From: Richard Steven Hack (richardhack@pcmagic.net)
Date: Sat Mar 09 2002 - 08:04:06 MST
At 10:27 AM 3/9/02 +0100, you wrote:
>Perhaps the character worked so well because there were mostly women
>involved to 'protect' it, and make the role realistic. The research
>by Sagan, Druyan, and Obst that went into building that role
>involved interviewing women scientists of that generation
>(1950s-60s) to learn their childhoods, educational and professional
>experiences, and especially the obstacles that those women
>encountered. I'm sure that Foster studied this too. If Arroway seemed
>'softer' or 'more compromising' than the book character, I suggest
>that it was intended, and is, in fact realistic. It's a fact of
>life, that women scientists work in male dominated fields, and have
>their own approaches, compromises, and solutions to their work
>environemnt. Huge decisions and compromises are necessary in order
>to balance family life and work life as well. A black-and-white
>Dagny Taggert in those situations would probably end up committing
>suicide in real life.
>
>Amara
I can assure you, having read a great deal about Foster, that she probably
approached it in exactly the way you suggest. Her primary emotional
motivation for doing the movie was the scene where she is reunited with her
father, but her entire film career has been about working in a
male-dominated field and trying to express her own creativity within
it. She is a consummate professional as every director has attested and
has made many compromises to obtain the success and clout she enjoys while
at the same time fighting to produce movies she believes in.
Currently, the balance of family and career for her is shifting
significantly. Subsequent to bearing her second child, she has closed down
her production company, and is apparently going to move out of the
Hollywood area (to where has not been disclosed). She has said in
interviews that she no longer has any ambitions in film and no longer needs
it to fulfill every aspect of her personality. I suspect that, as Camille
Paglia has suggested, another brilliant women has succumbed to "hormones"
and that we will be seeing much less of Foster on or behind the screen from
now on. I suspect also that her ambivalence toward the career that her
mother forced her into at an early age and which once threatened her life
has something to do with it.
If any of you have read the novel, "Society of the Mind" (the title is a
play on Minsky's book, "Society of Mind"), I think it would be great if
Jodie could play the part of Laura in a film adapted from that book. But I
suppose that will never happen.
Richard Steven Hack
richardhack@pcmagic.net
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