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 is Nobody Listening to Jada Pinkett Smith?

Jada Pinkett Smith is an accomplished A-list actress, woman of color, and mother. She's extremely active in charity work. She has 3.1 million fans on Facebook.

Compare this to her husband Will Smith, who has 43 million fans. Or Justin Bieber, who has 52 million fans. Or even The Rock, who has 8 million fans.

Here's the thing about those other folks on Facebook. They update occasionally, sometimes with what even seem to be personal messages about how they hope you see a new movie they're in or about celebrating milestones.

"12 pizzas. Sent by my 2 agents.
Dominated by 1 man."
I kind of want his life.

But Jada Pinkett Smith actually talks.

On March 10th she posted a short essay titled "Are We Bullying Our Young Artists?", in which she talks about the offhand way the media treats stars as young as single digits. On March 18th she posted another short essay called "Will there ever be a day in which women will be able to see each other beyond race, class, and culture?" And on March 21 she posted a response thanking her readers for listening and commenting, and saying that she hopes they keep thinking.

Did she really read all those comments? There's no way of telling. But that's not the point. People constantly bemoan the lack of thought and leadership in the areas of diversity and education in our celebrities. Here we have a celebrity who seems to be genuinely invested in connecting with people on a personal level about these subjects, and she's ignored. Where's the news articles about Jada Pinkett Smith starting a cultural dialogue?

I'm not saying that her thoughts are necessarily ground-breaking. But Jada Pinkett Smith is trying to talk, and I'm not sure that anyone is listening.

Ten Little Things

1. I've broken my nose, my tailbone, several toes, and most of my fingers. Riding horses is a lot like BMX - if you do it often enough, you get hurt.

2. My top five favorite movies are Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, Hot Fuzz, Small Soldiers, The Eagle, and I, Robot. (I'm told I have eclectic taste.)

3. I'm a huge classics fan, partly because I read so many as a kid (danger of being a fast reader - you run out of material. There's only so many times your parents are willing to take you to the bookstore). Some of my favorites are The Iliad, The Tale of Genji, The Frogs, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and The Brothers Karamazov.

4. I think that Jane Eyre is the most romantic book ever written. Yes, Rochester is a little crazy, but he owns his crazy.

5. I wrote my first novel when I was 13. It was impressively terrible.

6. Drizzling rain is my favorite type of weather.

7. Gray is my favorite color. I like it in all its incarnations - charcoal, silver, slate, whatever.

8. I really love animals. Everything from cats to dogs to snakes and even spiders. I pretty much like everything - except pigs. They eat people and are evil. Pigs are the devil.

9. I love hyperbole more than anything in the entire world ever. I think hyperbole is hilarious.

10. My celebrity crushes are Will Smith (forever), Channing Tatum (he seems like the nicest person, also, abs), Martin Freeman (yes I know he looks like a middle school geography teacher and I DON'T CARE), and Jeremy Renner (be in more movies, plz). Robert Downey Jr. can come too.