In Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1963), the story of a time-travelling test subject is told through a 28-minute montage of still images, with only one sequence of animated film. The scene I have elected to analyze depicts the protagonist’s love interest as she sleeps and slowly wakes. It runs from 19:02 to 19:52 in the film.
The first forty seconds of the scene consist of still black-and-white photographs, taken with a Pentax 24 x 36 (according to the notes included in the DVD case). The depth of field is wide enough to allow everything in the frame to be in focus, from the sheets on top of her in the foreground, to the pillow behind her. However, not everything is lit—there seems to be only one light source, above and to the left of the woman. It is probably a smaller light, because it only illuminates her left side and leaves the right in darkness, and seems highly diffused.
The first shots are medium shots, with the camera positioned above the woman and pointing down. Then the camera either moves closer, or zooms in—I suspect a zoom, only because no other camera motion is evident, making me think it was fixed in place. The feeling of movement in the scene comes instead from the woman’s changes in position. By using long cross-fades to transition between photographs in which nothing moves but the woman herself, the sequence approaches a feeling of continuous animation, which stands out in contrast to the somewhat discontinuous nature of the rest of the film. The sheet on top of her is particularly notable, because it moves up and down between shots, but instead of jumping between positions, it seems to fade in and out as if we could see the woman breathing.
When the transition is made to “real” film at 19:45, nothing initially changes about the image—I suspect the film camera (an Arriflex 35mm, according to the notes) was fixed in exactly the same position as the still camera had been, and the focus carefully matched, with the lighting and the staging left untouched for the transition. The camera begins rolling with the woman unmoving and we cross-fade in, as in the earlier shots. After a few moments, she opens her eyes and blinks. By changing so little in the transition, it draws a direct correlation between the montage of still images and traditional film; when the sheet moves with her breathing, it is as if we have managed to take 24 photographs of her every second. It hardly feels like a change at all, until the camera switches to the next scene, and we return to the usual montage of still images in which a great deal changes between each shot.
The overall effect of the scene is peaceful and beautiful, because of the unusual seamlessness of the shots. It also feels more realistic than many other parts of the movie due to the illusion of motion, which, the film reminds us, is still only an illusion even in the shot that is “real” film. Although very little action takes place in these fifty seconds, the unexpected sense of reality becomes a significant event in itself.
In episode 15 of Star Trek season 3, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” we receive two messages about the nature of utopia. First, when reprimanding the warring idividuals Bele and Lokai for attempting to violently control the starship Enterprise, Kirk informs him that in the United Federation of Planets, “We live in peace, with full exercise of individual rights. The need to resort to violence and force has long since passed” (timestamp 30:29). Later, when urging Bele to listen to Lokai’s grievances and reconcile their factions, Spock says, “Change is the essential process of all existence” (timestamp 37:20).
In both instances, Kirk and Spock are reacting against Bele and Lokai’s violent pursuit of social change. Both Bele and Lokai invoke the word “utopia” when they first reunite in the Enterprise’s sickbay, but Kirk and Spock’s responses seem to say, “That’s not how you do utopia; this is how you do utopia.” However, the writers of Star Trek are SF writers, not Utopian writers, as described by Edward James in “Utopias and Anti-Utopias”; they reject the “largely static society” of traditional Utopian writing, because exciting story-telling cannot be reconciled with “a denial of adventure, of risk-taking, of the expanding of spatial or technological horizons” (p. 222).
Instead, the world of Star Trek envisions a dynamic utopia, in which “change is the essential process of all existence” but in which our protagonists have, in many ways, completed the evolutionary progression “from the lower levels to the more advanced stages” (as Spock describes evolution at 37:58). The social structures of the Enterprise are well-established and incredibly static; when Bele changes the ship’s course, his disruption of the status quo is considered such a threat that Kirk threatens to destroy the ship and everyone on it. However, the universe in which the Enterprise moves is anything but static, and the goal of the Enterprise is to constantly change position in order to sow change.
Thus, we have a utopia in which the universe is struggling to advance towards a better future, but our main characters are able to live in a stable world in which racial conflict is something they heard of in history class once. We are made aware, through the day’s adventure in each episode, of an imperfect world, but that is not where we live.
Or at least, that’s what the story tells us– the interesting questions come in when we compare what we’re told with what we observe. To what extent can Star Trek’s vision of a dynamic utopia really be seen as utopic? There are serious concerns both in the Federation’s definition of equality (in which serious questions can be raised about the characterization of women and people of color, and from which LGBT individuals seem to have been excluded entirely) and in the ever-expanding quest to spread this utopia (which is often unhelpful or insensitive to the people they encounter, and which has more than a whiff of colonialism about it). Was it really best for Kirk to refuse to take sides on Bele and Lokai’s conflict? Is life on the Enterprise really so perfect that nothing else can be considered?
Luc Besson’s film The Fifth Element has an anti-technological bias conveyed in an unusually subtle way. Generally, when a science fiction film is anti-technology, it conveys this by depicting robots murdering humans in the streets (or something similarly obvious); in The Fifth Element, however, the bias is conveyed by setting up two characters’ worldviews as oppositional, and then encouraging the viewer to identify with the point of view that is opposed to technology.
