Author: tekanji

Feminist SF Blog: Joss Whedon & race

tekanji

Over at the Feminist SF Blog, Laura Q has written an excellent analysis of Joss Whedon & race.

Here’s a small excerpt of what she says in regards to characterization in Firefly:

The ‘Verse is much more suggestive of Whedon & crew’s take on politics: generally progressive, comfortable with feminism, interested in but a little clueless about class, and deeply uncomfortable with dealing with race and racism. So the racelessness of the people of color is the white boy version of racial utopia: color-blindness, where we can all just appreciate each other for the color/texture of our skin and hair. The color-blindness of not wanting to deal with it.

All I can say is that you need to go read this. Now. No, seriously, you’re taking too long. Stop reading what I’m writing and go read Laura’s post. I mean it.

Embracing Your Inner Skeptic

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I am a big fan of science. Studies, statistics, innovations in technology, you name it. Probably because I grew up in a family interested in debate and discussion and opinions only get you so far in those instances. In recent years, my mother in particular has embraced her Inner Skeptic and has encouraged me to do the same.

And, really, I think it’s high time for me to share the love of the Inner Skeptic with the world. Yes, that’s right. I am sharing the love. Sharing it. With you. So you’d better read on to see how this love will be shared.

I. Embracing Your Inner Skeptic

I’ve been embracing my Inner Skeptic for quite some time. I have peppered some of my posts with skepticism, and even have the small category specifically devoted to skepticism. But I’ve never really written one (or more) posts devoted specifically to looking critically at science. Not through lack of want, but rather because I didn’t have anything to push me into writing on the subject.

That is until one man, Scipio, decided to write about how “evil” women in comics are unrealistic because women aren’t as aggressive as men. He then backed his assertion of this innate state of women with a 2002 study on the neurobiology of aggression conducted at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). I read the article (which doesn’t even link to the original study [PDF]!), which in no way was a blanket endorsement of Scipio’s views, and decided it was high time for me to write an article on embracing your Inner Skeptic.

I know that all of us — myself included — can get super excited over the latest study and go overboard in supporting it without looking at important things like sample size and if it has been reproduced yet or not. This is, I think, part of human nature. But it’s important not to get so caught up in thinking of science as “facts” that we forget that most of the time the “facts” are our interpretation of the evidence, especially when the information on the studies comes only from news articles.

I’m saving the lecture on why not to confuse an article with a study for its own post, but here I will be discussing how to ask the “right” questions and why it’s valuable to understand the layers of interpretaiton, and how that differs from the empirical data. The point is not to discuss the relative merit of Scipio’s, or even the UPenn study’s, points, but rather to use this discussion as a springboard in order to excersise those critical thinking muscles that we all have.

II. Asking the Right Questions

One study does not evidence make. One study is merely a beginning. The UPenn study, for instance, is far from a definitive blow for innate differences. The title of the article itself even uses the word “possible” in it. Later on, it emphasizes that this was the “first time” such a thing has been measured. It even goes on to state that “[t]he findings provide a new research path” — meaning that more research needs to be done before anything else.

But the age of the study and if it has been reproduced yet are only two of the questions that should be asked. Sample size is another. The age, races, social background, ethnic background, and gender and sex of the participants is important too.

On the Evil Woman! post, Ragnell asks these questions as well as ones specific to the type of the study and the way that Scipio uses it to “prove” his point:

Are there other parts of the brain that can compensate for this particular part?

Is this a section of the brain determined by biological hardwiring alone, or can it be influenced to develop differently at an early age?
If it is the second answer, can the early social conditioning given to a little girl have nutured this area of the brain? What about the social conditioning given to boys? Is it possible that our cultural mores are causing early harm to young developing male minds?

How many times has this hypothesis been tested? Just once? Twice? Numerous times over several years? Or is this just one study, likely to be overturned by the next study as so many scientific studies are overturned?

How biased were the researchers? Was it a blind comparison or did they know before they accumulated the results which scan belonged to which person? Or which group? Or which gender?

[From Evil Woman!, comment by by Ragnell]

The article answers some of the basic questions. The sample size was 116 people, 57 male and 59 female. The age breakdown wasn’t given, but it was stated that they were “healthy adults younger than 50 years of age”. The measurements were adjusted to “allow for the difference between men and women in physical size” — though I wonder if that means if they allowed for individual size differences, or imposed one size as the “normal” male size and another as the “normal” female size. The only other information mentioned is that all of the subjects were right-handed. Nothing mentioned about social background, race, or any other factor that may have contributed to socalization factors in brain development.

