Alien Audiences

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. The Alien Memories Project

   • Martin Barker, Kate Egan, Tom Phillips, Sarah Ralph

   Pages 1-20

3. Remembering a ‘Masterpiece’

   • Martin Barker, Kate Egan, Tom Phillips, Sarah Ralph

   Pages 21-39

4. Gifting the Alien Experience

   • Martin Barker, Kate Egan, Tom Phillips, Sarah Ralph

   Pages 40-58

5. Remembering a First Encounter with Alien

   • Martin Barker, Kate Egan, Tom Phillips, Sarah Ralph

   Pages 59-77

6. Considering the Chestburster-Choosers: Realism and Repeat Viewing

   • Martin Barker, Kate Egan, Tom Phillips, Sarah Ralph

   Pages 78-100

7. Critical Conclusions

   • Martin Barker, Kate Egan, Tom Phillips, Sarah Ralph

   Pages 101-120

8. Back Matter

   Pages 121-139

   PDF

Released in 1979, Ridley Scott's Alien has come to be regarded as a classic film, and has been widely written about. But how have audiences engaged with it? This book presents the – sometimes very surprising – results of a major audience research project, exploring how people remember and continue to engage with the film.

• Intertextual references
• academic debates
• quali-quantitative survey
• Ellen Ripley
• Giger's Alien
• Committed viewing
• Masterpiece-choosers
• parental guidance
• media generations
• Fandom
• gifting economies
• family
• spoilers
• lengthy responses
• memory narratives
• first viewings
• visceral
• body genres
• chestburster
• realism
• film

• Aberystwyth University, UK

  Martin Barker, Kate Egan

• University of East Anglia, UK

  Tom Phillips

• Northumbria University, UK

  Sarah Ralph

Martin Barker is Emeritus Professor at Aberystwyth. He is Joint Editor of Participations for the journal of audience and reception studies and has researched and published on a variety of topics including contemporary British racism, media panics and children's comics.

Kate Egan is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Aberystwyth University. She is the author of Trash or Treasure?: Censorship and the Changing Meanings of the Video Nasties (2007) and The Evil Dead (2011), and co-editor (with Sarah Thomas) of Cult Film Stardom (2012).

Tom Phillips is a Tutor in Humanities at the University of East Anglia. He is the co-chair of the international Fan Studies Network, and his work has been published in Cultural Trends, Celebrity Studies and Transformative Works and Cultures.

Sarah Ralph is Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Northumbria University. Published in Celebrity Studies, Participations and Critical Studies in Television, her research interests centre on media and cultural consumption, media industries and production, and women and the media.

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