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?
I largely disagree with Sobchak’s assertion that Ripley is “hardly” a woman, as her representation of femininity is essentialized– she holds that women are only defined in popular culture as “irrational, potent, sexual object[s]” (46). While it is true that women are commonly over-sexualized, this depiction of feminine identity relegates the possibility of female leadership (like Ripley in Alien) and ignores other characteristics that define the human experience of being a ‘Woman’. Similarly, I am unimpressed by Sobchak’s psychoanalytic assertions, such as the meaning of space travel and the explanation of technological production as the “technological man[‘s]” desire “to make his own babies” (48).
ReplyDeleteYet, even as I find her arguments regarding Science Fiction to be dubious, they do highlight another place in popular culture where women are often marginalized. In her article, Laura Mulvey explains that in popular narrative cinema, women are frequently portrayed as no more than passive objects of erotic display that derail the narrative. A key example of this is Alice Eve stripping in Star Trek Into Darkness. When juxtaposed with Mulvey’s argument, Sobchak’s semiotic critique of science fiction explains how women are further marginalized in the genre. Sobchak focuses on marginalization by the lack of sexual identity afforded to women, but to me it is more important to understand how women are marginalized as characters within and producers of science fiction.
As such, I do not think that an ‘improvement’ of science fiction comes with the increased sexualization of female characters (Alice Eve for example). Rather, science fiction would better represent and empower women by portraying strong, active women (such as Ripley in Alien) and by Hollywood studios producing works by female science fiction writers.
There are parts of Sobchak's argument that I can believe, such as female bodies being coded as “sex” and halting the narrative of the film, which is something Mulvey discussed. I also see how Sobchak sees a phenomenon Coppa wrote about, that it’s easier to exclude women from media than deconstruct gender roles (for both the original producer and a producer of fan texts).
ReplyDeleteHowever, I disagree that the “virginal astronaut” is a sustained theme for the sci-fi genre.
Most sci-fi films have underlying themes: oppression, exploration, human behavior, or Sobchak’s “separation from the Mother” (50). When a sci-fi film deals with the theme of reason vs. passion, logic vs. lust, science vs. sex, then yes, female bodies and the “sex” sign play a significant role. In Alien, the Nostromo crew regresses from a clinical, sexless future to a sexual, basic, and primal self. In order for Alien to show this regression, Ripley’s body is used to signify this shift from future to primal. She’s cold and logical, but becomes sweaty and shaky when she’s facing the possibility of her own mortality. She strips herself from her uniform (a clear image of this oppressive, cold future) to small underwear and a bra-less tank top (showing her womanhood, her humanity).
Given that Sobchak’s article was published in 1985, all the sci-fi films she’s watched have been made Post War and during the Cold War. As we’ve learned in previous texts, masculinity was defined as a man who didn’t fall prey to womanly wiles. Given that sci-fi films had “strong” male leads who were explorers or fighters, it makes sense for that masculinity to be coded as asexual (like other masculine figures at the time).
But after the end of the Civil War and our current ease of use with technology, masculinity has changed. Instead of the asexual astronaut, sci-fi films glorify the sexy space pirate. Guardians of the Galaxy, the new Star Trek films, Star Wars, Iron Man, the Star Gate series, the newer Doctor Who/Torchwood, Tron: Legacy, etc. In all these films, are male lead is a little scruffier, more likely to be sexual in nature.
So while women might signify sex, and some sci-fi films have themes that deal with sex, virility, and pleasure, this is not necessarily a staple of the sci-fi genre. As masculinity, and to a lesser extent, femininity, has changed, our astronauts have become significantly less virginal.
Although it is a slightly different media (TV instead of film), Sobchak's argument is somewhat dismantled by the image of T'Pring in Amok Time. T'Pring is portrayed as sexual, and even as an object of sexual desire. She also has her own sexual desires. However, she is portrayed as and praised for being logical in the way that she pursues her sexual desires. I image that Sobchak would write off this counterargument as either an exception to the rule, or as a different category entirely since T’Pring is an alien and not a human. However, the character is still played by a real, female, human, and is not made to look vastly different than human women. As far as whether or not this is an exception to the rule of asexuality in science fiction, I do not think I have enough knowledge of pre-1985 sci fi movies to know for sure.
ReplyDeleteI found it difficult to analyze Sobchak’s argument because I initially started think of examples of how she was wrong. However, most of my exposure to science fiction films have been those released in the past 10-15 years. I can also think of numerous pre-1985 examples, but mostly science fiction novels that were explicitly written as feminist (Ursula K Le Guin, Marge Piercy, etc.). This then made me wonder how much of my resistance to her argument was a desire to “rewrite history” in order to fit with how I would like to see the world. Therefore, although I do not agree with all of her arguments (particularly the very psychoanalytic parts), I am willing to take Sobchak’s word that most women in science fiction films pre-1985 were portrayed asexually .
Fun fact if you write a super long comment but you're not already logged in to your google account, when you hit publish then the blog will forget you typed anything and make you do it all over again! hooray!
