Olga Tchepikova – Bitch Flicks

‘Barbarella’ and the “Savagery” of Futuristic Sexual Politics

One version of Barbarella draws her as a progressive, sex-positive, and role model-worthy character that saves the universe. … Barbarella the character might be the worst example of a superheroine by many of our contemporary expectations for a female lead not least because of the ambiguous dynamics of her (sexual) agency. … ‘Barbarella’ as a film remains a superheroine movie with a mission: save the future of sexual politics.

This guest post written by Olga Tchepikova appears as part of our theme week on Superheroines.

Oh Barbarella Psychedella… notorious campy Queen of the Galaxy and a retro sci-fi enthusiast’s dream come true. In my mind, she exists in two distinct versions: One — the more permanent one that I find to be true for the longest time between refreshing my memory — draws her as a progressive, sex-positive, and role model-worthy character that saves the universe. The other — which I become aware of every time I refresh my memory — reminds me that although Barbarella may be at the center of every scene during her mission she is not always the catalyst of action. Based on this conflict, I am hesitant to call Barbarella a superheroine. However, I think it is valid to label Barbarella a superheroine movie. But what exactly is the difference?

Barbarella has been praised for parodying the image of a hyper-sexualized astronaut woman especially with regard to the sexist organization of space travel programs in the 1960s and often classified as a feminist film for its display of a sexually active female protagonist. Lisa Parks wrote a wonderful essay on space programs and Barbarella in the book Swinging Single: Representing Sexuality in the 1960s (1999) edited by Hillary Radner and Moya Luckett. Indeed, the heroism we find in this movie seems inevitably bound to a fixation on sex. But precisely because the film’s iconography so strongly predicates Barbarella as intergalactic sex kitten, it is important to acknowledge that contrary to the popularized image of her promiscuous pursuit, she almost never actively seeks out sexual partners. Rather, she responds to other people’s sexual desire for her. But instead of dwelling on questions about erotic agency, I would like to point out that the sexual heroism we might associate with Barbarella is strongly contingent on the futuristic setting of the story — a setting we are completely detached from, but cannot help but read through our internalized socio-cultural conventions regarding sexuality. Consequently, in the story’s terrain, it is especially intriguing that sex as we know it has become irrelevant, or — in the characters’ own words — even “savage.”

In Barbarella’s version of the future ‘making love,’ or that which we refer to as romantic physical intimacy, does not exist anymore. “Love” may be the official motto of the Republic of the Earth, but there is no sex in it. In fact, the sexual future we see here is a neoliberal dystopia. Sex has been deemed too distracting — a threat to maximum efficiency. With the help of science, people in the 41st century take pills and touch hands for one minute “until full rapport is achieved.” For the best possible effect, their “psychocardiograms” must align. And to further emphasize the routine of this practice, we find out that only the poorest of the populace — the ones who cannot afford pills and psychocardiogram readings — have sex in the form of ‘genital intercourse with their clothes off.’

In a future shaped by such conventions, Barbarella is requested to find Durand Durand who is, as it turns out later, a scientist-turned-megalomaniac that wants to take over the universe. Her search leads to Sogo (the future’s abbreviated version of Sodom and Gomorrah) — a city where the “primitive state of neurotic irresponsibility” (Barbarella’s words) is alive and well. In Sogo, pleasure and death are the two main forces in action, making it an exceptional location in the pacified, hyper-scientific universe of 4000+ AD. And it is here that we realize that the “neurotic irresponsibilities” Barbarella is worried about strongly resemble the 1960s fantasies of counter-cultural hedonism and excess. Only in Barbarella’s era, their bad reputation is grounded in the disturbance of efficiency, not a lack of moral conventions.

Certainly, Barbarella’s main agenda is not to lay out the path our society might be taking in the coming centuries. It is a campy sci-fi film after all. But can we really fully dismiss that this could be our future? One where there is, as a rule, no sex in love and no love in sex?

There are plenty of ways in which sexuality (and love, for that matter) has been and continues to be regulated for the sake of a random status quo maintained through directed shaming and punishment. Aside from the long tradition of monitoring and restricting women’s physical, mental, and emotional faculties, ‘those in charge’ have also been persistently harassing individuals and communities displaying non-(hetero)normative desires and identities. And this rigid tenaciousness causes the personal to remain political until further notice, or at least until we live in a time like Barbarella’s day and age — where you don’t have to bother putting on clothes for discussing a diplomatic mission with the president because ‘naked’ is not synonymous to ‘sexual’ anymore. And even if it was, ‘sexual’ would merely mean a match of psychocardiograms, allowing for the best possible experience of touching hands for a minute.

