Science Fiction is sexy.
It has always been sexy; it will always be sexy. Some folks might be inclined to replace “sexy” with “sexist,” but you have to expect an art form governed by the yearnings of frustrated space jockeys to get into the regions they’d most like to explore. It’s the Final Frontier!
This is old news. Look at the lurid covers on old pulp magazines like AMAZING STORIES. Look at Golden Age comic books and vintage SF movie posters. Look at Anne Francis swimming naked in the classic movie FORBIDDEN PLANET. Look at the uniforms on the original STAR TREK – how is Captain Kirk supposed to pay attention to Klingons with Yeoman Rand walking around in that micro-mini? More recently, ALIEN’s Lt. Ellen Ripley may be a symbol of feminist revolt, but we still get a close-up look at her teensy panties; and the new STAR TREK reboot has the young Kirk canoodling a green babe in a bikini, so apparently Political Correctness is still not a Starfleet regulation.
Exploitative? Juvenile? Maybe…but such erotic fantasizing is true of both genders, if the sexy vampire craze is any indication. Much as we may pretend to have evolved beyond such sleazy desires, we can’t help ourselves. It’s the nature of the beast; what the aforementioned FORBIDDEN PLANET referred to as “monsters from the Id.”
Yes, the slinky, cat-faced blue Amazon in AVATAR is a fanboy love object, but is that any more offensive than the twisted objectification of Mr. Spock, whose female groupies dream of cracking his Vulcan composure, mussing his pageboy haircut, and getting his green blood boiling until he goes all Pon Farr on them? I don’t think so. The alien sex fantasy cuts both ways.
But sex is one thing – what about romance?
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