“The Look, pleasurable in form, can be threatening in content, and it is woman as representation/image that crystallizes this paradox.” (Mulvey) In patriarchal cinema, women are set up as the most visually appealing and threatening characters. Psychoanalytically, the image of the woman can be both a symbol of male dominance and male deficiency. The female form as object is the heart of Western scopophilia in film. When the female character is given personality and identity, the objective pleasure of the body is threatened. Indeed, the female, reasserting her own sexuality beyond that of the male gaze, is often so powerful that she will disrupt the plot. To escape this anxiety of the sexualized female figure, film and the male subconscious must rely on sadism or fetishistic scopophilia. These duel avenues of escape are exemplified during the introduction of tortured Cylon Six in the Battlestar Gallatica episode “Pegasus.”
The scene is a collection of shots from the point of view of the three characters present in the set. A low angle shot of the beaten and raped Cylon Six. A rotating series of roaming shots from the the point of view of the human scientist (and viewers). High angle, over the shoulder shots representative of the ephemeral Six which exists in the scientists mind. In this scene, the two polar depictions of the woman can be seen. The Cylon Six is a blond bombshell that “literalizes the fears associated with sexually assertive women.” (Kustritz) In this role, she is one of the most disruptive characters for the scopophillic viewer. Her assertive nature strongly clashes with the over sexualized objectivity of her body. In order to deal with this paradox, the scene shows symbolically the two escapist views used by the male subconscious.
Sadistically, to re-achieve masculinity, there is the raped and beaten woman (gender is his hierarchically portrayed as above race/Cylon here) on the floor. This character has been physically and mentally brutalized to the point of catatonic submissiveness. Her beauty has been punished by males against her will. This domination of the castrated in sad irony allows for the decastration of the male crew of the Battlestar Pegasus (who have been castrated by the powerful woman captain of the ship). In this, the male subconscious is also placated. The terrifying personality and beauty of the Six has been contained, controlled, and dominated, thus she can no longer threaten male phallic power.
Alternatively, the ephemeral Six is the embodiment of undiluted perfection. Her body, emphasized in closeup shots, is unapologetic in its sexuality. “She is... a perfect product, whose body, stylized and fragmented by closeups, is the content of the film and the direct recipient of the spectator’s look.” (Mulvey) The Six character returns in this to one dimensional objectivity. She become a fetish symbol of goddess-like feminine sexuality. The camera moves with the viewers eye, unconnected to the action on the film. The male, therefore, is allowed the subconscious pleasure of the flesh without having to deal directly with the character anymore. Thus, the threat is removed for the time being and scopophilliac entertainment can take place outside the narrative.
I found Kustritz’s “Postmodern Eugenics” to be a quite interesting and engaging read. Kustritz's aggressive tack argues her point very well, although I can see how it could be offensive. What she is really attacking is political insensitivity, an issue which can seem nit-picky. Her arguments against Patricia Wrede's colonization fantasy and Battlestar Gallactica are essentially pointing to the insensitivity of their creators. Battlestar Gallactica may have many fine points, but I think that Kustritz effectively demonstrates its insensitivity towards abnormal family types. Not being a fan of the show myself, I have only the few of episodes I saw last week and Kustritz's description to go on, but her argument seems quite solid. In a world where woman officers are addressed as "Sir," it seems backwards for there to be no gay couples or at least abnormal couples. If gender is such a relaxed issue, why is homosexuality repressed? Suffice to say I supported Kustritz's argument.
If anyone has ever seen the series Firefly, this essay got me thinking about the racial depictions in that series and the sensitivity towards which racial matters are discussed. Firefly does not claim to represent such an swathe of humanity as Battlestar Gallactica does, (by following the last surviving humans, this is what BG does) but it does claim to represent a universe shaped by the clash and mesh of eastern and western societies. For example the main characters often interject their dialogue with mandarin. However the culture's encountered throughout the series are almost always significantly more western than eastern. I would never suggest the same insensitivity behind the creators of Firefly as BG, if only because they never claim to approach racial or gender issues as seriously. In any case, it was interesting to put a series I know and love under the microscope.
I would be lying if I said that I found Anne Kustritz's essay boring, unintelligible, or irrelevant to the overarching analysis of the Battlestar Galactica series, as well as our modern outlook on future and evolution. I will say this - it certainly seems to be more aggressive than I would deem necessary. True, there is a certain obsession with juxtaposing fertility and evolution, and futuristic evolution most always seems to suggest not only a stronger human race, but a more successful "race" of electronics and eventually robotics. Yet, her constant barrage on the series's attempt at imagining a future where class, race, and social issues are still present and relevant yet are slightly more lacking in the areas of queerness and sterility seems a little unfair.
How does one convict an art piece? This is my qualm, as I stand back and survey the media forms that we have experienced and analyzed up to this date. Would there be a heated debate over hyper-sexualized male roles if there was not one about females? Admittedly Battlestar does serve to create believable, yet still incredibly masculine, "heroic" images of the male characters as a staple of the show. The hyper-feminine male character, Balthar, is actually the one who is oft seen as sniveling, pathetic, and immoral. The audience can't help but have a viscerally negative reaction to the character.
And what about the penguins? Now, although they make a good analogy, this just convinced me that the entire essay was out on a limb. And not one on the evolutionary tree. This argument is self-extincting. She offers no solution, just a rigid system of complaints, at one point narrowing it down to the fact that supporters of a familial community have no other point but to help others survive. Well, of course! They're penguins - that's what they do. It's the most natural thing on earth.
This is not to say that Kustritz's point about queerness, as well as sterility, is not invalid altogether. There obviously needs to be a shift in the way society defines a nuclear family, and the value placed on individuals that is dependent on their ability to produce genetically similar, and genetically successful offspring. In some ways, the robotic love story of the film really encapsulated the idea of love simply for the bond between, and not the creation of something new. There was a validation of contribution to society on a higher plane than simply Darwinism.
“The true social violence of ideologies of reproductive futurity lies not merely in an assertion that the non-reproductive have no place in the future, but fundamentally that they deserve no place in the future because reproduction functions as symbolic proof of divine favor.”
Kustritz’s “Postmodern Eugenics” highlighted the focus on reproduction in Battlestar Galactica and shows how the premise of the show and its characters, both human and Cylon, force reproduction as the sole purpose and meaning of human life.Kustritz’s introduction of homosexuality into this analysis surprised me, as the series does not touch upon the subject n the least. None of its characters are homosexual –apparently there are two evil lesbians in an offset movie, though their function seems more rooted in their evilness than anything else – while near all other aspects of diversity are covered through the characters. If queers, as Kustritz quotes Edelman to believe, really do represent a “cultural role as the absolute negation of attempts to fill that symbolic void” of needing to procreate, then their absence in Battlestar symbolizes a death of civilized culture in a way, and a return to an animal mentality wherein the continuation of one’s race trumps one’s own life and thoughts. Moreover, human focus on reproduction goes further into a form of eugenics with the fact that the human-cylon hybrids can only be produced when the child, before it is even born, will be provided with a nurturing “hetoronormative” family situation. In this new race of mixed cylons and humans, survival through reproduction is so imperative that a woman’s own body or unborn fetuses decree whether or not her giving or their birth would be healthy and beneficial to society, assumedly as the result of not having grown in an ideal environment.
Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” explores this theme as well, but in respect to the female form and scopophilia, for both males and the film spectator. Mulvey argues that part of the male’s appeal to scopophilia, the act of finding pleasure in looking, is his phallocentric idea that the observed female has a desire to own a penis. Perversely, the woman’s vagina is not an actual part to her body, but an absence of a part, namely the penis – she is the “bearer of the bleeding wound” (199).Her purpose, and the purpose of the male scopophilia, is thus rooted in a need to procreate, a need to fill a physical void through sex: the purpose of the women’s body is simply to fulfill a man’s desire, or a spectator’s desire, and, in doing so, continue the human race. Scopophiliac observers, both in the film and out of it as the audience, are usually not focused on the reproductive aspect to the sexuality behind this need, and this argument may thus be discredited for that. However, the eroticism portrayed for all viewers is clearly related to reproduction and also depicts the woman as a less-than-human object, with a function of producing a child that takes mental precedence over her actual life. Through this form of film and this form of erotic viewing, both viewer and male character demean the woman to a place in society solely meant for reproduction.
In the second vignette of Robot Stories, "The Robot Fixer," the mother could not let go of her dead son. Such a fundamentally human trait, the inability to let go of something lost, to get over the idea that something has irrevocably changed. It even made some kind of strange sense to me - at least I did not immediately find flaw or question it - when she must go as far as to steal the female action figure for her son. She needed to do something. It makes sense. But also, it makes no sense. He is dead, the toy is a toy, it is not magic, he cannot be saved by magic.
At the same time, humans seem to have an easy time of letting go of, or forgetting entirely, some forgotten race - dead, lost souls. In Kustritz's essay on Postmodern Eugenics, she brings attention to the necessity of such historic omissions as the Holocaust or Tuskegee experiments to the concept of eugenics. Wrede's novel, Thirteenth Child, on the European colonization of a indigenous-less America is a fascinating example of how it is possible, even understandable, for people to neglect to think that the eradication, the utter non-existence, of the entire Native American race could be interpreted as offensive to some. Moreover, the fact that Wrede presupposes that the course of history would be rather unaffected by the nonexistence of Native Americans in her novel is not only naive of her but fundamentally racist:
Wrede demonstrated an at least unconscious assumption that Native Americans aren’t human, that they are racially so distinct that, as she said elsewhere, eliminating them doesn’t really alter human history.
“Cutting between an apple, a snake, and two hyper-sexualized female cyborgs including Battlestar’s Number Six to the lyric “and the Devil is six,” Charmax reveals the stubborn persistence of representations which equate sin with female sexuality and blame female bodies for male desire.”
When considering the dynamics of scopophilic reactions, especially that of the man as the active participant, who does the watching, and the female as passive, who serves only for others to take pleasure in looking on, this representation of female as guilty of inciting sexual response becomes troublesome. Certainly the physical appearance of female characters, who supposedly act to be observed like the hyper-modified Molly of Neuromancer and the female androids of “Blade Runner,” has been a central point of their identity. Even when plot did not require or rely on objectification, Ripley still provides a quick strip in “Alien.” However, does this passive act of living, altering appearance or changing clothes, deserve the label of inciting a sexual response?
Even the synthetic women of “Machine Love” in “Robot Stories” incite sexual evaluation from men. While working and typing, her physical appearance, arbitrarily created by an external force, is mocked and critiqued. It is important to note that in “Machine Love,” a male robot is subject to similar treatment, but though the same actions are taken on him (groping of the breast by a human of the opposite gender), the emotional reaction is not as severe. Does this have to do with the falsity of the display, women contradicting their scopophilic role by actively sexualizing the image of a passive form? Should the synthetic women, who do not control their appearance but are rather the result of another planner’s vision, be held responsible for their form? Furthermore, can they be rightly accused on inciting another’s response purely based on their appearance?
How can the dynamics of a genre change to better allow women to be avoid debasement into sexual objects?
Unlike the aliens we explored in subsequent weeks, who are a radical form of Otherness faraway from our own ideas of race, culture, religion, and sexuality, the robot or cyborg is a reflection of our human selves. It is something that we as humans have created in our own image, for our own purposes. In Laura Mulvey’s article, she talks about scopophilia and fetishization in the medium of cinema, and how it satisfies, “a primordial wish for pleasurable looking,” (Mulvey, 201).
Isn’t possible that the creation of a cyborg or robot in our own image also satisfying this primordial wish? Think about how in Robot Stories, in the third story, their is an objectification of both the male and female robot. Of course, the female robot is further objectified because of our patriarchal society, with he male co-workers touching her breast while she works, and eventually even tearing off her clothes when the story reaches is erotic climax. The female robot is fully an object for heterosexual male desire, because it is just a tool for the office, with no perceived feelings, or desires.
In Battlestar Galactica we have a race of robots that look exactly like humans, and the first Cylon we are introduced to “the ultra-gendered body of the blond bombshell,” (Kustritz, 9). As the Cylons destroy the diplomatic space station, she kisses the human diplomat, perhaps an example of the “castration” explained by Mulvey experienced by the male audience when a woman is shown in full view, outside of the male gaze. Again, when we see this Cylon #6 as Gaius Baltar’s girlfriend, she is revealed fully to be the cause of Caprica’s destruction. With her full reveal to the male protagonist, she is no longer just visual eye candy, an object that Baltar doesn’t even respect enough to be faithful to. She is shown in full view as an enemy of humanity, “castrating” the power and male privilege of Baltar, and by extension the audience.
In the final section of Robot Stories, Clay, we are introduced to an elderly man, whose nearing the end of his life, and whose wife, Helen, is now reduced to digital data. The old man is a sculptor, an occupation that is almost entirely about fetishization of the human body and holding the human voyeuristic gaze. The old man, despite the protest of his family, refuses to have his brain copied into a digital computer. His wife Helen, to him, only exist as a hologram, not an actual human. He sees their interactions in the digital world as “not real”. He is an old man, yet she is still represented as relatively young, to him she only exist for his voyeuristic gaze. In her digital form he can only see her as the object, as the form of his sculpture. She is no longer human, so he refuses to join her digitally and dies on his own, naturally in the woods.
Michael Randolph
“Going far beyond highlighting a woman’s to be looked-at-ness, cinema builds the way she is to be looked at into a spectacle itself”. Laura Mulvey’s paper does an incredible job of making clear the ways in which the audience perceives women in film, that is, either through direct scopophilic contact, where the spectator and the character in the film look at the woman in the same way, as “isolated, glamorous, on display”, or through means of identification, that is, as the audience participates in the power of the male star, the audience can "indirectly possess her too".
I was really taken by the analysis of Rear Window, where the protagonist's interest in his girlfriend Lisa slowly wanes, until, that is, the moment that she “crosses the barrier between his room and the block opposite”. Not until their relationship had been reduced to one analogous to a spectator and a woman in a film, did his interest rekindle. “His enforced inactivity, binding him to his seat as a spectator, puts him squarely in the fantasy position of the cinema audience.”
In Battlestar Galactica, the character of Sharon “Boomer” Valerii, is worth exploring as an example of the way cinema creates this spectacle. One of the most powerful scenes is when she is the victim of attempted rape by Lt. Thorne. She was rescued by Chief Petty Officer Tyrol and Leiutenant Agathon, both of whom were romantically involved with Boomer at some point.
This seems rather similar to Douchet’s girlfriend Lisa. Only when Lisa was seen by Douchet as “a guilty intruder exposed by a dangerous man threatening her with punishment” was Douchet moved enough to save her. In the same way, at this point, as Boomer is being treated as a guilty intruder by the crew of the Pegasus, do we see a rekindling of the relationship between the two men and her, as they attempt to save her.
