My thoughts on a recent episode of The Incomparable podcast, which I generally enjoy, in which the panelists discussed Galaxy Quest. Hold on to your butts, it's a long one.

Before GamerGate was ever a thing, I was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the persistent and seemingly increasing coverage of identity politics, not in video game journalism (not much of a gamer myself), but in another suburb of Nerddom: that esoteric delicacy, the podcast wherein geeks in the Apple orbit get together to talk about the non-Apple geekery that they love.

No group does that particular genre better than The Incomparable.

I always grimace, though, when I see a woman on their panel. Not because I don’t think that women ought to be part of the conversation (of course they should), or that they don’t have interesting and insightful things to say (they do), but because I know that at some point in the episode, seemingly without fail, she will find some gender-related fault in whatever their topic happens to be and react disproportionately, or else engage in hyperbolic praise of something that pushes gender-politics ideology, and that the men on the panel will spend 20 minutes agreeing with her whole-heartedly and uncritically.

I try to keep an open mind, though, and at times the criticisms have merit. And in truth, these men, whose cultural biases I am by now well acquainted with, often need no help from the presence of their female counterparts to bring up the ways in which this or that piece of literature or art loses points on gender, or race, or simply not fitting perfectly into the liberal mindset.

So any episode, whether it has a woman on the panel or not, could potentially become a soapbox for gender-based ideology.

Still, because there is something surprisingly enjoyable about listening to fellow nerds talk about nerdy stuff that you also like, even if their ideology gets in the way from time to time, I continue to tune in. And, I have come to accept that this is simply a Fact of Life if I want to listen to these kinds of podcasts.

This latest episode of The Incomparable, in which Erika Ensign joins Jason et al. to talk about the movie Galaxy Quest, did not disappoint: I enjoyed and agreed with most of what they had to say about the movie, but on their comments regarding gender issues in Galaxy Quest, I feel compelled to in turn air my own thoughts. I won’t be re-hashing the plot. So go refresh your memory on Netflix or something if you want to follow along.

They, spear-headed by Erika, whose insights I often appreciate and enjoy, have Big Problems with Sigourney Weaver’s character, because gender issues. They describe the character as silly, stupid, ditzy, and as a cypher and cartoon.

A rather harsh assessment, I thought. But let's see why they felt that way.

Erika makes a point about her not having a satisfying character arc on the show:

“I do love this movie…like so many other properties it felt like it was just not made for me. The female character in the show ‘Galaxy Quest’ is just kind of silly and useless [which the Movie is well aware of and points out to great comic effect], but she’s not that much better in quote unquote real life… Other characters have some decent arcs…

When you look at Gwen, her arc, the take-home message I got from her is, sometimes its ok to just be really pretty and if you hang in there and you don’t try too hard to go above and beyond your station then you might land a hunky man at the end of everything.

Like that’s just so depressing it makes me sick.”

Erika takes the worst possible and least charitable read of Weaver’s character in the movie. Indeed, I wonder if she saw the same movie as me, because you would think that Weaver were depicted as a sex-slave or something in the course of the film, rather than simply being willing to be a part of the team and fulfill the role, even if silly, that she had to play. Incidentally, this is something that every other character, even the commander, must also grapple with: how to be a team player, and fulfill his or her role.

The lack of an arc is perhaps troubling, but on reflection I actually think it may have less to do with her being a woman than it is to do with the fact that she’s the only major character who is already well-balanced at the beginning of the movie, and so doesn’t need a huge life-changing arc like the others do.

The other major characters start the show like this:

Jason Nesmith (the Commander) is self-absorbed and upstages and marginalizes his friends because of his delusions of grandeur.
Fred Kwan is checked-out, disinterested, and clearly gave up caring long ago.
Alexander Dane is full of deep regret and self-loathing for having failed to amount to much of a Real Actor, and also bears a whole mountain of grudges against his friend Jason.

Tommy and Guy are side characters, and have very little arc of which to speak.

