The Monstrous Human: A Comparison Between the Pale Man and Xenomorph

By Colin Kerekes, Edited by Duncan Geissler and Ella Kilbourne

Introduction 

Guillermo Del Toro has long been considered an auteur of horror and fantasy cinema. His artistry is interwoven with concepts of spirituality, magical realism, and monsters, having had an affinity towards creature creation from youth (Morehead 2015). The two most memorable movie monsters to him are the Gill-Man (Ricou Browning) from Jack Arnold’s The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), which would later inspire the creature in his critically acclaimed The Shape of Water (2017), and the Xenomorph (Bolaji Badejo) from Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). In focusing on the latter, Del Toro felt an attraction and appreciation for the Xenomorph, namely due to its technical aspects. He describes being impressed by the fact that though the creature was played by a man in a suit, the construction of the costume acted to conceal these human features, breaking “every rule about how to shoot a man in a suit” (Del Toro 2013).  In other words, it seems the design of the monster made the body a transformative vessel, blending a humanoid structure with the physicality and visual details of an otherworldly creature. 

There is a duality to Del Toro’s relationship with monsters. He views them as inherently beyond human comprehension, yet at the same time he recognizes a presence of monstrosity in humans. In an interview with NPR, Del Toro described this distinction, explaining that “monsters in fantasy are one side of the road and the other monsters, the real ones, the ones we experience in the news and in the stock market are the other side, you know?” (Del Toro 2011). In his seminal work, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), he introduces a slew of grotesque and fascinating monsters, including the highly memorable Pale Man (Doug Jones), a vile, drooping creature with eyes on its hands and a taste for human flesh. However, while these monsters convey elements of horror in the film, the true horrors lie in the human brutality of the cruel fascist dictator, Captain Vidal (Sergi López). 

With the same perspective used for his own work, Del Toro has referenced the true villain in Alien not as the Xenomorph itself, but rather the human corporations behind its havoc. In an interview conducted for the 2018 released television program, James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction, Del Toro states that “the difference [between] human and a monster is the will” (Del Toro 2018). He seems to find an innocence in monsters. More than anything, he feels that the evil of monsters is often a product of animalistic habit, while human evil is calculated. Therefore, I will conduct a comparative analysis between two iconic monsters in cinema, the Pale Man and the Xenomorph, in order to understand how the creators behind these creatures perform a perversion of the human body in order to reveal the evils of humanity. The design elements of both monsters, as well as their narrative functions, leave the viewer to question who the true monster is in each respective film, imparting ideas of monstrous human tendencies including greed, fascism, sexual predation, and corporate materialism. 

The Pale Man 

Pan’s Labyrinth follows the young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero Macías) as she traverses two lands – the harsh landscape of post-civil war Spain and a fantastical realm of mythical creatures which serves as a heightened version of her real-world dangers. In this fantasy world, she must endure three trials in order to earn her rightful place as the Princess Moanna. Concurrently, she must persist beneath the brutal influence of her new stepfather, Captain Vidal. We are introduced to the Pale Man through her second trial, as he sits at the head of a banquet table. As his title suggests, he is pale, hairless, completely still and hunched over. His skin sags and folds onto itself. His thin stature accompanied by loose skin parallels the features of a person who has undergone extreme weight loss. Yet at the same time, he is surrounded by food and shown to consume his victims. 

Gianluca Balla, lecturer in Digital Arts and Game Design at Brunel University London, defines harnessing the uncanny, an inhuman image that mimics that of a human figure, as a key aspect of monster design in media. He explains that for character designers, “knowing how to deform the human anatomy to generate terror in the viewer is essential” (Balla 2023). The Pale Man and Xenomorph are both monsters that have distinctly human features which are distorted to create discomfort in the viewer. David Martí, makeup artist for Guillermo Del Toro, explained that the vision for the Pale Man involves a human figure that is “stick-thin with hanging skin” (Martì 2022). While the monster was initially left as is, Del Toro desired to warp these human elements, opting to remove both his eyes and nose. 

