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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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I realize that I am a day late and a dollar short here, but I watched Avatar last night for the first time (on demand in my living room). I had avoided it because I'd heard it was awful, and frankly, was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't as awful as I had expected (though it was no great work of genius).
Anyway, this had little to do with the main gist of the thing, but near the opening, some marine hollers at a bunch new recruits "okay ladies! Yadda yadda macho marine stuff!"
And I just turned to my partner and rolled my eyes and said, "because no matter how far into the future we go, calling men women will always be an insult."
Seriously can we imagine nothing beyond misogyny like forever and ever? It's just so tiresome. I'm not saying all futuristic sci-fi should be sunshine and rainbows and...Star Trek, but you know, we could at least be a little creative. (And the main gist of the story was pretty unconvincing for similar reasons. I found it hard to believe that in a post-environmental collapse earth culture, it would really be that okay to be utterly black and white about the genocide of an "indigenous" population.)
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Joined: 3/17/2011
Posts: 88
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Well, o' course there's the obvious: a lot of sci-fi isn't really about the future at all, just an extension and exageration of the present. In the case of Mr. Cameron, the man is obviously very fond of military culture and militarism--it's the same culture in all of his military movies (he's usually pretty dang critical of that culture, to be sure, but none the less he also loves it dearly). And the "ladies" thing has simply become cinematic short hand for "military culture" (and sports culture and cop culture, for that matter--I too am tired of the "ladies" thing).
One thing that comes to mind: our culture here in the U.S. is so backward about sex that anything like you're proposing would be seen as unbearably political. Which is immensely sad. I'm trying to get at something "better" in my book here on BC since in that world, war and patriarchal oppression turn out to be deadly to the oppressors as well as their victims. And with everyone afraid of their own shadows, political correctness has run absolutely riot to the point where curse words are considered dangerous substances. So it's kind of a two steps forward, eight steps back affair.
The trick, I think, in adjusting the patriarchal paradigm in our stories without making people feel preached at is to create a world where the progressive attitudes can be seen as a logical outgrowth of circumstances and also to make sure to show the unvarnished downside of this "better" system. And, most importantly, make them an integral part of the plot so the reader doesn't think the author is simply indulging his or her personal political biases.
Personally, I see a dwindling of misogyny as a natural consequence of the global culture developing right now, thanks to the internet and the huge increase in the education of women and girls which is just picking up steam globally. As totalitarian systems break down around the world because the folks in power can no longer control the flow of information, I see the world's culture eventually settling somewhere around the norms of a progressive western city, like say, San Francisco. Gender won't be such a big deal, nudity likewise, sexual orientation ditto. It's just a matter of time, as far as I can see. In the meantime, though, the world is gonna have a nervous breakdown or five trying to cope with the changes. As far as I can tell, the military, professional sports, and the police will be so changed as to be unrecognizable.
Another problem--the same problem the writers of Star Trek had with Rodenberry's vision of utopia--is that what you're describing takes away the opportunities for drama rather than escalating them, and most writers have a tough time finding enough drama to fill their narratives without being told that one mainstay of human drama, the "war between the sexes" has been won and no longer applies. And of course, most folks are so embroiled in their own "gender issues" that writing a culture that is simply beyond them is, well, beyond them.
Finally, it's always a good sign when the book you want to read hasn't been written yet. 
-Kevin
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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It is a good sign.
But I have to lament the lack of imagination in a genre that is, by very definition, all about imagination. Seems to me we could find drama in all kinds of places besides the same old, same old ones we have now.
It keeps hitting me in random moments and freaking me out that Don't Ask, Don't Tell is over. I lived on Andrews AFB for two years, not telling, while partnered to an officer. The idea that I could just be another officer's wife now is...mindblowing.
But that hardly erases all the dramatic potential in a story about the military--or even about sex/gender/sexuality in the military. it isn't even particularly Utopic by my values, but the standard insults sure are going to shift.
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Joined: 4/26/2011
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I get what your saying, but I think that while the face of a problem might change, the emotional core of our problems will always be the same. The Gay Rights Movement and the Civil Rights movement are very different on the surface, but they both come down inequality.
