Hello, all.
As I write
this I’m eyeballing Wisconsin primary election returns, and it’s an exciting
night! My choice for Attorney General,
Susan Happ is leading comfortably- she’s also backed by Emily’s List and Doug
La Follette, and her main opponent was the choice of Conservadem Mayor Barrett,
and it’s unusual for him not to get his way in a primary. This is pretty fun to watch, as is the
Treasurer’s election- Dave Leeper is only 2 points behind, and he made support
for a publicly run bank a centerpiece of his campaign! Mary Jo Walters is also running competitively
(within 8 points) for Lt. Governor, which is pretty impressive for a candidate
only a couple of cycles removed from the Green Party. Janis Ringhand- the pro-choice movement’s
choice (and therefore mine as well) for state senate appears to be winning easily. Truth be told, if any one of the three
statewide candidates alone pulls this off it’s been a damn good night, but the local legislature seats going the Left way would be nice too. Not enough to make up for last week's defeat, or the
attendant reminder of how strong racism remains in my city with the murder of
an innocent teenager by police in North County.
I know I’ve got at least one friend at the protests, and I’m hoping to
join them myself given enough courage.
Update-all
those elections went the way they were trending last night. Yaaaaay Happ!
I’ve
continued writing this into Wednesday night and soon Thursday morning. The heroes at the protests keep at it. I may be brave enough to join them but I
doubt it.
Now on to the piece itself. I’m hoping
eventually to turn this into a presentation to give at school this fall, so be
sure to let me know what you think. My contention: that the portrayal of single mothers in contemporary science fiction must work to transcend social prejudices and oppression based on race, sex and class, and it often fails to achieve this, with disturbing implications following.
Full disclosure-
I’m a Trekkie. I’m a Whedonite. Genossin Sophie is teaching me to be a
Whovian. In a word, I’m nerdy. And in continuing my enjoyment of some of the
big nerd franchises, I’ve really been struck by the messages used to reinforce
or question perceptions of single mothers.
Our society places a premium on
the nuclear family model with patriarchal gender roles as the proper habitat
for good citizens. Much of our public
policy and economy is structured around the idealized image of competent, assertive
male breadwinners and loyal, chaste housewives who remain appendages to others
and attain neither economic independence nor fulfillment outside the role of
caregiver to their families. Social
shaming results no matter the course chosen, with women who stay at home being
shamed for not performing economically rewarded work, and those who work shamed
for abandoning traditional femininity, accused of warping their children’s
development. Anything which could make it
easier for women to determine the course of their own sexuality, or pursue
career paths outside caregiver, is viewed as highly suspect. Beyond this, our government spends hundreds
of millions encouraging marriage, to say nothing of its subsidy to churches
which reinforce the necessity of women’s occupation in the home.
These problems are compounded
for the single mother- in the case of childbearing out of wedlock, her morality
is considered forfeit, and she is to be reminded by culture and policy that she
has (willingly or not) violated the rules society has placed on the use of her
body. She will be criticized for
fostering delinquency if she works outside the home, and criticized for
laziness if she doesn’t. Race is
obviously a factor here, as these arguments are rhetorically used particularly
against Women of Color. Their result is
to restrict funding for social programs which help everyone, and reinforce the
myth of personal effort as the main determinant of people’s prosperity. Shaming of single mothers is a dangerous
weapon used to reinforce conservative notions of women’s proper place,
undermine cross racial solidarity, and damage the welfare state.
With this in mind, we should
examine how our media reinforces or questions this trend. To that end, I am evaluating three episodes, one
each from Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Dr. Who, that prominently
feature single mothers (Dr. Beverly Crusher, widowed mother of Wesley, morality
is not questioned but is still put in the bind of work vs. domesticity, white;
Nikki Wood, teen mother of Robin, very work focused, morality is
questioned-also happens to be her generation’s Vampire Slayer, black; Nancy,
teen mother of Jamie, who is community focused, but has lost her own child, and
is generally marginalized-albeit presented in a nigh exclusively favorable
light, white.)
