How and why birth and reproduction are frequently represented as monstrous or repellent in 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'Alien' Anonymous College

At the height of the women’s movement in the 1960s through the 1980s, many American films expressed the ideas of abjection. These films transgressed the borders of order and disrupted the rules established by an overruling patriarchy to evoke the female fear of reproduction. In James Cameron’s Alien (1986) and Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), these ideas are highly prevalent. Examining the gender politics in the 1960s and the 1980s will reveal the deviation of conventional female roles played in films. These considerations are important to truly understand why birth and reproduction are represented as monstrous in films. Accordingly, these films encourage women to abandon popular, stereotypical roles enforced by the prevailing patriarchal society of the time. Through the use of mise-en-scène
, the directors create a gothic, monstrous and repellent view of birth to embody the feminist ideologies present during these periods.

During the 1980s, American feminists developed ‘Liberal Feminism’ which focused on a woman’s ability to maintain equality by urging women to make their own choices. Applying this feminist concept to Alien, it can be argued that Sigourney Weaver’s character, Ripley, represents the ideal woman in ‘...