![]() ![]() Inspired by the strong lead woman in Pacific Rim (2013), this test examines the independence of a female character. The second test, the Mako Mori Test, was created to address this short-coming. 2 An intentionally low bar, the Bechdel Test provides a very simple look at representation within a movie, yet some movies fail the Bechdel Test despite having an empowered leading female character. To pass, a movie must (1) have two named female characters who (2) talk to each other (3) about something other than a man. The first and more widely known is the Bechdel Test. For that very reason, we thought it might be revealing to apply two well-known internet tests to the women in these films and gauge how these tests relate to movie ratings. With one exception ( My Sister’s Keeper), none of the fifty films in our study focus on what used to be called “women’s issues.” Perhaps that fact situates women in an analogous position with genetics in these blockbusters-they are there, the audience notices them from time to time, but viewers generally do not have to pay close attention to them to grasp their role in the plot. By registering at the level of conventions, they often inflect other conventional aspects of the representational world, particularly those involving biology, gender, sexuality, and reproduction. After more than a hundred years of cinematic depictions of genetics, 1 popular films can count on genetic motifs, however speculative or scientifically inaccurate, to serve the needs of characterization and plot with little explanation. Still, the presumption that audiences will accept genetic engineering or mutant powers as the launching pad for the action-borne out by the success of these works at the box office-is telling. With rare exceptions, genetics is merely part of the premise of the film, not an explicit theme or subject matter. A few are dramas set in the contemporary world ( My Sister’s Keeper ), comedies ( Austin Powers in Goldmember ), or thrillers ( The Bourne Legacy ). Nearly half of these films are blockbusters based on comic book superheroes, followed closely by science fiction films in the vein of Jurassic World (2015), Star Wars (2002), and Star Trek (2002). Independence within the context of conventional structure nicely defines the new position of female gender roles in twenty-first century popular cinema.Īs a contribution to our project’s goal of understanding the representation of genetics in contemporary culture, we decided to evaluate the roles provided for women in the fifty highest grossing films of the last two decades that feature genetic content. Murphy’s story begins and ends with her place in a family setting, situating her firmly in a gendered social role and the reproductive cycle, despite her character having many other defining features. In the course of the movie, however, she earns her place as an independent heroine and an empowered woman, eventually becoming the matriarch of her own extended family. ![]() Murphy’s role in Interstellar (2014) began as a vulnerable child, whose main purpose in the plot was to complicate her father’s decision to leave Earth. Almost a hundred years later, his daughter, Murphy Cooper (Jessica Chastain), has forged her own path and saved humanity from extinction, and is now immortalized in the name of Cooper Space Station. The Cooper Space Station was named for the daughter he left behind on Earth. Near the end of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014), Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) wakes up on Cooper Space Station, proud of having completed his decades long interstellar mission and honored that a space station had been named after him. Oliver, “Blade Runner 3.” One in a series of works inspired by a comparison of the 1982 version of Blade Runner to the 2017 sequel, examining how our perceptions of genetic privacy and identity have changed over time. As she and Becket improve their drifting and fighting, they eventually work together to fight incoming Kaijus and blow up The Breach using Gipsy Danger as the bomb.Kendra H. This prompts Mori to remember the traumatic childhood experience of running away from a Tokyo Kaiju that killed her family, only to then later be saved by the Pentecost-piloted Jaeger. In their first time drifting in Gipsy Danger, Becket relives his past of losing his brother in a Kaiju fight. Pacific Rim, set between 2020 and 2025, requires that Jaeger pilots can mentally link together in a process called " drifting," which she can do naturally with Becket. She becomes a Jaeger pilot upon the insistence of both herself and Becket, much to her father figure Marshal Stacker Pentecost's (Idris Elba) reluctance. Mako Mori is introduced in Pacific Rim at the Hong Kong " Shatterdome," where Jaeger pilots from around the world convene to handle the exponentially increasing Kaiju attacks. ![]()
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