Tag: Women in Science Fiction

Futurama’s Fanservice

By Myrna Waldron
Spoiler warning: Full summary of episodes from the currently airing Season 7.
Trigger warning: Very brief reference to rape.
From “Into The Wild Green Yonder,” Amy & Leela talking.
Is it possible to still love something when you’re completely annoyed by it?
This is how I feel about Futurama right now. I’ve been a fan of it since its premiere in 1999 (as I spent most of my preteen and teen years with a healthy obsession with The Simpsons). As my affection for The Simpsons waned, Futurama replaced it as my favourite TV show. And there’s a lot to love – the series affectionately parodies a wide array of science fiction staples, the mood varies from slapstick comedy, to tragedy, to overwhelming wonder, and the writers and actors are some of the most talented and intelligent working in television today.
The two main female characters, Turanga Leela and Amy Wong, are one of the main reasons I love the show so much.  They are good examples of those mythical strong female characters you’ve all heard about, Leela especially. They combine several seemingly contradictory traits, resulting in a multi-faceted characterization. 
Leela is one of those rare combinations of toughness and vulnerability, since her personality combines a short, sometimes violent temper, with tremendous internal insecurity. In situations where the cast is in trouble, Leela is always the one who reacts first, and she is usually the one who is the voice of reason (especially if her only allies are the dimwitted Fry and the immoral Bender). Her insecurity especially links to her heritage – as a mutant whose only mutation is a single eye in the centre of her forehead, she doesn’t truly belong with her mutant parents, nor with the “normal” humans. 
Amy is a Chinese-American heiress, and is one of the few Asian characters I’ve seen represented on television ANYWHERE. She is sometimes shallow and promiscuous and has a tendency to constantly use the 30th century equivalent of slang, but she also holds a Ph.D in Applied Physics, establishing an Elle-Woods-in-Legally-Blonde-like contrast between the stereotype of a bimbo and incredible intelligence. She and Leela also share the trait that they don’t take any of the crap that their male co-workers sometimes throw at them.
But I have a problem.
From “Zapp Dingbat,” Munda, Leela, Fry and Bender.
After Futurama was un-cancelled and began airing new episodes on Comedy Central, the tone of the show changed. The show never shied away from risque jokes, but I have noticed that the general content of the show has become, as TV Tropes might say, “Hotter and Sexier.” To give one example, the second episode of the 6th season, “In-A-Gadda-De-Leela,” has some fanservice that severely undermines character development. In that episode, an out-of-control satellite forces Zapp Brannigan and Leela to have sex in order to save the planet. (It…makes a bit more sense in context) At this point in the series, Leela and Fry have finally become a couple, so this scene struck me as a rather blatant attempt to get Leela to have sex with Zapp again despite her significant character development. There are other earlier examples of Amy/Leela fanservice as well, such as them making out in “Bender’s Game” and a scene from “Jurassic Bark” of them wrestling in tiny spandex leotards. It gets pretty tiring.
The 7th season, which is currently airing, has two episodes with fanservice that I have a particular issue with. In “Zapp Dingbat,” Leela’s parents divorce and her mother Munda starts dating Zapp Brannigan. Since Leela believes Zapp is only using her mother to get to her, she resents their relationship tremendously. She tries everything she can think of to break them up, but they only flaunt their relationship even more in response. Eventually, Leela tries to seduce Zapp. She invites him to her apartment for dinner, and when he arrives, she’s shown dancing around a stripper pole in a negligee. This scene infuriated me – not only is the fanservicey attempt at showing Leela acting like a stripper extremely blatant, it contradicts Leela’s previously established loathing for Zapp and her regrets over their brief affair. Her actions are also indicative of selfish betrayal, which is also out of character for her. At no point does she recognize that her seduction attempt would constitute cheating on Fry, apparently all she’s thinking about is getting Zapp to cheat on her mother. I was also offended that of all the “sexy” acts of fanservice Leela could have been depicted as doing, they went for stripping, which is a tremendously misogynistic industry.
From “The Butterjunk Effect,” Amy and Leela flying in their skimpy battle costumes.
This trend of using the female characters for fanservice continues into the next episode, “The Butterjunk Effect.” In it, Leela and Amy join a “Butterfly Derby” league, which involves scantily clad female gladiators wearing giant butterfly wings. I bet I don’t even have to point out the fanservice here. Predictably, Leela and Amy wear very little once they become regular participants in this derby. They are easily defeated, and it is revealed their more powerful opponents drink “Nectar,” which acts similarly to steroids. The pair become addicted to the Nectar, and become violent and incredibly muscular. In fact, they become almost masculine, leading to some rather sexist jokes surrounding how they’re no longer acting like traditionally feminine women, and there are indications that Fry and Kif are losing attraction to them because of the masculinization. I suppose this is a parody of how steroids have a side effect of creating too much testosterone. At any rate, Leela and Amy run out of Nectar, and travel to the planet where it was sourced. Fry gets sprayed with a giant butterfly pheromone, which irresistibly arouse both Leela and Amy due to their Nectar addiction. Never mind that he’s already got one hot girlfriend, let’s have Fry fool around with the other hot girl too! …Again! I won’t even get into this episode’s running joke about women’s supposed cattiess to each other.
As you might guess, I’m pretty disgusted with how the female characters are being treated now. These plot developments and sexualized/objectified visuals are not indicative of the show that I love.  It isn’t right that only the female characters are sexy, while every time a male character is naked or horny, it’s played for laughs. I suspected that this is because there aren’t any women on staff, only (presumably) heterosexual males. When I was looking up the information on these episodes, I decided to find out how many female writers/directors have been involved with Futurama. According to Wikipedia, not including season 7, there are a grand total of three female writers, Kristin Gore, Heather Lombard, and Maiya Williams, who are credited only one episode each. I know it’s typical for screenwriters to be mostly male, but that’s just pathetic.
Leela and Amy wrestling in leotards. Objectification of women? Surely you jest.
What I feel like is that episodes like “Zapp Dingbat” and “The Butterjunk Effect” set a rather dangerous precedent. The show hasn’t jumped the shark yet, but it’s strapped on the waterskis. If I were to show episodes like these to a non-fan, especially a female one, I doubt they’d gain much interest in the series. How did the same show go from “Robot learns he is not immortal and achieves a new understanding of how precious and finite life is” to “Women wear sexy leotards and butterfly wings while having airborne battles, then get addicted to steroids?” This downhill slope reminds me of what happened to Matt Groening’s other show, The Simpsons. The decline of The Simpsons is a topic that has been argued about many times, but the most common complaints include character derailment (Homer stopped being a well-meaning but foolish husband/father and became an overly impulsive and selfish asshole), fanservice (The Marge-gets-breast-implants episode, anyone?), and stupid, offensive and unrealistic plots (Homer gets raped by a panda). I am one of many Simpsons fans who had to give up watching the series, as it became unrecognizable from the groundbreaking and brilliant satire that I loved. It’s by now a cliche to prematurely predit the doom of a television series, but I don’t want to see the same downhill spiral from Futurama.
I doubt anyone involved with Futurama production is going to read this, but enough already. I don’t theoretically have a problem with risque jokes or sexy/erotic situations, but there is a difference between depicting sexuality, and exploiting and objectifying women for a presumed heterosexual male audience. Heterosexual women aren’t the only ones sick of this stuff. Judging from brief Twitter conversations I’ve had, some LGBT women don’t care for fanservice either, especially when it goes beyond subtle expressions of sexuality. 
I like to joke that I believe in equal opportunity exploitation. If they’re not going to ever depict the male characters as sexy, then they need to stop with the fanservice of the female characters. It’s dragging down the entire show to exclusively objectify normally well-developed female characters. And they need to hire some women writers and directors. Math & science jokes, and science fiction in general, are not male-exclusive fields. I still want to continue to love Futurama. When the show is at its best, such as episodes like “The Late Philip J. Fry”, it’s one of the greatest shows on television. But stuff like a stripper Leela and butterfly gladiators bring down the entire series. Honestly…if things don’t get better, Futurama is going to end up just like The Simpsons.

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.