Kalinara raised another important question (one I wouldn’t have thought to ask, personally) [formatted from an IM conversation]:

Did they record anything about diet? Because diet’s been known to effect brain development and chemistry…at least according to a study. 😛

[D]iet’s a big thing. In a lot of “primitive” societies, there are foods that promote aggressive behavior that only the men eat…if they eat it while growing up…would that effect the size. So if we don’t know what all these people eat, it’s hard to say.

I looked up the study and came across this article which links to the full study here (click on the Full Text (PDF) link to see the study). There may or may not be a link between this issue and the UPenn study, but given that they are both interested in aggression I would say that the lifetime diet of the UPenn participants is defiintely something that could have affected the study.

III. The Layers of Interpretation

The finding itself was that MRI scans revealed that “women’s brains had a significantly higher volume of orbital frontal cortex in proportion to amygdala volume than did the brains of the men.” This is what I’d call the “empirical data” of this study, although even that cannot be confirmed until the study is reproduced by other teams and hopefully with some larger sample sizes. Still, this data is the objective findings of this particular study. From here, several layers of interpretation are created, some of which are built upon themselves.

Interpretation 1:

The amygdala is involved in emotional behavior related to arousal and excitement, while the orbital frontal region is involved in the modulation of aggression.

If you’re wondering why this is under the “interpretation” heading, that’s because it’s a correlational behaviour. It’s presented as fact here, and the article itself states that the above data has come from “established scientific findings”. If this interpretation was a mere hypothesis I would be surprised. Because the assumption the amygdala and the orbital frontal regions influence arousal, excitment, and agression is the entire basis for the interpretations that follow. And, really, I have no problem assuming that — at least until proven otherwise — it’s true that those parts of the brain influence what the study says that they do.

I just want to point out that in Greek medical science, it was given that women were prone to having their womb wander around their bodies. Sure, our technology is better than back then, but it’s important to keep in mind that emotional reactions are notoriously hard to measure with accuracy. Which is not to debunk this interpretation, but rather to recommend a cautious, versus wholehearted, acceptance of it.

Interpretation 2:

This study affords us neurobiological evidence that women may have a better brain capacity than men for actually ‘censoring’ their aggressive and anger responses.

While the Interpretation 1 was one of the foundational variables for the study, Interpretation 2 is based on the outcome. Assuming the accuracy of Interpretation 1, Interpretation 2 is a logical conclusion based on the empirical data.

But, as Jenn points out on Ragnell’s thread, bigger doesn’t always mean better [emphasis mine]:

First of all, the conclusion drawn (a sex difference in emotional control) is not directly addressed — what was actually found was, boiled down, that the women surveyed had a significantly larger amygdala then men. That, itself, may not mean anything — any conclusion towards emotional control is based upon the assumption that increased tissue size leads to greater tissue function. In fact, in the brain, function is correlated to complexity of neural tissue (e.g. folding of the cerebral cortex), not just size. Although having more tissue might mean you have greater function, this may not be the case. The authors, themselves, note in the discussion that they haven’t measured the complexity of the tissue, and further research must be done to characterize what exactly makes up for this increase in tissue, affecting whether or not this indicates a functional difference.

[From Hello Again, Hal, comment by Jenn]

I’d also like to draw attention to the qualifiers that are used in Interpretation 2: That the study is evidence (not proof) “that women may” (again, not proven) “have a better brain capacity than men” (capacity is potential, which does not always correlate to the actuality of the issue). It is important to note that these words are emphasizing the tenuous nature of the links; putting the hypothesis out there but not claiming that their study “proves” such a thing.

Interpretation 3:

Because men and women differ in the way they process the emotions associated with perception, experience, expression, and most particularly in aggression, our belief is that the proportional difference in size in the region of the brain that governs behavior, compared to the region related to impulsiveness, may be a major factor in determining what is often considered ‘gendered-related’ behavior

Again, I’d just like to point out that Interpretation 3 depends on the accuracy of Interpretations 1 and 2 (the whole idea of layered interpretations). I don’t believe that it compromises the potential usefulness of the study, or even of these particular interpretations, but rather that we — as the people who use the study — need to be aware of how the interpretations build on each other, and that interpretations like 3 are farther away from the emperical data than, say, Interpretation 1.

