Evolution and Gender Equality in the Future

Although I really enjoyed reading Tiptree’s stories this week, I came away a little depressed at the dark themes which they addressed, most primarily the challenges women face living in a male-dominated society. In The Women Men Don’t See, despite being strong-willed and hardy enough to cope with life in the wilderness, Mrs. Parsons does not believe that there is any future for women in their society, and she prefers to leave with the aliens for an uncertain future, rather than stay and face an unchangeable, oppressive future. Similarly, the women in Houston, Houston Do You Read choose to kill the three male astronauts from the past, believing them too much of a threat to be controlled, rehabilitated, or successfully integrated into their way of life. Extrapolated from Tiptree’s personal views on gender equality, these stories certainly provide a grim depiction of the fears women have about life in a male-dominated society, and their setting in the present or near future suggests that Tiptree believes this state of affairs is not going to be changing anytime soon.

The body’s natural instincts also play an important role in Tiptree’s stories, which rather demoralizingly highlight the futility of attempting to resist these instincts. Lilliloo and Moggadeet attempt to do so by breaking from the Path, and avoiding the old traditions of having to kill one another in order to survive the winter, but in doing so end up giving in to it in their own way, just as the Old One predicted they would. Similarly, after the male astronauts in Houston, Houston have spent time aboard the Sunbird, surrounded by females who they were used to viewing as subservient to them, they give in to their aggressive fantasies, which are arguably the product of the male instinct to dominate. Bud, under the effects of the inhibition-reducing aphasia drug, attempts to sexually exploit Judy, whereas Dave attempts to seize control of the space station through violence. Both these examples portray man as being ultimately subservient to his most primal desires, suggesting that no matter how much we might evolve, these subconscious desires our ancestors once had will always be present in us as well.

Interestingly enough, Tiptree’s stories also address another aspect of evolution, namely the desirability of the “survival of the fittest” paradigm in evolutionary biology. In the original Time Machine text, Wells proposes that such conflict is desirable, as it forces mankind to adapt and evolve, and the lack of intellectual curiosity and physical fitness in the conflict-free Eloi society is depicted as being undesirable, as exemplified by the Time Traveler’s negative impression of them. However, in Houston, Houston, Tiptree suggests that such conflict is not necessarily desirable, as even though the women of the future have not made much technological progress in their time, they are certainly more at peace with one another and with nature, as evidenced by the wildlife and plants which their ship can successfully sustain in outer space. Thus through this depiction of a society free from the conflict male behavior purportedly causes, Tiptree raises a rather uncomfortable question: is the evolution which “survival of the fittest” brings about necessarily more desirable than the other kinds of progress we might make, following other evolutionary paradigms? Tiptree’s answer appears to be no, as the actions of the women who remove the astronauts from the past from their society suggest.

The Time Machine: A Product of its Times?

Although the creators of works of fiction pride themselves on originality, they do not work in a cultural vacuum, as their works are inevitably influenced by the literary paradigm within which they operate. In particular, the historical context surrounding a work of fiction has a significant influence on the content its creators choose to present, as the different versions of the Time Machine show. Wells’ original text was published in 1895, at a time when England’s accelerating industrialization had led to its emergence as an global economic power, and consequently allowing capitalism to gain acceptance as an economic and political ideology. Being an avowed socialist, Wells uses his text to draw out the potential negative consequences of capitalism, namely that segregation based on economic class might eventually lead to the evolution of two different types of humans and the dysfunctional society he describes – social commentary which Wells’ contemporary audience, surrounded by the ongoing debate between opposing political ideologies, would surely have been able to recognize.

By contrast, the adapters of the 1960 Time Machine film were working under the spectre of the looming Vietnam war and the Cuban missile crisis, so it is hardly surprising that themes such as the inevitability of human conflict and the appropriating of advancing technology for military purposes are raised in the film. Leaving behind the present in which George’s friends urge him to use his talent for inventing to serve the country in the ongoing Boer Wars, George travels into the future, only to find war whenever he stops: in 1917 during World War I, in 1940 during a World War II bombing of his neighborhood, and in a futuristic 1966, suggesting that conflict will always exist in human societies. The instruments of war depicted in the film also reflect our tendencies to use advanced technology to destroy rather than to create, as George finds that the war in 1940 is fought with zeppelins and bombers, while nuclear missiles and “atomic satellites” are used in 1966. Such themes would certainly have resonated with the audience of 1960, when the US and the Soviet Union were pursuing nuclear rearmament and there was a very real possibility that their hostile relations might erupt into war.

One other theme which the Time Machine films appear to address is that there will always exist human desires which our scientific advancements and technology simply cannot fulfill. In the 1960 film adaptation, George travels into the future in search of information about advanced technology to carry back to his time, which he hopes will help him to spread the message of peace; in the 2002 remake, Alexander invents his time machine to travel back in time and prevent his girlfriend from dying. Neither of the time travelers find what they are looking for through the use of their inventions, although for different narrative reasons. While George’s arrival in middle of the various wars could conceivably be attributed to mere chance (at least from his perspective, and not that of the film director’s), Alexander learns near the end of the film that as the death of his girlfriend was what drove him to invent the time machine, saving her would cause a time paradox, and thus would never be possible. Expressed as a necessary consequence of a physical law, this paradox simply serves to drives home the point that there will always be desires scientific advancements cannot fulfill, given the limitless nature of human wants.