Hollywood sisterhood, or lack thereof

On a recent promotional tour for Avatar, Sigourney Weaver put forth the following explanation of why the film did not win Best Picture at the Academy Awards:

“Jim didn’t have breasts, and I think that was the reason. He should have taken home that Oscar.”

The actual Best Picture winner was Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker — one of the most testosterone-drenched winners in recent memory. One may honestly believe that Avatar was a better film (personally, I don’t), but given The Hurt Locker‘s subject matter, and the fact that Bigelow made no attempt to campaign on the basis of her gender, this seems like a pretty unfounded and demeaning claim for Weaver to make. The fact that it comes from her — one of the few women to achieve Action Hero status, blazing a trail for other women to follow — makes it all the more disheartening.

(Sorry for the newest installment of Outrage, Laura.)

WisCon GoH and Tiptree Ceremony

Dessert salon. I’m sitting at a table with Cabell, rathera, Candra Gill, Allison Morris, Alexis Lothian, and Kirsten Buckendorf. I pull out my tablet PC and soon after Candra pulls out her even smaller laptop, then rathera pulls out her miniscule Nintendo DS. Hee hee.

Molly Keenan announces that the convention needs to make a mysterious bar minimum and encourages people to drink up. Immediately a line begins to form. 5 minute warning!

OK, empty seats are filling up with people who didn’t come to the dessert salon. Diantha Day Sprouse and Janice Mynchenberg join us. Molly advises everyone to wash hands and use hand sanitizer to stop the flu that’s been making the rounds at the con. There’s also a severe storm warning (i.e. tornado watch!) for tonight. Molly and Rihanna experiment with sound gain on the podium mic and nearly deafen us all. Carrie and Betsy are summoned up front to applause.

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Race & Gender in Iron Man

Liz and I are having some peaceful computing downtime at WisCon, and in following various threads from panels I came across this totally awesome analysis of Iron Man at WOC PhD. Here’s a taste:

Ultimately, Rhodes is reduced to a whinier, darker, version of the machines that Stark surrounds himself with throughout the film. Interesting, some people have said that slavery came to an end because of the rise of machines and an MTV ad once compared slaves to “obsolete machines,” and before you say I am taking it too far, remember that insipidly inaccurate Will Smith version of I Robot? It too compared the plight of machines to those of black people. All of these comparison are ultimately dehumanizing as is the fact that Rhodes drops everything to rush to Stark’s rescue only to be outdone by a giant automated tweezer.

There is more on Rhodey, the military, the Afghani characters, and women in the movie as well. Go check it out!

Via Deeper in the Game via DeadBroWalking, and originally linked by Naamen.

WisCon Opening Ceremony

I’m hanging out near the front, where Liz and John are readying for their musical activities during the programming. Just got a “Proprietary Boobs” and “Backup” sticker for my badge from vito_excalibur. (See this post for the background.) Gregory Rihn is giving some history about the Women in Science Fiction panels and Susan Wood, and volunteers to give Liz some zines from the era.

Betsy Lundsten and Carrie Ferguson get up on stage and demonstrate a pink elephant towel from the Gathering (“Don’t Panic”). The two guests of honor are introduced. Past guests of honor who MAY be in the audience are announced: Suzy McKee Charnas, Beverly DeWeese, Steven Vincent Johnson, Pat Murphy, Karen Joy Fowler, Nicola Griffith, Ellen Kushner & Delia Sherman, Jeanne Gomoll, Carol Emshwiller, Eleanor Arnason, Kelly Link. Then ConCom folks stand up. Then volunteers. Then panel members. The rest of the people still sitting down are exhorted to talk to those standing and figure out how to join them.

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Thoughts on Elemental Logic

I recently finished the first three books of the Elemental Logic series by Laurie J. Marks. They are grave and thoughtful books about violence, personal responsibility, and friendship in an occupied land where magic works in unusual ways. The issues that are dealt with are serious, and I feel I owe the books (and author) the respect to say both what worked and what didn’t in the series. (There are spoilers in this post.)