Every single conflict or problem will seem somewhat familiar, no matter what skin it wears.
That being said, I understand your desire for stereotypes and insults to disappear or at least change, but the sad fact of the matter is that history does tend to repeat in cycles. Hopefully each cycle will slowly improve upon itself, but sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it even gets worse.
Maybe the human race was dying, so woman were banned from military service so the human race would have a better chance of reproduction and surviving. A society which had evolved to be almost gender-blind would suddenly become very conscious of gender. Over time, this law created a prejudice against woman in the military. Obviously, I'm stretching, and James Cameron probably just likes military culture, but you see my point.
Would it be better if the characters had some emotion called Shimishm, which we are incapable of feeling? How could we possibly connect to that, or even describe it? We'll always have fears, emotions, and desires, no matter how far society advances, no matter what the surface dictates.
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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If it was a story like the one you describe, that would be really thoughtful and interesting. "Ladies!" as short-hand for incompetent men is NOT thoughtful or interesting. And no, he didn't tell that story, so explaining it away with an elaborate history that doesn't exist (since nothing exists outside the film itself, since the film is a construction of fiction) isn't really a reasonable option.
I'm not saying the future will be perfect or even better, I'm not advocating PC language or complaining that my feelings are hurt. I'm just bored to death with this kind of thing in the same way I'm bored by blonde, busty heroines. Give me drama, give me intolerance of difference, but don't give me a 20th century military stereotype in your futuristic movie. It would be like having them all drinking diet coke. Surely that will be over--we''ll have moved on to something else--by then.
I mean, this movie in particular is rife with sex and race stereotypes, so it almost isn't worth picking on, but I see this kind of thing a lot. Culture and society does change--yes there is still lots of sexism and racism in ours (LOTS) but it is, at least, quite differently expressed than in, say, the 1950s.
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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Not to mention, using "ladies" as an insult to marines implies the marines are all male, which isn't even true right now, today, so in the middlish future, it's not convincing.
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Joined: 3/17/2011
Posts: 88
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Hey Lily,
Seems you're liking that movie less and less by the minute! lol
I don't think the stereotyped behavior will change by the mere fact of integrating the military. These men don't play the "ladies card" because it reflects reality, they play it in order to demean other man and these other men will tend to feel demeaned because of what they've internalized about what "masculinity" demands. Police forces have had women cops for quite a while now and "ladies syndrome" is alive and well there.
Did you watch the Women's World Cup this year? You remember the moment when that American player missed the sudden death kick that lost them the championship? When she missed, her face lit up in astonishment and then she rolled her eyes heavenward and smiled. I remember the moment vividly. It seemed like the most natural, healthy, humble reaction.
What struck me was how a male in the same situation would absolutely never have such a comfortable reaction to missing that crucial goal. He would likely glower, curse, kick the turf or bring his hands up to his head as if in terrible pain, fear darkening his expression as he contemplates getting chewed out by the men in charge. (And to be sure, I've seen plenty of women athletes who've had this sort of "gnashing of teeth" reaction as well.)
If a man had lost the winning point of the World Cup and responded as this woman did I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't get fired for "not having his head in the game."
What I'm trying to say is men, in general (I'm generalizing here) are really emotionally effed up about what it means to be a man and what it means to be strong, and as long as that continues, calling men anything other than men will continue to be felt as an insult, which again, is the immediate point of this sort of behavior. Yes, it's a two-fer 'cause at the same moment that it demeans the individual man, it demeans all womankind as well. And of course, if women weren't seen as some other, lesser species in this context, the insult would carry no weight and lose any meaning. I'm saying men are gonna have to learn to redefine ourselves before any real healing (and not just political correctness) in this arena is to become the norm.
It's amazing how much HASN'T been written about when it comes to the future, ain't it? 
-Kevin
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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I think that's my overall frustration. If you've a got a couple-five hundred years to work with (let alone if you're dealing with a story vastly outside known history in a totally imaginary distant future or long ago galaxy far away) it seems there's an infinite number of possibilities as to what might have been going on between now and then.
