Women Scientists Theme Week

Women Scientists Week: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Women Scientists Theme Week here.

5 Women Scientists Who Need Their Own Movie ASAP by Maddie Webb

Issues around equal gender representation in film are compounded by many female researchers’ accomplishments being erased from history, resulting in very few women being key players in scientific biopics. As a woman studying for a science degree, this absence is as painful as it obvious. So in a bid to restore balance (and an excuse for me to nerd out), here are 5 female scientists that deserve to have their stories told on the silver screen.

Jurassic Park: Resisting Gender Tropes by Siobhan Denton

Yet in rewatching Jurassic Park, it struck me that not only is Laura Dern’s Dr. Ellie Sattler a portrayal of a female scientist that is largely unseen in film, but she is, on numerous occasions, keenly aware of her gender and how this leads to her treatment.

Mission Blue: “No Ocean, No Us” by Ren Jender

Audiences have to look to documentaries like Particle Fever, about the discovery of the Higgs boson, to see women scientists in prominent roles on film. The Netflix documentary Mission Blue focuses on one woman scientist, Sylvia Earle, a former chief at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and pioneering oceanographer and marine biologist who is on a quest to save the world’s oceans from dying.

When Will Black Women Play Leading Scientists More Often? by Tara Betts

In movies and on television, the absence of Black women as scientists is glaringly obvious…The response on social media to the vocation of Leslie Jones’ character in Ghostbusters offers an opportunity to ponder: When have Black women been cast as scientists in laboratories, creating and inventing significant and outlandish developments, and leading investigations? …Where are the Black women playing scientists in films in the 21st century?

Splice: The Horror of Having It All by Claire Holland

Splice could very well be a cautionary tale for the career woman considering motherhood. From the outset, the film shows Elsa as an ambitious scientist who loves her job – and who loves her life exactly the way it is. … This presents the central conflict of Elsa’s character: her repressed desire to be a mother, and her larger desire to remain in control of her own life, body, and career.

Beverly Crusher (Star Trek: TNG) and Dana Scully (The X-Files): The Medical and the Maternal by Carly Lane

The impact of Dr. Beverly Crusher and Agent Dana Scully cannot be understated, not just on the landscape of female representation on television or the portrayal of women scientists but the way they also drove young women to pursue STEM fields in reality. …They transcend mere descriptors like woman, lover, mother, caregiver, skeptic, scientist — because they’re all that and more.

Contact: The Power of Feminist Representation by Kelcie Mattson

Contact remains a singularly astute portrayal of a woman combating the oppressive confines of institutional sexism as well as a reminder of how deeply mainstream cinema still needs progressive feminist portrayals that contradict gender clichés. … How refreshing that a woman’s personal arc is considered important enough to be entwined alongside the movie’s core theme of discovering meaning in our seemingly meaningless universe.

Mary and Susan on Johnny Test by Robert V. Aldrich

While the show as a whole was run-of-the-mill, it quietly had two of the most brilliantly realized female characters in recent cartoon history: Mary and Susan Test. …Mary and Susan Test are ambitious, intelligent, and fully-actualized. Exaggeratedly brilliant scientists, it’s the twin girls who put into motion most events of the series.

The World Is Not Enough and the “Believability” of Dr. Christmas Jones by Lee Jutton

Dr. Jones went from being a promising step forward for Bond girls to one of the more maligned female characters of the franchise. … And this is what is the most disappointing thing about Dr. Jones. She’s a tough-talking woman whose best moments in the film come when she grows impatient with Bond’s testosterone-driven idiocy and counters his quips with her own formidable sarcasm, yet in the end, she’s just like any of those earlier Bond girls that Denise Richards dismissed as lacking depth…

In Praise of Jurassic Park‘s Dr. Ellie Sattler by Sarah Mirk

Dr. Sattler is awesome. She’s a character who doesn’t fit into any typical Hollywood box: A friendly, stable, super-smart woman who wants to be a mother, has her own nerdy career, and doesn’t think twice about being a badass. … I saw Jurassic Park when I was seven and from then on wanted to be Dr. Ellie Sattler.

1950s B-Movie Women Scientists: Smart, Strong, but Still Marriageable by Linda Levitt

While the happily ever after scenario in these 1950s B-movies comes with an expectation that women give up their careers in science to become wives and mothers once the appropriate suitor is identified, it seems there are women in B-movies who do have it all — they maintain the respect afforded to them as scientists and also win romantic partners, without having to sacrifice their professional interests to assume domestic roles instead.

Ghostbusters Is One of the Most Important Movies of the Year by Katherine Murray

They’re moved to realize that, after everyone talked shit about them for weeks or months on end, someone actually appreciated what they did. It’s a moment of art imitating life that mirrored my experience with Ghostbusters… I also vastly underestimated how powerful it would be, and how great it would feel, to watch an action-comedy with only women in the leading roles.

The Female Scientists of The X-Files by Angela Morrison

The X-Files consistently worked against the idea that women could not be capable scientists. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the character of Dana Scully inspired many young women to pursue education and careers in science and technology – what is now known as “The Scully Effect.”

Women in Science in the Marvel Cinematic Universe by Cheyenne Matthews-Hoffman

Female scientists are few and far between in the Marvel world. Of the 65 MCU scientists in a live action movie or television show, 18 are women. And of those 18, 2 are women of color… While those numbers may seem a bit low, MCU’s female scientists statistics are pretty much right on target with the national average. Women are greatly underrepresented in the STEM fields in the U.S.

Contact 20 Years Later: Will We Discover Aliens Before Fixing Sexism? by Maria Myotte

But the entire gist is still pretty radical: A big-budget film about a woman leading a monumental mission that, if successful, would be the most important discovery of our time. Contact‘s feminism is all the more stunning to watch two decades after its release because of its stingingly accurate portrayal of sexism in science and refusal to appease the hetero-male gaze.

Dana Scully: Femininity, Otherness, and the Ultimate X-File by Becky Kukla

Instead of investigating the science, Scully actually becomes the science. …There seems to be a substantial link between Scully’s gender and the tests and science that is inflicted upon her. Is this her punishment for daring to be a woman in a male-dominated sphere? … There’s also something pretty grim in Scully’s abduction/missing ovum storyline that feels very reminiscent of higher powers meddling and making decisions about women’s reproductive rights.

Gorillas in the Mist, Dian Fossey, and Female Ambition in the Wild by Jessica Quiroli

If She Can See It, She Can Be It: Women of STEM on Television by Amy C. Chambers

It is important to have women represented in fictional media as scientists from across the spectrum of sciences… By making women more visible in science settings on television – in both fictional and factual programming – the inspiring images of science that can and are being produced can be associated with women who are not only represented as smart individuals but as part of a network of diverse and complex professional women.

The Ponytail Revolution: Why We Need More Women Scientists On-Screen by Kimberly Dilts

In Rewatching The X-Files, One Thing Is Clear: Mulder Is a Real Jerk by Sarah Mirk

I realized something even worse: Agent Mulder is not a dreamboat. In fact, he’s an asshole. An asshole who spends most of the series mansplaining to Agent Scully. … Twenty years after The X-Files debuted, it’s still rare to see a female character who’s as complicated and resilient as Scully — especially who works in science. … What stands out about The X-Files while watching it now, though, is how consistently Scully stands up for herself.

Rise of the Women? Screening Women in Science Since 2000 by Amy C. Chambers

Rise of the Women?: Screening Women in Science Since 2000

This guest post written by Amy C. Chambers originally appeared at The Science and Entertainment Laboratory and an edited version appears here as part of our theme week on Women Scientists. It is cross-posted with permission.

One of my major issues with the most recent addition to the Planet of the Apes franchise, Dawn of the Planets of the Apes (2014), were the roles available to women – both human and ape. In an article I wrote about the film, immediately after its release, I noted that (the very few) female characters were only “represented as child bearers and care takers.” The fabulous Judy Greer, a former dancer who studied simian movement and motion-capture for months in preparation for the role, gets barely any screen-time playing the wife of Caesar (Andy Serkis). Cornelia doesn’t actually get referred to by name so you have to look to the posters or IMDb if you want to know it; interestingly her name is a reference to Cornelius the male chimpanzee from the first three Apes films released in the late-1960s and 1970s (Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and Escape from the Planet of the Apes). The female human, Ellie (Keri Russell) is the only scientist in the film. She is revealed to have worked for the CDC as a research scientist and medic, but in the film she is only given the opportunity to use her medical skills to treat Cornelia’s post-natal complications after she births another boy for Caesar. Ellie’s medical intervention essentially diffuses male aggressiveness and reinforces lazy stereotypes. The women are background characters, barely involved, and overshadowed by their male companions.

I am interested in thinking about how women have been represented in recent Hollywood/American science-based fiction cinema and whether we have really moved beyond relying on stereotypes, sex, and spectacle. Female scientists are increasing in frequency in Hollywood, but they are not being given adequate representation – they are often secondary to their male partners. Any discussion of women in science fiction will often look to the 80s hero, engineer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien (1979). Ripley wields her guns, her attitude, and her brains with pride and power, and she blurs the boundaries between feminine and masculine character traits and stereotypes. She has no love interest, she doesn’t need rescuing, and makes better decisions than her male counterparts. She is a young, educated woman, a survivor, and a hero – her gender is not the most important or interesting thing about her. Ripley was originally conceived and scripted as a male character and some of her strength and progressive nature may be attributed to that. But despite the gender-swap history of character, Ripley is still one of the strongest female characters in a science-based movie. I think it is absurd that a character created before I was born is still considered the strongest female character in a science-based movie; it’s 2016, not 1986.

Female scientist characters are often defined by their relationships to men – as a daughter, a girlfriend, a wife, an assistant, or a colleague. Women are rarely presented as having achieved their scientific status and agency without the aid or inspiration of male character. For example, recent blockbuster Interstellar (2014) included two major female scientist characters Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) and ‘Murph’/Murphy Cooper (played as an adult by Jessica Chastain) both of whom are manipulated and inspired by their fathers. Brand is the daughter of the orchestrator of the film’s central mission, Professor Brand played by Michael Caine. But in addition to this relationship, Amelia Brand is willing to sacrifice herself, the mission, and potentially the future of humanity to be reunited with her boyfriend – Dr. Wolf Edmunds. Interstellar’s male lead ‘Coop’/Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) abandons his daughter Murph and for much of the film she is shown as a woman consumed with anger towards her father. She holds a grudge that spans decades, seemingly unable to appreciate that her father left on a mission to save humanity. Her scientific career and brilliance is apparently driven by her emotion, rather than her own ambition.

I have lots of issues with the Star Trek reboot, and it seems vaguely unfair to pick on just one of them. But let’s talk very briefly about Dr. Carol Marcus (Alice Eve), a Star Fleet Science Officer with a PhD in applied physics and a specialism in advanced weaponry who features in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). Marcus is ultimately defined by her position as the daughter of Admiral Alexander Marcus – the head of Starfleet. She initially hides her true identity by using her mother’s maiden name: Wallace. Yes, Carol does indeed do some science and saves Kirk, but in one scene this potentially brilliant female scientist is simply, and frankly unnecessarily reduced to a sexual object. It’s a short scene played for laughs, but when one of only two major female characters in a huge science fiction franchise — the other being Zoë Saldana’s Uhura, now in a relationship with Spock — is shown in her underwear (for no reason) you have to wonder about how and why filmmakers incorporate female scientists, and female characters more generally, into their films. This brief sequence feels as similarly out of place as the scene at the end of Alien when Ripley strips down to her underwear. As Xan Brooks comments in an article about Ripley as a revolutionary heroine: “It is as though the makers were so alarmed by what they had unleashed that they tried to rein her back at the last minute.” It was out of place in 1979, and it is unacceptable now.

These are just a few poor examples that caught my eye and they are based upon my own viewing, so I asked my social media hive-mind to help me with producing a list of female scientists in Hollywood films released since 2000. It was not extensive. Interestingly, I could find far more female scientists in films released during the 1990s. We will have missed some, but it should not be that difficult to come up with a list of female characters that took on prominent scientist roles in the last 5, 10, or 15 years.