In the two examples above, we see the power of the concepts of voyeurism, and the passive female, with the “determining male gaze” projecting its fantasy on it. Film has always depended on voyeuristic active/passive mechanisms, and, it seems, the “[image of women will] continually [be] stolen and used for this end”.
According to Anne Kustritz, the central question of Battlestar Galactica is quite literally: Will people survive? I would posit that the central question of this week's films and readings is a different understanding of the same question: Will people survive as people? What happens to the basic characteristics of our humanity when put under the stress of technology? Or are our identities destined to be effaced by modernity? In "The Robot Fixer," a segment in Robot Stories, Wilson Chin is stuck in a coma after a car accident. His mother, Bernice, feels helpless in the face of her son's lifelessness, and when she finds a box of his childhood Transformer-like toys, she sets upon the mission of repairing them as a substitute for somehow repairing her son. The viewer learns that to a remarkable extent, her son became defined by his obsession with the toys, almost lifeless even in the absence of coma. "Machine Love," another Robot Series segment, offers the logical counterpoint: machines as animate, sentinent beings. A Sprout G9 iPerson, essentially a robot designed to take on routine computer tasks, joins the workforce of an office, but finds difficulty connecting with real humans. But, he sees a female robot at an office across the street, and falls in love by sight. When he sees her controllers grope her, he becomes protective. Eventually, with the permission of a sympathetic coworker, they are united, and have the robotic equivalent of intercourse. This blurring of the definition of machine and human is epitomized by Battlestar Galactica, where Cylons have evolved from an essentially robotic appearance to become almost indistinguishable from people. The ending of the series reveals that, rather than portraying the future, Battlestar Galactica portrays the past, and Eve, the first woman, was actually Hera, a child of a Cylon and a human. While the media may posit that technology creates a fundamentally different human, the way in which this new human is portrayed indicates the continued existence of baggage. Six, the model of Cylon which appears most prominently in the first season, is a blond bombshell in a red dress, the social construction of the "perfect female." In fact, for all the attention Battlestar Galactica received for its vision of a peaceful (within itself) multicultural world, without normative gender roles, it establishes a very normative sexual order. The solution, rather than war, to defeating the Cylons is, as President Laura Roslin insists, is to begin making babies. As Kustritz describes, this very reproductive focused sexual role sublimates homosexuality, an identity which, for a pluralistic world like Battlestar Galactica claims to be, receives no representation. What can and should we make of this absence? Lee Edelman describes a chasm between signifier and signified as the result of a fear of social and biological death, in other words that queers are absent from this reality because of their representation as being unable to have children, and therefore symbols of the end of the line. He posits that the solution is for queers to embrace their role as denying the false cipher of a future, instead forcing a confrontation with harsh reality. Kustritz refuses to be "satisified without a politics that can envision a place for queer children and adults in the present and future." The true problematic is that describing the future is never really about the future, but about the present. Should it trouble us that someone sees a future where humans and machines are indistinguishable? How can, how should we understand the conceptualization of a world without queers? How, perhaps most fundamentally, do we define we?
Humanity is at an age where we are slowly replacing humans with machines.As early as the mid 1990’s, digital Tamagotchi pets were all the rage.With the increase of almost real pets and robots, making machines into natural, animal-like beings, fascinates humanity.The idea of robots or dolls replacing humans goes back to a time when electricity had yet to be harnessed, to the story of Pinocchio.
The idea of perfect humanoid robots has become rather popular in modern science fiction such as A.I., Artificial Intelligence, where Haley Joel Osment plays a young “replacement” android child, and Fringe, where early this season robot droid aliens from an alternate reality came in search of Agent Dunham.However, one work of science fiction truly captures the notion of the humanoid robot is Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy. Astro is a robotic child created by Dr. Tenma in the image of his own son.However, soon after Astro’s creation, Tenma realizes that Astro will never change and that he can’t be his “real son.” Tenma rids himself of Astro, but eventually Dr. Ochanamizu finds Astro and cares for him.In the manga, Astro lives and interacts as an almost normal human boy, with super robot powers.
The concept of Humanoid robots is also found in sci-fi epics such as Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica.Anne Kustritz, in Postmodern Eugenics:The Future of Reproductive Politics and Racial Thinking in Science Fiction, discusses the human-cylon, robotic humanoid androids, in Battlestar Galactica.The difference between Battlestar Galactica and Astro Boy is that in Astro Boy, Astro is one of the few truly humanesque robots.The other robots have a somewhat human form, but are drawn so there is no doubt that they are robots.In Battlestar Galactica, the cylons have embraced a “perfect” human form and are so human that initially they do not know that they’re machines.While Astro is loved by humans and robots alike, the major difference between him and the cylons is that the cylons form and need human relations, eventually becoming one with humanity.For a robot to truly become “human,” this needs to occur.As Kustritz says in her article, Battlestar confronts the idea of “who is the Other, and how might we construct an ethical relation to Otherness?”(6).The “other” isn’t a human outsider, but a robotic form.They have become so human, that the dividing line is almost nonexistent.
Like humans, the cylons care about the survival of their species, and the “Cylons conclude that only couples ‘in love’ can sustain a Cylon pregnancy”(Kusrtitz 10).This means that a cylon must mate (I use mate in this context to make clear that there is a distinction between human and machine) with a human lover in order to reproduce.The cylons need true love for a pregnancy.It cannot be false or partial.This suggests that there is some part of them that prevents them from suffering from illegitimate children.They have “evolved” to a point slightly superior to humans in this respect.The babies are cylon-human half breads:the genetic creation of the human and the nearly human.The robots have become so human that the idea of a family is natural.While this is approached in other sci-fi stories, usually humans adopt a robot child; very rarely does the robot evolve into a being capable of “human pregnancy.” If the purpose of robots is solely to interact in a human society and not become a part of it, then this should never occur.
Greg Pak also approaches the idea of robot love in his movie Robot Stories.In three of the four shorts, Pak shows loving relations between humans and robots and robots and robots.In the first short, Pak uses the classic “egg baby” idea of having a couple practice with a fake baby before adopting an actual one.Marsha, the main female has a love hate relationship with the baby.At first she can’t accept it as more than a machine, but after it goes on a rampage, she finds it crying in the corner and realizes that it is humanesque.This idea shows how the “other” can sometimes teach us more about ourselves, because we must realize that we are simply looking at a reflection of ourselves.In the third short, Pak shows a relationship between two computer droids whose soul purpose is to do work.The two robots are trapped and Pak shows how the male robot longs for the female.In the end, the two robots finally connect and have robot “sex.”This shows the viewer that robots, like the cylons in Battlestar Galactica are “human,” and not just mechanized emotionless slaves that work for humans.This also can be seen to contradict the robot laws that are common in sci-fi, because robots are supposed to be solely for the betterment of the human society, and if they have their own relationships, they aren’t helping anyone other than themselves.