As I've been writing my (first ever attempt) at science fiction, set 500 years into the future, I look, of course, at now and at where history seems to be going, to imagine where it could be in that much more time. But I also think a lot about where human history was 500 years in our past and look at the sorts of changes we went through in that time.
Whatever insults were flying around then, they barely make sense to us now--plenty of people don't even know that "wherefor art thou, Romeo?" doesn't mean "where are you, Romeo?" (Believe me, I'm an English teacher.) And if you are looking at relations between the sexes, well, gee, there are enormous differences between then and now--almost incomprehensible ones.
Of course, movies and books about the future (or about a fantasy world, or about the past) are always more about the moment in which they are written than they are actually about the future. But this can be done in interesting, creative ways, or in really transparent, dumb ways. Even though I expected little from Avatar, I have to say this moment threw me out the story completely, right away, into eye-roll territory.
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Joined: 3/17/2011
Posts: 88
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For me as well. I'm mostly disappointed with how little things change in the future I read about in books. Y'know, Star Trek takes 300 years to invent the cell phone. And when it comes to cultural change? Fuggeddaboutit.
I'm reading a book now, *Julian Comstock* supposedly about the 22nd Century, but it's really just an ersatz 19th Century pastiche. See, in the book, the "right wing" has absolutely won--America is an aggressively imperialist Christian nation and the office of President has become all but hereditary. The natural resources necessary for our modern life have been depleted and the author uses this as an excuse to simply turn the clock back and place us in a turn of the century America with horses and trains and WWI style trench warfare.
How'd we get there from here? So far, he's given no explanation beyond "the Christian Right won." It's dumb but charmingly written to a degree and promises to have a big cultural revolution type ending and that's why I'm reading it, 'cause my book too involves some sort of cultural revolution at the end and seeing how another author handles that sorta thing is worth slogging through some undercooked futurism to get at.
A lot has changed in 500 years, but the next 500 is prolly gonna see as much change as we've seen in a thousand or more. Just look at the cultural changes since the 50's or even since 2001! At the same time, we do see things that don't change or that revert. We have plenty of folk today that wish we were back in the 1st Century C.E.
I read *The Windup Girl* not long ago and that was a pretty good book but there was no reason to place it 3-5 hundred years in the future--could have easily been the next century or two without changing a thing. There was some culturally relevant stuff about our species' relations with artificial humans, their status in our world, but it wasn't remotely progressive, as you might imagine.
One of my permanently backburner projects has been a rewriting of the Star Trek universe where all the outwardly silly conventions of that series are explained. Why is it always the red shirts who die? Why do some Klingons have crazy brow ridges and some look like humans with douchy facial hair? Why do almost all aliens look so much like humans? The answers to these questions and more point to a lot of high strangeness just beneath the surface of the Star Trek world that we all know and, er, love. Once the project finds a plot, I'll prolly get on it.
-Kevin
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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That would be totally fun. Remember when Warf says "we don't like to talk about it?"
LOL
Yeah--like it would take 300 years for a white man to kiss a Black woman--and only when forced! Ha, Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemmings much???
Love all the 60s nonsense in that first Star Trek.
Myself, I fantasize about being part of the group of humans that lived in prehistory on the west coast of South America--you know, the ones they now think came across the Alutians and down the coast to populate the Americas? Seems like a nice life. Even if you died at 40 or perhaps younger, it would still be nice while it lasted.
I have no delusions about time = positive "progress" but time definitely = major change. And you're right, the rate of change seems to be speeding up exponentially. I wrote my college papers in longhand only twenty years ago.
