Julia Gillard, Sigourney Weaver, Jean Harlow

Australia has a new Prime Minister: Julia Gillard. Not elected, mind you, but an important first that must be celebrated in its firstness. And by that I mean, Charles Sanders Peirce’s firstness, a kind of mode of being without reference to object or subject. This is mainly me shying away from da politix, bro. I’ll leave that for the back of toilet doors and on the side of scaffolds.

However, we (the royal I?) mustn’t shy away from an unavoidable, incontrovertible fact of PM Gillard’s mode of being: she’s a deadset ranga. While this may be evidence enough for some of what lies beneath, the mauling mongrel, I prefer to take my evidence from an ABC “100 Best Movies of all Time” television broadcast in which she appeared a few years ago. I think The Lord of the Rings topped that poll—yes, I know, like, totes whatevs—but I remember the then Deputy PM, possibly even opposition spokesman on workplace relations, was asked for her favourite film character. She said something like, “I reckon being Sigourney Weaver in those Aliens movies would be alright.”

The ideal ego of my Prime Minister is Ripley, and that’s alright by me. I imagine she’s thinking of the infamous scene at the end of Aliens, when Ripley has entered into the mechanical body of an industrial robot and whisper-shouts, “Get away from her you, bitch” to the motherfucking queen alien, who’s already got all up in her face and shit-talked via her tongue-teeth xenonculus (excuse nonsensical neologism: “homunculus” just doesn’t work, and “alienculus” sounds like a link you might not want to click).

By identifying with Weaver, Gillard manages to tick some important re-election boxes:

(1) She stands up to The Company and their exploitation of nature’s commodities, whose raw, what I’ve previously called evolutionary perfection will be refined for intense profits by the military-industrial complex. Look out Big Mining.

(2) By using the robot, she not-quite-commits industrial sabotage (though blowing the whole operation up is always top of Ripley’s To Do list), but at least draws on the product of a no doubt heavily unionised manufacturing industry—Jules won’t forget where she came from.

(3) Finally, she performs this act of heroism in the name of Newt. Like Gillard, Ripley has no children of her own and is not married. However, the mother within, that essential component in the popular and populist punditry of what comprises women, emerges at the right time. By calling the queen a bitch at this moment, she recognises a shared femininity based in progeny and its protection. If some moron impersonates Mrs Lovejoy and brings up Gillard’s childlessness in reference to some failing or some inability to empathise with some rubbish point of view, they need to be silenced by that final scene in Aliens. And be used to host an alien. See how much they like babies then.

Jean Harlow: Red-Headed Woman (1932). Our Julia wouldn’t take this kind of treatment.