I’d also like to address the conclusion drawn by Gur, who I should point out tempers it with the word “belief”, that this is a major factor in determining “gender related” behaviour. This is the opinion of Gur, who is representing his team. It is the team’s interpretation, and the team’s bias, and when he says that it is their “belief” he is acknowleding that. But it’s not enough for him to acknowledge it, we need to as well. Could he be right? Of course. But he could also be wrong.

Turning to Jenn’s comment once again:

Secondly, the brain is a wonderfully fluid organ. Regions of the brain can shift its connections compared to degrees of use. *If* it is found that women have greater emotional control due to increased amygdala tissue, this may not indicate a genetic or biological difference so much as an adaptation to increased use.

[From Hello Again, Hal, comment by Jenn]

The empirical data of this study measures only the ratio of the two parts of the brain that we currently believe are linked to certain emotions and the ability to control aggression. It is possible that female brains are naturally better suited to developing the parts of the brain that regulate this stuff. It’s also possible that levels of testosterone play a role. But it’s also possible that women’s brains tend to develop this control because women in American society are encouraged to repress their aggression more than men are.

Not only is the “nature versus nurture” debate far from settled in the scientific community, but there’s no rule saying that all of the above can’t play a role. It doesn’t have to be nature or nurture. But, even then, it’s important to remember that modern science doesn’t give us the evidence for this — deciding whether something is nature, nurture, or both is completely up to our own interpretation of the data.

IV. Conclusion

Embracing your Inner Skeptic doesn’t mean disbeliving every study you come across. It doesn’t mean that we should never use studies to back up our opinions. What it does mean is turning a critical and — dare I say it? — skeptical eye to everything that we encounter. Studies we like, studies we don’t, news articles… there is always something to be gained from asking questions and separating interpretation from data. Science is possibly one of the most useful tools at our disposal, which makes it that much more important for us to be on our toes when its used by us or others.

(Hat tip to Jenn for doing the footwork in finding the original UPenn study.)

Summer Vacation

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My dad’s coming into Tokyo today, and tomorrow I’m off to meet him for a fun-filled week of doing anything except for thinking about Japanese. I may have to speak it to get around in some places, or read it to go anywhere on the JR Line (you’d think Tokyo trains would have English, like Okazaki and Nagoya do, but nope, all kanji), but I assure you there will be no thinking of the Japanese. At all.

Anyway, what that means is that I’m gone until July 2. I won’t be able to reply to comments or make new posts (I know, how sad!) but Ariel and Jeff will be here to hold down the fort. Luke may pop in if he gets inspired too (*hinthint*). When I come back, I’ll be guest blogging over at Alas (for July and August, how cool am I) but everything will be x-posted here.

See y’all July 2!

Site Outage

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The blog was down for the better part of several hours. Actually, every one of my websites were down for the better part of several hours. Not very happy with that, but as things seem to be fixed I’m not complaining. Much. Sorry to everyone who got errors and thanks to those of you who expressed concern. 🙂

Update 2006.06.24 (Tokyo time): I spoke to soon when I said things were fixed. When I got moved to a more stable server, Dreamhost apparently forgot to reconfigure the new Apache server. Which caused my sites to be down for about a day. Doh. The good news is that I shouldn’t have nearly the downtime that I’ve been experiencing in these past two months. The bad news is that I lost out on the majority of the traffic from The 17th Carnival of Feminists (if you haven’t seen it already, go check it out).

Changing Pop-Culture to Change Ourselves [Understanding Popular Culture, Part 4]

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In the opening of this series, I talked about how popular culture influenced us because it’s all around us. I talked about how it becomes the elephant in the room because of that. But what I didn’t talk about was how popular culture fits into our battle to change harmful cultural paradigms. And, really, that’s a glaring oversight that I intend to correct right now.

You see, I came across a post today (… oy. by Julia) that gave me one of those headsmacking, “OH!” moments. Not because I agree with her — far from it, I’m about to spend this entire post rebutting the points that she made — but because I finally understand the basis for the argument that [x] concern needs to be shelved so [y] and [z] concern can be taken care of first.

I. Chicken or the Egg Syndrome

So much of what happens in comics seems to be based on predispositions of society. The sexualization won’t really change until society changes and doesn’t, as a whole, view it as being so acceptable.