Star Trek,
The Next Generation- episode: “Evolution”- this is the simplest to analyze, as
the mother in question (Dr. Beverly Crusher) is a widow, and therefore not
morally suspect for having a child. She
is questioned, however, by her son Wesley who resents her absence throughout
the previous year, while she worries she’s missed irreplaceable time of his
adolescence. While Crusher has an
incredibly successful career, saving countless lives (and being one of three
doctors in Trek history ever to successfully de-assimilate someone from the Borg,
she is still implicitly condemned for leaving her son (where she knew he would
thrive, mind you) for a year, and what is used to reassure her is that Wesley is
doing well because she has already been a good mother, rather than that she is entitled to decide her own life. This doesn’t sit all that well with me.
Buffy the
Vampire Slayer- In the seventh season episode “Lies My Parents Told Me”
features Sunnydale Principal Robin Wood, the son of Slayer Nikki Wood, hunting
down the vampire, Spike, who killed her.
We see through flashbacks and recollections from both Wood and Giles
that Nikki was called to battle evil in the early 1970s, and shortly into her
Slaying career, gave birth to a son.
This is described as a singular occurrence in the history of Slayers-
young women chose to protect the world from demons, vampires, and forces of
darkness who usually live nasty, cruel, brutish lives despite their superhuman
strength and toughness. The one Slayer
mother happened to be a Black Woman operating in New York. The Watchers’ Council- the Committee of Wise
Men who created slayers, was at a loss and shunned Nikki- her personal Watcher,
however, helped raise her son, and enabled her to take “maternity leave” from
her battle with the forces of evil. She
returned- voluntarily- to answer the calling that structures the lives of the
chosen in the Buffyverse. This is
explicitly stated to be a choice of work over family, and set up as morally
questionable, but the choice that the show decides is necessary. Our perception is shaped by the fact that we
see the memories of Robin, but his mother cannot speak for herself except in
flashbacks. We see much more the impact
of her decisions on her son than we do of the decisions themselves or her personality,
which limits the potential of the episode to transcend previously denoted trends,
simply because we can get no answers to the questions of the decision-making
process. What is clear is that Nikki’s
son was able to get on with his life materially, supported by her father-figure
watcher, and his underlying resentment of his mother’s choice is at least
implied to be petty and misplaced. This
episode does not engage with the patriarchal standard of sexual behavior, which
is probably a wise choice. It does do a
good job of humanizing the Black single mother in her brief time on the screen,
and a better job of humanizing her son, but the backstory in which a white
patriarch must care for the neglected Child of Color really seems
problematic. Most troublingly, the
episode does reinforce the outside work-family binary, saying women must make a
choice. While this does depict economic
realities of a patriarchal society very well, it doesn’t consider how things
could be different, even with a strong support network, and it doesn’t make the
racism in the system central to its discussion.
Dr. Who
(reboot) “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances”.
In this early episode, the Doctor and Rose have travelled to London
during the Battle of Britain, and encounter what’s left of Jamie after he’s
been rebuilt by nanite-like creatures which found him injured by a German bomb.
His mother, Nancy- who has been posing
as his sister to alleviate the shame- keeps a pack of Cockney orphans safe from
his contagious touch and also uses guile, guts and stealth to keep them fed. The circumstances of Jamie’s birth are not
touched upon, but Nancy clearly lacks the support of a wealthy benefactor that
helped Nikki. This is much more a
class-based example, and it does engage with the sexual shaming, if only
wackily. It turns out that Nancy denying
the truth of her motherhood is what fuels not-Jamie’s rampage, and she of
course wouldn’t be lying if there wasn’t a stigma against which to protect
herself and her son. On the outside work-family
issue, they are pretty much the same to Nancy, as her work consists of stealing
and negotiating to feed her child and her other young charges. The episode implicitly calls for economic redistribution
and social acceptance of both children out of wedlock and their mothers, though
it’s easy to see Nancy being judged as worthy based on how thoroughly she
subordinates her own needs to those of others, which is a good message for
class solidarity but shockingly regressive from a perspective of concern for
women’s equality.
To conclude,
discussion of single mothers, even in science fiction shows thought to be the
cutting edge of cultural progressivism, often ends up leaving oppressive trends
and tropes unchallenged or even reinforced.
That said, all of these examples show strong female characters juggling
economic and socio-emotional pressures to do the impossible, and all serve to
create empathy among an often scornful public.
I’m not sure I can feel great about any of these, but they’re all useful
starting points for any number of discussions.
Ok that was
a lot. I might flesh this out a bit more
later- and add in a section about Shmi Skywalker- but I hope you enjoy this
(now belated) update for now.
Solidarität,
Genossinnen und Genossen
