“Even so late as the mid-Victorian days George Eliot was accused of ‘coarseness and immorality’ in her attempt ‘to familiarize the minds of our young women in the middle and higher ranks with matters on which their fathers and brothers would never venture to speak in their presence.’
The effect of those repressions is still clearly to be traced in women’s work, and the effect is wholly to the bad. The problem of art is sufficiently difficult in itself without having to respect the ignorance of young women’s minds or to consider whether the public will think that the standard of moral purity displayed in your work is such as they have a right to expect from your sex. The attempt to conciliate, or more naturally to outrage, public opinion is equally a waste of energy and sin against art. It may have been not only with a view to obtaining impartial criticism that George Eliot and Miss Brontë adopted male pseudonyms but in order to free their own consciousness as they wrote from the tyranny of what was expected from their sex. No more than men, however, could they free themselves from a more fundamental tyranny – the tyranny of sex itself. The effort to free themselves, or rather to enjoy what appears, perhaps erroneously, to be the comparative freedom of the male sex from that tyranny, is another influence which has told disastrously upon the writing of women.”
-Virginia Woolf, Killing the Angel in the House.
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, and goodreads.]
We just saw Christopher Nolan’s new film. It was a good film, though not his greatest. We were never bored. The story itself was good, though our assumptions about the film’s foundations were sadly correct – even more than correct. They spot-on celebrate everything we find wrong with the post-apocalyptic genre. The pro-natalist leanings are the movie’s downfall and are what kept me from really caring what happened to this version of the human race in general.
Interstellar wasn’t just about saving the humans – it was also about starting it over if necessary. Starting us over.
Some of the humans in the film are prepared to go off and leave everyone on earth and just start over with an “ark” of human eggs and sperm. This plot point was somewhat pathetic (on the characters’ part) but necessary to show the multiple levels of human thinking. It asks the question: What is more important, those already living and suffering or the thought of no humans existing at all?
The other issue we had was the main point to the film – of finding another planet to colonize. If we couldn’t take care of the last one then how dare we feel entitled to another one? Not to mention the fact Nolan conveniently didn’t acknowledge other life on those planets (that I can remember) – only if they did or didn’t support human life.
Another bone we have to pick was on a topic Nolan could have explored more. One of the characters has and loses a child on earth to a sickness the dust storms cause (affecting the lungs). Why the hell would you be having babies when you knew your world was dying? Not only is everyone starving, but they can’t breathe and you think it’s a good idea to bring another oxygen-needing, food-needing human into the world? Huh?
Jessica Chastian’s character asks of her then-in-space dad at one point “Did you leave us here to die?” What it really should have been was, “Why the hell did you bring me into this world, dad?”
But back to the main point. Nolan seems to be very anti-earth in this film, though I don’t know if he meant to be. He likens the struggling farmers trying to feed the population as “caretakers” who are pathetic and without dreams – as if going into space and leaving the human mess behind is the only way to have hope.
Sorry, but no. It is that very escapist outlook that many of the European colonizers had (escape Europe, start over, be in charge of a colony! Never mind the Native Americans who already live here). Leaving earth won’t solve humanity’s problem. It will leave them going from planet to planet like locust, continually throwing things off balance.
I would much rather be a caretaking steward of the earth we do have than have my species blamed for killing off every other species (plant and animal – oh, and not a single animal was seen in the film, by the way. Hm, I WONDER WHY). I would much rather our species be able to fix problems rather than escape them the way Nolan suggests in this film.
Let me give you an example: Instead of leaving a planet that was losing its oxygen, why not have scientists mutate the human body to have them better withstand the nitrogen that was taking over in the film? Why not genetically modify humans to withstand the climate they created? That’s adapting.
My point is: There has to be a better way than leaving our mess behind. Leaving is only a temporary solution. We will always have to come back and face our “ghosts” eventually. I don’t want to be a scary ghost. [Spoilers] After all, even in the film, the human race (which now knows more about 5th dimensions and gravity and time and space and is perhaps more evolved (?)) comes “back” to make sure things go right for the human race. Why can’t we just work toward being good ghosts from the beginning? [End Spoilers]
However, I think people will be talking about the topics this film raised for a long time to come. I know we will be.
-Gabbler
“Don’t go down so gently…I’m just waiting on you to breathe without permission”
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]
