Comments on: One serious flaw

By: Michael Clark

Michael Clark — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:55:28 +0000

I stopped reading 2000AD about 15 years ago. But I still have a big nostalgia trip when seeing art from the old issues. Funnily enough I have mates that work on the mag now, but still can’t bring myself to pick one up.

I wrote to Tharg once. I sent him a drawing I’d done (age 16) entitled ‘Tharg the Fuc*er.’ He never replied.

By: Rupert

Rupert — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:13:19 +0000

I appreciate the discussion of these important issues, but HOLY SHITSTICKS: JUDGE ANDERSON FLASHBACK.
my first crush.
whatever good intentions prompted her conception, i seem to remember her veering sharply towards a lara croft/pris aesthetic: all tits & thighs – the lycra lawgiver. the posters they were giving out in the late 80s were basically cartoon centrefolds. legal porn for horny pubescents.

By: Jess

Jess — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:55:24 +0000

Really good points. It's really striking that writers a) feel the need to anthropomorphise robots, and then b) when they do so, add on a whole load of gender stereotypes and gender presentation, not to mention biological sex characteristics, even though... they're robots! They don't reproduce! (late-stage BSG aside...) Sci-fi is meant to be about expanding vistas and imagining new worlds and ways of being, but all too often, even the most basic sexist and racist assumptions go unchallenged. Sociological Images has a really good example of this in a specific robot design, especially about 'male' robots being the default, and how the designers unthinkingly laden down their work with assumptions like... male robots will be more agressive, female robots will be... er... pink. Kate Bornstein has also written a good post about the gender of the robots in Wall-E. There was actually a big discussion about this on a number of feminist blogs, about how Pixar had gendered Wall-E and Eve as male and female. But, as Kate pointed out, there's plenty of room for interpretation:

Did you see a heterosexual boy robot fall in love with a heterosexual girl robot? I did… at first. And it makes sense how someone could assume that. I mean, WALL•E is a sweet little guy, right? He’s all, “gosh, shucks,” and shy around girls... a real warm-hearted guy, right? And Eve! Is she adorably hot, or what?! She could be Honey West, Emma Peel, or your favorite Charlie’s Angel. So, agreed: when I first saw the film, I saw a boy robot and girl robot. My question is this: how and why did most of us jump to that conclusion? Is it because of their names? The names sound like Wally and Eve, but their names are very specifically WALL•E and EVE, all in capital letters—because both names are acronyms for each robot’s prime directive and function. Nothing to do with boy or girl there. The film makers take a great deal of care in pointing out that WALL•E and EVE’s notion of butch/femme romance is based in the world and culture of Hello, Dolly. That’s supposed to be a cue for the audience to believe they’re a “healthy” heterosexual male and female couple. But it’s not proof that they are male or female. And anyway, how camp is Hello, Dolly!?

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:41:45 +0000

The anthropomorphic issue is something that we’ll be chewing over too. Get’s more complicated with the issues that something like Caprica raised in the pilot. Machines being assigned real personalities based on human beings and taking some of that particular gender over with them. Or not. Also a bit of a mine field.

I’m doing my best not to let our show slide into cliche but its been an eye opener at what is considered to ‘work’ in tv when it comes to female roles.

But I think one of the reasons that the Americans found Slingers so attractive a proposition was that it wasn’t very American TV in feeling . It still ticks all the boxes you need to get commissioned (fingers crossed), but comes from a very British sensibility. And I owe that to 2000AD.

I still can’t take superheroes seriously, because I grew up on Dredd and co. And reading stories with a bunch of strong female characters each week has hopefully also had some influence.

Looking forward to getting some women on the writing team too.

By: Dan Thorton

Dan Thorton — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:27:09 +0000

It would be interesting to see whether the gender split has continued in the post-Buffy era, considering the Terminator spin-offs and characters, Dark Angel etc, etc.
In the Fantasy (rather than sci-fi world), there were definitely influential females, for instance Margaret Weiss who wrote most of the Dungeons and Dragons novels – for a short while I assumed her writing parnter Tracy Hickman was also a woman, until I finally read a bio somewhere and realised Tracy could be a bloke’s name!
Plus the likes of CJ Cherryh etc….

I think with robots, it may not be a human gender issue, but an anthropomorhpic trait… for instance, male drivers always assuming their cars are female in films e.g. Eleanor, Christine, etc, etc….

Having said that, I grew up with Judge Anderson and various female characters being portrayed in a much stronger manner than in the 60′s and 70′s books in my collection!