Before each Smackdown, suggestions for alternates to Oscar's roster...
by Nick Taylor
My boyfriend had seen Aliens before we watched it together recently. Of course he had. Tommy loves science fiction and Aliens is one of the few perfect movies ever made in any genre, with so many elements that are not just immaculately assembled and realized in their own right but tremendously influential to how cinema subsequently related to sci-fi and war films. What’s undeniably stock about its characters and scenario is fresh and alive to behold, mixing an absolute lack of subtlety with nuance, modulation, and unimpeachable judgement.
This is certainly the case with Jenette Goldstein’s performance as Private Vasquez, a member of the military unit assigned to accompany Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her Weyland-Yutani Corporation handler Burke (Paul Reiser) to a terraformed colony on a planet that may or may not already be lost to an invasive species of perfectly-built killing machines...
Her arrival 28 minutes into the director’s cut instantly announces Vasquez as a new standard-bearer for the archetypical tough-as-nails, manlier-than-the-male-ensemble broad who fights her way through as much of the film as she can. Even before she picks up a gun, she cuts through the other Corporal Marine soldiers to the audience’s attention by doing pull-ups on a fixture of the ship minutes after stepping out of stasis and quipping at her fellow Marines. She’s a born badass, and it’s always a treat to watch her kick as much Xenomorph butt as she possibly can.
And then I asked Tommy, “You know she’s played by a white woman, right?”
And he immediately replied, “WHAT?!”
His response was basically the same one I had when I first learned that Jenette Goldstein was not, in fact, a Latina, but was actually a Caucasian Jew who grew up in LA. I would guess plenty of you had similar reactions when you learned it too. Maybe you're learning it right now! As this write-up comes so soon after the Smackdown toured through Flora Robson’s dubious, truly unforgettable transformation into a mulatto housemaid in Saratoga Trunk, it feels important to address Goldstein’s brownface from the outset. As the comments section of Cláudio’s piece on Linda Fiorentino shows in regards to Sigourney Weaver’s performance as a Chilean woman in Death and the Maiden, there’s multiple ways to portray Latin American identity on film, some of which provoke more strenuous debate than others. Still, for me to even think about throwing around words like “authentic” or “believable”, particularly in a stock role where believability is among the most necessary benchmarks for any actor, demands some very heavy caveats when it comes in contact with racist casting practices. Goldstein’s casting is absolutely worth debating, and the performance is worth picking apart in terms of what came from the makeup chair and what came from the actress.
Goldstein was required to sit for an hour each day and have her hair darkened, brown contacts put in her eyes, her skin covered in makeup to hide her freckles and have a teardrop tattoo drawn on, all to make her look more Latina. Her accent was extrapolated from gang leaders. Hudson’s joke that Vasquez heard about “aliens” and signed up for the job because she thought they said “illegal aliens” is how Goldstein originally heard about the film - she assumed it was an immigrant drama, and went to the audition dressed in a skirt, high heels, and a tank top. She only proceeded further with casting because of how muscular she was. Cameron was looking for a trained actress with the right physique, and Goldstein fit the bill.
It does not feel hard to imagine a viewer who takes Goldstein’s performance as stereotypical rather than archetypical, either because they’re put off by her casting, her performance, or how thinly virtually all of the non-Ripley characters are written. I won’t argue with the first two points exactly, even if the intention of this article is to (eventually) say how impressive I think her performance is. Certainly the first point is valid, and the second is as subjective as praising her.
As for the third point: Frankly, I don’t mind that there’s very little to distinguish Vasquez from the rest of the Colonial Marines. None of them are given much backstory in the film to stand apart from one another. Compare Aliens to something like Saving Private Ryan, which puts visible effort in differentiating its handful of soldier boys by writing and casting them as broad, instantly recognizable military types, and it’s amazing what a better job Cameron and his actors do to make the main Marines register as sharply-etched personalities, despite all of them having roughly the same “cocky meathead” energy. Cameron’s ability to shoot teamwork with such cinematic skill is a huge asset for the whole ensemble, giving us a clear portrait of the Marines’ individual temperaments, their social dynamics, and how all of these relationships translate on the field.
