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Bishop is also listed under the list of crew members that get listed when everyone wakes up. He even has a first initial, L. That said, I can’t recall if Ripley and Burke are listed as well. But by your own standards if you’re taking ‘Aliens’ as its own thing, we don’t know who made Bishop so his role as a “Company” entity is questionable at best. I can check the novelization when I get home, just for chuckles. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 21:10
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PeterCat posted:He is portrayed as a rogue element within the company. He might be, but Ash wasn't working as a rogue element, he was under strict company orders to bring the life form back. The company has never been neutral.
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Jan 12, 2021 21:20
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Bishop has a dog tag number like the rest of the Marines - Burke and Ripley do not. Worth noting that Hudson is, uh, not listed. Edit— the pic I grabbed is of a reproduction for a T-shirt and is incorrect, Hudson is listed in the movie. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 21:24
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I'm not sure the details are that important. The general vibe I get from the film is that WY and the Military are just different departments of the military industrial complex. Nominally distinct entities with different missions but deeply entangled and having a very incestuous relationship. Bishop is probably military property manufactured by WY, as is probably a lot of the rest of their equipment. While the mission is under military jurisdiction it's clear from the way that Burke and Gorman interact at the beginning that Burke has a lot of unofficial authority since he is a representative of the company. I wouldn't read too much into Bishop taking orders from Burke. He's like a custodian for the ship and a support element for the marines. In some ways he is a robot but in other ways he's just a dude. From everything the film shows us he generally does whatever anybody tells him to do unless it violates his programming or priorities. He doesn't really have feelings about the corporation so it's not a big deal for him to keep specimens alive for return. If Burke had told Bishop to attach a facehugger to Ripley/Newt to sneak it past quarantine, he wouldn't have done it and would probably have told the Marines.
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Jan 12, 2021 21:58
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Also worth mentioning that while the Company might potentially be malicious (or at least amoral), they’re not omnipotent. The only person at Ripley’s inquest that represents the Company is Burke, everyone else is from the government.
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Jan 12, 2021 23:31
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Xenomrph posted:Also worth mentioning that while the Company might potentially be malicious (or at least amoral), they’re not omnipotent. The only person at Ripley’s inquest that represents the Company is Burke, everyone else is from the government. FWIW according to the fan Wiki the ICC is owned and operated by WY. The idea is that there has been such a breakdown in oversight and regulation that the lines between government and corporations have been blurred. It's is not so much that the company is evil but that there is a culture of greed that is a breeding ground for evil actions by individuals, especially on the executive track. Modern experience has shown us that this kind of organizational culture is very hard to control and some people argue it's an inherent problem in capitalism.
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Jan 13, 2021 00:23
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Off the top of my head I don’t know that that’s accurate (wikis lol), unless the Alien RPG changed things. I can check when I get home.
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Jan 13, 2021 00:37
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Amarcarts posted:FWIW according to the fan Wiki the ICC is owned and operated by WY. The idea is that there has been such a breakdown in oversight and regulation that the lines between government and corporations have been blurred. So like today then.
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Jan 13, 2021 00:44
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MonsieurChoc posted:So like today then. I always lol whenever a new sci-fi/cyberpunk thing comes out and makes explaining that a part of its "world building" but when RoboCop/Aliens/etc. were being made that was still a sorta new concept to a lot of people.
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Jan 13, 2021 00:56
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Re-watching Resurrection for the first time in a while now. I think it's an interesting movie and underrated. Look at it through the lens of the idea of an artist forced to work under the oppressive demands of a studio and a lot of the scenes take on new meaning.
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Jan 13, 2021 01:46
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fwiw the wiki lists Bishop as a science officer whose primary job is planetary maneuvering. Probably eu crap but in keeping with the Scott films.
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Jan 13, 2021 01:50
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Amarcarts posted:Re-watching Resurrection for the first time in a while now. I think it's an interesting movie and underrated. Look at it through the lens of the idea of an artist forced to work under the oppressive demands of a studio and a lot of the scenes take on new meaning. i definitely think it's an interesting movie but rated about right probably edit: that t-shirt misprint is very funny. sucks to be Hudson, unless the other side is a huge pic of Paxton's goofy face yelling "game over man!"
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Jan 13, 2021 02:41
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Hodgepodge posted:fwiw the wiki lists Bishop as a science officer whose primary job is planetary maneuvering. Probably eu crap but in keeping with the Scott films. Which wiki? The only wiki I’d even come close to trusting is Xenopedia, that one at least cites (most of) its sources.
