Gender and Parenting in the Worlds of Alien and Blade Runner is a comparative, gendered analysis study of Ridley Scott's contributions to the genre of science fiction and horror cinema. Observing that while Ridley Scott's science fiction classics Blade Runner and Alien each feature future worlds in which space travel and off-earth colonies are commonplace, the author showcases how patriarchal and gendered expectations regarding women, usually associated with the past, still run rampant. Amanda DiGioia argues in this book that Scott has shifted from focusing on the future, and what humanity may be able to obtain from it, to a focus on facing mortality: what occurs after death and the futility of human existence. The opening chapter provides the necessary theoretical framework and background for the rest of the book, defining the Blade Runner films as science fiction works with elements of horror, from the corporeal to the existential, and the Alien universe as a collection of horror texts. The following chapters go on to discuss the idea of gender, across the works, ruminating on how humanity is in some instances nothing but a social construct that reinforces patriarchal myths about gender and power.

About the Author

Amanda DiGioia is a researcher in the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London, UK. Her previous publications include Childbirth and Parenting in Horror Texts (2017) and Duelling, the Russian Cultural Imagination, and Masculinity in Crisis (2020), along with articles in journals such as Horror Studies and Metal Music Studies.

Book Information
ISBN 9781839829413
Author Amanda DiGioia
Format Hardback
Page Count 144
Imprint Emerald Publishing Limited
Publisher Emerald Publishing Limited
Weight(grams) 333g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 13mm