I’m not going to dispute Julia’s assertion that “much of what happens in comics seems to be based on predispositions of society,” because, well, I agree. Popular culture draws its themes, plots, dialogue, stereotypes, and all that other good stuff from our existing culture. Nothing exists in a vacuum, and it would be naive to pretend that the treatment of women in comics/movies/etc. is self-contained.

But, at the same time, nothing exists in a vacuum. Popular culture doesn’t just draw from society, it is part of what shapes it. Popular culture has been around as long as societies have existed — being inspired by, reinforcing, and ultimately shaping society. Because of this, presenting the problem as linear — “culture –> popular culture” — is misleading. The reality is that the relationship is a circle, with popular culture influencing society and society in turn influencing popular culture.

II. Debunking the “Cause-Effect” Theory

Simply stated, my issue is with the cause and not the effect, because the effect will not dissipate until the cause is eliminated. I would truly like to see things change! But in order for that to happen the root of the problem has to be attacked, and that root is so large that it will take decades, probably, even with all the troops called in (and hopefully behaving themselves).

Bearing in mind what I said in Section I, I’d like to now turn to Julia’s argument that her “issue is with the cause and not the effect, because the effect will not dissipate until the cause is eliminated.” Well, it should come as no surprise that I disagree with the way in which she chose to frame the issue. Here again, I have to say that the “cause-effect” relationship she sets up is misleading because it oversimplifies the issue.

What root of which problem? The sexualization of women? Well, that’s just one facet of the oppression that women face. The patriarchy? Two problems there: 1) it’s an abstract concept, not a concrete problem to be solved, and 2) it supposes that gender inequity is the root of all oppression. Even if you use the word as I sometimes do, as a feminist shorthand for the oppressive institutions that legitimize hierarchies of power, “fighting oppression” is a starting point, not a path to success.

There is no concrete “root” because the problem of oppression intersects all kinds of different cultures. And, frankly, the group who we often think of as our feminist foremothers didn’t just fail to solve the problem of oppression because they didn’t have enough time, but because their idea of what the “root of all oppression” was too narrow. You can’t solve oppression by telling everyone to adopt your particular brand of tunnel vision.

III. The Importance of Recognizing Intersectionality

Let me clarify about the “particular brand of tunnel vision” thing. I don’t think having tunnel vision is a bad thing. We all have our pet topics and that’s cool. Some of us are more focused than others. Studying popular culture is probably my main focus, but since I love cross-sections I also keep abreast of other topics such as feminist issues,
human sexuality, and general oppression work. I don’t think that this is inherently better or worse than someone who chooses one topic, or even a smaller subset of topics, to focus on.

In fact, I’d go one step farther to say that the only way I think we’ll ever have a chance at winning the battle against oppression (as much as one can “win” such a thing) is if we wage this war on multiple levels. I believe that every fight we fight — whether it be against domestic violence or raising our voices against the overabundance of “sexy girls who kick ass” in popular media — is a valuable one. I believe every stride we make, however small and however flawed, should be appreciated.

That doesn’t mean that we have no right to critique it, but rather that the critique shouldn’t be done from a “our time could be spent better elsewhere.” Maybe your time could be spent better elsewhere, but you do not speak for me. If what speaks to you is fighting sexism on a societal level and shelving popular culture, then that’s wonderful! I, for one, am glad that there are activist out there who tackle issues that I don’t have the time and/or energy for.

IV. If the Goal is Unattainable, Why Bother?

And we can’t just snap our fingers and change society. Nor will a small group of people have that large of an impact on the world, in this case. It’s a monumental, impractical and impossible task to attempt, that at this point in time will lead to failure, and then disappointment, resentment and anger over that failure.

No matter how many times I read this quote, all I can think of is, “Oh, come on. Let’s be serious here.” The same can be said of feminism, or civil rights activism, or, really, any cause where people struggle against the way society is. It’s an uphill battle with few victories, and if you’re fighting for the glory you’d just as soon be better off cheering from the sidelines because it ain’t gonna happen.

But, faliure as a reason why we shouldn’t fight for our pet projects? Faliure? I mean, sure, there are some days when I look at what we do to each other and feel that the cause is hopeless. My blogging doesn’t stop the misogynists. It doesn’t stop the feminist infighting. It doesn’t stop the sexualization of women, inside or outside of comics. And if that’s a goal I expect to attain then, yeah, I’m going to fail.

