The main argument of Sobchack’s article The Virginity of Astronauts: Sex and the Science Fiction Film claims
that both men and women in science fiction films (with a particular focus on
those set in space) are of an asexual nature. Little time is given to depicting
romantic or sexual relationships of any kind – instead, the men and women of
science fiction are essentially covered up to give them very similar bodily
looks. I was intrigued by Sobchack’s characterization of men in sci-fi films as
idealized intrepid explorers who, in their adventures, attempt to break free
from biology and dependence on what she several times refers to as the “Mother”
or the “Other”. She essentially conflates these biological entities with the
female persona in general. However, this brings me to one of my issues with
Sobchack’s argument, and the one that I want to explore: the concept that
“woman”, as a whole, essentially always means the same thing in film.
When trying
to theorize what a traditional “woman” in a science-fiction film would be like,
she places Marilyn Monroe in her heyday into this role. What results from this
is a very Mulvey-esque argument that sexual females, as they are often
portrayed in film, would be incompatible with the genre, which is not only
narratively driven, but tends to have technical focuses on science and
technology which sometimes take a good deal of explanation in order to seem
natural in that world. Naturally, all Marilyn Monroe (or any sexual woman)
would do in this environment is arrest the ultimately more important narrative
with her spectacle. I was often unclear as I was reading whether Sobchack was
taking the viewpoint of films that have portrayed women, or her own, but it
seemed to me that all this argument showed was that she couldn’t imagine a
sexual female in a sci-fi movie in any other way than, say, Barbarella.
This was
especially illustrated for me in her passage about Ripley from Alien. Her claim is that Ripley was
essentially sexless – more pointedly, not a woman – for the majority of the
movie, until the very end where she encounters the alien one-on-one, scantily
clad. Sobchack claims that Ripley is now “an irrational, potent, sexual object
– a woman”. However, there is no difference in Ripley, character-wise, between
how she is at the end and how she is for the rest of the movie. Her screams,
her methodical singing, then carefully placing herself in the space suit and
blasting the alien out of the ship – they are all rational and consistent with
her character. So really, what is it that Sobchack is saying makes a woman a
woman – presentation of her body parts? There was nothing about Ripley that
didn’t make her woman-like before this point.
It is very interesting to realize that women and men in scientific movies are shown as almost like a different breed of person. Breed might be a very strong and forceful word, but I agree with you in being intrigued by the fact that the astronauts and scientists in movies like Alien are shown in an asexual light. I keep thinking back to the movie and see that there is really some truth in this. The main heroine is never shown in a way that makes viewers attracted to her. When watching the movie I kept comparing the scenes in which Ripley guides the action, as she spends so much time alone on screen, with the scenes of Barbarella by herself on screen. Looking at two extremes like this you can tell when it is the objective of the moviemakers to make audiences attracted to the heroines. The point that you raised about what a “woman” is in film intrigues me. I consider both these examples (Ripley and Barbarella) to be two extreme (over sexualized and not sexualized at all) to not really represent women in real life, but they could represent “women” in the movie world. I guess this can lead us to consider the role of films in society and within gender roles. Is it really their objective or duty to show real life or should we accept them as extremes?
ReplyDeleteI really like the question that you raised Claire of what constitutes female representation – presentation or biological sex? Personally I found Sobchack’s view on sexless women in science fiction just as problematic as the over-sexualized Barbarella. The idea that a woman is only a woman in film when she is “an irrational, potent, sexual object,” is extremely limiting and says that women can only be truly represented as hyper-feminine and sexual (46). One of the ideas we discussed in class on Tuesday was what representation means. I think Sobchack misses the mark by classifying Ripley as “hardly female” – she may be presented as more masculine and less sexual, but she’s still a woman. The point of representation is to see a diversity of female characters on screen: the Ripleys, the Marilyns, and everyone in between. Overall, though, I found Sobchack’s main argument that astronauts are generally portrayed as “cool, rational, competent, unimaginative, male, and sexless” in popular media pretty accurate (46). This idea of passionless rationality goes back to our first week’s discussion of the popular portrayal of scientists. But at least in Alien we’ve made it to the point where there are women in science fiction movies that are something other than narrative distractions and in Ripley’s case, the heroine of the movie.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of what makes a woman a woman is one open for discussion in many feminist critiques. In Sobchak’s “The Virginity of Astronauts: Sex and the Science Fiction Film,” the author presents Ripley and other female science fiction film characters as asexual. They’re not necessarily viewed as women through the lens of the filmmaker, she argues. Claire suggests that this means a woman has value as a woman with the presentation of her body parts. In another class I’m in right now, Islam in Modernity, we’re discussing the same concept as we look at transsexual identities and policies in Iran. In 1976 in Iran, sex reassignment surgeries were banned. This was, in part, due to notions about the meaning and purpose of womanhood. Wanting to transition from female to male was deemed a waste of potential, as women are considered valuable in their ability to bear children. Their procreative capability is how they are assigned worth by society. In comparison, men wanting to transition to being women were also seen as wasteful, as they would never be “perfect women.” A male-to-female transition wouldn’t result in the ability to bear children, which meant the woman would have no value as a woman. Would Sobchak characterize barren women or male-to-female transgender individuals the same way she characterizes women without noticeable sexuality?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, Claire, when you criticize Sobchak’s view of Ripley vs. Marilyn Monroe. I interpreted Sobchak to believe women in sci-fi films to be unable to be subtly sexual. It seems that Sobchak is saying that women in sci-fi are Barbarella or not female at all. It is interesting to note the implications of what this means in the context of society’s views on women as a whole. I thought Megan’s example regarding transsexual identities in Iran was really interesting and relevant. By questioning whether a nonsexual woman in a film is really a woman at all, Sobchak is sort of equating the value of women to their sexual capital. Sobchak’s portrayal of Ripley as asexual is as much of a problem as the over-sexualization of women in film. If a woman is overtly sexual, she is not taken as seriously in her role within the context of the film, but the sexless woman is not viewed as a woman at all. Personally, I found the article to be completely puzzling, even after our discussions, because I feel like Sobchak’s article makes it impossible for women to have a legitimate role in film at all.
