Saturday, February 19, 2011

Jonesy - Alien

Watching Alien, I became increasingly frustrated with the cat, Jonesy, that seem to be a big distraction to the characters and even sometimes lead to their demise. The first time we encounter the cat, Brett must chase after it in order for it to not interfere with the motion detecting apparatus. However, as the plot continues, the quest for Jonesy seems more and more counterproductive. I began wondering what was the point of the cat and what place did it have in a story that included spaceships, distant planets, robots and of course an alien. Upon further reflection, I have realized that the cat serves as a foil to the alien.
The alien and the cat represent two distinctly different ideas of what a non-human being can be. Jonesy is everything that the alien is not. Jonesy, or cats in general, is domesticable and (though I personally hate cats) he is loveable. Cats are also generally vulnerable to their environments as opposed to the alien that is vicious and adaptable. I think the cat also represents something normal for the crew of characters in the movie. While battling an altogether foreign creature, the cat reminds them of the promise of home and an ordinary existence. Though the quest for finding and saving Jonesy may seem unrealistic from and outside point of view, I can understand why he was so important to the characters.

7 comments:

  1. I agree with Emily here in that I found myself thinking at least 6 or 7 times that Jonesy was going to bring about the end of every crew member. Jonesy did have an important role however, as Emily mentioned, since he symbolized normal civilized life. It's kind of a stretch to say this, but I interpreted the crew's searches to find Jonesy to be their quest to restore normalcy to the ship. The problem is that they ran into the alien on each of these searches. However, the cat always survived even though there were numerous scenes where I expected poor Jonesy to get mauled. The fact that Jonesy is still alive in the end shows that "normalcy" has finally been restored. Another interesting thing about Jonesy is that he always growls or spits when he sees the alien, meaning that even the cat could recognize just how evil the alien was.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I must agree with Emily in some respects. I was also very distracted by the presence of Jonesy because he always seemed to take away from the mysterious labyrinth of the ship and the dangerous mission the crew was on. The very "edge-of-your-seat" part where the crew members are looking for the small alien that burst open their fellow crew member's chest is muddled by the darned cat meowing and scurrying off to hide; he in turn, becomes a huge problem, and he is technically responsible for the death of at least one crew member. This seems irrelevant perhaps, but I also found myself wondering how a cat could be allowed in the ship in the first place. If "the Company" (the background corporation in charge of the mission) is causing much complaint from the crew because of its strict and questionable tactics, then how could the company allow the crew to take a cat on board?

    I guess my main frustration with this cat is that I misunderstand why the crew chases it all over the ship. Emily's argument for the "normalcy" reminder is an interesting thought as to its purpose, but I find that the cat causes the movie to lose major intellectual points because it is so distracting. It could just be the fact that, like Emily, I despise cats. The cat is indeed a foil of the alien, though I must admit that at one point, I thought the cat was possessed and helping the monstrous alien lead victims to their dooms.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I was actually really attached to Jonesy as a character. Even though I was shouting to forget the cat and RUN when the first guy was looking for him, I was almost more sad at the the thought of Jonesy dying via the alien than the other crew members. It was obvious that the crew, especially Ripley was pretty attached to him and I like what Emily said about his representation of a normal life for them. I didn't find Jonesy to be distracting, I thought he was a nice addition to the cast. While Ripley is a strong female heroine, one of the first of her kind, I think Jonesy provides something she can be affectionate for and shows that even though she's a total badass, she still has a feminine side to her. While I agree that it doesn't necessarily make a whole lot of sense that a cat was on the ship, a lot of the movie isn't really all the sensible.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Interesting that the two self-admitted cat haters found Jonesy to be an annoying distraction while I completely agree with Margaret. Besides Ripley, he was my favorite character and I was invested in his survival. I LOVED the part where he and Ripley curled up together for their long sleep.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Jonesy did it all. He lured Brett to history death and told the alien about their escape so it snuck on to the escape shuttle. It was all part of his plan and that's why the alien didn't kill him after Ripley dropped his carrier near the end while trying to escape. Illuminati confirmed.

    ReplyDelete
  7. *his not history. I was writing rly fast

    ReplyDelete