the actions we take are more important than the beliefs we hold. A belief, in fact, is only meaningful if it’s a habit of action.2 Pragmatists think that doubt creates inaction, so to cast off doubt, we focus on ways to move past doubt and so “fix” our beliefs. Belief in a proposition means that, given the appropriate circumstances, we would act as though the proposition were true. If a belief makes no difference in our decision to act (or even think), then the belief means nothing at all.
Through Alien and Aliens, we can apply pragmatism to political philosophy, and in particular we can see how John Dewey’s philosophy in The Public and Its Problems serves to illustrate the social and political failings we viscerally experience in these films.
First, let’s take a look at Alien. Within its first fifteen minutes, we find the crew of the Nostromo debating whether they should investigate a distress call. The android, Ash, eventually interjects that “there is a clause in the contract etc. etc….” Ash’s insistence on obeying rules and regulations trumps any further dialogue. This is how all the really important decisions will be made throughout much of the film: Ash’s subtle yet overriding influence leads to Kane being let back on board after being attacked by the Facehugger. Even Ash’s refusal to freeze the alien, and Kane with it, gives us the impression that Ash might not be the most competent resident scientist. It’s obvious that some alternative measures could’ve been taken to remove the Facehugger without killing Kane. The crew, under Ash’s guidance, even leaves Kane and his parasitoid alone for a short time. Ripley questions Ash’s judgment, but Ash never provides any satisfactory explanations.
We later discover that Ash’s mission was to recover an alien to study; the human crew of the Nostromo were officially “expendable.” It seems that an indirect political force is orchestrating the events of this film. Thus, the most important “actor” or “character” in this movie is never seen by us or the crew, who are caught in an impersonal, political tidal wave. And the later films give us no reason to think things get any better in the Alien universe.
This dystopian future is something that John Dewey wanted desperately to avoid. In 1927, Dewey wrote The Public and Its Problems, a book that attempted to diagnose the most pressing dilemmas facing the American public. In fact, the political problems of Dewey’s time are reminiscent of the problems encountered in the first two Alien movies. In Public, Dewey deals with many issues, including the role of expertise in politics and how mistaken beliefs about the role of science and economics in political life can ruin a democracy.
The crew of the Nostromo were victims of a political regime unable to control corporate interests that failed to fully assess both the direct and indirect consequences of their actions: people died, and horribly, as a result. In his own time, Dewey was forced to witness two world wars. The first of these was a war that revealed, more than anything, that “non‐political forces” (for example, culture and the world economy) “are the expressions of a technological age injected into an inherited political scheme which operates to deflect and distort…[the] normal operation [of non‐political forces].”3 The political scheme of the Alien universe is equally unfit to contend with the injection of an unhealthy dose of Xenomorphs, especially considering that Weyland‐Yutani was planning to study and use the Xenomorph in their bioweapons division. Dewey was faced with a technologically advanced, mechanical form of warfare, while the crew of the Nostromo and the space marines were faced with a new kind of deadly organism.
What makes this scenario more challenging is that it’s probably not true that there was a diabolical plot hatched by a handful of politically powerful individuals to use the Nostromo to retrieve the alien. Those who represent the interests of others, rarely, if ever, actually want to unleash forces that could threaten humanity as a whole (witness the success of Cold War détente and disarmament). It’s easy to blame individuals, or small groups of people, for catastrophic events that no single group or individual could have foreseen. We know that the crew of the Nostromo and the space marines were under the governance of the “United Americas,” a state comprised of the former nations of North, Central, and South America.4 It’s fair to surmise, given the facts on screen, that this was the political state that dealt with a potential threat to humanity in a haphazard manner that invited a Xenomorph getting loose amongst a large human population. The United Americas was only eighteen years old when the events of Alien took place, and it doesn’t seem like this government has much control of the Weyland‐Yutani Corporation. Yet, both the United Americas and Weyland‐Yutani seem negligent in the extreme.
