Science-fiction, being a genre aimed at and enjoyed primarily by men, has over the centuries been filled with characters that are, for the most part, male and white. In early science-fiction texts, women were seldom ever represented as anything other than damsels in distress, which reinforced the prevailing ideology of the time which stated that women belong in the kitchen. Black characters were nowhere to be seen. That ship has sailed, but whilst those representations of women and the total absence of black characters in pre-postmodern-era science-fiction texts are impossible to read nowadays as anything but attempts at reinforcing the bigoted ideologies of the past, nonetheless those texts have shown contemporary science-fiction filmmakers and writers how to improve upon them and create science-fiction tales that ring true with contemporary audiences. In the past fifty years, science-fiction has evolved to include issues like the power of the individual, non-conformity, radically liberal ideologies as well as retaining political messages, and most importantly to show women and blacks as strong leaders and heroes.
Here I will examine the accuracy and effectiveness of new depictions of women and blacks in three culturally significant contemporary science-fiction films: Alien, its sequel Aliens and The Matrix.
Released in 1979, the seminal science-fiction horror classic Alien showed the great potential – both critically and commercially – for science-fiction texts involving a female protagonist. Lt. Ellen Ripley not only has a physique that pleasurable and reassuring on the eyes (Telotte, p. 51), but she is also a iron-willed and fiercely independent woman who still is not without her flaws (this is so as to not make the viewer read her as a lesbian or even to not reinforce lesbian stereotypes).
Ripley’s victory in her final battle against the extra-terrestrial creature is a reassurance that Ripley is only a protective mother figure, which makes her a successful effort by the filmmakers to erase the nightmarish image of the evil female dominatrix within science-fiction’s patriarchal discourses. Furthermore, critic Barbara Creed implies that if we extend the depiction of Ripley to all female characters in the pantheon of science-fiction texts, we could find new ways of understanding how male ideologies are sometimes used to deny the “difference” of woman in her depiction on the screen (Telotte, p. 51)
Having a strong female heroine in Ripley was not the only gender stereotype the film broke down. The crew’s spaceship Nostromo, whilst it also may be a model of lifeless and sexless rationality, is at the same time matriarchal in the womb-like imagery of Ripley and her crew sleeping in cryogenic pods at the beginning of the film. Less subtly, the Nostromo’s main computer is called Mother, who strangely in the end betrays her “children” by following the orders of the evil company who sent them on their mission (almost making Mother the female equivalent of HAL 9000 from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey) (Fulton 1995).
The alien spaceship as well is very feminine in design, showcasing an egg chamber and two very big vaginal walls to animate the female anatomy in a much more confronting way than the Nostromo. The design of the alien spaceship has an atmospheric Gothic feel that has total resemblance to its occupant: a boundary-crossing, shape-shifting being simultaneously male and female, organic and inorganic – a mixture of aroused phallus and castrating vagina (Fulton 1995).
Alien’s 1986 sequel Aliens not only showed Ripley as even tougher than before, it also showcases a female villain. Even more so than the Alien in the first film, the Alien Queen is a sadistic killing machine and the primal mother who has given birth – without a male – to endless and equally deadly offspring. Through her Aliens delivers a gruesome depiction of the reproductive organs of an unstoppable female monster. In this film, Ripley becomes a surrogate mother to Newt, a young girl left alone on the planet LV-426 after her parents and brother are themselves murdered by the inhabiting aliens. The final showdown between Ripley and the Alien Queen ensues after Ripley burns the Queen’s eggs to provoke her after the Queen has kidnapped Newt. Yet, it is not that Ripley is incapable of having children of her own and that she will reproduce because of culture and the Queen from instinct, but rather because the Queen represents Ripley’s other half – the lioness defending her cub. Both Ripley and the Alien Queen only transform into unsympathetic killing machines when their child – whether a biological or surrogate child – is threatened (Creed, p. 51).
The plot of the film The Matrix, and this aspect of the film is a trifle ironic given it seemingly incorporates so many elements that are usually synonymous with the fascination of men, is actually driven mainly by feminine narratives. It falls back on mythic structures centralized by female protagonists in texts such as Alice in Wonderland and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the former of which is, in fact, referenced in one scene by Morpheus. In its homages to those aforementioned texts among others, it is Trinity rather than Neo who can be read as the true hero of the story. Trinity has taken her name from a decidedly masculine God, and upon meeting her for the first time, Neo claims “I just thought…you were a guy,” to which she responds, “Most guys do.” (Williams 2003) On the other hand, many critics praised the Wachowskis for opening the film with an extended fight sequence featuring Trinity but noted how they later relegated her to simply being Neo’s love interest for most of the rest of the film (Schneider, p. 911), however when she revives Neo at the end by kissing him, she becomes his hero. This helps Trinity to reaffirm her crucial part in the saving of humanity (Ovnat, p. 4).
While it does not feature female characters as tough as those in Alien and Aliens, The Matrix equals those earlier films’ taboo-toppling gender depictions with its transgressive imagery of both females and males. Switch is a “gender blender” and Neo and Morpheus dress in long skirt-like leather coats. Neo and Trinity’s kiss at the end could be a straight kiss, a gay kiss or a kiss between two androgynous and unsubtle lesbians (because Trinity is wearing very masculine clothes and Neo’s head is shaven). Yet, the abundance of androgynous imagery in the film does not challenge sex or sexual roles. The Matrix is filled with images of gender bending, the leather scene (in all its militarism or sadomasochism), the questioning of who we are as individuals and androgynous aesthetic to reiterate the notion of the power of the individual and the minority (Ovnat, p. 8).