Women in Science Fiction Week: The Roundup

The wonderful thing about science fiction is that the writers have the opportunity to create a world, which while based on ours, can be markedly different. This means that there should be a place for strong female characters who are not restricted by sexism or forced into a situation in which they must perform femininity on a daily basis to be accepted as ‘woman.’ Despite the freedom of this genre; however, nothing is born outside of discourse, which means of course that we end up with the same sexist tropes repeatedly.
Even in shows which readily lend themselves to recurring scenes of violence, because women have historically been framed as delicate and passive, men end up in the leadership roles. This also means that when the action does finally happen, women are placed into nurturing roles like doctors and nurses to aid the wounded men. While some may see this exchange as complementary, it in fact sets up a serious gender divide that is reductive.
The lack of representation of older black women in science fiction is coupled with a complete lack of interest in developing any kind of independent agenda for their characters. Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Oracle in The Matrix, the only two named older black women that I (or anybody else that I asked) could think of,  are recycled wholesale from the stereotypical mammy of the slave era.
The main features of the stereotypical mammy are grounded in a white fantasy; often these women were wet nurses, bringing up their white charges in a far more intimate relationship than either have with their biological families. It is not Scarlett O’Hara’s mother who fusses about her eating habits, does up her dress, or worries about her relationships. It is Mammy. Scarlett, and the viewers of Gone With the Wind, never consider what Mammy might think of their relationship, or worry that she might have children of her own whom she cannot raise. We are content to construct a fantasy in which Mammy wants nothing more than to feed, clothe and care for her white charge.
It’s assumed that, of course we want Cobb to win because he’s really Leo, and, you see, Leo is talented but Troubled. What troubles him? You guessed it: a woman. A woman whose very name–Mal (played by Marion Cotillard, an immensely talented actress who’s wasted in this role)–literally means “bad.” Who or what will rescue Cobb/Leo from his troubles? You guessed it again: a woman. This time, it’s a woman whose very name–Ariadne (played by Ellen Page in a way that demands absolutely no commentary)–means “utterly pure,” and who is younger, asexual (a counter to Mal’s dangerous French sexuality) and without any backstory or past of her own to smudge the movie’s–and her own–focus on Cobb/Leo. So, it’s not a stretch here to say that Cobb needs a pure woman to escape the bad one. Virgin/whore stereotype, anyone?

For me, I can’t separate Alien and Aliens (although I pretend the 3rd and 4th don’t exist…ugh). Both amazing films possess pulse-pounding intensity, a struggle for survival, and most importantly for me, a feminist protagonist. Radiating confidence and strength, Ripley remains my favorite female film character. A resourceful survivor wielding weapons and ingenuity, she embodies empowerment. Bearing no mystical superpowers, she’s a regular woman taking charge in a crisis. Weaver, who imbued her character with intelligence and a steely drive, was inspired to “play Ripley like Henry V and women warriors of classic Chinese literature.”

Sigourney Weaver’s role as Ripley catapulted her to stardom, making her one of the first female action heroes. Preceded by Pam Grier in Coffy and Dianna Rigg as Emma Peel in The Avengers, she helped pave the way for Linda Hamilton’s badassery in T2, Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, Carrie-Anne Moss in The Matrix, Lucy Lawless as Xena, Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy, and Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider and Salt. But Ripley, a female film icon, wasn’t even initially conceived as a woman.
Overall, Olivia Dunham is a prime example of what it is to be a heroine in a science fiction world. She can break bones, witness the aftermath of a gruesome fringe event without batting an eye, and go toe-to-toe with mastermind villains, and yet she is not invincible or impervious to emotional situations. Although she is constantly surrounded by extraordinary events and weird circumstances, she is a truly believable character, imbued in verisimilitude. With a fifth season on the horizon (slated for September), I cannot wait to see what is in store for Olivia and her team.
Joss Whedon is known for creating and writing about strong female characters in his science fiction shows. One of the most popular and complex of these characters is Willow Rosenberg from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Willow speaks to many people and quite a few have named her their favorite character on the show, from Mark at Mark Watches to Joss Whedon himself, who put the most Willow-centric episode of the series (“Doppelgangland”) on his list of favorite episodes.
Another thing that makes Willow so appealing is the fact that her character arc over seven seasons can’t be described in only one way. Some see Willow’s story as a shy, brainy computer geek embracing her supernatural power in becoming a witch. Others relate to her arc as one of a repressed wallflower who explores her sexuality and finds more confidence in coming out as a lesbian. Still others are fascinated with the different ways she handles magic, and her recovery after drifting too far to the dark side.
What story is told when those three arcs are put together? For me, the story of Willow Rosenberg is the story of a woman who spends years defining and re-defining herself, rejecting roles that other people have chosen for her – for better and for worse.
As much as I would like to sit through a movie like this and enjoy it for what it is (ground-breaking sci-fi entertainment that will go down in history), I simply can’t. James Cameron’s attempt to create a more spiritual, natural, and peaceful society leaves me annoyed that once again this idea is filtered through a white, Western, male member of a patriarchal society. Some theorists will consider Cameron’s Alien trilogy feminist, because of Sigourney Weaver’s empowered Ripley (legend says it was written to be asexual–with casting deciding the character’s sex), but she still has to prove her femininity and womanliness by saving cats and small children. I fear that many feminists will laud Avatar as well–for creating a world where the people worship a female entity (“Eywa”), because the Clan leader’s female mate/wife is as powerful as him, and since the female lead is as empowered as Ripley. However, like Ripley, Neytiri too has her feminine trappings, as her power can be explained away through her heritage.

Patriarchy perpetuates rape culture and infringes on reproductive rights. Alien centered on rape and men’s fear of female reproduction. Littered with vaginal-looking aliens and phallic xenomorphs violating victims orally, these themes resurface. But this time around, Scott’s latest endeavor also adds abortion and infertility. As ThinkProgress’ Alyssa Rosenberg asserts, Prometheus bolsters the Alien Saga’s themes of “exploration of bodily invasion and specifically women’s bodily autonomy.”

[…]

But David doesn’t want her to have an abortion, insisting she be put in stasis and trying to restrain her. Like Ash in Alien, it appears David had an agenda to try and keep the creature inside Shaw alive. David tries to thwart Shaw’s agency and bodily autonomy, forcing her to remain pregnant. Hmmm, sounds eerily similar to anti-choice Republicans with their invasive and oppressive legislation restricting abortion. No one has the right to tell someone what to do with their body.
Lost has many strong female characters, many of whom I could easily see wearing a “This is what a feminist look like” t-shirt. As noted by Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, an admitted Lost junkie, “Generally, the female characters are more well-rounded than just about any other female characters on television, especially in ensemble casts.”
Lost has often presented ‘gender outside the box’ characters, suggesting being human is more important than being a masculine man or a feminine woman. After all, when you are fighting for your life, ‘doing gender right’ is hardly at the top of your priority list.
While Jack and Sawyer try to out-macho each other in their love triangle with Kate, neither hold entirely to the Rambo-man-in-jungle motif. As for the women, they just might be the strongest, bravest, wisest female characters to grace a major network screen since Cagney and Lacey.

Though the island is certainly patriarchal, one could make a strong case that male-rule is not such a good thing for (island) society. Kate or Juliet would be far better leaders than any of the island patriarchs (and as some episodes suggest, would make great co-leaders – what a feminist concept!)

But the film stars another woman, albeit in a more supporting role within the cast: Kirsten Dunst, who gives a sensitive portrayal of Mary, a character who is in many ways the polar opposite of Clementine. Mary is quiet, almost mousy. She wears rather plain, unobtrusive clothes. At work, she wears a smart white lab coat, as if to reinforce the medical nature of the proceedings, and answers the phone in the same measured tone of voice, responding to all queries with variations on the same stock phrases. Her inner extrovert manifests only after a combination of alcohol and pot, which lead her (and Stan) to have a wild dance party, including jumping half-dressed on the bed while Joel’s memory is being erased. Mary is, however, a woman who knows her own mind as the film progresses. She exchanges her seemingly blind devotion to Lacuna and Dr. Mierzwiak for her own brand of individual agency. By the end, it’s clear why: Mary has had her memory altered by Dr. Mierzwiak, after what appears to be some convincing on his part, when the affair they’d been having was discovered by his wife. The knowledge, if not the memory, of this seems to jolt Mary into coming into her own. Unfortunately, all this occurs in the last ten minutes of the film. For whatever reason, Mary is most definitely a sidelined supporting character, whose potential is never fully realized in the cinematic release, as director’s commentary and the trivia about the shooting script attest.
Splice explores gendered body horror at the locus of the womb, reveling in the horror of procreation. It touches on themes of bestiality, incest, and rape. It’s also a movie about being a mom.
Though it received somewhat lackluster reviews, I encourage anyone interested in feminism and film to give Vincenzo Natali’s sci-fi body horror film a try. Splice features female characters who are intelligent, emotionally complex, and incontrol. They’re not perfect, but they are three dimensional characters whose decisions drive the story. (One of them morphs into a male, but we’ll get to that.)
Splice asks a lot of questions about the terms and conditions of conception, gestation, birth, and motherhood, all without stabbing the viewer in the eye with reductive answers.
It also features some campy moments. Hipster scientists shout things like “It was the only way!” Academy Award winning actor Adrien Brody expresses his frustration by throwing down not just his jacket, but his scarf as well!
If you can stomach the juxtaposition of big thinky concepts and stilted clichéd dialogue, you will find Splice a thoroughly enjoyable mindfuck of a film.
There are moral issues at stake throughout the entire series, including the erosion of prisoners’ and laborers’ rights so that others may live more comfortably. The same critical lens is cast on forced birth, forced abortion, eugenics and abortion restrictions.
Early in the second season, Kara “Starbuck” Thrace has returned to Cylon-occupied Caprica (home planet for the crew of Battlestar Galactica) to find her destiny and aid the resistance, a group of humans who have stayed behind to fight the Cylons. She is kidnapped and knocked out, and wakes up in a hospital bed. Her “doctor” (who later is revealed as a Cylon) tells her she was shot in the abdomen and they have removed the bullet. As she drifts in and out of consciousness, she becomes suspicious. The doctor has excuses for every inconsistency. He tells her they’d operated because they suspected she had a cyst on her ovary. He says, “You gotta keep that reproductive system in great shape… it’s your most valuable asset these days. Finding healthy childbearing women your age is a top priority for the resistance. You are a very precious commodity to us.”
Starbuck replies, “I am not a commodity. I’m a viper pilot.”