By manipulating our impressions of who is looking at certain scenes (as described by Daniel Dayan) and taking advantage of our identification with the camera (as described by Christian Metz), we are presented with two ways of seeing associated with our two lead characters. When the pacing, mise-en-scene, and sound design of the shots vary in concordance with these two views, we come to see the viewpoint of ex-military 23rd-century taxi driver Korbin Dallas (played by Bruce Willis) as complicated, technologically-oriented, and sexless, and the viewpoint of the world-saving divine alien being known as Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) as calm, simple, and romantic. The film then endorses Leeloo’s philosophy by having Korbin, throughout the course of the film, change his life to become more like Leeloo.
To exemplify this conveyance of this ideology in the film, I have chosen a short sequence that is something of a turning point in the movie, in which Korbin is strongly attracted to Leeloo (and everything she represents), but still distances himself from her. The scene is almost perfectly halfway through the movie, and immediately precedes Korbin’s decision to abandon his current life in order to pursue and help Leeloo. The sequence I will analyse runs from timestamp 1:05:5 until 1:06:49 in the film; this is from 0:05 to 1:06 in the clip below, which also includes a few extra shots for context.
First, there is the process by which the oppositional viewpoints are defined. The real origin of every image in the clip above lies, of course, in the camera and the filmmaking process. However, through the conventions of suture, “the real origin of the image–the conditions of its production represented by the absent-one–is replaced with a false origin and this false origin is situated inside the fiction” (Dayan, The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema, page 117 of Film Theory and Criticism, 7th ed.). Suture is to be expected in any conventional film, and yet I think the choice of false origins in this sequence is being used to tell us more about the conflict of philosophy within the film, and the ideology ultimately promoted by the film. So, let’s look at who, exactly, is looking at whom.
(1)
Korbin looking at Leeloo
Part 1 consists of only shot 1, which is 41 seconds long and begins at 0:05 in the clip above. An earlier shot/reverse-shot sequence showed us Leeloo, and then Korbin looking at Leeloo, so we predict that this shot will once again represent what Korbin sees. However, instead of a more traditional reaction shot showing Korbin’s face, we see Korbin and Leeloo together, as Korbin’s look at Leeloo (both the implied look of his earlier role as absent-one, and the literal look depicted in the scene) pulls him closer into her world. At the beginning of the shot, Korbin rummages through a cupboard, throwing things over his shoulder to clang noisily on the ground, separate from Leeloo as in his usual life, but after he begins to dry her off his field of vision shrinks. As he is influenced by her calm, he goes from chatting and drying her vigorously and glancing from one part of her to another, to silently gazing into her eyes.
The camera colludes in this tunnel-vision. As the shot progresses, it quite elegantly removes all traces of technology from the screen, so that the closer we are to Leeloo the further we are from anything that marks the scene as happening in the future. To accomplish this, it moves slowly forward throughout the shot, transforming a cluttered medium shot into a clean close-up, an action it carries out so subtly that I almost didn’t notice it even after several viewings. We are meant to see Leeloo as Korbin sees her: a stable center with an inexplicable allure that draws our attention away from the other distractions of life. And so, she never moves from the middle of the frame, while we, as camera-Korbin, physically move closer to her without quite realizing our own movement, and literally lose sight of anything but her.
The remarkable change within shot 1 which goes un-remarked on.
Our attraction to Leeloo is romantic, with soft horn music, the close physicality of drying off, and especially the near-kiss toward the end all contributing to a sexually-charged atmosphere. When Leeloo and Korbin stand close to each other, as they do throughout most of the shot, there is a sense of belonging. It is notable that Korbin’s shirt is so bright orange; throughout the film, this colour is strongly associated with Leeloo, so when Korbin begins to wear it as well it is a sign of his increasing allegiance to Leeloo’s way of life.
So, when Korbin looks at Leeloo, he sees simplicity and calm, and he is attracted to what he sees.
(2)
Leeloo looking at Korbin
Part 2 consists of the following 4 shots: shot 2, in which the bed slides out of the wall and Korbin rips Cornelius (a monk trying to help Leeloo save the world) out of the plastic; shot 3, in which Leeloo comments, “autowash” and begins to take off her suspenders; and shot 4, in which Korbin pulls Cornelius to his feet.
When shot 2 begins at 0:50 in the clip above, it’s not immediately clear who is seeing it. Here we must visit Dayan and his The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema, to consider the process by which a moviegoer decides upon the false origin of the images presented. Dayan says,
“Within the system of suture, the absent-one can therefore be defined as the intersubjective “trick” by means of which the second part of a given representative statement is no longer simply what comes after the first part, but what is signified by it. … On the one hand, a retroactive process organizes the signified. On the other hand, an anticipatory process organizes the signifier.” (page 116-117).
Thus, when we see the bed sliding out of Korbin’s wall in shot 2, just after Korbin turns his head away from the camera in shot 1, we are thinking both, “Ah, this is what he was looking at before” and “Who is looking at it now?” We provisionally consider that Korbin is still the signifier in shot 2, but then at 0:51 he runs into the shot, and we realize that he can’t be looking at himself. Since Leeloo is the only other person in the room, we think it is probably her, but we have been wrong before; when shot 3 shows us Leeloo simply pointing and saying “autowash,” it is not for the purpose of the joke, but to reassure us that Leeloo really was our absent-one in the shot before, and to confirm that we have changed our perspective from Korbin-seeing-Leeloo to Leeloo-seeing-Korbin.