A great number of postmodern science-fiction authors and filmmakers have also unsubtly made race an integral concern in their texts. It should be unsurprising that science-fiction, being a genre awestruck by encounters with difference, must so frequently give us dramatizations of numerous significant racial historical events, starting with the American civil rights movement of the 1960s and the “blaxploitation” film and literary movement of the 1970s, which have collectively paved the way for the multiculturalism of the present day (Roberts p. 95).
In Alien, Ridley Scott presents us with a black-skinned monster, played (in the original film) by a black actor, which lurks at the bottom of a spaceship that is a metaphor for an industrial city, and kills through rape and violence with blistering efficiency. Thus, the crew’s (despite Parker also being black) fear of the Alien is essentially a metaphor for white middle-class individuals’ fear and distrust of an alienated urban black underclass. However, the character of Parker overrides the negative metaphor of the black man often being a homicidal killing machine, as Parker is an intelligent and tough African-American man who is the third last survivor after Ripley and her female colleague Lambert (Roberts p. 96).
Theories concerning The Matrix offer varying suggestions of rebel leader and Neo’s mentor Morpheus as being either John the Baptist or even the Almighty to Neo’s messiah, however the audience knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this African-American character speaks like an orator with the most engaging wisdom and power – just like the Oracle, who is also African-American (Medved 2003).
Science-fiction writers and filmmakers’ early reluctance to work their texts around black characters was perhaps reminiscent of various space administrations’ refusal to employ black astronauts. Today, black astronauts are commonplace in reality. But while The Matrix was not the first science-fiction blockbuster to feature black heroes – preceding films like The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Independence Day (1996) and Men in Black (1997) deny it that title – it can justifiably be hailed as the first science-fiction film to feature black characters as not just freedom-fighting heroes, but gods and goddesses. Michael Medved proclaims The Matrix and films like it are proof that unification is not just a dream, it is a current reality, and they have helped popularize the notion that society can be aided by African-Americans in positions of authority (Medved 2003).
Blacks are not the only racial minority who science-fiction historically has ignored. Science-fiction writers and filmmakers have taken an even longer time to incorporate Hispanic characters into their texts, which has made Eduardo A. Valenzuela pose the question as to just why there is a lack of Hispanic characters in contemporary science-fiction. Do Hispanics or Latinos even belong in science-fiction, he wonders? Are they as sellable as characters of other ethnicities? (Valenzuela 1997) By breaking new ground by not just incorporating an Hispanic character but also making the Hispanic character in question a woman, Aliens can allay Valenzuela’s fears. Aliens’ Pvt. Vasquez is twice the independent woman Ripley is: a smart-mouthed, feisty woman who, when she is not battling the alien predators, is usually performing feats of strength in order to make her male colleagues impressed and even jealous. In one scene, Pvt. Hudson asks her, “Pvt. Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?” to which she quickly replies, “No. Have you?”
Science-fiction cinema, at its most transgressive, makes radical social statements not just to provide a breath of fresh air from the more child-oriented entries in the genre and to give us a real depiction of the current state of the world in which we live, but as well to give a voice to all oppressed minorities. Whilst there are still many social minorities for science-fiction to champion, women, blacks and Hispanics are now frowned upon less, thanks to the positive depictions of them in the three films analyzed here. Alien has been applauded for being one of the very first Hollywood films to have a plot worked around a strong and intelligent heroine, as well as a tough black male character; its sequel Aliens toughened Ripley even more and featured a no-nonsense female Hispanic fighter (who can easily be read also as a lesbian, although that reading of the character indeed reinforces lesbian stereotypes); and The Matrix glorifies blacks by showing its black characters as spiritual gods and soothsayers. The impact and legacy of the groundbreaking depictions of race and gender in all three films, both socially and within the film industry, proves unequivocally that science-fiction can be a vehicle for positive social change.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Scott, R. 1979, Alien, Twentieth Century Fox Pictures
· Cameron, J. 1986, Aliens, Twentieth Century Fox Pictures
· Wachowski, L., Wachowski, A. 1999, The Matrix, Village Roadshow Films, Warner Bros. Pictures
· Creed, B. 1993, The monstrous feminine: film, feminism, psychoanalysis, p. 51, Routledge
· Fulton, E.J. 1995, Manmade women: technology, femininity and the cinema, University of Alberta (find through ProQuest)
· Telotte, J.P. 2001, Science-fiction film, p. 51, Cambridge
· Williams, G.C. 2003, Mastering the real: Trinity as the “real” hero of The Matrix, Film Criticism, spring 2003 issue (find through ProQuest)
· Schneider, S.J. (ed.) 2002, 1001 movies you must see before you die, p. 911, ABC Books
· Ovnat, H. date not given, Visions of humanity in cyberculture: 1st international conference. Queering the hets: sex gender and sexuality in the Matrix and eXistenZ, pp. 4, 8, http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/Visions/V1/ovnat%20paper.pdf, Hebrew University
· Roberts, A. 2006, Science fiction: the new critical idiom, pp. 95-96, Routledge
· Medved, M. 2003, Hollywood finally moves beyond racial oppression; Final edition, USA Today (find through ProQuest and ArticleLinker)
· Valenzuela, E.A. 1997, No se habla espanol in outer space?, Hispanic, April 1997 (find through ProQuest)
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