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Jan 13, 2021 02:48
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Xenomrph posted:Which wiki? The only wiki I’d even come close to trusting is Xenopedia, that one at least cites (most of) its sources. Going to be honest here, I just clicked on the first one I saw.
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Jan 13, 2021 03:26
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Xenomrph posted:Bishop is also listed under the list of crew members that get listed when everyone wakes up. He even has a first initial, L. It doesn’t matter who made Bishop; the question is who he’s working for. And the simple fact is that he takes instructions from Burke. (Note that Aliens retcons Alien slightly by saying Ash wasn’t even built by Weyland-Yutani, but by a different company called Hyperdyne Systems, who apparently just manufacture inferior products. (Is this another case of Cameron shifting blame off of Weyland-Yutani? Rhetorical question.) But this is an opportunity to shift things back to the actual point, which is the ideological critique of the film. If it’s impossible for Bishop to harm a human being through action or inaction, why is he able to help ship bioweapon tech to Weyland-Yutani? Clearly he is also programmed for naďveté to some extent - or there’s some loophole around the definition of ‘human’ that he’s exploiting. Recall that the ‘xenomorphs’ are literally the ‘alien form’ of humanity, in the same way that Aslan is a zoomorph (animal form) of Jesus Christ. In any case, his programming certainly isn’t anticapitalist. At best, the murkiness around Bishop can be read as others have read it: as a blurring of the lines where the Marine Corps become indistinguishable from PMCs. That’s the ambiguity of Burke’s “we”: when he says “we” always bring an android on space voyages, does he mean the company or the military? Does it make a difference? The “USS” painted on the USS Sulaco, which would designate it as a military ship, is tiny to the point of being illegible in all but the most HD versions of the film. The “USS Sulaco” badges worn by the crew also use dark/black text on a black background - so you could easily mistake the Sulaco for a company ship on which the marines are hitching a ride. In the earlier scenes, it’s never made clear whether the suits are government or corporate. The colony is cofinanced by Weyland-Yutani and “Colonial Administration”, but is the later governmental or what? And is it what “Administration” refers to later in the film? In a broader sense, Bishop points to a certain failure of Aliens as science fiction, since Cameron is hypothetically speculating about an entirely new military command structure that incorporates “artificial persons”. Like, what exactly is an “EOA”/“ECA”? And why isn’t that even in the film? I’ve already raised the question of whether the USS SULACO itself is the marines’ true commander, with pre-programmed directives like Mother, but the film doesn’t even approach that concept. And that ties into other observations, like that these “bug hunters” don’t bring any sort of N/B/C protective equipment against an alien that they’re told sprays incredibly powerful acid near a reactor complex. Cameron simply doesn’t appear to have been interested in what futuristic biochemical warfare might actually look like. It’s a fantasy film about knights facing off against a dragon in a volcanic cavern. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Jan 13, 2021 |
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Jan 13, 2021 03:33
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The Marines don’t bring any specialized equipment because they think Ripley is full of poo poo, and assume their gear can handle anything. ‘Alien’ never established who built Ash, only that he worked for them. Bishop takes instructions from a lot of people over the course of the movie. You’ve been shifting the goalposts around pretty badly my dude.
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Jan 13, 2021 03:42
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Amarcarts posted:Re-watching Resurrection for the first time in a while now. I think it's an interesting movie and underrated. Look at it through the lens of the idea of an artist forced to work under the oppressive demands of a studio and a lot of the scenes take on new meaning. Who would that be, Whedon? My understanding is that they gave Jeunet pretty free reign on that movie (at least compared to Fincher on 3).
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Jan 13, 2021 04:41
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david_a posted:Who would that be, Whedon? My understanding is that they gave Jeunet pretty free reign on that movie (at least compared to Fincher on 3). Nah, they tried to railroad Jeunet pretty hard at times, and take advantage of him because of his language barrier. Ron Perlman (who is fluent in French, and worked with Jeunet on ‘The City of Lost Children’) talked about having to run interference for Jeunet and interpret things for him so he didn’t get taken advantage of.
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Jan 13, 2021 04:49
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I'd consider the vagueness of where the corporate/government distinction precisely lies to be very much a part of the ideology of the film. These were, after all, the early days of neoliberalism, and privatization and private/public partnerships were the future. Insofar as android characters represent the systems we have built which are semi-autonomous and structure our own subjectivity, the fact that it isn't clear who Bishop serves seems less like a puzzle and more like the point. I'd call Terminator 1/2 the better Cameron films about ai/robots, but the Alien Queen is one hell of a dragon. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Jan 13, 2021 |
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Jan 13, 2021 04:52
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Whedon's script is garbage lol, everything good about that movie comes from other people.