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David Eick thinks female empowerment is passé

At least that’s what it sounds like from this news item about the new Bionic Woman on Sci Fi Wire. An excerpt:

“I think what’s interesting about the old show is that that came about at a time when there was a great deal of discussion in the popular culture about equal rights for women. And the [Equal Rights Amendment] movement was very much alive, equal pay for equal work, women’s lib. … And the statement was very simple: See, women can do what men do. And I don’t think we’re talking about that anymore.”

I’m interested in how other people interpret his comments. In their full context, they aren’t blatantly sexist, but they do make me itch unpleasantly. Eick is also a producer on Battlestar Galactica, and I sense this same “post-feminist” vibe in the treatment of Starbuck’s character there. It doesn’t seem futuristic or progressive to me, but it’s not exactly the same old shit, either. Can we get a diagnosis?

Heretic women priests

Today’s New York Times Magazine has a one-page story about the increasing number of Catholic women who are defying the Vatican and being ordained as priests. The woman they focus on is Jane Via, a 59-year old deputy district attorney in San Diego who has been working to improve the status of women in the Catholic church since college, where, the article says, she “was influenced by feminist theologians like Rosemary Ruether and Mary Daly.”

Via was ordained in 2006 and has incurred interdiction, but has yet to be excommunicated. (Seven other female priests have been excommunicated by Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.) She’s prepared for the possibility. As she says, “I have long believed in the legal principle of civil disobedience. The canon law that bans women from the priesthood is unjust. We have to break it in order to change it.”

I was reminded of Louise Marley’s The Child Goddess when reading this story. I didn’t like that book much, but the order of woman priests (the Magdalenes) was inspiring. As an atheist, I find it inherently mysterious when people struggle to change religious doctrine rather than tossing it out the window, but it is an activity I find admirable. Without determined people like Jane Via, religion would remain static and hidebound.

Speaking of (calf) hide, I was intrigued to see that the photo accompanying the article depicts a woman’s hands on the pages of a book I recognized as The Saint John’s Bible, the first edition in 500 years to be completely calligraphed and illuminated by hand. The creators are an order of Benedictines in Minnesota who made an impressive effort to acknowledge other faiths and cultural influences in their creation. It seems like a natural fit with the religious spirit of Jane Via.

The future of religion doesn’t have to be all about fanatics.

Buffy character database

A while ago, partly in response to the discussion about Joss Whedon and race, I started a Microsoft Access database to record all the credited characters who appear in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, along with important traits like their sex, race(s), species (human, vampire, werewolf, etc.), and status at end of series (alive or dead). I didn’t get that far in entering in characters (time intensive! too much work and exhaustion!) but I still like the idea of hard statistics to answer various questions about character representation in Buffy as well as other shows.

I mentioned my infant database to Liz and Laura while we were lounging around and geeking and they were both really into the idea. So I am now committing to converting the Access database into MySQL and putting it up on one of the feministsf.org web sites so that other people can add to it and query it. You are invited to take part once it’s up! Look for more updates!

Women in Battlestar Galactica

A little over a week ago, at the end of the Battlestar Galactica episode “Maelstrom”, something happened that made me VERY unhappy. Click on past the break if you want to read more, spoilers and all.

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Jean Grey, meet Jane Eyre

A couple of weekends ago, I watched X-Men: The Last Stand, the most recent installment in the X-Men movie franchise. On the same night, I finished reading Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. You might think that a 9-month-old superhero movie and a 160-year-old realistic novel don’t have anything in common, but you’d be wrong… Both fictions take on the subject of women and madness, with a special focus on the split personality. The outcomes of the two stories are very different in ways that make me concerned about the direction we young whippersnappers are headed in.

Warning: there be spoilers below!

I’ll begin with the elder work… At the beginning of the novel that bears her name, Jane Eyre is a mild-mannered, well-behaved orphan who is horribly mistreated by her aunt and cousins. She turns the other cheek time and again, but finally snaps and gives her aunt what for.

“What would Uncle Reed say to you, if he were alive?” was my scarcely voluntary demand. I say scarcely voluntary, for it seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance: something spoke out of me over which I had no control. [...]

