Virginal Astronauts

Sobchak explores the "Virginity of Astronauts" by first defining the lens through which sexuality - or the lackthereof - is viewed in science fiction films. Her argument is that sexuality is denied to female characters in science fiction movies, essentially creating a sameness of their bodies to those of the male characters. The argument that this is a sustained theme as opposed to one indicative of a certain time period - her example is the 1950s - is a compelling one.

"The deemphasis on human female sexuality in the science fiction film, then, is not limited to a particular period, but rather seems particular to the genre" (45). Her contextual example of Marilyn Monroe makes that point all the more valid. One could argue that the hallmark domesticity and perceieved cultural roles of women in the 1950s are the reason for this depiction in science fiction films yet the pattern plays out with characters like Princess Leia and Ripley in Alien, a character so thoroughly non-feminine that her role was initially written as a male.

Through this elimination of any resemblance to real human sexuality, Sobchak arrives at the thesis of the virginal astronaut - "a sign of penetration and impregnation without biology, without sex and without the opposite, different sex" (48). The reason presented for this avoidance of overt sexuality is that female sexuality would pose a direct threat to the male interaction with technology, a departure from various interstellar missions. This form of repression as Sobchak deems it, serves the greater narrative of displacing female sexuality to that of an alien, mutant or space itself. It's interesting to consider Alien in this regard as the physical act of implanting or impregnating the people onboard the vessel with alien eggs is overtly sexual, yet the humans themselves are not active participants in this sexuality. It is only towards the very end of the film that the viewer gets any glimpse of Ripley as a female human - an affectation that is jarring as Sobchak describes it. I'm interested in discussing what implications this has for both science fiction narrative structure and the roles that women can occupy in films. Someone in class astutely mentioned the character Alice Eve plays in Star Trek into Darkness, one which is overtly sexualized. Does this mark a shift in science fiction film portrayals or simply another version of the same repression? Has this theory held completely or is there a new distinction female characters have in modern science fiction films?

Sobchack's female identity and Ripley

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.

Slash Writers, T'Pring and Feminism

In “NASA/Trek,” Penley discusses slash fiction in relation to Star Trek’s Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. The slash fiction was written almost exclusively by women and was homoerotic in nature. Because science fiction is seen as an extremely masculine and non-sexual genre, the creation of these slash stories rely on the undertones and implications the viewers picked up in their watching of the show. I agree with Penley that the slash fiction writers were feminist writers. Though they were writing about a male/male relationship, these women reinvent masculinity in pursuit of sexual equality. Their fiction works under the assumption that “the idea of sexual equality, which will necessarily require a renovated masculinity, is taking a long time to become a lived reality and is hard to imagine, much less write” (Penley, 127). For these women, the possibility of sexual equality is not a part of their personal realities and is much easier to conceive in a futuristic setting. By writing about Kirk and Spock, who live in the distant future, these women are able to create a world where masculinity does not rule and “yielding phallic power does not result in psychic castration or a demand to be extravagantly praised for having relinquished that power” (Penley, 128). I thought that this was a really interesting and innovative way for the women to encourage sexual equality without alienating men, as feminists in the 70’s were prone to doing. This brought to mind Emma Watson’s recent speech regarding the He for She campaign with the UN, where she invites men to join in the feminist movement because they too are inhibited by gender norms (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-iFl4qhBsE).

This rewriting of Star Trek allows for women to take charge of the show in a way that they otherwise would be unable to. They create their own agency in a world that is otherwise not extremely welcoming. The way that women created their own means of participating in the show actually brought to mind T’Pring’s actions in the episode of Star Trek we watched. I found the Vulcan ceremony to be misogynistic and primitive. Spock basically already had possession of T’Pring, and there was really not much she could do about it. The way she handles the situation, though, shows how she could find leverage even in a situation that seemed to work against her. By choosing Kirk as her champion, she found a situation in which she would always get to be with Stonn, the man she truly wanted to be with. Her ability to take charge of a situation in which she had very little power paralleled the women slash fiction writers to me. They did not participate in the creation of the show and there were very few female characters with which they could identify (and the female characters in the show were in the periphery and not very powerful), yet they were able to find a way to not only partake more fully in the show and its story, but also identify with the male characters.

Vidding as Poaching: Both Sides (of the Camera) Now

In "Women, Star Trek, and the Early Development of Fannish Vidding," Coppa takes up the role of medium theorist, analyzing fan video construction as an act of media criticism driven by feminist goals. Focusing her attention on the vids of the early Star Trek fandom, Coppa identifies the ways in which Star Trek made way for vidding through its metatextual and textual relationships with gender before moving on to a discussion of the significance of the communal, female-run vidding process.