So, what changes when we start looking through different eyes? For one thing, technology and clutter have both returned to Korbin’s life. The sound bridge connecting shot 1 to shot 2 is a mechanical whine, and when Korbin first enters the frame of shot 2 he kicks an aluminum can and sends it clattering across the floor. Most obviously, a bed emerges from the wall, a concrete example of the ways that technology drives Korbin’s life. The soft horn music also ends, completing the shift from romantic timelessness to science-fiction technology.
Sex has also been totally removed from the equation. It is somewhat ironic that it is Korbin’s bed to come out of the wall just after his romantic moment with Leeloo, because it is very clear that no sleeping, euphemistic or otherwise, is likely to happen. For one thing, Cornelius lies on top of the sheets, and the bed has been made. For another, Cornelius has been wrapped in sterile plastic. Additionally, the character of Cornelius is actually a monk– an embodiment of celibacy.
Shot 2 and shot 4: technology, plastic, and clutter.
Leeloo’s reaction to both of these changes is very much that of an outsider. Whereas Korbin and Leeloo share focus equally in shot 1, in shot 3 (the only shot in which they appear together) the depth of field has narrowed so that only Leeloo is in focus, and Korbin is set apart from her. Leeloo does not get involved in the action of rescuing Cornelius, merely passing comment on the action while she continues with her own business of dealing with her wet clothes.
The world without Leeloo is also less happy than the world with her. This is evident both on the obvious levels of the previously-mentioned cluttered mise-en-scene and change in music, as well as the nature of the action, but it is also true on a more subtle level: the camera moves more obviously, with a distinctive handheld shake, and everything within the shot is moves as well– the stability provided by Leeloo has been lost.
At the end of shot 4, Korbin and Cornelius look directly at the at the camera, making us ask quite explicitly, “What are they seeing?”
This shot demands a reverse-shot.
The answer, of course, is Leeloo.
(3)
Korbin and Cornelius looking at Leeloo
Shot 5 shows Korbin and Cornelius looking behind them at Leeloo, and then immediately turning back to face the camera because Leeloo has taken off her wet shirt to wring it out. They stand awkwardly, and then Korbin edges out of the frame to get coffee. Even though this shot expresses their view of Leeloo, we never get a clear look at her at all; the depth of field is narrow and Leeloo, behind the two men, is totally out of focus.
Shot 5: trying not to look at Leeloo.
I find this shot most telling because in it, Leeloo expresses what she really represents, and Korbin aligns himself with the monk to quite literally turn his back on her. Leeloo, as a symbol of straightforward sexuality, has no qualms about taking off her wet shirt to wring it out: how else would she get dry? But this is still the middle of the movie, the point at which the hero must decide whether or not to accept his quest, and at this point he is determined not to accept. The camera, like Korbin, obeys the authoritarian message on the wall to “Keep Clear” (an artifact of an authoritarian society), and refuses to look at her, blocking her out with the two men who represent the usual way of things in this science fiction world.
(4)
The true origin of the looks: the camera
The story becomes more complex when we remember that Korbin and Leeloo are both fictional characters, and therefore cannot possibly look at each other. In Christian Metz’s The Imaginary Signifier, he attempts to tease out the truth behind the spectator’s experience of identification with film.
“The spectator’s look… must first “go through”… the look of the character out-of-frame. … This invisible character, supposed (like the spectator) to be seeing, will collide obliquely with the latter’s look and play the part of an obligatory intermediary.” (page 700)
Thus, we are the ones beginning to feel alienated from Korbin’s technologically-focused, conflict-driven life, and we feel attracted to Leeloo’s simpler way of living.
However, we must not forget the fact that “as he indentifies with himself as look, the spectator can do no other than identify with the camera, too, which has looked before him at what he is not looking at.” Although our look is more real than the look of the fictional character, it is still not the cause of the image; the true origin lies, as always, in the camera. We take a stance on technology not through our own will, then, but as a direct result of the camera’s placement—or rather, the director’s placement of the camera.
Thus, the beautiful slow zoom in shot 1 is caused not by Korbin’s attraction to Leeloo (the false origin), but by the director’s desire to make the viewer subconsciously associate Leeloo with calm, gentle feelings. The shots get jumpier and shorter starting with shot 2 not because Leeloo is disoriented by Korbin’s world, but because the director wants the spectator to consider the world disorienting. Every detail has been orchestrated with intent, and at great cost, to cause us to identify with a very specific ideology.
Finally, let us consider how the film ends: when Leeloo does save the world, it is as an embodiment of love, not as a technological weapon. In the epilogue, the President wants to speak to Korbin and Leeloo to thank them, but, as a scientist awkwardly explains, they are “occupied”; they are encapsulated in a healing device, no clothes in sight, unashamedly having sex. That is, Korbin has completely embraced Leeloo’s world, and brought the spectator into seeing a “happy ending” that consists of keeping out the rest of the world, in order to enjoy life on a primal, uncomplicated, “uncivilized” level.
The Fifth Element, despite its surface similarities to technology-glorifying science fiction romps, therefore subtly encourages the spectator to identify with an anti-technology ideology.