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Joined: 5/25/2011
Posts: 121
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Hi Lily, been a while. First off, don't mix up technological change with cultural. Remember, Dick Tracy had wrist tv communicators in the 50's. A good guess is a good guess and not much more. Spock puts data cards into his computer that look just like 3.5 inch floppies in the original ST. Another good guess excpet they were obsolete by the 1990's. Cultural change is very different - I often think of it as the tide. Change advances and advances and then suddenly something happens and it retreats. Religious revivalism has been spawned during every period of economic upheaval. The big birth of southern Baptist thought was during the Civil War. My point is that when times get tough or scarry people turn to "that ole time religion". Unfortunately, that ole time religion in culture is often gender based. Feminists in the 60's and 70's hoped that by now there would be no glass ceiling, that we would have had our first woman president, etc., and many of the hopes have come true, but at the same time we have had Brittany Spears as a gender role model! What South Park called the "stupid dumb whore" look. Women want great careers, but the media tells them they have to wear hip huggers with the waist band somewhere around their knees, and unfortunately, many women think this is great! Remember - Captain Janeway was supposed to be a rolemodel for the woman executive, but needed 7 of 9 to save her show! A cat suit with 7 inch heals still trumps a thoughtful executive woman. (I always wondered if those 7 inch heals had magnetic soles for EVA's - but I digress). If you go back and look at 50's and 60's SciFi there was a clear belief that science could solve anything (yes it was misogynistic and basically the Boy's Book of Adventure but still optomistic as far as science was concerned). Now we have an entire major political party that denounces science - how's that for progress!
As to your original question - why even bother with Avatar? Go watch "Dances with Wolves" and you'll soon realize that Cameron simply stole the plot and put the native American's in blue face! I could not believe what a rip-off it was. If he was going to steal a plot do you think he was going to worry about updating the marines? Of course not - nothing but creative laziness (and he laughs alll the way to the bank). If you set a story in an easily recognizeable world it makes life very easy for the viewer or reader - no effort on their part required, no need to think. Challenge the reader and you often don't get many people reading beyond page 2. If you want to see a master at work watch Jurrasic Park 1. In the opening scene when the paleontologist Grant scares the devil out of the fat kid he's actually laying the foundation for all that will come later with the T. rex and Velociraptor. It's pure non-sense, and really has nothing to do with the plot, but it primes the viewer for what comes later. You are right though, the drill sargent (or whatever could have just referred to the privates as maggots, but that wouldn't be as colorful). He could also have called them Denebiam Slime Devils, but that would have required explanation.
And Kevin, as a Geologist I agree totally as far as Star Trek is concerned. Whenever a geologist was assigned to an away team you knew he'd be dead after the next commercial. That's why I never joined Star Fleet.
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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Hi Tom!
"Dances with Wolves with blue people" is exactly what I said to Cole about half-way through the movie. That and every other "going native" story ever told, except lazier and flashier as you say.
I actually love the idea of Denebiam Slime Devils! Maybe they are highly intelligent, artistic creatures, who earned their name via prejudiced humans, and thus the marine commander is still a big jerk, but he's a different kind of jerk at least than every other jerk ever written up to now. And if it WASN'T explained, it would still be fun. In some ways, it would be more fun than using a familiar term, because it would make the world seem richer and more fully self-realized, even if we don't realize it as the audience.
Again, I hate to pick on a movie that's mediocre at best, but the same kind of thing annoys me about so much sci-fi and disappoints me. When you have pretty much anything at all as a possibility, seems to me, it could be a lot more fun and interesting.
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Joined: 5/25/2011
Posts: 121
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Hi Lily,
Thinking about this some more I think what you are looking at is basically the difference between fiction and literature. I remember a SF magazine I really enjoyed called Aboriginal SF (only lasted a few years back in the 1980's). They had two book reviewers, one who reviewed everything and another that was very selective. When the second was asked why he refused to review the latest Star Trek novel, he wrote that whenever he received a book from a publisher, or just browsed the shelves he had a simple selection criterion. If between the blurb and the cover art he figured it was a book he had read a hundred times before he just put it down. He was looking for originality.
