Motherhood and the workplace

arrival-alien

The movie Arrival (2016) and the movie Alien (1979) are contrasting takes on motherhood and women in the workplace.

In Arrival, a successful professional woman finds personal realization – and saves the world – by experiencing a bittersweet motherhood. She’s aided by a pair of quirky squid-like aliens as she teaches men how to stop killing themselves.

In Alien, a working class woman fights for her life against a lethal co-worker hired by her corporate employer. The killer is a squid-like alien mother who kills men in order to feed her babies. The hero has to fight to be treated as an equal and ultimately escapes from this hostile workplace by going off, on her own, with a cat.

(Both are great movies.)