In the film The Fifth Element, the world in general and protagonist Korben Dallas’ life in particular are complicated, strange, and dangerous. Life is fast-paced and science-fiction devices abound. However, the alien Leeloo, sent by ancient beings to prevent the destruction of the universe, represents a peaceful return to normalcy, both for humanity, whom she saves, and for Korben, with whom she falls in love.
The contrast between the world with and without Leeloo’s influence becomes particularly evident in a scene in the middle of the movie, in which Korben accepts a military mission representative of his old life in order to pursue and help Leeloo. The camera motion, shot length, mise-en-scene, and sound all change from calm simplicity to frantic complexity as Korbin turns his attention from Leeloo to the rest of the world. The scene itself is almost exactly halfway through the movie, and the sequence I will be analysing starts at timestamp 1:05:56 and runs until 1:06:49. (In the clip, this is from 0:05 to 1:06 — I included a little bit more for context.)
My first shot is a long one, lasting 41 seconds. As part of the plot preceding this scene, Korbin has hidden a number of people in his apartment: Leeloo in his shower, the priest Cornelius in his bed, and three soldiers in his fridge. Leeloo, the orange-haired humanoid alien, is the first to be rescued; immediately prior to this shot, Korbin has retrieved his shower, which retracts into the ceiling and out of view, and discovered that Leeloo is now soaking wet because of an “autowash” feature.
In this shot, the camera moves very little; it starts with a slight pan to the right as Korbin helps Leeloo out of the shower, but this is primarily because the previous shot was moving, and to keep the transition smooth it must cut from motion to motion. After the pan, it begins moving forward in a very gradual, slow process which makes the framing simpler and more intimate as the scene goes on but which will probably not register consciously as camera movement.
Leeloo also doesn’t move– she stands in the center of the shot, shaking, as Korbin walks behind her and noisily tosses items out of a hidden cupboard. His apartment in general is very cluttered, and as the unidenfitifiable objects as they hit the floor their clanging highlights his unsettled state.
He finds a towel and walks back to Leeloo to wrap it around her. He starts by vigorously drying her off, but the more time he spends with her, the slower his movements become. His dialogue also changes from being more high-energy to calmer the longer he is with her; he begins by explaining and apologizing for the autowash, then comments that this is the second time today that Leeloo has ended up in his arms, then falls silent as he contemplates that fact and her face.
The moment around 1:06:25 best encapsulates the mood of Korbin-with-Leeloo. He has finally stopped frantically moving around, only absently stroking her shoulder from time to time, and he has stopped talking. The camera has moved forward enough to cut the shower and the cupboard out of the shot, giving us a view of Korbin’s apartment with an unprecedented lack of clutter. He is totally engrossed in looking at her face; we expect him to kiss her at any moment. The slightly cheesy romantic music, which has been playing since Leeloo appeared, becomes most audible at this moment.
However, a whining/ moaning noise also becomes audible, and at 1:06:31 we begin our transition out of Leeloo-land. Korbin physically turns away from Leeloo to look behind him for the source of the sound, and asks (in a voice that has become a whisper through her influence), “Did you hear something?” and the music stops. When she answers, “Cornelius,” he is silent for a moment, and then we finally cut away from Leeloo and to our next shot.
In my second shot, we see a return to the world of action and technology that represents Korbin’s life without Leeloo. The music stops abruptly, and instead we hear a mechanical whine (which actually begins to be audible in the last few seconds of the previous shot) as Korbin’s retractable bed slides out from the wall, with Cornelius trapped under its plastic wrap.
The camera begins moving again as Korbin runs into the frame. In his haste, he kicks a aluminum soda can, which clatters metallically; it’s not meant to be noticed consciously but as with the junk thrown out of his cupboard in the shot before, it calls to mind the clutter of Korbin’s usual life. As the can skitters away, Korbin rips the plastic off the bed, and Cornelius sits bolt upright with a loud gasp for air. The shot lasts four seconds, a mere tenth of the shot before.
We cut back to Leeloo for the third shot. It’s a dirty single, with Korbin’s out-of-focus back in the foreground of the shot. However, it’s not very dirty, since Leeloo is standing in front of the only blank wall in Korbin’s apartment, and absolutely none of his things are visible. It is essentially a reverse-shot, showing Leeloo’s reaction to to action in the shot prior.
Leeloo is unworried. She does move, but it is to begin taking off her own wet clothes, not to get caught up in the action surrounding Cornelius. Instead, she simply points off-screen to the action, and comments, “Autowash.” (It is probably worth noting, for those who have not seen the movie, that Leeloo does not yet speak English in this scene; she speaks primarily in one-work proper names, but we are meant to read a further eloquence into them; they do not represent an intellectual deficiency on her part.)
However, Korbin is no longer engrossed in the calm world of Leeloo, and this shot lasts only two seconds.
In the fourth shot, the camera jostles back and forth as Korbin pulls Cornelius to his feet (a motion which also pulls a huge swath of plastic into the shot). We are once again looking at the messy part of Korbin’s apartment, with open drawers, cupboard doors, and shelves of books, awards, photographs, and knickknacks.
The men shove at each other for a few moments, Korbin in an attempt to brush Cornelius off, and Cornelius in an attempt to brush off Korbin’s attention (and to express his annoyance). Korbin is talking loudly again, saying almost the same thing he was saying to Leeloo when he pulled her out of the shower– lots of “sorry.”