Excluding Brand and Murph from Interstellar, Carol Marcus from Star Trek Into Darkness, and Ellie from Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, we came up with: evolutionary biology student Karen (Brit Marling) in I Origins (2014), archaeologist and paleontologist Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) in Prometheus (2013); medical engineer Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) in Gravity (2013), geneticist Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz) in Bourne Legacy (2012), astrophysicist Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman in Thor (2011) and Thor: The Dark World (2013), veterinarian Dr. Caroline Aranha (Freida Pinto) in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), xenobotanist (studying alien plant life) Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) in Avatar (2009), genetic engineer Dr. Elsa Cast (Sarah Polley) in Splice (2009), and botanist Corazon (Michelle Yeoh) in Sunshine (2007). Of the women listed here few are, besides Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus and Ryan Stone in Gravity, their film’s central protagonist. For example, in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Caroline Aranha is a thinly drawn scientist character and love interest who assists Will Rodman (James Franco), and in Bourne Legacy, Marta Shearing is a brilliant but dangerous geneticist working in a secret lab who becomes a love interest and damsel in need of rescue for/by Aron Cross (Jeremy Renner).

In Thor (2011), Jane Foster is an astrophysicist rather than a nurse, as she appeared in Marvel’s Thor comics. She is apparently given an intellectual upgrade and a sassy non-scientist female intern named Darcy (Kat Dennings). Jane was changed from a nurse to a research scientist following discussions between science advisors provided by the Science and Entertainment Exchange and the filmmakers, who wanted to update the character for a 21st-Century audience. Portman prepared for the role by reading the biographies of women scientists and was interested in creating a female scientist that could extend beyond the clichés of what a female character could be and do.

“I got to read all of these biographies of female scientists like Rosalind Franklin who actually discovered the DNA double helix but didn’t get the credit for it, the struggles they had and the way that they thought — I was like, ‘What a great opportunity, in a very big movie that is going to be seen by a lot of people, to have a woman as a scientist.’ [Jane]’s a very serious scientist. Because in the comic she’s a nurse and now they made her an astrophysicist. Really, I know it sounds silly, but it is those little things that makes girls think it’s possible. It doesn’t give them a [role] model of ‘Oh, I just have to dress cute in movies.” – Natalie Portman

The decision to make Jane Foster an astrophysicist was motivated by a desire to incorporate references to ‘real’ science and to incorporate a female scientist who might act as inspiration for future female scientists. It is indeed great to see a major female character in a blockbuster movie franchise as a scientist. But in the presence of Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Jane just goes googly-eyed and her scientific career and research become secondary to this new love interest (who just happens to literally be a god). She accepts his framing of science as magic without questioning (as any leading scientist would) and her research seems to ultimately become about finding him after the Bifröst Bridge is destroyed at the end of the first movie. In a great scene from Thor: The Dark World (2013), Jane is on an awkward blind date that she cuts short when Darcy crashes the date with new findings and readings that had previously preceded the arrival of Thor. Jane was framed as “the woman of science” in the film’s 2010/2011 marketing campaign, but in the film itself, her scientific prowess has NO influence upon the plot. Jane’s advanced understanding of astrophysics and her research is seriously under-used and so is the character who given little chance to develop beyond being Thor’s human love interest.

For a genre that is defined by its futuristic otherworldly framework and its potential to imagine alternate societies and power relations, the cultural politics of the science fiction genre have been consistently Earthbound. Movies reflect the period in which they are created and they often present both hopes for progress as well as revealing deep-seated prejudices. Filmmakers often fail to fully realize their attempts at progress – although this can be due to a number of reasons across the production process, including interference from the studio, and in the reception of the film that is outside of the director’s control. As feminist science fiction writer and critic Joanna Russ famously noted, science fiction narratives present a type of “intergalactic suburbia,” where Western society is presented with only a few futuristic additions, tending towards showing “an idealized and simplified” past that retains traditional power relations. The world has undergone huge advances across STEM but traditional, binaristic gender relations remain in tact. Russ’s comments criticize not only gender representation but also race and class by recognizing the preservation of traditional structures in futuristic and near-future narratives.

Is it possible to change perceptions of women in STEM through better and more pervasive representation of women in science-based popular cinema? Would more female scientists in popular cinema help to encourage young women to pursue STEM careers? Several groups are working to improve the representation of science, and women of science in the film industry. For example, The Science Entertainment Exchange “is a program of the National Academy of Sciences that connects entertainment industry professionals with top scientists and engineers to create a synergy between accurate science and engaging storylines in both film and TV.” They work to create a stronger relationship between the industry and experts in order to present a more realistic image of science and scientists, both women and men, on-screen. The Scirens promote the need for increased science literacy in the general public and consider how women can be ambassadors for this cause. One of the Scirens, Taryn O’Neill, wrote an interesting piece on this subject called “Actresses for STEM“ that inspired the project; it is worth a read. They have all worked to improve representation by encouraging a movement away from clichés in order to engage and retain audiences.

A study published in 2005 by Jocelyn Steinke looked at female scientist representation between 1991 and 2001. She found that about 30% of scientists in the movies released in her survey time-frame were female and that those women tended to be sane, eschewing the “mad evil scientist” stereotype, and tended to avoid questionable scientific experiments. Although in more recent cinema, Elsa in Splice and Marta in Bourne Legacy do use science in an ethically problematic fashion, with Elsa splicing together the DNA of different animals to create new hybrids for medical use, and Marta experimenting upon and maintaining genetically altered super assassins. Despite these two recent examples, women scientists on-screen are generally positive figures. At least until you consider how restrictively they are packaged – as Eva Flicker notes in her Public Understanding of Science article “Between Brains and Breasts“:

“[The female scientist] is remarkably beautiful and, compared with her qualifications, unbelievably young. She has a model’s body – thin, athletic, perfect – is dressed provocatively and is sometimes ‘distorted’ by wearing glasses.”

An interesting example of this from recent TV is computer scientist Felicity Smoak in Arrow (2012-) – she wears glasses in the lab and removes them when she goes undercover as ‘the beautiful woman’ allowing her to slip into venues unnoticed. She’s more than just a bit of sci-candy as her abilities are integral to the mixed gender team she works with, but it is intriguing that she still falls into a visual classification that can be applied to the representation of female scientists since the 1930s. Although arguably, female scientists and highly-intelligent female characters should be allowed to be both beautiful and brainy, shifting away from the idea that beauty and brains are mutually exclusive, Hollywood is still offering a restricted image of the gifted woman. Science can be as the European Commission recently campaigned ‘a girl thing!’ – but there must be scope to communicate the notion that science is for everyone regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, age, disability, or class (Alice Bell wrote a brilliant response to the European Commission campaign).

Some major future-dystopia film franchises have shown the potential for multifaceted female characters. The Hunger Games and Divergent do provide smart female protagonists: Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Tris (Shalene Woodley). But these women are fighters and leaders, not women of STEM. Both of these franchises are based upon young adult (YA) novels and therefore do not necessarily work well as comparisons to the adult science-based narratives I have been discussing. The rules are different for YA adaptations; since the immense success of The Twilight Saga teenage girls have become a major market for Hollywood and films are made to specifically cater for this influential and profitable group. The problem seems to be adult women. The idea that women, and perhaps even some men, might want to see a film with a female lead and a cast with more than a few token women is seeming incomprehensible for contemporary Hollywood. The desire for big opening weekends and early high profits has possibly created a culture of stereotypical gender representation, and a tired narrative cinema that relies upon reboots, sequels, and reaffirming traditional structures. Rise of the women? Not really.

Amy C. Chambers is a postdoctoral researcher at Newcastle University in the UK researching the intersection of science and entertainment media. Her newest project explores the representation and the projected futures of women within scientific cultures in science fiction. She blogs about her research and interests at the Science and Entertainment Laboratory and The Unsettling Scientific Stories Project, and you can follow her on Twitter at @AmyCChambers.

In Rewatching ‘The X-Files,’ One Thing Is Clear: Mulder Is a Real Jerk

I realized something even worse: Agent Mulder is not a dreamboat. In fact, he’s an asshole. An asshole who spends most of the series mansplaining to Agent Scully. … Twenty years after ‘The X-Files’ debuted, it’s still rare to see a female character who’s as complicated and resilient as Scully — especially who works in science.

This guest post written by Sarah Mirk originally appeared at Bitch Media and appears here as part of our theme week on Women Scientists. It is cross-posted with permission.

When I was in junior high, I had one major extracurricular activity: watching The X-Files. I loved the spookiness and the drama surrounding FBI agents Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Fox Mulder (David Duchovny). During the long summer months, I got X-Files consumption down to an efficient science. This was long before Netflix, back when binge-watching required serious devotion. Each day, I would walk down to the video store and rent a $2 VHS of two X-Files episodes. Then, at 9 p.m., I could watch another X-Files rerun on FX. That means I could squeeze three X-Files episodes into each 24-hour period. In my downtime, I read the unofficial X-Files guidebooks. It was a great summer.

Though I stopped watching the show as I got older (even 14-year-old me could clearly see when the show jumped the shark in season six), I remembered The X-Files as an excellent show. Agent Scully was a confident scientist. Agent Mulder was a dreamboat. I loved them both and thought they were the kind of odd couple that’s clearly made for each other. Then, last year, Fox announced that the original stars would be coming back to TV for an all new X-Files miniseries this January. I giddily started rewatching episodes.The X-Files is certainly a lot cheesier and low-budget than I remembered through the haze of nostalgia. But that’s not the biggest difference. Before finishing even one episode, I realized something even worse: Agent Mulder is not a dreamboat. In fact, he’s an asshole. An asshole who spends most of the series mansplaining to Agent Scully.

A lot of the fun of The X-Files, of course, comes from the sparky dynamic between Mulder and Scully. He’s a conspiracy theorist who instantly points to aliens, ghosts, or an errant chupacabra as the culprit for many of the crimes the pair investigate. Scully, meanwhile, is a forensic doctor whose criminal hypotheses stem from her extensive understanding of anatomy, chemistry, and biology. I’d always loved seeing the partners bounce contrasting ideas off each other. But watching the show as an adult who’s had two decades or so to reflect on everyday sexism, it’s suddenly obvious just how much bullshit Scully has to put up with. Not only does Mulder routinely dismiss her extremely practical ideas, but her knowledge often gets the side-eye from other men in the male-dominated world of law enforcement. In episode after episode, she has to defend her ideas to Mulder, her boss Agent Skinner, small-town cops, and a rotating cast of folks like the Lone Gunmen.

As a teen, I loved how Scully presented herself confidently and competently in the face of truly otherworldly chaos. She’s still a great character for that reason, but watching the show now, instead of rooting for Mulder and Scully as a duo, I find myself rooting for Scully alone. Twenty years after The X-Files debuted, it’s still rare to see a female character who’s as complicated and resilient as Scully — especially who works in science. Meanwhile, many of Mulder’s character traits that I once thought were endearing — his puppy dog attitude, his propensity toward throwing himself into the path of danger, his skepticism toward Scully’s ideas — now feel to me like standard egotistical behavior. As a teenager, I’d never met anyone like Mulder. Now, I’ve met many guys who act a lot like him — although their obsessions are usually not aliens, but Apple products, or politics, or “ethics in video game journalism.”

What stands out about The X-Files while watching it now, though, is how consistently Scully stands up for herself. There are a bunch of episodes where Scully’s no-bullshit attitude toward mansplaining shines. In season-three episode “Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space,’” Mulder runs around trying to prove that two upset teens were abducted by aliens while they were on a date. Scully calmly explains that it’s far more plausible that the two teenagers simply had sex and are struggling to deal with the emotional aftermath. This exchange between the agents is classic Scully:

SCULLY: We know that it wasn’t an alien who probed her. Mulder, you’ve got two kids having sex before they’re mature enough to know how to handle it.