However, if we create artificial intelligence that resembles us, it will eventually become one with us, and the distinctions that we designed will be gone.In Shirow Masamune’s manga epic Ghost in the Shell, robots have very human forms and humans sometimes adopt completely robotic ones.His heroine, major Motoko Kusanagi, has a completely cyberized body, none of it is actual flesh and blood.While the robots are clearly subservient to “humans,” this also shows the human-robot hybrid that appears in Battlestar Galactica to be a step above the robot and on the same level as the human.In Battlerstar Galactica, Hera, the first successful cylon-human child, represents human hybridization. However, she “offers a limited vision of genetic racial hybridity without social or cultural change, as human-form Cylon bodies are anatomically indistinguishable from human beings” (Kustritz 16).The cylons are thus the simplest form of the “other” because they are similar to humans in appearance and actions.They are models of humans, thus it is easier to forget that they are different.Unlike the Ooloi-human hybrid in Dawn, they will always retain a human form and will be easy to accept as the same. Like the “Innovators” in Hajime Yatate’s Gundam 00, the cylons can integrate into human society since their form is the same.On a simple level, humanity tends to accept things that look familiar and not foreign objects.
Pak, in the fourth short in Robot Stories, also discusses the topic of what it means to be human and human hybridization.The short creates a society where people become cyberized upon death and they exist forever.In the short, the protagonist, a sculptor, refuses to be digitized because he doesn’t see it as real.He sees the truth that the human existence is purposefully imperfect and cannot be ideal.When the people are digitized, at least in the case of his wife, everything becomes ideal and good.Since the sculptor depends on the physical world for his art, he refuses to be digitized and dies.This represents that by becoming partially mechanical means giving up things that are truly human.One cannot truly be human if one lasts forever.
The key difference between cylons and the other forms of artificial intelligence that I have mentioned is that the cylons and the humans eventually merge completely as a race, with Hera as their Eve.They do not simply coexist, they become one.Battlestar Galactica does admit the one fatal flaw of humanity: we can never truly coexist peacefully because people will always look for differences between people to prove they are superior, as Kustritz says, “if indeed all living people today possess Cylon mitochondria, if we all embody the human-machine, self-other binary which will subsume future conflict, none of us remember it” (21).Thus, even if robots unify us as a new species or as a cause for war, it doesn’t matter because we are flawed will never remember it long enough to prevent future conflict.While the human-robot hybrid may make us better, it cannot cure us of all of our flaws and faults.
What struck me most while I was reading the articles by Mulvey and Kustritz was the differences in the approaches suggested for the groups stereotyped in television and cinema. When speaking about the way films show women, Mulvey says, "It is said that analyzing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That is the intention of this article" (200). This is a very drastic way of speaking of a medium that most people enjoy, and would have no desire to destroy. She proposes that the only way to eradicate the subjugation of women in film through both the scopophilia instinct and the ego libido is to make the viewing of such films unpleasant through extensive analysis. For my part, I know that I won't be able to watch another movie without contemplating if the close up of a movie starlet is just another instance of the male dominated film industry propagating male dominance by keeping the female in the passive, viewed role. Kustritz, on the other hand, cites several other author's ideas for how do deal with continued eugenic and racist themes in television and film. She begins by criticizing how society has conveniently forgotton the eugenics movement, allowing its base ideas to resurface. One suggested recourse Kustritz mentions is that of Lee Edelman, who proposes that queers (all those left out of traditional means of reproduction) should, "embody for all of society, the inescapable truth that cultural death is inevitable" (12). This is similar to Mulvey's advice for women in that it shows a rather pessimistic paradigm. However, whereas Mulvey hopes to destroy the offensive, Edelman advocates embracing and owning the limits created by society, much as number six fully owns her sexuality in Battlestar Galactica. She doesn't fight against it, but instead plays the role she was designed for while simultaneously adapting the role to fit her personality. The second option mentioned by Kustritz is that put forth by Lauren Berlant, who proposes, "a renewed commitment to public political action and a refusal of privatization and consumption" (17) to combat the idea that race issues will evaporate as races become indistinguishable through genetic assimilation. Indeed, hers is the only opinion that can be described as proactive. Charmax takes this proactive stance even further by not only calling for action, but also, "tethers the future to our capacity to change by placing faith in the humanity of the Other" (23). The question that I am still pondering is: which of these categories of views will win out? How will women, queers, African Americans, or any other segment of the other continue to respond to a media that has been dominated by their historical oppressors? Hopefully, we will be able to move forward with meaningful changes without having to resort to rampant destruction. After all, if we destroy the past, however harmful it may be, how can we learn from it?
While society so readily criticizes our past of slavery and apparent racial discrimination, they, themselves, remain ignorant and unknowing of their own discriminatory actions and opinions. In this example from Anne Kustritz's Postmodern Eugenics, the ignorance of humanity that is apparent even when discussing such an entertaining subject of Harry Potter is astonishing. Kustritz describes the fan communities' discussions of the magical species House Elves: "Failing to recognize the resemblance between their own rhetoric and the arguments of antebellum slaveholders, fan discussions of Harry Potter author JK Rowling’s multi-cultural, post-colonial allegory reveal modern audiences’ deliberate ignorances" (6). Although there are scientific and historical fiction and non-fiction to remind modern society of past moral conflicts and grievances through direct storytelling or through metaphorically developed situations, still humanity does not seem to make the symbolic, or even literal, connection between past mistakes and present issues. In Battlestar Gallactica, many of the conflicts that arise during the war between the Cylons and the Humans are equivocal to those of humanity's past and present in order to remark on societal and political corruption. The show, at the time of its airing, was so influential that, "'the United Nations convened a panel to discuss the show’s treatment of terrorism, human rights abuses and religious conflict'"(Kustritz 7). If a science fiction television show about conflicts of war between robots and humans can affect the opinions of the United Nations, surely this show, among others, should be able to affect the opinions of the audience this show was written for. Are politicians, government officials, and perhaps, historians the only ones actively trying to eliminate past conflicts from the present and present conflicts from the future? Are they the only ones learning from humanity's past mistakes? Even in Laura Mulvey's article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, it is exhibited that however much equal rights between women and men are assured through politicians and amendments, women are still readily objectified. Mulvey goes over the idea that cinema is used to satisfy voyeuristic urges specifically aimed at women. She states, "The image of woman as (passive) raw material for the (active) gaze of man takes the arguments a step further into the structure of representation [...]" (208). Without regard to the years and years of women's suffrage movements, women apparently, when faced with a man's interested and forceful eyes, relapse into opinion-less beings solely remarkable as a visual spectacle. Is any human progress being actually made? Does humanity learn from nothing is overcomes?
Throughout Red Mars, we see the land characterized as something that is connected quantitatively to the pursuit of liberty and a new life. For many of the space colonists, this journey to Mars represents the pursuit of a higher or better way of living, not just a scientific expedition. These people, like Arkady, are excaping Earth’s failures in order to start anew, physically and philosophically. Arkady and his people, while on the Aries and in later stages of colonization, disregard their Terrean hosts and believe a the colonists’ lives off of their own decisions, as Terreans have shown to fail at inhabiting a planet so they must find a new way. However, they are less changing the naturally self-destructive human behavior seen for centuries that is now destroying Earth, than they are reveling in the fact that the whole planet, land and resources, is at their disposal and the promise that such bounty holds. Upon seeing Mars, Maya describes this, “…tabula rasa, blank. A blank red slate. Anything was possible, anything could happen – in that sense they were, in just these last few days, perfectly free. Free of the past, free of the future, weightless in their own warm air, floating like spirits about to invest a material world…” (85). Mindless of the natural state of the planet or the long-term fundamental consequences of repeating the same mistakes as Earth, many of the colonists see fit to colonize Mars exactly as they would colonize land on Earth, and cause the rift between the Reds and the Greens in doing so.