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Jan 13, 2021 05:22
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Xenomrph posted:The Marines don’t bring any specialized equipment because they think Ripley is full of poo poo. Even if we're to accept that excuse, they immediately discover proof that the aliens are real - and that they do, in fact, have impossibly powerful acid for blood. Then they proceed anyways. What you're looking for is, like, for somebody onscreen to say "Bishop is an Model XYZ Android manufactured by Coca Cola corporation under commission by the Space Navy" or something. Then you can say "clearly he is not the face of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation; he is canonically the face of the Coca Cola corporation, and that's an entirely different thing where the distinction is extremely important because something something reasons". What everyone else is talking about, however, is Bishop's role in the narrative - the basic concept of a "nice version" of Ash, and what that means. What is the nice version of Ash? Well, he uses politically correct speech and doesn't directly murder people. But is the problem of, say, Amazon that their delivery drones use slurs and murder people? (Is Amazon 'good' because they don't currently do that?) Here you can jump in and say that Bishop might be military property - so what is Cameron saying about the military, then? Why is the military machine given this kindly "human face"? Who put the robot there? Burke: "It's just a common practice. We always have a synthetic on board." Again: it's a question of who "we" is in that sentence - but it's also a question of why this is a "common practice". Ash was included in the Nostromo's crew because he was a management stooge sent spy on the workers. Ridley Scott used the 'android' conceit to illustrate the concept of a worker loving over their fellow workers. So, theoretically, Bishop could stand for a kind of solidarity. But does that really work if he's literally a tool of the military, programmed to defend the military-industrial complex? That's the important stuff. Bishop and Ripley may be 'lower class', but they're not progressives. There's an ideological limitation.
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Jan 13, 2021 05:32
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To give the film a little credit, you have to ask yourself: is Bishop, ultimately, less terrifying than Ash? The more appealing he is, the more pressing the question becomes even if there is outright effort to distract you from it (showing how long it's been since I've seen it here). It's a very ideological film, and that ideology is not great, but to my memory it's not a stupid one by any means. e: I guess the companion piece here would be Glengarry Glen Ross; it helps that the "android" character (the company man) is played by real life complete scumbag Kevin Spacey. It's also a very entertaining film with lots of scenery being chewed, although most of this thread has likely seen it. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 06:31 on Jan 13, 2021 |
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Jan 13, 2021 06:25
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I don’t need your help to tell me what I “should” be saying, thanks  Your posts would almost be tolerable if they didn’t hinge on fundamental misunderstandings of the text, and then totally ignore those misunderstandings when called on them and shift the goalposts to whatever. Like, your “what is Cameron saying about the military” point is almost salient and interesting... if one ignores the 7,000 words across 6 posts that it took to get there where you got fundamental details wrong and got called on it every step of the way, shifting your apparent “point” from one flailing essay to the next as if you meant to do it like some kind of master orator puppet master weaving the conversation to your whims. It’s insufferable. Gone is the original spurious claim that Bishop was the “face” of the capital-C Company, as if it had never been uttered. Also the Marines ignore the gaping acid holes because they don’t know the Aliens made them and don’t know where they came from and what they are. We, the audience (and Burke and Ripley) do, but as mentioned the Marines didn’t read the report. Remember that once the Marines barely escape with their lives, Vasquez suggests they switch tactics and nerve-gas the nest. This is what I’m talking about - your point (whatever it might have been, I genuinely can’t tell) hinged on a fundamental misunderstanding of the text itself. The Marines not “getting” the Aliens or being properly prepared isn’t an “excuse”, it’s the point. They walk in totally blind and overconfident and get steamrolled. Oh well. I knew there was a reason I didn’t engage with your posts; fool me 37635 times, shame on me. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Jan 13, 2021 |
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Jan 13, 2021 06:48
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And that in turn, is because of something SMG is fundamentally correct about- the Xenomorphs are colonials who have gone native and become space Viet Cong. And also cool dragon-monsters. Unfortunately the SMG AI was trained primarily on film and processes written language by way of analogy to his primary language, cinema. Ideally, SMG would post in the form of short films. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Jan 13, 2021 |
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Jan 13, 2021 06:51
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Hodgepodge posted:And that in turn, is because of something SMG is fundamentally correct about- the Xenomorphs are colonials who have gone native and become space Viet Cong. And also cool dragon-monsters. Well yeah ‘Aliens’ is one huge Vietnam allegory, but that’s not exactly a revelatory interpretation of the movie. But yeah they’re cool space dragon-monsters. Golic even refers to the Alien as a dragon in ‘Alien3’, if you want to get really on-the-nose about it.
