Space Oddities: Women and Outer Space in Popular Film and Culture, 1960-2000

ISBN-13: 9781441172051 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 256 str.

Marie Lathers

Opis

Space Oddities examines the representation of women in outer space films from 1960 to 2000, with an emphasis on films in which women are either denied or given the role of astronaut. Marie Lathers traces an evolution in this representation from women as aliens and/or "assistant" astronauts, to women as astronaut wives, to women as astronauts themselves. Many popular films from the era are considered, as are earlier films (from Aelita Queen of Mars to Devil Girl From Mars) and historical records, literary fiction, and television shows (especially I Dream of Jeannie). Early 1960s attempts by women pilots to enter the Space Race are considered as is the media drama surrounding the death of Christa McAuliffe.

In addition to its insightful film scholarship, this is an important addition to current reassessments of the Space Race. By applying insights from contemporary gender, race, and species theories to popular imaginings of women in space, the status of the Space Race as a cultural construct that reproduces and/or warps terrestrial gender structures is revealed.

Spis treści

Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction.  Space for Women:  A Problem Deferred
Chapter 1.  It's About Time:  A Brief History of Women in Space
I. Arrows of Time
II. No Official Requirement
III. Astronauts on Display

Chapter 2.  Bottled Up:  Inner and Outer Space in I Dream of Jeannie
I. Screen Memories
II. Alienation and the Arab Body
III. There is Another Kind of Space Here

Chapter 3.  Staying Home:  Astronaut Wives and Domestic Engineering
I. Angels in the House
II. The Engineered Century
III. Mothers in Space
Chapter 4.  Chimpanzees in Space and Gorillas in the Mist
I. We are the Monkey
II. The Colonialist Imperative
III. The Old Lady Who Lives in the Forest Without a Man

Chapter 5.  The Astronaut's New Clothes:  Naked in Space in Nude on the Moon, Barbarella, and Alien
I. Dressing for Success
II. Cosmic Striptease
III. In Space No One Can See You Undress
Chapter 6.  Making Contact
I. First Contact
II. Contact in the 1990s
III. Kissing Cousins

Conclusion.  Black Holes and the Body of the Astrophysicist

Works Cited
Index