Choose To Be Better

When I was very, very young, my father handed me a copy of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. I looked at the relatively thick book in my hands, and then back at him.

"You cut up the cover," I said in mild horror. (It would take me until college to become halfways comfortable with marking my books.)

He nodded. "I want you to imagine the characters on your own. I don't want you to just look at the picture, I want you to do the work," he said, and left me to my reading. 

I shrugged it off and carried on as kids do, but in a lot of ways that set the tone for my future as a reader. 

From that time forward, my dad would give me books and expect me to discuss my thoughts with him. He gave me classics - Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Thoreau - but also more recent books from the likes of Heinlein, Orson Scott Card, and Madeleine L'Engle, just to name a few. After the first book, he never cut the cover out again. He set a high standard and expected me to reach it. So I did. 

Because of the breadth of material I was exposed to, I developed a passion for material I most likely never would have picked up on my own. My opinions didn't always align with my dad's (I ate up Heinlein, Card, and Twain, but couldn't stand Dickens, Thoreau, or L'Engle). When I was a teenager he grumbled that the only real fantasy was Tolkien and everything else was just derivative as he got out his wallet to pay for my copies of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Anne Rice.  We occasionally found common ground over books like Black Hawk Down and The Iliad.

So when I see a desperate attempt to keep scifi/fantasy as an old boys' club, I know the truth about what literary discourse can be. There's simply no reason that men can't choose to be considerate and welcoming of female science fiction fans. A Y chromosome doesn't imbue you with the analysis gene, and it's not a get out of jail free card. The men that endlessly defend their own sexism could choose not to defend it. They could choose to focus on women's opinions, rather than their appearances.

Choose to be better, SFWA.

Science Fiction and the Ladies

Today we're going to look at one of my favorite movies ever, Will Smith's neglected classic, 2004's I,Robot. Because in the Sci Fi world recently there's been a lot of, um. Fail? Regarding the ladies. So we're going to take a look at a movie where a lady is the co-star. Not the love interest. The co-star.

And yes, before y'all start in on me, let me assure you that I am well aware the movie has middling-to-nothing to do with Assimov's story.

One reason I, Robot didn't do very well is probably that, although it deals with huge themes about the nature of humanity, at its core it's quite a small movie. The main cast is comprised of three people with three secondary-ish characters, and only Will Smith has any arc to speak of. Big movies with casts of thousands (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean) tend to do better for a variety of reasons that we won't get into here.

But I think there's another reason it didn't do well, which can pretty much be summed up in one picture.

Look at that neckline. What were they thinking?!

Dr. Calvin is a robotics scientist working in the lab that Will Smith (Detective Spooner... whatevs, you know you're just thinking of him as Will Smith) investigates after the death of a famous robot inventor. She's fully invested in robots as the transformative Apple products of the new era, and needs the push from Will to start seeing them as something potentially sinister. Will has an illogical hatred of robots that blinkers him, and he doesn't understand them or the company they come from. The two of them cannot solve the case of the inventor's death without both of their perspectives and knowledge working together. She's invested because Inventor was her teacher. He's invested because Inventor fixed him after a horrific accident.

In other words, this is a buddy cop movie. This is Sherlock Holmes. This is Men in Black. This is Point Break.

A great idea, right? Two great tastes that taste great together. A sci-fi buddy cop movie. But they made one fatal error.

The buddy cop is a lady.

Look at them, walking together like they're
equals or something.

At no point in the movie is there even a hint of romantic tension between the two leads. Dr. Calvin doesn't want or expect to be saved, and Will Smith doesn't want to save her. On more than one occasion he leaves her to fend for herself while he runs ahead or stays behind. Sometimes he listens to her, sometimes they bicker, and both of them visibly become better people as a result of their interactions over the movie - Will drops the incessant bitching about his ex wife and general bitterness, and Dr. Calvin becomes more adaptive.

Moreover, the movie itself treats her - and us lady viewers - as an equal. Is there a shower scene with Dr. Calvin? Yeah. But there's also a shower scene with Will Smith, and my God if every single review doesn't mention that fact. Oh no! We were exposed to the female gaze for 35 seconds! The shock! The horror! Let me fetch my smelling salts!

Umm... I 'll fetch them in a minute.

We're so incredibly used to women having a "place" in movies as the "reward love interest" that I think people didn't know what to do with this movie when it came out.

Well. No. That's not true. They did know what to do with it - ignore it, mostly. Critics almost universally said "meh", or "stupid". And nobody mentioned Dr. Calvin at all, unless it was to say that her part was unbelievable. Because you know, attractive and competent female scientists? I can take your hyper-advanced robotics, but truly sir, this time you have gone too far!

During the same year critics fawned over Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie that explores what our memories mean to us. Now, I'm not saying that I, Robot is as smart or well-directed as ESotSM. But on the other hand, this was a well-made action movie with heart that explored an extremely timely issue, aka what it means to give increasingly large parts of our lives over to machines. This is a movie that asks verbatim:

"I suppose you would have banned the internet to keep the libraries open?"

This movie's marketing, and its critics, flat-out refused to accept Dr. Calvin's relevancy in her own movie. Instead it billed itself inaccurately as a Blade-esque one man mission to blow up a bunch of robots. Which a) sounds stupid, and b) is not this movie.

One man does epic shit. That lady in
the trailers? Uh, she's nobody. Shut up.

I can't help but wonder what the marketing for this movie - and its reception - would have looked like if it was about two men fighting against a futuristic doom.

I'm not sayin, I'm just sayin.

Why it sucks that The Host didn't do well at the box office

If you're hoping to see more ladies, more sci-fi, or more ladies in sci-fi, it sucks that The Host appears to be crashing and burning at the box office.

On its opening night, The Host came in fourth with a measly $5.5 million, behind a male-led testosterone fest and an animated movie about cavemen (that's already been out for a week). Experts suggest this is likely to yield a $13 million total for its weekend run.

Now, am I saying that women can't enjoy movies about nonsensical "military" action? Of course not. Look, I own the first G.I. Joe movie. I am THERE. But we've spent a good 200,000 years watching men do stuff. I'm ready to watch women do stuff too. I want women in leading roles in sci-fi and action movies.

The people that make movies pay close attention to what fails and what succeeds, and they look at this in the form of generalizations and demographics. When The Host bombs, what are they going to say? They're going to say, "This was a science fiction movie with a female protagonist and it failed." They're very unlikely to say, "Oh, this movie had a bad script! Let's try again next week!"

No, they'll pick another action movie with a male protagonist because, well, James Bond and Jason Bourne make money. And why mess with a winning formula?

Dear one lady that we allowed in the movie:
enjoy the back of the box. PROGRESS!