From: Dickey, Michael F (michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com)
Date: Mon Mar 11 2002 - 08:03:30 MST
-----Original Message-----
From: Amara Graps [mailto:amara@amara.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 4:28 AM
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: RE: Contact's Arroway character (was Re: My Review A.I. the
Movie )
"Yes, I see your point regarding the pi. I didn't think the movie's
ambiguous ending was necessarily bad, but the pi in the book did tie the
various plot elements together."
"I just read, in the Sagan biography I have, that the pi was left out in the
movie due to a decision higher up in the film studio, so then,
a Hollywood decision. The decision makers thought that pi was too
complicated a topic for the public to understand. So here, yes, a dumbing
down of the movie. too bad."
Thats depressing, but not surprising that Hollywood did that, it is
surprising that Sagan *allowed* it, considering I seem to remember him
criticizing that very type of act numerous times in Demon Haunted World.
-------------------------
>In the book she was much more outspoken and (I thought) intelligent.
>The movie's Arroway was a dumbed down characterature of an
>intellectual atheist, and stumbled anytime someone disagreed with
>her or pointed out some lame allegedly logical flaw in her stance.
>To me, these things showed the influence that hollywood did have in
>the film.
"One thing to remember is that the book was published 12 years before
the movie came out. Sagan was changing, himself, during that time.
Carl Sagan went to extremes, in my opinion, to build that movie
character, so I give him (and the others) a huge amount of credit to
have produced even what he did produce, that is: a smart female
scientist character. I don't know of any other movie to have such
realism for that role. The people involved: he, Ann Druyan (his
wife), Linda Obst (film producer), Lucy Fisher and Courtney Valenti
(executive producers), and of course, Jodie Foster, did it right, in
my opinion. Do you really think that a Dagny Taggart approach would
have worked?"
"It's not realistic to expect a woman scientist to act like a man
scientist. She has different approaches and different strengths,
and usually it requires alot of energy to make her voice heard among
the din. And it's reasonable to expect her to be making large life
decisions, choices, compromises, and fighting more than what's
comfortable, with regards to how to have a family at the same time
of having a work passion. All I'm saying is that a female scientist
(character and real life) _should_ be experiencing uncertainties and
despair at times, and to also have goals and wishes that are nothing
to do with science, so why not have the character display that
reality? The Ellie character was not a lifeless robot, and most
woman scientists are not either."
I was not really referring to anything related to the charachter being a
women. I was more concerned (and annoyed) at the fact that she was an
intelligent scientist and atheist and balked a 1st grade objections to her
stance. She was at a loss for words whenever anyone challenged her ideas,
something that never happened to Sagan. A good example was during the
senate inquiry, another one was when she was talking with Matthew
Mcohnahay's charachter about standing in front of that pendulum and
flinching. He was citing the fact that she knew it wouldnt come back as
high as it had been, but she flinched anyway. She had no response (that I
can remember) where Sagan would have said something like "my brain has been
trained by millions of years of evolution to avoid large heavy objects
careening toward me, and only recently in evolutionary history have such
objects been delicately balanced and set periodically swinging, but with
time I could overwrite my evoluitonary inspired reflexive behavior with a
new one, that of not fliching in the presence of swinging pendulums"
It also seemed that Elly was enfatuated in a school girlish sense with
Mcohoanay's characther. Most of the time she was an intelligent, strong,
independant women, until some handsome smirking hunk comes by to question
her / flirt with her, then she reverts to a stereotypical passive hollywood
female charachter.
Just my 2c
Michael
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