This pattern has become so much “the usual thing” in pop culture that it’s almost not even worth pointing out anymore. It’s everywhere. It would be easier by far to point out the exceptions.
Scratch that, there aren’t enough exceptions left in popular media to provide enough material for even a portion of one small blog. In fact, I can’t remember the last exception to this trend.
I actually somewhat enjoyed National Geographic’s series Mars, mostly because I’m personally very, very interested in the subject and tend to enjoy anything about Mars more realistic than the silly cartoonish fantasies that still constitute a great deal of what makes it to the public view. Hell, I’ve seen some of the episodes three times. I wanted to like this series. I tried to like this series.
They made it very, very hard.
Mild digression:
I’m sorry to say that I think this series is a miserable failure, at least in its ostensible goal. Personally, I hate to say that of anything that involves the author Andy Weir who has brought us the most exciting Mars novel in generations (not to mention the media-ubiquitous Neil deGrasse Tyson), but, with the fleeting exception of some very brief obligatory cheering now and then in those few instances where nothing goes horribly wrong, the segments of Nat Geo’s Mars set in the future are persistently and unrelentingly grim and depressing. For a group of explorers who have devoted their entire lives to getting to Mars none of them seem to have the least enthusiasm for it, and even in “normal” periods the mood seems suitable for a funeral. They manage to make colonizing Mars seem like something to be totally depressed about, along with strong undercurrents of foreboding and fear… and yet, somehow, all this is apparently supposed to motivate us to be enthusiastic about it.
I’m no screenwriter, but I know full well that humans just aren’t like that. Look at our history- in our times of greatest stress, during the greatest trials that mankind has experienced there was still joy in being alive, there were still celebrations and still humor, sometimes right in the face of death. Portraying us as a species as constantly grim and sad in any circumstances is an injustice to us, and worse, unrealistic. We can tackle the dangers and face the fears far more easily than we can deal with constant depression. We like challenges, we don’t dread them. The sorrowful, morose, humorless group portrayed here are not the kinds of people that open up new frontiers.
Back to the (MGTOW-related) subject at hand- sorry, but with respect to gender this is just more of the now-usual thing. The guy nominally in charge of the colonization effort manages to get himself killed early on, a woman takes charge, later on a married couple comes to the colony, she’s another take-charge sort who’s instantly a rival for power but her husband proves too weak-minded to handle the stress and commits suicide by blasting himself out of an airlock (that apparently has absolutely no safeguards against this of any kind), killing a number of other colonists in the process. The one or two of these collateral victims that we actually see are also male. What a shock.
You see, in writing screenplays in the 21st Century, a dead woman is important, it needs context, exposition, acknowledgement and a certain amount of ceremony. A dead man is just a body. It only contributes to a casualty count.
We also get the predictable cliche segments of stupid, testosterone-riddled males getting aggressive with each other (for little apparent reason) only to be calmed down by wise, centered females, and, of course, lots of scenes of women giving orders. That’s always popular. After the death of the original commander I don’t recall any men giving orders, presumably there’s just nobody lower on the totem pole than the men to give orders to.
At the end of the series the two women who were previously rivals for power have reconciled, and a harmonious caste of women have quietly taken over all important tasks. The woman in charge makes an exception to her own rules so that she and the other two core women can heroically don spacesuits, drive across the martian landscape in a rover and personally discover life on Mars, thus saving the colony and the mission, with no involvement of men at all.
Indeed, nobody else could have done anything of the sort, because they were all under her orders not to expend resources. She has no problem whatsoever exempting herself and her hand-picked women, though. That’s for the greater good.
This miracle last-second discovery of life on Mars is then announced to the population of Earth by another woman, twin sister to the one now in charge on Mars. The image of women in charge everywhere is now complete.
In the earliest phases of the first colonization of another planet they have established and solidified a complete and exclusionary matriarchy, with no apparent dissent at all.
It seems that men will be very lucky just to be allowed to participate in planetary exploration in any way, and certainly not essential or even much valued.
Given current trends here on Earth we should all be well prepared for that on Mars.
For me, a guy, National Geographic has managed to take something I’ve wanted to do since I was a little kid, literally a life-long dream, and make it seem both unattractive and depressing. If that weren’t enough, they added the clear message that I wouldn’t be wanted, needed or valued anyway, because I’m male.
Thanks a lot.
As I say, this is so common now in popular culture as to be virtually invisible, someone has to point it out for it to be noticed, but imagine the (highly-practiced and always ready) outrage if the genders of the characters were reversed, and women were being obviously excluded from power, important positions, key decisions and successes on Mars. This sort of portrayal of overt discrimination is socially acceptable, but only in one direction.
In case all of this was just too subtle, the series was followed by a “making of” episode which includes a “diversity” segment that even more explicitly drives home the point. They don’t even discuss racial or ethnic or cultural diversity under that heading, in this context “diversity” clearly just means female vs. male. Traditional male “astronaut” qualities are pretty much openly mocked by women who seem to be portrayed as speaking for the future of space programs in general.
What can I say? Watch it if you want. Of course you may disagree with my take on it, but please at least keep what I’ve said in mind. At least become aware that you are being fed pretty heavy-handed propaganda.
If you’re a guy, you’ve been warned. This is more of why MGTOW exists as a movement, why it must exist and why it will continue to exist in some form, under some name. MGTOW is the only movement advocating not just feeble protests, not just whining, but a passive-but-real resistance, a kind of civil disobedience to . even if it just amounts to recognizing anti-male propaganda when we see it and declining to accept or support it, no matter how pervasive it has become.
We do not need, and are not obliged to cooperate with or support propaganda directed against us, trying to push us into the role of second-class citizens.
Someday, in a better future, shows with blatant bias like this will become a historical embarrassment the way that almost all other forms of discrimination already have. It’s just a question of how many decades or generations have to pass before it becomes unfashionable and no longer accepted.
We can, and should, start toward that better future by not accepting it now.
– Robert the Wombat