My point is that most publishers and readers are not like that reviewer - they want sameness, they want familiarity. The only time that isn't true is when there is a forcing mechanism that drives them to think. When I read your comment I realized that the reason the Sargent doesn't say something like "you lazy Martian rock sucking jelly blobs" is because there was no reason to be inventive. Consider the use of obscene language on tv. In SF shows you hear things like "Frack you!" or "Smeg head". Why? Because if they used the obvious terms they're copying the censors would bleep it or cut it. So there's a forcing mechanism for them to come up with something different. I fondly remember Johnny Carson starting a monologue on the Tonight Show with a joke about the Fuggowii Tribe (punchline for each joke: We're the Fuggowii!"). this went on for about a week until one night he got stopped by his director frantically waving at him - apparently someone had finally let some of the NBC execs in on the joke (only one had a heart attack). It is a sad commentary on us that saying a "bad word" on tv can still get you in trouble, but there is no equivalent for misogynistic comments. As a result space heroes have to say "Frack" (aqnd often gets that like nervous laugh which tells us we're getting away with being naughty), but calling soldiers "ladies" is just part of the wallpaper and goes unnoticed by most.
So to get back to my original point - fiction versus literature. If your goal is to just write a quick, saleable story, many times you create a world already familiar to the reader and you probably don't even think about many of the details, they flow (you mean that Martian hitmen for the slimemold selling mob wouldn't say "Fuggedaboutit!"??). So that type of story just brings a lot of garbage along with it. On the other hand, someone writing what they would like to someday be called literature might be much more detail oriented, and trying to do something different. Those are the stories where you won't see your Sargent at all. Unfortunately, they are often rather hard to fine too.
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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Well, I have a PhD in literature, and we academics would call everything made out of language "literature," but I see what you mean. We'd say that's high-brow versus middle-brow, versus low-brow, or something like that. Not that the lingo matters all that much. But yes, like I said, I should go easier on a mediocre film and just enjoy the special effects, which were nice to watch.
Still, Shakespeare was low-brow/middle brow literature for most of its history and it is full of uncouthness, but always quite original (in its time AND ours) nonetheless!
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Joined: 5/25/2011
Posts: 121
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Gee, I remember you said you had a grad degree, but I didn't realize it was a PhD. What branch of literature did you specialize in? I was an English major for a while. Actually, one of the profs that taught me the most about writing and thinking was an English Professor. I remember him fondly til this day. Unfortunately, too many of the others I ran into were only interested in telling us how to interpret literature (i.e., their interpretation being the only valid one). Ended up switching to science. My PhD is in Paleoecology as a branch of Geology.
Thanks for explaining the lit/fiction distinction. I always wondered about that, mainly because most bookstores (those nearly extinct things) tended to have literature sections and fiction sections. I guess someone decided high-brow, middle-brow and low-brow sections wouldn't work well from a marketing point of view. I had always just assumed that literature was fiction that had withstood the test of time.
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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The use of the term "literary" to mean only certain kinds of writing will probably always irk me about commercial publishing. Likewise the term "author." A writer is a writer is a writer in these post-post-post-everything days among the lit profs. "Author" is a terribly pretentious term and completely obsolete in academia.
But it's just marketing language, I guess.
I specialized in American lit from the Reconstruction to WWI, looking in particular at various struggles to define "family" in a time of race, sex and gender upheaval that troubled the (U.S.'s) national identity. I am more of the teach to write and think kind of teacher than the tell someone how to interpret lit kind of teacher, though interpreting lit is a good exercise in writing and thinking. I do think many English teachers get bogged down in the idea of being special-special-special for what they know rather than in the idea of teaching others to learn (and continuing to learn themselves).
But there are about 1000 English PhDs per academic job opening these days, so I am a multiply self-employed stay at home mother with a partner who brings home the bulk of the bacon from her own full professorhood in Media Studies and Women's Studies.
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Joined: 5/25/2011
Posts: 121
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Yes, I'm a bit familiar with the sad state of academic jobs in general. Our master of on-line teaching programs, which is unfortunately a support staff position, has a PhD in English Lit. Instead of teaching the material he loves, he has to guide rather clueless faculty in converting their courses to on-line.
That's an odd time because it's generally overshadowed by the Civil War on one end and the Great Depression/WWII on thre other. I guess the only writer I'm really familiar with from that time is Ambrose Bierce, and of course Twain. I've tried Henry James, but by the time I get to the end of one of his sentences I usually forgotten what the beginning was about.
