Otherness and Captivity

Earlier, while discussing Neuromancer and Blade Runner, the idea of "otherness" came up. This week's reading echoes and expands upon this idea. In human history, as discussed by Spiller, African slaves were the captive other while white slave owners were society. Dawn contrasts with this familiar story by turning the surviving remnant of humanity into the captive other. Whereas in other science fiction, including Blade Runner, machines replace race as the other that defines society, Octavia Butler imagines a world where we are all put in the position of the helpless slave. Alien provides a similar, though less extreme commentary on captivity. In the movie, the human crew are caught by the alien. While we don't know the alien's thoughts or motivation, the crew's actions are nonetheless determined by the necessity to survive the alien's control of the ship.

Dawn tells the story of Lilith, a woman who finds herself Awoken by aliens with a job for her. The Oankali want to use her to further their plan to change themselves and humanity through genetic engineering. However, this story is interesting because of how closely it echoes the slave narratives discussed in Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe. Lilith starts out frightened and ignorant of all that surrounds her and only slowly regains control of her emotions as she acclimates to the new world. Similarly, Africans experienced a similar period of confusion and isolation due to language barriers during the Middle Passage. Later, once Lilith has become used to her new reality, she is put to work by her captors. Although she does not want to help them in their plot to change her species, Lilith doesn't truly have a choice. Such forced labor is an obvious similarity to slavery. Spillers also mentions how "diseased, damaged, and disabled" slaves were used in medical experiments. In Dawn, humans were only saved from their nuclear war because of their potential value as medical research. Also, I found it eerily similar how the Oankali spoke of being attracted to humans and how Spillers said, "the captive body becomes the source of an irresistible, destructive sensuality." Through their absolute control over the humans, the Oankali became slave owners, even as they used euphemisms such as trading and sharing. Because Dawn is constructed so that the reader will sympathize with Lilith, the reader takes the position of a slave, which for most modern readers will be an uncomfortable and disorienting. It causes the reader to imagine being a slave in both the futuristic setting and the historical.

Alien operates similarly, causing discomfort by making the main character helpless. We don't like to imagine situations where we lose control. The fear inherent in being prey to a greater hunter is something to be avoided at all costs. However, when forced to examine such a situation, the automatic response is to rationalize one's action and imagine that one would make better choices than the characters in the movie. Rather than really thinking about being helpless and facing that primal fear, I found my train of thought gravitating to more comfortable topics, such as how such complete powerlessness could have been avoided. Humans love power. Striving for control defines a large part of the human experience. When all hope for power is removed, we become very uncomfortable, both because of the idea's inherent unpleasantness and because it reminds us of what we have done to others to maintain our own illusion of power.