Ere I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty. [...]

I was left there alone — winner of the field. [...] First, I smiled to myself and felt elate; but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of my pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had done; cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as meetly my subsequent condition, when half-an-hour’s silence and reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness of my hated and hating position.

– from Chapter 4 of Jane Eyre (bold text my emphasis)

Partly as a result of this outburst, Jane is sent off to a charity school where she is half-starved and half-frozen and surrounded by disease (many of her fellow students die before the year is out). Despite this punishment and her generally quiet and compliant personality, throughout the rest of the novel Jane always stands up for her beliefs when they most matter rather than giving in or keeping quiet.

In the adapted play of Jane Eyre that I saw not long ago, this “wild” and passionate side of Jane’s personality was explicitly tied to the character of Bertha Rochester, the mad woman in the attic, the implication being that both characters are punished for the same reason: they possess strong feelings and express them in a way convention deems unfeminine. In the book, there is considerably less sympathy for Bertha, but the “psychic double” interpretation still has some merit.

Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it — and, certainly, they were many and glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement, which, while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it with life; and, best of all, to open my inward ear to a tale that was never ended — a tale my imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence. [...] When thus alone, I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s laugh [my note: it is really Bertha's laugh, but Jane doesn't know it yet]: the same peal, the same low, slow ha! ha! which, when first heard, had thrilled me: I heard, too, her eccentric murmurs; stranger than her laugh.

– from Chapter 12 of Jane Eyre (bold text my emphasis)

Jane repeatedly thinks of this rebellious, angry side of herself as a separate, uncontrolled entity, and she often suffers in the short run for her defiance — yet in the end it never leads her wrong. The dark side of rebellion and selfishness is reserved for Bertha, who ends in fire and ruin. (See Jean Rhys’s novel Wide Sargasso Sea for a powerful revisionist take on the character of Bertha.) But strangely enough — here’s the psychic twin theory again — Bertha’s actions always help Jane. Her attempt to burn Rochester to death leads to the first, odd intimacy between Jane and Rochester, and the blazing collapse of Thornfield Hall leads to Rochester’s blindness and humble readiness to marry Jane as an equal instead of a rich and commanding lord. In the end, Jane achieves true happiness.

Here in the present day, things look a lot more bleak. In the third X-Men movie we learn that Jean Grey is the only known “class five mutant” and thus the most powerful being on Earth. Is this a good thing? Hell, no. Professor X explains to Wolverine early in the movie that when Jean was a girl he created a series of psychic barriers in her mind, so her nearly limitless power was trapped in her unconscious. As a result, she split into two personalities:

“the conscious Jean, whose powers were always in her control, and the dormant side, a personality that, in our sessions, came to call itself the Phoenix. A purely instinctual creature, all desire and joy, and rage.”

– Professor Xavier, thinking back to Jean’s youth

Wolverine, and to some extent Magneto, question Professor X’s right to interfere with Jean’s mind in this way, but the rest of the movie amply proves how right he was to box up her wild passionate self. Several main characters are thoughtlessly disintegrated by her in her black-eyed, possessed mode (there are some strong call-outs to The Exorcist in the film), and she bids fair to destroy all of San Francisco before her better half gains ascendancy long enough to allow Wolverine to kill her — out of love, and for the good of us all, of course.

In several ways, Jean is even worse off than Bertha, let alone Jane: 1) there is no hint that she was given any say in her own fate — it is assumed that a powerful woman is, by her nature, dangerous enough to be imprisoned without consent; 2) despite Professor X’s claim that Phoenix feels joy, we never see any of it — she comes across mostly as a blank when she isn’t ripping scenery apart with robotic destructiveness; 3) she doesn’t even have enough agency to kill herself; she has to get someone else to do it.

It is hard to imagine more disparate approaches to the subject of female power and selfhood. Have we gone downhill in 160 years? Or is this a sad sign of how bad some men still are at writing female characters? (X3 was written and directed by guys who aren’t even Bryan Singer, let alone Charlotte Brontë.) I don’t know, but it’s depressing in any case.