scfi's BEST SEX SCENE

[JacksonArcher]

Explain this to me - why has a thread called "SciFi's best sex scene" turned into a discussion about the Alien raping a woman with his tail?

That's still about sex, isn't it?

Admittedly if the rape does happen it takes place off-screen, so it doesn't count as a scene per se, but it's still within the topic.

Anyway, the thing about Ash, according to Ridley Scott on the commentaries, is, well... the guy doesn't have anything down there, but he still has the normal urges (god, that's not a nice way to build an android, is it?) - so stuffing a girlie mag at Ripley is as close as he's ever going to get.

Dude, I haven't seen you around these parts in forever.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

My favorite has to be the scene in Star Wars.. you know the one I'm talking about.

C-3PO coming out of the hot oil bath all clean and ready as R2-D2 head slowly turns to look at his glistening gold body.... but I could have misinterpreted that scene.

Brilliant! There was always something subliminal about that scene that I totally missed.

 

[Deckerd]

The 'rape' scene seems to boil down to someone not dying quickly enough then? How very inconsiderate of the sound editor to get you all hot and bothered like that.

Plus the actress herself stating that's how her character died...

Source?

Actors are never known to talk shite about the importance of their contributions to films, are they?

 

[Kegg]

The 'rape' scene seems to boil down to someone not dying quickly enough then? How very inconsiderate of the sound editor to get you all hot and bothered like that.

Plus the actress herself stating that's how her character died...

Source?

Actors are never known to talk shite about the importance of their contributions to films, are they?

Well, the bit where the alien's body-part slowly creeps up her body as she stands there motionless... that's new, compared to how the alien killed all the other (male) characters.

It's also clearly intended to suggest the image of rape, but then, there is sexual imagery just for the hell of it in this movie - like pretty much everything H.R. Giger designed.

So she's either raped and killed or there's a bit of rape-like imagery before she's killed. Either way Alien is a pretty disturbing movie when one gets down to it.

Dude, I haven't seen you around these parts in forever.

Hey JacksonArcher. Still churning out bits of movie data and such, I see.

 

[Deckerd]

It's not clear to me. It sounds like classic bullshit to me. I still want someone to tell me what a rape sounds like, because it sounds creepily like you're implying someone enjoys being impaled to death. I bet Vlad the Impaler had lots of onlookers watching his victims being hoisted up saying "ooh I bet that's just what rape sounds like, I feel all turned on now".

 

[Valin]

Not a sex scene, but as a young teenager, I found Caroline Munro to be very memorable sexually in "At the Earth's Core."

 

[Kegg]

It's not clear to me. It sounds like classic bullshit to me.

What? You really don't think it's obvious that the tendril slowly going up her leg has an implied sexual content?

Because I didn't say the sound of her dying is rape-like or that she had been raped, just that one image is intentionally reminisicient of rape.

Just like the alien has a phallic head and so on (going to call bullshit on that, too?)

 

[Deckerd]

"Intentionally reminiscent of rape" is your opinion and I accept that. To state it as a clear fact is what I'm calling bullshit. People can see sexual imagery anywhere they want to see it. My concern is with intent. Geiger's alien was a very sensual creature, but sexual? Nope. You remind me of Rowan Atkinson in Not the Nine O'Clock News foaming at the mouth about the phallic nature of Nelson's Column. "It's Nelson's Willeeee!"

 

[Kegg]

"Intentionally reminiscent of rape" is your opinion and I accept that. To state it as a clear fact is what I'm calling bullshit.

Egad, I felt it was obvious. I still do.

My concern is with intent. Geiger's alien was a very sensual creature, but sexual? Nope.

Giger's alien is a good exaple here. The sexual undertones of Giger's surrealist art are deliberate. Penis-head aliens, vaginas in the alien spaceship, and so on.

Add to that Alien sort of abounds with twisted sexual imagery. We have a man forcefully impregnated through fellatio with a rather violent C-section birth, after all. And then we have Ash's attempted rape with a girlie mag, the aforesaid Giger artwork... I don't see sex everywhere in this film (it seems completely absent from the crew interaction) but it's definitely a major theme.

 

[Deckerd]

Fellatio? Good bloody grief. I guess I'm not made the same way as you. What attempted rape? And wasn't Ash one of the crew? You're contradicting yourself.

 

[Starkers]

Seriously if you don't get the sexual overtones of Alien I'm figuring you've not actually seen the same film as everyone else!

An egg opens releasing a seperate creature who forcibly stuffs its reproductive organ down the throat of a man. It then impragenates him. The creature gestates inside the torso of the man before exploding out. Note the initial creature looks like a penis!

As Kegg says penile and vaginal imagrey is everywhere on the alien ship, the alien itself and the face hugger.

A robot then choose to try and kill Ripley. It could do this in myriad ways, the easiest of which would be merely to throttle her. Instead it deliberately rolls up a porn mag and tries to force it down her throat. There are so many ways that can be interpreted, but to suggest there's no sexual element beggers belief it really does.

with regards Lambert. To be honest it doesn't sound like she is enjoying whatever is happening to her. As I said, to my then adolescent ear it sounded sexual, nowadays I don't think it is, but what is clear is that whatever is happening to Lambert is happening quite slowly. It might just be her fear as the Alien slowly drags her out with its tail.Given that everyone else killed by an alien is killed extremely quickly this alone suggests something else happened with Lambert, even if all that was was the Alien having to winkle her out of her hiding place.

 

[Kegg]

Fellatio? Good bloody grief. I guess I'm not made the same way as you.

