Some sexist tropes in the Martian
medium.com
medium.com
Alright - I'll admit that I didn't think through these tropes when I read the book. I was too busy reading and enjoying the book. I can't help but wonder if the author's characters were slightly sexist. What if the characters were written this way on purpose? It's certainly a real problem in our society - why wouldn't it be reflected in a book. So am I to criticize the author for writing it or the character for thinking it? Or are we lumping it all into a general critique of the author's predispositions. I'm not sure I care to find out the answer. I also feel for the blog author's point of view because it's trying to combat a very real thing. I'm flustered.
You often run across similar criticisms of Game of Thrones in particular.
In the GoT world there are legitimately bad people, and not comic book style evil villains but instead bad people that feel true to life, and often have legitimate motivations for doing the bad things that they do.
So you run across these long articles criticising GoT, the author, or just asking things like "why did this [bad thing] have to occur? Wasn't it avoidable? Did we really need to read that? What was the motivation for putting it in?"
You often don't notice this style of complaint when the fiction is either more unrealistic or less true to life. I think people get disturbed by the plot/world/characters, and then lose sight that it is perfectly reasonable for "bad things" to happen in fiction. And yes it can contribute to the narrative, and the author doesn't need to apologise for it, or justify it.
I am not suggesting that anyone cheer for sexism in this book. But is it inherently wrong that there IS sexism in the book if that is the world the book's story ache takes place in?
PS - Of course anyone can criticise anything they wish. But they aren't immune from their criticism being in turn criticised.
So, the point here is not to attack Weir. It's to bring to his readers' attention some subtle cultural cues that they might miss on their own. Weir might have put those in there on purpose, or they might have ended up in there because he wrote (like almost every author) in the way that felt most natural to him.
If you are looking for something, you will find it. Sometimes the reasoning is easy to follow - other times it demands such illogical leaps as to question the validity or reasoning of the person trying to show the connection.
Give me any two numbers and I'll find a way to transform it to 9/11. For a time, people had even made a game out of doing just that.
For example, I have a can of Pringles on my desk. It has 190 calories. 190? Divided in a way makes two numbers, 19 and 90. 90 minus 19 is 71. The original 190 minus 71 is 119. Reverse 119 and there you have it, 9/11!
What you have is a group of people intent on finding messages that aren't there. Sometimes they have some claims easily understood by others and other times they delve so far into absurdity where only they can follow the train of thought that led them down their path of reasoning. Even if I can follow the logic, that doesn't necessarily mean I should give it any credit or significant meaning.
The blog post carefully lays out the evidence for what they are talking about. But that also exists against a cultural background, and if you don't have that background, it will be less persuasive because you won't recognize the referenced patterns as easily.
>It's equivalent to a literary critic saying "you can make a computer do anything"; while computers are incredibly powerful, any knowledgable programmer understands that that is not true.
There's physical constraints and constraints on our own knowledge. What someone means behind a statement and their motivations behind that statement are a lot more within human constraints. There are no limitations on interpretation. Linguistic interpretation is a lot more open-ended than that and when I say people can make up whatever they like, as long as they have some strands of logic to prop up behind it, I mean it.
How many different interpretations of Romeo and Juliet do you think can be found within each scene? Each interpretation will be colored by the observer's experiences. If they are pre-determined to find a certain message, they'll find it.
I know this for a fact. Humans see connections, patterns, and meanings that aren't really there. As an example, the puzzle Masqurerade has already been solved. Yet there are people who are so certain that their solution is the correct one. They see patterns that aren't really there, and readily convince themselves of the truth of their solution. Many of the solutions are quite logical, some even give a close answer. The problem is that the puzzle has already been solved.
[0] http://hazlitt.net/feature/goes-all-way-queen-puzzle-book-dr...
> > Johanssen: Your poster outsold the rest of ours combined. You’re a hot chick who went to Mars. You’re on dorm-room walls all over the world. Looking like that, why are you such a nerd? And you are, you know. A serious nerd. I had to do some computer shit to get Pathfinder talking to the rover and oh my god. And I had NASA telling me what to do every step of the way. You should try to be more cool. Wear dark glasses and a leather jacket. Carry a switchblade. Aspire to a level of coolness known only as…“Botanist Cool.” Did you know Commander Lewis had a chat with us men? If anyone hit on you, we’d be off the mission. […]
I haven't read the book but isn't the "dark glasses and leather jacket" bit here Watney paraphrasing what he was told by NASA to do? Not Watney telling Johanssen what to do?
The fourth example (again, no context, so maybe am incorrect) is not "women being talked about like they aren't there" so much as "one manager defending choices to other manager, with subordinate in same room because reasons".