Science Fiction: Women Do It Better
In a cafe in New Orleans a couple years ago, I overheard a couple in conversation. The girl was explaining the book she planned to write. For about thirty minutes I listened to this extraordinary idea for a narrative, a Jekyll and Hyde-inspired story dealing with female body insecurities that I’m not going to further explain because I really hope she’s still working on it, if not near publication.
“So that’s almost like science fiction,” her boyfriend said. “Not really,” she replied
No, it’s not just “like” it, her idea is science fiction. But for some reason the classification is avoided when the work is written by a woman. It’s speculative fiction, fantasy, or quirky McSweeny’s-style stories, but if a woman wrote it, it’s certainly not sci-fi.
Just look at the brilliant book Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall. I haven’t read anything better in years. The science fiction community has all but ignored it, giving only passing mention of its James Tiptree Jr award win.
This may seem like a superficial concern. Why should it matter whether something is part of a genre or not? But “science fiction” is known as the literature of ideas, intellectual rigor, and philosophic arguments. Science fiction indicates an imaginative literature: analytic, scientific — a creative work of scholarship rather than banal solipsism.
Even if a female author is labeled science fiction, another distinction is made: that she isn’t “hard science fiction.” The “hard science fiction” bar is raised when women want to write or film science fiction. Women tend to write a lot about biology, and more women study biology than other sciences. As Peggy at Biology and Science Fiction points out, “there aren’t that many gadgets that have come out of the biological sciences, at least as compared to the physical sciences” — and gadgety is representative of “hard science fiction.”
There was a panel about this at the WISCON, the women in science fiction con:
JB: Part of the reason the concept, the term is problematic is it’s used as a norm for “real science fiction” and however we define it, it has changed as more women enter the field. Fantastic, speculative, there’s other terms they call it when they don’t want to call it sf. Femspec. In early days of 50s and 60s sf, male authors would write about social issues and the social issues around tech but when women do it’s soft sf. Then we come to 70s and 80s when writing about biology was considered soft, because (the rhetoric is that) women are their biology in some way, women can therefore more easily be biochemical scientists… I expect the next thing to fall is going to be mathematics. Real, normative, actual, the only kind we should really care about, that counts, used in book reivews, not included in canon. This changing definition has a gender bias to it.
Margaret: Just like what has been called “art”. At various times pottery, woven stuff, wasn’t art, because it was women and people of color who were doing that. And very similar things done with gender and hard sf. As you’ve suggested, when men were doing very similar things with social issues, that was still “hard”.
There’s pressure on a woman to write “hard science fiction,” even if she doesn’t really want to — just to prove that she can.
People gave Sleater Kinney a lot of guff because they didn’t have a bass player; but no one ever said that meant they weren’t a rock band! Classification is always arbitrary. Had Joanna Russ befriended Donald Bartheleme in the 70s, instead of editors of Amazing, her work would be called metafiction, (or whatever.)
Going back to the idea that every subject can be science fiction, those of the gender that breed and bleed, have plenty of interesting science fiction concepts to bring to the table.
And they are definitely consuming science fiction. At least as many young girls have read the Handmaid’s Tale as young boys have read Ender’s Game — perhaps an equal number of boys and girls have read Ender’s Game. Females tend to read more fiction, after all.
Another two reasons I just don’t buy the idea that men are inherently more interested in science fiction than women: Small Wonder and Out of this World, about a girl-robot and time-shifter whose dad is an alien, respectively. Those two shows (and Punky Brewster about an orphan who was obsessed with astronauts) were my favorites and yours if happened to be a girl growing up in the 80s.
What makes these two television shows unique from other widely enjoyed tv sci-fi like Lost in Space or even BSG today, is both of the lead characters were girls. It might be the first time science fiction was made just for a mass young female audience. Silly as it seems now, the shows were no better or worse than any other 80s sitcoms.
Children watching these programs were engaged with philosophy of science fiction: what would it be like to stop time just by touching your fingertips together? (I’m sure I’m not the only one who practiced this in my bedroom when no one was looking.) Or if your friend is made of metal and wires, do you treat her just like everyone else?
Women love science fiction! We do! Probably more than you dudes! Nearly every art school girl has Ursula Le Guin’s books on her shelf. Women actually write most of the fanfic. Even at the basest, lowest low culture it is in there: a number of romantic comedies, (many starring Mel Gibson for some reason,) use science fiction furniture. And I learned, during a period of unemployment, that nearly every soap opera has a supernatural gimmick — clones, witches, even aliens. Instead of mocking it, we should embrace it, as the feminine counterpart to the shlocky science fiction made by the likes of The Rock and Sylvester Stallone in the 90s.
Some work by women that should be welcomed into the Science Fiction cannon: the writers Anna Kavan, Angela Carter, Shelley Jackson, Katharine Burdekin. In film: Lynne Littman, Kay Linaker, Caroline Thompson, and so many others. The music of Anne Clark. Art by Sara Sze and Patricia Piccinini. These are all just off the top of my head. I should probably make another post on this.
And let me praise Daughters of the North yet again. It’s magnificent. The Handmaid’s Tale comparisons were inevitable, but Atwood’s dystopia, while bleak and repressive, isn’t nearly as horrific as Hall’s vision. Hers is a world of hunger, suffering, torture, shit. It’s even better than Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Sarah Hall is a genius.