This diffusion of blame invites a common reaction from citizens of liberal democracies. When it seems impossible to point the finger of blame at someone in particular, it’s often assumed that human nature must be to blame! Maybe it’s human intuition that compels us to self‐destruction? But these thoughts arise out of irrational desperation. Dewey rejects the appeal to human nature when he reminds us that “alleged instinct and natural endowment appealed to as a causal force themselves represent physical tendencies which have been shaped into habits of action and expectation by means of the very social conditions they are supposed to explain.”5 We are usually referring to socially ingrained habits, not something intrinsic and “natural,” when we cling to the idea that our nature is to blame.
In fact, Dewey thinks our tendency to refer to “essences” or “natures” as the root of certain troubling phenomena is a holdover not from politics, but from a surprising source, Plato’s theory of Forms. Thanks to Plato and his static world of Forms, our theory of knowledge is poorly suited to dealing with the real world of politics. In Dewey’s words:
the theory of knowledge has been systematically built up on the notion of a static universe, so that even those perfectly free to feel the lessons of physics and biology concerning moving energy and evolution, and of history concerning the constant transformation of man’s affairs (science included), retain an unquestioning belief in a theory of knowledge which is out of any possible harmony with their own theory of the matters to be known.6
The idea of a static universe meshes well with a politically inflexible conservatism that can’t respond constructively to new technologies like those unleashed in World War I (or newly discovered creatures like Xenomorphs, for that matter!).
When trying to understand the roots of the political dystopia in Alien from a fresh perspective, one should first consider Dewey’s suggestion that, “if one wishes to realize the distance which may lie between ‘facts’ and the meaning of facts,…one [should] go to the field of social discussion.”7 No dinner party is safe from the wildly disparate beliefs of the attendees regarding subjects like ethics, economics, religion, art, and other “cultural” subjects. This kind of discord is only manageable if we realize that the idea of a “pure science” of politics or society, just like the idea of a pure Form, is mistaken. The last testimony of Ash helps us understand why. As the android is dying, Ripley asks how to kill the alien, and Ash insists that “you can’t…you still don’t know what you’re dealing with, do you? A perfect organism.” Ash declares this with an air of objectivity baffling in its arrogance; he seems to be treating this subjective value judgment as though it’s another scientific “fact” that the simpletons aboard the Nostromo just don’t understand.
We make a similar mistake when we treat the findings of science as entirely removed from their social context. Science is always concerned with using means to secure ends, but acceptable means and ends are always wrapped up in values chosen from outside of the practice of science. This raises a contentious philosophical debate, but from the perspective of the pragmatist, it’s one with serious political stakes. If the myth of “pure science” with certain conclusions is dispelled, then we can get on with removing the institutional barriers that exist between scientific knowledge and the culture at large. Dewey explains the situation poetically when he states:
Man, in understanding of himself, has placed in his hands physical tools of incalculable power. He plays with them like a child, and whether they play harm or good is largely a matter of accident. The instrumentality becomes a master and works fatally as if possessed by a will of its own—not because it has a will but because man has not.8
It seems natural to us to make an observation about social facts (like poverty or racial tensions) and then proceed to immediately judge whether they are beneficial or harmful based on our personal, limited experience. But wider experience (and the scientific method) shows us that our judgments are more sound when their consequences are taken into account. A consequence, for Dewey, is much more than a mere objective causal connection. We decide to initiate certain consequences instead of others when they are seen as meaningful to us in relation to a larger web of values.
Personal, immediate judgments, while limited, are an essential starting point for deliberation. To the person who objects that we shouldn’t bother assessing consequences, since there are potentially infinite consequences to our actions, two things could be said. First, we don’t really know how far we can take our assessments of consequences until communities give it their best effort—remember, the pragmatist says we “cash out” our beliefs by taking action. Also, the point of assessing consequences is hypothesis creation. Better hypotheses do a better job of predicting consequences. We can either be at the mercy of chance, or we can focus on the meaning of the consequences in our overall experience that bring us closer to the goals the community would cherish.