To me a character that deserves the reputation of a feminist heroine would be Carolyn Fry(Radha Mitchell) from David Twohy’s Pitch Black (2000), regardless of whether he intended it that way. We have time to watch her character grow through the movie, but she is a secondary character, Riddick is the famed anti-hero. To make an impression in spite of that is huge.

While Fry takes the reins of the group on the deserted planet by default, the one thing that drives her bravery is her terrible mistake — attempting to eject the passengers in cryogenic sleep to lighten the load of the spaceship before it crashed, stopped from doing so by the more conscientious navigator who died as a result, earning her a lot of resentment from the group, their mistrust eventually pushing her to fight for her leadership position more fiercely. I don’t particularly consider that a negative point, I see a person deeply ridden with guilt, antagonists willing her to fail, Riddick keenly watching her every move, reacting to her willingness to risk her safety for the sake of the others with amusement. I see a lot of a pressure on a person who is not particularly skilled to handle the task before her, but she pushes on in spite of that.

Mastermind behind phenomenal, groundbreaking television hits, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel and recently helming a little box office smash called The Avengers, Whedon has always crafted the powerful, intelligent female hero. He illustrates that aesthetic further in the short lived FOX series Firefly turned feature motion picture, Serenity showcasing not just one, but four intriguing women characters- Zoe, Kaylee, Inara, and River.

In a science fiction space western combining a thrilling taste of adventure, mayhem, and Whedon’s trademark humor, flying aboard with the wisecracking Captain Malcolm Reynolds, softhearted Wash, short-tempered Jayne, and the good doctor, Simon, these spirited and diverse women bring more than male gazing eye candy ornamentation.

Science fiction is, or should be, a place to examine stereotypes and political and social conventions, not to reinforce them. Before Le Guin came along, we had authors like Piers Anthony (a notorious misogynist, although like most misogynists he denies that he is one) and Ray Bradbury. Now I wouldn’t go so far as to call Bradbury a misogynist — I admire Bradbury’s work, I really do, because many of his themes are universal. But he falls into the same trap that Stephen King does — very few of his main characters are female, and more often than not, men are the decision makers, and the ones that move the plot along. It’s interesting to note that many writers tend to write towards their own gender. In Bradbury’s fiction, like Anthony and King, the female characters often end up in supporting roles as wives, mothers, and crushes that turn into ‘marionettes’ or a controllable programmable robot that can be easily manipulated.
I read these books as a child and teenager, and I experienced a sense of dissatisfaction with the minor roles women were playing in this male literary playground. So I wondered what women writing science fiction would be like, and that’s where I found Ursula Le Guin, who didn’t merit her own displays in the library lobby like the other authors I’ve mentioned. At least, not when I was a kid.
WALL-E, it seems, has developed human qualities on his own. He is also capable of keeping up with a robot approximately 700 years newer (read: younger) than he is–an impressive age gap in any relationship. EVE worries over WALL-E and caters to his physical limitations (he is, after all, an old man–with childlike curiosity), acting as nursemaid in addition to all-around badass. Who says we can’t be everything, ladies? While EVE doesn’t have any of the conventional trappings of femininity, she’s a lovely modern contraption with clean lines, while WALL-E is clunky, schlubby, and falling apart (not to mention he’s a clean rip-off of Short Circuit‘s Johnny 5)–reinforcing the (male) appreciation of a certain kind of female aesthetic, while reminding girls that they should look good and not worry too much about the appearance of their male love-interest.
And while some of the scenes are admittedly, far more graphic and gratuitous than I think necessary (there is a simple purity to the original Alien death scenes that I think is lacking here), the film featured some thought provoking and disturbing themes, though all backed again by a strong, smart, female scientist-turned-reluctant heroine and survivor, similar to the original Ripley.
The Swedish Noomi Rapace (seriously loving these Swedish actors) and South African Charlize Theron oppose each other brilliantly; Theron as the efficient and disdainful corporate heavy, Noomi as the resistant, believing, courageous scientist out to find some answers.
The film features a hefty score of themes for discussion, including one of the most disturbing abortion scenes I’ve ever seen. That scene is apparently what pushed the film up from a PG-13 rating into an R; if the studio had wanted to ensure a PG-13 rating, the MPAA demanded that they cut the entire scene. However, both director Ridley Scott and Rapace felt the scene was pivotal in Shaw’s intense desire to survive and in her emotional and mental development. If you weren’t pro-choice before, chances are you might be after witnessing this scene.

As I watched Avatar, I for some reason (probably because predicting the next thing that would happen got boring once I realized I would never, ever be wrong) began thinking about the first time I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and asked myself how the genre of science fiction and the movie industry as a pillar of American culture had changed in the time that had elapsed between the two films. What were the general cultural values and concerns being communicated in each of these films? What kinds of stories were being told about the world? How had cinema as a means of artistic communication and social commentary changed since 2001 was released? What do the methods of presentation in both films tell us about the ways in which our society has changed in the era of advanced mass communication? And, of course, how was gender represented?

I came to a few distressing conclusions. Naturally, I’ll get to the feminist criticism first. By the time Avatar came out, we’d traversed 41 years in which women’s status in society had purportedly been progressively improving since 2001 was released, but the change in representations of women in popular media, at least in epic sci-fi movies, doesn’t look all that positive. In 1968, we (or Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke) could imagine tourism in space. We could not, however, imagine women occupying any role in space exploration other than as flight attendants. In 2009 we (or James Cameron) could imagine female scientists and helicopter pilots participating in extraterrestrial imperialism, and we could even tolerate warrior-like blue female humanoid aliens as central figures in the plot of an movie, but we still couldn’t imagine a world in which traditional gender roles and current human beauty ideals aren’t upheld, even when that world is literally several light years and 155 years away from our own.
So it might be easy to dismiss Jo as one of those useless female companions. A pretty bit of skirt to be an audience stand-in for the Doctor to explicate to. Except for the fact that Jo Grant is awesome. She’s a trained escapologist, she can fly a helicopter, she can abseil; in ‘The Mind of Evil’, she karates a prison riot leader out of his gun. On numerous occasions, when the Doctor’s got himself locked up somewhere, she comes to his rescue. Though in her first appearance, the Master hypnotises her, the Doctor teaches her how to resist it, so that in later confrontations, the Master is utterly frustrated by his inability to dominate her mind. In ‘The Time Monster’, when they run into the Master, again, and he finds himself unable to find anything to say, she mockingly suggests, ‘How about, “Curses, foiled again”?’ She’s also bold, capable of making hard decisions under pressure. Again in ‘Time Monster’, the Doctor threatens their mutual destruction by initiating a Time Ram, shoving his and the Master’s TARDISes into the same temporospatial coordinates; but when the Doctor hesitates, Jo’s the one who makes the final move to press the big red button.

District 9 operates with what I’d call an absent feminism, which isn’t quite an anti-feminism but a disregard for a female world altogether—except when a minor feminine presence functions as off-stage impetus for the lead character. Aside from a few bit parts, the most prominent female role is that of Wikus’s wife, Tania (Vanessa Haywood), who, although rarely seen onscreen, becomes the driving motivation for Wikus to risk his life to find the cure for his “prawnness,” befriending, out of necessity, Christopher Johnson, the same alien he tried to evict earlier in the day. (Wikus didn’t know then that Johnson actually built his shack atop the Mothership’s missing module; he’s been diligently working for twenty years to fix it, and was nearly finished when pesky Wikus confiscated that black fluid.)

Wikus’s wife, who is given no real identity, save the fact that she is torn between the age-old allegiance to her father and loyalty to her husband (implying that she most certainly “belongs” to one or the other), won’t relinquish hope of her husband’s return by the film’s conclusion. Someone is leaving strange gifts on her doorstep, gifts oddly similar to the ones dear hubby Wikus used to give her. Blomkamp insinuates that she’s a steadfast wife who will do her wifely duty and wait faithfully for her disappeared husband. The viewer is given no back-story or insights into their relationship; yet, forced upon us is the heavy-handed notion that they really do love each other—like, in that super-deep, eternal-love kind of way. Their story, of course, is a bottom-tiered thread in the narrative.
Only after witnessing a mother’s love does Klaatu feel that there is another side to humans (besides their unreasonable and destructive one), and curtail the attack of the killer nanobots. Unwittingly then, Benson changes Klaatu’s mind based on the advice Barnhardt gave her as they fled his house: “Change his mind not with reason, but with yourself.” In your standard anti-feminist fare, Barnhardt’s advice can only mean one of two things. Being a family-friendly film, the remake of Day passes on Benson’s seduction of Klaatu, deciding instead to confirm that she is a mother first and foremost, her position as scientist at a prestigious American university be damned.

