Space Oddities: Women and Outer Space in Popular Film and Culture, 1960–2000 9781628928976, 9781441190499

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—Mommy, can I go to the moon one day? —Sure, sweetie. —Mommy, will you come with me? To Linden, who would go to the stars.

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List of Illustrations

Figure 0.1 Preparation for liftoff of the A4/V2, June 1942, Test number 4. Photo Deutsches Museum.

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Figure 1.1 The Mercury 7 astronauts selected in 1959: (front, left to right) Walter Schirra, Donald Slayton, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, (back, left to right) Alan Shepard, Virgil Grissom, and Gordon Cooper. Photo: NASA.

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Figure 1.2 Jerrie Cobb poses next to a Mercury spaceship capsule. Photo: NASA.

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Figure 1.3 Seven members of the Mercury 13 in 1995 at the launch of STS-63, piloted by Eileen Collins. Pictured are (from left): Gene Nora Stumbough Jessen, Wally Funk, Jerrie Cobb, Jerri Sloan Truhill, Sarah Gorelick Ratley, Myrtle Cagle, and Bernice Steadman. Photo: NASA.

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Figure 2.1 Beginning with the second season, a cartoon summary of the premise of I Dream of Jeannie introduced each episode. Sidney Sheldon Productions, Inc., in association with Screen Gems; NBC.

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Figure 2.2 Tony and Jeannie II (Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden) spend time in the Lunar House in I Dream of Jeannie.

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Figure 2.3

Jeannie blinks herself into outer space in I Dream of Jeannie.

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Figure 2.4

A run-of-the-mill NASA Arab in I Dream of Jeannie.

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Figure 2.5 Mercury 7 survival training in the Nevada desert. The astronauts wear stereotypical Arab garb. Photo: NASA.

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Figure 2.6 Nature and technology on the Cape. The launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour on mission STS-111 startles a large bird to flight over nearby waters. Photo: NASA-KSC.

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Figure 2.7 I Dream of Jeannie Lane, Cocoa Beach, Florida. Photo: Marie Lathers.

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Figure 3.1 Betty and Gus Grissom (Veronica Cartwright and Fred Ward) cease arguing when they notice the press outside their Cocoa Beach motel in The Right Stuff (dir. Philip Kaufman, 1983).

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Figure 3.2 The wives gather for coffee and deviled eggs in The Original Wives Club.

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Figure 3.3 Astronaut wife Susan Borman (Rita Wilson) irons, drinks, smokes, and watches I Dream of Jeannie in The Original Wives Club (dir. Sally Field, 1998).

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Figure 3.4 Marilyn Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan) catches up on news about her astronaut husband by watching television in Apollo 13 (dir. Ron Howard, 1995).

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Figure 3.5 The Gemini twins (Pat McDivitt and Pat White) talk to their husbands in space. Photo: NASA.

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Figure 3.6 The Gemini twins of The Original Wives Club, played by DeLane Matthews and Jo Anderson, sprout bigger hair than the real Pats. Photo: NASA.

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Figure 3.7 The death of an astronaut’s wife by electrocution with radio in The Astronaut’s Wife (dir. Rand Ravich, 1999).

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Figure 3.8 Jillian (Charlize Theron) kills her astronaut husband, gives birth to alien twins, and remarries in Houston in The Astronaut’s Wife.

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Figure 3.9 Christa McAuliffe resting after egress training. Photo: NASA.

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Figure 4.1 Illustration from Curious George Gets a Medal by H.A. Rey. Copyright © 1957 and renewed 1985 by Margret E. Rey. Copyright assigned to Houghton Mifflin Company in 1993. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Figure 4.2 The chimp “Ham” in the Biopack Couch for the MR-2 Flight of January 1, 1961. Photo: NASA.

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Figure 4.3 Two of Team Daedalus (Tommy Lee Jones and Clint Eastwood) in Space Cowboys (dir. Clint Eastwood, 2000). What’s worse—forced retirement or 50 g’s?

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Figure 4.4 Jeannie (Barbara Eden), Roger (Bill Daily), and the chimp Tony at NASA Headquarters in I Dream of Jeannie.

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Figure 4.5 Dian Fossey (Sigourney Weaver) and the mountain gorilla Digit touch across difference in Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (dir. Michael Apted, 1988).

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Figure 5.1

Extravehicular Activity outfits for the Shuttle. Photo: NASA.

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Figure 5.2 Aelita’s Martian dress attracts the earthman Los in Aelita: Queen of Mars (dir. Yakov Protazanov, 1924).

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Figure 5.3 The Devil girl seems to snicker at the bland clothing of the human male (Devil Girl From Mars, dir. David MacDonald, 1954).

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Figure 5.4 The female astronaut dresses like her male counterparts but the Cat-Women dress to kill in Cat-Women of the Moon (dir. Arthur Hilton, 1953).

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Figure 5.5 Two out of three women expose their cracks in Nude on the Moon.

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Figure 5.6 The Queen of the Moon and the spaceman in Nude on the Moon (dir. Doris Wishman, 1961).

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Figure 5.7 The female astronaut undresses to placate the aliens in Cosmic Striptease.

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Figure 5.8 Barbarella removes her spacesuit piece by piece in the opening sequence of Roger Vadim’s film (Barbarella, 1968).

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Figure 5.9

Barbarella gazes through her space helmet.

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Figure 5.10 Ripley gazes through her space helmet in Alien (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979).

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Figure 5.11 Ripley checks the controls, allowing spectators to check out her crack.

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Figure 6.1 Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) kisses Lily (Alfre Woodard) goodbye in Star Trek: First Contact (dir. Jonathan Frakes, 1996).

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Figure 6.2 Spacewoman Ellie Arroway (Jody Foster) meets with her “father” on the beach in Contact (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1997).

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Figure 6.3

Ellie gazes into space without a helmet in Contact.

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Figure 6.4

The female astronaut in Planet of the Apes is dead on arrival.

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Figure 6.5 Zira the chimp (Kim Hunter) agrees to let Taylor (Charlton Heston) kiss her in Planet of the Apes (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968).

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Figure 6.6 Kirk and Uhura (William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols) kiss in the 1968 “Plato’s Stepchildren” episode of Star Trek (Gene Rodenberry, creator and executive producer; CBS).

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Acknowledgments

Friends and colleagues over the years have been extremely helpful in contributing to this project. In graduate school at Brown University, Mary Ann Doane introduced me to film criticism and theories of female spectatorship. Jill Bystydzienski, when she was director of the Program in Women’s Studies at Iowa State University, encouraged my teaching of Feminist Theories, which established my initial interest in a book project on women in space. Teaching Women in Outer Space at Case Western Reserve University has given me the opportunity to expand those ideas. Students in both courses have contributed much over the years. Trips to Cocoa Beach, the Merritt Island National Refuge, the Kennedy Space Center, the Smithsonian Institute National Air and Space Museum, and the John Glenn NASA Research Center in Cleveland gave deeper meaning to my mission. Toni Mullee, Executive Director of the International Women’s Air and Space Museum in Cleveland, has been most encouraging and it has been an honor to meet some of the Mercury 13 women at that museum. I want to thank, in addition, Clyde Simpson, of the Planetarium at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and my co-instructor for Women in Outer Space, Drew Poppleton. David Barker at Continuum has been most supportive. My warm thoughts and gratitude go out as well to Nina Miller, Modupe Labode, Peggy Mook, Michelle Mattson, Laurie McCarten, Miriam Levin, Scott Wike, Tim Beal, and Bill Deal. Finally, I thank my daughter Linden for watching all of “Mom’s outer space movies” and episodes of I Dream of Jeannie over and over with me. Thanks to her also for making me listen over and over to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now”: “I’m burning through the sky, Two hundred degrees that’s why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit, I’m travelling at the speed of light, I wanna make a supersonic woman of you!”

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Introduction

Space for Women: A Problem Deferred

With a faint shiver, Friede turned away from Manfeldt and Turner, and laid her hands on the shining metal sides of the Space-Ship, which would be turned towards the sun on the way to the moon. “Magnificent creature!” she thought. “Creature of a great idea!” (Thea von Harbou)1

I. “Welcome to the moon, you Girl in the Moon” A 12-year-old German boy sits mesmerized before the final scene of a silent film showing in a movie house in Berlin. He has seen the film over and over and he knows how it will end; yet he experiences it as if for the first time. On the screen, a lone man stands in a desolate lunar landscape, his handsome face visible. He wears neither helmet nor space suit, yet he breathes. The astronaut wistfully observes the launch of a rocket before him, aware that the rest of his crew is returning to earth to lead out their lives. His decision to stay on the moon is a sacrifice; by staying behind, he ensures that those on board have sufficient oxygen for the return journey. He will remain on the lifeless moon, hoping for a rescue mission but prepared to die of starvation or cold. Although the boy in the theater had first identified with the 12-year-old stowaway character in the film, he now imagines himself as this man: handsome, courageous, brilliant, and devastatingly alone in an alien world. Alone, but wait— who is this?! A woman, an earth woman, the “Girl in the Moon,” has abandoned ship at the last moment and approaches the man. She is beautiful, kind, generous, and smart, and they have fallen in love over the course of the voyage. The couple embrace in this, the closing scene of director Fritz Lang’s Woman in the Moon (Frau im Mond), based on a novel by Lang’s wife, Thea von Harbou. It is 1929, and the boy in the theater is Krafft Ehricke.

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The boy went on to become a spaceman, so to speak. Krafft Ehricke joined Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, and other German engineers and scientists who worked during WWII on the V-2 rocket and then immigrated to the U.S. in what was termed Operation Paper Clip. These scientists played a crucial role in the fulfillment of President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 promise to place a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Work on the V-2 mutated into work on space rockets, the type of rockets that had been imagined in the early decades of the twentieth century by the three “fathers” of rocket science: the Romanian (at the time Austro-Hungarian) Hermann Oberth; the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky; and the American Robert Goddard. The first V-2 rocket launched successfully from Peenemunde on October 3, 1942, followed by many others. Krafft Ehrick was among spectators at the 1942 launch; he was 25 years old. The film Woman in the Moon was both a product of the early space years and an influence on scientists who dreamed of space. One of the very first cinematic representations of a world beyond that of earth (predating it were A Trip to the Moon [dir. Georges Méliès, 1902] and Aelita: Queen of Mars [dir. Yakov Protazanov, 1924]), Woman in the Moon had the most realistic launch scene to date and it created the in-flight love story that so many films later reinvented. In the 1929 film, the ancient narrative of the hero seeking adventure, and finding a woman along the way, played out in a rocketship and on the moon. Woman in the Moon also marks a pivotal moment when the work of the “fathers” of rocket science was taken up by a new generation of men, including Ehricke and Von Braun, who put the fathers’ theories into action. In fact, Hermann Oberth was technical adviser for the film, although his attempt to launch a liquid-fueled rocket for the premiere failed when he did not produce the rocket in time. In this film, produced at the very dawn of the space era, the associations between women and space are plentiful. Woman in the Moon, about an earth woman in space, was the brainchild of an earth woman, Fritz Lang’s wife and fellow screenwriter, Thea von Harbou. Lang later divorced von Harbou, apparently due to her support of Nazism, and married Gerda Maus, the actress who had played Friede. Thus, the director assumed the role of the astronomer in the film by falling in love with the Girl in the Moon. The film is equally devoted to the love story between Wolf Helius (the rocket designer) and Friede Velten (his student) and the story of space travel; the two narratives are merged to the point where the space of outer space is only imaginable as the space of woman. This corroborates feminist film theorists’ insights that in early film the woman

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represents cinema itself, in that she is “spectacle” and “icon”: “To ‘have’ the cinema is, in some sense, to ‘have’ the woman” (Doane 134). Friede is superimposed with the moon in several ways: she is the hero’s quest in the same way that the moon is his quest; her first name, which translates as “free,” is given to the ship; and, she captures the moon on camera. Friede’s connections to the rocket and the moon are reiterated when she touches the rocket in the novel (see exergue from this chapter) and, in the film, when she gazes at and then touches a drawing of the rocket’s trajectory. Woman in the Moon is, in addition, a film that projects the project of making a film about the moon. This is done through the use of an “automatic camera” attached to the tip of the rocket and also through the talents of the female crewmember. Friede’s role on the voyage is not only to fall in love and serve beverages—which she does—but also to document the moon with a motion picture camera; in this sense, she stands in for Lang. Friede is the moon and she is the means by which the moon is documented. It is as if she is positioned narcissistically before a moon, as a mirror of herself. As she documents the moon, issues of ownership—of the moon’s gold, of Helius’ rocket plans, of Friede (who is initially engaged to another crewmember)—are debated among the men. The prize at the end of the film is both Friede and the moon, whose beauty is recorded by, ironically, the Girl in the Moon. A final instance in the overlap between gender, image, and spaceflight in Woman in the Moon is the logo of a woman and the moon that was created by German rocket engineer Gerd de Beek and painted on the side of one of the very real V-2 rockets fired from Germany (see Figure 0.1). In the 1940s, engineers remembered Lang’s film and created an image of the Moon Girl that was tattooed, so to speak, onto the rocket. The V-2, a rocket created by men for mass destruction, “belonged” in some sense, then, to Friede, to woman as icon of the moon. From the early years of film, the image of woman, the art of cinema, and the work of the rocket scientist were entangled in narratives about journeys into outer space. This entanglement, with its rocky foundation on traditional notions of sexual difference, has continued into the early twenty-first century.2 I agree with film critic Constance Penley that “ ‘going into space’— both the actuality of it and its science fiction realization—has become the prime metaphor through which we try to make sense of the world of science and technology and imagine a place for ourselves in it” (NASA/ TREK 4–5). Over the last 60 years, popular culture has endeavored to

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Figure 0.1 Preparation for liftoff of the A4/V2, June 1942, Test number 4. Photo Deutsches Museum.

digest the “Space Race” through alternately realistic and fantastic (re) tellings of the space story. From early novels by Naomi Mitchison (Memoirs of a Spacewoman), Norman Mailer (Fire on the Moon), and James Michener (Space) and more recent ones by Catherine Bush (Minus Time), Douglas Coupland (All Families are Psychotic), and Carol Hill (The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer), to television series (Lost in Space, Star Trek and all its versions), feature films (Barbarella, Alien, Apollo 13, Contact), and documentaries (Magnificent Desolation, The Wonder of It All), the Space Age has been imagined, played out, revised, and repackaged. These narratives grow out of an already established genre—science fiction—that builds on the possibilities of space travel and extraterrestrial life. Prose by H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury, Flash Gordon television episodes, and films such as Rocketship X-M (dir. Kurt Neumann, 1950) and Devil Girl from Mars (dir. David MacDonald, 1954) paved the way to the Space Age and set the terms of popular interpretations of it. (Especially important in science fiction literature was the early contribution of Jules Verne, notable for his 1865 novel, From the Earth to the Moon.)

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Popular culture’s coming to terms with the possibility of interplanetary travel as it relates to ideologies of sexual difference is the subject of this study. How the Space Race is digested as a gendered event was and is related to social norms; in the late 1950s and throughout the 60s, emphasis was placed on defining women’s place in the home—not their place in the public sphere—and this emphasis was played out in NASA’s refusal to train women as astronauts. The relatively new technology of television was the major vehicle for the popularization of the connected discourses of Space Race and domestic peace. Center stage in the middle-class home, television was the prime medium for the dissemination of NASA’s accomplishments.3 Because of television, the outer space of other worlds and the inner space of the home were forever linked, and this process set up a series of oppositions that continues to characterize our understanding of space—outer/inner; alien/astronaut; U.S./ U.S.S.R.; ape/human; domestic space/public space—and the representation of space in fiction and dominant cinema. Television was the principal medium of the Space Age, but on what foundation were the messages it devised based? The western conflation since at least the eighteenth century of women and the material—the body—and the conflation of man and the ethereal—the mind—has had a major effect on representations of women as astronauts. Whereas it takes a lot of jet fuel to defy gravity where man is concerned, it has taken not only fuel but revisions of western binaries and thought patterns to thrust woman into space. And once there, her body still seems to drag her down to earth, through the processes of sex and reproduction and all that they entail. Issues of clothing, disposal of waste, and the unpredictability of menstrual cycles have dominated talk of what strategies are required to transport women’s bodies into space without accident, overflow, or overexposure. Women’s bodies have been “problems” for NASA and the public, whether they are the bodies of the Mercury 13 women, who defied stereotypes and equaled or surpassed the Mercury 7 astronauts in unofficial tests, the naked women of Nude on the Moon (dir. Doris Wishman, 1961), the decomposed female astronaut of Planet of the Apes (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968), the lost body of Christa McAuliffe, or the disabled body of novelist Douglas Coupland’s female astronaut. At the same time, women’s bodies intrigue the public and offer opportunities for imagining futures different from our own, whether utopian or dystopian. Whereas the killer woman in space is still popular at the corner cinema, a nurturing, competent, and sane woman in space has slowly emerged over the decades as a feasible candidate for science fiction films.

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This study poses the woman in space as a problem, one that the U.S. space program, the media, and popular culture wrestled with and worked through, in fits and starts, throughout most of the twentieth century. On the one hand, imagining a woman in space has been a theoretical problem; on the other hand, launching a woman into space has been a historical problem. The idea of a woman in space is a theoretical conundrum in western culture because of a traditional emphasis on a special bond between woman and the material, woman and nature, and by extension, woman and the earth. Seemingly entrenched binaries have aligned men with the cerebral and the spiritual, leading to narratives of the transition from boyhood to manhood as a breaking of ties to the maternal and the material. Women, on the other hand, have been pegged as necessary to the very concept of earth as home, as a site of birth and death, of growth and decay—as site of the body. A woman who leaves the earth is in some sense labeled a monstrosity, and this applies twofold to a mother who boards a spaceship. Whether we see such a woman as a monster or simply as inconceivable, she presents an impasse in cultural imaginings, many of which have encouraged real women to stay at home. Many stories that allow woman to leave the earth do so while condemning her flight or identifying her as “not a woman.” Others dress her up in outrageous or horrifying garb that allows the spectator to accept the space woman by turning her into a monstrous alien being or a human woman gone bonkers. A few films have endeavored to imagine a competent female astronaut professional, but these have been rare. In the second half of the twentieth century, women took the reins of theory and harnessed it to speak for their experience, their history, and for possible futures that would revise in liberating ways the material and the maternal. In early science fiction—with a few exceptions—space women are depicted as either oversexed or undersexed space aliens or as human secretaries and assistants who cater to men’s needs on the spacecraft. By the 1960s, however, space dramas revealed the holes in the binary of woman-earth/man-space, as characters such as Jeannie (I Dream of Jeannie, 1965–70) straddled home and space in constantly shifting and constantly ambivalent allegiances. At the same time, wives of NASA astronauts were made to continue to represent Mother Earth, although tensions were emerging in the way that these women fulfilled their cultural role. In the 1970s and 80s, these themes continued, but some new imaginings reflected a continuing breakdown in traditional boundaries: Ripley, the heroine of Alien (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979), was not an assistant in space but an aggressive and calculating alien-hunter. For the