Evidently. I'm sorry, but you're beginning to strike me as someone for whom even the most obvious sexual subtext does not exist.

What attempted rape? And wasn't Ash one of the crew? You're contradicting yourself.

I meant in the sense of normal relations (there's no hint of anything other than a working relationship between all the crewmembers), but yes, you're entirely right that Ash is one of the crew and I should have clarified.

As for the mag scene with Ash, I've pointed out before that calling the scene an attempted sex act is exactly what Ridley Scott says about the scene in his commentary. He explains it by saying that basically Ash has sexual desires but doesn't have sex organs, so that's his substitute.

Even ignoring of Scott's explanation, though, stuffing a porno mag into a woman's mouth... yeah. Starkers is on the money there, there's not many other ways to see that moment.

 

[Starkers]

It could be an anti feminist statement as well. Ripley is a strong female character, in command of the ship by this point. Ash’s act as man’s need to shut woman up, and by stuffing her mouth with pornography? As I say it works on many levels but patently there’s a sexual element there. It’s a pretty stupid way to try and kill anyone unless you have some kind of conscious or subconscious ulterior motive for choosing it as a murder technique.

 

[Deckerd]

I think it must be a cultural thing. That film has never struck me as full of penile and vaginal imagery.

 

[matthunter]

As for the mag scene with Ash, I've pointed out before that calling the scene an attempted sex act is exactly what Ridley Scott says about the scene in his commentary. He explains it by saying that basically Ash has sexual desires but doesn't have sex organs, so that's his substitute.

Isn't one of the deleted scenes Ripley asking Lambert if she'd slept with Ash? Can't remember how it played out.

 

[The Comedian]

The 'rape' scene seems to boil down to someone not dying quickly enough then? How very inconsiderate of the sound editor to get you all hot and bothered like that.

Plus the actress herself stating that's how her character died...

Source?

Actors are never known to talk shite about the importance of their contributions to films, are they?

http://www.planetavp.com/features/articles/sub-editorial-24.shtml

Further research shows the interview was in an issue of Fangoria, which I remember but can't find online.

 

[DevilEyes]

I can't believe that there isn't a single good 'sex scene' (in the original definition of the term - two people doin' the horizontal lambada!) that people actually like in this genre.

Well, as Irvin Kershner wryly observed of the scene in Empire Strikes Back where Leia and Han kiss passionately... that's their equivalent of a sex scene.

So on the one hand you've got sci-fi like Star Wars that get by with passionate kisses, and on the other hand you are wretch-inducing disturbing stuff like Alien, and in the middle you have sci-fi movies and TV that are generally too rating conscious of the subject to show enough flesh to actually result in a proper sex scene.

Which leaves you... yeah, with stuff like Species.

Sci-fi, live it, love it, learn it.

Also since I can't go with Kane I'm going with Empire Strikes Back. Hey, it's a classic moment.

So you both happened to miss all the posts about the actual SEX SCENES in Battlestar Galactica and Terminator, among others?

Or did they just get overshadowed by the obsession with the Alien impaling a woman with its tail...

To each their own.

 

[Kegg]

So you both happened to miss all the posts about the actual SEX SCENES in Battlestar Galactica and Terminator, among others?

Just curious, when does Battlestar Galactica start having sex scenes? I'm midway through season two and haven't seen any yet. If you consider the sex scenes that have occurred up to then as counting, well, they pretty much fall under my point of a show restraining its sexuality in the interests of being ratings conscious.

Many of the 'among others' have the same level of sex that I've seen BSG had to date, or even less. So, yeah, I say in all sincerity that the Han/Leia scene in ESB is a favourite. It's a fun character moment, very passionate, and to top it off they get interrupted by C-3PO. Ouch.

 

[DevilEyes]

So you both happened to miss all the posts about the actual SEX SCENES in Battlestar Galactica and Terminator, among others?

Just curious, when does Battlestar Galactica start having sex scenes?

About 15 minutes or less into the Miniseries, aka BSG pilot.

What were you expecting, Intimacy?

Don't be silly, you know very well that these are sex scenes, unlike some of the nonsense that's been mentioned here.


A kiss is not a sex scene.
People rubbing gel over each other without any sexual intent is not a sex scene.
A murder that some people see as a rape because an alien used its tail to impale someone is most definitely not a sex scene. (For that matter, an actual rape is not something I'd name as a sex scene - a rape is a rape.)

Two characters having sex on screen - that is a sex scene. Is that so hard to comprehend? Mind you, it is characters, not actors. When actors actually have sex during the making of the scene, that's porn. BSG has sex scenes, it just doesn't have porn scenes - if that's what you want, rent porn.

 

[Kegg]

So you both happened to miss all the posts about the actual SEX SCENES in Battlestar Galactica and Terminator, among others?

Just curious, when does Battlestar Galactica start having sex scenes?

About 15 minutes or less into the Miniseries, aka BSG pilot.

What were you expecting, Intimacy?

No. I'm just observing that those scenes fit very neatly in what I was talking about, so I'm not sure why you'd cite them as evidence to the contrary. -_-

To requote myself:

and in the middle you have sci-fi movies and TV that are generally too rating conscious of the subject to show enough flesh to actually result in a proper sex scene.

The sex scenes aren't particularly erotic and to date have only been notable to me in exploring the different characters. Which I'm fine with, obviously, but it's understandable why some wold bemoan the lack of sex scenes in sci-fi. I wouldn't - I'm quite happy with the status quo, although I wouldn't mind a change. Or not. For something I've engaged in such lengthy debates in I'm surprisingly apathetic.