After noting a real-world example of Star Trek's treatment of women (Majel Barrett's demoted status as the "First Lady" of Star Trek, if no longer one of the stars), Coppa moves on to discuss the textual politics surrounding Spock's replacement of Number One as the series' scientifically-driven second-in-command figure of identification for minority viewers. While her goal is not to analyze Star Trek as a feminist text in and of itself, Coppa provides enough context on the characters and relationships of the series to support her argument that Spock has many characteristics that female viewers find relatable. Guided by contrasting forces of technical expertise and logic (textually apparent) and concealed emotionality and desire (more easily overlooked, but a hot topic among discerning fans), Spock struggles to balance competing aspects of his identity just as female fans attempt to negotiate their status as individuals with geeky interests traditionally coded as "masculine" as well as as women with emotional and romantic desires. In the writers' removal of Number One from the narrative, fans were robbed of a character-rich and complex figure of identification – and this injustice against female subjectivity is certainly not the only one in the Star Trek universe. Coppa then goes on to discuss the labor-intensity and creativity of the process of fanvid creation, stressing the significance of feminine repurposing of technology for the purpose of "poaching" from their beloved texts in order to create content better suited to feminine interests.

I agree with Coppa's argument that fanvidding is a highly reconstructive form of fannish "poaching" meant to ultimately yield greater satisfaction from the Star Trek universe than the source text alone can provide. Even more so than fanfiction and fanart, fanvidding is a highly technical and labor-intensive process which closely resembles the act of editing footage for the original series itself; thus the act of reusing existing footage for a more pleasing output helps female fans quite literally take the role of the director – a role which is rarely occupied by women even today. In the case of the meta-oriented fanvid "Pressure," Coppa comments that women were "both… filmmakers and the stars," setting up female identification figures for other fans while also controlling the action from behind the scenes – a plurality of women that is rare in mainstream visual media even today. In this way, vidders take on the role of Nurse Chapel – emotional and desirous – and the Enterprise – omniscient and technical – in order to craft their own content for themselves and their peers, negotiating a position of feminist geekdom that is not shafted to one side or the other, but comfortably "both sides now." While far from idyllic - women are still forced to recreate their own niche, legally ambiguous texts from the scraps of mainstream media - it is a constructive and community-driven process that yields a satisfying output.

Barbarella's Problematic Sexuality

“Bringing Barbarella Down to Earth” by Lisa Parks discusses the astronaut and feminine sexuality in the 1960s, focusing on NASA’s exclusion of female astronauts and the hypersexuality depicted in the 1968 science-fiction film Barbarella. Parks argued that depictions of female astronauts in fictitious popular culture were manifestations of society’s general fears regarding the female body, especially the radical idea of that body in space. 

During the early 1960s, NASA forbid women from joining the space program and undergoing astronaut training, even women who had passed the same preliminary screening tests as potential male astronauts. I was surprised to learn how charged the debates over women in space were during the 1960s. The Lovelace Foundation, NASA’s medical branch, reported that women were unfit for space travel due to fluctuations in body weight and mood that occur during menstruation cycle. However, other contemporary research suggested that women’s bodies were better able than men’s to undergo the physical and psychological strains of space flight. Despite these promising findings and many women who desired to be astronauts along with men, NASA maintained its stance that the variability of a woman’s body made female space travel dangerous, and somehow a potential threat to US national security in the Cold War era.

Park’s argues that Barbarella’s “five-star, double-rated astronomatrix” represents NASA’s fears about sending women into space by emphasizing her feminine sexuality, noting that “Barbarella’s campy visual style and parodic narrative deflected attention away from the issue of women’s professional mobility and instead directed the spectorial gaze toward Barbarella’s excessive sexuality” while refusing “to imagine the feminine body as anything other than sexual” (263).  Viewers are introduced to the character of Barbarella through a sexual gaze. The film opens with Barbarella casually spinning in the air while slowly undressing and removing her spacesuit to reveal a naked female body. Although she is a high-ranking diplomat on the Republic of Earth single-handedly entrusted with the important political mission of finding the space criminal Duran Duran, the mise-en-scene and plot of the film continually characterize Barbarella through her body and sexuality. Barbarella’s role as an astronaut is inexplicably tied to her female sexuality through her skintight and revealing space outfits. Additionally, Barbarella frequently relies on men to help her out of dangerous situations and even has sex with men in exchange for their aid in her quest to locate Duran Duran. I believe that Barbarella represents a problematic character type that persists in cinema, particularly action films, to this day: the “strong female character” whose ability to successfully perform her job is somehow dependent upon her sexuality.

Subversive (or subsumed) power in Barbarella?

Lisa Park's "Bringing Barbarella Down to Earth" provides a feminist critique to Barbarella that notes how the protagonist's feminine agency may carry a disruptive potential to patriarchal conditions and institutions. Ostensibly, the movie justifies the prevailing discourse at the time that labels female astronaut as an impossibility. Parks discusses how Barbarella's parodic narrative "deflected attention away from the issue of women's professional mobility" (263). Additionally, the movie re-affirmed the logic that NASA and political leaders used to exclude women from the space program: Barbarella's expressive and overt sexuality in the movie constituted a "a refusal to imagine the feminine body as anything other than sexual," and NASA/political leaders were worried about the unpredictability and dangers of female sexuality in space (263).