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most part, however, the nostalgic 1980s–90s roped women back to the earth in films, such as Apollo 13 (dir. Ron Howard, 1995), that built upon foundational boundaries remaining from the 1950s and 60s. The last few years of the twentieth century saw partially successful releases of women back into space, in films such as Contact (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1997), but the pull of gravity—the pull of our understanding of woman as primarily an earth mother—remained strong. Space Oddities intertwines theory and practice, fictions and realities. Indeed, theory and history are not separate poles, just as the binaries of body/mind, material/ethereal, and nature/science are not neatly and eternally set (or separated) in stone. The ways that women in space have been depicted in popular film and literature parallel the way government officials, scientists, and the public have reacted to the idea: she has been told she is “not a woman,” but rather a monster who has forgotten her duties as homebound companion to man and mother to his children. Historically, the Mercury 13, a group of women who believed they would train as astronauts in the early 1960s, marks the beginning of a new history of woman’s relationship to space, one that seemingly culminated in Sally Ride’s 1983 foray into space and continues with NASA’s slow increase in the percentage of astronauts who are women. These struggles can be gleaned in popular film: Ripley has to fight to have crewmembers below her in rank respect her authority; Elle Arroway, in Contact, has to fight the government and religious leaders to take her place in space. I propose the term “grounding women” to refer to a process by which women are encouraged to stay grounded: on earth, in the home, in the kitchen, or in the back yard. The term has particular resonance in space studies, and certainly male astronauts have been grounded (actor Gary Sinese seems always to be grounded; see Apollo 13 and Mission to Mars [dir. Brian De Palma, 2000]). Women are grounded, however, by default; there is no need to depict a scene in which they are told they must stay home, whether due to German measles, mental trauma, or their periods. It is understood that something, something residing in the very organs that make up “women,” cannot defy gravity, cannot leave home— although female communications officers are necessary so that men may phone home. This is why the premise in Contact that the woman astronaut has not really left home works so well: if she was a man, would the final scenes in which her state of mind is questioned have played out differently? Would a male astronaut travel through wormholes just to meet his mother on the beach? Would a male astronaut be denied the heroic ending of proving that he was right? Contact works (and it is quite

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different from the novel in these respects) because Ellie sleeps with a man and meets her father in space. Both of these actions “ground” her as a woman, as a body, as linked always already to man and to the earth. I have chosen to highlight the four decades from 1960 to 2000 for several reasons. Although I refer to quite a few 1950s space movies, I do not analyze that decade of Hollywood cinema in detail because there have already been many critical studies of it. In addition, there was a fundamental rupture in U.S. views on space in 1961, when real men went into orbit. Although throughout the 60s there were still 50s-type space movies being made, a new era of seriousness about space was afoot, most especially represented by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). I choose to end with the year 2000 because this provides us with a timeloop back to the 60s, in nostalgic films such as Apollo 13 and Space Cowboys (dir. Clint Eastwood, 2000) that wish to relive the heroics of the 1960s and early 70s missions. As we prepare in the early twenty-first century for possible missions to the moon and Mars, we begin a new cycle in the history of space travel; we will also surely know familiar, but hopefully also new, television and big screen fantasies of space travel so that the study begun in this book can be extended in the future. One means of managing the bodies of women in space is to award specific roles to these bodies, and these have been in particular roles that serve communication purposes. From the real-life “computers” of the 1950s to the secretaries and nurses of NASA, women have served as mediators between speakers and between the mind and body, as caregivers, translators, interpreters, and servers of coffee. In Cat Women of the Moon, the original Star Trek series, and HBO’s The Original Wives Club (part of From the Earth to the Moon, 1998), women communicate, either successfully or unsuccessfully, with alien species and/or human males. They interface with technology to relay information between aliens and men. This role serves to allay fears and anxieties concerning women’s usefulness in space and answers the question “what will she do with her body in space?”: she will serve coffee (It! The Terror from Beyond Space); bandage wounded men (Nurse Chapel and Dr. Crusher of Star Trek); mediate and interpret (Counselor Deanna Troi, Next Generation; Lily in Star Trek: First Contact); and man communications consoles (Helen in Cat-Women; the secretary on earth in The Crawling Hand; Uhura of Star Trek). Despite this emphasis, however, women are repeatedly denied access to the Mother of control consoles—mission control—except when they are invited to view their husband astronauts on the video screen. One of my specific purposes is to trace the creation of the male astronaut as cultural archetype, a hero for the modern age, in a process that

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Michael L. Smith has called “inventing the astronaut” (199). The astronaut combined the hero with the celebrity, according to Susan Faludi: Perhaps no group of men has ever been so on display yet so valued, so ogled yet so championed for their brawn, than the handful of pilots anointed by a nation to navigate the stars. They were held up as virile new scouts blazing a trail into the ultimate unknown region . . . (Faludi 462) Through a focus on the representation of astronauts in popular fiction narratives, the male astronaut is revealed to be a work-in-progress, a hero who merges easily with his own nemesis—the alien—and a changeable category of identity that may at times extend to non-human primates (chimps), women, and people of color. The term “astronaut” in this study is used not only in the literal sense (a man who goes into space wearing an astronaut’s suit) but also in the wider sense of those who manage space or are managed by it. In this sense, the astronaut’s wife—a stock character in many of the fictions I discuss—is herself a sort of astronaut, a “woman in space,” because her identity is dependent upon her relationship to space, in this case through her husband. She is also, in some sense, an “anti-astronaut” who helps to define and uphold the category of the astronaut proper. Animals sent into space, in particular chimpanzees, are also considered astronauts in this sense, as are their descendents who remain earthbound (in animal care facilities; see Chapter 4). The history of women in space, reflected and often remolded in the representation of women in space in popular culture, may be read as the history of a deferral, of a problem deferred. Films from 1920s silent classics such as Woman in the Moon and Aelita: Queen of Mars awarded a choice of two roles to women in space: she was either Friede, the astronomer’s assistant and love interest, or Aelita, the alien vixen and demagogue of the Soviet masterpiece Aelita. These roles for spacewomen seemed to dry up in the 1930s and 40s, but returned with a vengeance in the 1950s. The Great Depression and WWII displaced popular imaginings of women in space, although U.S. culture did not completely lose its enthusiasm with the ideas of space travel and space aliens. It was after the war, however—for historical, social, and economic reasons—that Friede and Aelita made their way back onto the big screen. The war not only brought German rocket scientists to the U.S., but also yielded a generation of middle-class women who knew what it was to work, to go boldly where few proper women had gone before: to the office and even

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to the airplane hangar. The roots of modern feminism lie in this phenomenon of working women with social and financial independence, whom the government and businesses attempted to squash after the return of G.I.s from Europe and Asia. The 1950s in the U.S., while long viewed as a decade of white-bread and middle-class contentment, both moral and economic, is now understood to have been a decade of gender, racial, and economic foment, unrest, and insecurity. That women in space were either reassuring accompaniments to men or threats themselves demonstrates that the time period was rife with anxiety concerning national and individual identity. The post-War return of women to the silver screen as assistant crewmembers, love interests, and monstrous threats from afar is not surprising: that women were perceived as needing to be contained in suburban havens is a sure indication that anxiety concerning the middleclass domestic ethos and economic/industrial (including nuclear) superiority were related. The woman crewmember of Rocketship X-M is educated and independent (and German) but easily relinquishes her head and heart to a spaceman—she follows in the line of Friede. The proto-feminist and murder-on-her-mind alien of the British play and film Devil Girl From Mars took up where Aelita left off. In some ways, then, post-War women in space simply revived the model set in place in the 1920s. But they were revived with a difference, due to the complicated ways in which the war endowed the nation with a new vision of space travel. This vision was fed by the economic and social changes of the 1950s, which created an underclass of “minorities”—of “Others”—intent on one day realizing a dream deferred. The history of human—male and female, black and white—and animal—monkeys, mice, chimps—travel in space has been characterized by debate and discord concerning just who belongs in space and who doesn’t. The central decade of the Space Race, the 1960s, was a decade characterized by the solidifying of identities, with the separation from the white male norm of those of “marginal” or “minority” status, including blacks and women. The seeds, both economic and social, of the liberation of women and blacks, planted in the 1950s, set these “odd” social identities on the road, in the 60s and 70s, to making their way into space, as “space oddities,” but also as professional astronauts and scientists. We might say that the “aliens” among us—women and blacks— began to reach space as humans once their status on earth as oddities was challenged. Historically, blacks and women became NASA astronauts as a result of laws such as the 1972 Equal Opportunity Employment Act,

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and pressure from individuals in government as well as the public at large. Theoretically, “odd” humans could now enter space because they were gradually welcomed into the human fold and part of being “human” was to explore (and eventually colonize) beyond one’s home frontier. As the terms “women,” “blacks,” and “black women” were debated and molded, described and delineated, space was made in the western category of the human for them. In a similar way, the category “animal” has been revisited and revised since the 1960s with, especially, non-human primates being brought into the fold: animal theory would have it that we are not humans, but rather primates. I look, then, at gender, race, and species difference, for decisions about who could ride a rocket into space involved recognition of these critical differences. Space Oddities is thus a commentary on the relationship of earth to space, of the material to the ideal, of body to disembodiment, of weightiness to weightlessness. It draws on and contributes to the disciplines of cultural studies, feminist studies, primatology, and media studies, all a part of what I call “space studies.” It remains focused on women astronauts as celluloid creatures, but deals also with true women astronauts and to a lesser extent with that other species of woman in space: the alien. I explore the following themes, among others: the association of women and the earth; sex, reproduction, and family in space; gender and the astronaut’s apparel; the association of women and the animal; the relationship between domestic suburban space and outer space; and the relationship among nature, technology, gender, and space science. I trace a trajectory that runs very generally from the representation of women as identified with the earth (even when they made it to space) to the representation of astronaut wives who never left home, then to the representation of the wife-astronaut (Christa McAuliffe is the primary example), and, finally, to the woman astronaut per se. This evolution in the popular understanding of women and space is not always smooth, but its course reflects the history of second-wave feminism: women slowly make their way, over time, into men’s fields. At the same time, I hold this model of women’s history up to scrutiny, by asking if the long-awaited voyage of the first U.S. woman in space (Sally Ride, 1983) was not part and parcel of the “end of history” for the space program. In terms of theoretical underpinnings, I am indebted to a long line of feminist cultural critics. Having been trained as a literary scholar, my readings of films are in large part textual readings that draw on methodologies of close literary analysis. I am also heavily influenced by theorists

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of popular culture, and especially of popular film. I combine methodologies by giving the reader history as needed (of NASA, of women astronauts, of the television as a technology, etc.) and then examining how fictional constructs are built on or built as alternatives to these histories. I am committed to writing women “into” space at the same time that I write about women “in” space. Thus, I draw on a range of sources, including historical documents, history texts, novels, feature films, documentary films, magazine articles, and television shows. I take care to alert the reader as to whether I am speaking of historical fact or dramatic fiction, but at the same time I guide the reader to an understanding that the two are ineluctably entwined. Space Oddities joins together three areas of contemporary scholarship: feminist theory, film and media studies, and space studies. Other studies (articles and book chapters) have looked at some of the films and issues I address; however, there is no full-length study of the representation of women and outer space in popular culture, although there are analyses devoted specifically to science fiction. There have, however, been quite a few studies of real women astronauts over the last 10 years; my own study draws on these to address the fictionalization of the woman astronaut. The fact that so many studies of the true history have appeared (see Chapter 1) makes this a propitious time for a reading of women in space, so that “women” become, in one sense at least, “universal.”

II. Breakdown My choice of material in this book has been somewhat idiosyncratic in the sense that it has been tied to those manifestations of popular culture that I find to be the most representative of this theme and, at the same time, those that allow me to tell a story about “women in space,” those that permit me to begin at a beginning and follow a narrative through—from the television series I Dream of Jeannie to Contact. Along the way, I have all but omitted reference to a few space oeuvres, in particular the multiple versions of Star Trek (except one film that I consider in Chapter 6), the Star Wars franchise, and the series Lost in Space and its Hollywood film version. The Star Trek and Star Wars series have been looked at by a host of critics and I have preferred to focus on lessdiscussed narratives. I am also less interested in franchises, which is one of the reasons I examine Alien, but not its successors. In general, sequels dilute the representational force of the first film, and as part of this

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process meaningful female characterization can suffer. Finally, I am less interested in cataloguing female characters than in choosing a few who make a difference, and as such I do not claim that this book is exhaustive. A related point is that I expect some readers will be disappointed that this book is not about science fiction per se. There are untold numbers of science fiction and fantasy writings and films that place women in outer space as astronauts and aliens. I realized early on that to include every one of them in this study would be to crowd out works that are more aligned with the genre of realism, in writing and in film, than with science fiction. And this “space realism” is what I wish to interrogate. I make exceptions to this rule, but my approach to the exceptions is itself a “realist” approach: for example, I am more interested in the African American woman Lily Sloane than the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact; in Alien, I am more interested in Ripley than in the Alien. In terms of fiction writing, I have chosen to look at realistic depictions (with a few exceptions) of female astronauts, working not in the future but in the present. These representations come together in forming a popular culture sub-genre of “alien chic” (to use Neil Badmington’s term), which I would call “astronaut chic.” Readers will also notice that what I consider to be commentary on “women in space” includes historical figures and fictional characters (the Mercury 13, Jeannie in I Dream of Jeannie, astronaut wives) who do not travel to space. These are necessary precursors, I believe, to an understanding of representations of women in outer space. But more than precursors—and by precursor I do not mean that such fantasies of women tied to the earth no longer inhabit popular culture; we are not that far into the future!—these representations tell us much about what film and television makers believed audiences could digest about a topic as odd as that of the woman astronaut. As we will see in Chapter 2, although Jeannie does not go into space (except to blink herself there for a moment or two), she is all about outer space—its spaces, contours, and boundaries; its gendered and exotic nature. And as we will see in Chapter 3, the housewives of The Right Stuff (dir. Philip Kaufman, 1983) and Apollo 13, by marrying the men who go into space instead of going themselves, represent the negative of the astronaut, his “human” side, his wife and mother of his children—those who cannot be astronauts but are nonetheless defined by the Space Race. The information to be culled from close attention paid to these non- or anti-astronauts is not only compelling, but essential to a complete understanding of what

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circumstances can lead a woman to be suited up as astronaut in other popular culture representations. In this sense, they are all “women in space.” Literary representations of women in space do not occupy as much space in this book as filmic representations. Fiction has, certainly, imagined the woman astronaut. Naomi Mitchison, British writer and activist, published Memoirs of a Spacewoman in 1962, and other science fiction authors have filled pages with stories of women in space. My choice is as much an indication of the current public’s attachment to cinema as means of entertainment as it is an appreciation of the important visual aspect of such stories—space stories do well on the big screen and in color. There are, nonetheless, some very good and some very bad prose fiction depictions of women in space and a few of these are considered here. In particular, I look at four: two romance novels, one memoir, and two realist novels. In Chapter 1, I investigate the relationship among the terms “women,” “history,” and “time” in the initial years of the Space Age. Specifically, I consider how women have been variously written into or left out of space discourse in the history of the Mercury 13 would-be astronauts. I explore how notions of time and history worked to keep the Mercury 13 women pilots grounded and how this false-start is necessary to an understanding of women’s eventual place in space. I also mention the International Women’s Air and Space Museum (Cleveland) as a timely moment in the construction of women in space as a category. The chapter opens with a discussion of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (1988), a layman’s reference to space and time, which I return to in the conclusion. In the 1965–70 U.S. television sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, a genie in a bottle lives with an astronaut in Cocoa Beach, Florida, not far from Cape Canaveral. The show ingeniously melds two cherished American dreams—the dream of going into space and the dream of staying at home—and this melding is the topic of Chapter 2. In my reading, Jeannie is the most important television “woman in space” of the 60s, despite the presence of women in space in Lost In Space and Star Trek (although the character Uhura is extremely significant in the history of space shows, as I explain in Chapter 6). It surely did not surprise viewers that Jeannie stayed home while Tony went into space, yet Jeannie paradoxically possessed powers that allowed her to transport herself wherever and whenever she wished. I introduce the Cape and Cocoa Beach, Florida as a perfect stage for Hollywood’s construction of

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the Space Race, and then I explore how NASA represents itself on the Cape as environmentally friendly. I present Jeannie as an example of NASA domesticated but also of the domestic launched into space; she is a fantasy “astronaut’s wife.” She is also a foreign—even “alien”—body because she is from the Middle East. This leads me to begin a discussion concerning the alien Others of a nation that I pursue in later chapters. The role of women in the films The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, The Original Wives Club (part of the HBO documentary From the Earth to the Moon), and The Astronaut’s Wife (dir. Rand Ravich, 1999) is to stay at home—in the kitchen, bedroom, or backyard—and watch TV or listen to the NASA squawk box as their men risk their lives by going into space. In Chapter 3, I argue that these women remain grounded, as their husbands build a fraternity of astronauts defined by exclusion: the exclusion of women and of African Americans. Curiously, although the astronaut’s wife is mentioned in Germaine Greer’s important The Female Eunuch (1970) and a few other critical texts, this figure has remained all but invisible to cultural critics, as if NASA had convinced the public of the transparency of these women’s lives. Thus, a recent resurgence in interest in the wives in popular culture, represented by these films, has gone virtually unnoticed. I show, on the contrary, that this recuperation is a stunningly conservative one, one that replays with only small differences the 1960s Life Magazine representations of the perfect astronaut wife. I consider the centrality of television in making the astronaut and in making the middle-class home, as well as the role of the wife in “engineering” the home, thus bringing technology, including space technologies, into earth dwellings. The association in popular culture of female sexuality and the animalistic is paired in Chapter 4 with a consideration of the uses of apes and monkeys by primatologists and space scientists. Colonialism in Africa in the twentieth century supplied species that NASA sent into space as surrogate astronauts for human males. The most famous chimps were from Cameroon; their descendants have now “retired” to Florida. The film Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (dir. Michael Apted, 1988), although not about space travel, develops a connection among primatology, women, and colonialism that is a companion narrative to that of the Space Age. Dian Fossey’s experience transfers the colonial missionary as “benevolent” influence on “natives” to postcolonial benevolence toward the animals of the jungle, thus inscribing primatology as a neocolonialist discourse. I compare how white women were and still are used in that project to the (non)use of women in the outer space project. The

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connection between the “race to space” and “race in space” is central to this chapter, which is framed by readings of the children’s tale Curious George Gets a Medal (George blasts off) and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s “The Heron and the Astronaut ” (from her book Earth Shine), a reflection on Florida and Africa. Alien was a watershed moment in the public’s recognition and acceptance of a woman in space, a moment that was unfortunately followed by a backlash in the 1980s and 90s. The Alien series of films (beginning with Alien, 1979) goes the farthest of such films in depicting the dangers of sending woman into space; at the same time it creates a strong and independent female alien-snatcher. My take, in Chapter five, on the much discussed undressing scene at the end of Alien is that it can be read as a statement of the dependence of the astronaut (indeed, of all categories of identity) on clothes, the suit s/he wears. When Ripley strips to her panties, she becomes “woman” (sexy and vulnerable); with her suit and helmet on, she is ready to destroy the alien—she becomes “astronaut.” I give a history of the space suit and note the (essentially self-inflicted) difficulties encountered by NASA when a suit for women was required. I examine Doris Wishman’s 1961 film Nude on the Moon and Roger Vadim’s 1968 film Barbarella as fantasies of naked female bodies in space to shore up my argument that Alien is radical in its emphasis on the suit, but traditional in its emphasis on Ripley’s underwear. Most radically, Ripley is a woman in space without being an astronaut’s wife or lover. Alien was a turning point in the history of the representation of women in space, but it was not followed by similarly active adventures of the woman in astronaut clothing. In the final chapter, I examine the films Star Trek: First Contact (dir. Jonathan Frakes, 1996) and Contact, both myths of first contact between human and alien, and both myths that “manage” female astronauts (Penley discusses the “management” and “mis-management” of female astronauts at NASA in NASA/TREK). Both rely on western colonialist discourse concerning first contact with Other or “alien” species on earth (this continues with Avatar, James Cameron’s 2009 film). I argue that in the Star Trek film, a white male astronaut sent into space to make first contact with Vulcans is upstaged by a black earth woman who shows up on the Enterprise and runs into a Klingon. In Contact, we finally see a woman astronaut go into space and this film represents the end of our trajectory, its arrival at a utopian vision of the woman astronaut. But what, in fact, does Dr. Ellie Arroway find when she reaches space?—her long lost father. The character Ellie, drawn from the Carl Sagan novel, is to date the most complete representation we have in U.S.

