Reimagining the Gargoyle: Psychoanalytic Notes on “Alien” and the Contemporary “Cruel” Horror Film
If Hair proclaimed the Age of Aquarius, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) surely celebrated its last gasp According to Steven Spielberg’s vision, our troubles would be resolved by Aquarian consciousness-raising sessions conducted by relentlessly benevolent extraterrestrials. But then a stretto of disasters put paid to the aspirations of Woodstock Nation. Three Mile Island, the plunging dollar, the spectacle of the American imperium held hostage by shabby ideologues–these and sundry other narcissistic injuries refurbished or pessimism, setting us to brood upon apocalypse.
