Women in Sci-Fi

I found an interesting article on Strange Horizons about one woman's reaction to Star Wars. My first response was, "Down, girl. It's just a movie." I admit I chuckled at the line The Jedi mumble Taoist-derived platitudes to prove that they're on the side of Light but they are really a fusion of a rapture cult and a multinational corporation.

Further down she talks about the role of women in the Star Wars saga, which is to say it's ludicrously minimal. I've ranted on this before, if you remember. And if you have the DVD for Episode III, take a look at the deleted scenes. All the woman scenes were cut (reducing Padme to a woman who brushes her hair and cries). I'm not that big of a Star Wars geek; I've never gotten into the roleplaying games or the novels, so my info is based purely on what's in the movies. So based on Return of the Jedi, I always thought that Padme had given birth, hid Luke on Tattoine as he was the only child Anakin knew about, and took Leia to Alderan where she then formed the Rebel Alliance. I liked the idea of this woman doing everything she could to overthrow her own husband (almost a Shakespearean tragedy). I figured she died when Leia was about five.

But apparently I was wrong. She did of a broken heart. God, that was stupid. Not to mention really hard to explain to children, and believe me they ask. The whole birth scene drove me nuts. Poor Padme lying flat on her back, surrounded by machines. Obiwan is standing there, but he's not even holding her hand, let alone offering her any sort of support. Then again with that metal thing over her pelvis it's hard to see what's going on. Maybe she was getting a C-section.

But I digress. The part of this article where the woman really had me was when she pointed out that there was only one woman per trilogy. You never see Padme or Leia interact with other women. Interesting. This is true of pretty much all the sci-fi/fantasy films I grew up on. There was always only one woman. That might explain why the only groups I feel comfortable in myself are groups where I am the only woman. And a group of all women? Forget about it!

Not that I blame George Lucas for my lack of social skills. And that is really an old school paradigm. Look at The Matrix. Granted Trinity largely exists to be the love interest, but some of the women of Zion had scenes together with no men in sight (granted, they were talking about the men...). And two of them even fought side-by-side defending the ship harbor (or whatever they called it).

And for those who object to the entire existance of this article, I'm going to end with a Joss Whedon quote:

"I think it’s always important for academics to study popular culture, even if the thing they are studying is idiotic. If it’s successful or made a dent in culture, then it is worthy of study to find out why. ‘Buffy,’ on the other hand is, I hope, not idiotic. We think very carefully about what we’re trying to say emotionally, politically, and even philosophically while we’re writing it. The process of breaking a story involves the writers and myself, so a lot of different influences, prejudices, and ideas get rolled up into it. So it really is, apart from being a big pop culture phenom, something that is deeply layered textually episode by episode. I do believe that there is plenty to study and there are plenty of things going on in it, as there are in me that I am completely unaware of. People used to laugh that academics would study Disney movies. There’s nothing more important for academics to study, because they shape the minds of our children possibly more than any single thing. So, like that, I think ‘Buffy’ should be analyzed, broken down, and possibly banned."