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popular culture of a woman astronaut, yet she is grounded by the film characters’ nagging suspicion that she has not in fact left home. Ellie Arroway learns to listen to radio waves from her father and it is this childhood hobby that sets her on a course to hear what aliens might be saying. Another thing she learns from her father is a saying that she herself uses as an adult: if there is no life on other planets, that would constitute “a terrible waste of space” (the quote is from Carl Sagan’s book). For many decades, it was thought that finding room for women in space would be a waste of space. Multiple reasons were given for keeping women in their proper place at home, but eventually women such as Sally Ride, Kathryn Sullivan, and Mae Jemison took up where the Mercury 13 had been interrupted in 1962. Meanwhile, popular culture and especially film continued to at times reinforce cultural and social mores concerning women’s true place and at other times dare to imagine futures where women could do something out of the ordinary. In the conclusion, I offer readings of two popular books about the universe, one by a man and one by a woman: Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and Janna Levin’s How the Universe Got Its Spots. Whereas Hawking’s book purports to present the complexities of time and space in an objective way, his reading cannot escape gender. Levin also aims to present science objectively, but the very form of her text—it is written as a journal—reveals a connection with traditional modes of women’s writing. Perhaps we would need to turn to fiction as a means of writing ourselves out of the problems of gender and science: Carol Hill manages, in her novel The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer, to present a beautiful, talented female astronaut who can go on and on about physics (her cat is named Schrodinger) and blast into space whenever she wants. The twenty-first century may well provide us with a film version of the story of Amanda and the (alien) Dancer. This study thus considers multiple genres of situating women in relationship to outer space, from film and television series to history and sciences texts, from magazine articles and photographs to novels and short stories. In the spaces of these frames and pages, a woman is woven into space.

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Chapter 1

It’s About Time: A Brief History of Women in Space

It’s about two astronauts; it’s about their fate; It’s about a woman and her prehistoric mate. (It’s About Time) I’m sorry to have gone female on you, Major. (Colonel “Bright Eyes” in Project Moonbase) At this writing, we are still waiting. (Jerrie Cobb)

I. Arrows of Time Stephen Hawking’s 1988 bestseller A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes was a cultural phenomenon. Although there have been other examples of the marketing of science as popular, or lay, culture, Hawking’s is probably the best known. Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University until his retirement in 2009, Hawking has written several popular books on cosmology. I begin and end this book with comments on certain aspects of A Brief History because the text leads to a consideration of the effect that popular science writing has on our notions of origins and origin stories. It does this by revealing some of the ways in which history (that of an idea, a nation, a gender) may be constructed with models of the history of the universe in mind. Hawking offers a history of time—a history of the universe—and thus provides a seductive stage on which to examine the history of the popular representation of women in outer space in the second half of the twentieth century. His book also reveals how science may be popularized—how it may itself sit on the border between “fact” and

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“fiction”—and how language is used in very concerted ways to facilitate this crossing of genres. The success of A Brief History of Time is due in large part to Hawking’s stature in the physics community; it is also due to his ability to transform difficult concepts into readable sentences and, surely, his (or his editor’s) choice of a title: A Brief History of Time. What could sound more important, more concise, more romantic, and at the same time more readily approached? The three words of the felicitous title—“brief,” “history,” and “time”—are caught in a tight interdependence that endlessly rewrites itself. Thought given to the meaning of the title leads invariably to new thoughts and new meanings, if not finally to utter confusion, for in the end the catchy title is an oxymoron. How can a “history” be brief? How can there be a history of “time,” when the concept of history itself is dependent on the concept of time? How can we be brief when we discuss time, which seems shorter or longer depending on one’s perspective, and which in any case is infinite? Is 1988 meant to be the end of time, since Hawking appeared ready in that year to sum it all up? More to the point, why a summing up of time in the decade of the 1980s? Hawking does not appear to have consciously set out to inflect his study with gender trouble, but readers attuned to the history of women in the west cannot remain so oblivious. Having first read Hawking’s book in the same month that I read Denise Riley’s ‘Am I That Name?’: Feminism and the Category of ‘Women’ in History, also published in 1988, I found myself wondering about the following: What of women, time, history, space, and the universe?; is gender, a category constructed in the west in the nineteenth century, a meaningful addition to a discussion of space and time?; is gender a product, even a by-product, of space and time?; do women experience space and time—and thus the universe and history itself—differently than men and, if so, can this difference yield clues about the traditional exclusion of women from space?; what of feminism?—are we really in what some call a “post-feminist” age, a posthistory, or at least a radically new era?; what is the relationship between feminism as a historical construct—as political movement and individual experience—and scientific and/or popular models of time, history, space, and the universe?; is feminism (potentially) “universal”?; is gender universal?; is it coincidence that debate among humanists about the terms universal and universalism have arisen at the same time that space science seeks a new understanding of the universe and space engineering seeks to propel (some of) us into space?; is “women” a “universal” category, or merely a modern, western, and limited concept?; what does

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it mean to try and place “women” in space, either in reality or on film?; and what, on the other hand, does it mean to restrict “women” from space? As an academic, I consider myself to be a member of the educated reading public. I can’t admit, however, to have understood much of A Brief History of Time. (The Riley book is also difficult, I’ll admit.) I will assume that Hawking is sincere in his desire to reach a broad audience, and I note that a second reading, completed a full year after the first aborted one, was helpful. On my second reading, I noted that at least three concepts described in Hawking’s book are useful to a discussion of the representation of women in space. They are: “sum over histories,” “allowed orbits,” and “arrows of time.” These terms are used in this study as figures of speech, with the goal of sketching out connections between the seemingly disconnected worlds of culture (including gender) and science. In addition, I borrow the force of gravity from physics, and use it as a metaphor for the cultural constraints (what John Glenn called the “social order”) that have bound women to earth and kept them from blasting off. Gravity and the related gravidas (indicating the weighty state of pregnancy) have pulled woman to earth, made her weighty, allowing men to escape earth’s orbit more readily. The expressions “sum over histories” and “allowed orbits” are connected. Physicist Richard Feynman first proposed the “sum over histories” concept, which Hawking summarizes as such: In this approach the particle is not supposed to have a single history or path in space-time, as it would in a classical, nonquantum theory. Instead it is supposed to go from A to B by every possible path . . . The probability of going from A to B is found by adding up the waves for all the paths. (A Brief History 60) These paths constitute the “allowed orbits,” the second term that I borrow from Hawking’s book: “The waves for these paths will not cancel out. Such paths belong to [physicist Neils] Bohr’s allowed orbits” (60). As Hawking notes, in using the “sum over histories” approach one must include in the “sum” histories that take place in “imaginary time,” as opposed to “real time”: To avoid the technical difficulties with Feynman’s sum over histories, one must use imaginary time. That is to say, for the purposes of the calculation one must measure time using imaginary numbers, rather

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than real ones. This has an interesting effect on space-time: the distinction between time and space disappears completely. (A Brief History 134) Time becomes merely another dimension of space; we live in four dimensions, not three. May we speak, then, of a “sum over histories” to describe the various paths that women have taken on the road to finding their place in time and space? If so, the probability that U.S. women would ever get to space is the sum of all the possible paths of women to space, a sum that was reached when Sally Ride made her trip in 1983. Briefly put, what troubles feminists is that the sum over histories of women have seemed to lag behind the sum over histories of men, time and time again. Even worse, it has often occurred that by the time women catch up the event on the horizon is already over; thus, no woman has landed on the moon. In both real and imaginary time, it has been difficult to place women in space as astronauts, during the years period when the Space Race occupied much of the American imaginary. The “arrows of time” approach offers a further means of understanding women’s place in space-time. Hawking identifies three “arrows”: the thermodynamic arrow; the psychological arrow; and the cosmological arrow. To answer the question “Why do we remember the past but not the future?” (A Brief History 144), he investigates whether or not the arrows can be reconciled. He answers that psychological time (memory) moves in the same direction as thermodynamic time (increase of entropy, or disorder) and cosmological time (the universe is expanding). Seen in light of arrows of time, the history of women in space becomes a thermodynamic ordering of disorder; a psychological time that insists on remembering the past, not the future; and a cosmological time that proposes the expansion, and not shrinking, of the universe. We can use these terms metaphorically in the following manner: the arrows of time that characterize the history of women in space create a slow but acknowledged order from the disorder of gender entropy; the arrows create the past as a memory that can then be used to reorder the future, which we can predict (by summing up all possible paths) but never fully know in the present; and continuing expansion may account for the bringing into orbit of previously marginal histories and categories of identity, as categories are revealed to be “universal.” This last example suggests a remembering of the future: we can know that women, people of color, lesbians and gays, will be brought into the orbit of history—into

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the universe—eventually; the problem is, perhaps, one of patience—but is the universe patient? “Allowed orbits” is a useful expression because it suggests that there are multiple paths upon which one may found a particular history. If the actual history (that is, the past) is the sum of these paths, then that is also the path, or orbit, that is ultimately allowed. The passive “allowed” connotes the presence of a higher being—a God or a group of congressmen, scientists, or film directors—that permits certain orbits and not others. By combining this idea with that of “arrows” of time, we can propose that a particular history (of the category “women,” let’s say) follows a set of allowed orbits that themselves must fit the three arrows of time. But I do not mean this to sound quite so deterministic; instead, I propose that the moments when women produce an event that thrusts them into a new orbit (the moments in which they lose patience), although they follow the laws and arrows of physics (nature), are to some extent unpredictable and uncertain. The past (history) obeys the law in general, but sometimes it bends (or “curves,” to follow Einstein’s and Hawking’s vocabulary) that law into the future. Trepidation at these bends, twists, and turns in history can also stagnate the march of history for some, however. Time and time again, in the 1962 congressional hearings concerning qualifications for astronauts (discussed below), it was argued that women’s involvement would “interfere” with the current men’s program and thus impede it, slow it down. When women are seen as interference in the natural course of history, their participation in history is not just unwanted, but becomes a conceptual impossibility. In 1962, there was as yet no allowed orbit for the female astronaut.

II. No Official Requirement1 The story of women in outer space is the story of being in the right space at the right time; it is also the story of the recording of the history of that particular space and time. An example of how women have endeavored to write themselves into time, history, and space is found in the transcripts of the 1962 House of Representatives hearings convened to determine whether or not there was gender discrimination in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) establishment of qualifications for astronauts. For two days in July 1962, a special subcommittee of the Committee on Science and Astronautics of the House met to consider the issue. One committee member stated that the

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committee’s work was to “once and for all settle this problem of women astronauts” (Report of the Special Subcommittee 63–4; hereafter, Qualifications). The “problem” was settled by one witness with the following statement: “The present qualifications are such that there appear to be no women who are qualified in the program” (64). There was no discrimination, he argued; there were just no women who qualified. Yet the hearings offered more than this simplistic approach to the problem. A careful reading of the transcripts reveals an alliance between language and institutional power made visible through rhetorical strategies used by committee members and witnesses. Specific terms foregrounded in the debate were molded by one side or the other to make its case, to reinforce or contest historical realities. These included broad categories of time and history as well as terms more particular to the hearings, including “experience” and “engineering,” “interruption” and “interference,” and “qualifications” and “requirements.” The history of the Mercury 13 recounted below is that of an aborted attempt to write women into space history, or a failure at the embodiment of the female astronaut. It was not until 1983 that a U.S. woman rode into space, and 1995 that a woman piloted the space shuttle. Between 1962 and 1995, the issue of women astronauts was debated at the same time that popular culture sold “women in space” to consumers. The choice to begin Space Oddities with the Mercury 13 arises from my belief that the U.S. public had first to imagine the woman astronaut on film and in reality—as an individual, a body—before it could begin to allow the notion of the female body as being “at home” in space. Our understanding of history as both concept and discipline owes its rise in the nineteenth century to modern conceptions of origins and evolution, time as chronological (as opposed to cyclical), and progress. Feminist historians have remarked that “gender” as a category of analysis began to be used in its current form in the 1970s but that its history as category dates also to the nineteenth century. Liberal feminism has wanted to write women into history, and one powerful way of doing so has been to recover “forgotten” women and their contributions; these neglected individuals and events are greeted with a sense of triumph: “It’s about time!” NASA’s Herstory Project, part of the NASA Oral History Project, for example, uses interviews available to the public online to recuperate women who have worked for NASA, thus recovering women from and in history (http//www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/ herstory.html). Yet the history of women in space is not only a celebration of women’s accomplishments; it is also a discursive history that defines the

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ever-evolving relationships among gender, chronological time, and the very notion of history. Joan Wallach Scott has summarized the conjoining of the subject, or discipline, of history with historical fact, or the past: History figures in this approach not exclusively as the record of changes in the social organization of the sexes but also crucially as a participant in the production of knowledge about sexual difference. I assume that history’s representations of the past help construct gender for the present. (Gender and the Politics 2) The House of Representatives transcripts examined here and this study itself work to solve the “problem” of women in space by considering it not as a question of statistics and dates but, rather, as a construction that is realized through language. The special subcommittee on the selection of astronauts was chaired by Victor L. Anfuso of New York, and included 11 other members.2 On July 17, 1962, three women pilots testified: Jerrie Cobb, Jane B. Hart, and Jackie Cochran. Cobb and Hart formed part of a group of women pilots that became known in the 1990s as the “Mercury 13.” Cobb, 31, was a single professional pilot who had broken several records and an aeronautic sales executive. Hart, 40, was married to Senator Philip Hart of Michigan, the mother of eight children, a captain in the civil air patrol, and was involved in women’s and civil rights groups (she convinced Congress to hold the hearings). Jackie Cochran, approximately 52 (her year of birth is unknown), married with no children, was the most acclaimed U.S. female pilot of her generation: she founded the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) of WWII, was the first woman to break the sound barrier, and was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force Reserve and the Civil Air Patrol. Cobb and Hart argued forcefully that the astronaut program’s qualifications led unfairly to the exclusion of women. In contrast, Cochran urged that NASA hold off on changing its qualifications. On July 18, three men were questioned: John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, and George M. Low. Glenn and Carpenter were Mercury 7 astronauts. Glenn was 41, married and the father of two, a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps, and a graduate of the Test Pilot School at the Naval Air Test Center (Patuxent River, Maryland). Carpenter, 37, married and the father of four, was a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy and was also a graduate of the Navy Test Pilot School. Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth (in February 1962), and Carpenter was the

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second (May 1962). George M. Low, 36 and the married father of four, was director of Spacecraft and Flight Missions in NASA’s Office of Manned Space Flight. The three men argued that the time for a women’s program was not at hand.3 The transcripts reveal two familiar approaches to placing women in history. On the one hand, Cobb and Hart desired to see women participate in history as it happens, not in an appendix or afterword: “We seek, only,” Cobb pleaded, “a place in our Nation’s space future without discrimination. We ask as citizens of this Nation to be allowed to participate with seriousness and sincerity in the making of history now, as women have in the past” (Qualifications 5). In a similar vein, a sympathetic committee member, Waggonner, stated, “I think all you are asking is just to keep step in the march of history” (20). On the other hand, women were encouraged by Cochran, the male witnesses, and some committee members to be “patient.” As Moeller opined: “So that if today our priority program is getting a man on the moon maybe we should ask the good ladies to be patient and let us get this thing accomplished first and then go after training women astronauts” (71). Similarly, Cochran stated: “I am now thinking with the great rush that is necessary now to maybe catch up [with the U.S.S.R.], from all that I have been told by the newspapers, that we do not want to slow down our program” (28). Arguments on both sides referred to conventional notions of the relationship among time, history, and progress, between the gendered virtue of patience and the feeling that time was of the essence. Thus, women’s place in the space program hesitated between patience and urgency, slowness and speed, a two-steps-forward-one-step-back momentum that has characterized many histories of women in male-dominated fields.4 Ultimately, a new category—that of the “woman astronaut”—emerged from the debris of the debate, and a U.S. woman reached outer space in 1983. But when it came to arguably the most significant public and publicity-laden event in the United States in the 1960s—the Space Race— women were saddled with inflexible interpretations of time and history, allowed orbits that had seemingly been proscribed in advance. The history of women in the U.S. space program has a clear beginning, although this origin can be characterized as a false start: the unofficial and aborted program of the Mercury 13.5 In 1963, Cobb, the most outspoken of the 13, included her history of the event in her memoir (Woman Into Space), and the event was mentioned from time to time in magazines and histories of space travel. The first few years of the twentyfirst century constitute, however, a watershed moment in the writing of

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this history. Surely spurred on by Cobb’s anger over John Glenn’s second chance to enter space in 1998 (on the shuttle Discovery), the recovery of these women has produced books by academics, journalists, and members of the Mercury 13, appearing back to back between 2001 and 2006.6 One might surmise that a national collective unconscious has determined that it is time to tell this story.7 One historical origin of the Space Race is WWII, when rocket technology served military purposes. After the war, German scientists immigrated to the United States and brought this technology with them. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), a U.S. military agency created in 1915, was replaced in October 1958 by the civilian NASA. In the same year that NASA opened its doors, preparation began for Project Mercury. Although the first draft of the call for astronauts did not set the requirement of jet test pilot experience, the final version did, following President Eisenhower’s opinion that those with security clearances and who could be called to Washington at any time—that is, military personnel—would be NASA’s most efficient pool. Candidates were to be between 25 and 40 years old, not over 5’11” tall, in excellent physical shape, hold a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent, have at least 1,500 hours of flying time, and be jet test pilots (see Burrows for this history of the Mercury 7). The Mercury 7 astronauts (Figure 1.1), presented to the public in May 1959, were chosen from 110 military men who met these requirements. All seven chosen were white, Protestant, and married with children. Three came from the Air Force, three from the Navy, and one from the Marine Corps. The group consisted of (Malcolm) Scott Carpenter, (Leroy) Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, (Virgil) Gus Grissom, Walter Schirra, Alan Shepard, and (Donald) Deke Slayton. All had bachelor’s degrees except Carpenter and Glenn, who qualified with “equivalent experience”; Glenn received a degree from Muskingum College in June 1962 and Carpenter received an “earned” degree from the University of Colorado after his flight. At the time, two schools in the United States provided test pilot training: The Naval Test Pilot School in Maryland and the Aerospace Research Pilot School (called today Test Pilot School) at Edwards (at the time, Muroc) Air Force Base in California. Pilots were trained to test new aircraft and prepared to work for the military or aerospace companies such as Boeing. Four of the Mercury 7 men had completed the Navy Test Pilot School and three had completed the Air Force School. It is important to note not only the characteristics and training of these men, but also the profound symbolic weight that they carried.

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Figure 1.1 The Mercury 7 astronauts selected in 1959: (front, left to right) Walter Schirra, Donald Slayton, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, (back, left to right) Alan Shepard, Virgil Grissom, and Gordon Cooper. Photo: NASA.

The Mercury 7 were heroes to a nation: “the Mercury 7 were presented to the press as the personification of the clean-cut, all-American boys . . . They were portrayed as brave, God-fearing, patriotic individuals with loving wives and children” (McCurdy 90). They represented “America.”8 In 1960–61, a few dozen women were given some of the same tests as the Mercury 7. The initial testing took place at the nongovernmental Lovelace Research Center in New Mexico under the supervision of Dr. Randolph Lovelace, who had conducted the physical tests on the Mercury 7 personnel. Lovelace and Air Force Brigadier General Donald Flickinger, also involved in the Mercury testing, were interested in testing women and had met Jerrie Cobb in Miami in September 1960. One of their concerns was that the Russians were known to be training female cosmonauts. Lovelace and Flickinger worked with Cobb and Jackie Cochran to find pilots and bring them to New Mexico, a process that created tension between the two women over who was the real instigator of the program. Twenty-five women were tested and 13 made the grade: Cobb, Hart, Myrtle T. Cagle, Jan Dietrich, Marion Dietrich, Mary Wallace Funk, Sara Lee Gorelick, Jean F. Hixson, Rhea Hurrle Allison, Irene

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Figure 1.2 Jerrie Cobb poses next to a Mercury spaceship capsule. Photo: NASA.