So, the points of view of the individuals actually facing the aliens are most important when constructing a method to deal with the Xenomorphs. The “interests” of the crew members would be impossible to determine without looking at their nuanced, lived environment, and so taking into account everyone’s interests must include the broader cultural context. Taking cultural meaning into account also entails the deliberate use of an intelligently applied method of problem solving that takes into account the interests of everyone affected. No single political aim, isolated from the broader cultural context, can be said to encompass all possible consequences. Yet Weyland‐Yutani erases the value of the Nostromo crew’s perspectives by conducting a crude cost–benefit analysis with their lives. The deaths of the crew members mean nothing, and not just in a sentimental sense, but in a literal sense as well. This erasure of the meaning of the lives of individuals is one of the symptoms of a state that can’t direct political action in an intelligent and participatory manner. A disorganized government that lacks the institutions, resources, or even the ideas to provide an avenue for the public to have a voice can’t necessarily be blamed for what it is structurally incapable of doing.
Such a government can only sit and watch as other, more focused, organized, and determined institutions, like Weyland‐Yutani, drive forward in a limited way that only represents what Weyland‐Yutani perceives to be their self‐interest. The tragedy is that their so‐called self‐interest is so narrow that it hardly concerns itself with the public’s dilemmas at all. This does nothing to help Weyland‐Yutani’s future security, and if they really assessed the consequences of their actions they would see that, despite making some immediate monetary gains, they are actually pulling the rug of shared cultural meanings out from under the public. The individual isolation that results will then almost certainly create discontent in the extreme among those separated from powerful, single‐minded institutions like Weyland‐Yutani.
For Dewey, a healthy state is formed to respond to the needs of publics: a “public consists of all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have those consequences systematically cared for.”9 When the Weyland‐Yutani Corporation, with the explicit backing of its national allies, sends employees and citizens to their doom without publicly acknowledging the consequences of these actions, the state, for all practical purposes, ceases to be a legitimate one, Dewey would say. For Dewey, the state’s defining function is its ability to assess the indirect consequences of actions, via political, social, and economic research. It must then test through action hypotheses, based on social facts, ways to alleviate the worst effects of those consequences on the public. If the state fails in this capacity, it devolves into a mere collection of contending interest groups that can only be reactionary; it never can act as a genuine representative of the public.
Alien provides us with a picture of a governmental failure. Weyland‐Yutani, with or without oversight from the United Americas, failed to assess the true threat that the alien presented. And the initiative to retrieve the alien was not conducted with the interests of the public in mind. In fact, it’s hinted that the alien may be used as a weapon if successfully retrieved, even if this means sacrificing many of those whom the state ought to protect. Finally, Weyland‐Yutani’s decisions were “abstract” in the worst possible sense; that is, the decision to acquire the alien was based on aspirations that had no useful information about the aliens and their abilities. The lesson Dewey would take from this is that we ought to focus on refining our methods of problem solving and, at the same time, ensure that our ideas are in line with direct experiences of the objects of our study—that is, to confirm by experience, rather than rely on conjecture.
Furthermore, given that we know Weyland‐Yutani, rather than the United Americas, made the calls in the first movie, it’s highly likely that society in this movie is in the process of dissolving or already has dissolved. While blaming Weyland‐Yutani entirely for the catastrophes of both movies would be valid, the Company seems to be merely filling the void left by a state that has already eliminated the public’s ability to act collaboratively in its own defense against predatory corporations by using an intelligent method. Without intelligent political method, Weyland‐Yutani will simply focus on doing what they do best: pursuing profit in a market economy. In the absence of other effective political social institutions, Weyland‐Yutani’s agenda could come to dominate the whole society. Of course, from the Company’s perspective, they’re acting in an organized, intelligent manner. The trouble is that no other social institutions seem to exist to give voice to the broader concerns of the public.