Hardt’s and Negri’s “2.5 Network Power: U.S. Sovereignty and the New Empire” furthers this correlation between land and the spread of democracy by pointing out the concurrence of the emergence of national social classes and the recognition that land is limited even in America. During this Progressive era from the 1890’s to World War I, the paper claims that riots and social unrest based off of class and wealth were in response to the sudden shortage of accessible land: “In effect, when power ran up against its spatial limits, it was constrained to fold back on itself”. This historical event outlines an ideology shown through the Greens of Red Mars, that we exist to expand and to colonize the people, places, and things around us. According to this research, the near imperialism America embraced following this period was a response to a need for further expansion and ownership: since we were limited in what we could do to our nation, we nearly began dominating others, in the name of justice, to appease this hunger. In applying this to the novel, one might argue that the whole mission of the Aries demonstrates self-serving arrogant Terrean behavior in that it aims to dominate even further, beyond the scope of the planet and onto planets that possibly should hold life in the first place.
When the alien becomes familiar, and the familiar becomes problematic, what is there left to accomplish? Both in Red Mars and Total Recall, this sense of Mars as some sort of finality for a single person or for society as a whole is rehashed - living again and again the mistakes as we build towards the future. The inclusion of technology, of plastic that forms to one's probing fingers, contributing to the energy that fuels a flawed civilization, doesn't so much juxtapose as help along the magnification of problems of race within an attempted-idealized society.
I guess this week, this is all I have to say - maybe because neither media outlet satisfied me, or maybe because my own answers to the questions posed by them are inadequate. It seems as though I am experiencing my own frustration over the fact that modern science fiction writers cannot form a functional future for our race. We must wonder now, is that indeed too much to ask? Is it so selfish to want to vacation on mars through our memories, or live in a plastic bubble, or shape a new society to our wants, our needs? It left me feeling a little empty, that the further we travel out, the more we revert inwards.
Why can't mars be alien? Because we, as a race, cannot leave society, cannot leave the comfort of culture, and structure, and preconceived notions on earth. They travel with us, because they gave birth to the need to travel in the first place. It's like a virus as much as it is like a seed.
"Mars was empty before we came. That's not to say that nothing had ever happened. But all of that (geological activity) happened in a mineral unconsciousness, and unobserved. There were no witnesses - except for us, looking from the planet next door, and that only in the last moment of its long history. We are all the consciousness that Mars has ever had."
This sentiment is so unequivocally human. These words describe the manner in which we humans exist. Things, events must be seen, witnessed - by something, by someone. In order for something to be something, it must be attached to the human consciousness. We are everything. Everything else is nothing.
Despite the opposition of Ann and the other Reds, this idea - that something (unsettled and un-terraformed Mars in this case) isn't really anything until it is developed and experienced by humans - eventually predominates and determines the fate of Mars. It is to be experienced and developed and lived on and utterly transformed.
The irony of the situation lies in the fact that, through this process of terraforming and developing Mars into a human nest, it becomes impossible to experience the true Mars - what it really is. And the contradiction in the prior sentence lies here, in this question: How can we as humans ever experience something in its true form - that is to say, its form untouched, unseen, unchanged by humans? Must humans change things in order to "experience" them? I put "experience" in quotations because of the fact that we may not really be experiencing anything if we must change it in order to "experience" it.
Are we unable to experience anything other than ourselves?
In Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars we are given Mars as a symbol. Again and again the many names that Earth’s past civilizations have given the red planet are invoked; Nirgal, Mangala, Auqakuh, Harmarkhis. Mars means different things to different people, whether it be the preservation and pure pursuit of knowledge (the Reds), a new space to spread human life and shape the ecology (the Greens), or a brand new society, different from Earth ( Arkady’s Revolutionaries and Hiroko’s underground group). To the thousands of emigrants desperately trying to find a better life, Mars is a place of myth and opportunity, all of the First Hundred part of that all encompassing myth.
Myths play out through the novel from the very beginning. It is said that all myths begin with a grain of truth, and it is no different for the First Hundred and their successors. Hiroko, the reclusive Japanese ecological and closed systems scientist is the subject of much gossip and myth on the Hundred’s long trek to Mars. They say she has a cult-like following, and that she kept everyone’s sperm and eggs for herself. Maya is initially disgusted when she hears of these “myths”, seeing it as stereotyping of the sole asian woman on the ship into the “dragon lady”.
But of course, these myths about Hiroko turn out to be based in truth. Hiroko indeed is the leader of some kind of Mars cult, blending Japanese Shinto beliefs with a reverence for the Martian land. She also has been keeping reproductive material from all of the First Hundred, as John Boone found out when he found his son, born from him and Hiroko.
So what does that mean about the other myths surrounding the other First Hundred? Or about the ridiculous story of the Big Man and Paul Bunyan of Mars? Surely, if each myth has some truth, those are based in some kind of fact. Perhaps John Boone really was not the first man to Mars...
Is the martian man fated to destruction. As the human population rises into the tens of billions, Earth no longer seems able to sustain us. It is like we are a cancerous growth. We flourish and expand unchecked until we kill our host and thus ourselves, maybe our “suicide gene.” Is a symptom of our humanity, the constant need to conquer, “veni, vidi, vici, morti.” Ass our host begins to show signs of exhaustion, we look to stars not just in spiritual wonder but like rats on a sinking ship. “And Mars has never ceased to be what is was to us from our very beginning-a great sign, a great symbol, a great power.” (Red Mars 3) Is altogether surprising that we would do unto Mars what we did unto earth. “Why when we look at the land we can never see anything but our own faces.” (Red mars 158) As much as the Reds ideology is poetical beautiful it is unfeasible under the constraints of humanity. Leaving nature untouched means hindering human growth, individuals can do it; masses, countries, civilizations cannot. History shows such stability is beyond us. Even in science-fiction, humans cannot remain contained to a single world without destroying ourselves in some magnificent fashion. So, shikata ga nai, we do what we must; we pray on science to save us from ourselves.
Technology gave us the tools to brake free of slow evolution. We no longer have to wait the countless eons to develop gills to breath underwater, we can construct artificial ones. “Science is part of a larger human enterprise, and that enterprise includes going to the stars, adapting to other planets, adapting them to us. Science is creation.” (Red Mars 178) Yet this intelligence, this ability to change, seems not to be able shrug off our destructive tendencies. Indeed, each step in which we advance the ability to feed, heal, and house people, the general demographics of suffering don’t ameliorate. As soon as we create more to give, its appears we create (or procreate) more people to give to. The green revolution nearly doubled the food production of the world, so we nearly doubled the population. The frontier must ever expand to meet over ever expanding appetite.
Travel through space, colonize Mars, build a space elevator weighing six billion tons, and yet create a society just as flawed as the modern day. Rebellion, wage slavery, and overpopulation. These seem illogical and yet in Red Mars‘ fictional history, such developments are the most plausible elements of the whole narrative. Each evolution of technology is not then an evolution of humanity but rather a transition. This is what allows science fiction as a genre to comment so clearly on our present. The game changes but the rules do not. Still, science or some miracle of genius might yet change the rules, and that is the moment for which we all wait.