MULDER: So you’re saying that all this is just a case of sexual trauma?

SCULLY: It’s a lot more plausible than an alien abduction.

That episode, like most episodes of The X-Files, ends in a gray area. Neither Mulder nor Scully’s ideas are completely vindicated, and it’s not clear to viewers whether the strange encounter was caused by sexual trauma, extraterrestrials, or shadowy government agents. Neither agent is wrong, but the script writers are careful to show neither is objectively right, either. Another fan-favorite Scully episode is season four’s “Never Again.” Gillian Anderson reportedly asked the show writers to put together a script specifically exploring Scully’s “dark side.” The result is this episode that begins with Scully asking Mulder why he has a desk — with a nameplate and all — while she doesn’t. Mulder says he always thought of a corner of the room as “her area” — an explanation Scully doesn’t buy. Then, Mulder heads out on vacation, telling Scully to follow up on a UFO sighting. She argues that it seems like a real waste of time, especially since the witness’s account of the incident sounds suspiciously like the plot of a Rocky & Bullwinkle episode.

MULDER: So you’re refusing an assignment based on the adventures of Moose and Squirrel?

SCULLY: “Refusing an assignment?” It makes it sound like you’re my superior.

MULDER: Do what you want. Don’t go to Philadelphia, but let me remind you that I worked my ass off to get the files reopened. You were just assigned. This work is my life.

SCULLY: And it’s become mine.

MULDER: You don’t want it to be.

SCULLY: This isn’t about you. Or maybe it is, indirectly. I don’t know. I feel like I’ve lost sight of myself, Mulder. It’s hard to see, let alone find in the darkness of covert locations. I mean, I wish I could say that we were going in circles, but we’re not. We’re going in an endless line — two steps forwards and three steps back. While my own life is… standing still.

With Mulder on vacation, Scully winds up going on a date with a man, who (of course) turns out to be driven mad by a tattoo laced with poison ink. Deadly shenanigans ensue and Scully lands in the hospital. When she returns to work, rather bruised, Mulder asks, “All this, because I’ve … because I didn’t get you a desk?” Scully doesn’t give into his guilt trip. The episode ends with the line, “Not everything is about you, Mulder. This is my life.” Television doesn’t get more direct than that.

The “Mulder is an asshole” trend isn’t just something that bugs me — a lot of fans feel the same way. This fall, I was on an X-Files panel at GeekGirlCon in Seattle with five other female fans. In front of a conference room full of several dozen serious X-Files devotees, I was a little nervous to voice my negative feelings about Mulder. But panelist and X-Files burlesque producer (yes, that’s a thing) Jo Jo Stiletto beat me to it. “Mulder is a real dick,” she said, to applause. That quickly became the theme of the panel: recounting the many ways that Mulder shuts down Scully, dismisses her intelligence, and generally belittles her during the series. Every fan had their own story of coming to realize that Mulder is a dick. Instead of reveling in the will-they-or-won’t-they romance between Mulder and Scully, as adults, we all agreed that Mulder feels a lot like a manipulative ex-boyfriend all women are better off without.

When the new miniseries airs this month on Fox, I’ll be watching. But while the show will always hold a special place in my heart, what will keep me tuned into the reboot isn’t Mulder and Scully. It’s Scully, holding her own. Mulder and his eye-rolling can go get permanently abducted for all I care.

Sarah Mirk is Bitch Media‘s online editor. She’s interested in gender, history, comics, and talking to strangers. You can follow her on Twitter.

The Ponytail Revolution: Why We Need More Women Scientists On-Screen

This guest post written by Kimberly Dilts appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists.

One of my smartest, funniest friends, playwright Megan Gogerty, came home from Ghostbusters the other night, rightfully full of joy about having just seen four fully fleshed-out female characters spend the length of a film “nerding out on science and history.” She pointed out something about the experience that was revolutionary. Wait. More revolutionary than FOUR WOMEN NERDING OUT ABOUT SCIENCE IN A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, you ask? Yes, MORE revolutionary. I’m going to let her tell you in her own words because frankly, she’s smarter and funnier than I am:

“That fight scene? I can’t… To see four women! Kicking ass as themselves, with not a single spandex leather catsuit or wedge heels to be seen! THEY ALL HAD THEIR HAIR TIED BACK. Do you understand how radical that is? The simple act of, y’know, getting your hair out of your fucking face before you fight a monster, rather than having it whipped sensually around over your eyes, blocking your vision? Buffy couldn’t do it. Mrs. Smith couldn’t do it. Sydney Bristow couldn’t do it. They were all forced into the Implausible Battle Hair code of conduct for genre heroines. If you are a man and were bored and didn’t notice their hair was tied back during the battle scene, may I humbly and gently suggest perhaps that you may not know what it’s like to be out in the desert, to not see yourself — to never, ever, ever, ever, ever see yourself — in a genre picture without having to squeeze yourself into the impossible corset the Male Gaze requires.”

I want to stop here and invite you to ponder this with me for a moment. In 2016, in cinema, it is a revolutionary act to see a woman tie her hair back on-screen in order to accomplish a task. Not to flirt – not because the messy bun makes her look cute in that “I just woke up and don’t really care what I look like but still look like a model kind of way” – but to just do a thing without getting her hair in her mouth. It is simply not done. That’s how low the bar is set for women in film.

We don’t just need female scientists on-screen, we need female scientists on-screen who have cellulite, and wear flats, and have passionate conversations about substantive, quantitative, peer-reviewed flovinium-laced flaxum jaxum time fluxes. We need women scientists on-screen who are women of color, LGBTQIA women, and women with disabilities. We need female characters who don’t cater to the Male Gaze — who, when going to fight monsters (as scientists often do in the movies, let’s face it), don fucking power ponytails.

It has to be normal for women to wield power in films. We need to see women be the smartest and to have a variety of body sizes, like men get to have. Why? Because story is how we understand the world. We create perception (and therefore, personal reality) through story, which has an immediate effect on reality because thoughts become words, and words become action (or inaction — how many young girls stay away from pools because they internalized the message that they don’t have “bikini” bodies?). If we normalize women in science on film, it helps to enable more women to be scientists in the real world. Don’t think media has that much power? Take a look at what CSI did for forensic science, or what Jaws did to (and then for) sharks, or what Frozen did for ice princesses. The X-Files‘ character “Dana Scully inspired many young women to pursue education and careers in science and technology – what is now known as ‘The Scully Effect.'”

THIS IS WHY FEMALE LED FILMS ARE IMPORTANT pic.twitter.com/DsCj0NlHvg

— trudie (@hoItzmanns) July 10, 2016

In high school, I was a “nerd.” I got straight A’s and I went to The International Science Fair. When it was suggested that I think about theoretical physics as a career, I actually did think about it… and then opted for a career in the arts instead because I’m a glutton for punishment who likes not having any money. Now, I don’t regret my choice, but I do sometimes wonder, would I have actually become a theoretical physicist if I had had, say, a single female science teacher? Or any signal from popular culture that a girl choosing science for a career was, if not cool, at least normal? I have no idea. But science tells us that outcome would certainly be more probable if I’d had even one woman role model in STEM.

We are truly in a moment of struggle over whose stories are being told. Do filmmakers believe that women are active protagonists worthy of their own tales, or passive objects to be used to further male narratives? It’s as big and infuriating and important as that — what is the story we want to tell about a woman’s place in the world? There are countries where women are not allowed to drive, women are put to death for having been raped or for reading. Here in the U.S., women contend with misogyny and sexism, rape and sexual assault, intimate partner violence, abortion restrictions, unequal pay, and sexual harassment. Women of color face racism; Black women face racism and police brutality. Queer women face homophobia and biphobia. Trans women face transphobia, harassment, and murder. The story that society currently tells is that women are property to be controlled — we are the discovered, not the discoverers, and cinema reinforces this notion in a million little destructive ways every day.

So yes, we need more women scientists in film. We need more women senators, and pilots, and coders, and entrepreneurs and activists, and filmmakers, and we need it to be totally normal for women of all races and ethnicities and sexual orientations to be these things on the big screen.

We need women to write, direct, produce, and fund these stories. Because despite overwhelming evidence that women want to see themselves on-screen and will pay cash money to do so, Hollywood, seems determined to maintain the status quo. If we want to see change, and we want to see our stories told from our point of view, we have to do it ourselves. So I’m writing a mermaid comedy about a marine biologist. It’s going to be broad, and goofy and by god, there will be ponytails. Who’s with me?

Photo of Margot Lee Shetterly, author of ‘Hidden Figures’ which is being adapted into a film, by NASA in the public domain.

Kimberly Dilts is a Los Angeles-based writer/producer/performer currently touring her second feature film, Auld Lang Syne on the festival circuit. She’s also currently working on rewrites for two films, both featuring female protagonists. You can learn more about her work at www.scrappycatproductions.com and follow her on Twitter @kmdilts.

If She Can See It, She Can Be It: Women of STEM on Television

I am a self-proclaimed Orphan Black geek monkey and I am obsessed with Clone Club (and their marvelous dance parties). When I first started to explore the representation of women in science in entertainment media I wrote a blog post on the subject to help organize my thoughts on how and where women working in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) were represented. I got a great response from people who read the article and received lots of tweets about the mysterious Cosima Niehaus. After a quick google I binge-watched the first two seasons of Orphan Black (an almost entirely female-led science-based series) and excitedly watching seasons three on four on TV.

I have now discovered that Cosima is an evolutionary biologist (the geek-monkey) who is one of the show’s main characters; part of a cast of clones (#CloneClub) all played by the mesmerizing Tatiana Maslany. Cosima is named after Orphan Black’s own science advisor Cosima Herter (one of the few women acting as a science consultant in mainstream film/TV) who is a science writer interested “in the ethics, philosophy, and history of biology, especially cloning, evolutionary theory, and genetic engineering.” In Orphan Black, Cosima is both an active scientist who helps to drive the plot and explain much of the series’ scientific complexities, and a science experiment as part of a convoluted conspiracy plot surrounding the Dyad Institute, the Neolutionists, the Proletheans, and Topside, amongst many others. It is a narratively dense series, but at its core it is fixated upon science and women — something that I discovered was severely lacking in the mother / daughter / lover women I found on the silver screen.

I am restricting my examples to TV series released after 2000 and I chose to split discussions of film and television because there is a disparity between the number of women scientists in mainstream Hollywood movies, and the volume of women present in television shows. Some of this is due to the fact that there are far more TV programs made than films, and that the production process is very different with the option for pilot-episodes (to test out potentially unprofitable female characters…), early cancellations (in the U.S. context), and long-running shows such as FOX’s Bones that provide the opportunity for existing female characters to be developed and for new ones to be introduced.

Bones is led by Dr Temperance “Bones” Brennan with a comparatively substantial list of female co-stars in scientific professions (in the main cast the gender split is 50:50). The women are not outnumbered, the women have conversations about things other than men, and they are not ‘damsels in distress’ – they fight their own battles and wield their own firearms. The series passes both the Smurfette test and the Bechdel test. However, Bones does not comment on the very real issue of sexism in the hard sciences but it, in part, helps to address the problem by making women, from a variety of different backgrounds, scientific role models for its viewers.

Women make up between 60-65% of the US TV viewership but, as noted in a 2013 study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, only 38.9% of characters in prime-time programs are women, and only 22% of prime-time programs feature women in half of all speaking parts. Science-based television series seem to fair better with women taking some significant roles within their respective shows. There are some brilliant examples of women in STEM on the small screen for example: Astrid Farnsworth (Jasica Nicole) and Nina Sharp (Blair Brown) from Fringe; Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) from NCIS; Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan) from Masters of Sex; Nikki Alexander (Emilia Fox), Clarissa Mullery (Liz Carr), and Sam Ryan (Amanda Burton) from the UK’s Silent Witness; Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge), and Daisy ‘Skye’ Johnson (Chloe Bennet) from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Alison Carter (Salli Richardson-Whitfield) from Eureka; Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) – from Stargate: SG1, Stargate Universe, and Stargate: Atlantis. Where I struggled to build a long post-2000 list of women of science in cinema in a couple of hours I managed to amass a list of more than fifty women of STEM on mainstream shows with a mix of science fiction and science-based/medical dramas. I also included mechanical engineers Kaylee Frye (Jewel Staite) from Firefly, The 100’s Raven Reyes (Lindsey Morgan), and Scorpion’s Happy Quinn (Jadyn Wong). Yet despite these good examples, women still pale in comparison to their male counterparts who are often the lead characters.