Leverton, Jerry Sloane, Bernice Steadman, and Gene Nora Stumbough. Cobb was the first to be tested and became known as the leader of the group, which she called the FLATs, Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees (the Mercury 13 nickname came from the media) (Figure 1.2). In September 1961, 12 FLATs were scheduled for further tests, already completed by Cobb, at the Navy Station in Pensacola, Florida. The Navy readily agreed to allow the women use of its equipment, but in the end the tests were canceled. As was noted at the hearings, the person and office that ordered the cancellation was unidentified. Cobb was subsequently named a NASA consultant but was never, she said later, consulted. Thus, while Cobb completed all Mercury testing and 12 others completed the first phase, the women never trained as astronauts. The summer of 1962 was a heady time for NASA and a significant opportunity for finding room in space for women. A year earlier, in May 1961, John F. Kennedy made his famous speech calling for a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In February 1962, Glenn orbited the earth and in May 1962, Carpenter followed. A new class of astronauts, the first since the Mercury 7 and thus the second ever, was to be announced in September 1962, just a few months after the hearings

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(these male recruits became known as the “New Nine” or “Next Nine”). Reference was made at the hearings to a potentially revised set of qualifications for this class. Thus, the summer months were a critical period, a window of opportunity that might open in time for women to climb through; however, like the third day of hearings (for rebuttal from Cobb and Hart), which was cancelled for no known reason, the window slammed shut and did not open again until 1978, when the first class that included women was accepted. In what follows, the uses of the terms “experience,” “engineering,” “interruption,” “interference,” “qualifications,” and “requirements” at the hearings are examined and contextualized. Although other examples of polyvalent and ultimately ambiguous terms used could be fruitfully analyzed, these seem to me the most salient to a construction of women’s prehistory in space. The U.S. feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s valorized “experience” as a category crucial to an understanding of women’s place in history. The time-honored distinction between theory and experience, or practice, was chiseled away at by feminist thinkers who instead devised theories of experience. Mostly left out as agents or subjects of the grand narratives of western philosophical thought and history, women identified experience as significant to the “march of history” and even to theoretical constructions of history. Simultaneously, history as a discipline turned to the everyday experience of ordinary people. Women’s experience was particularly suitable to notions of the everyday since it involved the domestic or private sphere, in which the routines of family and home life marked the slow, barely mobile, passage of women’s time. Men, operating in a public, civic, or professional sphere, were characterized as drawing on education and on-the-job training to influence history in dramatic thrusts and spurts through discoveries, inventions, treatises, and treaties; women drew on experience in the home, a space characterized as feminine, as well as experience as women, to provide an apparently immobile backdrop to these spurts. Jodi Dean makes this point in reference to the role of the astronaut: “the men’s activities are heroic; the women are left to signify the everyday” (99). In reaction to the theorization of the private sphere, which seemed to permanently fix women as a “massification”—to borrow Denise Riley’s term (8)—that could not escape the home, feminists turned women’s personal experience on its head and announced that “the personal [was] the political.”9 This statement implies a meshing of the public and private realms on the terrain of women’s bodies that makes women distinct from, but not the

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exact opposite of, men and the idea that personal experience could translate into civic or public action was built into this formulation. As historian Joan Scott has noted, “What counts as experience is neither self-evident nor straightforward; it is always contested, and always therefore political” (“The Evidence of Experience” 96). However, as demonstrated in specific historical examples—such as the 1962 hearings— the term “experience” could work for or against women. At the hearings, the terms “training” and “experience” were evoked by both sides. When Cobb presented biographical information concerning the Mercury 13 group, she noted the flying hours acquired by each: Jan Dietrich had racked up 8,000; Mary Wallace Funk, 3,000; Irene Leverton, more than 9,000; Cobb herself, 10,000 hours. But NASA required that Mercury astronauts be jet test pilots and none of the women fulfilled this qualification, although Cobb and Cochran both broke the sound barrier in jets (Cochran first). The military did not allow women to be fighter pilots, so women were not admitted to the Patuxent and Edwards schools. (In the late 1950s and early 1960s, training at the schools amounted to 6 to 8 months’ worth of experiential and academic work.) So, although a very few women, including Cobb and Cochran, had the occasional chance to fly jets, they could not be trained as jet test pilots. To counter their lack of jet test pilot training and bachelor’s degrees in engineering, Cobb argued for the women’s “equivalent experience”: “NASA should realize that there is an equivalent experience which we can offer because we have worked real hard for many years in a man’s field of aviation, gaining experience and demonstrating our professional flying skill” (Qualifications 18). Glenn, Carpenter, and Low argued repeatedly for the exclusion of women as astronauts because, in their opinion, military-trained jet test pilots were the most qualified applicants. The fact that this requirement excluded women was not presented as the result of discriminatory practice but, rather, as an affirmation that jet control was the closest approximation to spacecraft control. Mercury astronauts needed “qualified” jet pilot service of at least 1,500 hours or 10 years experience flying, as reiterated at the hearings thus: “Experience. Must have experience as a jet test pilot having attained experimental flight test status through the military services, the aircraft industry or NASA, or having graduated from a military test pilot school” (44). (Women pilots were not hired in the aircraft industry.) Whereas it was clear that women had “experience”—personal and job-related experience with flying—they did not have professional or public experience, which came down to experience at military combat training.

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In the end, Cobb’s recourse to “equivalent experience” was recourse to a fluid term, one that could be molded to work against the Mercury 13. All accepted at the hearings that when Glenn was admitted without a college degree he was granted a fair exception through the rationale of equivalent experience. The discussion of Glenn’s education revealed holes in the experience test, holes that Glenn, although not especially talented at rhetoric, managed to fill in: Mr. Fulton: You wouldn’t have passed, because you don’t have an engineering degree—do you? Colonel Glenn. I have one now. I did not at the time of selection. Mr. Fulton. You would not have been selected. So we can’t look at these methods of selection and requirements as rigid. They must be variable, to get various characteristics. Wouldn’t you agree with that? Colonel Glenn. To back up just one moment, my background at the time of the original selection, I believe, was gone into, and if you will note, when NASA has relaxed anything previously on the original selection program it was an engineering degree or the equivalency thereof. Mr. Fulton. I am glad you said that. Colonel Glenn. Mine was the equivalency thereof, and it was felt, with my inservice and the schools I had been to, while I did not have the actual hours at college, I had more than the equivalency of an engineering degree. (55–6) Glenn’s experience, he claimed, was even more than equivalent. Further on, a distinction between scientists and engineers was established during the proceedings. Scientists—biologists, chemists, physicists—might one day be “crewmembers” on flights in order to gather data and perform experiments; for the time being, however, “astronauts” were needed, and astronauts were military jet test pilots who knew how to build and take apart machines: they were engineers. One way of approaching this apparent discrepancy between how “equivalency” was applied to men (for the bachelor’s degree) but not to the women (for jet test piloting) is to question the meanings of the term “engineer.” Although the Mercury 7 qualifications did not specify what the bachelor’s degree should be in, it could not, presumably, be in French or art history. Of the five Mercury 7 astronauts with degrees at the time of their missions, three held university degrees in engineering and two held degrees from military academies. For some people, one

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was an engineer if one held a degree in engineering—college courses counted as training and experience—for others, one was an engineer even without the degree if one was actively engaged (experienced) in the work of engineering, that is, on-the-job training. In the field of engineering, theory (education) and practice (experience) were held as interchangeable. This slippage allowed Glenn to maneuver his way into the capsule. Glenn’s rather extensive presentation of his job experience as an aeronautical engineer shows that committee members had touched a sore spot and that “engineering,” like “experience,” was a fluid term that could be manipulated to suit one’s personal goals or the goals of a projected history. And so the women tried also to mold the term. Cobb touched a related sore spot when she proposed that there was no need for an astronaut-pilot to be an engineer since space flights worked on automatic pilot. Glenn and Carpenter disagreed. Glenn painted a telling picture of the astronaut-pilot as an integrated—cyborglike— part of an industrial system: One of the design criteria we are working on is just where the astronaut is an integral part of this system, not just a passenger who goes along for the ride, as a biological specimen. A lot of the things we had in the past to protect human life in the early missions, will be given over to the control of the astronaut, where his function will not be backed up by automatic systems. The astronaut is being designed into these systems as an integral part of it. (48) During his flight, Glenn had to take over from his capsule’s automatic pilot for a brief time and he announced when he landed: “Now we can get rid of some of that automatic equipment and let man take over” (cited in Michael L. Smith 202). It is well known that the Mercury 7 astronauts felt that NASA did not seek enough of their input in the initial design of spacecraft and the control of systems. They were angered and embarrassed when presented by the media as doing the job of “biological specimens”—of chimps. What Glenn suggests here is that a shift in NASA’s approach made the man and the craft symbiotic, that together they formed an “integral system.” The capsule was thus characterized as a homosocial site that excluded women: engineering was a matter of man interfacing with machine, in the creation of a cyborg body. This desire to give astronauts more control resonated with the relatively new field of “human factors engineering,” which studied how humans interact with technology, with machines and computers.10

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It is hardly a coincidence that “engineering,” a polyvalent term, was also used in the 1950s and 60s to describe new household management techniques, ones that involved housewives’ dependence on gadgets or aids produced by technology. That engineering was an academic and professional field largely shut off to women at the time was due in part to the idea that women could not understand, much less master, technology.11 This prejudice was ironically countered by the saturation of the domestic sphere with technologies, ones that women were expected to make integral to the home. In turn, “home economics” was created as a female-specific reflection of engineering (Rossiter, Women Scientists, 1982, 65). In the hearings, Hart referred to modern household gadgets as evidence that women were ready to go into space, not because they were proficient at using the gadgets, but because the machines afforded them the time to get ready to go: “Our affluent society, after all, has provided so many household aids that the intelligent, energetic housewife can find many hours to devote to other useful purposes” (8). Vacuum cleaners, coffee makers, and refrigerators were thought to have lessened the time women worked in domestic space and thus freed them to go into outer space. Male engineers and industrial designers brought space technology inside the home by producing these gadgets, and women schooled in the only “science” appropriate to them—home economics—taught other women how to incorporate these appliances into housework. Women could not be military jet test pilots, and few women were engineers, but they could be home economists, home managers, and home engineers: “The ideas of rational household management, ergonomics [another name for human factors engineering], and household technological expertise were marshaled and packaged to present housework and family care as the equivalent of an outside job, albeit unpaid” (Webb and Suggitt xxiv). “Household management” and “domestic engineering” were buzz words that appeared again and again in advertisements and magazine articles geared to women. Commercials on the plugged-in and turned-on television, its antennae reaching into space, lured viewers into the belief that the dishes were not only washing themselves but putting themselves away. The woman in the living room and kitchen, ideally in control of this array of aids, was to imagine herself a domestic systems manager—an integral part of home design. But outside of the home, she was no engineer (Chapter 3 continues this discussion). NASA’s George Low stated at the hearings that there were then 146 women “engineers” and 77 women “professional mathematicians”

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working for NASA (he also noted two female interns) (61). He did not mention that this was an extremely low percentage of total workers in these areas (Rossiter, Women Scientists, 1995, 292). In fact, it was much more common to find women “computers,” that is, women who crunched numbers with mechanical desk calculators but who were not called “mathematicians” until late in the 1950s, when actual machine computers began to arrive. Women engineers at the time were few and far between, although there were certainly more women engineers than there were women jet test pilots. But the vast majority of women working at NASA were secretaries, nurses, seamstresses, and computers. Another significant use of the term “engineering” in the 1960s was in the phrase “social engineering.” Although this phrase was not used during the hearings, a reference to it can be gleaned in Glenn’s infamous statement concerning the “social order”: Colonel Glenn. I think this gets back to the way our social order is organized, really. It is just a fact. The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order. It may be undesirable. (67) Women were not socially engineered to return from wars and tinker with aircraft design—that was a calling left to men. Waggonner’s response to Glenn reinforced the idea that the social order could be engineered to be eternally fixed: Mr. Waggonner. I think Colonel Glenn has hit in his statement on the exact differences of opinion which exist here, and fundamentally our social order prescribes some differences. The program is developed to this point because of the differences in our social order which time has laid down for us. (67) With biblical confidence (“which time has laid down for us”), Waggonner decreed the inevitability, from the point of view of history and time, of the absence of women in space. Finally, in a phrase reminiscent of Glenn’s presentation of the “social order,” Cobb wrote in her memoir: An astronaut training program for women had to follow as day follows night. It was the natural order of things.

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Still no word from NASA. But they were busy men. The operations of officialdom take time. We could wait. We had strength, patience, and enthusiasm to spare. It would not run out. (131) The women had, Cobb asserted, patience enough to ride out an archaic but still entrenched social order. But by playing the patience card, she was buying into the structure of that order, which relegated women to an always-deferred future time. The hearing transcripts indicate that those not in favor of training women as astronauts drew a distinction between women with the virtue of patience and those with the vice of impatience. The latter refused to wait and wished to “interrupt,” “impede,” or “interfere with” the man-inspace program. Ever since Kennedy’s announcement, the space program had a specific deadline in mind and could thus map out a schedule or chronology of events. The public announcement of this chronology promised that the United States would finally beat the U.S.S.R. at something (Yuri Gagarin had orbited in April 1961). But the fact that the Soviets were on their way in 1962 to putting the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, into space (she flew in 1963) did not motivate the men who testified. The summer of 1962 was a time suspended between the Soviet first man in space and the upcoming Soviet first woman in space, a time between patience and agitation, a time, as I have suggested, that opened a slight crack in history for women. But the crack was again sealed in part because by that time the United States had a precise schedule to follow, one that prioritized a man on the moon as the sole focus of the space program and ascribed to this feat, in advance, a place in history. Anything or anybody threatening the patriotic chronology would be termed an “impediment” or “interruption” and would be viewed as “slowing down” the proper course of time. By remaining patient, women would lose out; by pushing too hard, women would cause the country to lose the ultimate race. Thus, women became associated with the slowing down of time and the deceleration of the march of history. They were not only ill suited to participation in history—through their lack of education and appropriate experience—but they were also veritable obstacles on the path to the future. The fear that women might keep time from properly unfolding was raised by Waggonner in a question to Cobb: Mr. Waggonner. Do you think that we ought to sacrifice anything in the way of accomplishment in time with regard to our lunar landings

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and other space activities, or to go into this program to the extent that we would put a woman in space at the expense of slowing down another program? Miss Cobb. No, sir; I do not. Mr. Waggonner. Would you think that it would be a reasonable thing to assume that maybe after this next orbit flight, which will go as many as six orbits, that we continue our present program toward a lunar landing, and then as soon thereafter as practical, in one of the perhaps three-orbit flights, there would be one that we could train a woman astronaut for? Would that be something along the lines that you ladies have in mind? Miss Cobb. No, sir; I think that we do not have to wait for the landing on the moon before women can go into space. Mr Waggonner. I am not saying wait until then, I am saying should we [sic] interpose between the next orbital flight of maybe six orbits and the lunar landing, a three-orbit flight with a properly trained woman astronaut? Miss Cobb. I don’t think it is too soon to start training women for space flight and, in fact, we should have started long before now. (21) Waggonner’s effort to insert women into the program without interrupting the Kennedy schedule was, however, not supported by most committee members, Cochran, or the men who testified. In a series of statements, Cochran was determined to lock women out of a timetable preordained by and for men: The determination whether women should be included at this time in the program of training and use of astronauts should not depend on the question of sex but on whether such inclusion will speed up, slow down, make more expensive, or complicate the schedule of exploratory space flights our country has undertaken. (24) . . . and I think these girls should be put through every possible test on the ground that we can, so long as it does not slow up, interfere in any way with the present program that is being carried forward with our astronaut program . . . (31) Committee member Roush reiterated the appeal to keeping on schedule, claiming that training women would “slow down our present space program” (62). When Low argued that there was not enough equipment available to train women, he provoked this reaction from

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Anfuso: “That is the best point you have made. In other words, you are not objecting to women, but at the present time, to let them use the things that you are using now for the astronauts, would be interfering with the program” (53). The idea for some was that the timing for women was off at present but that it could be workable in the future: Mr. Anfuso. I think, Mr. Waggonner, if I understand you correctly, you are not saying that women eventually won’t be able to do these things, but at the present time they just can’t; isn’t that right? . . . That has not been an intentional thing by any stretch of the imagination. (69) James Fulton disagreed, saying, “I believe we do have the facilities in this country for training women without interfering with these prime programs” (73). But in the end, the virtue of patience was again invoked, and the slow passage of time coded as feminine: Mr. Moeller. So that if today our priority program is getting a man on the moon maybe we should ask the good ladies to be patient and let us get this thing accomplished first and then go after training women astronauts. (71) Indeed, of the several bad jokes made during the proceedings, one concerned patience and Fulton’s bachelorhood: Mr. Fulton. Next is this. I did agree with my friend from Louisiana because he is a fine Southern gentleman from Louisiana, and I am a Northern progressive from Pittsburgh. Mr. Waggonner. Who has had the ladies waiting indefinitely. (72) That the bachelor Fulton, the subcommittee’s strongest supporter of Cobb and Hart, kept the ladies waiting—by putting off marriage and family—brings us to another form of “interruption” that would characterize a space program with women astronauts: interruption through attrition due to marriage and pregnancy. On this point, two examples of the relationship between women and the passage of time were raised. One was the lead time or minimum training period that women would require to become astronauts, which was set at three years. This was about equal to the lead time allotted for the Mercury 7, with some extension due to the need to train the women

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as jet test pilots. Because the men’s program was already in place, it was stated by some that a three-year period would be too lengthy and would impede the program. In response, it was pointed out that NASA was currently looking at recruiting astronauts beyond the Mercury 7 group for the Apollo program, but this longer view of things was not taken up by many. Low’s insistence that he did not yet know the qualifications for the new corps of astronauts also furthered the rhetorical force of this argument; he could not say once and for all that women would be denied access to the program. Thus, a “future time” was imaginable in which women might qualify for the program, but a future was also imaginable in which women would again be denied—he couldn’t say for sure. After all, the future was still to be made. History and time were characterized as headed toward certain orbits (a man on the moon by the end of the decade) and simultaneously as unknown and unknowable, this despite the fact that it was men such as Low himself who set the arrows of time. The second issue, of more interest here, had to do with women’s management of time in terms of their personal experience—their life choices. Jackie Cochran dwelled on the “problem” of attrition through marriage and pregnancy, which could at best interrupt women’s participation in the program and at worst put it to a halt. The ticking away of social (marriage) and biological (motherhood) time clocks would jeopardize the smooth operation of recruitment, training, and participation, she argued. Cochran referred to her experience as director of the WASPs and stated that attrition in the corps due to marriage was 40 percent. The training of women as jet test pilots, an expensive and timeconsuming endeavor, would thus be a “waste” of money. The relatively advanced age of the Mercury 13 group, compared with the WASPs, did not sway Cochran, nor did the fact that some of the Mercury 13 women were already married with children. That a woman with “the instincts and desires” of her sex would want to marry and have children was inevitable according to Cochran, and each pregnancy would require a year of “interruption.” Cochran herself was childless.12 Attrition and parturition on earth were not the only problems posed by women’s bodies. Concern about how women’s bodies would function in space was ever-present, even if not specifically addressed at the hearings—although jokes were made about “colonizing” space. An article on menstruation appeared two years after the congressional hearings, but the ideas it exposed were already in the air. Written by medical doctors who worked for the Lovelace Clinic and drawing on the Mercury 13 tests,

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it was published in 1964 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. In vocabulary reminiscent of that of human factors engineering, the authors pitted menstruation against the machine: “Monthly physiologic changes complicate the epoch woman space explorer more than the male counterpart. The intricacies of matching a temperamental psychophysiologic human and the complicated machine are many and, obviously, both need to be ready at the same time” (Betson and Secrest 422). Women’s cycles might conflict with space travel schedules, producing bodies that were “not ready” to interface with the machine. The authors continued: “Menstruation may complicate the use of the female astronaut in an environment of time tables and rigid schedules needed for a perfectly manned space voyage” (422). The belief that menstruation leads to an increase in “inattentiveness” and just plain sloppy work, as well as criminality and mental disturbances, crops up here, as it had in previous reports on women as pilots. The authors found, however, that the women tested at Lovelace had not slipped up: “Surprisingly, monthly uterine shedding did not alter their performance of practical mechanical testing procedures, although these people did make lower grades on examination at that time” (422). But this surprise did not change the scientists’ conclusions. The study placed great importance on the unreliability of the menstrual cycle—its ignorance of proper timing—which might cause irregular cycles (dysmenorrhea). The related problem of unanticipated or extra waste was also broached by the authors. Extra waste (blood) at any moment of the day or night precluded women from integrating with system design: “Prolonged and/or unexpected menses and the waste products eliminated would provide a challenging problem for disposal” (422). Birth control pills could alleviate these problems, but, the article noted, would cause worrisome side effects—new problems. In conclusion, the authors stated, the time and money needed to examine women’s potential problems in space made it unlikely that women astronauts would be trained in the foreseeable future. The female body was clearly not designed to do the work of the astronaut. Congressmen sympathetic to Cobb and Hart sought alternatives to women’s participation in the “men’s” or “current” program. This was an important response to the idea that women could not catch up to participate in the program because there were not enough equipment and funds to open the gates in time. A “parallel program”—a sort of separatebut-equal doctrine for women astronauts—was proposed. The idea was to test and train women separately from men but follow a similar program