As kickass as she is, Sarah possesses no other identity beyond motherhood. She exists solely to protect her John from assassination or humanity will be wiped out. Every decision, every choice she makes, is to protect her son. In Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron tells Sarah that “Without John, your life has no purpose.” Sarah tells her ex-fiancé that she’s not trying to change her fate but change John’s. Even before she becomes a mother in Terminator, her identity is tied to her uterus and her capacity for motherhood.

[…]

On the surface, it seems like the Terminator franchise revolves around a dude often searching for a father figure rather than appreciating his mother. And problematic depictions of motherhood do emerge. But who’s really the hero? Is it the smart hacker son destined to be a leader? Is it the cyborg that learns humanity? Or is it the brave and fierce single mother who sacrifices everything to protect humanity and doesn’t wait for destiny to unfold but takes matters into her own hands?

Even though Leia has romantic feelings for Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back, she continues to call out his arrogant bullshit. She quips snappy retorts such as, “I’d just as soon kiss a Wookie” and “I don’t know where you get your delusions, laser brain.” She’s never at a loss for words and never afraid to express herself.
She also has burgeoning psychic powers as she picks up on Luke’s cries for help at the end of the film. Obi-Wan tells Yoda when Luke Skywalker leaves Dagobah, “That boy is our last hope.” But Yoda wisely tells him, “No, there is another,” cryptically referring to Luke’s twin sister Leia.
In Return of the Jedi, Leia puts herself in harm’s way posing as a bounty hunter to save Han. Sadly, after she’s captured by Jabba the Hut, she’s notoriously objectified and reduced to a sex object in the iconic metal bikini, essentially glamorizing and eroticizing slavery. And of course she needs to be rescued. Again.

Women in Science Fiction Week: Is ‘Terminator’s Sarah Connor an Allegory for Single Mothers?

Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in Terminator 2: Judgment Day

This post previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on May 25, 2012.

Mothers are supposed to be everything to everyone. Sadly, society often stigmatizes, vilifies and demonizes single mothers. Single moms are blamed for “breeding more criminals.” Single parenthood is criminalized and “declared child abuse.” On top of that, “almost 70% of people believe single women raising children on their own is bad for society.” WTF? Seriously?? Wow. Way to be misogynistic people.

So it’s no surprise to see broken and dysfunctional single moms reflected on-screen. And don’t get me wrong. I love watching flawed female characters. But what about single mom Sarah Connor, “the mother of destiny?” Often labeled a feminist hero, topping lists for greatest female characters, is she the “ultimate protective single mother?”
Along with Ellen Ripley, Sarah helped pave the way for strong female characters. In Terminator, Sarah (Linda Hamilton) is a friendly college student and food server, lacking confidence, who “can’t even balance [her] checkbook.” Targeted by cyborg assassins sent from the future to kill her son, the future resistance leader fighting against domineering machines, she is thrust into a hellish nightmare fighting for her life. The Sarah (Linda Hamilton) of Terminator 2: Judgment Daytransforms into a badass goddess. With her sculpted muscles doing pull-ups and firing guns, she’s a ferocious warrior filled with rage (something women are rarely allowed to exhibit) yet haunted and struggling with mental stability. In the cancelled-way-too-early fantastic TV series Sarah Connor Chronicles, we witness Sarah (Lena Headey) as a brave single mother, passionate, smart, angry and flawed, doing everything she can to not only survive but thrive.
As kickass as she is, Sarah possesses no other identity beyond motherhood. She exists solely to protect her John from assassination or humanity will be wiped out. Every decision, every choice she makes, is to protect her son. In Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron tells Sarah that “Without John, your life has no purpose.” Sarah tells her ex-fiancé that she’s not trying to change her fate but change John’s. Even before she becomes a mother in Terminator, her identity is tied to her uterus and her capacity for motherhood.

[…]

On the surface, it seems like the Terminator franchise revolves around a dude often searching for a father figure rather than appreciating his mother. And problematic depictions of motherhood do emerge. But who’s really the hero? Is it the smart hacker son destined to be a leader? Is it the cyborg that learns humanity? Or is it the brave and fierce single mother who sacrifices everything to protect humanity and doesn’t wait for destiny to unfold but takes matters into her own hands?

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Women in Science Fiction Week: ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’

 
Guest post written by Kirk Boyle previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on June 16, 2009.
In The Day the Earth Stood Still, the alien Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) is a diplomat for a group of intergalactic civilizations who lands in Central Park to speak with the world leaders of the human race at the U.N. His intention is to “save the Earth” by reasoning with them to change their way of life so they do not destroy the planet. When U.S. leaders respond with unilateral violence instead, Klaatu begins the process of collecting the animal life forms of the Earth’s various ecosystems in globular “arks” before unleashing a swarm of self-replicating nanobots to destroy human civilization, thus saving Earth from us.
Eventually, with the help of Karl Barnhardt (John Cleese), a physicist who won the Nobel Prize for his work on biological altruism, Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly), an astrobiologist at Princeton, convinces Klaatu that humans can indeed change, and he interrupts the attack of the insect-like bots.
The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still‘s fraudulent feminism is exposed in how Klaatu (Reeves) is finally convinced to spare humanity in his bid to “save the Earth.” In a supposedly progressive way, the remake turns the traditional stay-at-home mother of the 1951 original (Patricia O’Neal) into a Princeton astrobiologist who is important enough to be put on a “vital list” of scientists and engineers who the U.S. government calls upon in the event of an imminent collision of “Object 07/493” with Manhattan. However, this liberal update is nothing but subterfuge.
Throughout the movie, Benson (Connelly) tries repeatedly to persuade Klaatu that humans can change, including taking him to see Professor Barnhardt (Cleese). The unflappable Klaatu begins the process to end the world anyway, and remains unconvinced by Barnhardt’s syllogistic arguments. In the film’s climatic moment of revelation, Klaatu sees Benson consoling her stepchild (Jaden Smith) at his father’s grave.
Only after witnessing a mother’s love does Klaatu feel that there is another side to humans (besides their unreasonable and destructive one), and curtail the attack of the killer nanobots. Unwittingly then, Benson changes Klaatu’s mind based on the advice Barnhardt gave her as they fled his house: “Change his mind not with reason, but with yourself.” In your standard anti-feminist fare, Barnhardt’s advice can only mean one of two things. Being a family-friendly film, the remake of Day passes on Benson’s seduction of Klaatu, deciding instead to confirm that she is a mother first and foremost, her position as scientist at a prestigious American university be damned.
Kirk Boyle is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Asheville. He previously contributed pieces about Horrible Bosses, Revolutionary Road, and Good Dick to Bitch Flicks.

Women in Science Fiction Week: ‘District 9’ and Absent Feminism

Guest post written by Sarah Domet previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on March 5, 2010.

District 9: A Film I Want to Like

I’ll be the first to admit: I want to like District 9, and I want to applaud The Academy for nominating this quirky, dark, heartfelt, and comic film for a Best Picture award. Even further, I would like to label District 9 a complex, multi-layered science-fiction movie that explores the intersection of race, politics, multi-national corporations, biotechnology, and the dark world of illegal weapons trade. Certainly, it seems this movie promises to be one of Big Ideas.

District 9, directed by Neill Blomkamp, depicts a futuristic Johannesburg, South Africa, nearly two decades after a massive alien spacecraft grinds to a halt in the sky, hovering silently just above the cityscape. The malnourished, bipedal, crustacean-like aliens, given the derogatory nickname “prawns,” now live in a militarized refugee camp, aptly named District 9 and policed by the South African government. However, crime, weapon trade, and even interspecies prostitution have overrun this filthy alien shantytown, and soon Multi-National United (MNU), a private company, is contracted to relocate the prawns to a more easily patrolled area, one much farther from the city limits. Enter Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a middle-management Yes-Man put in charge by MNU head (coincidentally, also his father-in-law) to lead the evacuation and relocation of these creatures. (His primary job is, hilariously, to go door-to-door, politely asking the prawns to sign an eviction notice while MNU mercenaries with machine guns look on. How bureaucratic!)

[…]

Science fiction is often a useful allegorical genre that allows filmmakers to discuss socially and politically charged issues in a way that is palatable to average moviegoer. Take Minority Report, for example, or The Matrix, or the film-adaptation of Orwell’s novel 1984. District 9 attempts to borrow from this rich tradition, and it’s nearly impossible to critique this film without pointing to the overt, sometimes too obvious, racial commentary that serves as the backbone of the plot. District 9 is, after all, set in South Africa, the geographical epicenter of Apartheid. However, to the Bitch Flicker who turns to this movie looking for deep political or social commentary, I say this: Don’t waste too much time looking. While the film seems to want to reveal a reverse racism, one where the historical victims (South Africans) become the villains, propagating against the prawns the same violent and discriminatory acts that were once committed upon their own people, in the end the movie either: a.) substitutes gunfire, gore, or special effects at any moment the movie veers too far from the surface, b.) relegates Big Ideas to Small Peanuts by reducing the plight of the prawns to the pursuit of Wikus’s happiness, or c.) reinforces the very racist notions that it wishes to resist (see representation of Nigerian gangsters.)