“Both young girls and boys should see female decision-makers, political leaders, managers, and scientists as the norm, not the exception. By increasing the number and diversity of female leaders and role models on screen, content creators may affect the ambitions and career aspirations of girls and young women domestically and internationally. As Geena Davis frequently states: ‘If she can see it, she can be it.’” —Gender Roles & Occupations: A Look at Character Attributes and Job-Related Aspirations in Film and Television

It is important to have women represented in fictional media as scientists from across the spectrum of sciences, not just biological and medical sciences. Although I did not struggle to create a post-2000 TV list of women with science-based professions, I did find that a higher percent of the women I found were working in the biosciences including all the female medics on House, Body of Proof, CSI, Rizzoli & Isles, The Strain. Finding women represented in the hard sciences was more of a challenge – in The Big Bang Theory for example, of the female scientists that are series regulars Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik) and Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz (Melissa Rauch), one is a neurologist and the other is microbiologist. They are repeatedly shown to be academically brilliant and their scientific prowess adds to their characterization but they are both bioscientists – the hard physical sciences are almost entirely left to the men. Earlier in the series, there was the wonderful Leslie Winkle (Sara Gilbert) who was a physicist who was able to hold her own and often exceed the achievements of the boys – but she was not retained as a series regular.

I had to search through several of the The Big Bang Theory seasons to find a second example of a woman outside of the biosciences and medicine: Elizabeth Plimpton (Judy Greer), cosmological physicist, appears in one episode – “The Plimpton Stimulation” in season 3 – but her academic prowess is soon undermined by the character’s voracious sexual appetite. Other women include Leonard’s (Johnny Galecki) mother, psychologist Beverly Hofstadter (Christine Baranski); Leonard’s ex, Stephanie Barnett, MD (Sara Rue); and Raj’s (Kunal Nayyar) girlfriend, dermatologist Emily Sweeney (Laura Spencer, who also plays intern Jessica Warren on Bones). Rashel Li and Lindy A. Orthia conducted a study on viewer responses to scientific ability and gender balance/imbalance on The Big Bang Theory. Many participants were irritated by the gender-based stereotypes of men in physics and women in biology but conceded that all scientist characters were shown to be equally scientifically capable despite their restriction to particular fields.

This made me think about how the female characters are incorporated into The Big Bang Theory. When the sitcom began in 2007 there was only Penny (she had no last name until recently, when she married one of the male scientists and took his name, don’t even get me started on that) a supposedly ditzy actress/food server played by Kaley Cuoco to provide gender “balance.” But over its nine seasons, the show has evolved from being a tired trope of “nerdy male scientists can’t get a dates” to a show with developed female characters who are more than romantic accessories or weak comedic stereotypes. The show has been praised for its realistic representation of bench science, but up until its fourth season it failed to show professional women in STEM settings unless they were administrators, assistants, or students. Amy and Bernadette start off as the oddball lady-Sheldon and the squeaky-voiced vertically-challenged blonde – but these initially problematic characters develop to show the real-world issues faced by professional women who struggle with not being taken seriously because they are women who don’t reject their femininity. They are not the stereotypical representations of STEM women as described by Jocelyn Steinke in her study of female scientist representation in movies 1991-2001, and they are not simply sci-candy brought in to solve problems for the male leads. The women of The Big Bang Theory are now given screen-time without the male characters and Amy, Bernadette, and Penny (who left waiting tables to forge a career in pharmaceutical sales) have their own lives to discuss beyond their romantic entanglements. The show still needs to work on its representation of gender (and race) in STEM, but it remains one of the most realistic representations of real science on television, and may inspire some women to pursue a career in the sciences.

“In recent years the so called ‘fourth wave’ activists and organisations have been making great strides in bringing feminism back up the social and political agenda. Groups like the Everyday Sexism Project, No More Page Three, the Women of the World festival (WOW) and the Women on Bank Notes campaign have all contributed to widening understanding of our social inequalities. This is the wider context within which we can begin to address the inequalities in STEM.

We call on TV and other media to use the gender lens when casting new characters in widely viewed programmes, commissioning new series that challenge gender stereotypes, and to both train and use female experts.” – Science Grrl, THROUGH BOTH EYES: The case for a gender lens in STEM

Media producers need to think more actively about incorporating female characters into their science-based TV series; they should, as recommended by a report produced by Science Grrl (quoted above), use a gender lens when commissioning new shows. They need to work towards producing shows that “challenge gender stereotypes” – women should not be an afterthought or a late addition; they should be part of the initial design of the program. A huge majority of science-based television programs and films have science consultants who advise on science content and science-based storylines to make them more believable and entertaining. It is important to have scientists involved in a production at an early stage as collaborators to allow for a more organic incorporation of scientific principles and more accurate representations of the systems of science (laboratories, experiments, results). This should also be applied to the incorporation of women in STEM – as part of my developing research I want to analyze the incorporation of women into science-based shows and ask how improving the involvement of women (as science advisors, writers, directors, etc.) could genuinely improve and diversify the representation of scientists.

The film and television industry is still an extremely male dominated field. “In 2013-14, women comprised 27% of all individuals working as creators, directors, writers, producers, executive producers, editors, and directors of photography,” according to “Boxed In Report,” commissioned by Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. For me, the most important media recommendation made by the Science Grrl report is the idea that women need to be incorporated into the process early and that media producers should even be involved in training women scientists to be active contributors. Science consultants are an increasingly important part of producing exciting and entertaining science-based TV and film. Dr. Kevin R. Grazier, the science advisor for Battlestar Galactica, Defiance, Falling Skies, and the movie Gravity spoke at an event I was involved with about his involvement in the these projects from the beginning – science was a core element of their creation. Science-based narratives are informed by the science-based worlds created by both the creative teams and their science advisors.

The experience of female scientists is an important thing to be presenting on-screen not only for young women but also for young men who can have the idea of seeing women of STEM on their screens normalized. By involving women in STEM as advisors and collaborators, the representation of women can move from being token figures and anomalies to being regular and entirely expected leading figures in science-based narratives on either the big or the small screen. By making women more visible in science settings on television – in both fictional and factual programming – the inspiring images of science that can and are being produced can be associated with women who are not only represented as smart individuals but as part of a network of diverse and complex professional women.

Women don’t need to be told that science can be girly, and they don’t need to be given pretty role models to show them the way into science; but they do need to be shown that science is for everyone.

‘Gorillas In the Mist’, Dian Fossey, and Female Ambition in the Wild

This guest post written by Jessica Quiroli appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists.

When we first see Dian Fossey — portrayed by Sigourney Weaver, nominated for an Oscar for her performance — in the biopic Gorillas in the Mist, she’s briskly walking up stairs at a sprawling college campus in Louisville, Kentucky. She looks pristine, as do her surroundings. She’s well-dressed, her hair perfectly coiffed, her eyes glowing with hope and curiosity. She’s the image of health, intelligence, cleanliness, and acceptable American womanhood in the 1960s.

That will not last.

Dian Fossey, a zoologist, primatologist, and anthropologist, was a controversial figure because she approached her work with primates in their natural habitat in a radical and unconventional way. But it was, of course, also because she was a woman in the wild. Before Cheryl Strayed wrote her book Wild about hiking the Pacific Coast Trail, and Reese Witherspoon made a feminist masterpiece of it on the big screen, there was Gorillas in the Mist: a film that tells Fossey’s complicated story, three years after she was murdered in 1985 in her cabin in Rwanda.

The film celebrates the beautiful creatures Dian was sent to track by famed anthropologist Louis Leakey and her profound connection to them, which led to her living on a mountain, endangering her life in the process. She ultimately positioned herself to battle frustrated poachers protecting their way of life, despite the illegal killing of gorillas.

Dian’s arrival in the Republic of the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in Africa illustrates a rejection of all that was traditionally feminine in her previous life — an engagement to a man, not to mention her blow dryer, which she insists on having in the early part of her journey. By the end, she’s stripped herself of all those aesthetic concerns, at least outwardly.

Fossey established her own site in 1967, named the Karisoke Research Center, in a rainforest camp in Rwanda, where much of the film’s story focuses. Throughout the film, as she journeys away from that woman in the first frame, we watch her fall in love not just with her African surroundings and gorilla subjects, but with her own power. At one point Dian bellows, “Get off my mountain!” — which could be viewed as a problematic or colonial statement as she is a white woman claiming ownership of a land not hers. In that moment, she perhaps reveals a deeper desire to detach from people whom she felt controlled or judged her. In Africa, she’s hated by poachers, but she’s unapologetically claimed her agency.

The film also explores Dian’s relationship with photographer Bob Campbell (Bryan Brown). The two begin an affair after he becomes the sole photographer of her work with the gorillas. The photos serve as documentation of the emotional bond that Dian developed with them. But the images are also a foreshadowing; Dian long ago gave up notions of being a traditional woman or wife, a decision that ultimately impacts their relationship. Fossey’s friend Rosamund Carr (portrayed by Julie Harris) confirms that her heartbreak over the end of her relationship profoundly affected her, confirming the film’s accuracy as well.

At times it seems so clear that Dian should leave, where she looks worn out and miserable, as well as genuinely sick (Fossey had asthma, and was also a smoker). The inspiration that made her eyes glow in the first few scenes is gone, replaced by a determination to not surrender and a desire to control her environment. Her fearlessness, however, is admirable; her drive, awe-inspiring. She spent years sacrificing her own needs to do work that had never done before, work that would have long-term impacts. Weaver shows not only that Fossey was devoted to studying her creatures, but that, at a certain point, they were her true love, for better or worse.

In 1967 women were on the verge of a revolution, forging their path by demanding equal respect and opportunities. Fossey didn’t fight that battle in everyday society, but she lived and died as a symbol of defiance of the expectations put on women. Just by doing work that she loved and believed in, Fossey made a statement about women’s value in the world.

Gorillas in the Mist doesn’t rob you of mourning. But it also doesn’t paint Fossey as a fool or victim. Her death was a horrific tragedy. But the movie shows you her fearless leadership, as she faced peril. She had every opportunity to jump off the track and move far from her mountain. But she refused.

Adapted from the screenplay from Fossey’s autobiography, screenwriter Anna Hamilton Phelan offers insight into Fossey’s mentality. Phelan recalled her visit to Fossey’s cabin, in Linda Seger’s screenwriting book Creating Unforgettable Characters. The visit occurred just weeks after Fossey’s death. With police tape everywhere, Phelan was unable to go inside. However, she peeked in her closet from a window. Hanging in the closet, she saw a ball gown, which she later learned was from the department store Bonwitt and Teller. That moment inspired Phelan to write the screenplay. Why was Fossey holding on to a ball gown in the middle of the wild? Phelan and Weaver’s performance show that Fossey lived by her own standards and didn’t care to be desired or liked. Perhaps she looked at that fancy gown in her closet and recalled her past life; perhaps she even longed for her former life. But she never fully returned to it.

As risky as her decision was, she stayed the course, refusing to be any other kind of woman than the one she became with the gorillas on that mountain.

The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International carried on Fossey’s work in the Karisoke Research Center, “dedicated to the conservation and protection of gorillas and their habitats in Africa.”

