Week 12: Diverse Positon Science Fiction

Bloodchild was a strange but interesting way to cover feminism and female pregnancy/childbirth. Pregnancy is gruesome, and Butler, explains it just how is is…minus the flesh eating grubs. This story, although sci-fi, stays pretty true to reality. The process of childbirth is dangerous and can sometimes kill the mother. In older times, women were basically forced to reproduce. In order to keep the Tlic race alive, Terrans must be used as incubators for the Tlic eggs. What’s interesting is that Butler makes it so that the male Terran is the carrier. Judging by Gan’s reaction to the whole ordeal, I like to wonder how men today would react if they were suddenly told that they must be the one to bare children. Would men agree to the circumstances or would they react with violence, as did Gan?
I was also surprised about how many students in class were repulsed by the descriptions in the story. I don’t find my self affected much because 1. I’m female and 2. I’ve dissected plenty of animals not to be affected anyway. But what I’m curious to know is why did the descriptions make students feel that way? What makes people feel grossed out and why? I think Butler made me think further about things other than feminism. I think we need more short stories like this to get straight to the point. I do understand wanting to grow attached to characters but Butler created a scenario that made me ponder even moments after reading the story.

We also watched Attack the Block during class, a movie that I find to be pretty amazing. It’s a movie that takes an alien invasion and puts it into an environment that you wouldn’t normally expect, and the heroes aren’t really heroes. This movie focuses on a gang of teenagers, basically a bunch of thugs that you would never look up to. 

Writers and filmmakers hardly ever think about how other cultures or races are affected by events in films particularly sci-fi and fantasy. There are some films that have tried such as District 9 and Avatar but I don’t feel like they exactly hit the mark. Our films also mainly feature some typical white male out to save the world. It’s just nice to see a change for once and Attack the Block even brings out a lot of cool concepts and visual effects. The aliens in this film are like none I’ve seen before. Altogether there is originality to this film that I think is disappearing in current movies.