Guiding Question: 4. If science fiction is a genre that imagines our future, what happens to gender and race?
Gender and LGBT themes in Science Fiction
This appears to be a personal blog, written by Christopher Chevallier, your average person who writes mostly science fiction reviews. It isn’t advised to reference Chevallier in an essay, but in this blog he easily talks about the under representation of gay and lesbian people in science fiction. Chevallier believes this is due to the portrayed gender equality in the future of scifi. Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, video games set in the future, are talked about for their strong female character, Star Trek is mentioned in helping to break down gender stereotypes, naming Uhura as a key part in this. LGBT seem to be under-represented in mainstream scifi, but Chevallier doesn’t appear to have read some of the feminist scifi books available, some written with a LGBT target audience. This no doubt exemplifies the point that there isn’t widespread acceptance for these social ideas, and the slight showing of lesbian themes doesn’t even come close to talking about homosexuality between men being shown on television. This blog mentions several media and titles associated with scifi and the ideas he is touting, so a good blog to read for further ideas of what scifi has to offer in the idea of gender.
Written by Amanda Fernbach, this article was published in the tri-yearly journal, Science Fiction Studies, published by the DePauw University, Indiana USA. Articles published in this journal go through a three-stage peer review process before being published. Amanda’s article uses psychoanalysis to looks at the fetishisation of masculinity and the two types of masculinity that are shown within science fiction. The hyper masculine cyborg with his traditional male hero stereotype being played out, and the more feminine ‘consol cowboy’ who by being one with technology is somehow become feminine. There is a focus on the Terminator movies, using Freudian psychoanalysis when looking at the cyborg, and then a move to the Neuromancer series of books when looking at the console cowboy. Cyberspace is seen as feminised but also a techno fetish, where console cowboys can become one with the matrix in a pre-oedipal type relationship, similar to that of a young child with it’s mother. As Amanda says ‘… the hyper masculine cyborg deconstructs traditional masculinity through performative excess and the console cowboy is feminized by his technoprosthetics, ... Despite this … this transgressive quality fails to carry over into the cultural arena. In fact, I would argue that these phallic and pre-oedipal fetish fantasies do the opposite, ultimately confirming hegemonic power structures in the cultural context of postmodernism …’
This is an audio recording of Russel Kirkpatrick, Maxine McArthur, Ian Nichols and Keith Stevenson at the panel they participated in at Conflux 2007, a speculative fiction convention held in Canberra each year. These four authors talk about race in science fiction. The podcast begins with each of the panel members introducing themselves and then talking about how they interpret race within scifi. Maxine McArthur talks about how she doesn’t like using the highly charged word race, and instead talks about humans and aliens within scifi, focusing on the similarities to be found, and to not focus on the differences. Keith Stevenson talks about the idea of Aliens being treated as the new ‘other’ replacing the Orient, or India and ideas of race as other. Ian Nichols believes scifi is racially focused and mentions many instances of the ‘evil aliens’ being a poorly hidden representation of ‘black people’ in space. Then follows this idea with the ‘white toast’ empirical ideals of Eurocentric white men carrying over into science fiction. Russel Kirkpatrick looks at alien as the ultimate exotic ‘other’, something to fear, criticize or remake as seen fit, displacing the no longer relevant race. It was overall agreed, with slight protest from Ian, that many scifi stories are a product of their time and unconsciously reflect the socially acceptable values at the time of writing.
Professor Willard McCarty, author and lecturer, posted this blog on ‘the forum’ at onthehuman.org. This website is made for and by humanists and scientists, run by the National Humanities Centre, and independent institute for advanced study of humanities, located in America. The way this blog was posted was very interesting, in that once posted, readers could make comments about it and Professor Willard would make comments back, further explaining ideas expressed in the article or clearing up misconceptions that had arisen. In point, a fully referenced interactive blog with a professor. The blog itself is about the concept of self in relation to technology and the sense of other. The Other no longer being a mystical oriental race but inside our homes in the form of computers insinuating themselves into our lives. A look at humanity on one side and technology on the other. It’s well worth the effort to scroll down and see the questions people have posted and read McCarty’s responses.
A collaboration of unknown people wrote this article on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. Wikipedia started in 2001 and is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization based in California, USA. Strict conventions, writing guides and peer review work together to keep the quality of articles posted high. The quality of articles on Wikipedia is usually good, as far accuracy and referencing goes, and that is why this article was chosen. While directly referencing this article in an essay isn’t advised, since you can’t be too careful with unknown writers, many good ideas are discussed and links provided which are good for further research. This article includes a critical analysis of the portrayal of men, women, cyborgs and robots within science fiction. Also looking at the idea of single gender worlds. Then it moves onto scifi literature through the ages, it’s beginning and the different ‘eras’ and how gender is portrayed in them. Then it does the same for comics and film and television. This article is a good place to start for an overview of gender perceptions within scifi and ideas that are created therein.
References
Chevallier, Christopher (2010) ‘Gender and LGBT themes in Science Fiction’ (17th February 2010) We Are The Blog: Resistance is Futile http://wearetheblogssf.blogspot.com/2010/02/gender-and-lgbt-themes-in-science.html (accessed 12th September 2010)
Fernbach, Amanda (2000) ‘The Fetishization of Masculinity in Science Fiction: The Cyborg and the Console Cowboy’ Science Fiction Studies http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/81/fernbach81art.htm (accessed 12th September 2010)
Kirkpatrick, Russel, McArthur, Maxine, Nichols, Ian, Stevenson, Keith (2007) ‘Human, Klingon, Martian - portraying race in sci-fi’ [audio file] (28th September to 2nd October, 2007) Conflux http://conflux.org.au/blog/2007/10/04/conflux-4-podcast-human-klingon-martian-portraying-race-in-sci-fi/ (accessed 12th September 2010)
McCarty, Willard (May 11 2009) ‘Who Am I Computing?’ The Forum http://onthehuman.org/2009/05/who-am-i-computing/ (accessed 12th September 2010)
Wikipedia (4th September 2010, last edited) ‘Gender in speculative fiction’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_speculative_fiction (accessed 12th September 2010)
No comments:
Post a Comment