Then, with an amusing swooshing sound effect, they both look directly at the camera.
In shot five, the two men are in the foreground in focus, obscuring Leeloo as she takes off her wet shirt behind them. We get the swooshing sound again as they both in unison turn their backs to her. Korbin awkwardly offers Cornelius a cup of coffee and steps out of the shot as Leeloo wrings out her shirt (the water splashing audibly on the ground) and mutters “autowash” to herself.
By standing with Cornelius and literally turning his back to Leeloo, Korbin has rejoined Cornelius’ world of action (a world that does not have time for romance). It represents a complete reversal of his position towards her earlier, which was romantic but devoid of action. It also represents the general tone of the movie, a tone that Korbin consistently tries to escape by pursuing Leeloo.
As the scene continues, we see Korbin pour a cup of coffee, then a reverse shot of Cornelius standing awkwardly, then a point of view shot as Cornelius notices some plot-important cruise tickets and grabs them, then a reaction shot of Cornelius as he crosses himself and grabs an award statue of Korbin’s, then a shot of Korbin and the coffee as Cornelius runs forward to bash Korbin on the head, and then a shot in the hallway as Cornelius and Leeloo flee– all of which happens in barely thirty seconds, less than the time Korbin spent just drying Leeloo off!
Overall, these five shots (and the context surrounding them) perfectly encapsulate the two worlds of the film, and Korbin’s reaction to them. When we move away from Leeloo, the camera moves more, the shots come faster, the mise-en-scene is messier, and the sound changes from peaceful music to motion-driven sound effects, whereas the closer we get to Leeloo, the calmer all of these things become. Because of this, throughout the movie, Korbin is drawn to Leeloo, and in fact puts up with more frenzied action than usual in order to gain the happy romantic “clinch” at the end.
While I’ve been struggling to write anything of substance, I thought I would indulge myself and write about Doctor Who [SPOILER WARNINGS APPLY]. Yes, I know we just had a DW post, and at this rate we shall have to change the blog name to Who Goggles, but it’s all I got at the moment and sometimes writing about something pleasant can inspire more advanced and cutting patriarchy blaming. Heck, I may be able to throw in some blaming with my Whovianism! Something like, for example, Jo’s post the second entry below this one. A post I agree with completely, by the way. However, I think I’ll mostly be writing a bit of a love-fest-type of thing. Kind of like MaryAnn Johansen’s Who posts at Flick Filosopher, or Catriona Mills’ Circulating Library live-Who-blogging posts. I may try my hand at one of the latter when I watch the next Classic Who story on my list. I think they’ll probably be mostly love-fests because I am aware of how much my love of Who will forgive a multitude of sins – like giant plot holes, absurd twists, deus ex machina, etc. But I shall try and keep at least one feminist eyeball open and not glazed over!
So after getting hooked on DW by watching the Reboot, I thought I would go back to the very beginning and watch all the Classic Who from the first Doctor onwards. But, while watching Youtube clips waiting for stuff to download, er borrow, er buy, I ended up saying fuck it and went straight to the Classic Doctor I wanted to see most: Tom Baker. He was, sort of, my first Doctor after all. Being Canadian, I didn’t grow up with Who but did manage to watch something of the reruns that PBS was showing in the 80s. I remember nothing about the show, not the story, not the villains, not even the house I watched it in, but I remembered Four! “Who is that guy?” I remember thinking. I always thought there was something subversive about him, so I wanted more of that. And, I mean, look at him! (lovely photo borrowed without permission from Kaldor City).
These are all images that made me stop and think, “That’s interesting. I wonder what I could say about that.”
Let’s start with some economy!!1
You really ought to read the article for this one, which is from Salon. Basically, there’s been a lot of right-wing hand-wringing about how Obama is cutting defense spending and that now terrorists will kill us and eat our puppies! Except that is a total lie, and Obama is increasing defense spending. This is a common thing for Republicans, isn’t it?
Speaking of politics…!
I found it here, on The F-Word. Even their expressions are so telling. Those women just look so happy! (I was going to specify, “the women photographed with Obama,” to clarify, except, oops!, Bush somehow forgot to include any in his photo…) This picture’s just here because it makes me smile, and provides a little hope that things will change.
I’m generally of the opinion that our system is flawed, though, which is why the following image really made me think:
The website, More Party Animals, advocates for, well, more party animals. I’ve long felt that the two-party system is better than a one-party system, but still provides insufficient options. It leads to lazy thinking, as if every issue has exactly two sides. It makes it much easier for one party to have power over everything and completely steamroll the opposition (as opposed to in a minority government in Canada, say, where the leading party has the most representation, but still less than half, so that it must be able to compromise to accomplish anything. I know that “bipartisanship” is driving me crazy right now, but largely because the Republicans went so far with the power they had before, and because there’s no one further to the left of the Democrats with a loud enough voice to keep the discourse from shifting permanantly to the right. In general, though, I would be willing to put up with compromises from the liberal leadership as long as I could be sure that the conservatives, if/when they had power again, would be subject to the same need. So in an idea world, the particularly right-wing Republicans would greate a conservative party, the rest of the Republicans and the majority of the Democrats would merge to form a moderate party (i.e., what they already are), and then an actual liberal party would exist on the left. Because having just the center and the right represented in my government is going to drive me crazy.