[…]
District 9 operates with what I’d call an absent feminism, which isn’t quite an anti-feminism but a disregard for a female world altogether—except when a minor feminine presence functions as off-stage impetus for the lead character. Aside from a few bit parts, the most prominent female role is that of Wikus’s wife, Tania (Vanessa Haywood), who, although rarely seen onscreen, becomes the driving motivation for Wikus to risk his life to find the cure for his “prawnness,” befriending, out of necessity, Christopher Johnson, the same alien he tried to evict earlier in the day. (Wikus didn’t know then that Johnson actually built his shack atop the Mothership’s missing module; he’s been diligently working for twenty years to fix it, and was nearly finished when pesky Wikus confiscated that black fluid.)

Wikus’s wife, who is given no real identity, save the fact that she is torn between the age-old allegiance to her father and loyalty to her husband (implying that she most certainly “belongs” to one or the other), won’t relinquish hope of her husband’s return by the film’s conclusion. Someone is leaving strange gifts on her doorstep, gifts oddly similar to the ones dear hubby Wikus used to give her. Blomkamp insinuates that she’s a steadfast wife who will do her wifely duty and wait faithfully for her disappeared husband. The viewer is given no back-story or insights into their relationship; yet, forced upon us is the heavy-handed notion that they really do love each other—like, in that super-deep, eternal-love kind of way. Their story, of course, is a bottom-tiered thread in the narrative.

Continue reading –>

Sarah Domet received her Ph.D. in English Literature and Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of Cincinnati in 2009. She spends most her time writing, teaching, cooking, gardening, taking long drives in the country, and doing other things that would lead you to believe she’s 80 years old. Look for her book, (F+W Publications, 2010).

Women in Science Fiction Week: In Defence of Jo Grant, Beyond Screams and Miniskirts: The Women of Classic ‘Doctor Who’

Guest post written by Barrett Vann.
Let’s talk about Doctor Who. Let’s talk, in fact, about the Doctor’s companions. Back in the day of 2005, when Doctor Who came back to the airwaves, there were a lot of inevitable comparisons between this New Who and the Classic Who that ran from ‘63 to ‘89. People talked about the Doctor himself, about the plots, the monsters– and they talked about his companions. Rose Tyler was lauded as a new kind of companion– not so much an assistant as a partner, wearing baggy jeans and using her wits and determination, not one of those screaming, knicker-flashing ninnies from the old series back in the sexist sixties and seventies.
Well, wait just a bloody minute. Certainly the stereotype exists that companions back in the day were nothing but a bit of eye candy to entice the dads into watching a family show, and no-one is going to argue that feminism and gender issues haven’t advanced in fifty years. But were the women of Classic Who really nothing but a load of scantily-dressed damsels who screamed at the first sign of danger or imminent alien invasion?
They certainly were not.
I’m going to start with the Third Doctor, because I love him, and because two of his companions make a wonderful illustration for the variety of why and how the women of Classic Who were awesome. The Third Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee from 1970-1974, had several companions, but it is the first two I want to compare here, Liz Shaw and Jo Grant.

Dr. Shaw, being serious
Jo Grant, being a nature child
Dr. Liz Shaw was a Cambridge-educated scientist, and expert on meteorites with at least two degrees, one in physics and one in medicine. Although young and fashionable (fashionable here meaning improbably short skirts and equally improbable heels), she has no romances whilst on the show, and grows impatient with being treated like the Doctor’s errand-girl. A career woman (and undeniably a woman not a girl), she’s part of UNIT before the Doctor showed up, and though they do develop a good relationship, he’s never the end-all be-all of what she’s doing with her life. Indeed, when she does eventually leave UNIT to return to her research, she cites as her reason that the Doctor did not need a capable assistant, what he really needed was “someone to pass him his test tubes and tell him how brilliant he was.” Amusingly, this rather meta observation does indeed reflect what was often the role of the Doctor’s companion, a role Liz often deviated from.
Her successor, Jo Grant, would seem initially to fit much more comfortably into that role. When she first hit the screen, Josephine Grant was young, 19 or 20, inexperienced, and only got the job at UNIT because she had an uncle in the ministry. She’s blonde, bubbly, and at first appears to be a bit of a ditz. She flirts with the UNIT men, she giggles, she admits (often) that she doesn’t understand things; when she’s frightened, she screams. In her first appearance, she accidentally wrecks an experiment the Doctor’s working on, and then is hypnotised into almost blowing up UNIT. In stark contrast to the very scientific Liz, and the Doctor himself, she’s a New Agey 70’s girl, open to the possibilities of magic and superstition, and occasionally the show mocks her for this. On one occasion, she actually ends up dressed in white and strapped to an altar as a virgin sacrifice. A more potent image of objectified, powerless femininity it would be hard to find. Unlike Liz, who leaves the show to further her career, Jo leaves because she’s fallen in love and wants to get married and study mushrooms in the Amazon.
So it might be easy to dismiss Jo as one of those useless female companions. A pretty bit of skirt to be an audience stand-in for the Doctor to explicate to. Except for the fact that Jo Grant is awesome. She’s a trained escapologist, she can fly a helicopter, she can abseil; in ‘The Mind of Evil’, she karates a prison riot leader out of his gun. On numerous occasions, when the Doctor’s got himself locked up somewhere, she comes to his rescue. Though in her first appearance, the Master hypnotises her, the Doctor teaches her how to resist it, so that in later confrontations, the Master is utterly frustrated by his inability to dominate her mind. In ‘The Time Monster’, when they run into the Master, again, and he finds himself unable to find anything to say, she mockingly suggests, ‘How about, “Curses, foiled again”?’ She’s also bold, capable of making hard decisions under pressure. Again in ‘Time Monster’, the Doctor threatens their mutual destruction by initiating a Time Ram, shoving his and the Master’s TARDISes into the same temporospatial coordinates; but when the Doctor hesitates, Jo’s the one who makes the final move to press the big red button.

Jo Grant is unimpressed by your gun, Master

Ultimately, though, even disregarding her badassery, Jo is a great character. It’s easy to dismiss her because she is, in many ways, very girly. And as anyone knows, girliness is too often considered one and the same as weakness; girly characters have to ‘make up’ for themselves by compensating with more masculine traits if they are to be considered strong. But are Jo’s girly qualities weak? Not at all. She’s good with people, certainly better than the Doctor; she’s emotional and empathetic– and if she screams when she’s frightened? I call that a perfectly reasonable response. She is sometimes gullible, ditzy, she did fail her science A-levels, but all that means is that she’s flawed, as all good characters should be.
One of the things about the women in Doctor Who that’s wonderful is that, like Liz and Jo, they’re strong in different ways. Another interesting dichotomy appears with the Second Doctor, when he travelled with Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot. Jamie– short for James Robert– is a Scottish Highlander from the mid 18th century, while Zoe is a scientist who lived on a space station in the 21st. Despite the fact that Jamie was snatched, literally, out of the middle of a battle, and is still quick with his knife, it is he, not Zoe, who spends the most time physically clinging to the Doctor in times of danger.

Jamie McCrimmon does not know the meaning of personal space
Here, while Zoe is the competent scientist, Jamie is the volatile, emotional party who depends on the Doctor. Being a Scot, there are, of course, also the obligatory jokes about which member of Team TARDIS is the one wearing the short skirt this time.
And the list continues. Travelling with the Doctor’ fourth incarnation, there’s Romana, a Time Lady. Cool, arrogant, sharp-tongued, the Doctor’s intellectual equal; as she’s quick to point out, she did graduate from the Academy with a triple first. Romana is also eager to see the universe, despite coming from a highly insular society. Later, Leela, a knife-wielding warrior, all instinct and impulse, who doesn’t care for being treated like the Doctor’s own personal Pygmalion project. With the Fifth Doctor, there’s Nyssa, an alien, a scientist and pacifist; with the Seventh Doctor, Ace McShane, an emotionally troubled teenager who puts on an unfailingly tough facade and likes blowing things up. Or beating up Daleks with baseball bats. Even Peri, the American who travelled with the Fifth and Sixth Doctor, and who fairly obviously was there to be little more than a lot of bouncing cleavage, is a botanist, clearly intelligent, and refuses to take down-talking from anyone, whether the rather bombastic and volatile Sixth Doctor, or the Master, whom she famously tells, ‘I’m Perpugilliam Brown, and I can shout just as loud as you can!’