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and schedule. The term “parallel” suggested the possibility of two futures, two arrows of time, unfolding side by side. These would form, in effect, distinct time continuums, since the women would need to train as test pilots. Women’s time would unfold in a parallel universe facing the same direction as men’s, but it would lag behind and always be threatened with interruption. Not surprisingly, Cobb thought a parallel program unnecessary. But Anfuso persevered, prompting this reply from Low, who indefinitely postponed such a possibility: “We are certainly not opposed to anything like that, in the future, Mr. Chairman” (52). He thus skirted the issue by accepting the term “parallel” but divorcing it from the idea of simultaneous. A parallel program might work, but not at the present time. Jane Hart referred to the cancellation of the Pensacola tests as “one of the mysteries of the past year,” and Cobb explained that it took her two days in Washington, DC, to find out why the Navy tests were cancelled (18). After Cobb passed these tests, arrangements were made for the other 12 women. Travel (to be paid for by Cochran) was planned, and some of the women quit their jobs to participate; however, the tests were canceled at the last minute. Cobb described her search for answers: They said, “We got word from the Pentagon that the tests for the girls would have to be canceled.” I talked to people with the Navy Department. It all got thrown back on NASA. I went to NASA and all the way up and down—it took me 2 days—I finally found out that NASA would not say to the Navy, “We do not have a requirement for this.” (19) (There would appear to be an error in the transcript; it most likely should read “We do have a requirement for this.”) Low returned to this terminology when he was asked to explain why the tests that the military had hosted for Cobb at Pensacola were suddenly interrupted: “NASA was asked only later whether or not we had a requirement ourselves for such tests. At that time the answer was ‘No,’ NASA did not have a requirement for women astronauts” (64). Toward the end of the second day of testimony, Glenn picked up on the terminology. When Fulton asked if he would oppose a “small program” for women to train not as commanders (pilots) but as “scientist” crewmembers, Glenn replied: “I wouldn’t oppose it. I see no requirement for it” (74). A slippage in the use of the term “requirement” was crucial to Low’s presentation of the recruitment program as in no way discriminatory. Low was able to deflect listeners from the idea that the minimum

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requirements were in fact discriminatory by displacing the term “requirement” onto the program as a whole (the program does not require women) instead of on the specific qualifications for astronauts (there is a requirement that astronauts be military jet test pilots). The term “requirement” carried so much weight at the hearings that Low was able to sound convincing merely through his use of it. Cobb’s memoir reveals that a military “requirement” was in fact a piece of paper: “I found out this much: The Navy needed a ‘requirement,’ a piece of paper indicating enough NASA interest to justify their putting their time, effort, and funds into the proposed project” (210). It turned out that “requirement” was another word for “requisition”—for supplies, services, or personnel. And there was no requisition for women astronauts.13 Although Cobb and Hart were promised a third day of hearings for rebuttal of the men’s testimony, that day was ignored in Anfuso’s closing remarks on the second day. Cobb lamented: “That was all. No scientific testimony. No time for rebuttal. Jane and I were stunned. What had happened to the promised third day? We never found out” (Cobb 219). The cancelled third day may or may not have made a difference in this rhetorical battle—probably not. By playing the “no requirement” card, the White House and NASA had effectively silenced the Mercury 13. But I want to go against the grain of traditional history and propose that it was not only because NASA no longer had a jet test pilot requirement for astronauts that women were admitted; rather, they were accepted because NASA concretized the creation of a relatively new category of astronaut—the mission specialist who would join the pilot commander. The space shuttle was meant to have a crew of at least seven and this seemed to ensure that there was “room for women”—and minorities—on board. Sally Ride was the first American woman in space and a mission specialist, a physicist, and flight engineer on STS-7 Challenger. It was not until 1995 that a female pilot, Eileen Collins, piloted a shuttle—a full 34 years after jet test pilot Alan Shepard’s inaugural flight (Figure 1.3). Collins, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, was able to gain jet test training because the military test pilot schools had opened their doors to women from the mid-1970s.14 The meaning of the term “astronaut” and the question of whether there could be astronauts who were not pilots had come up at the hearings. Anfuso brought up the topic, noting that NASA “felt that it was not, as you said, just important that the astronauts be able to pilot the spacecraft but, more important than that, to be able to bring back certain scientific information” (20). But Cobb argued that the engineering

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Figure 1.3 Seven members of the Mercury 13 in 1995 at the launch of STS-63, piloted by Eileen Collins. Pictured are (from left): Gene Nora Stumbough Jessen, Wally Funk, Jerrie Cobb, Jerri Sloan Truhill, Sarah Gorelick Ratley, Myrtle Cagle, and Bernice Steadman. Photo: NASA.

requirement was as unnecessary as the jet test requirement: what was needed in an astronaut was that he or she be a pilot, pure and simple, because flying the spacecraft was the primary duty of an astronaut (this was the time of one-man launches, followed by two-man ones with the Gemini program and three-man ones with Apollo): “[T]he primary function is still that of flying the spacecraft. That is why it is easier to take a pilot and teach him the other jobs which need to be done in space than to take an engineer or a geologist, or some other scientist and teach them to be a pilot” (20). The chicken or the egg; either way, women were excluded. Hart jumped in with the idea for a separate possible mission for women: “[I suggest the encouragement] of young women who are currently studying scientific subjects so [they] could, even though not pilots, eventually, if not right away, be able to go along in these as scientific observers” (20). Hart’s statement is qualified several times over, and she ends with an ambiguous phrase: are these women to be conducting science or observing? She stated further that having an “observer” along would save the pilot from the exhaustion of having to pilot and observe (an exhaustion suffered by Carpenter), and “would be encouraging for young ladies in school today to continue in this field” (21). In the 1960s, several categories of space personnel were tested and tailored by NASA: pilots, crewmembers, scientists, and astronauts.

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The tailoring of these categories had much to do with how quickly women became candidates for a place in space. The subject was introduced by Anfuso during Cochran’s testimony: “Do you think we should start training women, not as astronauts, but as crewmembers?” to which Cochran replied, “That makes sense” (29). When Anfuso asked Cochran if she thought it would be appropriate to train either women or men scientists for space, she replied, “Yes, sir; if you have an opportunity” (35). Finally, Cochran again promoted the idea after Fulton used the term “assistant”: Mr. Fulton. Actually, women could be very good assistants in those flights [Gemini and Apollo], even if they were not the captain of the astronaut ship, isn’t that correct? Miss Cochran. I agree, you may want a medical technician aboard that is a woman, or a woman who is assistant pilot. (37) Assistants and technicians remind us of women in 1950s and 1960s space movies and television series who handled communications and first aid, as well as of the historical category of the woman “computer”—these were roles women could play without being astronauts or pilots. The distinction between “astronaut” and “crewmember”—the gap that opened between the terms—created a space through which women did finally enter. Low seemed to have realized this possibility, and quickly shot it down: The term “astronaut,” for Project Gemini, at least, involves and concerns all crewmembers . . . This is because the work involved in one of these space missions is such that each and every crewmember must be trained to do every function in the spacecraft. (48)15 Subsequently, Fulton reiterated the need for scientists in space, noting: we could include women in the training programs, looking toward operational work within the near future and that is not just engineers which I think is too narrow, because I think we need astronomers, biologists, experts in live [sic] sciences, geologists, and why can’t the women, with their tremendous abilities, help us on that? (58)16

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In broad terms, the 1962 hearings proposed that men were the history makers and agents of time, while women, outcasts of time, were to wait on the sidelines for their moment after the original, historical, event had occurred. This is what the committee concluded: the women should wait until NASA had the time and resources to train them. Whereas Low implied that this might occur when new requirements for the Apollo program were written, the historical fact is that women became part of the astronaut program only after waiting for two decades, and longer for a pilot commander. The Soviet Union, less patient than the United States, put Tereshkova into space on Vostok 6 in 1963, but this did not spur on the United States. In a letter to Cobb after the hearing, a NASA administrator wrote, “the future use of women astronauts is possible, but at what time in the future is another matter entirely” (Cobb 211). Clearly, these men controlled not only time but the timing of time as well. Women have been refused historicization twice over: as neglected by history, they have had to wait patiently yet struggle aggressively to gain some semblance of equality with men; as neglected by the concept or discipline of history, they have been relegated to origin or chronology stories that place them second, third, fourth—when they place at all. Can western culture make “time” and “space” for women? Can women participate in the “march of history”? Or, do women only interfere with and impede the progress of history, the time of man? These questions continue to preoccupy feminism. Years after the hearings, it was learned that Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson—charged with overseeing NASA—had put an end to any chance of there being a woman-in-space program in March 1962, a full 4 months before the hearings. His assistant, Liz Carpenter, presented him with a letter in support of the possibility of women astronauts, addressed to James Webb, head administrator of NASA. At the bottom of the letter, in lieu of a signature, Johnson scrawled “Let’s stop this now!” (Weitekamp 136–7). The letter was never sent. It was filed away and not made public, but it signaled the government’s success at halting the history of women in space before the congressional committee heard Hart and Cobb’s pleas. As historian Amy Foster has noted: “Up until Congress passed the EEO Amendment, the opportunities for women as astronauts seemed on the surface to be only talk” (114). It was only talk. Toward the end of her memoir, Jerrie Cobb summed up her mood after the hearings. Although disappointed, she remained optimistic: “Hopefully, we waited to see what formal action the House space committee would take. At this writing, we are still waiting” (220).17

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Although women are seemingly finished with waiting—or rather, are now waiting for other things—the downside of having to insert oneself into history after the fact has characterized the race for women in space: by the time women “caught up,” the race was over. As the United States rewrites its space narrative by proposing another moon visit by a person in a spacecraft and an eventual such mission to Mars, we wait once again.

III. Astronauts on Display As previously noted, it has been in the first few years of the twenty-first century that the early history of women in space has known its watershed moment. The Mercury 13 has been promoted by books appearing back to back. This recognition of the early years of women’s struggle to get to outer space was preceded by two decades that nostalgically glorified men in space, and that glorification continues today. The 1980s and 90s proposed a return to the past, not in a time travel sequence as complicated as that of Planet of the Apes, but rather a simple return to astronaut celebrities of the 1960s. The American public was spectator to a series of revisions and mythifications of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo men, this in Tom Wolfe’s novel The Right Stuff (1979) and the film of the same name; a memoir by astronaut Jim Lovell (1994), filmed as Apollo 13; an HBO series on the Apollo program, From the Earth to the Moon; and Space Cowboys, which was influenced by John Glenn’s return to space in 1998. The origin of Apollo stories is Norman Mailer’s Of a Fire on the Moon, published in 1969. But whereas Mailer’s account of the Apollo 11 mission, and to some extent Wolfe’s account of the Mercury 7, turned a critical and satirical eye on NASA and the public’s fascination with space— Mailer understood that space was empty except for media hype—the novels and films following their accounts took themselves quite seriously, if not literally. There have been as yet no feature films on women’s historical plight in reaching space; however, if popular culture follows its predictable orbit, then at least one is surely waiting in the wings (the 2009 film Amelia, dir. Mira Nair, is a precursor to such films). From the Earth to the Moon, for which Ron Howard and Tom Hanks reunited from Apollo 13 to tell the “whole story” of American space travel, devotes one part of the documentary to women. These women are not the Mercury 13, however; they are the wives of astronauts (the episode is titled The Original Wives Club).

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No feature drama has treated the feats of women astronauts such as Sally Ride, Kathryn Sullivan, Eileen Collins, or Mae Jemison, much less the stymied feats of Cobb, Hart, and the 11 other pilots who anticipated being considered for training. There has been a television movie about Christa McAuliffe, the only civilian woman in space, who died in the Challenger disaster of 1986 (dir. Glenn Jordan, 1990). That she would be the exception to this rule is noteworthy. The use of the phrase “untold story” in Stephanie Nolen’s and Martha Ackmann’s titles is revealing, as is the term “original” in the From the Earth to the Moon episode devoted to astronaut wives. The search for origins, for the untold story, also characterizes Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, a novel that identifies Chuck Yeager and the test pilots of the 1940s and 50s as the ancestors of the astronauts. Wolfe suggests that the astronauts’ “fathers” were military pilots, and the FX15 is presented as the evolutionary predecessor of the Atlas rocket-Mercury capsule. But this is, of course, constructed history. One could imagine, instead, that the origin of the Mercury and Apollo programs is an erasure of women. In this version—in this “anti-story”—male astronauts’ glory depended on an original crash landing, so to speak, of the woman astronaut, rather than on the successes of Yeager and his colleagues. It is as difficult, however, to imagine the Mercury 13 group taking the place of the Muroc pilots in Wolfe’s novel as it is to imagine the husbands of the Mercury 13 or of later female astronauts as taking the place of the pilot wives in Wolfe’s first chapters (see Chapter 3 of this study), as forming an “Original Husbands Club,” or of a film with the title The Astronaut’s Husband (in lieu of The Astronaut’s Wife ). Origin stories, untold and recovered stories, are tricky: some become allowed over time, others do not. And so the stories are kept separate and unequal. The state of Ohio, where I live, claims several origin sites of manned space exploration. Its special 25-cent coin and a version of its vehicle license plate proclaim “First in Flight”/”First in Space.” That Wilbur and Orville Wright were from Ohio seems enough to rival North Carolina, which saw the actual flight of the brothers. The slogan also refers to John Glenn, whose hometown is New Concord, Ohio, where one can visit his former home. Dayton has the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where the Mercury 7 were tested, as well as the Air Force Museum, which is chock full of planes and makes some reference to space travel. Cleveland is home to two institutions having to do with space flight: the NASA / Glenn Research Center, an economic interest for the city, and a small museum housed in the Burke Lakefront

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Airport terminal: the International Women’s Air and Space Museum (IWASM). The latter museum was in part founded by Bernice Steadman, one of the Mercury 13. IWASM can be seen as a companion (a “wife”?) to the much larger and more financially endowed National Air and Space Museum (NASM) on the National Mall in Washington, DC, and the newly opened Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near the Dulles International Airport in Virginia (a branch of NASM). NASM houses exhibits on women astronauts but is dominated, as would be expected, by the very male history of the U.S. Space Race. For its part, IWASM has an exhibit area, library and research center, and gift shop at one end of the small airport terminal lobby. Exhibits are in the lobby itself and the library is a mass of books shelved behind the gifts for sale. The stated mission of the museum is “the preservation of the history of women in aviation and space and the documentation of their continuing contributions” (http://www.iwasm. org/about_us.htm). The exhibits cover the history of women pilots, with attention to that most famous of women pilots, Amelia Earhart, as well as women astronauts. On display are typical women’s artifacts, but with a pilot twist: jewelry, letters, medals, and two full-length garments, Harriet Quimby’s apparel for the woman pilot and one of the Mercury 13’s wedding dresses, made from a parachute. My goal here is not to compare the size of exhibits dedicated to men to those dedicated to women or to check off which exhibits mention the Mercury 13 and which don’t. While statistics are of course useful, we do well to consider the more complex combinations of motives and means that go into the making of history. Museum exhibits, even the smallest, are a result of and a contribution to the construction of history, in an endless revision and recycling of its moments, in this case the moment of the Space Age. The existence of IWASM is another clue that the 1980s and 90s were decades devoted to the resurrection of space stories—those of men, primarily, but also those of women. IWASM may also be counted as an influence on the rise of publications on the Mercury 13 in the very early twenty-first century. Following the Mercury 13, American history was introduced in 1978 to its first official class of astronauts to include women. They were Sally Ride, Judith Resnick, Kathryn Sullivan, Anna Fisher, Margaret Rhea Seddon, and Shannon Lucid. Ride opened a new chapter in NASA’s history when she became the first American woman to go into space in 1983. In 1992, Mae Jemison, of the class of 1987, became the first African American woman in space; in 1995 Collins, of the class of 1990, became

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the first female shuttle pilot and in 1999 the first female commander. The IWASM website lists 26 current (as of June 2010) women astronauts in NASA’s fleet, along with one female payload specialist, no women candidates, and 20 former women astronauts. Forty-seven total NASA women astronauts have flown in space (as of April 2010). Four women astronauts have died in space: Judith Resnick, Christa McAuliffe, Laurel Clark, and Kalpana Chawla, a high number given their low percentage overall in the number of astronauts to have flown. Have enough women astronauts made it to outer space for us to lay to rest our insistence that “it’s about time”? I fear not, for history tends to recycle, not in ways that precisely mimic original events, but in ways that extend these events, warping them to meet new expectations and desires, regurgitating them for a hungry public that can’t remember what it ate at its last meal. So the entry of women astronauts into the cadre of men, although very laudable (but not sufficient in numbers by any stretch of the imagination), does not mean that we should stop reading the rhetoric and representation of women in space for clues to our seemingly intractable fears and anxieties concerning such a phenomenon, that of a woman escaping the earth’s gravitational pull. Although NASA and President Johnson put a stop to the creation of the female astronaut in 1962, this “stop” was not eternal; the deferral of women’s spaceflight was merely a matter of time. The display of images of (a very few) women astronauts—for example, the Titusville, Florida Astronaut Hall of Fame—gives the impression that they have been around for a long time—after all, this is a museum and museums only display what is part of history. But the “sum of histories” leading to these few displays has not been a smooth trajectory. Before the woman astronaut could emerge—and long before she could be installed in a museum display—U.S. culture had to grapple with the myriad problems she posed—the suitability of her particular body in space, for example, and the suitability of the convergence of the roles of wife, mother, and space woman. Most of these issues were worked out on television and in film either before or during the time that they were worked out in “history,” and I turn now to these representations.

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Chapter 2

Bottled Up: Inner and Outer Space in I Dream of Jeannie

It was just like crawling out through a bottle. (Mercury 7 astronaut on using the capsule’s escape hatch.)

He probably thought you were one of the regular run-of-the-mill NASA Arabs. (Tony Nelson to Jeannie)

We saw in Chapter 1 that women had a chance, however slim, of becoming astronauts in the early 1960s but that they were ultimately denied the opportunity to join men on the New Frontier. Using every argument they could rally, Jerrie Cobb and Jane Hart worked to establish the woman astronaut as a figure who would join men in space without impeding or interrupting historical events that were currently unfolding. In the end, the congressional committee did not recommend that NASA change requirements to make it possible for women to join its astronaut corps and 20 years passed before space history was “interrupted” by women— this time, successfully. In the meantime, Hollywood spun fantasies of women in space, both in film and on television. The examination of one television series, I Dream of Jeannie (1965–70), reveals what happened in another instance of a woman—in this case a genie named Jeannie—interfering with, interrupting, and impeding NASA’s project, and how she was ultimately dismissed and relegated to conventional suburban life and television oblivion. I Dream of Jeannie joins the Mercury 13 as an aborted attempt at embodying the female astronaut, at allowing her a place in post-War U.S. society. Yet, however interrupted, Jeannie is a step in the direction of making the female astronaut thinkable and visible; she is an important step forward for the onscreen embodiment of the woman astronaut.