ReplyDeleteAnyways, as much fun as everyone is having tearing apart Sobchak's arguments and pooh-poohing her construct of femininity, I feel like it's important to take a step back and remember that, as Professor Goldstein reminded us multiple times in class, she was working with a construct of femininity that was not her own but rather was given to her as a tool of analysis. With that in mind, you can still disagree with her as a modern reader who's had a different life experience in a different time period, but keep the context in mind.
Now that that's over with, I'd like to bring up what I found most fascinating about her article: the mention of Ripley's character originally being conceived as male and that "few changes were made to accomodate the differences that such a sex change in the character might present" (45). Indeed, Ripley does show stereotypically masculine qualities, such as the triumph of reason over emotion (except in cases involving the cat), but I think that her character takes on a different meaning as a male. As a female, we are reminded that she's 3rd in command, a relative place of power, but as a male I think we would be more likely to remember that there are only 7 people on the ship, and of her subordinates, two are portrayed as working-class, one thinks it's a good idea to poke at mysterious and possibly (aka: definitely) dangerous alien eggs, and the last just cries a lot. So, impressive as the position is, at the same time it's not saying much. And it begs the question, as a man would people have actually listened to her? Would her command to keep Lambert, Dallas, and Kane in quarantine have been obeyed (despite Ash's existence basically making that impossible)? If that were the case, then I suppose we wouldn't have a movie, but it's still an interesting point. And of course, the most important thing I wonder is if Ripley were a man, would we still have that stripping scene in the end? Ripley would still be the lone survivor I assume, so would female fans get an ogling moment before audiences got to see a male character atypically break down out of fear? It's hard to imagine a man being portrayed as weak and vulnerable, and yet for Ripley as a woman, we almost expect her to break at some point, believing that her strength must be a facade. Giving the same lines to a character of different genders in this instance makes for either a strong female character or a somewhat weak male character. Of course, the movie was made how it was made and I'm not saying that anything should have been done differently but I always think that it's interesting to examine the decisions that go into making a movie.
While I think Sobchack’s article is an interesting endeavor, I also think it largely misses the mark in a lot of ways. Indeed, in claiming that the masculine “mastery” of space present in sci-fi can only exist in a context where “biological sexuality is not linked to human women and human women are not perceived as sexual,” she fails to display any understanding of how sexually active human women can be constructed within the context of sci-fi to coexist with masculine mastery of space (41). Star Trek Into Darkness, for instance, does so by portraying Alice Eve as fetish fodder, articulating a view wherein women solely exist to comfort the men who are the driving forces of both space-age society and the narrative itself. Likewise, while Sobchack questions why one would “get one’s rockets off when [the female] body invites an earthbound penetration and offers the deep space and infinitude of the womb,” as Space is the Place shows through its decadent NASA scientists, one can make rockets and still take breaks by using women sexually for “R&R” (44).
ReplyDeleteTrue, one can conceivably counter the Star Trek Into Darkness example by saying that it was made long after this was written, but it is not so much the film itself that matters insofar as it is the fact that it mixes sexual activity with a view of spatial conquest, which goes against Sobchack’s invoking of Marilyn Monroe to “prove” that such a mix is essentially impossible. Indeed, as Professor Goldstein herself has stated in class, a key tenet of Semiotics and Structuralism is that structures are relatively static, and Sobchack’s analysis thus relies on a view wherein the patterns she describes in sci-fi will always be present; that they aren’t, that modern films have broken away from those patterns significantly (while still being very patriarchal, it must be noted), shows the inherent futility in trying to ascribe a “permanent” set of rules to any one genre. The rules of any genre can change in relatively short periods of time, after all, and even though Sobchack’s inability in the article to show this might be more the fault of her framework than her, it is still a flaw nonetheless.
I find it interesting that Sobchack focuses so exclusively on American science fiction cinema, especially when you try to apply her arguments to Barbarella, which is a French-Italian film. Sobchack's arguments about virginal astronauts and asexual female characters seem especially unconvincing when you try to apply them to Barbarella, who spends most of the film exploring the universe and her own sexuality. Sobchack writes about how the genre "could not have possibly contained" Marilyn Monroe and that her body would have derailed the narrative focus on space travel and alien encounters. Still, that's exactly what Barbarella does. It's odd that Sobchack focuses on the lack of a Marilyn Monroe science fiction film when there's an actual Jane Fonda film that accomplishes all the things she hypothetically talks about.
ReplyDeleteIt's also interesting to try and compare Ripley and Barbarella. Ripley was written originally as a man, and she spends most of the film as extremely asexual, but she does have one moment of feminine sexuality at the very end of the film. Sobchack talks about how this one moment is so disturbing because she simultaneously possesses great power in her sexuality but is also extremely vulnerable and in danger. While Barbarella's sexual moments are far more frequent and more varied in tone, there are also these moments where Barbarella is in danger but also holds immense power thanks to her sexuality.
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