Yet Parks's key argument revolves around Barbarella's potential resistance and subversion, that in the movie, she is able to exert sexual and bodily agency and power under limiting patriarchal conditions. Barbarella transforms her body into a "technology of self” (a Foucauldian term) in which she constitutes herself as an ethical subject in terms of a "self-directed regime of bodily behavior and style," and in which "the relations of oneself to oneself are intensified and valorized" (266). In Barbarella's case, she stylizes her sexuality as a weapon that "advances the interests of the Republic" and also "multiplies her own pleasures and rejuvenation" (268). She is able to externally exert power through her sexuality, and also internally exert power by claiming her sexuality as her own, advancing her own pleasure and selfhood.

Though I remain skeptical of some parts, I'm a big fan of Parks's analysis because I'm interested in assessing the different forms of subversive power that women use to navigate and negotiate with highly restrictive patriarchal institutions. Though for me, the question always remains: if women can only gain agency by working within the bounds of male-dominated structures and cultures, do they automatically re-inscribe the systems that attempt to police them in the first place? In Barbarella's case, her sexuality--the source of her agency and external/internal power--also justifies the discourse that female astronauts, with their unpredictable sexuality, do not belong in space. The male-gaze reduction of Barbarella to a sexual object reinforces patriarchal ideas that women can only be understood in sexual terms. 

I also find it interesting how the threat of Barbarella was mitigated, as it echoes the "containment" idea in one of our earlier readings. Parks discusses how the threat of Barbarella is suppressed: her traits that threaten patriarchal social order--"her aggressive, non-reproductive sexuality and her adept use of machinery--are overvalued and transformed from icons of male fear into objects of intense desire" (263). Her threatening traits are diminished to objects that men can gain pleasure from, therefore making Barbarella only legible in sexual terms and also reducing her power to objects of pleasure for men. While Parks argues that Barbarella uses these traits as a form of autonomous sexual power, I wonder if her power was actually subsumed and ultimately channeled to serve as a tool for the Republic, and therefore men's social and political needs. This reminds me of our reading from last week - Elaine Tyler May's "Explosive Issues: Sex, Women, and the Bomb." Women were called upon to embrace domesticity and quit pursuing autonomy in the spirit of national security. When people began feeling anxious about female sexuality and changing social roles, society worked to “contain” women. They subsumed the threat of the independent women and channeled this energy into domestic power, so women could also serve as useful tools for the nation. I think in both cases, the state co-opts and uses female sexuality for its own benefit -- non-reproductive, female sexuality is only okay if sanctioned by the state, meaning it must serve a higher purpose for the nation. Parks discusses "state-sanctioned on reproductive sexuality" that is mobilized for "pleasure or politics" as something more progressive, yet I find it more constraining.

Contradictions and Tensions: Lynn Spigel Examines the Impact of TV on the American Family

           In chapter two (“Television in the Family Circle”) of her book Make Room for TV: Television and The Family Ideal in Postwar America, author Lynn Spigel examines the impact of the rapid rise of the television on family dynamics and gender roles. Spigel argues that that the new technology both brought the family together and divided them along gender and social lines.

            Throughout the reading I was most intrigued by Spigel’s ideas about the contradictions and tensions between family unity and division. Television sets were advertised as “the new family hearth” and featured families gathered in a semicircle suggesting a Victorian-esque “domestic haven.” In direct contrast to this notion of televisions bringing families together for group entertainment were later advertisements for multiple TV sets. A 1955 General Electric ad, for example, utilizes a split-screen layout with the message “When Dad wants to watch the game … Mom and Sis, the cooking show … there’s too much traffic for one TV to handle,” thus promoting a harmonious family through the “sociosexual division of space.”

            I agree with Spigel’s argument that the introduction of televisions into American homes caused both an upheaval of and reaffirmed gender roles. As television sets invaded the sphere of domesticity, they brought a variety of programming, which could either confirm or challenge gender roles. There was an underlying fear that TVs could undermine male control of his household – “it is a rare show that treats Father as anything more than the mouse of the house – a bumbling, well-meaning idiot who is putty in the hands of his wife and family.” The show Father Knows Best that we screened last week could be seen as an exception to this “mouse of the house” rule since Jim Anderson portrayed as the head of the household (even the show’s title emphasizes his ultimate authority). However, he does allow his daughter to make gender transgressions by dressing in her brother’s clothes and pursuing a typically male profession. Spigel’s piece also affirms the idea of gendered technology that we encountered in the “When Computers Were Women” reading by pointing out the feminized language (“passivity […], penetration, consumption, and escape”) surrounding mass culture and television.

            Spigel concentrates most of her piece on the effects of television on the nuclear family and parents’ roles. This can be applied to how we look at feminist geek culture by looking at how technology could both challenge and uphold gender ideals. We can also utilize Spigel’s ideas about contradictions and compromises within gender roles. How new technologies or geek culture force men and women to either challenge gender roles or go out of their way to make the roles fit, even if this ends up contradicting the ideals of the role.