Gendering the Anthropocene

Jenner, Joseph

doi:https://doi.org/10.3828/sfftv.2019.06

Female astronauts, failed motherhood and the overview effect

Jenner, Joseph

Science Fiction Film & Television (2019), 12, (1), 103–125.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/sfftv.2019.06
Language: English
Pages: 23

Abstract

In this article I examine films such as The Cloverfield Paradox, One Under the Sun and The Space Between Us, as well as television series such as Extant and The 100, to argue that, in parallel to revisions of masculinist Anthropocene discourse, the increase in female astronauts in contemporary sf has revised the notion of who is capable of political agency and intervention by seeing life on an ecologically troubled Earth from an expansive spatial and temporal perspective. The recent increase of female astronauts on screen, including women of colour, suggests a political reconfiguration of agency in the current geological epoch called the Anthropocene. However, at the same time, contemporary sf film and television is populated by female astronauts who are grieving a lost or dying child, are infertile, or give birth to alien or monstrous children. As I will argue, the failure of procreation is projected onto anxieties about the Earth’s increasing inability to sustain life on Earth. There is, then, a deep ambivalence about the views of the Earth as witnessed by female astronauts - both a progressive political gesture within Anthropocene politics and a perpetuation of the displacement of cultural anxieties onto the female body.

Read now (free)

If you have private access to this content, please log in with your username and password here

Works cited

Anon. ‘Technological “Solutions” to Climate Change: Are Any “Geoengineering” Solutions Viable or Realistic?’ Scientific American (n.d.). scientificamerican.com/article/geoengineering-solutions/#. Accessed 8 May 2018. Google Scholar

Bonneuil, Christophe and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz. The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us. Trans. David Fernbach. New York: Verso, 2016. Google Scholar

Brown, William. Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age. New York: Berghahn Books, 2013. Google Scholar

Constable, Catherine. ‘Becoming the Monster’s Mother: Morphologies of Identity in the Alien Series’. Alien Zone II: The Spaces of Science Fiction Cinema. Ed. Annette Kuhn. New York: Verso, 1990. 173-202. Google Scholar

Constable, Catherine. ‘Getting about Herself: Re-envisaging the Sublime in Gravity’. Film-Philosophy Conference, 6 Jul 2017, Lancaster University, UK. Conference paper. Google Scholar

Creed, Barbara. ‘Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine - An Imaginary Abjection’. Screen 27.1 (1986): 44-71. Google Scholar

Cristoforetti, Samantha. Interview by Nadia Drake. ‘They Saw Earth from Space. Here’s How It Changed Them: The Majesty of our Planet Can Be Difficult to Describe. But These Astronauts Will Try’. National Geographic (Mar 2018). nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/03/astronauts-space-earth-perspective/. Accessed 9 Mar 2018. Google Scholar

Grusin, Richard. ‘Anthropocene Feminism: An Experiment in Collaborative Theorising’. Anthropocene Feminism. Ed. Richard Grusin. Minneapols: U of Minnesota P, 2017. vii-xiv. Google Scholar

Haraway, Donna J. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books, 1991. Google Scholar

Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke UP, 2016. Google Scholar

Heise, Ursula K. Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Google Scholar

Irr, Caren. ‘Climate Fiction in English.’ Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature (Feb 2017). DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.4. Accessed 8 May 2018. Google Scholar

Kaplan, E. Ann. Climate Trauma: Foreseeing the Future in Dystopian Film and Fiction. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2016. Google Scholar

Kelly, Scott. Interview by Alan Yuhas. ‘Nasa Astronaut Scott Kelly on His Year in Space: “Maybe You Do Go Bananas”’. The Guardian (5 Mar 2016). theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/04/nasa-astronaut-scott-kelly-year-in-space-interview. Accessed 29 Mar 2017. Google Scholar

Lewis, Danny. “Half of NASA’s Newest Astronaut Class Are Women.” Smithsonian.com (18 Jan 2016). smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/half-nasa-newest-astronaut-class-wmeon-180957850. Accessed 5 Jun 2018. Google Scholar

Pesquet, Thomas. Interview by Jon Henley. ‘Astronaut Thomas Pesquet: “Earth is Just a Big Spaceship with a Crew. It Needs Looking after”’. The Guardian (2 Feb 2018). theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/02/astronaut-thomas-pesquet-earth-is-just-a-big-spaceship-with-a-very-big-crew-. Accessed 7 Jun 2018. Google Scholar

Sheldon, Rebekah. The Child to Come: Life after the Human Catastrophe. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2016. Google Scholar

Sobchack, Vivian. ‘The Virginity of Astronauts: Sex and the Science Fiction Film’. Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. Ed. Annette Kuhn. New York: Verso, 1990. 113-15. Google Scholar

White, Frank. The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. Google Scholar

‘Vincent Tran and Riyaana Hartley Exclusive Interview | One Under the Sun Movie’. YouTube, uploaded by Maximo TV (8 Jul 2016). www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF-jR49VeNc. Accessed 7 Jun 2018. Google Scholar

If you have private access to this content, please log in with your username and password here

Details

Author details

Jenner, Joseph

Science Fiction Film & Television