Should be an interesting source for character though. former slaves with their dashed hopes of real freedom, women nurses who treated the wounded durig the CW but can't become doctors, let alone vote, even though they know they are better than the incompetent male doctors they worked with, people damaged by the war. Lots of character types to explore through stories.
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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It was a big time for African American literature. Half the books in my dissertation were by Black writers. There was still great hope int he period for the 20th century to usher in some kind of utopia. I think all the time about how sad it is that my characters (in my own historical fiction in this period) are about to get really screwed by the disappointments of the first half of the twentieth century.
But it's a terribly interesting time for people in the trenches of life--as opposed to Big Events in History Books.
I LOVE Henry James. But I'm a masochist in other ways too. He made my dissertation cut with "The American" which is not at all one of my favorites from a fan-perspective, but awfully interesting from a cultural criticism perspective. Twain made it in there too. Plus Pauline Hopkins, Charles Chesnutt and Nella Larson. With lots of DuBois and Douglass thrown in for fun.
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Joined: 12/18/2011
Posts: 25
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I very much enjoyed the movie Avatar, because of the action, and because of the romance between the main characters. Also loved it because the good guys ultimately won and the main bad guy bit the dust (forgive me, I'm a guy, lol). Beyond that, as a work of literature, I fully agree with what you said in your opening posts of this thread: it was mediocre, and not so well written. Emphatically yes, I do believe, in such a genre as science fiction, where we can go anywhere we want, we should be able to write good imaginative original work.
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Joined: 8/9/2011
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This topic hits home for me because I am working on a story that is a bit dystopian. I think for me Sci-fi is always at it's best when the author simply looks down range to the logical trajectory of mankind whatever his present state. In that way it makes a statement about the present and the future, and the reader has gained a valuable insight. I think Avatar tries for this in ways, and seems a lot like a Sci-fi version of Dances With Wolves in others...
VH
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Joined: 12/18/2011
Posts: 25
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Hi again, Lilly!
Had to come back and see the new activity on this thread, and found it to be a comment by Virillio. Virillio is writing a very interesting work. I perused the first two chapters of his book a few hours ago. I plan to finish reading what he has uploaded and leave some kind of review later today.
Back to this subject, though, I'm really glad you decided to open this topic for discussion. It's a help to me to see other people's ideas and viewpoints in the writing world. I might never have noticed the whole "all right, ladies" thing if you hadn't pointed it out, because it's become so common in the books and movies of our times for "tough guys" to call other male characters "ladies" or "girls" etc. Most of us have probably become desensitized to it because of the times.
It's a small matter, maybe, but often what seems negligible to me might be huge to someone else, and since we are writing for everyone to potentially read, it's a good thing for us to try to see the words we might choose through others' eyes before we put them out there for the rest of the world.
I've been trying, whether subconsciously or otherwise, to take a fairly safe path on my journey toward finishing my lifetime back-burner project, while at the same time making an effort not to leave out any of the elements I originally intended to include. Like a lot of older SciFi works, there are hidden and not-so-hidden socio-political statements in it, most of which are purely intentional (lol). Some thoughts are revealed by omission, while others are hidden by inclusion. to write a work that satisfies our own intent is possibly the greatest challenge of all.
Anyway, thanks again.
;0)
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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Yes, when Virillio says writers are looking down the path to the future to what seems "logical" that's pretty much it. But people coming from different perspectives will find different futures "logical."
My own sci-fi story is what I deem logical in 500 years, given a certain kind of trajectory. It's both good and bad (it's human, after all) but it's also quite different from what lots of other sci-fi writers have imagined (at least the big ones I am familiar with).
As with evolution, there are a myriad ways things can change socially over time. History is full of broken threads, just as biology is full of mutant dead-ends.
It might be interesting to ask why people are more or less interested in imaging certain threads of possibility versus others.
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Joined: 12/18/2011
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Ah, good point. Where we go with our imagined future might very well say more about us than it does about the world....
