Ringworld

Ringworld by Larry Niven

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


On his birthday, two-hundred-year-old human Louis Wu is startled to be recruited to a mysterious mission of exploration by a member of a long-vanished alien race.

The Puppeteers are a great concept, though perhaps their name is a bit too telling. They are a cowardly but far-sighted alien race which has decided to move house after the discovery of a giant explosion that will destroy most of inhabited space - in twenty thousand years. I thought that Nessus was the strongest character, because for him to be pedantic and dull is expected. (Whereas I expected more interesting things from a Kzin.)

If you're into detailed descriptions of a vast alien world, read Rendezvous with Rama, because the Ringworld is a tad bit disappointing and less than shocking once the explorers land. Niven is far more interested in the theories behind how such an odd artificial world could come to be than he is in inventing a new kind of alien to populate the Ringworld.

Unfortunately, the book is hugely marred by rampant sexism. Teela Brown, the human female recruited for her luck (no, I'm serious, she's lucky), is a wide-eyed innocent who needs to have everything mansplained to her by the three "males" in her group (two are aliens, but male by default, since the "females" of both their species are non-sentient. Eye roll, exasperated sigh). She's something of an idiot savant, and so obnoxious I truly hoped she would get lost and never be heard from again (unfortunately, our bad luck keeps her around until nearly the end. She's the Jar Jar Binks of Ringworld). When she does bow out (actually, she gets sold by our hero Louis Wu to a beefcake who's a dimmer bulb than herself, which is saying something), she's replaced by an even more offensive space hooker, because heaven forbid Louis Wu suffer the trip home without some nookie! I can only give Niven so much leeway for having written in the 70s. I don't think I can forgive him for Teela Brown.



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The Questions Women are Asked....

True story: I liked The Avengers. I liked Scarlett Johannson's Black Widow, though I give most of the credit for making that movie work to Joss Whedon, who wrote and directed it (and made sure the female characters were more than window dressing).

But Hollywood is still its usual self, and so Johannson gets questions like these, while the character-focused questions are left to the men:

Reporter: I have a question to Robert and to Scarlett. Firstly to Robert, throughout Iron Man 1 and 2, Tony Stark started off as a very egotistical character but learns how to fight as a team. And so how did you approach this role, bearing in mind that kind of maturity as a human being when it comes to the Tony Stark character, and did you learn anything throughout the three movies that you made?

And to Scarlett, to get into shape for Black Widow did you have anything special to do in terms of the diet, like did you have to eat any specific food, or that sort of thing?

Scarlett: How come you get the really interesting existential question, and I get the like, “rabbit food” question?

Now she knows how to ask a good question.

Reporters, please try to come up with better questions to ask women. They do more than diet and look pretty, and may have something interesting to say. Okay?

My eyes glaze over every time some celebrity starts talking about their beauty regimen. Why not ask Johannson what it was like to be the sole female Avenger? Why not ask her how she and Whedon chose to portray the Black Widow, and how she tried to balance the character's surface vulnerability (especially during "interrogations"!) with her obvious toughness? Those are the questions I want to know the answers to, believe it or not.

Via A London Salmagundi.

State Home for Manic Pixie Dream Girls

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, it's a common trope of movies and television. If you think of the characters played by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown, Natalie Portman in The Garden State, and Zooey Deschanel in everything, then you've got a good sense of what she's like.

The term was coined by Nathan Rabin of the TV AV Club in his review of Elizabethtown in 2007.
 
(For a list of films starring the MPDG, see the TV AV Club's list here.)

To properly understand the nature of the MPDG (and for a hint of the scorn heaped upon this type by feminists), check out this short explanation by Anita Sarkeesian (whose series discussing Tropes vs. Women at Feminist Frequency is great, though as a Christian I have problems with her discussion about Mystical Pregnancy - but more on that later).

Two folks at NPR discuss this trope, mentioning my personal favorite Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby.

Jezebel calls the MPDG the "Scourge of Modern Cinema" and I'm inclined to agree.

Writer Sadie Stein dubs her "The Amazing Girl", though she targets real-life women who fit the stereotype, particularly the famous muses of history, who is "the Romantics' ideal of the pure and naturally innocent woman, a creature morally inferior to men but capable of spiritual perfection -- in short, a childlike vessel for the projection of masculine ideals." Basically, the MPDG is the modern muse.

I had read the Jezebel article about a year ago, but hadn't thought about it much after that. However, I recently volunteered to do a consumer survey at a local movie theater. I was asked questions about my movie viewing habits, watched a trailer, was asked questions about my response to the trailer, and then asked to watch the trailer again, followed by more questions. (It took longer than I thought it would.) It was an interesting glimpse into the very intentional marketing done to attract moviegoers via trailers. The film was called Ruby Sparks, and you can see the trailer I watched below:

It bothered me that not only is Ruby the perfect MPDG, with literally no private existence of her own, but that she is also literally created by a man and can be manipulated by him at will. She comes into being to fulfill his needs by pulling him from his funk. Does she have her own needs? Is she allowed to?

Part of the problem with MPDGs is their lack of personal dreams - much less ambition. They exist to be shallow characters whose effervescent quirkiness brings joy to the life of a man. Everything they do is darling, as cute as a basket full of puppies and kittens. But they lack power, they exist for the pleasure of men, and they're basically adorable little dolls. Everything a feminist dislikes. (Although I love Hepburn. Katharine, not that twit Audrey with her stupid accent.)

Ruby Sparks is the quintessential MPDG, and I kind of hate her. (The movie theater most likely showed that trailer to me because I'm a young woman, though I realized during the survey that I never see anything without explosions on the big screen anymore. It seems a waste of money if nothing blows up.)

But here, to refresh your palate, is a brilliant send-up of the type, created by Natural Disastronauts. Enjoy!

Found via The Society Pages.