See also at Bitch Flicks: Biopic and Documentary Week: ‘Gorillas in the Mist’

Jessica Quiroli is a minor league baseball writer for Baseball Prospectus and the creator of Heels on the Field: A MiLB Blog. She’s also written extensively about domestic violence in baseball. She’s a DV survivor. You can follow her on Twitter @heelsonthefield.

Dana Scully: Femininity, Otherness, and the Ultimate X-File

This guest post written by Becky Kukla appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists.

Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) is my ultimate icon. She’s intelligent, cool-headed, and super sassy. She also has the best job in the world which usually involves traipsing miserably after her alien-obsessed FBI partner Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) in a bid to prove the existence of extraterrestrials to the United States government. Yeah… and I thought my job sounded stressful…

The X Files was, and to some extent still is, a cultural phenomenon. Countless articles and academic papers (including part of my dissertation) have been written about the cult aspect of the show, the allegories to our real world society, and the inversion of masculine/feminine stereotypes within the main characters (Mulder is an emotional believer, Scully is a rational skeptic). The X-Files often does hold a mirror up to the things we often glaze over within society, and its portrayal of The Syndicate (a group who effectively control everything in the world) as a bunch of old, white men is particularly relevant, even twenty years later. While The X-Files was busy being experimental in its monsters of the week and its representation of our society, the show tended to be incredibly formulaic in terms of the dynamic between the two main characters. No, I am not talking about that insatiable chemistry that still has us all guessing today, but the typical narrative structure of each episode. Mulder discovers a weird case with potential supernatural links, Scully tells him that he is mad and looks for scientific explanation, Mulder proves that his explanation is the correct one, all the evidence is destroyed (somehow) and Scully still finds that she can’t quite bring herself to ignore ‘the science.’

It makes for nostalgic viewing (we are never in any doubt about what will transpire throughout the episode), but it also feels like Scully gets the short straw a lot. Dana Scully is a qualified medical professional (“I’m a medical doctor!”), yet her years of training and experience fall flat against the little green men. She is exceptionally clever, but she is way out of her depth with these supernatural cases. Aside from doing autopsies, Mulder almost constantly has the upper hand throughout each case. That is until the events that transpire at the beginning of Season 2. Instead of investigating the science, Scully actually becomes the science.

At the beginning of Season 2, Scully is abducted — in both the physical and supernatural sense of the word — and it is later revealed that certain tests were performed on her. She returns safe and sound (okay, safe being a pretty optimistic word) and has no memory of these events, until about a season later. Scully realizes that a metal chip has been placed in the back of her neck (which she determines must have been placed there at the time of her abduction) and she ends up meeting with a group of women who have all had chips removed. Subsequently, all of the women she meets have succumbed to some sort of cancer. A skeptic at best, Scully brushes away these fears until it is revealed in “Memento Mori” that Scully has cancer, and it’s pretty bad.

I wish I could tell you that Scully’s life gets better from here on, but after her survival from cancer, she goes on to discover that during her abduction, her ova were harvested and have since been used to produce bizarre alien clone children — one of whom she has the pleasure of meeting in “A Christmas Carol” and “Emily.” But Scully’s road is never easy, and naturally, Emily dies.

To sum it up, Scully has a pretty terrible time and there seems to be a substantial link between Scully’s gender and the tests and science that is inflicted upon her. Is this her punishment for daring to be a woman in a male-dominated sphere? Scully is already “othered” by her presence in a patriarchal world as a woman — she frequently experiences sexist comments from other characters, exemplified by another female colleague in Soft Light. Scully becomes synonymous with the supernatural elements which Mulder is so fixated on, her female physicality means that she is the perfect candidate. Her ova were removed, cells which men do not possess, so it’s not a leap to say that Scully was abducted because she was a woman.

We are probably all aware of the existing link between ‘the mother,’ ‘the feminine’ and ‘the monstrous’ in science fiction (thanks Barbara Creed!). Motherhood and the reproductive process is fixated upon time and time again in the sci-fi world. Scully becomes removed from the supposed ‘natural’ process of motherhood, and her own body is used to breed alien hybrid children against her will or consent. She becomes a part of the ‘monstrous,’ something unnatural and seemingly abhorrent. In the episode, “Humbug” — as discussed by Lisa Parks in Deny All Knowledge: Reading The X-Files — Scully shares a moment with Lenny: a man with a detachable conjoined twin who turns out to be ever so slightly bloodthirsty. Both Lenny and Scully are caught off guard and share an embarrassing look at each other when both of their dressing gowns come slightly loose. As Scully stares awkwardly at Lenny’s belly, Lenny stares equally at Scully’s breast. The implication here is that both Scully and Lenny are alike in their otherness — both regarded by society as ‘other.’ This also comes at a point within the series after Scully has had the alien implant inserted in her neck, however she is not aware of it. The process of using her ovum to produce alien-hybrid clones has also begun, not that she knows it. As cyborg feminist specialist Donna Haraway — definitely check out her book, A Cyborg Manifesto — suggested; women, cyborgs, similans and the like are all “odd boundary creatures” which constantly threaten the traditional narratives and push the limits of science. Scully, and the other monsters we meet in The X Files are certainly guilty of that.

Aligning Scully with ‘othered’ alien life, cyborgs, and other women in the series posits her in this sort of feminized space, against the patriarchal FBI. However, Scully’s work (especially her initial task which was to debunk Mulder’s theories on behalf of her superiors at the academy) serves the masculine and patriarchal government. Indeed, even when Scully isn’t debunking Mulder’s odd (but accurate) theories, she is more often than not running around after Mulder, writing down his ideas, acting as his support staff, etc. In fact, it takes Scully until season 5 to express her annoyance at not even having her own desk in their shared office.

Scully continues to be skeptical of the existence of extraterrestrials, or of conspiracy theories — choosing instead to buy into the science. Despite everything that has been aggressively done to her, Scully can’t quite bring herself to believe that the existence of extraterrestrials can be real, even though her own body harbors the technology. As Lisa Parks points out, Scully’s position as a scientist is quite precarious. The science in the show is channeled through the feminized form (aka Scully) and therefore open to critical analysis, more so than if it was a male scientist. Scully, while a firm skeptic of aliens, is almost always intrinsically linked to this (as described earlier), so her skepticism of the supernatural and her insistence to hold onto this female fallible science seems to equate to her inability to accept herself.

There’s also something pretty grim in Scully’s abduction/missing ovum storyline that feels very reminiscent of higher powers meddling and making decisions about women’s reproductive rights. Instead of making laws, the Syndicate have a very real effect on the abductees’ abilities to have children therefore taking the decision away from the individual completely. It’s interesting to note that when men are victims of alien (or government) abduction in The X-Files, it is never intrinsically linked to the fact that they are male. On a very non-supernatural level, Scully constantly has to fight in the male-dominated space which is the FBI, and her shift from rational career woman to someone who has had the choice to bear children forcibly taken away from her serves to remind us that Scully is not male, however much she tries to assert herself.

Scully, while incredibly influential to generations of young women going into STEM subjects, is a rather questionable character. Traditionally, science has positioned female bodies as passive objects for male scientific dissection. Despite Scully being a scientist, as a woman, her body is still constantly placed under great scrutiny — from the clone offspring, to her cancer, even her tattooing exploits in “Never Again.” Dana Scully is an absolutely fascinating character, but it often feels as if she is being studied during The X-Files, when perhaps she should be the one doing the studying?

Recommended Reading: Scully, What Are You Wearing? The Problem of Feminism, Subversion, and Heteronormativity in The X-Files by Lacy Hodges (University of Florida, 2005).

Becky Kukla lives in London, works in documentary production/distribution to pay the bills and writes things about feminism, film and TV online in her spare time. You can find more of her work at her blog femphile or on Twitter @kuklamoo.

‘The World Is Not Enough’ and the “Believability” of Dr. Christmas Jones

This guest post written by Lee Jutton appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists.

The character of the Bond girl is nearly as iconic as that of James Bond himself. After all, one of MI6 Agent 007’s defining features — and indeed, one of his biggest weaknesses, one that his enemies exploit time and time again — is his love of the opposite sex. Over the course of 24 films spanning 54 years, Bond has met his match — whether it be intellectually, sexually or a combination of both — in numerous women. While some seem to exist only as a pretty face and body for the audience to ogle as Bond utters some his infamous double entendres, many others stand on their own as vibrant, complicated characters. These are women with their own inner lives, their own professions, their own reasons for being beyond just being eye candy. However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t still conventionally attractive; the more modern version of the Bond girl often has brains, but you better bet she still has beauty, too.

The World Is Not Enough is a perfectly acceptable James Bond adventure directed by Michael Apted and starring Pierce Brosnan as 007. Story-wise, it doesn’t reach the heights of From Russia With Love or GoldenEye. But it’s an exciting, action-packed romp featuring a great Bond girl performance by Sophie Marceau as Elektra King, the daughter of an oil tycoon who is not what she seems. The film’s other female lead is a nuclear scientist with the unfortunate moniker of Dr. Christmas Jones, played by a 28-year-old Denise Richards. Previous Bond girls have included fellow agents (both allies and enemies), assassins, thieves, and heiresses (like Elektra King), not to mention the occasional pilot or fortune-teller; adding a nuclear scientist to their ranks could be viewed as a step forward into a more feminist future for the franchise. When asked about the role, Richards told BBC News that she felt the “brainy and athletic” Dr. Jones had more substance than Bond Girls of the past:

“The female roles now have a lot more depth – it’s more than just running around on Bond’s arm. Christmas is strong, intelligent and sassy and there’s an infectious one-upmanship and clever banter between her and James Bond.”

Unfortunately, not many people agreed with her. Upon The World is Not Enough’s release in 1999, a sizeable portion of the criticism was leveled at Dr. Jones — much of it bemoaning the curve-hugging wardrobe she sported throughout the film and insisting that Richards just wasn’t believable as a nuclear scientist. Richards ended up being the recipient of the Bond franchise’s first-ever Razzie Award, while a 2006 Entertainment Weekly list of the 10 worst Bond girls ranked her #1: “Let’s review: Denise Richards played Dr. Christmas Jones, a nuclear physicist who wore a tank top and hot pants. Bloody hell, even Q didn’t have a gadget to help Bond escape from that disaster.” Yet such skin-deep criticism of this character is unfair, and barely skims the surface as to why Dr. Jones went from being a promising step forward for Bond girls to one of the more maligned female characters of the franchise.

Dr. Jones is introduced about halfway through The World is Not Enough, when she emerges from a protective jumpsuit at a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile base in the middle of the Kazakhstan desert. Bond is posing as a Russian nuclear scientist to figure out what notorious terrorist Renard (Robert Carlyle) is doing at the base when he is introduced to Dr. Jones, an American nuclear physicist who has been recruited by the International Decommissioning Agency to help reduce Russia’s stockpile of nuclear weapons by dismantling its nuclear warheads. A tough job, to be sure, and Dr. Jones’ frosty reception of Bond at the base immediately establishes her as someone who has had to be very tough to get where she is in life. Despite being the head of the project, she is clearly not used to being taken seriously, and so overcompensates by being extra imperious towards the men around her to ensure that they keep in line. As Bond ogles her long, tanned limbs as she emerges from her jumpsuit clad in, yes, a tank top and shorts, his guide describes her as the base’s bit of “glimmer” and glumly notes, “Not interested in men. Take my word for it.” Naturally, Dr. Jones overhears, and immediately assumes that Bond’s intentions towards her are along the same lines:

Dr. Jones: Are you here for a reason, or are you just hoping for a glimmer?
Bond: Mikhail Arkov, Russian atomic energy department. And you are, miss?
Dr. Jones: Doctor Jones. Christmas Jones, and don’t tell me any jokes, I’ve heard them all.
Bond, innocently: I don’t know any doctor jokes.