Most of the Doctor’s companions, Old and New (if you don’t include non-televised media)
All these characters have strengths and weaknesses, but one thing they certainly are not is a homogeneous mass of legs, high heels, and helplessness. Another wonderful thing about Doctor Who is that the universe is a living one. In non-televised media (the Big Finish audioplays, and Doctor Who novels, which, incidentally, I wholeheartedly recommend), characters who were short-changed in canon, like Peri, are expanded, and others who were a little one-note, like Tegan and Ace, are allowed to develop. But even without that, there’s far more to the women of Doctor Who than might at first meet the eye, and there are no few who’d give you a proper talking to for saying otherwise.
Barrett Vann is an English and Linguistics student at the University of Minnesota. An unabashed geek, she’s into cosplay, literary analysis, high fantasy, and queer theory. After she graduates in December, she hopes to tackle grad school for playwrighting or screenwriting, and become one of those starving artist types. 

Women in Science Fiction Week: ‘Avatar’: Only Slightly Less Imaginative Than a Bruce Springsteen Song

Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) in Avatar

Guest post written by Nine Deuce previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on May 9, 2011 originally published at Rage Against the Man-Chine. Cross-posted with permission.

I know, I’m the last person in the industrialized world to see Avatar, but I waited for several reasons. First, I was under the impression that it was based on a video game, rather than the basis for a video game, and if there’s one “artistic” genre I’m less into than films based on comic books, it’s films based on video games. Second, not only do I not go to the movies, but I rarely even watch movies. I don’t go to the movies because I don’t like sitting up for that long, and because somehow I’ve ended up living in America’s hub for people who like to pretend they believe zombies really exist. We all know that people who are into zombies like to make spectacles of themselves in public — hence the existence of the thousand or so “Cons” that take place in this city every year — so going to the movies in my neighborhood often means enduring the presence of unwarrantedly smug drama club dorks who lack senses of humor, analytical skills, and the ability to determine when and where it might be appropriate to make histrionic displays of themselves via affectedly amplified snickering and banal “witty” commentary/audience participation (hint: at screenings of Rocky Horror Picture Show only, which would not even transpire were everyone in America to suddenly sprout good — or at least non-embarrassing — taste). I don’t watch movies because I generally disapprove of the direction the movie industry has been heading in since the late 80s (and, really, since the advent of the industry itself) and can only think of about ten movies that I enjoy watching for the reasons the people who made them intended. Even ten’s a stretch. Third, it’s a James Cameron movie. I pride myself on knowing nil about the movie industry and on my inability to name one set designer or screenwriter despite having spent five years living in LA, but even I know James Cameron is to blame for some of the more egregious examples of pointless cinematographic excess; in addition to having been tricked into seeing both Bruno and Joe Dirt in the theater, I also count Titanic among the tortures I’ve endured under conditions of extreme air-conditioning and Gummi Bear-and-fake-butter-induced nausea. Finally, I like to strike while the iron is between zero and forty degrees. I don’t want my movie reviews getting lost among all the timely ones, do I?

[…]

As I watched Avatar, I for some reason (probably because predicting the next thing that would happen got boring once I realized I would never, ever be wrong) began thinking about the first time I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and asked myself how the genre of science fiction and the movie industry as a pillar of American culture had changed in the time that had elapsed between the two films. What were the general cultural values and concerns being communicated in each of these films? What kinds of stories were being told about the world? How had cinema as a means of artistic communication and social commentary changed since 2001 was released? What do the methods of presentation in both films tell us about the ways in which our society has changed in the era of advanced mass communication? And, of course, how was gender represented?

I came to a few distressing conclusions. Naturally, I’ll get to the feminist criticism first. By the time Avatar came out, we’d traversed 41 years in which women’s status in society had purportedly been progressively improving since 2001 was released, but the change in representations of women in popular media, at least in epic sci-fi movies, doesn’t look all that positive. In 1968, we (or Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke) could imagine tourism in space. We could not, however, imagine women occupying any role in space exploration other than as flight attendants. In 2009 we (or James Cameron) could imagine female scientists and helicopter pilots participating in extraterrestrial imperialism, and we could even tolerate warrior-like blue female humanoid aliens as central figures in the plot of an movie, but we still couldn’t imagine a world in which traditional gender roles and current human beauty ideals aren’t upheld, even when that world is literally several light years and 155 years away from our own.

[…]

Both the female and the male blue fuckers are tall, thin, ripped, and look like members of one of the bands in Strange Days, and they’re all wearing goddamned loincloths. There’s a reason Fleshlight makes an alien model that is purported to replicate a female blue fucker’s two-clitorised vulva, and that reason is that James Cameron couldn’t imagine a world in which aliens don’t look like people he’d want to fuck. Don’t believe me? Check out this excerpt from a Playboy interview he did about the movie (google it — I’m not linking to Playboy):

PLAYBOY: Sigourney Weaver’s character Ellen Ripley in your film Alien is a powerful sex icon, and you may have created another in Avatar with a barely dressed, blue-skinned, 10-foot-tall warrior who fiercely defends herself and the creatures of her planet. Even without state-of-the-art special effects, Zoe Saldana—who voices and models the character for CG morphing—is hot.

CAMERON: Let’s be clear. There is a classification above hot, which is “smoking hot.” She is smoking hot.

PLAYBOY: Did any of your teenage erotic icons inspire the character Saldana plays?

CAMERON: As a young kid, when I saw Raquel Welch in that skintight white latex suit in Fantastic Voyage—that’s all she wrote. Also, Vampirella was so hot I used to buy every comic I could get my hands on. The fact she didn’t exist didn’t bother me because we have these quintessential female images in our mind, and in the case of the male mind, they’re grossly distorted. When you see something that reflects your id, it works for you.

PLAYBOY: So Saldana’s character was specifically designed to appeal to guys’ ids?

CAMERON: And they won’t be able to control themselves. They will have actual lust for a character that consists of pixels of ones and zeros. You’re never going to meet her, and if you did, she’s 10 feet tall and would snap your spine. The point is, 99.9 percent of people aren’t going to meet any of the movie actresses they fall in love with, so it doesn’t matter if it’s Neytiri or Michelle Pfeiffer.

PLAYBOY: We seem to need fantasy icons like Lara Croft and Wonder Woman, despite knowing they mess with our heads.

CAMERON: Most of men’s problems with women probably have to do with realizing women are real and most of them don’t look or act like Vampirella. A big recalibration happens when we’re forced to deal with real women, and there’s a certain geek population that would much rather deal with fantasy women than real women. Let’s face it: Real women are complicated. You can try your whole life and not understand them.

PLAYBOY: How much did you get into calibrating your movie heroine’s hotness?

CAMERON: Right from the beginning I said, “She’s got to have tits,” even though that makes no sense because her race, the Na’vi, aren’t placental mammals. I designed her costumes based on a taparrabo, a loincloth thing worn by Mayan Indians. We go to another planet in this movie, so it would be stupid if she ran around in a Brazilian thong or a fur bikini like Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.

PLAYBOY: Are her breasts on view?

CAMERON: I came up with this free—floating, lion’s-mane—like array of feathers, and we strategically lit and angled shots to not draw attention to her breasts, but they’re right there. The animation uses a physics-based sim that takes into consideration gravity, air movement and the momentum of her hair, her top. We had a shot in which Neytiri falls into a specific position, and because she is lit by orange firelight, it lights up the nipples. That was good, except we’re going for a PG-13 rating, so we wound up having to fix it. We’ll have to put it on the special edition DVD; it will be a collector’s item. A Neytiri Playboy Centerfold would have been a good idea.

Sigh. I’ll take flight attendants in place of a sociopathic obsession with disembodied CGI female body parts that men invent in order to avoid confronting the fact that women are human beings. Fuck, I’ll take stewardesses. Neytiri is permitted to talk, to take an active role in training Sully how to rape pegasuses, and to participate as a warrior in the fight against Chip Hazard and his robotic blue-fucker-ass-kicking devices, but she’s not allowed to not be a sex object. That shit is the real final frontier, and something tells me we’ll be imagining visiting other branes by jumping into bags of Doritos before we’ll imagine women being allowed to be human beings. She’s also not allowed to take an active role in choosing a mate, as we discover when she tells Sully that once one has raped a pegasus and become a real blue fucker warrior, the time has arrived for one to choose a mate. Even though she has already raped a pegasus, is adept enough at it to instruct Sully on the subject, and happens to be the daughter of the blue fuckers’ HNIC, the prerogative to choose a mate is left to him as the man — even though he’s only an honorary blue fucker — to choose her as a mate, at which point she must passively acquiesce. How romantical.

Nine Deuce blogs at Rage Against the Man-chine. From her bio: I basically go off, dude. People all over the internet call me rad. They call me fem, too, but I’m not all that fem. I mean, I’m female and I have long hair and shit, but that’s just because I’m into Black Sabbath. I don’t have any mini-skirts, high heels, thongs, or lipstick or anything, and I often worry people with my decidedly un-fem behavior. I’m basically a “man” trapped in a woman’s body. What I mean is that, like a person with a penis, I act like a human being and expect other people to treat me like one even though I have a vagina.