Weyland‐Yutani’s dominance is direct evidence of the state’s failure. The United Americas exists to create and test social policies. If Weyland‐Yutani decided to retrieve a Xenomorph for further military study (definitely a momentous political act) without government being part of the process, then it is clear that this government is ineffectual. Corporate interests are often pitted against the interests of the public at large (as we see in Alien and Aliens). But, if a state cannot leverage political authority over corporations in an intelligent way, or even mediate conflicts between corporate and public interests, then such a state is breaking down. The public will find a means to voice its ever more serious concerns, even if the result is violence.
By the time of Aliens, Carter Burke is a representative of the financial interests of Weyland‐Yutani Corporation, and he clearly cares more about the financial stability of those he represents than the safety of those actually in contact with the aliens. Why is it that sometimes financial interests outweigh the value of human lives? The easy way out is to blame Burke and stop there. But again, the problem is deeper than that, Dewey tells us, pointing to the way human society has developed in the industrialized world:
The newer forces [of industry] have created mobile and fluctuating associational forms. The common complaints of the disintegration of family life may be placed in evidence. The movement from rural to urban assemblies is also the result and proof of this mobility. Nothing stays long put, not even the associations by which business and industry are carried on. The mania for motion and speed is a symptom of the restless instability of social life, and it operates to intensify the causes from which it springs.10
Aliens presents us with a universe in which digital technology and space travel have increased the number of “mobile and fluctuating associational forms.” But greater mobility also keeps people from forming meaningful attachments to others. When attachments are fleeting and serve narrow purposes, it soon becomes clearer why Carter Burke would forsake his peers for the good of his more stable relationship with the Corporation. A whole web of relationships provided Burke with vested interests that put him in his situation. For Dewey, the only antidote is to look for the consequences of often‐subtle social forces, how they are created and sustained, and how they impact us all.
Earlier we saw that nonpolitical forces outstrip society’s ability to rebuild itself. And so another serious problem relating to our mobile, industrial societies can be found in the claim that big business actually rules the political arena. Someone who believes that people like Burke will always, in every circumstance, use money to effectively control the levers of politics, believes in “economic determinism.” But this is a position that’s difficult to defend. Dewey reminds us that “most of those who hold these opinions [economic determinism] would profess to be shocked if the doctrine of economic determinism were argumentatively demonstrated to them, but they act upon a virtual belief in it.”11 The result? There is a chasm between the theories some people hold and what they practice. The values Burke holds inform him that profit is the supreme value. If pursuit of profit is held in the highest regard, then our political institutions and practices will reflect this. A belief that money inevitably controls our actions, especially our political actions, binds many people to the belief that profit is worth pursuing more than anything else, so we find ourselves in a vicious circle. Pursuit of profit held as the highest good leads to a social situation in which our institutions reflect this belief. Profit‐driven institutions then perpetuate and reinforce this belief. And so the cycle goes on. The trick is to publicly assess the negative consequences of these beliefs, so we can more effectively address the influence of money in politics through institutional reform. Reforming our institutions is certainly more promising than falling back on blaming “human nature” for our big business troubles yet again!
The real source of belief that big business runs the whole show is a very popular, yet very outdated (and now destructive) idea of “individualism.” Old‐fashioned “rugged individualism” is, for Dewey, a relic of American pioneer culture.12 The individualism of the past created a means for associating with one another that was effective in conquering nature and breaking down unnecessary traditional institutions (like monarchies and control by religion), but this old individualism is ill‐suited to contemporary circumstances. We now live in a society in which individuals are defined by a narrow notion of financial success created (for most of us) by consumer influences. Dewey notes that “the chief obstacle to the creation of a type of individual whose pattern of thought and desire is enduringly marked by consensus with others, and in whom sociability is one with cooperation in all regular human associations, is the persistence of that feature of the earlier individualism which defines industry and commerce by ideas of private pecuniary profit.”13
It is this mistaken, rustic individualism, tied to a money‐driven concept of success, that produces the prejudice that a corporation is justified in its successes because of its owners’ and shareholders’ past activities or investments. In fact, freedom conceived solely as financial independence destroys all hope for harnessing methods for dealing with problems through cooperative political action. The fact is, Weyland‐Yutani is trapped in this old “individualism” just like the rest of the public.