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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Much more! Just as historical fiction says more about our moment than about the past. We only write our own experience--even our imaginations are controlled by what we know directly, which is why I find enduring sexism troubling. What does it say about us NOW, that we can't imagine ourselves in a place where that is not the norm? And "sexism" is just an example. There are plenty of other things that are troubling too.
In Toni Morrison's Nobel address, she talked about being worried that the US American imagination about the future couldn't make it past a thirty-year bond.
Even when we set our fiction a thousand years into the future, there is a certain lack of imagination about what we could be as human beings, as a society, as people in respectful relationships with one another. We seem limited to bitter, grim versions of ourselves and consider that more "realistic" or "mature" or worldly-wise.
As filled with despair as I often am, I struggle against it, because I know despair is only half the human story. Fiction could be a place to show that struggle in more complexity. (Sometimes it is, don't get me wrong--the fiction I love is certainly more complex.)
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Joined: 7/13/2011
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Maybe I'm joining the discussion a little late, but I'd like to contribute some anyway. I liked Avatar (back to where this discussion began) for what it was: high-budget, low-IQ entartainment, lots of CGI and not too burdened with the weight of ideas.
That said, stereotypes are essential to something like that. Think about Indians and cowboys: some sixty years with the Indians as the bad guys, the next thirty and counting the other way round. Same goes for the aliens: Lt. Ripley vs. the horrible monster for some years, then we get poor innocent Na'vi. Maybe the first movies with Indians as the good guys had some deep meaning (never been a big fan of the genre), but as soon as you slip into big-budget productions it's all about catching attention, and that's where the deep meanings end.
Excuse me if I turn out so cynical, but that's the way I see it. As for sexism, Avatar space marines are as stereotyped as it goes: big, ugly, dumb, prone to violence and trigger-happy. Reading between the lines, I think Cameron is way deeper than at first sight. Think about those Blackwater operatives back in Iraq: do you really think people in that kind of business could evolve something approaching a soft spot for sexual equality, even in centuries?
Gung-ho space marines are intrinsically sexist in that they are a sum of what's left in us from the times when the Neanderthals crawled out of their caves with a club in a hand and a woman by the hair in the other (I'm misquoting Stephen King here). Of course they say "lady" as an insult, probably even a female gung-ho space marine would (think about GI Jane): that's the way they're wired, because otherwise they would be unsuitable for the job. The people with the guns fighting corporate/colonial wars will always be fished out of the bottom of the food chain, where you don't find much in the way of education or conscience.
Bottom line, it's Jake Sully who's out of place, it's Trudy who's out of place. In my opinion, Cameron paints a very accurate picture of what the future looks like as far as the space marines are concerned, he just doesn't get the main characters right (of course he has to do this, otherwise no 3-billions-worh movie).
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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I don't think it's about having a "soft spot for sexual equality." My whole point is that such a spot might well be unnecessary in the distant future, because "sexual equality" will be a given, without reference to itself in any particular way at all.
Cavemen didn't necessarily pull women around by their hair, but that is the image people tend to call up when trying to prove that misogyny is somehow a "natural" human trait and therefor something we should just accept.
But in the past 500 years, human culture (just my own, western version of it, for that matter) has changed in ways I doubt anyone could have imagined in 1512.
Who the heck knows what "space marines" might actually need for the job in 2500 (or whenever this movie is supposed to be set)? There could be a critical need for a different set of skills than any marine has now. This film like so many other examples of the genre is more a picture of what our own society is NOW, set in a weird place, with strange creatures. Which is fine, but kind of boring, to my taste.
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 412
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There's a difference between equality and being the same. Even if true gender equality is achieved, men and women are built differently. men are stronger, women have more stamina and better pain tolerance. And statements that you don't conform to the average of your group, no matter what that group is, gender, age, intelligence, job, ect, is going to be an insult throughout time.
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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Saying something is eternal or "natural" or inevitable is an excuse, guys. We are speculative fiction writers. We can be more creative than this.
