On Wed, 16 Jul 1997, Michael Marc Levy wrote:
> >
> I pretty much agree with Tanya's and other's analysis of male-female
> power relationships in Contact, but with one suggestion.
> The black, female presidential assistant, played by Angela Bassett, is
> considerably more than just a good source of information on where to buy
> a nice dress. She has considerable power and uses it as needed, for
> example when Drummond (Drumlin? whatever) is trying to completely take
> over the project and she, pretty much by executive fiat, states that
> Ellie will continue to have day to day control over operations.
I half agree here: yes, the Angela Basset character clearly does have alot
power dealing with realpolitik rather than idealism. However
when she makes Ellie the operations controller (with Drummond having
overall administrative control) it is clear that this is a sop thrown to
Ellie in exchange for her silence. Shortly afterwards Palmer comments that
Ellie has been more or less given walking orders, and when Ellie looks
puzzled, he adds something like "or you are at least being handed your
hat".Ellie is on the out and out, and the support of the Bassett
character is strictly provisonal, if not illusionary. The only suggestion
that they might really share anything in common, comes in the dress
scene. Apart from this, I don't think
there is really any female networking going on here. The divison
between politics and science that the movie postulates is too wide.
> I wonder how much of Ellie's isolation from female co-workers is simply the
> usual male-authored cliche on Sagan's part and how much of it is the way
> things still are (or were when Sagan wrote the book in the late 1980s)
> for women working in the hard sciences. Anyone here have the kind of
> background to comment on this from first hand experience?
>
> Mike
I'm sure that Sagan's depiction of Ellie's all male scientific team is
realistic in terms of when Sagan wrote the novel (and probably even now)
but the complete lack of women in Ellie's life (not that she precisely
has one) is worthly of note: no female freinds, no relatives, nada.
Tanya.
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