michael biehn \/\/ birthing badass babes
A film actor for the past three decades, Michael Biehn has appeared in over 70 movies and television shows. Frequently collaborating with writer/director James Cameron, a young and lithe Biehn had an enviable decade from 1984-1993 when he starred in Terminator, Aliens, the Abyss, and Tombstone. Not surprisingly, most of his roles since playing appearing in Terminator have been in action films. He’s currently filming Blood Bond, his first writing and directing effort.
- Come with me if you want to live. But don’t stand too close now, I stole this trenchcoat from a bum.
Now it seems wholly inappropriate to invoke Milton’s Paradise Lost in most situations, definitely while discussing modern action films, but there is a striking parallel between Milton’s God and Michael Biehn’s most famous characters: they’re both birthmothers.
Granted, neither of them give an explicit birth (although there is some convincing after-birth glowing going on inParadise Lost*), but they’re both bringing someone into a new world. Milton’s God births Adam, then Eve. Which is cool. But Michael Biehn’s character (twice) births the titular BadAss Babe.
James Cameron’s movies put females in the forefront of the mostly male action movie world. It’d be hard to claim two action franchises as more female-centric than the Terminator and Alien movies. Sarah Connor. Ripley.
Motherhood and birthing are also at the forefront of these movies, something distinctly out of sync with the greased up masculine actioners that dominated in the ‘80s and 90s. The shocking stomach-explosion birth in the original Alien. Sarah Connor’s future birthing the literal hope of mankind in Terminator. Ripley’s mourning of her long-deceased daughter: her character’s driving force in Aliens. Sarah Connor’s gun-toting, ripped-from-prison-pullups, renegade mom from T2. Newt, the lone little girl survivor of the Alien-infested base who Ripley adopts. The Alien queen. The Connors/Ripley steely murderous maternal rage…
“Get away from her, you bitch!”
But these characters don’t come out of the chute fully formed Alien-and-Terminator-mashing mommies. They have to be birthed into their horrifying futures. They have to be taught to wield weapons. They have to learn the ground rules. Someone has to show them how to make the pipebombs, how to use the grenade launchers.
That man is Michael Biehn.
As Kyle Reese, the soldier sent back from the future to protect Sarah Conner against the (nearly) unstoppable Terminator, he’s the guy who transforms Sarah Conner (Linda Hamilton) from a soft and lovely young lady to armed crusader against Cyberdyne and the ugly annihilated future.
As Corporal Dwayne Hicks, he’s the guy who takes over the massacred Marine venture and gives the already pragmatic Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) the tools to torch Alien ass.
Both instances of birthing feature three recurring actions: the transmission of information, the training in weaponry, and, just as our own parents grow old and rely on us, the eventual inversion of roles.
In Terminator, Kyle Reese is the only conduit of information about the future. He’s the only person capable of not only saving Sarah Connor, but propelling her into badass-dom by telling her about Skynet, her son, the nuclear attacks, the war against the machines, and the Terminator that’s stalking her. He shows her how to handle weapons, make pipe bombs, and he defends her until he’s grievously wounded by Arnold’s ever-advancing synthetic killer.
By the time he’s mangled by the Terminator, the new Sarah Conner’s already been born. At one point during the climactic chase/showdown she admonishes Reese drill sergeant-style to get up, keep moving. Then, despite a broken femur, she outsmarts and crushes the Terminator. Reese dies, but Sarah Connor turns into T2’s tough mama protagonist.
- Picnicking with automatic weapons: the Sarah Connor story.
Ripley doesn’t need quite as much help in the birthing process in Aliens since she’s already survived an encounter in the first film. But she’s still more practical and clever than badass. That changes once the rescue crew she’s running with starts to get chewed up, acid-burned, or cocooned. Enter Corporal Hicks. He introduces Ripley to “a personal friend of mine. This is an M41A pulse rifle. Ten millimeter with over-and-under thirty millimeter pump action grenade launcher.”
Once she’s touched the cold bullet-spewing beauty of the pulse rifle, Ripley immediately wants to know everything about it. Hicks obliges. And now that she’s got the guns and the know-how to use them, it’s a given that Ripley’s going to outlive them all.
First she drags the by-now injured Hicks to the ship coming to rescue them. But Newt’s been Alien-abducted, so Ripley has to rescue her. Which she does. After duct-taping a flamethrower to the pulse rifle. This isn’t Alien-era Ripley who’s just trying to escape with her cat. This is post-Biehn-birth rampaging Ripley. Much Alien acid blood is spilled.
Newt’s rescued, a stand-off with the Queen happens and Ripley torches the Alien babies. Of course the Queen chases her, setting up a final brain-melting clash of murderous mothers. Who wins? Not-so-spoiler alert: Ripley wins.
- In my left hand: a child named Newt. In my right: a pulse rifle.
And all this made possible by one Michael Biehn. It’s too bad that his decade of glory didn’t translate into more high-profile work. But starring in two of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time and ushering Sarah Connor and (Ellen) Ripley into iconic character status isn’t the worst way to spend your big-time Hollywood years.
Photo credits: eljinetepalido.es, dietrichthrall, kernunnos.com
Ohh, do Keith David next.
Well-spotted. And of course, in both cases HicksReese birthed the Murderous Mothers by the transferral of (or the insemination of their psyche with) the solid-projectile-spewing Phallus, the alchemical process by which these Phallus-wielding babes analogize the mythical Androgyne.
Good call, ObsBlade. But I wonder if perhaps instead of pushing toward androgyny, Ripley/Connor are actually pushing more fiercely feminine. Their motive behind grabbing the spewing Phallus is maternal protection. And we often see in nature that the threatening of the children (cubs, etc.) brings down maternal wrath. So maybe Hicks/Reese is giving Ripley/Connor the tools to reach a deeper maternal femininity rather than drawing them toward androgyny.
True, Tyler, the maternal intent is maintained despite the grafting on of masculine genital-surrogate weaponry. However, I don’t think the two perspectives have to be mutually exclusive, because if a man can be a mother, such as you contend HicksReese was, surely an androgyne can be a mother also. Perhaps we’re getting tangled up with terminology to boot.
The whole point of the “Great Work” which produces the “androgyne” (in Jungian terms, that by which one realizes the Animus or Male Soul if a Woman, or the Anima/Female Soul if a Man) is the generation of A New Thing, after all, but one which doesn’t blur the line between the genders (such as in a physical sex-change operation followed by hormone treatments) but rather balances them in a hypostatic bipolarity while maintaining, even amplifying, their differentiation (like, say, a magnet or a battery). If anything, I suspect the man thus balanced is MORE a man than before, not less-than, and the woman is more a woman, rather than less-than. The actualizing of RipleyConnor’s animus through the consecration (by fire, literally!) of the Phallus is what makes these fantastic celluloid heroines fiercely feminine rather merely neuter or even butch.
This brings us to to Hedwig! And the Origin of Love:
http://img.letssingit.com/members/319636/hed.jpg
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