When I, and I suspect many other people who fight oppression in whatever form they like best, say things like “ending the sexualization of women in comic books” is a goal of mine, I don’t mean that it’s my expectation that I, personally, will lead the crusade that once and for all eradicates the way women are used and abused in comics. I’m pretty sure that’s not what Girl Wonder thinks either. That kind of goal is known as a “long term goal” — which means that it’s the ideal that we strive for with our activism. It gives us a common goal from which to form a community.

Maybe one day this community will be big enough to make an impact. Maybe it won’t. But it’s stupid to just give up on fighting for what you believe in because you might not be around to see the main goal come to fruition. And, really, if everyone thought like that then the goal wouldn’t come to fruition! Fighting oppression starts with education — education of ourselves and spreading the awareness to others. If even one person becomes more informed on the issue, and therefore less likely to unthinkingly endorse it, then haven’t we already won?

V. Conclusion

There is no one way to fight for what we believe in. There’s no one topic, no magic button to press to get where we want. We all push our way through life doing the best we can. And, yeah, we’ll make mistakes. We’ll let our anger get the better of us and we’ll hurt each other. And it should be talked about and it should be discussed.

Because, really, discussion is what we all need. We’re not always going to agree, and we’re not always going to understand why another person does something else. And, you know what? That’s perfectly fine. It’s not all thinking the same way that’s the goal, it’s learning to understand our differences and change ourselves so we can change society.

'Offensive' is Not a Feminist Value

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For the record, I don’t think that not giving a shit if you’re offensive to other feminists is something to be proud of, or something to admire. I don’t think that being trollish is something to be proud of, especially when one is trolling one’s own community. There’s a difference between examining an issue and advocating your morality as the only correct path, and frankly the latter does not encourage the former.

And, you know what? I’m really, really sick of the way that the A-list feminist bloggers shit on our community. I know saying that makes me sound like a bitter nobody. And, hey, I am a bitter nobody. But I’m not out there pulling a Hirshman by telling women what they (should) want. And I’m certainly not out there repackaging the “it’s just a joke” defence as “playing devil’s advocate” in order to excuse the real hurt that a fellow feminist blogger has done to the women out there who don’t feel the same as she does.

And by posting this I’m being angry, and I’m being divisive, and I’m sorry. I really am. But, damnit, people! I love this community. I love all the good work we do. I love the way that we support each other against the seemingly endless tide of misogynist trolls who want to destroy us because we scare them. And when I see women hating on each other rather than hating on the institution that oppresses us, it kills me.

New Carnival: Feminist SF

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Ragnell has just informed me that the only love her new carnival has gotten so far has been from me and the author/artist of Planet Karen. This will simply not do!

So, even though I haven’t plugged a carnival in way too long, I’m going to quote Ragnell’s announcement:

First, a word on the Carnival. The Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans periodically collects posts from the hazy side-reality where feminist social consciousness meets the outer limits of the imagination. This is to draw attention to lesser known bloggers, to bring individuals of like-minded (or at least, understanding) interests together, and to foster the growth of feminist fan communities. It’ll be held here on July 2nd, deadline for submissions is June 29th, use the submission form or email me, details here.

Just One Month…

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I want one month in the feminist blogsphere in which none of us attack each other because someone engages in an activity that we personally don’t like. I want one month in which feminists who have differing views on porn, BDSM, and other sexual practices can come together and have a civil conversation that examines the patriarchy’s role in all this instead of flinging shit at each other. I want one month in which we don’t privilege one set of oppression over another, but rather realize that the dynamics of oppression creates a complex and interconnecting web that needs to be tackled both as a whole as well as one thread at a time. I want one month in which the need to be the sole arbiter of Truth is less important than creating a community in which we listen to each other and realize that every person takes a different path to happiness. I want one month for us to celebrate our differences instead of using them to divide us.

For one month. Just one. Fucking. Month. I want us to blame the patriarchy instead of blaming women.

Why isn’t that possible?

This Gives a Whole New Meaning to 'Freudian Slip'

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The Almighty Penis... I mean Dagger
Penis Envy

And people said I was crazy when I talked about “girl power” being not much more than male appropriation of female power. Howard Chaykin’s illustrations of Red Sonja take this to an extreme by giving her a penis dildo strategically placed dagger.

She still has the chainmail bikini to give fanservice to the boys, but Red Sonja has always been a strong (both physically and mentally) character and this illustration makes me wonder if the idea of a woman holding that much power herself was so threatening to Chaykin’s subconscious that he ended up giving her a consolation penis. No one’s accusing him of deliberately doing this (because, well, how would we know either way unless he came out and said something?), but come on. Can you honestly say that you saw this picture and didn’t go, “Whoa, she has a penis!”?

