Alien Exploitation

Octavia Butler’s Dawn and Hortense Spiller’s Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammer Book both focus on the tragedy of enslaved black women, Dawn in a futuristic setting, at the hands of aliens who have no problems tampering with their prisoner’s genetic material, Mama’s Baby on the historical plight of female African-American slaves. Lilith is not obviously treated badly, but she is clearly a captive of the Oankali. Like slaves out of American history, her sexuality is exploited by the Oankali to their own gain. To the Oankali, Lilith is a useful tool, not a person. They need her genetic material to help advance their own species as well as, supposedly, ours. It is interesting to note the fear here: that aliens want our bodies, our flesh. I wonder to what extent Alien reflects this same fear. One might suggest that this fear actually comes from interracial relationships. People have always been afraid of interracial relationships, even when acts of sexual exploitation by one race of another were commonplace.