Speaking of crazy!
(From this article, at Towelroad.) Apparently the artist, who likes to use gay pride imagery in her work, donated a thousand dollars to the Proposition 8 campaign. You know, the anti-gay one. It seems she doesn’t paint pride parades and such because she actually cares about the subjects– no, it’s just that Teh Ghey makes for great “spectacle.” The artist says, “Art is not about ‘appreciating.’ It is about looking. People get accustomed to viewing art through a filter of words: theories, press releases, the pieties of art appreciation. Spectacle cuts through the static…I’ve never really liked parades that much…But when the majorette is a middle-aged man in a tutu and sneakers you know you are not in Kansas and you might want to stay awake.” So, that’s sweet of her.
And, finally…
It appears to be a promotion for something on the Sci Fi channel, but I found it here at L’image Blog (oh, stumbleupon!). I particularly like that it’s a cute, sweet-looking white girl scaring the “monster” in this one, since so often in these old movies (and, uh, current ones), it’s exactly that kind of character who would be the “fragile” victim. (Other kinds of women get a ton of crap in movies, too, obviously, but not usually this particular brand of crap. You have to “deserve” victimhood– the other, less wholesome women aren’t victims, they were asking for it.) The look on her face here really fascinates me, like she knows it’s a “hilarious” reversal because of its impossibility, but she still wants to take revenge for all the indigities she and women like her have suffered in film. I also feel like there’s something about the racial undertones of such movies, but I haven’t really seen enough of them to know (before my time)… King Kong was, uh, pretty awful, racially. And the lips on our lagoon creature here makes me suspect that not too much has changed, and makes me wonder more about the “woman getting revenge” aspect that I liked earlier.
So, ending on that ambiguous note, I am off to return to my life. If you have come across any other interesting images lately, please share in the comments! Or just add your thoughts about the ones I put up here.
Happy blogaround, everybody! And, uh, Valentine’s Day too, I guess.
I had written in my first post about Dr Who that I wasn’t sure how much of the excitement I felt was New TV Show infatuation. Time will tell, of course, but I do think I’ve been seeing reasons to support my new-found love (as well as the usual problems that women always face when looking for media that doesn’t marginalize them). Some of the reasons for this love has to do with the female characters (especially Donna, I’ll admit), and some of it has to do with the humour and the quirkiness of the main character, and all of the other things that I wrote about in my first post.
On the DVD of the first season there was an interview with Christopher Eccleston about becoming the new Doctor. He starts off by saying that one of the first things the writer(s) of the show wanted to do was get rid of the sexism of the old one. That they recognized how under-written the female characters were and wanted to do that differently. And he actually used the word “sexist.” People so often will try and find some other word, any other word, than sexist or misogynistic. So much so that it’s actually kind of weird hearing people use it outside of feminist gatherings. While I’ve only seen 3 episodes of Season 1 and about 7 or 8 episodes of Season 4, I’ve found so far that their attempt to not be sexist has had some success, at least (what happens to Donna notwithstanding).
This is one of the things that I’m liking about the reboot: it’s not the Doctor saving the woman all the time, although he does do that fairly often. She sometimes saves him: Rose saves his life in the pilot, Martha saves him in at least one episode, Donna apparently saves him earlier in their relationship. I also like how his female companions help him resolve dilemmas, like how Donna solves some riddle due to her Super Temp powers, or kicks down the locked door when the villains are after them because the Doctor’s screwdriver isn’t doing much. Okay, I loved that last one! She sighs impatiently and says something to the effect of “oh get out of the way.” Ha! So far, the women aren’t bimbos, helpless and squealing (well, not all the time). At least one of them actually looks like a regular person, not a fashion model. Of course, both of the women who played Rose and Martha are quite pretty and slim in a typical way. I can’t comment too much with regards to Martha because I’ve only seen her in that two-part story from Season 4, but Rose so far, while very pretty, is also dressed in baggy jeans, a loose zippered hoodie and sneakers. Not exactly sexed up. She just looks like a regular person. Very refreshing.
There definitely seems to be more of an equal footing between this recent reincarnation of the Doctor and his female companions, even given the Doctor’s advanced age, experience and IQ/awareness. Not completely equal, but definitely more equal. You can see the writers are trying to not be sexist or otherwise exclusionary, or are sometimes aware of how much the female companion falls into the “plucky sidekick girl” trope. Case in point, in Season 4 the Doctor refers to Donna as his “plucky companion” and she practically sneers at him “Plucky?! I’ll ‘pluck’ you, mate.” Ha! I love Donna.
Another thing that Eccleston mentioned in that interview was that they had done away with the Doctor’s know-it-all, paternalistic behaviour towards his human companions. As the old series is but a dim memory, I can’t say how well they’ve succeeded in this regard. Based only on what I’ve seen so far, however, I would agree that they don’t have much of that at all. The Doctor actually depends on Donna’s intelligence and perceptions fairly regularly (“come on, Donna! Think!” cries the Doctor, as they’re trying to save the world). I’ve really been enjoying the Doctor’s fallibility and Donna’s strength. They both have strengths and weaknesses, and, working together they make a really good team. I haven’t seen enough of Rose (and certainly not Martha) to know how much that is true with them as well, but I’m hopeful.