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Jan 13, 2021 06:57
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Xenomrph posted:Well yeah ‘Aliens’ is one huge Vietnam allegory, but that’s not exactly a revelatory interpretation of the movie. There's a weirdly redemptive aspect to the toyetic aspect of the film, where it's asking you to love the Xenomorphs. It's James loving Cameron there's no way he wasn't thinking about this- you want the Xenomorph to be scary to kids and then you want them to want to play with them as toys. And it's true, we should absolutely love the Xenomorphs and even make toys if we have the excess labour kicking around which wants to direct itself to that.
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Jan 13, 2021 07:19
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i think thats why I prefer alien to aliens. Cameron makes thexeno scary to kids, while Ridley makes it terrifying for everyone
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Jan 13, 2021 07:24
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alf_pogs posted:i think thats why I prefer alien to aliens. Cameron makes thexeno scary to kids, while Ridley makes it terrifying for everyone One of a monster is just inherently scarier. You can play with that a hell of a lot, but ultimately if there's more than one it means the remainder have to be somewhat less impressive just to give the characters a chance. Aliens probably has as much in common with Jurassic Park as it does Alien. I'm fairly certain this is also a comparison I owe to SMG. Anyhow, they're both great kids' monster movies, even if Jurassic Park has a wide age range.
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Jan 13, 2021 07:37
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Bishop isnt part of the company in any way that Burke would be able to use. Thats literally why he brings in Gorman. Gorman is the Ash of the Sulaco only instead of having his own preprogrammed instructions like M.O.T.H.E.R hes just and inexperienced goofus for Burke to run his agenda through. The difference is Ash is a robot and thus doesnt seek redemption the way Gorman does at the end. Burke only objects to military jurisdiction once Gorman is incapacitated and it falls to Hicks. Literally noone even cares where or what the hell Bishop is doing when they try to evac. They just leave him in the lab or wherever he is.
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Jan 13, 2021 08:04
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I mean, thats sort of the point. Bishop is able to recognize that Ripley is the more competent advocate for the Company's interests in many respects. Apart from Alien 3, Scott picks up on this theme with David meant to be a perfect proxy for the CEO as well, who later becomes the friendlier and more benevolent Walter. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 08:26 on Jan 13, 2021 |
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Jan 13, 2021 08:24
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Xenomrph posted:the Marines ignore the gaping acid holes because they don’t know the Aliens made them and don’t know where they came from and what they are. Nope: Hicks: "You seeing this all right? Looks melted. Somebody must have bagged one of Ripley's bad guys here." Hicks immediately identifies the hole in the floor as having been caused by the acidic blood of the aliens described by Ripley - and it's not treated as a revelation. You've made several factual errors so far, so it may help to rewatch the film. As for your confusion as to what I have written, I believe I can help you. Here is my point, as expressed in my first post on the topic: "Bishop is the face of the company. ... Ripley [is] 75 years out of date, with antiquated beliefs about robots and the companies they serve. In the time that she was asleep, Weyland-Yutani has rebranded itself as a good, liberal corporation. All the ‘Ash’ models covertly spying on the workers have been tossed out and replaced by these Bishop models that openly monitor the employees." What is being said here? It says that the mean and duplicitous Ash models have been replaced with "good, liberal" robots who are certainly better at serving the corporations. Bishop is "the face of" (meaning: representative of the character of) these new practices: "Bishop is a nice enough guy, but he’s nonetheless serving the interests of the corporation." To this, you objected that "Bishop does not represent the Company, he is USCM property." "And he isn’t serving the owners of WY, he’s serving the USCM." This is where multiple people pointed out that there is no clear line of separation between the corporation and the military in the film. There is no conflict in their objectives, because they are acting in concert. The marines are being sent to defend the corporation's facility. Moreover, multiple people have noted that Bishop's role in everything is very ambiguous. He is familiar to the marines and wears dog tags, but is nonetheless clearly programmed to serve the interests of the corporation(s) (where they don't conflict with laws and regulations). Several folks have consequently speculated that he serves as a sort of liason/consultant, or that he serves as a walking interface for the various pieces of mil-tech, or something like that. In any case, the key point is that Bishop does exactly what Burke tells him to do in a pretty sensitive situation: the handling and disposal of some extremely hazardous poo poo. Like, those facehuggers are full of the most powerful acid in the known universe, and he's getting ready to load them onto their shuttle without really telling anybody. It's pretty shady, even if Bishop is a genuinely friendly individual and "just doing his job". To this, you kinda got bogged down in repeating that there is no proof Bishop is built by and programmed to serve the specific corporation in the movie. But that's way beyond the point - which, I've already clarified, is the ideological critique of the film's narrative. "The face of the company", in this context, does not mean "canonically the official Weyland-Yutani mascot". SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Jan 13, 2021 |
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Jan 13, 2021 08:28
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I just read a neat scifi book by the name of Starfish, in which, at one point, a psychologist trolls a CEO's ai proxies until the CEO herself finally acknowledges him in person. Tangential, but I thought it might be interesting in relation to the AI stuff.