The Pale Man only has nostrils. He has a mouth, but his lips appear almost carved out. He has eyes, yet they are placed in the palms of his hands, and the tips of his fingers are blackened to mimic eyelashes. Essentially, the Pale Man has all the features central to a typical human face, yet they are distorted in some way. It is this distortion of human elements that both makes him a monster and functions to reveal aspects of human corruption and immorality. Del Toro has said himself that “the Pale Man represents all institutional evil feeding on the helpless” (Del Toro 2017). His appearance parallels the degradation of those in power. The way in which his skin droops evokes the impression that he is weighed down by ambitious greed. The way he interacts with his setting suggests aspects of greed in humanity and dictatorship. Gabrielle O’Brein, film critic awarded by the Australian Film Critics Association, understands the “Pale Man's elaborate dinner table” and his positioning at the head of this table to mirror Captain Vidal’s self-serving display of power, as well as the imagery of a “priest [who] happily feeds himself while the Spanish people go hungry” (O’Brein 2016). To be at the head of the table is a sign of leadership. However, the Pale Man’s leadership is indicative of a thirst for might and intimidation. Backlit by a roaring fire, he guards the table of delicacies and asserts dominance over literal and figurative nourishment. While otherwise lying dormant, looking down at the food like it is his domain, the being grows vicious when the starved Ofelia, in a display of disobedience, eats a grape. It appears that the actions of the Pale Man also support this lust for dominance. He is not shown eating any of the food on the table, yet when awakened, he revels in eating the heads of two helpless fairies. Through this, he gains a better sense of control over his body. Feeding off the weak physically and mentally empowers him. 

Jade Patterson, researcher of Languages and Linguistics at University of Melbourne, defines the “fusion of disparate elements [...] as essential features of the grotesque body” as understood through Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Patterson 2018). She continues to describe that these disparate elements are what characterize monsters, particularly literary monsters, as representations of moral fracture in society and the human psyche. They act as “physical mirrors of an inner deformity” (Patterson 2018). Semiotic theory can be applied to these concepts. Semiotics involve the study of signs in visual imagery and how these signs convey social and cultural meanings to the viewer (Scholes 1982). Yulia Sofiani, lecturer of History at Siliwangi University, notes that horror is a genre intertwined with semiotic theory, because it is concerned with making cultural references, as well as manipulating the viewer to an extent (Sofiani 2017). When applying this framework to the Pale Man, his physical abnormalities that distance him from conveying unadulterated humanity make him emblematic of the distortion of mortal values prevalent in the film’s fascism-infused setting. The audience is implied to absorb the monster’s image and apply these signs of corruption in the natural world to their overall interpretation of the monster’s grander thematic purpose. 

In a sense, the Pale Man’s behaviors impersonate Captain Vidal’s. Vidal grows stronger in his fight to protect fascism with each innocent body he violates. For instance, he gains a sick sadistic pleasure in creating physical pain. Early in the film, he rapidly beats the face of a farmer to a bloody pulp who hadn’t even been a viable subject of suspicion. There are numerous scenes throughout the narrative that illustrate Vidal’s merciless torture methods. We can understand these savage acts as a physical assertion of his assumed patriarchal authority. While the Pale Man seems disconnected from Vidal’s narrative role, the elements of his appearance and conduct, in the words of Patterson, fuse to be a manifestation of Vidal’s “inner deformity” (Patterson 2018). This is no more prevalent than in the Pale Man’s blindness. O’Brein continues to analyze that “the monster can only see after inserting his eyes into his hands, reinforcing the senselessness of a blind machine that subverts creativity” (O’Brein 2016). Vidal is that senseless machine. He shoots Ofelia at the end of the film, an embodiment of childlike creativity and compassion, because in his totalitarian perspective, the people must be submissive in mind and action. The Pale Man is a visual representation of this evil. He chooses to see only when he hopes to consume acts of rebellion. Otherwise, he will remain disengaged from those around him, just as a fascist dictator would. 