Gwen DeMarco, on the other hand, is already a pretty decent, well-rounded person. She has some regrets, but no delusions, and like the rest she is kind of a washed-up actor, but she cares about her friends, including Jason, for whom she shows real concern after he uncharacteristically lashes out at a fan. And, as pointed out by another of the Incomparable panelists: she displays “integrity and a sense of self worth in turning down Tim Allen’s advances and standing up for the crew, that they work together or not at all.”

Of course the same panelist likes her only in the beginning of the movie, because “then she gets silly and ditzy, on the planet and running around in the corridors. She gets some good lines but they don’t change her character, push her forward like Erica mentioned.”

We’ll get to the ditziness on the planet’s surface in a moment, but I would just point out here that what they can’t see because they are so focused on the fact that she is female, is that the fact that she does not grow significantly could be because she does not need to, because she is not deeply flawed to begin with.

But maybe I am overstating the case. Maybe her character is written weakly. Maybe the writers should have made her more flawed, and given her more of an arc. Ok. That could be; it’s not a Great Film, after all; I will concede that it has flaws. But Erika’s assessment is so negative, and depressing, and I think over-reactionary and unwarranted, that I am really truly sad that she feels that way when a sci-fi show fails to write a female character that is “strong” enough to live up to her expectations.

But I also think that there is something else going on: The Incomparable don’t like Gwen’s character because she is written as a woman with womanly traits, and because she ends up with a man at the end.

Indeed, listen to what Jason Snell has to say about the relationship between Gwen and the Commander:

“Just understanding some of their history…their history is completely intangible….there’s no actual anything, there’s nothing to it. So when the movie ends the way it does…where did that come from? its not really paid off anyway, and if we had a better sense of them being people who actually had a relationship and were sparing with each other and this was something that made them understand and grow. That they made a mistake back then, that they’re not as bad as they thought or whatever, but none of that is in this movie…. I feel like in the end with Gwen they decided they would just rather tell the jokes and not have the character be a person.”

First, this is not a romantic comedy, and it’s an ensemble piece, so the romantic story line is necessarily not given a full treatment in the film. But also, again, I feel like I saw a different movie. Because everything that he complains about not being there in order to establish the boy-gets-girl ending was there:

Early on the Commander implies that they had a relationship, though she denies it
They then have a scene where he tries to woo her with a silly line about “the alien mists fill my mind with such thoughts” or some such and she rebuffs him saying that it used to work on her before she knew him better. (This clearly implies that they were in a relationship at one time)
When they are going after a beryllium sphere they have a little exchange in the background about how he slept with extras on the show. (Which sounds a lot like the sparing Jason complains about being absent)
When they think the ship is about to explode and kill them both, and they only have seconds to live, they both nearly profess their love for each other with halting phrases like “Gwen, I always…”, and “Jason, I…”.

Indeed this is just as well-established as anything in the entire movie. And when I originally saw the movie, I most certainly got a strong sense that they were old flames who didn’t work out, largely because Tim Allen’s character was so full of himself.

So what is Jason Snell talking about? I have no idea, except that it gives him a way to eviscerate what today is a capital sin, it seems, in story-telling: having the woman end up with a man in the end.

But the most outlandish element of all of this criticism is how much they make of a tiny joke for Gwen's character when in the crew’s encounter with aliens down on the planet’s surface that look like adorable little green-skinned children she is so compelled by their cuteness that she almost steps out from the crew’s hiding place.

This is such an affront to the panelists that it comes up twice during the episode. Here’s Erika’s first comment:

“This is another scene that really bothers me.. actually this is the one scene I think that bothers me the most, because you have Sigourney Weaver’s character suddenly being completely stupid and wanting to run out there just because they happen to be cute…? This was the moment where I kind of turned on the movie for a moment and was like ‘How dare you?’”

In my experience women do tend to be more affected by the cuteness of babies and children than men generally are. Indeed, I have on multiple occasions seen my mother in public positively transfixed by someone else's baby. I have never seen my father so transfixed. If anything I consider this a black mark for men not women, because I think it is healthy to be so affected by the youngest of our kind.