Women in Science Fiction Week: A Feminist Review of ‘Prometheus’

Noomi Rapace as Dr. Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus

Guest post written by Rachel Redfern previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on June 20, 2012 and was originally published at Not Another Wave. Cross-posted with permission.

The prequel and spinoff for the classic film Alien has as much feminist food as its precursor did, albeit slightly less groundbreaking, though we can’t fault it for that: Alien did give us the first female action hero in Sigourney Weaver’s portrayal of the irrepressible Ripley.

Prometheus is naturally larger in scale and far more reliant on special effects, a feature that while clichéd is expected in the current sci-fi action genre (not to be solely negative, the landscape was absolutely amazing and the cinematography superb, seriously, watch for some stunning views of Iceland’s Vatnajökull National Park, Hekla Volcano, and Detifoss Waterfall).
And while some of the scenes are admittedly, far more graphic and gratuitous than I think necessary (there is a simple purity to the original Alien death scenes that I think is lacking here), the film featured some thought provoking and disturbing themes, though all backed again by a strong, smart, female scientist-turned-reluctant heroine and survivor, similar to the original Ripley.
The Swedish Noomi Rapace (seriously loving these Swedish actors) and South African Charlize Theron oppose each other brilliantly; Theron as the efficient and disdainful corporate heavy, Noomi as the resistant, believing, courageous scientist out to find some answers.
The film features a hefty score of themes for discussion, including one of the most disturbing abortion scenes I’ve ever seen. That scene is apparently what pushed the film up from a PG-13 rating into an R; if the studio had wanted to ensure a PG-13 rating, the MPAA demanded that they cut the entire scene. However, both director Ridley Scott and Rapace felt the scene was pivotal in Shaw’s intense desire to survive and in her emotional and mental development. If you weren’t pro-choice before, chances are you might be after witnessing this scene.

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Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and it’s intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

Women in Science Fiction Week: WALL-E

WALL-E (2008)

This post written by Editor and Co-Founder Amber Leab was originally published at Bitch Flicks on April 13, 2009. 
While the beginning of WALL-E is a lovely silent film (and would’ve been a fantastic short film), when you brush away the artifice and the adorable little robots, all you have is standard Disney fare: a male protagonist and a female helper, told from his perspective. Why the robots are gendered at all isn’t clear; the movie could’ve been about their friendship–and far more progressive than the heteronormative romance that ensues.

WALL-E “dating” EVE

EVE is sleek and lovely, and is physically able to do things WALL-E cannot, but she’s part of an army of task-oriented robots. The mere push of a button shuts her down, and she lacks the self-protectionist drive that WALL-E exhibits when his power reserve drains. He is, of course, beholden to no one since the humans left Earth; he is autonomous and self-sufficient. EVE, on the other hand, is fully robotic: she’s a badass, complete with gun, and she’s more intelligent and cunning than WALL-E, but she’s been programmed to be that way. She’s an advanced form of technology, but she needs WALL-E to liberate her.
WALL-E, it seems, has developed human qualities on his own. He is also capable of keeping up with a robot approximately 700 years newer (read: younger) than he is–an impressive age gap in any relationship. EVE worries over WALL-E and caters to his physical limitations (he is, after all, an old man–with childlike curiosity), acting as nursemaid in addition to all-around badass. Who says we can’t be everything, ladies? While EVE doesn’t have any of the conventional trappings of femininity, she’s a lovely modern contraption with clean lines, while WALL-E is clunky, schlubby, and falling apart (not to mention he’s a clean rip-off of Short Circuit‘s Johnny 5)–reinforcing the (male) appreciation of a certain kind of female aesthetic, while reminding girls that they should look good and not worry too much about the appearance of their male love-interest.
More contrary opinions about WALL-E–including the troubling way it portrays obesity–on:

If you know of some other good discussions on the film, leave your links in the comments.

Women in Science Fiction Week: Examining Stereotypes with Ursula K. Le Guin

Guest post written by Carissa Harwood.

In the past, the act of writing science fiction has been a traditionally male dominated genre. Women have sought to create their own meanings in the books they read that don’t often include their perspectives and experiences. In recent decades, though, women writers have searched for and taken control over a fiction category that seeks to shrink them, or exploit their gender for some statement, whether intentional or not, about the female body.
While times have certainly changed, and there are many fine science fiction writers, male and female, Ursula Le Guin stands out for me as a writer who has created new meanings for women in science fiction with seeming ease in her writing. She takes a simple concept — the ‘what if’ factor — and creates whole worlds that she populates as she gives us her answer. That’s the big golden key to science fiction writing — exploring the ‘what if’.
Here’s a ‘what if’ from her novel The Left Hand of Darkness — what if there was a planet where gender wasn’t so easily defined? What if there was a planet where men had the children, what would that be like? So often I’ve come across aspiring authors who request that I review their NEW FRESH EXCITING sci-fi novel, even though my blog explicitly states I no longer review new science fiction. And here’s the reason: the submissions (from male authors) I’ve read invariably read like this (I made this up as an example, this is not a direct quote from anywhere): 
“Susie laughed manically as she switched Betty’s birth control pills with pez. ‘Now I can have Tommy all to myself’, she smirked.” There is a lot of smirking going on in these novels, and I hate the word smirk. It should be used sparingly. A smirk should be used to indicate a sarcastic smile, an I-know-something- you-don’t-know sing-song smile, and I’ve always associated the smirk with something teenagers like to do. And that is how many writers of science fiction write their female characters: smirking adolescents.
Science fiction is, or should be, a place to examine stereotypes and political and social conventions, not to reinforce them. Before Le Guin came along, we had authors like Piers Anthony (a notorious misogynist, although like most misogynists he denies that he is one) and Ray Bradbury. Now I wouldn’t go so far as to call Bradbury a misogynist — I admire Bradbury’s work, I really do, because many of his themes are universal. But he falls into the same trap that Stephen King does — very few of his main characters are female, and more often than not, men are the decision makers, and the ones that move the plot along. It’s interesting to note that many writers tend to write towards their own gender. In Bradbury’s fiction, like Anthony and King, the female characters often end up in supporting roles as wives, mothers, and crushes that turn into ‘marionettes’ or a controllable programmable robot that can be easily manipulated.
I read these books as a child and teenager, and I experienced a sense of dissatisfaction with the minor roles women were playing in this male literary playground. So I wondered what women writing science fiction would be like, and that’s where I found Ursula Le Guin, who didn’t merit her own displays in the library lobby like the other authors I’ve mentioned. At least, not when I was a kid.
Compare Bradbury’s marionettes and Anthony’s robot women to Le Guin’s character of Sita Dulip in Changing Planes. The main character is a woman who travels alone and fearlessly not only to other cities in the world, but other dimensions and other planets and cultures. She isn’t someone’s ‘female companion.’ She’s not defined by her marital status or her relationships or how many children she can or cannot produce. Not once does she ask anyone’s permission. Not once does she require a male guardian or escort. Not once does she require supervision. She just goes, because that’s what any thinking and curious person should be allowed to do without restriction—go forth and explore and learn and imagine. And she can do all this without one single mention of menstruation, (or mentioning having to pack tampons) or heartlessly abandoning her children in favor of a free life seeing what the universe has to offer. A woman can venture forth into the world (or worlds, in this case) without one single thought for her reproductive capabilities.
What’s so innovative about that? A woman traveling alone, doing what she wants? Because there’s no sense of fear, or intimidation or dependence on anyone else. Sita Dulip is truly a free individual. There’s no sense of loss, or not belonging anywhere. It’s simply a story of exploring and learning, without any literal or figurative baggage.
Let’s look at another comparison of science fiction as a way to explore deeply held social constructs by looking at John Scalzi’s brilliant take on The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, by Ursula Le Guin. He wrote about this as a lens through which to examine the Penn State scandal, and I had my students read this article when we discussed comparing literature to current events. The world she constructed in the novel goes like this: If you could have a happy wonderful, perfect life, but the price was that one child would have to live his or her life in misery, neglect and starvation for the rest of that child’s life—would you do it? Could you live your life knowing it took someone’s direct pain and misery? What happens to the people who stay? What happens to the people who walk away into an uncertain world?
It’s these kinds of questions that are explored through science fiction that really melt my butter. And I’m not saying–at all–that women can write science fiction better, I just want women to have an active voice, and active participation.
It’s the demand for participation in this world as something other than a reproductive vehicle that I wanted to find. Writing is a mental communication of ideas from the author’s brain to yours, a communication that, hopefully, journeys with you as you read along and create new possibilities and opportunities, challenging our perspectives and allowing us into the hearts and minds of the most diverse cast of characters you can imagine. All writing explores how we think, but fiction provides with a vehicle we can ride in. I just don’t think the vehicles should come in distinct shades of pink or blue with all their incumbent stereotypes. This can only happen if, and hopefully when, more women take up the pen to write their own stories, and seek to answer their own ‘what ifs’.