Even so, all of this requires a physically committed and smartly interpretive actress to make her character resonate. Vasquez benefits from being one of the only women of note besides Ripley and Newt (Carrie Henn), as well as one of the film’s scrappiest, fiercest survivors. Lasting longer than most of her castmates doesn’t automatically guarantee a better impression, but, as previously mentioned, Vasquez makes a huge impression as soon as she steps onscreen. Her bravado, self-assurance, and cocksure humor are boldly underlined and remain essential with every step she takes. Her boredom during Ripley’s description of her alien attack reveals itself as pure swagger when she says the only thing she needs to know about the xenomorphs is where they are. Vasquez’s badass attitude is distinct from Hudson’s wisecracking, Hicks’s intelligence, Drake’s chumminess, and Apone’s cigar-chewing authority, and mingles with each of them in unique ways. The camaraderie between Vasquez and Drake is the most noteworthy relationship between any two Marines for the first half of Aliens, and when she desperately tries to save him after he’s already gone, it matters enough that it somehow doesn't feel clichéd.
Yeah, this type of stock side player, an equal bag of war film and science fiction clichés, was never going to be recognized by the Academy as essential acting, even if they were smart enough to single out Sigourney Weaver’s tour-de-force in a field not quite stacked with Oscar-y choices. But Goldstein takes arguably the most minor role of Aliens’s final team and refuses to let a single moment go to waste. There’s so much of Vasquez’s character that emerges in small business, in how she handles her armaments or stays on alert in a shot focused on other characters. Goldstein wields her gigantic gun with muscle-popping machoness but also with the control and infallibility of someone who’s been expertly trained to handle the weapon in her hands and knows exactly how dangerous it is. When Vasquez says she only needs to know where the aliens are hiding, she isn’t displaying an eagerness for violence but flaunting a level of military expertise that Goldstein’s performance validates at every turn. She’s the best at killing bugs, and she won’t waste an opportunity to remind them of it.
Goldstein is also dynamite with her close-ups, which communicate Vasquez’s attentions so succinctly in brief insert shots built into larger movements of assault and information. Her professionalism, the awareness of her mission’s life and death stakes that defines her every movement, endows her expressions with the urgency and clarity demanded by her fight for survival. Vasquez’s silent, clenched glare at handing over her ammunition while looking for the missing colonists underneath a dangerously sensitive cooling system is just as memorable as the shift of realization (of fear?) in her eyes as Gorman activates his final defense against the Xenomorphs. It speaks well of Adrian Biddle’s cinematography and Ray Lovejoy’s editing that they hold on Vasquez so frequently, even in scenes where she isn’t doing more than listening to orders or checking equipment. Goldstein rewards their efforts by keeping a vigilant eye on her character, such that we understand the physical exertion and whirling thoughts Vasquez has been wrapped up in whenever she bobs back into the center of a scene.
Where Hudson gets the breakdown and Hicks the tentative romance, Vasquez is a fairly static presence over the course of Aliens. She starts off as a swaggering, hypercompetent soldier, and she dies that way. Goldstein takes this and makes Vasquez a portrait of exactly the fortitude needed to hold yourself together against an unseeable, seemingly unkillable evil for as long as humanly possible. She doesn’t try to “play” badass, she just is badass, every step of the way. What’s inherently problematic about her casting never dissipates, and I wouldn’t ask anyone to consider that separately from her performance. Goldstein creates one of the most indelible heroines of sci-fi cinema, and whether or not the foundations she’s committed to are sound, her performance is as muscular and reliable as her character. You'd remember Vasquez even if she didn’t survive her first encounter with the aliens, and it’s lucky for us that she does.