Via Dance of the Puppets.

The ups and downs of gender in the CG movie Ark

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So, I finally got around to watching the movie Ark today. The first half hour or so got me really excited. The rest… well, let’s just say that the movie could have benefitted from an education regarding Women in Refrigerators.

The rest of the article is cut for massive spoilers that will ruin your ability to ever watch this movie if you read them. That being said, if you have already seen the movie or never intend to see it, please read on.

I. The Good

First there was Jallak. The movie opens with him doing the whole “protect the children” spiel when his commander and another fellow soldier want to shut down hibernation pods because the kids in them are Cevean. This gave me a warm fuzzy because usually the role of protector is relegated to women because it allows them to transgress the boundaries into the public/aggresive sphere without compromising their femininity. Them showing a man as having paternal instincts, to me at least, stood out.

Then there is the one kid who wakes up after Jallak takes a stand, Amarinth. She is adopted as his daughter. It skips to 16 years later (making her 18) and she is shown generating an electric current. Cool. The viewer already knows that she’s related somehow to the legendary priestess, Amiel, who built the Ark — the machine that is to help the races leave their dying planet.

And then… then the movie pops out three more surprises: the ruler of the Storrions (the militant race that has enslaved the Ceveans) is a woman, their lead scientist is a woman, and Jallak’s second in command (he’s the commander of the army at this point) is a woman. I mean, not one but three stereotype breaking women? There’s so much potential there I almost wet my pants.

The Empress is shown as a woman torn between her people/duty and saving her own skin. Although she is complicit in the slavery and war-like behaviour of her nation, she takes a strong stand against the nobility who want to build smaller ships and leave before the planet collapses. She also has a clearly evil adviser named Baramanda (he’s a total Sephiroth type).

We don’t get to see much of Piriel, but it’s made very clear that she’s Jallak’s second in command in the army. The doctor is introduced as the Storrians “leading scientist,” and even though the first scene she gets is of her failing, the viewer knows it’s because her task is impossible rather than because she isn’t smart enough.

Early on Amarinth’s love interest, Rogan, is introduced. He is a rebel Cevan who tries to assasinate Jallak to prevent the Storrions from obtaining data on the whereabouts of the body of Amiel. He gets some cool fighting scenes, then his gun craps out on him and he surrenders.

Amarinth gets exactly one cool scene: after all hell breaks loose, she uses her techno powers to power the escape vehicle for her and Rogan. All of her screaming and freaking out about the situation is mitigated by the way that she and Rogan talk about how she “saved him” and stuff.

Oh, and did I mention that all of the women have plausible proportions? None of them have huge boobs. All of the costumes are beautiful and skintight, but it’s not in a way that causes you to focus on their bodies to the exclusion of the rest of them. My only gripe in this area is that the leading men got more variety in their body shapes and age markers than the women did. In fact, for a long while I had a hard time telling the doctor and Piriel apart because they’re both short-haired blondes. Only one visibly old woman appeared in the movie (excepting random people in the street), but she just had a cameo. Jallak was clearly a distinguished gentleman of some years, and even Baramanda is clearly older than Rogan.

II. The Bad

The first 30 minutes sets up so many awesome possibilities, but things start going downhill from there. It all starts with Jallak being caught as a traitor when Baramanda calls him out on the incident with the kids in the first scene where he got Amarinth from. He gets arrested and Baramanda goes to get Amarinth because they now know that her blood will make the Ark run. I’m sitting around witing for her to bust out with her cool techno powers, but no. Not even a little bit. After her screaming and struggling ineffectually with her captor — who is a machine — Rogan comes to save her. And gets a cool fighting scene while he does so. Amarinth sits back and does nothing.

Then she wants to save her father and says that she’ll do it her way. Cool, right? Except her way involves her giving herself up to Baramanda with no actual assurance that anyone will be safe. You’d think she’d try to bust out her cool machine powers to stop the machine that’s about to kill her dad. But, no, she walks into the middle of the square and says, “Here I am, take me.” Great plan there. Great plan.

Rogan and Jallak join forces after Baramanda double-crosses Amarinth (and puts her to sleep, of course, which shelves her so that the boys can take centre stage). They get some wicked cool fight scenes. Remember Piriel, that female commander I mentioned? Yeah, no one else does, either. She got one scene telling Jallak how he had disappointed her and how he was on his own, and then she doesn’t show up again until after all the action has gone down. But her arm was shot when the rioting began! Wow!