I think it is a reflection on how things have changed in the last 30 years that the writer’s of a tv show would a) be aware of sexism, b) recognize it in an older show, and c) try to do things differently. It seems to me that it has become standard in some respects to have female characters that are strong and are more on an equal footing to the male characters. Remembering old Bond films for example, yuck, compared to the more recent incarnations. Of course, it is also true that women continue to be sexually exploited in film and are repeatedly relegated to sidekick or victim or plot point. If they even show up in the film at all (looking [sadly] at you, Pixar). As I’ve said before, with feminism it’s not always either/or but rather both/and. Bond may be paired with a female character that is strong and intelligent, but she’ll still likely either be in a bikini or need rescuing in the end (er, or both!). In fact, I would argue that the stronger and more kick-ass the female character, the more likely you’ll see her sexed up and in ridiculous shoes.
Which is another reason why I love Donna. Did I mention that I love Donna? She’s strong and intelligent, and most definitely not sexed up. She really goes against that trend. And, you know, thinking on eloriane’s and my recent Doctor Who posts, this makes the way her character ends up all the more upsetting. It’s not just that she’s no longer going to be the companion, but that the woman that seems most like the Doctor’s equal (even calling herself that in an alternate Good-bye scene) gets the worst ending. Going back to being a regular old temp. Being stripped of not only her super brain, but her memories and confidence in herself that she obtained while traveling with the Doctor.
So while the creators of the new Doctor Who seem to have the beginnings of a feminist awareness, they still seem to drop the ball in some ways. Much like the rest of the world, for marginalized peoples of all stripes it’s usually two steps forwards and one step back. I do try to not be satisfied with crumbs, as just once I would really like to have a whole slice of pie. Tantalizingly, Doctor Who at times seems to offer this. I’m still annoyed that at the last moment they took it away.
I saw The Day The Earth Stood Still yesterday, and I actually really enjoyed it! I’d never seen the original (though it’s now wallowing around the 200s in my Netflix queue) so I couldn’t be enraged by any deviations from that version. I thought maybe Helen would enrage me, being one of only two female characters and all, but she was actually pretty cool!
Helen kind of exists just to show how nice and good humanity is, but somehow, despite that, she ends up being a rather strong character in her own right. I really related to her and even admired her. Usually with this kind of plot the woman saves everything by just being really good and lovable, but Helen doesn’t fall into that trap. When she wants to prove to Klaatu that humanity is not just its paranoid military, when she wants to show him that we are worth saving, she doesn’t try to kiss him, or give some kind of sappy speech about the power of love. She takes him to meet a Nobel Prize winner!
This is cool because, 1, it means she’s the kind of person who hangs out with Nobel Prize winners (she’s got the smarts!), and 2, it means she’s the kind of person who values more than just sentimentality. I don’t want to say that she’s not all emotional like all those other silly wimminz, because I think it’s an unfortunate patriarchal paradigm that condemns the showing of emotion, and specifically condemns the showing of emotion because it’s a female trait and nobody wants to be a gurl. However, it frustrates me when characters in movies can’t point out anything of value in humanity other than ill-defined concepts of “love.” The movie still ended up going with the whole “you are capable of such destruction but also paradoxically such triumph” thing, but I’m okay with that– mostly because it was a thought process prompted by said Nobel Prize winner, and completed not by a romantic show of love, but by Helen and her step-son reaching out to each other and helping each other heal.
Actually, that bears fleshing out. It really, really helps that there’s no romantic subplot anywhere in this movie, in terms of keeping Helen characterized as a brilliant adult as opposed to a fawning woman. I’m not opposed to romance (when it’s really romantic, like, without any stalking or lying. I’m looking at you, rom coms!) but often when a woman in involved in a romantic subplot she becomes harder for me to believe in as a full character. Is this because this kind of plot positions her as belonging to another, more important male character? Or is it because I’m falling into the fallacy of romance = girly = not important? I think it must be the first, since it doesn’t always get in the way– only when it’s done poorly, and against the character’s, well, character. In this case they sidestepped even the possibility of a poorly-done romance by cutting out the romance entirely, something I kind of wish more movies would do. I know it’s a really easy way to add minutes but I’d like to see more explosions, please!
(This movie did a pretty good job of delivering on the explosions and technobabble and such too, by the way. I’m just focusing on Helen right now.)
Really the reason I’m so pleased is that Helen always acts like, and is treated like, a Real Scientist. Our very first scene is her teaching some bright young students astrobiology, totally confident and in control, dispensing pearls of wisdom to her class. Even though she’s the only female scientist they call upon (boo!) she really holds her own in the conversations, and she acts professionally, and everyone takes her seriously. She always introduces herself as Dr. Helen Benson, and people call her Dr. Benson unless they have an actual reason to call her Helen (which is to say, a more personal relationship). Coolest moment: when they’re doing surgery on Klaatu, and the surgeon takes a sample of his skin, she just calmly says, “I’ll want a sample too.” And they just set one aside for her. She asserts her authority, and they acknowledge it. That’s really the most notable thing for me, here: other characters acknowledge her intelligence and treat her with the appropriate respect. She’s not sciencey because it makes her a better prize for the hero, she’s just legitimately smart.
