Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology (review)

Alien Sex takes a long look at aliens in the popular acceptation of the term, particularly in films like Alien 3 and The Man Who Fell to Earth. It has a lot more to do with the subject of sexual relations among humans as portrayed in film, and, as its title promises, with theological attitudes to sexuality. In this sense, the Alien of the title is multivalent: the Alien can be sexuality itself (though Gerard Loughlin wants to transcend this idea), or the Alien can be the "significant other" in a human sexual relationship, or it can be the self as Other to itself. The Alien can also, and finally, be God: the early-sixth-century theologian known as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite thought of God as alien not only to humanity but also to any humanly satisfactory definition.

Loughlin's title is an intelligent provocation, for he is well aware that theology, sex, and cinema are no more obviously compatible today than the first two were at any other point in the history of Christianity. Loughlin's own theology is liberal, ethically focused, and accepting of sexual diversity, and he would clearly prefer that Christianity in general were more similar to his way of thinking. He faces a difficult mission, however, for he must confront the historic antipathy to sexuality, the body, and desire in much of Western Christianity since late antiquity. Nor is sex the only issue. His observations about the rivalry between churches and cinema during much of the past century are not disproved by the marketing of The Passion of the Christ and The Nativity Story to evangelical Christians since Loughlin went to press (not to mention earlier biblical blockbusters like Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments). How, then, does one combine sex, cinema, and theology in a manner that affirms all three and demonizes none? Loughlin is optimistic: Alien Sex is "body theology" or "sexual theology"; it is also "at best a proto-cinematic theology, a book wanting to be a film." This is because "the book explores certain parallels between the cinema and the church, viewing them as institutions for the production of vision, spaces for the projecting of dreams, caves for the inciting of desire" (xix, xx, xxi).

However, Loughlin's solution will almost certainly be more satisfying to convinced Christians of a liberal social persuasion than to other readers. Fundamentalists will decamp after the first few pages, flinging anathemas over their shoulders at his acceptance of "deviant" sexuality rather than scriptural literalism. Readers uncommitted to Christianity as a personal religion will probably also remain dissatisfied to some degree, even if they are interested in the history of Christian attitudes to sexuality. His book's catchy title and handsome cover (Jane Fonda as Barbarella being embraced by an angel) could lead one to expect a rather different book, one that "connect[ed] the apparently unconnectible, of aliens with the desiring body, and of both with theology" (x) from a secular, more anthropological perspective. Loughlin is a perceptive filmgoer, well versed in the history and theory of cinema, still photography, and cultural criticism. But, again, he is a committed Christian theologian, seriously interested in that most "alien" of human states, the afterlife, and the combination can be somewhat jarring. So, for example, in a chapter on Lars von Trier's Against the Waves, Slavoj Žižek keeps close company with Saints Paul and Augustine, while Karl Barth jostles a variety of more recent theologians holding more latitudinarian attitudes toward sexuality. Over Loughlin's entire project hovers the most disconcerting book of the Bible, the Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon. This delicious love poem, in which sexuality seems to be expressed in positive and appealing form, has been sanitized by allegorical readings since antiquity, interpreted as not being "really" about sex or at least not primarily so. The Lover and Beloved...