Alice's Critical Annotated Webliography

3. If science fiction is a genre that imagines our future, what happens to gender and race? (You can apply this question to literary or cinematic SF.)

Introduction
It is a reiteration that science fiction (SF) is a genre which is different from other genres. The plots in SF are full of imagination towards the future of human-beings, though the ideas are ridiculous sometimes. Some scholars think that SF very often reflects the anticipation towards certain cultural issues, especially gender, race and ethnicity. The development of SF may be hindered by the conventional thinking towards these issues at the same time. The followings are the five websites I use to illustrate how SF breaks through the cultural construction of gender and race, as well as how SF reinforces the conventional notions of gender and race.

Both/And: Science Fiction and the Question of Changing Gender
As suggested by Vint, SF is a genre that can be used to imagine our future. She claims that most of the malleable bodies described in SF can be used as a tool to challenge our contemporary gender constructions. On the other hand, they can be used to reinforce the culturally constructed sex/gender system. She then uses two SF novels, Samuel R. Delany’s Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976) and John Varley’s Steel Beach (1992), as examples to support her argument. In the first novel, the male protagonist Bron, turns himself into a woman and he wants to be a real woman different from the other women. It is, however, ironic for Bron to persist the thought that real women must behave in the way requested by men. As a woman, Bron finds that she has to relinquish her desires to adapt to the desires of the surrounding men. In Delany's representation, being a woman is the result of a long process of socialization. The similarities between Bron's woman and patriarchy's woman effectively citicize the sex/gender system and its systematic production of sexual difference. As for Varley’s novel, the male protagonist Hildy also switches his gender to female. The novel includes many paragraphs describing Hildy’s appearance, clothing and sexual activity after gender switch than in the ‘male’ sections of the novel. Vint argues that this SF reinforces the conventional stereotypes by stressing that the world changes when one changes gender.

From the Andromeda Strain to Alien
As compared with other genres of films in which sexism in media representations of women was often found, SF films and television programmes in the 1970s was not only influenced by, but also proposed the ideals of feminist movement. As mentioned by Westcott, women lived longer but sicker lives before the 1970s. The media at that time kept reinforcing the gendered division of labour and discriminated against women. With the aid of feminist movements, SF films started to change its representation of women and present more progressive images of women in the 1970s. Westcott then illustrates two examples of SF programmes, The New Adventures of Wonder Woman (1975-9) and The Bionic Woman (1976-8), which break the conventional phenomenon of rare women being starred in television series. In the programmes, Wonder Woman defeated (mostly male) villains, while Jamie Sommors fought crime in her bionic body without wearing a titillating costume. These are the films attempting to portray female characters in a way that challenges sexist stereotypes of the past. Westcott suggests that SF genre is a breakthrough which imagines a future where men and women interact equally.

The Relevance of Gender in the Cyborg Body in Science Fiction
Chapman suggests that women and men were portrayed in very different ways in many SF films. Women were usually linked to nothing but something with negative connotations, while men were represented as more important than women. Women were considered evil and villain, while men were regarded as heroes and saviors. Chapman points out that very often SF reflects gender in terms of current events. Then, the author proposes a concept, abjection, to describe the process of which female body is discriminated against. Chapman then exemplifies the change of media representations in SF by the examples of The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). Throughout the three series, the character of Sarah Connor has changed from weak and feminine dressing in The Terminator to strong and masculine in Terminator 2. From Chapman’s point of view, these three films can be read in two ways. They intend to suggest femininity can be as strong as masculinity. On the other hand, they can be viewed as simply repeating old 1950’s SF where feminine characters are wicked, and masculine characters are heroic.

Race and Ethnicity in Science Fiction
According to Leonard, SF authors use the imaginative possibilities of SF to visualize worlds where present social problems have been solved. They can, on the other hand, imagine a future where problems have been overstated. Leonard quotes two examples, W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Comet (1920) and Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950), to prove that SF has provided a means to investigate the simultaneous dependence on and disdain for black Americans by white Americans. The roles of SF are to render the invisible visible and to reveal something about the era that the novels were created. They find ways for the voices of disenfranchised and subordinated people to be heard. Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred (1979) gives voice to a black woman, while Orson Scott Card’s novel Pastwatch (1996) highlights racism and oppression instead of ignores it. They urge the readers to look into their past and present to think about the kind of future they want. However, many SF authors are bound by some other forces, such as their own culture and experience as well as publishers’ and target audience’s expectations. As a result, most of the SF deals with racial tension simply by ignoring it.

When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like ‘Avatar’?
Newitz uses the SF film Avatar (2009) as a case study which is obviously a fantasy about race from the point of view of white people. In the film, the moon’s inhabitants Na’vi are described as native people wearing feathers in hair, worshipping nature gods, painting their faces for war as well as using bows and arrows. Newitz argues that the film makers try to display alien versions of stereotypical native peoples. Newitz further categorizes Avatar as movies about white guilt by generalizing the common plot orders in these movies. The main white characters, who initially were one of the oppressors, assimilate themselves into the “alien” cultures. They switch sides and become the leaders of the people they once oppressed later in the film in order to purge their sense of guilt. This type of SF, argued by Newitz, is an attempt to lead people of color from the inside instead of from the outside. Moreover, it is a small breakthrough for the male protagonist of Avatar choosing to join the Na’vi rather than abiding the racist culture of his own people. However, the natives in the story are still hindered by the whites. Newitz insists that Avatar is still a story which revisits the old tropes of colonization.

Conclusion
In short, the above websites and examples of SF novels, films and television programmes reaffirm the importance of SF genre in reconstructing the media representations of gender and race. On one hand, SF can break down the conventional thinking of race and gender. It can, on the other hand, be used to consolidate the cultural construction the other way round. There is no doubt that SF has been playing a significant role in imagining our future lives.


Works Cited
Chapman, Adele. “The Relevance of Gender in the Cyborg Body in Science Fiction.” Helium. 18 June 2007. (retrieved on) 15 March 2011. http://www.helium.com/items/403363-the-relevance-of-gender-in-the-cyborg-body-in-science-fiction>.

Leonard, E. A. “Race and Ethnicity in Science Fiction.” Cambridge University Press. n.d. (retrieved on) 11 March 2011. http://files.pbworks.com/download/hTB0loEBqH/templefyw/30798217/Leonard%20-%20Race%20and%20Ethnicity%20in%20Science%20Fiction.pdf?ld=1>.

Newitz, Annalee. “When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like ‘Avatar’?” io9. 18 Dec. 2009. (retrieved on) 14 March 2011. http://io9.com/#!5422666/when-will-white-people-stop-making-movies-like-avatar>.

Vint, Sherryl. “Both/And: Science Fiction and the Question of Changing Gender.” Strange Horizons. 18 Feb. 2002. (retrieved on) 10 March 2011. http://www.strangehorizons.com/2002/20020218/both_and.shtml>.

Westcott, Jennifer. “From The Andromeda Strain to Alien.” Reassessing Women in Mainstream Science Fiction Film and Television, from “When Worlds Collide” to “Alien”. Digital Dissertation Consortium (2003). 15 March 2011. http://www.2shared.com/document/6C5hh6VH/EdissCoS.html>.