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Joined: 7/13/2011
Posts: 2
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Probably we are talking about the same thing with opposite approaches, approach A being that in the future we'll have solved some of our current problems, approach B being that in the future we'll have made some of our problems even worse. I'm most definitely an approach B supporter, but in the end maybe it's just the antinomy between utopia and distopia.
I agree that insults are generally a statement that you don't conform to the average of your group. In my opinion that's connected with cultural levels: at the bottom you find those for whom different is worse, in the middle those for whom different is better, and at the top those who think different is just different. I don't think two random persons should agree about deep issues, but I think you reach the full social/cultural maturity when you respect a person irrespective of the person's opinions and beliefs.
That's to say, some ways of approaching diversity are probably ingrained in most of us (I wouldn't use the word "natural"), because maybe deep down there's some part of our brain where we still live in a pack and wait for the big alpha male to say whether the stranger is dangerous or not, but who among us who have the will and the means to evolve can learn to overcome that part.
The real trick, in my opinion, is growing up in an evolved environment: if you're raised among tolerant people you'll be imprinted with tolerance, and the same goes the other way around.
I'm afraid gender, sex orientation, skin color and features like those have a long way to go before dropping out of use as insults, and in all likelihood even in that case are bound to be replaced by something that employs the same mechanism (different perceived as worse).
Different cultural levels have existed throughout history, and probably will always exist. You can choose to look at the cultural high levels, and you'll have utopia, or at the cultural low levels, and you'll have dystopia.
Just opinions, by the way.
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 412
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Lily, by saying we shouldn't do this, and we should be better than that by then, you're kinda taking that creativity away yourself. "The Other" is a built in part of the human beast. you can't just ASSUME you're going to get rid of it. If it being gone is part of the story, you're going to need a reason why, be creative.
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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See it doesn't need a ton of explanation from my perspective, because I understand the possibility of it just being a non-issue. The fact that "woman" does not = "lesser being" in the milieu of my own life is proof to me that such a milieu can exist and thrive and potentially get large enough that to use "ladies" as an insult would have most people scratching their heads in confusion.
I don't really know anyone who would actually use such a term as an insult and hey, I know a lot of people. To me, the fact that women might someday come to be regarded as fully human--while sure, society still has plenty of other problems (I'm not talking about utopia)--is just not that much of a stretch.
It's like the reader who wanted my lesbian characters to explain how homophobia went away. I live a life more or less free of homphobia right now, (except that occasional shocking slap that sometimes comes from well outside my own rounds of daily living and socializing) so the idea that such a society could exist in 500 years isn't a big stretch. And the idea that people would need to discuss its absence is like suggesting we now discuss how successful U.S. abolitionists were at eradicating slavery--and that was considerably less than 500 years ago.
I suppose my bottom line point is that misogyny is not inevitable, because plenty of people are living without it now. There's no reason to assume its absence won't be the cultural norm in another realm of human development.
Again this isn't crazy talk about wild utopias, it's just that if we can all kinds of nutty alien species and development of outrageous technology, don't ya think we might be capable of regarding women as human?
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 412
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But you are automatically assuming that using ladies as an insult is categorizing women as lesser beings, overall, instead of a single categorization about strength. You are stretching, and projecting your own feelings about the matter. That's like saying, if a character started crying, and another character said, What are you, a baby? that would be an insult to baby's and a statement that young children are lesser beings.
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Joined: 5/12/2011
Posts: 240
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I don't buy that you really believe that. You know good and well that "ladies" in such a context is an insult. It's a widely-recognized insult and a simple, knee-jerk way to invoke a certain kind of culture which is why they used it in this movie to short-hand that culture.
And my point is far less about that one word/insult and much more about that culture in general and the notion in so much of our speculative fiction that even when all else we know and understand is radically changed, somehow that culture will inevitably, unquestionably remain.
I question this and wonder why so many people thoughtlessly fail to.
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Joined: 3/13/2011
Posts: 412
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it is being given as an insult to a group of guys who pride themselves on strength.
It is not a statement that, women are inferior in every way, so I will compare you to a woman to insult you.
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Joined: 2/27/2011
Posts: 353
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Bumping up so new members can see.
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