It’s ironic that the character of a beautiful young scientist who is bitter about being dismissed by the men around her as just a bit of “glimmer” was then just as easily dismissed as such by audiences. One can argue that Dr. Jones’ costume caters to the male gaze and that yes, she might have been taken more seriously if she had worn a less-revealing wardrobe, rather than one reminiscent of another sexy scientist: archaeologist Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. Yet the notion that beautiful women should have to diminish their appearances in order to be taken seriously — especially when working in a traditionally male-dominated field — is just as outdated as anything in the Bond films of the 1960s. In 2006, Casino Royale addressed this issue in regards to Bond girl Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), an accountant from HM Treasury with a brusque manner of speech and a stylish but severe black suit that she wears like a suit of armor. Lynd is smart, tough and, because she’s a Bond girl, also incredibly beautiful. After a conversation about the art of reading one’s opponents during poker, Lynd then asks Bond to read her:

Lynd: What else can you surmise, Mr. Bond?
Bond: About you, Miss Lynd? Well, your beauty’s a problem. You worry you won’t be taken seriously.
Lynd: Which one can say of any attractive woman with half a brain.
Bond: True. But this one overcompensates by wearing slightly masculine clothing. Being more aggressive than her female colleagues. Which gives her a somewhat prickly demeanor, and ironically enough, makes it less likely for her to be accepted and promoted by her male superiors, who mistake her insecurities for arrogance.

Bond could also have been talking about Dr. Jones, who shares Lynd’s “prickly demeanor” and is viewed as arrogant by the men around her, who can’t believe that she isn’t interested in them. But, she never got the memo about the wardrobe, and one wonders that if Dr. Jones just bothered to put on a pair of slacks, perception of the character would have been different. Indeed, once one is able to suspend any disbelief that they might have over a nuclear scientist being capable of looking good in short-shorts, one realizes that Dr. Jones isn’t a terrible character — like many Bond girls from the series’ earlier era, she’s just a mediocre one.

Soon after Bond and Dr. Jones are introduced, they team up to track down Renard, who has run off with a stolen bomb. When they find the bomb hidden in an oil pipeline, they rocket in on an inspection car so that Dr. Jones can dismantle it, only to find out that half of the device’s plutonium is missing. Even though she doesn’t exactly enjoy spending substantial amounts of time running around with a man who only “speaks spy,” Dr. Jones is determined to help Bond track down the plutonium, noting, “The world’s greatest terrorist running around with six kilos of weapons-grade plutonium can’t be good. I gotta get it back, or someone’s gonna have my ass.” Bond, ever the gentleman, responds, “First things first.”

Now, Richards’ performance is not one that will go down in the history books as a landmark of great acting. But, it doesn’t deserve to be remembered as one of the worst, either. She does her best with the dialogue that is given to her — some of which is, as Richards mentioned when discussing the role, surprisingly sassy and snarky, reflecting her dismissive attitude towards Bond’s heavy-handed, uber-masculine tactics. The problem is, screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade just don’t give her enough, and when they do, it is too often bland statements of the obvious. It’s not that she isn’t believable as a nuclear scientist; it’s that after awhile, we just forget that she is one. Dr. Jones wastes more breath bluntly stating what is happening than she does explaining why; she’s the smartest person in the room for most of the movie, but is rarely given the chance to show it. I refer to this phenomenon as the Legolas Effect, named for the handsome elf archer played by Orlando Bloom in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Legolas rarely shows the wisdom of elves, and instead periodically utters pointless lines like “A diversion!” to remind the audience that he’s more than just a pretty piece of scenery placed in the background of Aragorn’s epic speeches. The same goes for Dr. Jones, who at one point screams, “It’s flooding!” while tons of water gushes into the submarine where she and Bond are waging war with Renard. Moments like this demolish any credibility that Dr. Jones built up while dismantling nuclear bombs and just make her look silly.

Speaking of silly: The World is Not Enough culminates in the stereotypical closing-credits sex scene with Bond that is chock full of the terrible Christmas jokes that Dr. Jones was so firmly against when she was introduced earlier in the movie, including what is the most cringeworthy closing line in the entire franchise: “I thought Christmas only comes once a year.” And this is what is the most disappointing thing about Dr. Jones. She’s a tough-talking woman whose best moments in the film come when she grows impatient with Bond’s testosterone-driven idiocy and counters his quips with her own formidable sarcasm, yet in the end, she’s just like any of those earlier Bond girls that Richards dismissed as lacking depth: she helplessly collapses into the arms of Bond and allows him to turn her into a punchline after all.

Watching The World is Not Enough seventeen years later, one can’t help but feel that both Dr. Jones and the woman who portrayed her were treated somewhat harshly. The role is unfortunately underwritten, and Richards’ performance in the film pales in comparison to that of the fiery Marceau (to see the two women side by side is to automatically see Richards in a less complimentary light), but to only describe the character’s failings in terms of her appearance says more about the audience than it does about the character. At this point, it should go without saying that scientists come in all shapes, sizes, colors and genders. Instead, our perceptions and prejudices have colored our negative impressions of Dr. Jones. While she isn’t one of the best Bond girls, she doesn’t deserve all of the worst-ever criticism that have been bestowed upon her — nor does Richards deserve the majority of the blame for why the character just doesn’t quite work.

Lee Jutton has directed short films starring a killer toaster, a killer Christmas tree, and a not-killer leopard. She previously reviewed new DVD and theatrical releases as a staff writer for Just Press Play. You can follow her on Medium for more film reviews and on Twitter for an excessive amount of opinions on German soccer.

1950s B-Movie Women Scientists: Smart, Strong, but Still Marriageable

This guest post written by Linda Levitt appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists.

A study published by the University of Denver in 2012 shows that less than one third of women completing degrees in STEM fields end up pursuing careers in the disciplines they studied. In fact, one in three women leaves the technology workforce within the first two years. Since the number of women pursuing and succeeding in careers as scientists remains quite small, it is surprising to find a particular characterization of women as scientists in 1950s science fiction B-movies. The abundance of female scientists in these films does not reflect the reality of women in the sciences at the time. We could argue that including female scientists enhances the moviegoing experience by creating “eye candy” for male audience members. If the moviegoer identifies with the heroic male lead, as film theorist Laura Mulvey and others would assume, then the film’s satisfying conclusion includes winning the heart of the “leading lady” and enabling the “happily ever after” for the heroic male scientist who saves civilization from deadly creatures, nuclear meltdown, or another apocalyptic scenario.

Science fiction routinely offers an alternative present or a possible future: some of these realities are promising, and some are apocalyptic. The possibility of gender equality in the workplace is not far-fetched for an alternative reality, especially in light of a long history of women working quietly in the background in the sciences. Thus another perspective would be to argue that the inclusion of female scientists in B-movies allowed young women in the audience to see the possibility for an intellectual career for themselves.

In the decades since these films first played in theaters and drive-ins, it has become relatively commonplace for women to have fulfilling careers, although gender equality remains a daunting challenge across all professions. The recent proliferation of discussions about “work-life balance” indicates this inequality: the need to find a balance between professional and personal lives is addressed almost exclusively to women. While the happily ever after scenario in these 1950s B-movies comes with an expectation that women give up their careers in science to become wives and mothers once the appropriate suitor is identified, it seems there are women in B-movies who do have it all — they maintain the respect afforded to them as scientists and also win romantic partners, without having to sacrifice their professional interests to assume domestic roles instead.

Women scientists featured in 1950s B-movies span a broad variety of expertise: paleontologist Lee Hunter in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Dr. Patricia Medford, an etymologist in Them! (1954), biologist Stephanie Clayton in Tarantula (1955), and three scientists — Joanna Merritt, Marna Roberts, and Madame Elzevir (truly, she was not afforded a first name), wife of the esteemed Dr. Pierre Elzevir — in Gog (1954). These women often have the answers to save civilization, or willingly brave deadly encounters with the unknown, but many of the depictions of female scientists also reify gender stereotypes about women, regardless of their intellectual prowess and independence.

The 1954 Cold War sci-fi thriller Gog offers several good examples. A feminist critique would address some of the blatantly sexist events, such as the research assistant who weeps hysterically when the scientist she works with dies suddenly, only to be slapped across the face by another male scientist who implores her to “get some men up here and restore order.” Just the same, three women scientists are at work in this underground laboratory where a space station is being built. One of the scientists, Joanna Merritt (Constance Dowling), is portrayed as serious, intellectual, and devoid of much emotion. She does, however, have a quick wit.

Merritt and Dr. Van Ness (Herbert Marshall), the lab supervisor, take security agent David Sheppard (Richard Egan) on a tour of the facility. They observe an experiment in weightlessness, where a man and woman are training for a zero-gravity environment in space. After watching them for awhile, Sheppard asks: “Why the girl?” Merritt replies: “We think women are better suited for space travel than men.” Lest she have the opportunity to make an argument favoring women over men, Van Ness quickly adds, “For one thing, they take up less space in a rocket.”

Sheppard objectifies the female astronaut in training, referring to her as “the girl” and questioning the appropriateness of her place in the space program. Then Van Ness adds that women are better because they are smaller, providing an idealized stereotype of the petite, fit woman. Nonetheless, there is still an opportunity for Merritt to offer what rhetorically sounds like a scientific truth: “We think women are better suited for space travel than men.” She has a strong and present personality, and the perspective she voices is not easily dismissed. Spoiler alert: There have already been hints that David Sheppard and Joanna Merritt are… well… romantically acquainted, and by film’s end, they appear destined for the happily ever after. Still, her position as a scientist of regard does not seem diminished. The presence of women in positions of intellectual power seems tacitly accepted here, in a filmic world where imagination is boundless.

Merritt has no internal conflict — she is not concerned about making choices about her life. Yet the taken-for-granted nature of female scientists in these films differs markedly from recent films: for characters like Dr. Ellie Sattler in Jurassic Park (1993) or Dr. Eleanor Alloway in Contact (1997), their choice of careers leads others to question their scientific authority and personal motivation.

Women’s studies scholar J. Kasi Jackson points out that “in addition to negotiating between detachment and empathy, the female scientist must balance professionalism with femininity.” The woman scientist is an outsider both in science, where her “feminine” empathy is not objective, and in society, where scientific rationality conflicts with assumed “feminine” traits. Jackson’s observations relate well to Lee Hunter (Paula Raymond), a paleontologist in the 1953 giant creature movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Hunter is a social outcast: as a woman, she doesn’t comfortably fit in with her male colleagues, nor does she seem to connect with any other women. She is, in fact the only woman with any substance in the film, and no one doubts her place on the scene or the veracity of her research and observations. The other female characters are empty stereotypes: a nurse, a nun, a telephone operator, a screaming mother, and a bank of phone operators handling calls in the monster-created emergency. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms fails the Bechdel Test, since it does not have: (1) at least two women in it, who (2) talk to each other, about (3) something other than a man.

Although it is unlikely that a 1950s science fiction B-movie would pass the Bechdel Test, it is employed here to draw attention to the strength of the female scientist in this film. Like Joanna Merritt, Lee Hunter is poised, confident, and smart. She is the assistant to Dr. Thurgood Elson (Cecil Kellaway), who is visited by a physicist named Thomas Nesbitt (Paul Hubschmid), who believes he has seen a dinosaur. No one takes Nesbitt very seriously, but Hunter does. She establishes both her scientific prowess and her compassion after Nesbitt leaves Elson’s laboratory. Of Nesbitt, she tells Elson, “When he first came to this country, I attended his lectures on the curative properties of radioactive isotopes. He’s a brilliant man. Isn’t his story in any way feasible?” Despite Elson’s refusal, Hunter decided to visit Nesbitt’s office to offer her support.

Nesbitt’s secretary informs him of Lee’s arrival: “There’s a Lee Hunter waiting for you. She’s very pretty.” In this moment, the narrative privileges Lee’s femininity and sexuality over her intellect. Yet when Nesbitt later asks why she would believe his claims, she says, “I have a deep abiding faith in the work of scientists. Otherwise I wouldn’t be one myself.” Hunter ties her identity to science, a theme which is repeated throughout the film.