Space is the “last frontier.” While this statement may seem clichéd, at the rate the population is growing, this could be true. As Fred Turner said in “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” “the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American History.” This means that space exploration of the mid-1960’s was the beginning of the second period of American history. The question arises if we are destined to destroy the frontier like we did in America. However, the issue in science fiction isn’t whether space travel is inevitable, but when it is going to happen, and what kind of environment we will live in. In many sci-fi works, humans live and operate on lunar or satellite colonies, like those found in the anime franchise Gundam, which are usually controlled by individual nations. In Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, the Mars colony isn’t a national set up; it is a world colony that is meant to include and represent all of humanity. According to Michel Foucault, this would be a “heterotopia,” a place where things are supposed to occur. The question arises if Mars is supposed to be the place where diversity is finally realized and racism dies. Like traditional heterotopia, Mars was not free to everyone’s access, and though eventually other countries gained the access that they deserved, it isn’t until after the first 100 and still the communities set up were very tight knit with the exception of the Bedouin community. This is a rather interesting contrast because colonies are set up to help a “mother country,” and even if Earth is the mother country, not all nations will benefit equally. Likely the U.S. and the Russia will gain the most since they were the originators of the project. Also, it seemed that even though some colonists wanted to break away, others wanted to represent their nations proudly, like the colonies found in G Gundam, where each orbiting colonial satellite represents one specific country. When Americans, or any other people who live in a former colony think of colonialism, the obvious idea thought is “how long will it take for us to break away?” In Red Mars, it takes very little time for the first one hundred to change how they will set up their colony. In fact, their first glimpse of liberation occurs when they decide that the American and the Russians, fresh off the end of the Cold War, should not live in separate sections of the ship because it “reinforces the other divisions between us” (R 36). Throughout the remainder of the flight, Arkady, the radical, tells the crew that they should “make new plans,” (R 59) this is the instinct of the colonizer. They want to be free and don’t want to be controlled. I found it interesting that throughout the novel, Mars seems to fall into deeper and deeper chaos. After the 100 arrive on the planet, it doesn’t take long for factions to arrive. The major conflict of terraforming is very reminiscent of how when immigrants move to a new place they try to build things and form communities that are reminiscent of home. While the scientists were pro-terrafroming, others saw it as a risk, because they found Mars to be an ideal place, and wanted to keep it the way it was and felt it was a taboo to change Mars. However, for the earthlings on Mars, terraforming is not to make Mars look like Earth, it is to make it more livable. As can be seen in the end of the movie Total Recall, Mars’s core must change for the humans to be able to survive. In this movie, the core of Mars in made of ice, and Quaid decides to use a machine to turn part of the core into air to save the humans who are starving for air. Both these stories relate how Earthlings try to create their own existence on a foreign planet. However, in Red Mars, there is a blatant concern for the effects of terraforming on Mars. This leads to the splintering of the 100 and eventually causes Hiroko to leave the initial settlement and start her own settlement using her genetically engineered children. Hiroko’s group goes as far as starting a new Shinto-esque Martian religion, where, like in traditional Shinto, the kami’s represented nature. Thus they were against the terraforming because of its destruction of what they saw as holy. Eventually, following the death of John Boone, Mars falls into chaos, due to increased sabotage by radical groups, mimicking the disarray on Earth. While Robinson is vague in her description of the uprising, she makes it clear that it occurs because of a debate over what the new Martian constitution will yield. The revolution leads to madness and the eventual death of many of the 100, including Frank Chalmers, one of the original leaders. In the end, “primal Mars … melt[s] away. Red Mars [is] gone” [R 550]. I find this line to be rather interesting. We tend to think of celestial bodies as eternal; having Mars no longer be red is a drastic change. It shows the power of humanity. Like how the Americans broke free of British rule, humanity once again does the unimaginable. Since the series is a trilogy, it will be rather interesting to see if a new Martian republic will rise from the ashes of Red Mars, or if more chaos will ensue since the novel ends with Hiroko saying “‘this is where we start again’” (572).
Throughout Red Mars, the characters focus on the space Mars provides and what they can do with that space. Ann admires the space for its pure emptiness and wants to leave the openness of Mars alone. Her position is explained on page 221,"She had fallen in love with Mars for the same reason that Michael hated it: because it was dead. And Ann was in love with death." While a pessimistic description, it is clear that Ann loves Mars because it is different from Earth; she sees it as natural and untainted and can't stand the idea that humans will mess it up. Ann describes her own feelings for Mars on page 157 when she says, "I mean I look at this land and, and I love it. I want to be out on it traveling over it always, to study it and live on it and learn it. But when I do that, I change it- I destroy what it is, what I love in it."
In contrast, Arkady and Sax are very much in favor of terraforming Mars. Regarding the concept of space, this can be seen as a more aggressive approach in which they try to remake Mars in their own image. They view Mars as a new manifest destiny. Sax defined this mission on page 178 when he says, "We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can." Sax uses the language of a calling or a duty to the universe, not just their nations or even mankind, to convince the rest of the one hundred that they should terraform. This position is similar to the U.S. sovereignty as described by Hardt. Hardt states that it was necessary for the U.S. to expand into a vast open space during the beginning of its history in order to expel outward the energy of the multitude that would otherwise disrupt order. This idea applies to the Mars colony as well, as they must expand their control over the planet or risk stagnation.
A third concept of Mars's space is held by Hiroko and her followers. "It was a kind of landscape religion, a consciousness of Mars as a physical space suffused with kami, which was the spiritual energy or power that rested in the land itself." (229). This view is most similar to the superstitious herotopias, places that are outside of all spaces, although still possessing a physical location. They believe in Mars as a magical place that has power beyond that of an ordinary location. Perhaps the power of Mars is a clearer view of the world they left behind, and their relationship with Earth and viriditas. If this is the case, they view Mars as the reader views science fiction, as a lens through which we can better focus on our own experiences.
In justifying the bailout package, the US Congress described certain businesses as "too big to fail," and indeed many corporations in the modern age have revenues that exceed the budgets of several countries, sometimes of several countries combined. Who can really regulate in such an economy? What happens when business becomes larger and more powerful than the government that's supposed to control it? Or, the corollary, what happens when a government is too big to be controlled by its people? What happens to our version of the truth? This week's readings and film cast a troublesome light on what happens in just such a situation. In Red Mars, the colony begins as a scientific research station, supposedly void from all such political concerns. The ship itself becomes a microcosm of modern debates on our responsibility to our environment, our planet, our traditions, the role of government and the possibility of world harmony. Arkady offers a sharp retort to those who wish to follow the exact confines of the treaty: "And yet some of us here can accept terraforming the entire physical reality of this planet, without doing a single thing to change our selves, or the way we live. To be twenty-first century scientists on Mars, in fact, but at the same time living within nineteenth-century social systems, based on seventeenth-century ideologies. It's absurb, it's crazy..." (89). In fact, while governments themselves stay somewhat uninvolved for a time, concerns of profit and wealth become more important, as the search for mineral wealth changes the scientific quest from a search for knowledge to search for money. The entire capitalist ethos is questioned by the book, as what begins, perhaps not as a perfect utopia, but certainly as a better version of the world, becomes chaos and ruins. It's interesting to consider that while Red Mars begins as a relative utopia and destroys itself, Total Recall situates Mars as a colony largely under corporate control that becomes independent thanks to revolutionaries, including Douglas Quaid. While the book shows reasonable people taken over by greed, only the film begins with a very literal control of the mind. It's not even clear at the end of the film what the reality is, whether Quaid is really a secret agent or just a construction worker having a vacation implanted in his brain. The control of life and all its facets becomes especially poignant with the company's monopoly on the very air necessary to breathe. Compare these visions of a corporate chokehold with Hardt's description of America's role in the modern world: "In all the regional conflicts of the late twentieth century, from Haiti to the Persian Gulf and Somalia to Bosnia, the United States is called to intervene militarily—and these calls are real and substantial, not merely publicity stunts to quell U.S. public dissent. Even if it were reluctant, the U.S. military would have to answer the call in the name of peace and order" (181). The acceptance of US supremacy as not only reality, but righteous fate, suggests an unwholesome arrogance and unhealthy nationalism. Indeed, as Arkady objects early in the voyage to Mars when several other passengers complain that they came to get away from politics: "You Americans would like to end politics and history, so you can stay in a world you dominate!" (60). How we look at the future is based on our vision of the past. As Quaid responds to a fortune teller who asks if he'd like a look at his future: "What about my past?"