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I. Screen Memories What media critic Lynn Spigel has termed the “fantastic family sitcom” dominated much of American television in the 1960s: In the 1960s, television would construct for itself a new generic form founded on the merger between the troubled paradise of 1950s domesticity and the new-found ideals of the American future. We might call this form the “fantastic family sitcom,” a hybrid genre that mixed the conventions of the suburban sitcom past with the space-age imagery of President Kennedy’s New Frontier. Programs like I Dream of Jeannie, My Favorite Martian, The Jetsons, and Lost in Space were premised on an uncanny mixture of suburbia and space travel, while shows like My Mother the Car, Mr. Ed, My Living Doll, and Bewitched played with a seemingly incongruous blend of suburban banality and science fiction fantasy. (Welcome to the Dreamhouse 108) This was also the first decade during which children grew up knowing that space travel was indeed possible—in large part because they saw it televised. For his part, Jeffrey Sconce has called the late 1950s and the early 1960s “[a time when] the TV set became the most ubiquitous, obsequious, and yet imperious of technologies to occupy domestic space and childhood memory” (25, emphasis mine). To combine the insights of Spigel and Sconce—to tend to television, childhood, memory, and the Space Age as related—I want to turn to the Freudian theory of the “screen memory.” Sigmund Freud described the screen memory: “a recollection . . . whose value lies in the fact that it represents in the memory impressions and thoughts of a later date whose subject-matter is connected with its own by symbolic or similar links” (“Screen Memories” 62). Freud also noted that the screen memory works by contiguity, in space or time: “It is a case of displacement on to something associated by contiguity, or, looking at the process as a whole, a case of repression accompanied by replacement by something in the neighborhood (whether in space or time)” (52, emphasis mine). Beginning with the proliferation of television sets in U.S. homes in the 1940s– 50s, children could, by contiguity, create screen memories about what was going on inside the home and, by extension, what might be going on beyond the domestic front—what was going on “out there” in some other “zone.” For children of the time, the “screen memory” was in a very real sense the image that was on the screen at a certain moment.

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The television screen image worked its way into their repressions, mixing with actual events in a revision of (childhood) history and of the domestic space of childhood. In specifically television-related screen memories, I propose, the imaginary worlds of fantastic television series are warped into novel fantasies that shield or reinforce memories of genuine events, and one of these genuine events is the series of happenings known collectively as the Space Race. One of my own childhood television screen memory riddles was only solved for me as I conducted research for this book. My memory was of two astronauts in full costume, bottled up in a space capsule, with goofy looks on their faces and a very silly song playing: “It’s about time, it’s about space, it’s about two men in space . . . ” No one could help me solve the “it’s about time” riddle—I had to wait for the advent of the internet. It’s about Time was a Sherwood Schwartz (better known for The Brady Bunch) creation that ran during the 1965–66 season. When their space mission goes awry, two astronauts travel into the past—the past of prehistoric earth—where they live with cavemen and cavewomen. In the second half of the season the show brought a cave couple to 1960s New York City, where the zany adventures continued. The theme song said it all: It’s about time, it’s about space, About two men in the strangest place, It’s about time, it’s about flight – Traveling faster than the speed of light. This is the tale of the brave crew As through the barrier of time they flew ... It’s about two astronauts; it’s about their fate, It’s about a woman and her prehistoric mate. It’s about time, it’s about space, About two men in the strangest place. They will be here right on this spot No matter if they like it or not. How will they live in this primitive state? Will help ever come before it is too late? Will they ever get away? Watch each week and see! Will they be returning to the twentieth century? It’s about time for our goodbyes To all these prehistoric gals and guys.

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IT’S ABOUT TIME! (http://www.tvparty.com/itsabout.html) My screen memory was of two astronauts in a capsule, an image that television often displayed during the Gemini years of the 1960s. The It’s About Time version was a screen memory for the very real Space Race playing out around me. In a sense, the television screen was synonymous with the hatch of the space capsule: it allowed us television viewers to travel from “inner” space to “outer space,” that is, to other worlds. Several generations of children in the United States have now had childhood memories of the space program and the possibility of other worlds. These include memories of televised space disasters; the 1986 Challenger explosion is the most notable because it was shown live in classrooms throughout the country. Over the last 60 years, our relationship to space has been a complex intertwining of fact, fiction, and memory. Oftentimes—and often after the fact—the facts have been manipulated by both fiction and memory in the creation of what I would call Space Age (television) screen memories. Constance Penley has shown how her 1990s undergraduates’ childhood memories of the Challenger accident were the work of trauma and fantasy. The children invented stories about the accident that alleviated their trauma: Fantasy is not just a mental tool employed to work through trauma; the memory of the trauma is itself a fantasy, a story the subject tells retrospectively to resist or rework the knowledge of an experience. All stages of remembering a collective trauma like the Challenger disaster are shot through with fantasy. (NASA/Trek 43–4) I would suggest, in addition, that trauma associated with viewing the explosion on the television screen must have been related in the minds of children to the domestic sphere, to a secure or insecure sense of home and family, as well as to a secure or insecure sense of the integrity of the human body. Challenger trauma is related to “inner” space, by which I mean both the space of the individual body and the space of the domestic sphere. The disaster revealed what the fall of the Twin Towers, in September 2001, repeated: that the integrity of the human body— its wholeness, its inner space—may be compromised and that this compromising is first displayed on the screen and then screened through fantasy. This becomes clear in jokes recounted concerning the dismemberment of McAuliffe’s body: “Where did McAuliffe spend her vacation?—All up and down the Florida coast” (Penley, NASA/Trek 22).

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Penley remarks that adults who witnessed the Challenger explosion on television as children do not have accurate memories of that event; rather, their memories are tainted—or even bolstered—by fantasies, some concerning dismemberment and re-memberment. I would add that the collusion in language between remembrance (memory) and dismemberment (of the body) reveals that memory needs the body, that the body is necessary to the reconstruction of an event and the subject’s eventual acceptance of it. I would guess that at least some of the children’s fantasies must have had to do with the television screen as the medium of communication of the trauma; the fantasies would therefore be related for children to their television viewing of space shows, the shows “in the neighborhood” (to re-cite Freud) of broadcasts of NASA’s successes and failures. That the Space Race and subsequent shuttle missions were, and are, televised in their glory and tragedy (including the Columbia disaster of 2003) is surely associated and confused for several generations with the television shows that presented fantasies of space travel in the years contiguous to launches: Lost in Space, My Favorite Martian, Star Trek, It’s About Time, I Dream of Jeannie; for Penley’s students, Mork and Mindy, ALF, and V; for children at the time of the Columbia disaster, X-Files, Star Trek: Next Generation, and Star Trek: Voyager. The focus on the body of Christa McAuliffe—wife, mother, and astronaut—in fantasy reactions to the Challenger explosion points to a further association of screen memories with the inner space of the home—where the body (of the mother and therefore of the whole family) is assumed to be integral—and its dangerous neighbor, outer space, where the body may be dismembered and, for all intents and purposes, forgotten—leaving only traces on the seashore. To return to fantastic television sitcoms, there is a strong albeit contradictory association between the whacky premises of these shows and the seemingly humdrum domestic lives of middle-class whites during the years following WWII. Aiming for domestic bliss as compensation for the very real fears of the Cold War, Americans stocked up not only on war rations but also on scary or merely bizarre scenarios conveniently provided by the newest domestic companion, the television. As the 1950s wore on, Hollywood stopped producing technically realistic versions of space travel—as in Destination Moon (dir. Irving Pichel, 1950)—and turned out film after film involving fantastic alien monsters. Thus, viewers cathartically experienced, in advance, their worst nightmares. The Twilight Zone (1959–64) and The Outer Limits (1963–65) are the most recognizable television indicators of this desire to experience the unknown from the comfort of the living room couch, strategically placed

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before the television console. These programs were about the Arms Race and the Space Race, the latter conjured up in large part as a response to the Soviet Union’s apparent readiness for nuclear attack. In the same years that these zany shows entertained conventional families, the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions were blasting real men into outer space, a feat thought in earlier years to belong only to science fiction. And that’s just the point. Since science fiction became reality during the 1960s, it is not surprising that audiences viewed these television shows without batting an eye. A fantastic family sitcom especially ripe for the production of childhood television screen memories associated with outer space was I Dream of Jeannie (1965–70) (Figure 2.1). The premise was accepted without question: Jeannie was a genie from Baghdad (or Persia) of the preMuslim era living in twentieth-century Cocoa Beach with a NASA astronaut named Tony Nelson. This skeletal plot was not debated by young girls in the 60s but rather relished by them in large part because it promised them the security of the suburban home at the same time that it offered them the fantasy of a place where woman’s powers, through a blink of the eyes, were limitless. I Dream of Jeannie is an ingenious expression of two dreams cherished by American post-War culture: the dream of going boldly into space and the dream of staying safely at home. It is not surprising that these dreams were divided along gender lines.

Figure 2.1 Beginning with the second season, a cartoon summary of the premise of I Dream of Jeannie introduced each episode. Sidney Sheldon Productions, Inc., in association with Screen Gems; NBC.

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Whereas men such as Tony and his side kick Roger dreamed of being astronauts and working outside the home in a NASA building and eventually in outer space, women such as Jeannie dreamed of inhabiting a lovely suburban home with a human husband. Outer space and inner space were thus opposed. But at the same time, they were confused; after all, Jeannie often left the house. Her ability to blink her body from one space to another—from the home, to NASA headquarters, to outer space and back—posed a threat to the space program. I Dream of Jeannie is concerned with several layers of space: the inner space of the domestic sphere, which might be called “television space”; regional and national/international space—the public sphere; and outer space, which is, after all, the space where NASA intends to send its astronauts—this might be called the stratosphere. Jeannie’s body—familiar and desirable but also alien and implausible—occupies each of these spaces at various times. The viewer accesses space through her body, which functions as a “shifter” between spaces. She also undermines the borders between spaces by traversing them at her leisure. I first examine Jeannie as both heroine and foil of the domestic sphere. I then introduce the space of woman’s body as alien into this equation through an examination of Jeannie’s fantasy of the Middle Eastern alien body that raises questions of national space and border crossings in the public sphere. Last, I consider the imaginary space of Cape Canaveral as formed through the opposition of nature and technology, an opposition whose reconciliation on woman’s body remains tenuous, and that seems to foreclose the venturing of women into the strato-sphere. One of the ways in which Jeannie comments on its own implausibility is to refer to the geographical spaces of its narrative as “mythical.” Beginning with the second episode of Jeannie and for several subsequent episodes, a voice-over narrator introduces Cape Kennedy, Cocoa Beach, and Florida as mythical places: “Once upon a time, in a mythical place called Cape Kennedy . . . Cocoa Beach, a mythical town in a mythical state called Florida.” From the very start, then, the real town of Cocoa Beach and the real state of Florida are presented as imagined communities, to borrow Benedict Anderson’s phrase. Indeed, Cocoa Beach is mythical in the series, since Jeannie episodes were never shot in Cocoa Beach and NASA prohibited shooting at the Cape (although NASA documentary footage of launches was occasionally used). The series was shot in a Hollywood lot with the fake house that had been used in the Donna Reed Show serving as Tony and Jeannie’s suburban home. It is the technology of television that allows for the spatial mythmaking.1

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In a sense, the story of Cocoa Beach is the “other” story to that of NASA’s public space program—it is the underside or alternate universe of the space program. For television viewers who saw both launchings of Gemini and Apollo missions and episodes of I Dream of Jeannie on the same television sets during the same years, the two stories were forever linked in the active making of screen memories. Rather curiously, I Dream of Jeannie was the only 1960s television sitcom that incorporated NASA as a primary reference. Other space shows—It’s About Time, Lost in Space, My Favorite Martian—ignored NASA altogether or gave very slight attention to the organization; on Star Trek, NASA was completely displaced by Starfleet. Jeannie’s emphasis on NASA, although expected in a 1960s show on space, was unusual, if not to say bold. NASA has always been concerned about its public image and concern about Jeannie was in fact expressed by NASA officials (see Cox 57–61). But Jeannie cleansed itself of any political (read: negative) commentary on NASA’s agenda and this was accomplished, and at the same time undermined, by the transformation of the public agency into a nutty domestic space. In fact, the NASA complex doubles Tony’s Cocoa Beach home: it’s a never-ending insane domestic romp. The psychiatrist Dr. Bellows’ wife Amanda, like Jeannie, appears regularly on base despite a policy against unofficial visits; both home and office are identified as infiltrated by zany women. Moreover, we may interpret Dr. Bellows’ ironic failure to remain grounded in the rational (as well as the very fact that NASA’s primary official in this show is a psychiatrist) not as condemnations of NASA as nutty, but rather as means of domesticating NASA, for the domestic is nutty and the domestic is everywhere. This explains other space sitcoms’ avoidance of NASA. A desire not to tread on the political/public sphere and a desire to focus on the domestic, even if fantastic, led most sitcom writers to ignore the actual space agency. I Dream of Jeannie comments on the binary of inner/outer space in many episodes, the most telling being “First Couple on the Moon” (episode 86; aired March 19, 1968), in which a woman scientist will accompany Tony to the moon to live for 3 months in a Lunar House. Jeannie and Tony’s home will thus be symbolically transported to space, blending domestic and outer space(s). First, the astronauts will train in a simulated Lunar House on the base, in a dress rehearsal for the transfer of U.S. domesticity into space. When he learns of the plan from Dr. Bellows, Tony immediately reacts with scorn: there is no way he will spend so much time with a “female Louis Pasteur,” he says. He then tells Jeannie that there is no reason to be jealous, since women scientists are

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so unappealing. But both Dr. Bellows and Jeannie’s sister know better. Dr. Bellows tells Tony that women scientists have changed: “the day of horn-rimmed glasses, flat shoes, tweed skirts is over,” but Tony keeps insisting that “based on my experience” the women will be both ugly and technologically inept. In the only reference in the sitcom to the training of women astronauts, Tony asserts that the woman to accompany him should be trained just as he is, thus implying that no woman could pass the tests. For her part, Jeannie II, Jeannie’s dark-haired and evil twin sister, tells Jeannie that in fact modern women scientists are very attractive, and she promises to protect Jeannie from this danger. Two candidates are interviewed. Professor Henrietta Swanson, who teaches nuclear physics at Carver College, confirms Dr. Bellows’ statements: she is a tall platinum blonde who does not wear glasses. She moonlights as a cocktail waitress on her lunch hour, which explains the skimpy outfit she wears under her lab coat. Tony and his co-worker Roger, who is the backup spouse in the rehearsal, are overwhelmed with a new appreciation of women scientists. The next candidate, however, played by Jeannie II, confirms Tony’s experience: she has large horn-rimmed glasses, flat shoes, and a tweed suit. She states that she is Dr. Rita Walters, Ph.D., and that she has had experience in the Middle East making and flying carpets in her spare time (a nod to the perceived need for astronauts to be pilots). The women and men undergo two series of tests. The first, meant to gauge compatibility, consists of a series of questions about topics such as interior decorating. It becomes clear that Tony is compatible with Dr. Swanson, to Roger’s dismay. In the physical battery of tests, however, Dr. Walters wins hands down, through Jeannie II’s use of her magical powers. For this reason, Jeannie II and Tony end up in the simulated home. The home—actually one room—is in some sense a version of Jeannie’s bottle: it is small, cozy (although without couches and pillows), and exudes a red glow. It resembles a rocket/laboratory combined with a red-light district brothel. Jeannie II can’t keep her hands off Tony and every time she diverts him from his work something zany happens, especially when she controls the very symbolic “zero gravity button” (Figure 2.2). “I’ve got a hysterical woman on my hands,” Tony complains to Dr. Bellows, who watches the household on a television screen. Later, Jeannie replaces her sister and even more chaos ensues, enough to cause Dr. Bellows to cancel the mission because “the American man and woman have too many problems.” This episode mixes space science, domesticity, sexual attraction, and chaos. The havoc caused by woman’s

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Figure 2.2 Tony and Jeannie II (Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden) spend time in the Lunar House in I Dream of Jeannie.

body, represented by the hot buttons of technology, is a sign to NASA that space is not ready for a human couple. This is a relief to Jeannie, however, since she is jealous of outer space and wishes to keep Tony at home on the earth. Many other episodes deal with the theme of the home: a house across the street alternately disappears and reappears; Tony’s home is remodeled as a “mod pad” under Jeannie’s influence; and appliances ranging from a vacuum cleaner to a microwave oven act as if they have minds of their own. In “The Americanization of Jeannie” (episode 8; aired November 6, 1965), Jeannie decides to become a modern (read: emancipated) woman and refuses to do housework. In another episode, she takes a job selling miracle ovens—the only miracle being that she blinks up the food inside. In another, Tony hands her a book called How to Be a Woman, but his plan backfires on him. For Jeannie the genie is not a woman, but rather a being midway between an alien and a housewife, a genie who longs to be a human slave to her master, cooking and cleaning for him. By proxy, she is a “woman in space” and she even manages to go into space in one episode—by blinking herself there. She is the sexy alien woman from 1950s B-movies combined with the ditzy housewife of I Love Lucy (1951–60). Instead of going to the moon, she lands in Cocoa Beach, and that’s as far as the mid-1960s could take her. She could live in a suburban bedroom community near Cape Kennedy, as the wives of NASA engineers did, but she could not move permanently from her

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bottle to the capsule. Viewers were prepared to accept a 2,000-year-old genie, but it would appear that they were not ready to accept a Captain Jeannie, space hero. But could Jeannie really be accepted as a housewife? During the final year that Jeannie aired, Tony and Jeannie were married (episode 124, “The Wedding”; aired December 2, 1969). The episode was preceded by others that prepared the way by narrating the choice of ring, blood tests, a bachelor party, a remodeling of the home, and a visit by the bride’s relatives. Considering that the wedding itself only required one episode (whereas Jeannie’s escape from a safe required four) and that the preceding wedding-related episodes numbered six, it is not difficult to surmise that the wedding day itself was of little interest to producers. By all accounts, in fact, the producers were against the marriage but were pushed to it by the network. For many, including the stars of the sitcom, the wedding signaled the end of the series, and indeed the 1969–70 season was its last (see Cox). Marriage has been known to kill other sitcoms and, as every soap opera fan knows, keeping viewer interest alive requires that characters either not marry or engage in serial marriage. It would be fun to think that Tony and Jeannie’s marriage killed the show because viewers were disgusted at the idea of a human male sleeping with a female genie with green blood. But instead, it was probably the conventional nature of the marriage—the fact that it was so nearly a “normal” marriage—that led to viewers’ boredom. The boredom may, on an unconscious level, have been increased by the fact that this was a hyper-real wedding, with a mannequin standing in for Jeannie since genies are not able to be photographed. The marriage ceremony was a con, an error in the producers’ understanding of what made the show “real.” Genie’s odd body was set center stage in this episode, in which the astronaut was shown to marry a perfect American suburban woman, perfect because she was an android operated by a genie. The idea introduced in an earlier season that children of the couple may turn out to be genies was forgotten with the wedding; thus, the idea of a monstrous genie pregnancy and birth was avoided. The possibility of miscegenation (since Jeannie is either Persian or Arab) was also avoided, as well as that of interspecies reproduction. In the last season, Jeannie wore more and more normal clothes and knew more and more normal (well, sort of) people, such as the Bellows, who became Tony and Jeannie’s regular dinner companions. In the last year also, Dr. Bellows was made privy to the secret of Jeannie’s true self, which ruined the

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viewer’s feeling that she was in on a secret shared only by Roger. How to kill a sitcom: marry the main characters to each other and let the psychiatrist in on the joke. In June 1969, a few months before the premiere of the first episode of the last season, Cocoa Beach celebrated “Barbara Eden Day,” at which the actress was placed center stage and kissed by astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Tony was replaced by Buzz; Jeannie by Barbara. Later that year, the entire cast made its way to Cocoa Beach for a celebration of Tony and Jeannie’s fictional marriage at the real City Hall, but this event was not televised. Thus, the demise of the show, coming at the swan song of the space decade, involved a replacement of the actors with real players, and as the space program became stalled on earth, genies returned to their bottles and Florida became a real place, as real as it would ever be. The complexities of imagining women in space that the show brought out, involving issues of national and domestic space, were abandoned once man had placed the U.S. flag on the moon and Tony had wed Jeannie, who was now completely naturalized and domesticated, her allowed orbits narrowed to just one. In some sense, national interest in the space program was dying and so the show melded back into reality, through the deus ex machina of the wedding. And just as the public tired of moon landings, it tired of the astronaut’s domestic life, which rather than zany had become conventional. Viewers turned their televisions to other stations.

