Astronautic Subjects: Postmodern Identity and the Embodiment of Space in American Science Fiction — Page 7:
The Mechanics of Engenderneering
31 The usual pattern for the literary and cinematic construction of cyborg characters is the following: At first, there is a semiotic openness, which is later dissolved in favor of clear demarcation lines. In this process, the machine is endowed not only with sexuality, but also with a clear function within the gendered patterns of social practice. Roy Schwartzman has described this process of a gradual transformation of robotic identity in cyborg fiction as engenderneering. The term is defined by Schwartzman as "personification with a twist: the investiture of non-human entities with a gendered identity" ("Mechanics" 1). The act of engendeneering is necessarily an ideological operation, comically integrating the cyborg into an environment that tends to regard it as an abject creature. Due to the bizarre and almost carnivalesque nature of this transformation, the engendeneered object also serves as a reminder for the viewer of how such processes are structured. The robot's unwilling appropriation as a gendered "person" illustrates both the arbitrariness and the absurdity of such procedures.
32 The astronaut in the sci-fi genre finds himself placed in a similar dilemma as the cyborg: Clad in a unisex suit that defies attributions regarding gender and sex, the astronaut is grotesquely engendeneered by ideological discourse. In the course of this re-semantization, the initial innocence of the spacewalker becomes abandoned for the sake of bizarre ideological inscriptions which delineate the figure as a penetrator of the universe. The astronaut's actual sexlessness or asexuality, Vivian Sobchack argues in her essay "The Virginity of Astronauts," is concealed by an aura which is coded as both masculine and technological:
[W]hether named Buzz or Armstrong, Buck, Flash, or Bowman, our public astronauts reek of locker-room camaraderie, but hardly of male sweat or semen. As if in training for the big game, they have rejected their biology and sexuality - pushed it from their minds and bodies to concentrate on the technology required to penetrate and impregnate not a woman, but the universe. ("Virginity" 108)
Sexy Galaxies: Gender Bending in Science-Fiction Parodies
33 In this context, we have to mention the conspicuously "camp" element of contemporary science fiction. Comical distortion of traditional genre components has been a popular strategy since the early days of sci-fi films. In the meantime, many classics have been turned into spoofs, making fun of the hypermasculine settings of the originals. Examples include the Austin Powers trilogy, which shows us phallus-shaped rockets and children's toys functioning as giant spaceships, and the German Star-Trek parody Starship Surprise. In the opening lyrics for the cult film Rocky Horror Picture Show, sung by Richard O'Brien, this hilarious aspect of 20th century science fiction is articulated in the famous lines, "Science fiction, double feature, Doctor X will build a creature. Androids fighting Brad and Janet, Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet." Later on, the song makes reference to the infamous Flash Gordon movies from the late 1930s, "And Flash Gordon was there in silver underwear," ridiculing the courageous explorer as a flamboyant sex object. The title song "Science Fiction / Double Feature" anticipates the comical plot of the movie that revolves around a couple of aliens from the planet Transsexual in the "sexy galaxy of Transsylvania." The ambiguous touch of American science-fiction movies is exposed here to the point of total deconstruction. The image of the heroic adventurer in space is debunked as a mere joke.
34 In the American cartoon series Futurama created by Matt Groening in the late 1990s, we find a similar mocking of existing clichés concerning the male space traveler. One of the main characters of the TV-series is the robot astronaut Bender who travels through space together with his friends Fry and Leela. The name Bender is already informative, standing for someone who undermines existing boundaries and norms dictated by the cultural hegemony. In the episode "Raging Bender," the character is discovered as a new talent by the manager of a wrestling foundation after unintentionally smashing another robot's electrodes. From that moment on, Bender climbs into the ring as "Bender the Offender." In the course of events, he even volunteers to fight in women's clothes, literally transforming into a "Gender Bender," which also becomes his new nickname in the ring.[7]<em>Futurama</em>'s Gender Bender was quickly discovered by the American toy industry. On a marketing page on the internet, the doll can be purchased for $27.95 The caption describes the toy, in a mixture of irony and serious appeal to <em>Futurama</em> fans, as "that pink clad princess of the ring, that tin terror in a tutu, that gladiator with the golden curls - The Gender Bender! The robot you love to hate is ready for some action! Gender Bender comes packed in a matching pink and blue box and even has a matching wand. You can't resist his charm!" See http://www.emerchandise.com/product/COFTR0004/s.M2kYsUGK. As the epitome of the astronautic cyborg, the Bender figure ironically resists social conventions and constraints. The act of continuous change and mutation - what is called "bending" - is a crucial feature of astronautic identity. Boundaries are almost superfluous in this imagery. Limitations are rather marked as relics of an old structuring system which is still obsessed with power maintenance but has long become obsolete.
- Figure 10: Gender Bender toy, a 8.5 inch tall wind up robot.
Conclusion: Burning Bridges
35 The genre of science fiction offers consumers an ambivalent image of identity. Whereas some texts are exaggerated or comical, others make a genuine attempt to re-fashion the ideological patterns of Western thinking. In any case, there is more than just one function to this diverse genre: Neither is it meant for entertainment purposes alone, nor is its single goal self-empowerment, or even subversion. Even the more "progressive" science-fiction texts are often based on an ambiguous premise: While pointing to the possibility of fundamental changes in society, they are also loaded with concessions to hegemonic culture, often culminating in a hidden affirmation of existing structures. This applies in particular to the processes of gendering, disgendering and regendering in utopian fiction. It is left up to the audiences who consume these texts if the search for a gender-free space can continue on a more pragmatic level or if it remains an illusion. As Treut's film Gendernauts, among others, has suggested, there are numerous structural analogies between utopian fiction and social reality - analogies which can be instrumentalized and "acted out" by citizens and consumers (no matter of transsexual, multisexual, or metrosexual) every day. The postmodern individual is especially inclined to make use of such connections in order to break out of the perceived ghetto of social constraints and find self-affirmation. In the age of expressive individualism[8]Winfried Fluck uses this term to describe the fundamental transformations in values that occurred in postmodern societies between the mid 60s and the late 70s. "The culture of expressive individualism," Fluck explains, "is not primarily concerned with a social rise to respectability but with the possibility of self-realization" ("Cultures" 216). Marked by the desire to find gratification and self-empowerment at almost any cost, expressive individualism implies components of radical behaviour as well as a tendency to "outradicalize" others. In its willingness to "burn bridges" and break new ground, the astronautic subject stands in the tradition of expressive individualism, participating in a virtual contest over the most innovative and most satisfying modes of self-fulfillment., such attempts have to be radical and uncompromising in nature. The affinity of authorship and utopianism is at the heart of such creative operations. Marge Piercy's science-fiction novel He, She, and It (1991) offers a remarkable vision of a collective boundary subversion in the near future. Set in the mid-21st century in a place called Norika (actually the former North America - now a contaminated wasteland permeated by huge environmental domes), the novel encourages us to make use of existing structures of thought and organization to fundamentally change the path of progress. In the final passages of her tale, Piercy draws a connection between the act of creating science fiction and the manufacturing of cyborgs described in the book: Both the author herself and the characters participate in a "strange and instructive journey" (446), the outcome being not clear yet.