Hello to all of you on the list....
I'd like to introduce myself, but I must admit that I do so with some
hesitation since I recognize that I am privileged to have access to
the ideas and messages on this list. As a male who has had the
unpleasant but good fortune to have several female acquaintances open
my eyes over the years to my own ingrained and invisible (to me)
sexism, I recognize how easy it is for men to wade into all kinds
of conversations and so dominate them that productive discussion is
considerably diminished, if not extinguished. I will try to avoid
that error.
I am most certainly not a feminist -- this would be as impossible a
matter for me as claiming to give birth; I have no need to co-opt
either nomenclature or territory that rightfully belongs to women.
However, I do support the principles, analyses, and goals of feminism,
as well as those women who carry the feminist project forward; and
mostly I do all that by scrutinizing my own behaviour, staying out
of the way, and nailing the chauvanist pigs in my classes.
I come to these interests through my larger commitment to Socialism,
which I see, broadly, as a political philosophy which, at least in
part, attempts to identify oppressed groups and work toward their
empowerment. The feminist struggle becomes, then, for me part of a
panoply of concerns that includes not only race and class, but also
discrimination based on age, ethnicity, ability, height/weight/appear-
ance, and (getting back in part to SF in a way), species (I hope I am
right in seeing close links between feminsim and environmentalism).
Early on in my university studies I recognized the brilliant connections
being made in SF by Russ, Tiptree, LeGuin, Charnas, and others, and
such insights and writing have continued to fuel much of my intellec-
tual life.
But enough about me: I am primarily interested in the current dis-
cussion of feminist protagonists in the SF film. Most such protag-
onists, of course, are simply props for male heroism -- they twist
ankles, scream a lot, become helpless and immbolized, and require
rescuing. Others (but far fewer) are simply men disguised as women
-- the macho mama. However, for me the first film that seemed to
provide a real breakthrough in how the female hero was to be viewed
is "Alien". Admittedly, the character of Ripley (nicely foiled by
Lamb[ert]) becomes more of a "macho mama" later on under the direction
of Cameron in "Aliens"; however, I sense that Ridley Scott is doing
something rather remarkable in that first film (and, after all, he
did direct "Thelma and Louise"). But before I (perhaps all too
typically) go on at length, I'd like to see what others think about
Ripley as a newly drawn, perhaps feminist, hero.
rick c.
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