II. Alienation and the Arab Body That Jeannie can move in and out of her bottle at will aligns her with other women of 1960s sitcoms who use magical powers all the while that they were chained to suburban homes, including Samantha of Bewitched (1964–72). Jeannie and Samantha, unlike the all but immobilized housewives Betty Friedan describes in The Feminine Mystique (1963), are able to dominate space by beaming up from bottle to living room or from room to room, home to home, or home to (their man’s) office. In this sense, Jeannie conquers space to a much greater extent than NASA itself: whereas astronauts such as Tony leave earth’s gravitational pull with a lot of effort, Jeannie leaves the constriction of her bottle with a blink of her eyes (Figure 2.3). That Tony is Jeannie’s master is therefore an ironic commentary on the powers of NASA compared with the powers of female wizardry. These powers harken back to a male model, however. That

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Figure 2.3 Jeannie blinks herself into outer space in I Dream of Jeannie.

male model was an Arab one: Aladdin in The Arabian Nights. Jeannie’s stance as an alien/woman in space is heightened by this, the fact that she is meant to be “Oriental.” Genie dramas of the 1950s and 60s invariably involved a male genie, following the model of The Arabian Nights. A prime example was The Genie (dir. Lawrence Huntington, 1953) with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., but it was The Brass Bottle (dir. Harry Keller, 1963) with Burl Ives that directly inspired I Dream of Jeannie. In it, the genie lives in a bottle and not in the lamp of the traditional Aladdin story. Actor Tony Randall played his master and Barbara Eden, who would soon play Jeannie, was cast as Randall’s fiancé. In the same year, a Twilight Zone episode called “I Dream of Genie” aired, also with a male genie; its title played on the Stephen Foster song “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.” It was not much of a leap for the creators of Jeannie to combine the genie/Jeannie references and thus turn a male genie into a female one. The reference for the male genie in western culture was the male servant/butler, whose use of the term “master” spoke to class difference. For a woman to utter “master,” however, was to exchange class for gender difference and to suggest that Jeannie was from a harem—this is how the Oriental gloss from Aladdin was added on—and thus a servant of a rather different kind. Why such a transposition at this time and in this place? The most obvious response is that Jeannie reflects the Women’s Liberation Movement, which rose from addressing the doldrums of white suburbia in the 1950s to increasing activity in the 1960s. But Jeannie was, as we have seen,

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an ambivalent response, at least until the last season when marriage took the genie out of Jeannie. Woman’s body in Jeannie serves, again, as a shifter, marking—as it blinks here and there—the distance between inner and outer space, the domestic and public spheres, and nature and technology. Although Jeannie cannot become an astronaut and take Tony’s place in the space capsule, she can emerge from and reenter her bottle at will (unless her master bottles her up). Jeannie was thus familiar to middle-class audiences as a young woman in search of a husband and suburban home; she was at the same time unfamiliar as an exotic, even alien, being. Her status as a “border creature” (to use Haraway’s term from Simians, Cyborgs and Women) is further underscored by a significant difference not of gender or species, but of race. Here we encounter Jeannie at her most changeable: in harem garb, she is either Persian or Arab; in modern clothes, she is a (presumably white) blonde. The discourse on race is significant and adds another level to the multiple spaces that Jeannie alternately conjoins and transgresses. When the genie became Jeannie and the master/slave dialectic became rooted in gender rather than class difference, something remained nonetheless of the Middle East. Race, like gender, is a category inscribed in the series as an effect of space, for the series is about space in all its forms. This point is crucial to an understanding of the relationship between Hollywood and NASA, between representation and reality, during the Space Race. I Dream of Jeannie and much of the history of NASA and its handling of race and gender are about space and space effects—about suburban neighborhoods and federal lands, frontiers and borders, geography and nationhood. These are, I propose, effects of space, of the human need to apply earthly or terrestrial divisions of space to the vast openness of outer space, that extraterrestrial geography. In Jeannie, the collusion of space effects on Jeannie’s body aligns race, gender, and species (human/genie); this section discusses the racial body. Jeannie is purportedly from the Middle East of two thousand years ago, from Baghdad (Iraq) of the pre-Muslim era. At times, however, she is said to be from Persia (Iran) and there are, in addition, several references to Mecca (Saudi Arabia). We are told that she is from the old Baghdad of outdoor markets and multi-colored veils that is imagined in the west. She is the exotic Orient as imagined by the United States in the 1960s: a girl with a blond ponytail lounging around in pink satin pajamas and gauzy veils. Jeannie is what popular culture

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during the Cold War—that is, before the War on Terror—was able and willing to spin about gender and the Middle East for television audiences. She is exotic but familiar, distant but close, foreign but domestic—she is a woman of color and a blond, all rolled (or bottled) into one. Jeannie II, whose maliciousness counters Jeannie I’s naïve goodness, is, not surprisingly, a brunette. Her hair color aligns her more closely with her purported nation(s) of origin but it also conforms to the stereotypical western alignment of dark hair and eyes with the unknown/evil. She is not an Arab or Persian; she is a brunette. She is Jeannie’s other half; along with her, Jeannie allows Tony to experience all his fantasies of woman and it is partly in this sense that she is a genie. Finally, collusion in popular culture of the term alien to refer to extraterrestrials (especially popularized with Alien) and immigrants, in particular illegal ones, is hinted at in Jeannie, because the genie is, after all, an illegal alien. The seemingly transparent portrayal of race in I Dream of Jeannie is undermined by the confusion between the Arab and the Persian. But on a deeper level, the race discourse is complicated by the fact that Arabs and Persians (as well as all Middle Easterners) have at times been assimilated to “whites” in the United States and at other times assimilated to “others” of a different, and darker, race. In Whitewashed, John Tehranian has shown how the “Middle East” is a rather recently invented historical region, whose citizens may be considered “white” (especially, for example, Armenians) or “of color” (especially Iranians and Iraqis). Indeed, often the term “Persian” is used to designate a “white” person from Iraq; “Iraqi” would, on the other hand, designate an “Other”—perhaps, I would venture to say, even an “Arab.” In I Dream of Jeannie, the opposition of the sisters expresses this tension: Jeannie is the “white Persian,” while her sister is the “dark Arab.” I Dream of Jeannie participates in what we might call “sitcom Orientalism,” due to its evocation of colonialism and conquest by the west. I use the term “Orientalism” in the sense given it by Edward Said, that is, as an “imaginative geography” set up by the west to justify colonialism. This geography is “feminized” in that the Orient is itself viewed as mysterious, hidden, and veiled, much as the body of the Arab woman in the mind of the west. Gaylyn Studlar sums up Said’s project thus: Said suggests that the West’s creation of an imaginary East originally was rooted in a comingling of fear and fascination that grew out of contact with Islamic culture and a fear of the Ottoman Empire; the West’s

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gradual empire-building in the East came to be justified through an Orientalist discourse that served as a rhetorical means of controlling the Near East as an alien place associated first, and foremost, with chaos. (Studlar, “Out Salomeing Salome,” in Bernstein and Studlar 99) Jeannie is a cultural manifestation of Orientalism that contrasts and compares the Orient with two other cultural and discursive spaces: the west and outer space. The television series “screens” these multiple spaces and their effects: domestic space (the west); the space of the Arab (the Orient); and outer space, a contested New Frontier.2 The confusion of Iran and Iraq—of Persians and Arabs—as well as the random assignment of Middle Eastern or South Asian sounding names to things and people in the sitcom betray an effort to dress woman up in garb that western spectators could accept as believable albeit odd, given that they had been trained since the birth of film in how to “read” symptoms of the Arab on screen.3 Examples are the following: Jeannie’s true name is Maharani Jeannie I (a maharani is a Hindu princess married to a maharaja); her nasty dog’s name is Djinn-Djinn; her former master is the Blue Djinn (Djinn, from the Arabic, refers to a demonic spirit or to a spirit—a genie); she has a nephew named Abdullah (sometimes a title in Arab cultures); the chief Djinn’s name is Hadji (hadji or hajji is a title for one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca); Jeannie’s great-grandfather is named Bilejik; Jeannie has Uncles named Azmire and Vasemire (imaginary versions of Emir); her great-uncle Suleiman (Suleiman I was an Ottoman sultan) offers her the throne of Basenji. Episode titles reflect this Orientalism: “Abdullah,” “Djinn and Water,” “Get Me to Mecca on Time.” Yet Jeannie is referred to as an Arab in only one episode, “Fly Me to the Moon” (episode 57, aired September 12, 1967). In this episode, she takes on “Arab” male attire (with moustache) to pretend to be a “water boy” at NASA (Figures 2.4 and 2.5). When she claims to Tony that Dr. Bellows suspects nothing, her master replies sarcastically, “He probably thought you were one of the regular run-of-the-mill NASA Arabs.” The creators of I Dream of Jeannie were thus at least semiconscious of bringing the ancient Orient into modern times and bringing the Middle East to Florida by introducing Jeannie to Tony, Cocoa Beach, Cape Canaveral, and NASA. To put it more simply: the female genie is the alien Arab domesticated in the home of the astronaut. Jeannie is alien in the sense that she is of a different species, of a different kind, and in the sense that she is, or is supposed to be, foreign and non-white. Jeannie is doubly embodied as alien: she is from another planet in the sense that she possesses powers

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Figure 2.4 A run-of-the-mill NASA Arab in I Dream of Jeannie.

Figure 2.5 Mercury 7 survival training in the Nevada desert. The astronauts wear stereotypical Arab garb. Photo: NASA.

unknown to womankind, and she is from another planet in the sense that she is foreign, strange—and, certainly, illegal. For there are, of course, no “regular” Arabs at NASA. So, whereas Tony does not encounter aliens in space in the television series, he does come home every night to an alien, to a woman of another species, another time, and another race—but she has been, or is in the process of being, domesticated. The Orient that Tony encounters is at least partly a domesticated and Americanized space, the kind of space that Tony would no doubt

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prefer to encounter on a mission, or at least prefer to create through the colonization of space. While Tony spends time in capsules as part of his profession as astronaut, Jeannie spends much of her time in her bottle as part of her profession as genie. It is significant that the bottle is placed in the living room, the center of U.S. middle-class domesticity in the 1960s and the room in which the television was found. This positioning also reflects that during the 1950s and 1960s the Women’s Movement represented women as being bottled up in the home. Jeannie’s bottle, shaped roughly in the form of a space capsule, is a fascinating space that deserves mention. One Mercury astronaut noted about the escape hatch of the capsule, which was at the top: “It was just like crawling out through a bottle” (Carpenter, et al. 83). John Glenn described the space capsule, designed by NASA engineer Maxime Faget, as “a rather squat object with corrugated sides, a smooth rounded bottom, and a round top that looked a little like the cap on a catsup bottle. The whole thing resembled a gigantic TV tube” (Carpenter, et al. 103). Jeannie’s bottle resembles a catsup bottle, but it was in fact modeled after a 1964 Jim Beam bourbon decanter (see Cox 45–55), an object that could be found in living rooms of the 1960s, when the in-home bar was popular. Jeannie is housed in a house within a house—doubly domesticated, she is bottled up in a double restriction of her access to space (unless the bottle is uncorked). This bottling up is sometimes reinforced in the show by Jeannie’s entrapment in other tight spots: in one series of episodes she is trapped in a safe; in another she is jailed; in another she is stuck in a vacuum cleaner—she may as well be floating in the void of space. The interior of the bottle merits attention. It contains one room, itself resembling a living room, with a circular couch. The couch and its many pillows and throws are of “feminine” colors, like Jeannie’s garments, and appear to be made of silk, satin, or gauze-like fabric. The bottle’s space is the space of the middle-class living room, then, but there is an underside to it: the space recalls a bedroom or boudoir and is modeled after a western stereotype of the Oriental harem in which, supposedly, half-naked women lounge among an endless supply of cushions.4 The bottle, as both harem and living room, is the fulfillment of the (male) spectator’s desire to have both wife and hussy contained in the home. Thus, the bottle perfectly represents the melding of the two cultural moments that Jeannie offers to the public: through its resemblance to a space capsule it represents NASA, space science, and the United States (the west; the space of man—Major Nelson’s “cozy cocoon”); through its stereotypical

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stance as a genie’s lamp/bottle, it represents the Middle East and the primitive or the pre-(space)science Orient—the space of woman.5 There is, as well, a more close-to-home commentary on race and space in I Dream of Jeannie. Jeannie’s origins suggest an Orientalist master/ slave dialectic appropriated by a 1960s astronaut living in Cocoa Beach, Florida. But in Tony and Jeannie’s relationship it is not difficult to see echoes of the slavery of Africans and African Americans in the United States and the Civil Rights Movement that was in full swing during the five seasons that the show aired. In Jeannie, the role of the slave is given to a Middle Eastern woman who alternately accepts and refuses passivity at the same time that she longs to take the place of the white plantation mistress, to become the missus of the astronaut. For African American viewers, the additional fact that the astronauts of Jeannie are white men surely confirmed that NASA was yet another government agency that ignored and discriminated against blacks (this was in fact true), and that Hollywood played into NASA’s hands by following suit. I Dream of Jeannie can thus be read as an appropriation of slave narratives and a rewriting of slave history as a comedy involving an Arab blonde and her “master” at the same time that it reinforces dominant narratives of space in which only white men are called upon to construct the future along the New Frontier. When Tony tells Jeannie that in her disguise she will pass as a “regular run-of-the-mill NASA Arab,” his joke relies on the absence of Arabs from NASA and also suggests the absence of women, of “others,” in general. Arabs are alien to NASA, for NASA is embodied by the white male astronaut. On the other hand, since the genie is represented as the alien of this sitcom, we can conclude that I Dream of Jeannie presents NASA as always already infiltrated by that which it hopes to discover and then conquer. I Dream of Jeannie is thus far from offering to U.S. viewers unambiguous praise of the space program and confidence in its abilities; instead, it jeopardizes NASA by allowing women, non-nationals, and aliens into the space of the agency. It rewrites Cape Canaveral and the surrounding area as a haven for other-worldly beings that manipulate and undermine western science and engineering’s civilizing mission.

III. There Is Another Kind of Space Here As we have seen, Jeannie purports to stage a “mythical” place; indeed, while Jeannie’s magical powers are borrowed from myth, the Space Race

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was based on the western myth of human conquest. Moreover, the television series drew on myths already created on the ground in the area of the Space Coast: myths concerning the relationship between nature and culture, origins and futures. The Space Coast is home to Cocoa Beach, the Kennedy Space Center, the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge, and Cape Canaveral National Seashore. In speaking of geographical (regional) space in Jeannie and how it is embodied by woman, it is this juxtaposition of technology at the Cape—NASA—and wilderness at the Cape— Nature—that interests me. Television “naturalized” Cocoa Beach through artificial or technological means, just as NASA worked to naturalize its presence on the Cape, as we shall see. And we shall see further that this naturalization can be examined as a process ultimately dependent on the body of woman. Jeannie is a type of space alien—she is unnatural—but she is naturalized and domesticated by the television screen, which insists that she is at home in (an albeit mythical) Florida. In this way, outer space and the “natural” space of earth are merged upon the body of woman, that body that screens reality with smoke, veils, and blinks of the eyes. As feminist theorists have argued, in western culture woman’s body has often carried the weight of signifying Nature.6 With the introduction of modern technology in the late nineteenth century, this scenario was complicated. Since then, woman’s body has, in the same gesture, been made to represent either an impediment to technology’s quest to conquer nature, or the evil side of technology—technology gone haywire. Woman cannot master the machine and yet woman is a machine, this tradition holds, a machine whose inner workings must be controlled—by man. Woman as nature is thus woman to be colonized and conquered by technology at the same time that she herself embodies the artifice of technology. In this light, Jeannie contributes to the invention of the myth of the astronaut and the myth of space science: she is the astronaut’s Other in that she is aligned with the feminine, domesticity, earth, and nature, but she is also Other due to her mystifying relationship to science and technology. She is a ditz when it comes to cooking, but she is able with a few blinks to control the vacuum cleaner as well as a NASA space capsule. Her body is a sign of the necessary although uneasy relationship between nature and technology, earth and outer space. The Space Coast, running from Cape Canaveral to the city of Melbourne, has for decades been associated with the Space Race. Indeed, the connection between the state of Florida and the state of space has been naturalized; it seems to go without saying: “Far too many people just take space for granted because it has been here, it is here, and they

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think it always will be on the Space Coast” (Lieutenant Governor Brogan, quoted in Faherty 181). William Barnaby Faherty, author of a history of the Space Race on the Space Coast, contributes to the mythology of Florida and its special connection to space technology with talk of destiny: “It was Florida’s destiny. Geography chose the state’s east coast for the spaceport that united planets with the same certainty that it chose the Isthmus of Panama for the ocean-uniting canal” (181). Indeed, since the U.S. west was forever lost as a frontier well before the 1950s, a new frontier was needed. The “New Frontier,” as President Kennedy termed it in May 1961, this “New Ocean,” as he termed it in 1962, was outer space. From that time, a new Oregon Trail was mapped out, with its starting point in the swamps of Merritt Island. I Dream of Jeannie has itself been a contribution to this positing of a destiny. The alternating contrast and coupling of nature and technology characterizes New Frontier discourse at the same time that it revises conquest as a “natural” process. This contrast and coupling has long been at work on Merritt Island. The choice of an island as site of launch activities for the space program (Georgia’s Cumberland Island was also considered) is an instance of life imitating fantasy, the fantasy of the spaceman who accidentally lands offshore and comes upon an island or beach apparently deserted but actually inhabited by a strange being or beings. This fantasy under-girds I Dream of Jeannie as well as films such as Love Goddesses of Blood Island (dir. Richard S. Flink, 1963), The Crawling Hand (dir. Herbert L. Strock, 1963), and the more recent Contact.7 How a nearly deserted island in Florida became the “natural” home for NASA and its astronauts is a story that illustrates, in many ways, frontier and colonial/conquest narratives. Since the early years of NASA, the Merritt Island Refuge land has been owned by the agency, which allows the U.S. Bureau of Wildlife and Fisheries to manage it. It is an unusual alliance, to say the least. Small towns along the Atlantic shore and the few homes in the interior of the island were confiscated by the government early in the 1960s, although the literature refers time and time again to the island as having been uninhabited, thus contributing to the myth of the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) emerging from a pristine natural environment—in effect, a deserted island. An exhibit (“Nature and Technology”) at the KSC Visitors Complex announces this alliance: “[The] Exhibit showcases the unique balance KSC has with nature.” Within the small exhibit space, the history of Merritt Island and the various types of natural habitats in the area are showcased:

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Mention Kennedy Space Center or Merritt Island and many people imagine space exploration, the excitement of countdown and the thrill of liftoff. But there is another kind of space here, one that is almost unknown to outsiders. This space can be silent and secluded, where gentle breezes caress miles of primitive beach and endangered sea turtles struggle from their leathery eggs, or as boisterous as the aroma of tropical blossoms. (Emphasis mine) The “natural” part of the island is “another kind of space” that is “unknown to outsiders.” The two spaces, primitive/natural space and futuristic/ technological space, are at opposite ends of a continuum of unknowable/ knowable space: they are both unknown, but for that very reason they are fascinating to the inhabitants of suburban domestic space—the very knowable space of the television sitcom, Cocoa Beach. Further citations from the exhibit reveal a desire on the part of KSC not only to contrast the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge and itself, but to bring them together somehow, to make them neighbors, in a “balance” (from the brochure) or shared “boundary” in which they “co-exist” (from the exhibit). Indeed, as one drives from the Wildlife Refuge to the Canaveral Seashore, one notices this boundary. To the south, along the Atlantic shore, Launch Complexes, closed to the public, dot the horizon. Here, one feels eerily like Taylor (Charleton Heston) at the end of Planet of the Apes, when he comes upon a crumbling Statue of Liberty on the beaches of what was once New York City. The beach, a boundary or threshold between shore and water, between culture and nature, is the preferred location for the joining of space exploration and earth’s “natural” habitats. A direct line ties the “primitive” to the futuristic and bypasses modernity, which is represented in the suburbs and communities built off the island. The Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge brochure has similar assertions of its successful co-existence with KSC: Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge is a place like no other. The 140,000 acre refuge shares a common boundary with NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where man began the exploration of space . . . The unique relationship the refuge shares with NASA is testimony that nature and technology can coexist and thrive. In fact, one discovers in the brochure that the island was made accessible to western (as opposed to native) humans, and thus to the Fish and

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Wildlife Service, by NASA itself, which got rid of the mosquito problem. So we find that the preservation of nature, here in a wildlife refuge that counts 500 species and more threatened and endangered ones (21) than any other in the United States, has as its origin the good will of NASA, which solved the mosquito problem, kicked some men out and brought in others, and put the island under the management of the Fish and Wildlife Service. Technology, in the form of launching rockets, has in some sense saved the threatened species (Figure 2.6). The marriage is a happy one, according to a different Refuge brochure: “You cannot watch the flight of the bald eagle without contemplating man’s quest for flight and our desire to find out what is beyond earth’s fragile atmosphere. To visit here is to witness nature and technology at their finest.” What kind of space or place is Merritt Island? Old or new, primitive or “technologized,” uninhabited or inhabited? Engineered by NASA or

Figure 2.6 Nature and technology on the Cape. The launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour on mission STS-111 startles a large bird to flight over nearby waters. Photo: NASA-KSC.