To most of the characters in Red Mars, at least among the first Hundred, Mars was something of a clean slate with which to start anew. Whether it was Arkady, who saw it as a place to effect a whole new way of life, a communal utopia without the trappings of capitalism, where “no one is wasting time buying or selling, because there is no market”. There was Sax and the green faction, who saw Mars as a place for life to thrive where it had never thrived before, and in Sax’s words the terraforming of Mars would “be a monument to humanity and the universe both”. There were, of course, the reds, who saw beauty in Mars’ desolate landscape, and who worked hard to prevent this transformation of Mars. These were just the first of many who would come to Mars in search of a better life.
However, none of these dreams would come to fruition as a result of the bloody revolution that takes place at the end of the book. The immigration control treaties were ignored, and the greed of the multi national corporations, and their determination to make money at any cost, created a world of “a million people and no law, no law but corporate law. The bottom line. Minimize expenses, maximise profits.”
The transnational corporations were demonstrated in this book to wield an influence greater than that of the governments on Earth. This is clearly seen by the way that UNOMA was unable to enforce their treaty. Greed wins out in the end, and when Frank asks why, he receives the answer “they’re all getting paid off in one cosmeticized way or another”.
People were leaving an Earth where the rich were getting living longer, and getting richer, while the poor were dying poor as they always had. However, thanks to the greed of the transnational corporations, they would not find Mars to be the land of potential, the clean slate they were looking for. People would find a land of crime, with those very transnationals “telling them what they can and can’t do”.
It is no wonder that many among them decide to rebel and follow Arkady, because you cannot dangle utopia in front of people and then expect them to do nothing when those promises are unfulfilled.
Though we like to use the term “post-racial” to describe our current dynamics, it seems the science fiction pieces so far suggest that a society truly past race must have another distinguishing feature to connect people. In Lathe of Heaven, we saw the loss of all race, then the introduction of turtle-like aliens to distract pure humans from fighting each other. In Children of Men, the invented new category was fugees; in Dawn, the Oankali. Now in Red Mars, a distinguishing factor is the new label of Martian.
If science fiction is viewed as a critique of modern society, as Frederic Jameson argued, then Kim Stanley Robinson’s view is a more positive spin on the value of new labels. Rather than the other labels we have encountered, the Martian label does not exist in opposition of another identity. It is an identity that bonded the first hundred that superseded their other identities (ethnicity, nationality, gender) while still allowing them to hold the other identities. The new identification could be added on top of other understandings of their selves, rather than boiling the group down to their basest and most primitive identity (not turtle, not immigrant, not oankali). Instead of suggesting that humans must move beyond race by introducing a threat to overcome, Robinson’s work suggests that giving a common goal to humans could make progress in race relations. Labels, including race, let people build relationships, but can we subvert the power of race to divide with the power of a new label that could bond us together? Instead of letting racial tension escalate in an environment of fear, could race dynamics be improved by distracting people with a distinct goal?
"In any case I believe that the anxiety of our era has to do fundamentally with space, no doubt a great deal more than with time. Time probably appears to us only as one of the various distributive operations that are possible for the elements that are spread out in space"(Foucault 23).
From the beginning of the colonization of Mars to the revolution, the prevalent, recurring battle between the characters is the fight over methods of space optimization. The idea of time limitation does not ever seem to be a threat to this Martial society. Not only does is this concept not often considered towards the beginning of the novel, but eventually this limitation is completely eliminated when the inhabitants of Mars are able to produce and be given longevity treatments in order to extend the length of their lives. By introducing these treatments, the plot further abandons time as a constraint on the work and progress of Mars. What main constraint the people are left with is space. Of course, this developmental constraint has been apparent since the idea development and progress began. As mentioned by Hardt, "From the beginning, American space was not only an extensive, unbounded space but also an intensive space: a space of crossings, a ‘‘melting pot’’ of continuous hybridization. The first real crisis of American liberty was determined on this internal, intensive space" (170). Whether physically, racially, or emotionally, space seems to continually overrule time in relevancy to developmental progress. Because the people of Mars are apparently left with only one dominant constraint, they then seem to focus all their opinions and arguments toward their individual viewpoints on the matter. Each member of the society realizes quickly that safe space on the planet is limited and groups begin segregate according to the opinions of the individuals for the best solution to the space limitation. One of the arguments is towards the idea of terraforming the planet and the other is for preserving the planet in its original state and learning to expand their materials to simply live on the surface. This conflict has become so pronounced because of the harsh radiation and health hazards outdoors. Only so much time per individual can be healthily spent outside, therefore frustrating many of the inhabitants. The situation is described: "There was a lot of work to be done under the hill, getting the last row of chambers finished; and it was possible to dig some cellars below the vaults, giving them some more space protected from radiation. And many of the tractors were equipped to be teleoperated from indoor stations, their decision algorithms handling the details while the human operators watched screens below. So it could be done; but no one liked the life that resulted. Even Sax Russell, who was content to work indoors most of the time, looked perplexed. In the evenings a number of people began to argue for immediate terraforming efforts, and they made the case with renewed intensity" (Robinson 127). The point is made that although it is possible for the people to simply live and complete their work safely inside, everyone knows how uncomfortable and unfavorable this option is. The community yearns for expansion, whether expanding the safe interior, or terraforming the planet; everyone knows that the current martial living and working conditions are not enough. This theme of space optimization dominating time optimization is very prevalent throughout the course of the novel and it brings up the point of what would happen had there been more of a time constraint to threaten the people. What would be different.
Dawn began as a story about difference, about otherness, in accordance to a different species, and evolved into a critique on otherness as a part of social and racial perception. Butler artfully sculpts a disturbing gallery of experiences that causes the vicarious reader to be as, if not more so, uncomfortable as Lilith, Joseph, and even Curt.
Lilith’s terror towards the aliens is directly related to Cut’s paranoia surrounding his view of Lilith. The common strain is this idea of difference – whether it be race, species, or supposedly superior knowledge, the state of inequality is one of intense discomfort. Perhaps it is from this discomfort that Butler herself feels the need, in both Dawn and Parable of the Sower, to incessantly pair each female and male with their corresponding counterpart. It almost seems as a courtesy to the characters to provide some sort of sexual normalcy among the chaos.
And here, we come to touch upon another point. The intense overtones of sexuality – whether it be purely human-based, or a hybridization including the ooloi – brings on the dichotomy of discomfort and comfort. On some levels the human body in Dawn is simply a way to calm oneself and escape fear, or at least share it with another. In another sense, the three-way connectivity of the male/female/ooloi bond comes off as both transcendent and dually almost disturbing.
On a race level, I found it incredibly interesting that the only dark-skinned female was the automatic leader chosen by another species to represent the human race- once again we return to the matriarchal form. There is a deep connection between Lilith and earth, and her need to return reveals the intensity of the bond.