Speaking of the rioting, that’s when we see the last of the Empress. But, I mean, she was clearly evil for asking her nobles to go ahead with the plans when it seemed like the whole finding Amiel’s body thing was a bust. Some pissant rebel shoots her in the head while she’s being all, “I’d never abandon you, my loyal subjects!” Her anti-climactic ending was assured by then, however, because Baramanda had been stealing the limelight with his blood-sucking bug power and obsession with Amarinth.

So, Amarinth has been out cold this whole time and Baramanda starts sucking her blood to steal her techno powers and get all the glory for himself. The doctor starts arguing with him, secure in her knowledge that he wouldn’t dare do anything to her because she’s the only one who knows how to run the Ark. Except for her assistant. Who apparently is in love with her. Gag me.

Just like Amarinth, the doctor gets taken down by Baramanda because her armour of moral outrage just didn’t cut it for protection. She’s actually shot, and killed. Her last line? She tells assistant-boy, “Just shut up and hold me.” No joke.

So, anyway, Baramanda continues sucking Amarinth’s “life force”. The boys bust in, but only manage to take out Baramanda’s guards before he gets his bugs back in her. At this point his blood triggers Amiel’s body to sort of wake up and shoot green things through him before disappearing. She also activates the Ark with all that stuff.

Baramanda is down for the count, and the boys rush to try to help Amarinth (still unconscious) while the assistant holds the body of the doctor. Piriel joins up at some point, sporting that wound I mentioned earlier, and the boys plus her take Amarinth to the escape pods. She decides to sacrifice herself to stay with Jallak try to shut down the Ark. Rogan and Amarinth (kicking and screaming like the helpless little girl she is) get sent to the location of the second ark.

You should know what comes next: Amarinth is told that she is to sacrifice herself to power the ark, of course! Women who get too powerful can’t be left to survive, you see. And she has to do it because Baramanda (remember him?) has joined with the other ark and is coming to kill everyone like the one-dimensional psychopath he is. She gets to have one kiss with Rogan and then she merges with her Ark for what has to be the most painful mech battle I have ever witnessed. And I saw Iczer-One, mind you.

Here’s the only real fighting scene that Amarinth gets in the entire movie. And it consists of her being knocked over and stepped on until she gets lucky and grabs the residential sector off of Baramanda’s back. Giving her father and Piriel a chance to sacrifice themselves by shutting down the core. And by that I mean that Jallak has been hacking the code to shut it off while Piriel stood around looking pretty and asking him if he was done yet.

Rogan lives at the end to give this long speech about how Amarinth taught the two races so much about living together and made The Big Sacrifice.

III. Let’s recap

All the women introduced are dead with most of them not having done anything worth note.

Amarinth, the lead female, has had to sacrifice herself because her Phoenix-class powers are too awesome to let her live (forgive the comic book reference, but it’s the same paradigm being used).

Piriel, who presumably has military experience, was never given a scene in which she could kick ass, but Jallak and Rogan were given several painfully long Matrix-esque fighting scenes. And, don’t forget that after her brave speech where stays behind with Jallak, she does squat except for die along with him.

The Empress, who should have been a driving force, is nothing more than a plot device used to introduce Baramanda, who is a one-dimensional Sephiroth clone. She also dies in a completely unbelievable manner. Honestly, even if there hasn’t been a riot in her entire lifetime (which is highly doubtful), at the first sign of trouble she would have been taken to a secure location — or, most realistically, the machine she was riding in would have snapped up a shield. Having her stand up and be like, “LOOK AT ME, I AM AN IDEAL TARGET!” just makes her, and her guards, look stupid and incompetent. Which flies in the face of the previous times we’ve seen her.

The doctor’s expertise on running the Ark comes to naught, and she’s killed because… well, I’m not exactly sure why they killed her. Maybe because she could have stopped Baramanda from fucking things up so badly?

Ultimately, I’m disappointed that the movie started off with so much potential to do something different but instead decided to fall back on tired old cliches with a tired old ending and a big ‘ol heaping of misogyny. In some ways I think it’s worse than if it had been honest about its intentions from the beginning, because then I wouldn’t have gotten excited and I would have been able to enjoy it for the carbon-copy cliche that it really was.