The separation of sex and love exemplified in Barbarella’s universe is not as uncommon as it used to be — at least in newer public discourse and social behavior. Casual sexual encounters, or ‘hook-up culture’ in the mouth of people who disapprove, can be both a means to ridicule people who are interested in bonding with their sex partners — as suggested in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World — or a convenient code to avoid the distracting nature of romance and emotions for the sake of personal fulfillment and success in other spheres of life. As of now, we like to exhibit emotionally detached sexual encounters for the sake of efficiency as a personal choice — something that can or even will be reversed if we choose. But what if, indeed, it were possible to achieve ‘full rapport’ with another person without going through the trouble of physical intercourse and being exposed to the dangers of disease contamination and emotional attachment?

The definite separation of sex and physical sensation à la Barbarella takes this idea far out of the already tense and fragile comfort zone defining our culture’s progressive and inclusive attitudes towards sexuality. From where we stand now, a social norm that dictates this separation seems almost dehumanizing. Do we really want to be that progressive? It is one thing to think sexual intercourse without emotional attachment, or sexual sensation without sexual partner(s), but it is hard to think sexual sensation without the respective physical, and maybe even emotional stimulation. However, the over-exaggeration of this idea, to me, is fundamentally what defines the sexually heroic nature of Barbarella from the vantage point of a culture that recycles this film’s iconography on a regular basis — not least because somewhere along the way, she makes the ‘efficient sex’ of the future look ridiculous.

Barbarella was created during a time of social and sexual revolt but placed in an age where the hyper-civilized earth community overrode this one human trait that continuously has been causing trouble throughout history. Despite being a strong believer in the futuristic world order, she reverts to ancient practices that go against a lot of the principles working to maintain the 41st century’s social order and recognizes the productive potential of sexual distractions. She chooses body fluids over pills, feeling over pragmatic ritual, quality over quantity. In the eyes of the future, she becomes “savage.” In other words, she becomes like us. Her choice for ‘the old-fashioned way’ champions sex — even the casual type — as an important form of social activity, not a disturbing call of nature.

Barbarella the character might be the worst example of a superheroine by many of our contemporary expectations for a female lead not least because of the ambiguous dynamics of her (sexual) agency. But that is now, and this was then. Barbarella as a film remains a superheroine movie with a mission: save the future of sexual politics. Indeed, it seems like the sexual libertinage of counter-culture might be a smaller evil than time-efficient, pharma-induced orgasms to be received through fingertips. But then again, it is another 2000+ years until the 41st century — more than enough time for sexual intercourse to be declared “savage.”

Olga Tchepikova has lived, studied, and worked across various places in Europe and the U.S.. Her mind in free time, as well as in research, is mainly occupied with films about and critical theory on subculture, outsider figures, horror, violence, death, sexuality, and the sex industry.

Failed Revolutions in Imaginary Cities

How do you solve a problem like dystopian science fiction? It’s been around for about as long as the film industry and yet, politics and society still won’t stop producing warning signs for the decay of humanity, providing directors, writers, and “artists” with almost inexhaustible opportunities for critiquing the current state of the world community, or showing what the present state of things might turn into if not handled consciously and carefully.

This guest post by Olga Tchepikova appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.

Many dystopian stories are set in urban environments: early films like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) address the issues of class structures and technological progress in the urban sphere and novels like John Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer (1925) put emphasis on the city as a space inhabited by masses, where anonymity and lack of compassion or interest in community prevails over civic solidarity and consideration. In urban spaces, it is really not that hard at all to be “alone in a crowd” both literally and figuratively. The city as a space for the display of pessimistic future narratives works well because that’s where all types of processes are accelerated, and there is a plethora of productive and destructive forces turning urban existence into an organically evolving chaos—a disease to the city’s body that needs to be cured continuously, by any and all means necessary—and the most subtly pervasive one is surveillance.

There have been a few particularly disastrous examples of state surveillance. Some are a bit dated (the East German Stasi and its many filmic representations) while others are fairly recent. So is it, in fact, a dystopian future we are talking about when it comes to spying on citizens? Not really. We have kind of embraced it in “western” urban culture and now are encouraged to accept its humoristic potential (I’m talking about the “Smile, you’re on CCTV” – smileyface stickers everywhere). At the same time, it comes at us in disguise, as a communicative necessity for the progressive human that wants to be harder, better, faster, stronger. Yet, here we are, on camera in public spaces and feeding the world wide web (and feasting on it, too).

