New Hobby: Analyzing artificacts of popular culture for their sociopolitical messages.
Consider, for instance, the movie Species, which I saw for the first time two nights ago in an edited-for-tv version on AMC. I started piecing together some interesting insights into the movie's stance regarding female sexuality. Whereas one might expect a movie written, directed, and produced entirely by men (and with only two important female characters) to take the archetypal stance that fermale sexuality is bad, evil, or abnormal in some way, this isn't the case. At first glance, one might be tempted to suggest that that is the film's message; after all, the adult form of the creature does go about seeking a man almost immediately after reaching LA. And yet, what she wants is not sexual pleasure, but children.
The key to understanding the movie lies in Marg Helgenberger (spelling?)'s character, the female scientist working with the seek-and-destroy team. Here we have a female character who is very much the liberated woman, very interested in sex with Michael Madsen, not at all afraid to seek enjoyment. But therein lies the key difference between her character and the monster: she wants sex for fun; the monster wants sex for babies.
Given the film's date (1995, I think), this is perhaps not so surprising--call it backlash against the Reagan sensibilities of the Eighties. But there is something else at work here, something which makes Species really about the single male's sexual fantasies in this culture. The monster is sex with a purpose, sex driven by the often supposed female desire for children, family, etc. The good woman of the 90s is after pleasure, sex without consequences--and dominance by her partner. Whereas the creature being hunted demands sex, kills those who refuse her, and ultimately rides the unfortunate sacientist in the hotel room just before killing him, the scientist woman eagerly strips, kneels, and demands that Madsen stand up before her, with obvious intentions of oral sex--and the connotiation of being dominated while she kneels naked beofre him.
Heady shit, no?
The key to understanding the movie lies in Marg Helgenberger (spelling?)'s character, the female scientist working with the seek-and-destroy team. Here we have a female character who is very much the liberated woman, very interested in sex with Michael Madsen, not at all afraid to seek enjoyment. But therein lies the key difference between her character and the monster: she wants sex for fun; the monster wants sex for babies.
Given the film's date (1995, I think), this is perhaps not so surprising--call it backlash against the Reagan sensibilities of the Eighties. But there is something else at work here, something which makes Species really about the single male's sexual fantasies in this culture. The monster is sex with a purpose, sex driven by the often supposed female desire for children, family, etc. The good woman of the 90s is after pleasure, sex without consequences--and dominance by her partner. Whereas the creature being hunted demands sex, kills those who refuse her, and ultimately rides the unfortunate sacientist in the hotel room just before killing him, the scientist woman eagerly strips, kneels, and demands that Madsen stand up before her, with obvious intentions of oral sex--and the connotiation of being dominated while she kneels naked beofre him.
Heady shit, no?