But today it is apparently an insult to suggest that a woman might experience emotions related to children and babies.

It comes up again:

Jason:

“I was just thinking how stupid Gwen is in that scene with the little alien babies and she wants to run over and hug them or something…”

Erika:

“Yup. Really?! I mean they could have chosen any of the characters… to want to go talk to them for other reasons…but it’s a very gendered thing that they did to her. They’re cute they’re adorable they’re like babies so I want to go and hug them. If it wasn’t that gendered if it was just more neutral, maybe I wouldn’t have had as big a problem with it.”

You really have to listen to the episode to pick up the anger in her tone. She doesn’t shout, or anything, but its clear just how much the incident affected her.

Notice that this is something that “they did to her," the female character. That is, to portray a woman as having a womanly trait is a transgression against that woman. Because, apparently we are no longer allowed to make harmless and good-natured jokes that are funny because of the gender of the person. (Remember, we aren’t talking about rape jokes here.)

And, I would point out as well, that he whole movie is filled with characters doing really stupid things that really don’t take into account the severity of their context. The fact that their actions are stupid in context is what makes them funny. But even in a comedy we apparently should not portray a female character as doing something stupid. Except maybe if its also something that a man might do as well. Because we should never portray women doing things that women specifically might do. Right?

I get that women being emotional about babies is seen as perpetuating harmful gender stereotypes. It baffles me, but I understand that this is a concern. Even so, is it a proportional reaction to feel like you have been betrayed, as a woman, by the makers of the movie because of this joke?

If you say yes, put me down as mind-boggled.

People like The Incomparable panelists see anything relating to gender in frankly bizarre and skewed ways and they react with such negativity that they not only dishearten and discourage me as a listener, who am just trying to be reasonable and egalitarian; but they also fail to see the things that they love truthfully and accurately.

For instance, Erika remarks that a flat female character who fails to be a “person” is something “which for 1999 is not a really surprising thing in a science fiction movie, I’m sorry to say.”

As if 1999 was still a gender-regressive dark age.

First, we’re talking about Sigourney Weaver, an actress who decades prior to this movie played Ripley in Alien and all through the Nineties reprised that role in many sequels. Second, there were plenty of sci-fi movies in the Nineties with “strong” female characters:

Terminator 2 (Sarah Connor has gone from damsel-in-distress to full-on commando)
The Alien sequels (Ripley continues her alien-killing badassery)
Ghost in the Shell
Tank Girl (Ok, didn’t see it, but it’s in the name)
Star Trek: First Contact (Strong women, of both the good and villainous cyborg varieties)
Contact (Not only the main character but a Scientist to boot. Huzzah for Women in STEM!)
The Fifth Element (Lilu, superhuman, name-taking, head-busting savior)
The X-Files Movie (Scully, the rational-to-a-fault doctor)
The Phantom Menace (Arguable since no character in the movie manages to be a person, but at least Queen Amidala is a main character, who is a woman, and who is in a powerful position)
The Matrix (Trinity? “Hell yes.”)

It seems like the 1990s were a good time for strong female characters in sci-fi. So what is Erika talking about? I honestly don’t know. I guess the requisite quotas were not met?

Her perception filter of gendered issues is so powerful, I think, that she, like the other panelists, sees things that aren’t there, doesn't see things that are there, misremembers history along politico-gendered lines, and makes into mountains mole hills wherever possible.

And that’s the problem.

As a listener, it saddens me.

As a human being, it worries me.

Postscript:

Ok, so I can’t resist one final bit of craziness, which you might not notice had you not spent years listening to these people, who I otherwise respect and admire, hand-wringing about gender issues.

In the wrap up they talk about why the movie is appealing, and another panelist mentions “My wife is not a—Lynne, is not a—she has a name—is not a science fiction fan…”

The tacit implication being that if he were to not specify his wife's name he would somehow be failing to acknowledge that she is a person above and beyond her relationship to him, a man.

Look at how saturated these poor geeks are in gender politics: that a man can’t call his wife “my wife” without worrying that he somehow inadvertently denied her humanity!

This is the world that we live in.