If you can’t beat them, join them, right?

… said no film hero/ine ever. If anything, do it for the purpose of infiltrating authority, like Queen propose. If you can’t (and you shouldn’t “can”) join them, beat them. That’s what hero/ine/s do, and by watching them we are reminded that we too often don’t, although we should. They connect the dots and look back on the ones voyeuristically observing them. They resist and are sometimes punished for it—just like in the real world. Take for example Brazil (1985), straight out of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, where protagonist Sam Lowry tries to escape the imperative of bureaucratic regulation of his environment and ultimately is lobotomized for his efforts. Here, punishment of disobedience is an almost accepted, public ritual, while disobedience itself is both overt and covert—there are terrorists in the city, but also underground freedom fighters (Tuttle).

Slightly different, but similar enough to include here is Dark City (1998), with a seemingly more happy ending, showing how John Murdoch battles an alien species, the Strangers, who are in complete control of the temporal flow of the artificially created environment, constantly change the geography and impose identities on individuals without their knowledge, all for the “good” cause of filtering out the humanity in the human. Here, no one is who they “really” are and no one (except the hero Murdoch, the traitor Dr. Schreber and the crazy person Walenski) cares because they don’t know (a friendly nod to Last Thursdayism).

Scary, right?

In Brazil, the opening sequence is most illustrative of the scattered condition of society or the discrepancy between ideal and reality: floating above the clouds, we find ourselves “somewhere in the 20^th century”—a noplace (not in to utopia-etymology sense) and everyplace of the past 100 years. This type of insistence on universality is a prime example for cinematically mediated ideology as it kills any slightest bit of hope for change no matter whether the circumstances are positive or negative. Besides, speaking of ideology, Triumph of the Will opens with a very similar cloud sequence. Coincidence? Do I need to answer that? But actually, it’s just Lowry’s dream, the one where he’s a hero and saves the girl, which means procreation, which means return to nature, which means return to the Garden, which means happiness. It’s a good thing. But it’s not real. The idyllic heavens change into a shop window full of TVs showing an advertisement—because this is the reality of the 20^th century: it is simulated on screens now—and a few seconds later…

In your face, media propaganda, capitalism and consumer culture!

Before we meet Lowry roughly 10 minutes into the story, we see the Ministry of Information violently arresting the wrong guy (Buttle the generic citizen instead of Tuttle the infiltrator), and the only difference between the aftermaths of the exploding shop window and the destruction accompanying the Ministry actions is that the latter procedure has a piece of paper authorizing it. Because processed information is power, and the lack thereof makes you an easy target, or victim. Or, actually, maybe just a normal human being living your life, as is the case in Dark City.

Everything quiet on the neo-noir scifi front — Everything quiet on the neo-noir sci-fi front

In a similar way as Brazil, Dark City is set in a temporally patchworked environment. The mise-en-scène completely lacks coherence in its references to historical space and time—there are too many of them at once. As Mr. Hand explains, “We fashioned this city on stolen memories: different eras, different pasts, all rolled into one.” They have the whole world in their hands, if you know what I mean. The Strangers’ invisible puppeteering activities result in our perception of the narrative as dystopian only via, again, the power of knowledge. In Murdoch’s camp, however, knowledge means to reflect, to detect inconsistencies, and to suspect. Suspicion causes paranoia and paranoia ultimately leads to “real” power, at least in his case. Contrary to Brazil, where the productivity of suspicion is actively promoted by the same authority that benefits from it, and therefore, prevents any actual change.

Dark City ends with Murdoch’s victory over the Strangers and his rebuilding of the city on his own, seemingly “freer” terms. Does he end autocracy? Yes. Does he bring about liberation? If this is about humanity and idiosyncrasy and “everyone needs to be who they really are”… the answer is no, not really. Murdoch dislikes processes no one else appeared to suffer from and makes the world better for only himself. Murdoch wanted Shell Beach; he got Shell Beach. In the process, he may have played around with the parameters of the formula and put it to sleep, but he did not bother sharing knowledge (and thus, power). They’ll just have to live a lie forever. But it’s only a lie if you know there is truth, right?