This is covered in “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe” as being an expected trope of a Black woman, but what interested me was the role Joseph played because of the tropic characterization of his mate. The obvious criticism here is that he became almost a subordinate of Lilith, the weakness and doubt of the entire clan stemming from a supposed inability to discern earth from space maybe because of their lack of “Blackness.”
It is also interesting to note that this is not so much white/black juxtaposition as it is a black/other contrast. And to further this point, it is a male/female comparison, a playing and melding of gender roles. The most blaring omission to all of this, covered in “Mama’s Baby,” is the lack of a Black, patriarchal male. Where Parable had Bankole, there seems no male foil to stand opposite Lilith as she leads her unsuccessful matriarchy to earth – without her. Maybe this, then, explains itself. The matriarch successfully leads everyone – to her own destruction and abandonment.
Daoism (Also Taoism) is an ancient Chinese philosophy that came about during the tumultuous times of the warring states period before the rise of the Qin Dynasty. It’s founder, Laozi, emphasizes the oneness of the world, how by creating good you also create bad, and vice versa. This is also where the concept of Yin and Yang arise. There is Yang, representing the positive, strong, masculine, and oppressive aspects of life, and there is also Yin, representing the negative, weak, feminine and submissive. But, just as the Yin-Yang sign shows, there is weakness in strength; positivity in negativity; etc.
So what does this have to do with Octavia Butler’s Xenogenisis series, and the movie Alien? First of all both of these movies at their core are about survival. In Laozi’s Daoist writings, he emphasizes survival through the use of the Yin aspects of life, through submissiveness. Laozi believed that the best way to live during the Warring States Period was to surrender to larger, oppressive powers, thus securing long-term survival. Through this show of “weakness” or “femininity” as the ancient Daoist would define it, you also have strength, because in the end you live longer. Water is weak, without form and flimsy, while rock is solid and strong; Yet, given time the Yin aspect of water can wear away at the Yang aspect of rock, dissolving it into nothing but sediment. Within weakness there is strength; within strength there is weakness.
Lilith Iyapo can be seen as the Yin aspect. She represents the feminine, matriarchal, and submissive. She is under almost complete control by her Oankali “captors”, and is tasked with being the “mother” of the new colonies of humans to a renewed Earth. Her own philosophy of “learn and run” is the epitome of the Yin side. By being submissive to the Oankali until the time is right, like the water wearing down the solid rock, Lilith hopes to escape the Oankali. However, in the end, as the two remaining books in the Xenogenisis series show, being fully submissive seems to be the only assured way to survival. Lilith finds that with the Oankali she is able to have children, live longer, thus allowing her genetic material for generations and generations. Those that reject the Oankali are doomed to live tough lives of infertility and violence. Again and again through the novel we are reminded of matriarchy’s superiority over the Yang of Patriarchy or “hierarchical problem” as the Oankali would call it. Gabe, as a very “Yang” and masculine individual struggles with Lilith’s leadership, even though he knows in his intelligent mind that she is right. Curt, another individual that could be said to be even more “Yang” than Gabe is sent away into suspended animation for his aggressive, masculine, hierarchical behavior.
In the movie Alien it is a little bit harder to apply the Daoists principle of survival through the submissive because the Alien is no way like the Oankali, where if you obeyed them they would lead you to a greater life and survival. The Alien would simply massacre you on the spot if you were completely submissive. But if we look at it simply through the lens of Yin femininity and matriarchy, perhaps it is Daoist after all, Ripley is the only survivor of a group of mostly strong, aggressive men. She was initially right about quarantining Kane right away, and was always put in opposition with Ash, the eventual robot-traitor. At the end of the movie we are reminded of her femininity through her “stripping” and through her motherly petting of Jones, the cat. We are shown that in the end, it was not masculinity and strength that survived the brutal Alien, but the Yin aspect of femininity. Just as Laozi wrote all those years ago, to survive we must emphasize the Yin to in the end become strong. In the end there are no opposites. Everything is one.
“We are as committed to the trade as you’re body is to breathing. We were overdue for it when we found you. Now it will be done – to the rebirth of your people and mine.” (Butler, 41)
Butler’s Dawn plays with perceptions on human development and evolution towards becoming a new race, showing consequences to the mindset that promote ceaseless development at the risk of hurting existing life. The aliens in Dawn, the Oankali, resemble modern humanity in many ways in their treatment of other species and their need to change. This starts with the premise of the inferiority of humanity as a “fatally flawed” (36) race whose polar impulses, our intelligence versus our pride, will always tear us apart and keep us from becoming something existentially better. It is therefore suitable to use human bodies as guinea pigs for observational purposes: her body is worshipped as “a tool for reconstruction” (97) but can be healed or even genetically changed (like all other humans on the ship) without her consent. Furthermore, the Oankali view, not only the human body, but also the actual human race as malleable, and ultimately disposable. They prefer the term “trading” to “interbreeding” in describing their kind’s methods of expansion and evolution, despite the sexual nature of the act of creating a new mixed race. They believe that they are not simply creating a new species, but bettering the lives of both parties involved by helping each to evolve. The process “renews” (39) the Oankali as a species, saving them from extinction or stagnation, which humans seem to have fallen into. In fact, it is their destiny to continually evolve in this manner: in speaking of his planet, Nkanj says, “It was a womb. The time had come for us to be born.” (36) The Oankali ceaselessly move forward as a species; they do not exist as much as a race, as they do a continually expanding multi-race, absorbing others into their genes so easily and emotionlessly that you could argue they are killing these other races in the process. In doing so, they represent a scientific view of humanity as a species that needs to interbreed or find and take on the characteristics of a better species in order to evolve as humans. This view is not content with humanity’s cultures or thoughts; since humans are inferior to whatever we are destined to become next, it promotes the debasement of our current state in our attempt to find something to make us better.
Alien similarly compares humanity to a seemingly superior alien species. As deemed by the company hiring the crew of the Nostromo, human life on the ship comes second to the pursuit of a new alien species, a new race. We see the perspective behind this need for discovery of a greater being in Ashe’s admiration of the alien species: Ashe states, “I admire its purity…no conscience, remorse, or delusion of morality.” Ashe represents a cold and robotic human drive to discover, and eventually adapt from, a new improved race, despite the cost this discovery will have to our physical wellbeing and existence. Like in Dawn, the humans of Nostromo are degraded to vessels for the procreation of another, superior species – the company in charge of the ship is not directly responsible for this, but its willingness to sacrifice its human employees to the whims of science resembles the Oankali’s willingness to replace the human race with their own mixed breed. Within both, an overlying society imposes its will to branch out to another species, learn, and copy from it for the sake of science.
Octavia Butler’s Dawn and Hortense Spiller’s Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammer Book both focus on the tragedy of enslaved black women, Dawn in a futuristic setting, at the hands of aliens who have no problems tampering with their prisoner’s genetic material, Mama’s Baby on the historical plight of female African-American slaves.Lilith is not obviously treated badly, but she is clearly a captive of the Oankali.Like slaves out of American history, her sexuality is exploited by the Oankali to their own gain.To the Oankali, Lilith is a useful tool, not a person.They need her genetic material to help advance their own species as well as, supposedly, ours. It is interesting to note the fear here: that aliens want our bodies, our flesh.I wonder to what extent Alien reflects this same fear.One might suggest that this fear actually comes from interracial relationships.People have always been afraid of interracial relationships, even when acts of sexual exploitation by one race of another were commonplace.
