Why can’t a woman save the world?
I watched the first episode of a new disaster TV series, ‘Salvation’, and while I was entertained enough to keep watching, there was something that bothered me.
Take a look at the place, the time, and the protagonists. The dateline is “present day” America. , . Your world. Your everyday real world. They’ve added a potential catastrophic asteroid impact in 186 days – but other than that, we’re fine, folks, this is our world, nothing to see here.
Protagonists:
Handsome maverick rich guy/entrepreneur/tech wizard who’s out there with a (somewhat selfish but eh) vision to save the world from itself: a hetero white male.
Bright young genius MIT student who falls into this because, you know, he’s a genius and he’s the only one doing this research which is really boring and all that but oh hey there’s an asteroid coming and who ends up as the above maverick’s sidekick – handsome, adorable, with the BEST pick-up lines ever, quirky, witty, sexy, fun, and did I mention preternaturally BRIGHT: a hetero white male.
Powerful government figure – deputy secretary of defense – high-falutin’ political type with all the proper tentacles, er, connections, in the highest circles of government: a hetero white male.
In the other corner:
The efficient press secretary/press release writer/sophisticated media personality, blonde and vivacious, and in a secret affair with the Head Political Guy: a blonde white female
The young sidekick’s girl – the one he picked up with that adorable line and immediately bedded – quirky, pretty, savvy, a writer of science fiction (dear god at least they didn’t make her write Harry Potter fantasy): a white female.
A spunky journalist type with moxie and connections, one who looks slated to be “trouble”: a slightly darker female.
ALL the women are pretty, *TWO* of them find an occasion to slip into something slinky and sexy for an “Embassy ball” halfway through the episode (and the third one, by that time, is wearing nothing at all because she’s already between the sheets with Genius Boy With The Good Pickup Line. All of them are gorgeous, and all of them appear to have a head for no more than just the feminine stuff.
You know, words. While the men get on with the actual IDEAS, with THINKING, with ACTION. The women merely get to write about those things. They’re important, to be sure – because without them how else is all that masculine excellence going to get communicated to the audience who need to see and admire it?
There is a certain sense of a dynamic here – the powerful man and his relationship with the beautiful but subordinate arm candy woman (the politician and the PR flack) – which would admittedly be harder to sell if the politician, for instance, was a woman and the flack a man.
But it’s been done, if only rarely. Take a look at something like “Expanse”, with that oh so ruthless and powerful female political star in that heaven, and you see it can be done.
But even if you leave that alone – why couldn’t the grad student, for instance, have been female? And why couldn’t she have been appreciated for what she did and what she understood rather than for the fact that she might have been REALLY HOT once she took off the obligatory pair of scientist spectacles which she would no doubt have been made to wear in the beginning, just to establish that she was, you know, scholarly, a nerd, a geek?
In one sense I know I am giving a damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t scenario.
There is indeed the version of the stereotype where the girl scientist is all nerdy and geeky and unattractive because, you know, the hot girls really don’t DO this kind of thing with their lives – or else she’s EITHER just pretend-geeky and once she shakes down that severely pinned up hair into cascading curls and takes off those glasses she’s a rocks star, OR she’s just a rock star to begin with, a scientist with a body of a Playboy centerfold and the face of Boticelli’s Venus who also just happens to have two PhDs in relevant disciplines plus a stray Master’s degree in Russian, just for funsies.
And more often than not, if we DO get a female scientist thrown in, she’s either the bossyboots who terrorizes everyone else into doing the right thing, or else she’s the one who drops the ball on whatever is being done, and then stands there and SCREAMS…
Yes, I know, I know, it’s all fiction and I am being a curmudgeon. But somehow these things never arise when it comes to male figures of power. They CAN be brilliant and good looking at once and nobody bats an eyelid or makes any snarky comments (much like the ones I was making).
But remember this – men age gracefully. An older man with graying temples is actually believable as a scientist of standing or a power figure and yes, he can STILL be sexy.
While the Hollywood standard has – as has been described by someone whose identity I now don’t recall – precisely three levels of roles for women. The sexy ingénue, someone’s mother, and Driving Miss Daisy. In recent years it might have been expanded – marginally – to suit-wearing corporate bitch (or genre equivalent).
But nowhere in there does an older woman with a touch of gray and a quiet sense of power have a place to stand. Nowhere there does an intelligent younger woman stand, either, one who might have stepped into that Grad Student Sidekick’s shoes. SHE, you see, would have had to fall back into ingénue – she would be young enough for Hollywood to demand that she had to be pretty and easy on the eyes, all other qualifications be damned.
Anyone who’s ever known a grad student in the advanced stages of pursuing a PhD could tell you that those people usually look rumpled, bleary-eyed, carrying the weight of two worlds in the bags under their eyes, wearing clothes they might have slept in (and probably have done at least once), with way more than five o’clock shadow if they’re men and hair that hasn’t been brushed for a while if they’re women, basically focused on what they are doing rather on what they look like or whether they own a tux (or a fetching evening gown) to show up at an Embassy ball in.
I think I may have to go an WRITE the kind of thing I want to see on the screen. The only problem is that then I will never see it on the screen. Because the kind of character I write… is way too real for the fiction that people are apparently willing to accept.
All I can say is, keep soldiering on, the female half of humanity.
Even though nobody wants to know that you’re doing it. If a real asteroid comes hurtling down to this planet… we’re probably going to bungle things badly enough to destroy ourselves anyway, whoever is in charge, but it’s likely to have been the old boys’ club.
We might never know what could have happened if they’d let a girl scientist whip off her glasses and release her hair and save the world.
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