Images of sculptures by Sarah Sze
Previously:
- Science Fiction is for the Renaissance Men
- Dario Argento and the Paradoxical Feminism of Horror Films
Related links:
- Bat Segundo interviews Sarah Hall
- When Harry Met Sexism, Bidisha, The Guardian
- Science Fiction Fandom Has No Sex, This Recording
- What Chicks Don’t Like About Science Fiction, io9
- Gender and Fan Studies, CCC
Dario Argento and the Paradoxical Feminism of Horror Films
Horror film is the greek mythology of our time — unavoidably moralizing. Especially when it comes to cartoonish fare like Nightmare on Elm Street or the Saw series, you root for the villain, dispensing gruesome O. Henry-ending comeuppance — slash the face of the vain beauty queen, paralyze the bully star athlete. Without unlikable victims, the film can’t go on. The viewer’s conscience is brustled. He feels remorse as spectator of evil, even if it is all staged.
Sometimes the most dramatic moments in a horror film are violence towards animals, as they represent the ultimate innocent victims. What did the puppy do to you? I haven’t yet see The Strangers, but Liv Tyler seems perfectly cast. She’s strong and beautiful, in a humble way. Impossible to dislike. You wouldn’t want her in danger, any more than you could stand a chainsaw weilding monster attacking a panda.
Nearly every film has an Athena, an Artemis, a Cassandra, or some figure combining the myths of all three. Either her boyfriend dies early, or he is maimed, paralyzed, zombified, etc. She must defend him, but first herself, relying on wits and strength she never realized she had. Here is a good essay reviewing several of my favorite films, and explaining how horror films subvert traditional gender roles by making a feminine character the hero.
Notably, there are also a number of films with the girl as the killer, the prototype being I Spit on Your Grave (set for a remake,) in which a woman savagely beaten and raped, kills her attackers off one by one. Hard Candy, with Ellen Page playing a young woman who literally castrates would-be pedophiles, is another one. I didn’t particularly like it, but its faults lie not with the premise, so much as the too-cute script.
At least since HP Lovecraft, horror has been indentified as the genre of repressed sexual fantasy. And I’ve heard more than several people compare slashing to penetration, but for now let’s stick to the theory of the final girl, as named by Carol Clover in “Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.” Her book was groundbreaking in that it pointed out the audience — male or female — does not identify with the serial killer, but the lone woman on the run.
Nobody does the “final girl” quite like Dario Argento, then again most of his main characters are women to begin with. His latest film, the third in the trilogy starting with Suspiria and Inferno — Mother of Tears — opened this weekend. But with surprisingly little fanfare considering he got a big shout out in Juno, and nearly every art school girl I know is obsessed with him. If you’re a fan it’s a must-see, and even if your not, it’s a good place to start. It’s missing the hallucinatory neon music box architecture and prog rock orgy that is Goblin, the band who scored his best known films. But absent of these campy stylistic details, one finally able to appreciate Dario Argento’s gift for suspense.
Sarah, an art historian, played by Argento’s extremely attractive daughter Asia, receives a recently unearthed tomb. Opening it and examining its contents becomes a literal play on Pandora’s Box. All the witches in the world — played by hot goth chicks of all ages and ethnicities — come to Rome to celebrate the new darkness. They are lead by the Mother of Tears (her sisters the Mothers of Pain and the Mother of Sighs, were killed in the previous films. This trio is loosely based on Thomas de Quincey’s Suspiria de Profundis.)
Sarah discovers she’s a “white witch,” and therefore must confront the Mother of Tears herself for a magic-off. So there is no sense of WTF are you doing walking down those steps? She has to come face to face with the danger.
Argento’s films have always seemed very feminine, perhaps because the mother of Asia, Daria Nicolodi, often cowrote his scripts. There’s a very small list of women writing and directing horror, so her contribution is notable.
Incidentally, I saw two and a half films over this unpleasantly temperatured weekend. First Prince Caspian, (which is delightful) and afterward, I walked into the last hour of Sex and the City, playing down the hall. The script is dumb and Sarah Jessica Parker is annoying (but actually kinda pretty in it, in a Joan Crawford kind of way.) But everyone is there to see the clothes, and it delivers for that. Just as horror film scripts tend to be threadbare, just circumstances that might deliver a zombie sneaking out from under the bed every twenty minutes, SATC was written to show off shoes, and there’s really nothing wrong with it if that’s your thing
Related links:
- Final Girl
- Pretty Scary
- What Is a Feminist Horror Film Anyway? by Hannah Ax Wound
- Ax Wound, a feminist horror film zine
- Ginger Snaps, great feminist horror film written by a women
- Slumber Party Massacre, written and directed by women
Show Me Your Titles is the best film podcast. It’s like Bookslut for film — funny and deeply knowledgeable about the industry. When they geek out about things like editing and lighting, it doesn’t seem unnecessary or unintelligible. Listening with my headphones, I laughed out loud in the supermarket when they speculated what kinds of things neighbors and besties, Claire Denis and Catherine Breillat talk about when they hang out. And I now have a better understanding of Vera Chytilova’s Daisies.
Anya Phillips, James Chance’s girlfriend, was a fascinating lady. Part of that fascinating is how little can be dug up on her, and what exists on the web is all scandelous. See Downtown 81. Nogoodforme just posted a bunch of photos of her. Nice hair, lady.
Every art school girl loves Vanessa Beecroft. The LA Times explains why. Here’s the story in one image. (via.)
Soft-core Czech fairy tale film “Valerie and Her Week of Wonders” is playing at MFA Boston next week with a live soundtrack by several “New Weird” musicians. Is this going to be Rocky Horror for art school girls before long?
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