Guess it didn’t happen then.

While we’re at it, let’s talk about truth some more. Truth is like gender—there is an essentialist take on it, relying on facts, things that actually exist in the world (things that you can touch… like genitals for example), and then there is ideology: things invented but holding the same authority as the essentialist prove (similar to the assumption that these genitals you can touch magically make you desire certain things and hate others). With gender, it’s complicated. With truth it’s the same, unless someone forces it to be simple. For example, in Brazil, ink holds more “truth” and authority than interpersonal communication. Information printed on paper is more than just power as an ideological concept—it is the physical manifestation of power, like your genitals.

Where there’s truth, the “human” aspect of interaction becomes irrelevant—no other physical authority as such is needed to maintain law and order. Indeed, surveillance “somewhere in the 20^th century” is not an overt action taken out by identifiable people (they just reinforce the authority of the paper print) but, rather, emerges in forms of indoctrinations mingling in the environment, promoting a tautological and unquestioned acceptance of bureaucracy. All over the city, there are posters reminding the citizens to “Be safe – be suspicious,” or “Don’t suspect a friend, report him” and finally, that…

One might say that the organization of the depicted society relies on a form of decentralized panopticism. Panopticism is the unverifiable threat of surveillance turned into self-surveillance—it used to be a prison thing but now we have, you know, cameras in our laptop screens and are you sure it’s not broadcasting just because the light is not on? Is it paranoid to think it might? In Brazil, the decentralization of surveillance means that the possibly watching body is not only the state authority but also, people just like you. Somewhere in the 21^st century, the decentralization of surveillance means that the possibly watching body is not even a body anymore. So, this demands an even more rigid need for self-discipline—in order for everyone to be a suspect, everyone needs to suspect.

Now it appears that these two films could not be farther apart in the presentation of their citizens—in Brazil, everyone suspects everything; in Dark City no one suspects anything. However, both are built on the same conditions: individualism, transparency of authoritative activities, and the privacy of citizens are sacrificed for a harmonious communal existence where the illusion of egalitarianism depends on the withdrawal of authority from direct visibility. By explicitly encouraging paranoia but not presenting the population with these messages in a spectacular manner, the Ministry of Information creates a paradoxical community that is bound by mutual distrust, and therefore, establishes a structure where the public does not aim to overthrow authority because everyone is too busy suspecting each other. With a similar effect, the Strangers in Dark City look down on their lab-rat citizens without permanently appearing in the continuity of their world. Both cases are a witch hunt: if hero/ine/s drown, they’re innocent; if they survive, they’re guilty and die anyway.

Unless they evolve.

Lab rats outsmarting their “owners” is always a moment of pleasure, but is their personal victory over authority solely driven by their position as heroic victims, or did they have to become more evil than the evil in order to prevail over evil? This is something I was toying with during Ex Machina, and also the aspect that made Dark City a lot darker than it might seem in the first place. Sometimes we forget that every hero/ine drags along a body count, too. But at the same time, some change in the dystopian routine of the film is better than no change, or the wrong side’s victory.

That’s why Brazil is so soul-crushing. Lowry is irreversibly kicked out of reality into a non-existent, eternal, utopian dream—he got the Garden, the girl, the happiness. But he didn’t win. There are other films that thrive on this idea, and most of them also don’t have a happy end.

Attempts at improving the “situation” through distraction are very close to our reality that significantly lacks a routine of epic, heroic gestures. Could it be, though, that it’s mainly because there are too many causes worth fighting for and it hurts to prioritize? You wanna make a donation for homeless puppies, children, or grown men? Or would you rather watch Hobo with a Shotgun?

What we cease to see is how that off-screen world of ours sugar-coats outrage with sensationalism and throws it back at us in the form of film, so we can at least be entertained by the sad realities we live in while reality itself becomes secondary, invisible, almost unreal. Do we simply not start revolutions because most of the successful ones are fictional, or do we not feel entitled to actually complain and be outraged because this reality is not that bad? We are not ignorant but aware—after all, we share on Facebook and hashtag on Twitter. Only those spaces are the Garden, not the reality. But since we are not lobotomized yet, we could still evolve.

Olga Tchepikova has lived, studied, and worked in various places in Europe and just left the US after finishing her MA there. Her mind in free time, as well as in research, is mainly occupied with films about and critical theory on various sub-cultural spheres, sex, porn, horror, violence, death and their ramifications.