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Jan 13, 2021 08:34
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Bishop isnt a quarantine official. If you tell him to FedEx an alien egg hes going to stick it in a box and send it on its way. Hes not going through customs with it stashed up his rear end. He has nothing to do with and isn't concerned if the Intergalactic Customs Agent flags it once his part of the instructions are over.
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Jan 13, 2021 08:47
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Hodgepodge posted:I just read a neat scifi book by the name of Starfish, in which, at one point, a psychologist trolls a CEO's ai proxies until the CEO herself finally acknowledges him in person.
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Jan 13, 2021 10:07
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l33tfuzzbox posted:That trilogy drops in quality as you proceed, but his other series is pretty solid. Blindsight is an especially good read Yeah, I hear a lot of good things about that one. I think it was the cspam games thread that was talking about him and someone dropped a link to the full text of Starfish.
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Jan 13, 2021 10:40
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Hodgepodge posted:Yeah, I hear a lot of good things about that one. I think it was the cspam games thread that was talking about him and someone dropped a link to the full text of Starfish. Blindsight full text is on his website. I really enjoyed it. https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
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Jan 13, 2021 11:27
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ScottyJSno posted:Blindsight full text is on his website. I really enjoyed it. Well, here goes another night I guess.
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Jan 13, 2021 11:39
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l33tfuzzbox posted:That trilogy drops in quality as you proceed, but his other series is pretty solid. Blindsight is an especially good read 
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Jan 13, 2021 14:46
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banned from Starbucks posted:Bishop isnt a quarantine official. If you tell him to FedEx an alien egg hes going to stick it in a box and send it on its way. He has nothing to do with and isn't concerned if the Intergalactic Customs Agent flags it once his part of the instructions are over. Well that would be the “programmed for naďveté” thing I was talking about. But the bigger issue is how Bishop’s actions probably contradict with the marines’ entire mission objective. We’re told “it’s a rescue mission” and a potential “stand-up fight/bug hunt”, with Ripley seeming quite certain that latter means that they’ll be fully exterminating any aliens they discover. She’s already made it clear that she won’t be going along unless that’s the mission. Now, of course, Burke lies to her on that point to get her on board. But did Ripley seriously not ask anyone else, at any point, what the mission was? Or did they lie too? This is another place where the film is very unclear about what’s going on. Have all of the marines been ordered to ‘preserve specimens’? If so, by whom? This mission’s under military jurisdiction. If their orders are to exterminate the aliens, what do we make of Bishop acting against them? If it’s that the marines don’t really have any specific orders w/r/t specimens, why’s Ripley going along? A key part of Burke’s plan is for the specimens to be kept secret, so it would seem that Bishop probably is going against orders. But also, note that none of the marines step up to destroy the specimens either. So, like, how far up does this go? This murkiness isn’t present in Alien; it’s always very clear what’s going on: the company programmed Mother for rapacious capitalism before sending her out into deep space. Mother detects evidence of alien biotech and, interpreting her programming, concludes that this is now her top priority. Mother instructs Ash to capture the alien, breaking laws and regulations if necessary. The human crew are all kept in the dark about this, being told only that they’re investigating a radio signal. There’s no confusion about what the characters are doing. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Jan 13, 2021 |
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Jan 13, 2021 15:32
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Hodgepodge posted:Unfortunately the SMG AI was trained primarily on film and processes written language by way of analogy to his primary language, cinema. Ideally, SMG would post in the form of short films. Hmmmm. The SMG AI, typologically an "Ash" or a "Bishop"? Enquiring minds need to know.
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Jan 13, 2021 16:29
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