ReplyDeleteHi Claire! I was also unconvinced about Sobchack's reading of Ripley, and your last paragraph really articulates a lot of what I was skeptical about. Sobchack is working within a paradigm that semiotically links women to sex so that each become total signifiers for the other--I do understand this, so maybe I have more of a bone to pick with structuralist and psychoanalytical theory than with Sobchack's argument itself. However, with that in mind, I'm having trouble coming to terms with the idea that "Ripley, indeed, is hardly female," when she is clearly a woman throughout the film (45). Sobchack argues that "she is not marked as either a woman or sexual" (46). What does it mean to be marked as a "woman" (besides being sexual, as Sobchack makes it an "or" statement -- woman or sexual)? All I can think of is marking difference based on biological essentialism or bodily difference, which I find unconvincing in itself. I agree with your point -- "So really, what is it that Sobchack is saying makes a woman a woman – presentation of her body parts? There was nothing about Ripley that didn’t make her woman-like before this point."
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I think Sobchack makes an interesting point when she says, "the semiotic link between biological asexuality and men has been forged" rather than broken by the sci-fi genre and therefore is "allowed a full range of representation" (47). Sexlessness affords men coolness, rationality, competence, autonomy, and narrative activity. It also affords Ripley the same qualities -- and in fact, I'd argue that Ripley's character expands notions of female subjectivity and potential. I think the reason I'm having such trouble with analyzing Sobchack is because I find the paradigm in which she is working problematic and reductive itself. I'm finding it difficult to argue about and examine Ripley's character within her structuralist framework.
Even though I do not believe that Sobchack is necessarily arguing that the only acceptable notion of a woman is the Marilyn Monroe type, she does not explore any alternative representations of womanhood when she asserts that Ripley from Alien is stripped of hers. I understand that Sobchack is more concerned with conventional cultural representations of women, but this gap in her argument weakens the larger piece for me. She almost seems to decry the script change that caused Ripley to become a female character rather than celebrate it as a momentous occasion for women in a field that at the time (and still today) was dominated by the male action/sci-fi hero. Although her argument is ultimately more concerned with the semiotic idea of women signifying sex (a la Marilyn), as a result her argument fails to consider alternate presentations of female sexuality or womanhood in general. (Side note: I’ve read Vivian Sobchack for multiple classes in the past and almost always find her work to be among the most difficult and sometimes frustrating. She definitely requires a reread or two.)
ReplyDeleteI believe it is also important to note the date of this article’s writing. Being over 25 years old, Sobchack’s argument obviously does not take into account more modern representations of women in sci-fi, which although far from perfect, have made great strides over the past three decades.
I have an issue with anyone making such sweeping generalizations about an entire genre of films, especially as Sobchack claims that her argument applies to all American science fiction films across time. It appears that Sobchack relies on American science fiction films released since the 1950s as evidence for her claims. As a side note, Sobchack should have cited the years that these movies were released, especially since some of the titles she mentions are the names of movies that originally were released in the 1950s and had been remade in the late 1970s, so it is unclear which version she is referring to. I also think that Sobchack's argument warrants at least a brief discussion of a film such as Barbarella as it is precisely the type of science fiction film that Marilyn Monroe would have starred in, even though Sobchack claims that would have been an impossibility. I know it was mentioned in class that Sobchack analyzed American science fiction and that Barbarella was a foreign film, but its production did have significant American involvement, and other scholars such as Lisa Parks found it appropriate to discuss Barbarella in relation to contemporary American science fiction films and American popular culture. Sobchack claims that "Science fiction films from other countries do not seem to base themselves in a semiotic system in which biological reproduction and the female are linked as a sign opposed to the sign constituted by linking technological production to the male" (42). Because I found Sobchack interpretation of the role of women in science fiction films to be so problematic, I would be interested to see how she applies her analytical framework to non-American science fiction.
ReplyDelete(This post is from Jenna Katz)
ReplyDeleteMy main issue with the Sobchack reading was that she seemed to be presenting the woman as asexual as a bad thing. I don't think that having women portrayed as "one of the boys" is necessarily negative in an action-adventure science-fiction film. I understand her frustration with the lack of feminine sexuality because it seems to stem from the love/hate relationship that society has with feminine sexuality. However, I think that having women be integrated and integral to the action is better than having an overly sexual woman who stops all the action and is not important (like Barbarella). Despite Ripley's lack of sexuality, she is still a really interesting character. I find that much more interesting than a romantic or sexual plot. I think that science fiction and media as a whole need to get over the idea that sex is bad and primitive or that sex has to define a person and that it needs to find a happy medium. Until we get there, I would much rather have women as actual characters than as strippers.