I've just seen _Contact_, and I would be interested in hearing how other
people react to the female characters in the film. While I think that
there's much to like about Ellie, the Jodie Foster character, I wish that she
had some contact with other women at some point in the film. There are some
group shots in the control that show other female scientists, and there is
the African-American woman who seems to be in on the important political
decisions. However, the people with whom Ellie has real relationships--her
friends, her colleagues, her rivals, her lover--all seem to be men. During
her childhood, her father is her major influence; she never knows her mother
(who dies in childbirth, I think?) If I'm remembering correctly, the child
at the end who asks the question about extra-terrestrial life is a boy.
I was pleased with the portrayal of Ellie as a woman whose life is dominated
by a passion that is not romantic, and I found the final shot when she is
alone in the desert unexpectedly moving (and I wanted to cheer because she
wasn't shown in the arms of Palmer Joss, having lost the aliens but gotten
the man). But I also think that perhaps in some ways she represents very
much a masculine fantasy of what an independent woman's life might be like:
she is unmarried; she works; she certainly manages her life competently;
but all the important people in her life are men. (Maybe, though, this
would be realistic for the portrayal of the professional life of a woman
working in her field today? I don't know.)
I've also been interested by some of the fragments of television reviews that
I've heard. I haven't paid close attention to them, but it seems to me that
I've heard at least two describe her as an isolated woman who hides from her
personal pain in her work. I can see some evidence for this point of view
in the film, but on the whole I don't see the film emphasizing her isolation
(although she is frequently shown alone, but I think that's different).
Indeed (given that all her relationships are with men), she seems to me to
have a number of enduring friendships. Do the reviewers just not know what
to say about a female character in a movie whose story is not a love story?
(or--as my teen-aged students, male and female, often tell me, am I just
being over-sensitive?)
Ann Wheeler
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