Sci-fi Cliché: Oppressive Alien Cultures

First of all, I've not been doing much book reviews because first I was stressed with the end of the academic year, then it was so hot I felt like pouring my brain out of my ears, and somewhere inbetween those two I found myself re-reading Harry Potter. So. I will continue those as soon as I finish a newish book!

But first!

Lately, one of my favourite ways to relieve tension is to multitask two or three things: playing a game (World of Warcraft, usually), watching shows online, and reading blogs. Lovely way to keep the mind occupied. This means that in the past half year or so I've watched pretty much all the crime-scene shows I could get my hands on, a good chunk of Dexter, Legend of the Seeker, and a whole bunch of sci-fi shows.

These shows include, but are not limited to: Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, Star Trek: Voyager and I've just started on Star Gate: SG1.

And I've noticed a certain cliché. I'm only on episode 3 of SG1 and it's already popped up. Now, mind you, I've not finished that episode yet so I'm not going to talk about the theme in this specific show. I also don't remember seeing it in Firefly or Battlestar Galactica, so I'm not going to talk about those either. And since I was multitasking all through all of these shows, I'm a little fuzzy on the details of the thing in Star Trek, though I'm sure I saw it in there. Somewhere.

Instead, I am going to talk about the cliché in a broader sense. The cliché is this: our intrepid heroes, including one female lead, and usually no more than that, are visiting some alien/otherworldly/old-timey place, and it turns out the people who live here have a bit of a strange or outdated sense of what women should be allowed to do. (The question of why gender matters to an alien culture is a different matter.)

In short, this culture thinks the woman in our expedition needs to get back in the kitchen, cover up properly so none of the men get tempted by her dangerously seductive feminine wiles, get herself attached to a man for protection and reproduction, and while she's at it, make them dinner.

Our heroes usually don't like this, especially the female lead, who is offended, but for some reason, they never leave the place or put down an ultimatum. Probably because that would make for a short story. Instead, the female lead might do one of two things: she might try to prove she is 'one of the guys', or she might conform to the culture's feminine ideals and try to rile up in women from within.

Fun snippet: in the bit of SG1 episode 3 I've seen, the following conversation takes place:
Mongol Leader: "If you will travel this country, you must learn our ways."
Sam Carter: "I'm thinking we should just go back while we're ahead."
Daniel Jackson: "If we learn their customs we'll be okay. It's an incredible opportunity to study an ancient culture up close."
Daniel is basically telling Sam to suck up the humiliation for anthropology's sake. Can you tell this makes me angry?

The end of this template for a storyline can be a lesson in which our heroes teach this primitive, un-emancipated culture that their women are equal to their men, and sometimes better! How heartwarming. This ending is troubling in a whole-new-can-of-worms way.

Okay, so my first problem with this cliché is the same problem I have with a lot of sci-fi: who do aliens care about gender? Why do all aliens have two sexes and genders? It makes little sense. Even on Earth we have hermaphroditic creatures. In fact, why are all the aliens humanoid? I have a vague suspicion that the answer to this one is 'special effects budget'.

My second problem is that, in all the cases I can remember seeing this cliché (I might be missing one), the female lead is encouraged to undergo the humiliation for the sake of the mission. That in itself might not have been so bad, if it weren't for the fact that the pain of this humiliation is often not mentioned at all. Okay, so you might have someone mentioning the impracticality of the clothing styles, or how off-putting it is to be surrounded by submissive women (or how awesome that is), but even if the female lead expresses discomfort at being treated like cattle, she is usually told, once again, to suck it up.

Thirdly, there is the whole 'enlightened people come to educated the primitive tribe' thing. As much as I dislike cultures in which women (or any group of people) are oppressed, you can't just point and say they're savages. It's not that simple. And a group of outsiders decided that this culture could really use some changes, and (forcefully) implementing them? Someone is feeling superior! /singsong voice There are many, much better ways to show a culture overcoming equalities, than depicting them as savage and stupid, saved only by the enlightened invading aliens.

And my last point for today: in juxtaposing one culture with another, and more often than not having that disctinction be; us, the enlightened and them, the savages, we are implying something. We are implying that the us in this story, often the human race, and not rarely the human race in the present, are enlightened. We are unlike that silly savage race, who don't know to treat their women properly. We are above that. We treat women equally. We do not have sexism anymore. This is false. We might be better off than we were a hundred years ago, but we are not there yet.

There are many more details of this cliché, little things that keep popping up in culture and pop culture, that make me cringe, but this post is long enough and I will continue some other time. Maybe. Unless I forget.