Science fiction B-movies from the 1950s are rife with female characters who do not have the independence or determination of Joanna Merritt and Lee Hunter. Some female characters are primarily sexualized and seductive, where others are hyper-emotional and present themselves as weak and needy. Despite the depiction of some women scientists, these films still reflect the gendered reality of their time: the cultural framework in which these films are set is undeniably sexist. Teresa De Lauretis argued that female characters are made to conform to the ideal image that the male protagonist has for them. Regardless of their intellect or achievements, these characters are the object of the male gaze.

Writing in 1971, political scientist Jo Freeman argued that one of the core concepts of sexism is that “women are here for the pleasure and assistance of men.” Freeman goes on to say that:

“It is this attitude which stigmatizes those women who do not marry or who do not devote their primary energies to the care of men and their children. Association with a man is the basic criterion for participation by women in this society and one who does not seek her identity through a man is a threat to the social values.”

Identity formation is a complex process, and every person forms and performs their identity in the context of their interpersonal relationships. In other words, self-identity reflects, but is not dependent upon, the presence of others. Freeman’s claim, then, has validity, especially when viewed with contingency. For women scientists in the 1950s, “association with a man” was “the basic criterion for participation by women” in society: science has been and remains patriarchal. As previously noted, women tend to abandon or simply not pursue professional life in the sciences; the lack of a welcoming, balanced space for women is one reason. With this in mind, it is noteworthy that B-movie women scientists seem undaunted by the patriarchal cultures in which they choose to work.

Although men significantly outnumber women in the B-movies discussed here, women were frequently featured in significant scientific roles, battling aliens, mutant forces, or giant bugs. A survey of these films indicates a spectrum of reception in which female scientists may be welcome or othered, depending on their circumstances and relationships to men within the patriarchal culture of a scientific organization.

Linda Levitt’s research focuses on gender studies, media, and cultural memory. Her work is often situated at the intersection of these ideas.

In Praise of ‘Jurassic Park’s Dr. Ellie Sattler

Dr. Sattler is awesome. She’s a character who doesn’t fit into any typical Hollywood box: A friendly, stable, super-smart woman who wants to be a mother, has her own nerdy career, and doesn’t think twice about being a badass. … I saw ‘Jurassic Park’ when I was seven and from then on wanted to be Dr. Ellie Sattler.

This guest post by Sarah Mirk originally appeared at Bitch Media and appears here as part of our theme week on Women Scientists. Cross-posted with permission.

So I saw Jurassic Park 3-D last night. I know. It was $17. That’s ridiculous. But if there’s one movie from my childhood worth revisiting on the big, three-dimensional screen, it’s Jurassic Park. This was actually the very first movie I remember seeing on the big screen when I was a kid and I vividly remembered all the famous dino scenes — the dilophosaurus melting Newman’s face, the T-Rex eating the lawyer, the “clever girl.” But I had forgotten one major element of the film: Dr. Ellie Sattler is the best!

At first, it seems like Sattler (played by Laura Dern) is doomed to just be Dr. Alan Grant’s pretty sidekick. In the first scenes, out in the fossil fields of Montana, she hangs off Dr. Grant’s shoulders while he takes center stage, lecturing a snotty child on how a velociraptor would totally eat his intestines, given the chance. While she plays a somewhat traditionally feminine role — telling Dr. Grant he should love kids, being the object of the lounge-lizard-chaos-theorist Dr. Ian Malcolm’s lust — that all changes in one key moment: The shit-digging scene. You remember it.

That’s the point where it clicked for me, rewatching the film. Oh yeah. Dr. Sattler is awesome. She’s a character who doesn’t fit into any typical Hollywood box: A friendly, stable, super-smart woman who wants to be a mother, has her own nerdy career, and doesn’t think twice about being a badass. Instead of Tomb Raider gear, she rocks the practical khaki shorts and hiking boots. As Dr. Sattler stripped off her Triceratops shit-covered gloves — much to Dr. Ian Malcolm’s horror — I remembered being a kid at the drive-in theater, watching Jurassic Park from the backseat of my parent’s Volkswagen Rabbit and thinking, “Yes! That’s me!”

In the film, Dr. Sattler makes her own plans and rules. When everyone else heads back to the visitor’s center as planned, she sticks out in the field to keep investigating a sick triceratops. When the park’s power fails to come back on as expected, she doesn’t sit in the emergency bunker waiting for rescue. She makes a plan and grabs a walkie-talkie, heading out to find the power switch.

“I should really be the one going,” mutters park owner John Hammond before she sprints off.

“Why?” says Dr. Sattler.

“Well, because you’re a… and I’m a…” stutters Hamond.

“Look,” she says, “We can discuss ‘sexism in survival situations’ when I get back.”

All that, and she can ID cretaceous-period plant life from 100 yards. What a star.

I saw Jurassic Park when I was seven and from then on wanted to be Dr. Ellie Sattler. As a teenager, I actually went to archaeology science camp, spending summers hunched over a dental pick in the middle of the desert, digging up Tertiary Era mammal teeth. After a couple months of that tedious work, I determined that a life like Dr. Sattler’s isn’t for me. But along the way developed a life-long love for science. And practical khaki shorts. Thanks, Jurassic Park.

Sarah Mirk is Bitch Media‘s online editor. She’s interested in gender, history, comics, and talking to strangers. You can follow her on Twitter.

Mary and Susan on ‘Johnny Test’

This guest post written by Robert V. Aldrich appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists.

No one’s going to blame you if you haven’t heard of Johnny Test.

It was a quiet little show that ran from 2005 to 2014, first on The CW (Kids’ WB at the time) and thereafter on Cartoon Network. There wasn’t a whole lot to it as a show, to be honest. It was pretty casual fare about a boy and his talking dog, with simple art and generic animation. The voice acting was pretty decent but nothing to write home about. Each episode was usually a very simple concept (often revolving around school, chores, and similar mundane events) that got milked for all it was worth. The series’ episodes had a few decent jokes to make you smirk, a lot of lowest-common-denominator giggles, and one or two gags that went over the kids’ heads that only mom or dad got. It was a perfectly decent show, perhaps even good at times, but never anything particularly stellar.

In another time and place, Johnny Test might have been a bigger deal, but like its ancestors from the late-80s, the series suffered from being an adequate cartoon just after a major epoch of great cartoons (with the 2008 conclusion of Avatar: The Last Airbender and the cancellation of Toonami) as well as being overshadowed by a few stellar standouts (like Ben 10 and Transformers: Animated). As such, only its very core target audience even knew it existed. Which is a shame because while the show as a whole was run-of-the-mill, it quietly had two of the most brilliantly realized female characters in recent cartoon history: Mary and Susan Test.

While the TV series Johnny Test was very clearly aimed right at the ‘boy’ demographic, with the titular character and his talking dog Dukey (…shudder…) being the centerpiece of most episodes, the two pivotal characters were Johnny’s older twin sisters. Whereas Johnny was an average, no-brand kid who was equal parts jock, geek, and lay-about (IE your generic all-American pre-tween), Mary and Susan Test are ambitious, intelligent, and fully-actualized. Exaggeratedly brilliant scientists, it’s the twin girls who put into motion most events of the series. The two red-haired teen girls are constantly working on scientific experiments that push the boundaries of human comprehension, ability, and rend the very laws of nature. Basically, think Dexter from Dexter’s Lab, only with actual manners, social graces, and no bizarre accent.

Mary, the eldest of the twins and visualized with curly hair and baggy pants, is an open-minded sort of scientist, willing to engage with most any theory. She’s slightly more out-going of the two girls and focuses mostly on their collective work. She seems to be the more mature of the two and the most well-adjusted of the three Test children.

Susan is Mary’s counterpart (if differences that subtle can be called such). The younger of the two, Susan has straight hair and typically wears a skirt. She’s a little more hard-nosed when it comes to science and interpretation, and is a little more curt. She evidences a quicker temper than her sister, and has also garnered the attention of an unwanted paramour in the form of Eugene ‘Bling-Bling Boy’ Hamilton.

Both Mary and Susan are brilliant scientists, whose work is courted by the U.S. government (who seem synonymous with the military, though they’re frequently played for comic relief) and other institutions, even while they attend school at Porkbelly Technical Institute (which seems to be a generic higher-ed establishment and made unclear if it’s a high school or a college).

Mary and Susan are not the first female science wonks in cartoon history. Prior to them, cartoon-watchers had Gadget Hackwrench from Rescue Rangers and Sandy Cheeks on Spongebob Squarepants (yep, technically the squirrel in a diving suit is a scientist). Go back any farther and you could debatably include Penny from Inspector Gadget, but at about that point, the already paltry list begins to thin out completely. Sure, some shows had the occasional one-off or even recurring character as a female scientist (Transformers had Carly, Spike’s girlfriend who seemed a little too enamored with the alien robots), but by and large, the media was woefully lacking in such representation. This necessitated audiences look to live-action entertainment for any semblance of female characters into science, math, and the like. But live-action stuff’s like, for adults and who wants to watch that?

Even more remarkable is that while female science characters are in short supply, in even shorter supply – so much so as to border on unheard of – are female scientists who are still GIRLS. In the annals of cartoon history, one would be hard-pressed to find any other characters so prominent and also so well-rounded. While Mary and Susan’s cartoon predecessors were often more scientist than girl, the Test Twins are still very much regular teen girls. They like to get gussied up in dresses, go to the pool, and go dancing. They like makeup and many of the usual trappings associated with femininity. They just also really, really love science.

This is best evidenced by both girls having an unrequited interest in Gil Nexdor (get it?), the hunky airhead that lives down the street. Both girls pine for Gil’s easily-distracted attention, but are exceptionally clueless as to how to achieve it or hold it. For most of the show, Gil seems largely oblivious to the Test Twins’ very existence, an interesting reversal on the usual trope. It’s doubly interesting because of how it is similar to Susan’s struggles with Bling-Bling Boy and his constant, unwanted (and at times, toxic) attention.

Most every episode of Johnny Test involves the girls and their intelligence. Either an invention of theirs kicks off the episode’s action, or one is needed to save the day. Episodes vary from the run-of-the-mill charm-of-life episodes involving the usual kids’ matters (lazy afternoon, not wanting to do homework, sibling rivalry, etc.) to hyper-exaggerated inanity (alien invasions, feuds with other super-geniuses). Mary and Susan sometimes struggle with one another, as sisters are wont to do, but always end up reconciling. Likewise, their attitudes towards Johnny vary from episode to episode, depending on how much trouble he’s getting them into or how much they want him to test a new invention, but they always drop everything to help him.

The Test Twins really are quite remarkable as characters. As progressive as cartoons can be, there remains a colossal dearth of science-minded female characters, especially ones who embrace femininity. Were we to guess based off the likes of their peers and predecessors like Penny or Gadget, we might get the impression that once a woman puts on a lab coat or a stethoscope, she ceases to be a woman or a girl. Once she commits to STEM interests, she quits being interested in dresses, dances, or swooning after crushes. Mary and Susan Test challenge this quietly but directly.

For girls tuning in to watch this show, they found two prominent and visible characters who appear in nearly every single episode and always contribute meaningfully, if not outright save the day. Moreover, they do it not with beauty or social graces or even physical might, but with their intellect. These girls are the force in the show because of their smarts. Name any other cartoon with any other female character (much less two!) that can say the same. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Moreover, these two girls are not the centerpieces of the show. While they’re certainly not supporting characters, they’re not quite tritagonists with Johnny either. Mary and Susan occupy some unique territory where, depending on the episode, they find themselves as anything from partner-in-crime to background character to even deus ex machina. At first glance, this might seem a bit to undermine their importance, but consider instead that the target audience of this show is likely to be boys (because heaven forbid a show appeal to both, but that’s a discussion for another matter). By having these two super-science girls in the background of the show helps normalize the notion of girls who are smart, ambitious and love science. If this show were a little boy’s favorite TV show, it would be very likely that he would be completely accepting of girls at school being into biology, math, and the like. After all, why wouldn’t they be?