Recall that for a pragmatist, actions can be clues to habits of belief. The Weyland‐Yutani Corporation, and the state it seems to effectively control, both behave as though the freedom of individuals is of little importance; they also act as if it’s unimportant for those involved in a particular problem situation to be part of the decision‐making process. So no matter what Weyland‐Yutani and the state may claim, they do not hold a belief in principles of free enterprise, democracy, or self‐determination. If Weyland‐Yutani and the United Americas hold economic determinism as an ideal, they would undoubtedly treat such principles as negligible fictions anyway. Weyland‐Yutani’s real principles can only be found by observing their actions, a particularly important thing to remember when professed beliefs fail to coincide with actions taken.
If belief and action can’t be so easily separated, we can see just how important it is to discover whether or not the economic determinist is mistaken. Dewey argues against economic determinism, saying, “For it is their belief that ‘prosperity’—a word that has taken on a religious color—is the great need of the country, that they are its authors and guardians, and hence by right the determiners of polity.”14 The individualistic and money‐driven belief in a destiny of prosperity (which is a very powerful belief in the United States today) can lead the public to hand control of the economy over to business interests. After all, why care when it’s not in your control?
The power of big business and the ineffectiveness of the political system are actually symptoms of the diffusion and splintering of the public’s political voice. It is the separation of the interests of the public from the political system, and the resulting apathy towards politics, that have increased capitalist power such that the necessity of economic domination is a plausible position for many. The fact that most individuals have such little influence in contemporary politics is a result of the way in which political institutions are organized. If the political process were more engaged in assessing the actual hopes and needs of individuals locally, and less with manufacturing hopes on a broad scale (usually by galvanizing the public through fear and sensationalism), we could find ourselves better able to tackle immediate problems in an intelligent way. The more elected representatives feel responsible for, and to, their electorate, the less alienated the public will feel.
The Alien universe, with its diabolical pact between the United Americas and the Weyland‐Yutani Corporation, provides us with a worst‐case scenario of the future. It doesn’t look like the political machinery in that universe is much worse than our own, but we ought to recognize that better choices can be made to improve our situation. Institutional reform is necessary if the public is to find its voice again. Dewey insists that “governmental institutions are but a mechanism for securing to an idea [like democracy] channels of effective operation.”15 In the future, necessity may compel us to make more drastic institutional changes, but these changes must involve and be agreed to by more of us. This is because historically, “life has been impoverished, not by a predominance of ‘society’ in general over individuality, but by a domination of one form of association, [whether the] family, clan, church, economic institutions, over other actual and possible forms.”16 Our key task is to reorganize and reenergize channels for collaborative and collective effort to unlock the potential of as many individuals as possible. We can’t do this by merely hearkening back to ideal “golden ages.” Instead, we should think experimentally, make changes, assess their consequences, and move forward in a way that enriches the lives of individuals by giving them the opportunity to form many more meaningful, productive relationships.
Alien and Aliens tell us what we ought to avoid. Watching these two films is like witnessing what happens when our current political and ideological deficiencies are put to the test in a futuristic, doomsday‐like environment. Yet we’ll hopefully be better equipped than the crew of the USCSS Nostromo. Dewey’s way forward is to recognize that “the problem of a democratically organized public is primarily and essentially an intellectual problem in a degree to which the political affairs of prior ages offer no parallel.”17 We have to reintegrate the public through institutions in order to dispel the apathy that leads to a dissolution of society like that of the Alien universe. The task is enormously difficult, but to say that the task is impossible is to believe in a static universe—that society’s ideas cannot change. The Xenomorph is not the big bad enemy of the first two Alien movies. The enemy is our own ineffectual political forms. This is both comforting and disturbing. It’s comforting because it places responsibility in our hands; it’s disturbing because our concerted efforts, or lack thereof, are all that’s left to blame.