Carissa Harwood is an adjunct professor and writer of things rich and strange, from aliens to zombies, with some feminism, paranormal romance, and urban fantasy thrown into the mix. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts Degree in Playwrighting and blogs at 3500 Words per Pound.

Women in Science Fiction Week: The Strong, Intelligent and Diverse Women of ‘Firefly’ and ‘Serenity’

Cast of Firefly and Serenity

Guest post written by Janyce Denise Glasper.

“Why do you keep writing strong female characters?”
“Because you’re still asking that question,” Joss Whedon quips.

Mastermind behind phenomenal, groundbreaking television hits, Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel and recently helming a little box office smash called The Avengers, Whedon has always crafted the powerful, intelligent female hero. He illustrates that aesthetic further in the short lived FOX series Firefly turned feature motion picture, Serenity showcasing not just one, but four intriguing women characters- Zoe, Kaylee, Inara, and River.
In a science fiction space western combining a thrilling taste of adventure, mayhem, and Whedon’s trademark humor, flying aboard with the wisecracking Captain Malcolm Reynolds, softhearted Wash, short-tempered Jayne, and the good doctor, Simon, these spirited and diverse women bring more than male gazing eye candy ornamentation.

The women of Firefly and Serenity — L-R: Jewel Staite (Kaylee), Summer Glau (River), Morena Baccarin (Inara), Gina Torres (Zoe)
Wife of Wash, Zoe Washburne is a resilient, tough, hold the guns chick with a fiery attitude that is as wild as the curls of her hair. In the face of tragedy, she sheds not a tear, going head first into battle with weapons blazing in each hand while not wearing emotions on sleeve. This firecracker’s mind is sharply focused on the end game and to the Serenity crew, staying alive is the best option.
Gina Torres is made for Zoe. In every moving inch of her body and facial expression, she flaunts a calm, collected exterior that shields a force to be reckoned with. She is neither weak nor insecure in her prowess, taking fearless approach in the scariest of situations.

Zoe (Gina Torres)

 

Often, I have disagreed with angry sentiments of viewers voicing displeasure at Zoe calling Malcolm “Sir” and denoting that there is a master/slave relationship at work. He isn’t a whip slashing, verbally abusive tyrant lying on his back getting fanned upon while being hand fed grapes.
No. No. No.
He is a commander of a vessel, treating the crew like his family. Out of all of them, there is a special sibling type bond between him and Zoe. She, not Jayne, is his right hand man, or in this case woman. She has been at his side as a comrade in a lost war against the Alliance and that experience hasn’t wrought animosity, but pain and regret. Malcolm sees Zoe as his equal and that speaks volumes.
Yes. He tells her what to do, but she does in a way that she sees fit.
“Love. You can learn all the math in the ‘verse… but you take a boat in the air that you don’t love… she’ll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down… tells you she’s hurting before she keels. Makes her a home.”

Malcolm’s quote is about Serenity, their beloved ship who is another unspoken feminine hero that is an integral part of the film.

Kaylee (Jewel Staite)
In comes Kaylee Frye, the adorable, sweet-natured Texan engineer who gets down and dirty repairing anything that needs fixing above the space vessel. Utterly devoted to the job, even without formal training, Kaylee speaks of things, especially emotions in mechanical terms and is often seen in oily, dirty jumpsuit. She may be seem to the anti-feminine, doing the “man’s” job, but that is not what’s so compelling about her. Often the voice of reasoning and moral compassion without being sanctimonious or preachy, Kaylee is the very heart of Serenity.
Actress Jewel Staite breathes a genuine special charm into Kaylee that is quite refreshing to watch. At times it seems that she doesn’t have a place amongst her sharply trained warrior peers, but Staite gives her a reason for being an imperative member. For in the toughest, most grueling predicament, when having to use a gun, Kaylee’s stern determination and iron will has her bravely wielding the weapon without tears and “womanly” fussiness. That’s something to be valued and commended.

Inara (Morena Baccarin)

 
Serenity means the state of being calm and untroubled — Inara Serra embodies the definition. The poised, tranquil companion, or in other words a courtesan, has illustrious skills beyond sensual grace. Softly spoken and wisely engaged, she battles with tongue more so than weapon. An expert with combat and a bow and arrow and often a vital aide in fighting the good fight, she gets knocked around a bit, but that doesn’t stop her from continuing to join in the battle of Malcolm verses The Operative, licking her wounds and going back for more to protect nearly brutally defeated captain.

Morena Baccarin personifies her character flawlessly. Possessing such phenomenal skill using widened eyes and speaking dialogue with sharp, clever articulation, a viewer cannot help but be arrested by her representation of peaceful tranquility, the way she floats effervescently into a scene, and the unmentionable smoldering toe-to-toe chemistry with Nathan Fillion who plays the sardonic Malcolm.

River (Summer Glau)
Last but certainly not least, River Tam, a former Alliance test subject, is the secret weapon. A broken mentally destroyed psychic, she is precocious, observant, and vulnerable, but her brother, Simon is overprotective in babying her at times. When she is purposely triggered by a creepy Alliance induced subliminal message, she unleashes a wild can of whoop ass crazy in a bar, maliciously hurting not only innocent bystanders, but also a Serenity crewmember which ultimately terrifies everyone. Yet seeing her brother down on the ground towards the climatic end pushes a different button and causes her to give the most poignant of sacrifices. While soft orchestra music plays, she fights passionately, kicking and punching the monstrous, once human Reavers with the strength of a thousand warriors.
She has then rightfully earned passage on the crew, albeit at the captain’s side commanding ship.
Summer Glau brings versatility to the complexity of River, showcasing the depths of a damaged psyche, ranging from cryptic, shattered girlish innocence, to altogether frightening, emotionless devoid. It would take only a solid actress to take on a role so challenging and Glau renders River meticulously.

The women of Firefly and Serenity — L-R: Gina Torres, Summer Glau, Morena Baccarin, Jewel Staite
Though under the command of a man, that doesn’t stop Zoe, Kaylee, Inara, and River from brutally speaking their razor tongued minds to the captain. River is an extraordinary circumstance; her words are enigmatic as opposed to outright as with the other three. 
Certainly not breaking down into sobs or running away in fright, these four animated, beautiful, and talented women band together in the face of battle. Along with the rest of the Serenity crew, an excellent villain played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and a brilliantly penned script, there’s a reason fans remain attached to Whedon’s charismatic “browncoat” vision, especially the female rebel.

Janyce Denise Glasper is a writer/artist running two silly blogs of creative adventures called Sugarygingersnap and AfroVeganChick. She enjoys good female centric film, cute rubber duckies, chocolate covered everything (except bugs!), Days of Our Lives, and slaying nightly demons Buffy style in Dayton, Ohio.

Women in Science Fiction Week: Thoughts on Strong Female Characters: Carolyn Fry from ‘Pitch Black’

This guest post written by Rhea Daniel previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on June, 13 2012 and  originally published at Short Stories, cross-posted with permission. 
So I saw The Avengers(2012). I’ll be honest, pure entertainment, skillful use of existing archetypes to create entertaining group dynamic, how can you not fall for that? 
However the whole ‘strong woman character’ attribution to Joss Whedon isn’t completely merited. I love his truly sympathetic essay about women on Whedonesque.com, and his feminist bent, however as ‘strong’ women go, I could never relate to his female characters.  
To me a character that deserves the reputation of a feminist heroine would be Carolyn Fry(Radha Mitchell) from David Twohy’s Pitch Black (2000), regardless of whether he intended it that way. We have time to watch her character grow through the movie, but she is a secondary character, Riddick is the famed anti-hero. To make an impression in spite of that is huge.

While Fry takes the reins of the group on the deserted planet by default, the one thing that drives her bravery is her terrible mistake — attempting to eject the passengers in cryogenic sleep to lighten the load of the spaceship before it crashed, stopped from doing so by the more conscientious navigator who died as a result, earning her a lot of resentment from the group, their mistrust eventually pushing her to fight for her leadership position more fiercely. I don’t particularly consider that a negative point, I see a person deeply ridden with guilt, antagonists willing her to fail, Riddick keenly watching her every move, reacting to her willingness to risk her safety for the sake of the others with amusement. I see a lot of a pressure on a person who is not particularly skilled to handle the task before her, but she pushes on in spite of that.

[…]

It’s not that I don’t still love Ripley/esque sci-fi warriors, I just find Carolyn Fry’s inner turmoil borne of the vicissitudes of external forces much more approachable, and strangely unsung. I like her more because she is unsure of herself, searching for firm ground to walk upon, because unlike Ripley, she doesn’t know where she stands, steeling her vulnerable frame against the next onslaught.

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Rhea Daniel got to see a lot of movies as a kid because her family members were obsessive movie-watchers. She frequently finds herself in a bind between her love for art and her feminist conscience. Meanwhile she is trying to be a better writer and artist and you can find her at http://rheadaniel.blogspot.com/.