The world of entertainment has not been kind to women and girls who are interested in science, technology, engineering, and math. Often these characters are written quickly out of shows, turned into one-off joke characters, or relegated to quiet support. When they are featured in any way, they are nerdy outcasts who are scientists not just first, but almost exclusively. If a female character is into STEM matters, it’s as if they must sacrifice their femininity.

Mary and Susan casually dismiss all of that as the garbage that it is. They’re girls, fully realized and healthy in every way, who love science and lose themselves in their pursuits. No struggle exists to reconcile their intellects with their lives as girls. They are the perfect role-models of the aspiring scientist who also wants to wear cute clothes and go to the prom. On a show that otherwise was solid but quite forgettable, these girls stood out as contributing wonderfully to the tapestry of rich female characters cartoons have offered.

Not too bad for a cartoon with a talking dog named Dukey.

Robert V. Aldrich is a writer and novelist, living in Raleigh, North Carolina (and plans to vote against Pat McCrory as soon as November gets here). He’s the author of numerous books including Samifel and Rhest for the Wicked, as well as a contributing writer for multiple websites. You can find more of his work at TeachTheSky.com and he can be found on Facebook and Twitter. When not writing B-rate sci-fi or smarty-pants evaluations of kids’ shows, he is working for the health department, teaching martial arts, or losing arguments to his cats.

‘Contact’: The Power of Feminist Representation

‘Contact’ remains a singularly astute portrayal of a woman combating the oppressive confines of institutional sexism, as well as a reminder of how deeply mainstream cinema still needs progressive feminist portrayals that contradict gender clichés. … How refreshing that a woman’s personal arc is considered important enough to be entwined alongside the movie’s core theme of discovering meaning in our seemingly meaningless universe.

This guest post written by Kelcie Mattson appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists.

For half my life I planned to be an astrophysicist.

You can credit the mental implantation of that idea to the 1997 film Contact. I was eight years old, and recognition clicked when I saw Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway. Her love for space exploration coalesced with my own in a way I hadn’t known was possible, and I thought, clear as a pinpoint — I want to be that.

Ultimately, that passion translated into writing stories about science rather than living them myself, so I’m not a successful case study. But Contact remains a singularly astute portrayal of a woman combating the oppressive confines of institutional sexism, as well as a reminder of how deeply mainstream cinema still needs progressive feminist portrayals that contradict gender clichés.

Based on the novel by the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan, Contact follows Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), a leading member of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program, as she strives to prove the existence of alien life. After she discovers a radio signal transmitting from a seemingly uninhabited star system, the governments of the world unite with NASA to decode what the mystery alien message means for the future of humanity.

Contact makes waves just by existing. Although the science fiction genre is peppered with extraordinary portrayals of pioneering women, it’s rare for them to actively serve as the protagonists of any major motion picture, let alone a multi-million dollar sci-fi blockbuster. Instead of maximizing the endless possibilities inherent in the genre to their fullest potential by liberating and diversifying, the majority of women take a narrative backseat to a revolving door series of leading white men. They’re lucky to do something other than fulfill the tired role of token love interest. Dr. Martha Lauzen’s “Celluloid Ceiling” report for 2015 confirms this: women comprised only 22% of movie protagonists in the top 100 highest grossing films of last year.

Contact breaks down common cinema barriers by not only featuring a complex, layered female protagonist, but a brilliantly capable, talented female scientist — a concept still lacking adequate female personification and normalization within modern narratives.

As a woman in a male-dominated profession, Ellie Arroway endures a belligerent stream of ingrained sexism. She is overruled, questioned, ignored, and derided by the men surrounding her, particularly by David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt), the Scientific Advisor to the President and quasi-antagonist. He removes the funding from Ellie’s SETI research site in Puerto Rico and threatens to do the same four years later at an observatory in New Mexico because he’s convinced the effort is a waste of resources — NASA’s and Ellie’s. Not only is “looking for E.T.” a laughable venture, he argues Ellie’s squandering her talents in the department and won’t accomplish anything of note with her career. If she’s going to be a scientist, she should at least be the kind he approves of. It’s an example of paternalistic control masquerading as concern that Ellie is quick to challenge.

During a White House press briefing about the contents of the alien message, Ellie is scheduled to speak but government officials pass her over without warning in favor of Drumlin — despite the fact Ellie leads the project responsible for discovering the extraterrestrial communique. He even surpasses her by committee vote (and exploitative manipulation) to become humanity’s ambassador to the alien race, again in spite of Ellie’s enormous qualifications.

There’s also Ellie’s on/off again love interest Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), a religious philosopher who condemns her on national television for her lack of belief in a Christian God. Most damning of all, when Ellie can provide no proof of her successful meeting with the alien race, National Security Advisor Michael Kitz (James Woods) interrogates her to the point of gaslighting. She’s a delusional, hysterical woman; how can they believe a word she says? How can she believe herself?

While the pushback against Ellie’s stalwart belief in extraterrestrial life isn’t necessarily gender specific (think the mockery Fox Mulder faces in The X-Files for a male equivalent), Ellie is still infantilized and dismissed in a frighteningly recognizable way. Drumlin, Kitz, and Joss make decisions “for” her, without her, and against her, even going so far as to steal credit for her work to amplify their professional status. Despite her contributions (she discovers alien life, people), she’s summarily overlooked without question or hesitation. There are no explicit declarations of hatred, belief in female inferiority, or use of gendered slurs — just a reactionary, bone-deep confidence in their own authority as men. It’s a quieter, more insidious form of misogyny permeating all sections of society.

Because of this constant litany of sabotage, Ellie is forced to move through the world by working around the biased structural institutions. The only way Ellie can overcome those limitations, however, is through the aid of men. Reclusive billionaire S. R. Hadden (John Hurt) funds not only Ellie’s research after all other prominent institutions have rejected her, but reveals the existence of a backup spacecraft after the first is destroyed by a suicide bomber. Interestingly, Ellie is both active instigator and passive reactor in these scenarios — Hadden provides financial backing because she implores it from his company, and he’s impressed by her fiery determination. The revelation of the secondary spacecraft, though, as well as a clue that solves the coded alien message, come from Hadden’s goodwill, not an intellectual triumph of Ellie’s. Without Hadden’s money and influence, Ellie would be helpless to progress. One can even argue the suicide bomber (Jake Busey), a disgusting, religious radical responsible for innocent deaths, makes Ellie’s journey in the machine possible by causing Drumlin’s death in the explosion.

It doesn’t matter how unquestionably skilled Ellie is or how vocally she protests — her talents aren’t enough to break past the systematic barriers imposed by powerful men and the society that implicitly favors them. Her avenue for advancement isn’t dismantling the system, but sneaking through the cracks. Aliens exist; equality does not.

It’s a disappointing view of the STEM field, but not an inaccurate one. Case studies have found many women face hostility, harassment, and sexual assault from male colleagues. The script’s co-writer, Ann Druyan, experienced “huge amounts of sexism” during her career with NASA:

“I remember routinely being dismissed, interrupted — I’d say something and people at a meeting would turn to Carl [Sagan] or someone else and say, that was a really great idea you had.”

Although Ellie’s experiences occur within the framework of a semi-fantastical context, the messy convergence of religion, science, and gender serves as a reflection of the oppressive situations real women experience. She is no fainting damsel weakened by conflict, but a symbol of female resistance, her personhood achieved in non-traditional ways that challenge the status quo of masculine privilege and assumed gender divisions. She pursues her chosen scientific track to the disapproval of her colleagues. She raises her voice. She’s compassionate and filled with ideological wanderlust, as well as career-driven, aggressive, and angry. She’s lonely but rejects romance in favor of a one-night stand without considering it a sacrifice to the altar of her career, and when she does choose a relationship, it’s not a corrective act that fulfills her life. She’s an independent, sexual being who fits within the heteronormative standards of female beauty without being sexualized, yet can still wear a “really great dress” to a party. Ellie’s absolute disregard for prescribed stereotypical characteristics coded as “male” and “female” frees her to be a whole, multi-layered character in pursuit of her own kind of individuality.

Ellie even breaks the known limitations of the universe. From a narrative standpoint, she grapples with the biggest philosophical questions plaguing our existence: are we alone? What’s our purpose? Her desperation to make first contact mirrors a psychological need to cure her loneliness, an echo of the themes seen in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Interstellar, and more. How refreshing that a woman’s personal arc is considered important enough to be entwined alongside the movie’s core theme of discovering meaning in our seemingly meaningless universe.

The fact there are no other on-screen female scientists seems a deliberate choice to further highlight Ellie’s isolation, but it’s still an unfortunate oversight by the writers. (Ellie’s mother in particular is a presence sorely lacking; she’s barely mentioned except to note she passed away during childbirth.) Given that Ellie is only one of two women with an on-screen speaking part, all of her major interactions are with men. If Drumlin and his ilk represent the sexist hegemony, the handful who support her can be classified as male allies. This is especially true of Ellie’s father, who fully encouraged his daughter’s interest in astronomy and helped advance her curiosity, rather than shut it down in its infancy as something inappropriate for a young girl. Ellie and her fellow SETI scientist Kent Clark (William Fichtner), who is blind, share a passion for their study as well being overlooked minorities. By the film’s end, even Palmer Joss overcomes his biases to accept Ellie’s differences and proclaim his belief in her story to the world; he doesn’t speak for her, but uses his influence to support her voice.

It’s worth mentioning the alien emissary that Ellie meets assumes the form of her father in order to “comfort” her. It’s a pretty blatant example of the daddy issues cliché, and compounds the realization that in addition to another species, Ellie spent her entire life searching for a paternalistic replacement (she sleeps with Joss after he unintentionally quotes Ellie’s father, a move that’s way too Oedipal for me). Although the reliance on a lost-father trope in order to give Ellie depth is irritating, it doesn’t undermine her progression or strengths as a character. Her interests weren’t defined by her father, and neither is she diminished or restricted by her grief over his loss. She’s allowed to weep at the sight of “him,” even if the alien’s attitude is infantilizing.

Ultimately, Ellie triumphs over the sociopolitical forces conspiring against her. The secure knowledge of Ellie’s own truth is what matters more than the government’s approval, and thousands of strangers stand in solidarity of belief with her. She achieves her goal of advancing scientific understanding by initiating first contact, as well as finding personal peace, without compromising her autonomy or personality. Radios, telescopes, space, math, physics — these passions were born entirely from herself, and they flourished because of her drive. There’s no question of how or why or she’s an exception. Ellie just is. She’s passionate, level-headed, exacting, devoted, optimistic, courageous, unapologetic, and full of glorious wonder.

That’s what girls need to see: the normalization of women as protagonists, as professionals, as figureheads of heroism. Viable, easily seen examples that women belong in the worlds of science and technology, that the fields aren’t exclusive boys’ clubs. A woman can achieve breakthroughs in math and physics. A woman can raise her voice and fight for her beliefs. A woman can serve as representative for the best of humanity.

More than anything, she can succeed in the face of overwhelming societal pressures trying to undermine her choices — just like social norms dictate what young women can and can’t do. Pink is for girls, blue is for boys; you play with dolls, not trucks. It’s impractical to be a scientist, or an engineer, or a radio astronomer.

Contact shows women can be protagonists, women can be scientific geniuses, and women can inspire. It compounds the deep-seated necessity for identification through representation, if nothing else than through my own experience as a young girl looking for confirmation that I wasn’t abnormal at the same time I was looking up at the stars.

If Ellie Arroway can do those things, so can we.

Kelcie Mattson is a multimedia editor by morning, aspiring critic by afternoon, and tea aficionado 24/7. She’s been a fangirl since birth, thanks to reruns of Star Trek and Buffy. In her spare time she does the blogging thing on feminism, genre films, minority representation, comics, and all things cinephile-y at her website. You can follow her on Twitter at @kelciemattson, where she’s usually overanalyzing HGTV’s camerawork and sharing too many cat pictures.