There are two other interesting female characters as well (only one with a name)– Regina Jackson, the woman who is the eyes and ears (and mouth) of the president for the duration of the crisis, and about whom I don’t have much to say. And then, not really a “character,” but a nameless soldier with two lines:
Guardswoman: [Catching Helen with a cellphone after they had been forbidden] Ma’am. Is that a cell phone? Helen Benson: Yes… Guardswoman: [Tearfully] May I borrow it?
Honestly, I loved this soldier for the same reasons I loved Helen. She was in a position of authority, and the text recognized her right to have that authority (she seriously worried Helen in the beginning!) but she was also an interesting and complex human without being “weak.” I mean, she’s not at her strongest here, because she thinks Manhattan is about to be destroyed by an asteroid and she wants to warn her family to get out of town, but it’s not some kind of womanly frailty. It’s the human response to “we’re all going to die.” I sympathized with her and respected her and even though with was a ridiculously short scene, it remains one of my favourites (along with the “I’ll want a sample” scene). Bonus: she’s a woman of color!
I was a little amused by the “happy” ending, in the sense that most dystopian sci fi starts with the sudden and complete eradication of technology. I couldn’t help thinking, what about planes that are currently in the air? Scientists in the Antarctic? People with pacemakers? But I’ll accept that it’s better than the complete eradication of humankind, and revel in the unexpectedly feminist respect for women that the film showed. I mean, it’s science fiction! And yet it respected its female characters, and even passed the Bechdel test. Amazing.
They had a gigantic wall graphic which was a sort of timeline of sci fi, seperating it into different eras based on the general subject matter of the sci fi at the time, and tying it to “current events” in the world at large. They illustrated the whole thing with a gigantic collage of book covers, authors’ photographs, illustrations, and screenshots from movies and TV. It was interesting information, but it was also fantastic geekery to go through everything and exclaim over everything we recognized. They had a nice big picture of the Doctor and some daleks!
They ALSO had the cover for Trouble and Her Friends. I discovered this book in my Gender and Cyberculture class (possibly one of the best classes I’ve ever taken) and it may very well be my favourite book ever. I am actually amazed I haven’t written about it yet. It’s out of print but used copies are starting at $0.01 on Amazon and your library may have a copy as well. You should locate it right now. It’s OK, I can wait.
What’s this? WHY so I adore this book? Well, it’s lesbian cyberpunk! You need more than that? It’s lesbian cyberpunk in which the lesbians neither die nor go insane!
Looking at it, it’s actually gotten some pretty poor reviews on Amazon, mostly for focusing on all this gay stuff instead of plot. What makes me want to laugh is that it’s compared unfavorably to Neuromancer, which is possibly one of the worst books I’ve ever forced myself to read. Seriously, I was on a 22-hour flight and it was my only book, and I just kept putting it down.
I can see the parallels. Both books center around a Second Life-like cyberspace populated with three-dimensional avatars. Both protagonists are former hackers, though Chase (in Neuromancer) wants back into hacking, whereas Cerise (in Trouble) was prepared to stay legit if it weren’t for the fact that her ex-lover, Trouble, was in trouble. From what I remember it’s a similar kind of plot with exciting virtual-reality shootouts and car chases, but a lot of really, really dated predictions for the future.
However, Trouble has something OTHER than plot, which, in my mind, makes it the superior book. Trouble is not just about neat techy stuff, but also about what it means to be an outsider, trying to fit in versus blazing your own trail, the importance of friendship…plus hot lesbian sex. Especially since I was the only lesbian I knew at the time, it was hugely refreshing to see a group of homosexual characters presented with an understanding of what it’s like, culturally, to be gay, and to be presented with protagonists in whose stories I could see my own (if only I was a kick-ass hacker). Actually, even the tech in Trouble is more interesting to me, since it involves two competing ways to interact with cyberspace– the simpler way that Neuromancer proposes, where the metaphor is maintained purely through visual cues, but also a more dangerous (and interesting) way, where one installs a “brainworm” that simulates actual sensations, making cyberspace not just a metaphor, but a reality.
Neuromancer, on the other hand…dear god. It had the sorriest excuse for “characters” that I’ve ever tried to sympathize with. (If I ever have the willpower, I’ll write about Molly and Y.T. from the Gibson books I’ve read. Short version: they have sex with the protagonist for no reason! They’re cool and strong, but not when it actually matters!) At least Snow Crash had an interesting premise to keep me going, but I’m sick of disaffected white guys just wandering through their books aimlessly. Maybe I’ve read too much post-war fiction lately (I tried to get through Catch-22 on that plane, too) but I prefer to read about characters who CARE about things. Something. Anything. Seriously. If the character doesn’t have any goals, or desires, or anything they care about, why in the WORLD should I care about THEM? Oh, right, because of the shiny, shiny “plot.”
Probably at the time, the universe posited in Neuromancer was unique enough to be interesting in its own right. My dad read it when it came out… in 1984. But science fiction has to do more than predict cool technology, if it wants to last. It has to tell us something about ourselves. The technological premises in Neuromancer are no longer new or interesting, and while it surely deserves respect as a groundbreaking work for its time, it’s Trouble and Her Friends that I found compelling even ten years later, and I expect it’s Trouble that will still be interesting when the next generation is my age. Maybe the plot isn’t as shiny and amazing, but it’s the heart of the book that really makes it worth reading.
Posted by vivamus 
(lovely photo borrowed without permission from Kaldor City).
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