“Gravity” Perfectly Depicts Women In Science

TheMaskAndRose

is a lover, seeker and nomad. Your wife grabbed his cock at the bar while you were in the bathroom, and you're only getting laid tonight because she can't stop thinking about it.

You can find his ramblings on Game and Gender Dynamics at his blog, http://themaskandrose.wordpress.com.

March 5, 2014 209 Comments Culture

As those of you who watch TV knew, and I found out on Saturday, the Academy Awards ceremony happened on Sunday evening in Los Angeles. One movie that took home a fair amount of wins was “Gravity,” which as far as I could tell when I saw it, was about the relentless ineptitude of women who try to compete with men in science.

Let’s understand the basic premise before we begin.

(spoiler alert)

There are two astronauts in space worth discussing, Sandra Bullock’s character and George Clooney’s character. Shit hits the fan and they have to abort their mission. Once the aforementioned shit arrives, Sandra Bullock’s character somehow finds a way to chop each turd up in the blades on the fan and spray it on everything around her, all while magically avoiding the death she’s begging for with her technical failures.

Matt, Clooney’s character, is calm, cool, collected, and mission-oriented. He’s the boss, and he knows what he’s talking about.

One would think that with all the feminist claptrap about how women are just as capable of success in STEM fields as men are, Hollywood would have gone to some effort to show that ladies are at least slightly capable of handling anything related to logic, common sense, and science. What we get, instead, is Stone: an inept moron whose failure at everything mechanical is a constant danger to herself and everyone around her.

Stone, the ostensibly well-trained female astronaut:

Constantly fails to follow directions, because she’s strong and independent and knows what she’s doing. Except when she doesn’t and puts the entire mission at risk because she refused to listen to a man who knew his shit.
Constantly lets go of things she’s told to hold onto, while holding onto things she’s told to let go of. Graphs and computers and following superiors be damned.
Begins to feel lightheaded, at which point Matt has to fucking explain to her that she’s getting dizzy because she’s running out of oxygen. She must have missed that class, based on the fact that she alters her behavior to align with this shocking new information.
Freaks out when her oxygen tank runs low, at which point Matt has to fucking explain to her that there’s still oxygen circulating around in her suit so calm the fuck down. Another class missed, apparently.
Doesn’t understand that landing jets are still jets until Matt explains it to her. I wish I were making this up. Watch the movie.
Doesn’t know what an airlock looks like until Matt explains it to her. An airlock. The basic structural portal that allows her to enter and exit the spaceship. The door. She doesn’t know what the door looks like.
Cannot operate a fire extinguisher without knocking herself unconscious.
Tries to escape in a pod that not only already has the parachute deployed, but whose parachute is intricately tangled into the space station it’s attached to. Somehow, she is surprised that the pod cannot detach in such conditions.
Nearly drowns herself by opening the escape hatch, fully underwater, still wearing her entire spacesuit.

And yet, somehow, when she accidentally manages to not-kill-herself, the audience is expected to respect and admire her for bravery, or something. I was laughing in the theater, though I did a good job of keeping it relatively quiet. This is exactly what it looks like in real life when most women try to science.

I’m really proud of Hollywood for its accurate depiction of women who try to “do everything men can do,” in nothing but a bratty-little-sister attempt to one-up men. Also, another realistic portrayal of the career-driven woman: she’s completely alone. Having given up things like being a good wife and choosing instead to build whatever the hell it was she built in the movie, she ends up in her 40s, facing death in outer space, crying at the idea that nobody is left on Earth who will miss her or say a prayer for her.

Take note, fembots.

Don’t Miss: The Dangers Of Bro Science