The Xenomorph 

The Xenomorph in Alien assumes a much more inhuman design, yet it persists in being an amalgamation of disparate parts like the Pale Man – namely, the blending of human sexual organs with that of machinery. Its physique is oftentimes shrouded in darkness. The extraterrestrial beast stands on two legs much like a human would, with humanoid hands and feet webbed at the fingers and toes. Its chest takes the shape of an exposed ribcage. Where it differs from a human silhouette is its elongated head with no eyes, and mechanical tail which slithers behind as it stalks its prey. Barbara Creed, Cinema Studies professor at the University of Melbourne, deciphers the design of the Xenomorph’s head to imitate that of a phallus (Creed 1986). Screenwriter of Alien, Dan O’Bannon, describes that the head’s structure originated with a “human skull.” H.R. Giger, designer of the Xenomorph, sawed the “jawbone off” and extended it “six inches.” O’Bannon elaborates that Giger then “put an extension” on the missing jawbone to create a distortion effect, “attaching other fixtures to it and building a new extension on to the back” (O’Bannon 1997). The creative process here is not so different from Del Toro’s process in designing the Pale Man – taking what is human and progressively distorting these familiar structures to create something strange and foreign. According to the novel Alien Legacies: The Evolution of the Franchise, Giger’s original concept art that inspired the Xenomorph broke “down the binary divisions between body and machine” and “human and non-human”, while exploring human sexuality and sexual acts through abstract creatures (Abrams & Frame 2023).

The Xenomorph in appearance and action conveys themes of sexual assault and corporate abuse. To focus on the first, the Xenomorph is not only visually akin to sexual organs, but also sexually predatory in the way it treats its victims. Alien follows a crew on a futuristic space vessel, the Nostromo, as they are terrorized by a Xenomorph. The Facehugger, an early stage of the Xenomorph’s development, attaches itself onto Kane’s (John Hurt), one of the crew members, face early in the film, orally impregnating him with the embryo of a Xenomorph. This is later understood to be an act of impregnation when the next stage of development, the Chestburster, breaks through Kane’s chest in blood-spurting excess. Both the Facehugger and Chestburster can be acknowledged as signs for sexual organs. The Facehugger is spider-like, yet its surface resembles a human vagina. The Chestburster is snake-like, and in similarity to the adult Xenomorph, is phallic in nature. In interpreting these congruences, the audience is forced to liken these extraterrestrial attacks to deeds of sexual violation. Even though these scenes of horror are undeniably works of science-fiction, they evoke discomfort inherently tied to intrusive human actions. Like how the Pale Man’s consumption is emblematic of exploitative tendencies of human dictators, the Xenomorph’s predatory behaviors mimic human predators. 

The Xenomorph’s appearance is as much tied to the idea of technology and machinery as it is to sexuality. The monster is not necessarily fleshy. Much of its exterior appears solid to the touch. Its teeth are almost metallic, as well as the end of its tail which is sharp like a blade. While we see human elements in its design, we also see images of tools or weapons, a union of materials rather than parts of an organism. It resembles a human body that has been engulfed by fragments of machinery. The true villain of Alien, as regarded by Penny Crofts, Professor of Law at University of Technology Sydney, is the fictional company Weyland Yutani that is “nefariously planning to sacrifice workers in order to capture the alien to study for biological warfare” (Crofts 2021). 

Weyland Yutani is expounded as a mega-company involved in space colonization. Its goal is to create technological weaponry from the alien organisms it harnesses. Machinery ultimately plays a large role in the corruptive nature of Weyland Yutani. For example, film critic Rob Ager explains that the design of the Nostromo is brimming with devices of corporate messaging, like the “data display screens shoved over the head of the crew in the canteen” (Ager 2021). Technology is used in a way to control the thoughts of the crew. The highly technologically advanced ship acts as a cage where the lives of those inhabiting it are considered expendable. Through this evaluation, the bits of machinery that feel nearly ensnaring on the Xenomorph’s body resemble how this human-run corporation exploits and infringes on the wellbeing of its human workers through a focus on technological innovation. Before the Xenomorph is even introduced, we see the creature of the Space Jockey, a corpse on a derelict ship. “The pilot appears uncomfortably fused with technology and industry, possibly against its will, which would make it a slave to the machine” (Ager 2021). These visual signifiers of man-made corruptive technology are present in nearly all of the film’s extraterrestrial figures, not just the Xenomorph, and the viewer must recognize that to truly comprehend the film’s moral disposition. 

Conclusion 

While the Xenomorph is visually divergent to the Pale Man, both condemn aspects of humanity, particularly the aspect of humanity that grants a single person, or groups of persons, unreasonable power over others. Their designers took the familiarity of human anatomy, and mangled it to nightmarish, grotesque proportions, but each film illustrates that there is no greater nightmare than the reality of the evil that humans can inflict upon each other. These monsters serve as a reminder that just as hints of humanity exist in monstrous bodies, the capability for monstrosity is almost inherent in humans. As Guillermo Del Toro put it, the “true monsters in our lives are real, are human” (Del Toro 2011).

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