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naturalized thanks to the space program? It seems important for NASA and the Refuge to display the area as both. Although Houston is certainly identified with the space program, that city has not spurred the intense fantasy of Man meets Nature that still characterizes the Cape in Florida, a fantasy revived with the space shuttle missions that have originated there since the late 1970s. This is in large part because Houston is the site of “mission,” not “launch,” control. Launches appeal to the media and the public as momentous and mythical moments; they also mark the threshold between earth/ocean and space, the moment at which one exits earth. The threshold or liminal space of contact between the void of space and the familiarity of home (earth) is, as already suggested, the beach. That Cocoa Beach and not Titusville or even the town called Cocoa was chosen as I Dream of Jeannie’s locale is not surprising: the name is more suggestive and it is actually on the beach. In terms of the television show, NASA (the term Kennedy Space Center is not used) is in the town of Cocoa Beach—two words mentioned in almost every episode—and all the characters live there, including Tony, Jeannie, Roger, and Doctor Bellows. Although NASA and its astronauts moved, except for launch purposes, to Houston beginning in 1962, and although astronaut families never truly “lived” at Cocoa Beach (the astronauts stayed in motels), Tony Nelson did live in Cocoa Beach, and the town could continue to be identified with the space program in part due to this screen fiction8 (Figure 2.7). The seashore represents, then, the passage from earth to space and the threshold of the New Frontier. Americans were long familiar with the frontier as a space evoking images of discovery, conquest, and bounty. When Frederick Turner proposed his Frontier Thesis in 1893, the public accepted in general the idea that frontierism was part and parcel of U.S. life—that it defined the populace as individuals and as a nation. So when a reinvigorated myth of the United States’ destiny was needed in the 1950s and 60s as a way to shore up the arms race with the U.S.S.R. and as a way to relieve anxieties caused by the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, and social unrest, a New Frontier—that of outer space—was invoked. For Kennedy, New Frontier and New Ocean were synonymous. Indeed, as Mette Bryld has convincingly demonstrated, the exploration of the deep seas was significant to science after WWII and, like the Space Race, it involved competition with the Soviet Union: “After the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a fierce competition for global dominance which implied military and technoscientific invasions of both the sea and the cosmos” (397; see also the book by Bryld and

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Figure 2.7 I Dream of Jeannie Lane, Cocoa Beach, Florida. Photo: Marie Lathers.

Lykke). Both the deep sea and the cosmos were coded as “extraterrestrial regions” (398) open to farming and mining, exploration and conquest.9 Bryld goes so far as to claim that in the decades following WWII, the sea—coded as “inner”—and space—coded as “outer”—were being “discursively set up for invasion.” This is seen in popular culture and especially film representations of outer space in the 1950s and 60s, which conjoined outer space and the deep sea as lands of rich resources and terrifying monsters. (At other times, they were displayed as barren and lifeless wastelands.) The ocean, like outer space, was identified as unfriendly to humans (sharks, octopuses, giant squids) but also friendly (whales, dolphins) and ready to serve man.10 And just as the beach represents the boundary between earth and space in popular culture, so it literally represents the merger of land and open sea. What would allow humans to transgress these “natural” boundaries was technology, in the form of space science and oceanography. In the pilot of Jeannie, Captain Nelson meets Jeannie when he is stranded on a deserted island during his return to the Cape from space.

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A review of beach films that narrate stories of space and that were made around the time of Jeannie reveals that this television sitcom belongs in certain ways to the same category. The “Beach Party” series of seven films usually starred Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon and included titles such as Beach Party (dir. William Asher, 1963) and Beach Blanket Bingo (dir. William Asher, 1965). These established a genre of California beachnik films that was imitated but never surpassed. Seven total “beach party” films were made from 1963 to 1966, all shot in Malibu. But one can also identify a group of films that presents the underside, unconscious, or “dark side” of these happy, frolicking escapes from the real problems of the 1960s. These anti-Beach Party films, set on the beaches of California or Florida, sometimes melded bikini madness with a desire to capitalize on Cold War fears of technology and science gone amok. Here the beach is an ominous transition zone between vast empty space—the ocean— and the purported civilization of the mainland. The group of dancing kids in Beach Party films is on the beach for surf, fun, and kisses, and there is no fear of monstrous interruption beyond someone’s “Pop” getting annoyed. In the alternative films, however, rockin’ kids are inevitably interrupted by a monster, Pop’s dark side, be he a cross between human and jelly fish (Sting of Death, dir. William Grefe, 1965), a murderous hand on the loose (The Crawling Hand), atomic beasts (The Horror of Party Beach, dir. Del Tenney, 1964), or a shaggy green thing (The Beach Girls and the Monster, dir. Jon Hall, 1965). In The Cape Canaveral Monsters (dir. Phil Tucker, 1961), a terribly bad film, alien monsters are set loose right on Merritt Island. The very funny The Crawling Hand develops the beach as the space of interaction between astronaut and alien. In a gruesome foreshadowing of what could happen to Tony were Jeannie not around to protect him, an astronaut’s ship is invaded by an alien being during its return to earth. An explosion occurs, but all is not lost: the male astronaut’s forearm and hand, still clothed in astronaut apparel, land on a California beach. The arm can’t resist strangling a landlady and a restaurant owner and then infecting a local kid whose only goal is to marry his Swedish beach girl. The arm is a synecdoche for the astronaut infected with the alien since once the astronaut’s arm lands on the beach (as does Tony Nelson, although his bodily integrity is not compromised) it serves as host for the alien. (The film also plays on U.S. culture’s simultaneous fear of and fascination with the exploding spaceship, a fear that was played out in reality with the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster.) One bloody alternative to the Frankie and Annette beach blanket films stands out as an especially remarkable representation of the dark

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side of I Dream of Jeannie. The women of the island in Love Goddesses of Blood Island are the opposite of the grateful genie who returns Tony to civilization and promises to grant his every wish. Two astronauts or pilots are stranded on a tropical island after crashing in the ocean. Injured, they are brought to shore by a group of women of various nations who dress in bikini tops, gauzy capes, billowing pants, and exotic headdresses. The women tell the main pilot/astronaut that he is their sex and work slave—he will sleep with each on a rotating schedule. The man enjoys the sex romps, although they exhaust him, but he fails to appreciate the torture. The leader Aphrodite explains to the astronaut/pilot that her island is a safe haven from the wars of the mainland; men have created violence and spilled blood, but the women of the island know only peace and harmony. They must therefore kill the men to keep their island safe: the secondary pilot/astronaut dies when he is cut open as he watches, his heart yanked out and smashed in his face and his head ripped off. Once Aphrodite loses control of the island matriarchy and of herself, represented in the bloody guts scene, we know that all hell has broken lose and that paradise is now just another space for deadly catfights. Like Jeannie, an incongruous blonde from the Middle East, the blond (and French) Desirée seems out of place and is easily identified by the astronaut as the one woman who can save him. After Desirée kills Aphrodite, the couple leave the island on an inflatable raft. A final scene shows the front page of a Miami Beach newspaper with the headline “Astronaut Rescued at Sea.” The return to earth, the splashdown, is a liminal moment in which the astronaut is caught between the darkness of space and the glaring sun reflected in the ocean; he is caught between the primitive nature of outer space, lacking in human presence and the human attributes of sexuality, love, and violence, and the space of earth’s shoreline. Traditionally, the splashdown scene is also a triumphant moment: as the astronaut emerges from the capsule—as he breaks his link between space and sea—he is greeted by a helicopter and a ship full of male NASA and military personnel. He then reenters the world of men and the military, the world of space exploration that is based from earth. The tropical island or beach is an interruption of this normal passage from empty space to populated mainland (as it is for Tony Nelson). The island is a way station between space and earth, located in the ocean, site of the splashdown. It is land, but it is not part of the “main” land, and it is inhabited by women, and rather odd ones at that. It is, in some sense, a place in this world, for it is part of earth, and thus knowable and welcoming, but at the same time out of this world, unknowable and mysterious. Moreover, it is the last

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possible site of adventure/danger for the astronaut before he returns to the ho-hum of NASA and family life. The fact that an island was chosen to house NASA’s manned space launches seems surely to have been influenced, at least unconsciously, by the fantasies our culture has woven about islands and men leaving civilized earth. That Jeannie I and Jeannie II, opposite ends of a continuum of woman, occupy the beach comes as no surprise. In Space: A Memoir (1998), Jesse Lee Kercheval remembers the Cape, where she grew up, as the place where she and her sister Carol reunited as adults to watch the launch of Sally Ride, the first U.S. woman in space, on the Challenger shuttle in 1983. It is significant that she ends her memoir with this scene: “I close my eyes and see it: the sun shining the way it can only in the Sunshine State, my sister next to me, both of us shouting with joy because, at long last, an American woman is on her way to space” (325). It is tempting to think of women spectators’ view of Sally Ride’s liftoff in terms of television spectators’ memory of the most significant screen woman of the early Space Race: Jeannie. Returning to the confusion of Cocoa Beach and Hollywood discussed earlier, we might juxtapose these spectators. Sally Ride’s voyage was not invented as a telescript—although it was surely “scripted” in many ways—and we are right to believe that the real shuttle was launched on that day at Cape Canaveral, with the very real Florida sun, sand, and surf in the background. This was not a Hollywood moment, but a Florida moment, we are led—and want—to believe. And yet this real-life moment was made into a reality television show, as it was aired across the country. Because of our screen memories, the women of Jesse Kercheval’s generation were perhaps tempted to see this launch as Jeannie’s launch; the woman has left behind her ditzy television role and blinked herself from Donna Reed’s ranch home in a Hollywood studio to the shuttle, ready to blast off from Cape Canaveral. It took almost 20 years, but then the television audience could mimic the launch audience in their chant of “Ride, Sally, Ride.” In an ironic scenario that remembers Jeannie and offers a utopian screen memory, the message in a bottle, the chant would be “Ride, Jeannie, Ride.” But before Jeannie could go into space as Sally Ride, before she could go there as Alien’s Ripley and Contact’s Ellie, she first had to fulfill her role as astronaut wife, which is where we left her at the end of I Dream of Jeannie. So it is to astronaut wives as women in space that this study turns next.

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Chapter 3

Staying Home: Astronaut Wives and Domestic Engineering

If you think going to the Moon is hard, try staying home. (Barbara Cernan) Look, I don’t remember the space program and I don’t think about my marriage. (Rene Carpenter) But I called three of—in my view—three of the greatest ladies and most courageous ladies in the whole world today—your wives. And from Jan and Joan and Pat I bring their love and their congratulations . . . And also I’ve got to let you in on a little secret. I made a date with them. (President Richard Nixon to Apollo 11 astronauts)

When Tony married Jeannie he succeeded in bringing her down to earth and limiting her to one allowed orbit. Instead of being the frantic, ditzy, and ever-mobile alien genie, Jeannie became a conventional “satellite” of her husband and went out more and more for dinner parties and less and less for romps in Baghdad or at NASA headquarters. This was in 1969, the year of the moon landing, that culmination of man’s interfacing with other worlds. At that time, and in fact since the very early 1960s, astronaut wives, satellites to their men, were glorified as strong and supportive women who could manage dinner parties, sew their children’s clothes, and tame their own fears and anxieties about space travel. They were also made to represent the emotional side of the astronaut, so that he could indeed represent all things to all people (see Dean 87). These wives were “women in space” by proxy, women who lived intimately with the Space Age but whose ventures into space were mediated by their husbands and their television sets. By the end of the 1960s, when their marriage orbits began to disintegrate, so to speak, through separations

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and divorces, they were brought back to earth as ordinary women who were now facing the demise of the “perfect marriage” that was imagined in the last year of Jeannie. This trajectory of some from happy NASA housewives to fallen and disgraced ex-wives of the astronauts became a subject of popular film, which added disappointed wives and divorcees to a list of “space oddities.” They represent NASA’s own “return trauma,” as the end of the man-on-the-moon era arrived and the future of men in space was less and less a topic that intrigued the public, itself often more interested in the very earthy private lives of the astronauts.

I. Angels in the House In the 1980s and 90s, a trio of popular films about space flight made attempts to depict the connection between the astronaut in space and the woman at home in a straightforward fashion, as opposed to the fantastical representation of this relationship in I Dream of Jeannie. Whereas Jeannie created a fantastic and alien foreign body to represent the companion of the 1960s astronaut, these films were “reality-based” in their presentations of women in space as run-of-the-mill 1960s human wives. The astronaut wife was Jeannie without the magical powers. The Right Stuff (dir. Philip Kaufman, 1983), based on the Tom Wolfe novel of the same name, traced the transition from the test pilots of Chuck Yeager’s era to the Mercury 7 and included glimpses of the Mercury wives; Apollo 13 (dir. Ron Howard, 1995), based on the novel by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger as well as the history of Apollo by Andrew Chaikin, turned a failed 1970 mission into a victory, and presented the wives’ relief at this victory; and The Original Wives Club (dir. Sally Field, 1998), part 11 of HBO’s From the Earth to the Moon, foregrounded the story of the Gemini and Apollo wives as worthy of its own space, so to speak. The Right Stuff was the prototype for 1990s films that devoted space to the wives; Apollo 13 zeroed in on one wife in particular (Marilyn Lovell); and The Original Wives Club, a docu-drama, positioned 1960s astronaut wives as a cohort distinct from but “equal to” that of male astronauts. In the 1990s as well, these earnest takes on the wife’s situation were countered by sci-fi horror films that suggested that wives were not only adept household managers but potential incubators for alien life forms: The Astronaut’s Wife (dir. Rand Ravich, 1999) is the example cited in this chapter. This film drew on the image of the astronaut wife already well-established by the earlier films and endowed one wife with her own story; at the same time, it located the alien body in the body of woman.

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The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, and From the Earth to the Moon are historically based. To emphasize this, the films make use of archival footage and techniques such as the insertion of actors into this footage, in this way blurring the lines between artificial and real, representation and reality, drama and news. In Apollo 13, for example, archival footage of several 1960s–70s events is used, often starring the broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite. At other times, the film’s actors appear in these news segments, for example when Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) and Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) are seamlessly inserted into footage. Archival footage is further corrupted in the film when Cronkite’s words during the blackout period of reentry are changed slightly. Another means of blurring boundaries between documentary footage and dramatic fiction is the guest appearance of historical figures acting roles different from their own: Jeffrey Kluger, co-author of Lovell’s memoir, plays a science reporter in the film; Jim Lovell is an extra on the Iowa Jima and Marilyn Lovell is at the launch scene; and Roger Corman, famed director of 1950s–60s science fiction films, plays a congressman. Emphasis on technologies of representation and communication within the films, especially the television set in Apollo 13, adds to this reality effect. The Space Race as recounted in these films is a blend of historical event and media manipulation accomplished through the use of visual and communications technologies. Still, these films are ever on the verge of collapse into the genre of melodrama, since their realism is dependent on an emphasis on the domestic. The films harness the combined forces of docudramas about the Space Race and melodramas about women’s condition (Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1 Betty and Gus Grissom (Veronica Cartwright and Fred Ward) cease arguing when they notice the press outside their Cocoa Beach motel in The Right Stuff (dir. Philip Kaufman, 1983).

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The stories of astronaut wives arise from a merging of the woman’s film or melodrama of the 1940s with the journalistic docudrama of the 1960s– 70s, the latter influenced by New Journalism nonfiction novels such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1965), Oriana Fallaci’s If the Sun Dies (1967), Norman Mailer’s Of A Fire on the Moon (1970, first serialized in Life magazine), and Wolfe’s The Right Stuff (1979); the last three of these are about the Space Race. Emphasis on the real, however manipulated, fosters a belief on the part of spectators that the stories told in the films are the stories, the “natural” or definitive versions of women and men in the space program. The belief that the relationship between husbands and wives during the Space Race was a natural one that may be readily transferred to film with the help of technical advisers, vibrant costumes, historically accurate sets, and fine directors, is the same belief that went into Life’s creation of the Mercury 7 families as picture perfect, so to speak. But in fact, all representation is subject to the fantasies and fallacies of nostalgia and screen(ed) memories. The alert viewer recalls that films are made products—constructed narratives—and not “found” or “natural” products. Apollo 13 is, in particular, self-consciously aware of the possible collapse of the ethereal male astronaut into the very material and feminized suburban home, and the possible collapse of the stresses of space into the stresses of the home front. The pull of earth—the pull back to wife and children, the “earthbound astronauts” of home—is especially strong in 1990s renditions of the Apollo story.1 During five seasons of Jeannie, viewers witnessed the trials and errors of a stay-at-home genie whose body was, paradoxically, unhampered by the laws of space and time. But in astronaut-wife scenarios considered in this chapter, a very strict distinction is established between the two women represented by Jeannie: the domestic housewife and the space-time traveler. The astronaut wives considered here are grounded or “earthbound,” imprisoned in Stepford-like or clone-like bodies, themselves encaged in suburban homes—Jeannie has been stripped of her magical powers and permanently bound to earth. The feminization of the genie—her imprisonment in the home— contaminated the depiction of the male astronaut in the 90s, and he was feminized as a human whose true goal was to get home. Apollo 13 welcomed the collapse (back) into the earth of the astronaut: the failure of the mission was a “successful” failure because the men were brought home. As Jodi Dean remarks, “Although ostensibly about a 1960s mission to the moon, the recent film Apollo 13 is really about coming home in the 1990s” (62). The family-values discourse of Apollo 13 proclaims that what goes up must come down, even if the mission is aborted.

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Men may try to escape materiality and domesticity (their wives and children) by blasting off, but they are ultimately anchored to the suburban home and its resident housewife. We may read this as meaning that certain “astronaut hero” scenarios are, in the end, failed attempts to escape from the women at home. In this way, the positive side of technological failure is demonstrated: once the machine-man symbiosis ceases to function, the astronaut longs for his family on earth. The ultimate mission is to get the men home, and “return trauma” (a term used by novelist Catherine Bush to describe the adjustment difficulties of astronauts and their families after a mission) is never an issue. Once the men are home, the story ends. Family values are, then, concerned with keeping both men and women tied to earth, but it is the men who must be re-tied after an escape attempt; the women were always there. The fragility of earth marriages is reinforced in Apollo 13 and The Original Wives Club in scenes that foreground the wedding ring; both scenes are based in reality. In Apollo 13, Marilyn Lovell loses her ring down the shower drain the day of her husband’s launch. In The Original Wives Club, astronaut Ken Mattingly (Zeljko Ivanek) loses his ring while on the Apollo 16 mission. To underscore the relationship between the ring, woman, and the material, Mattingly is said to have accidentally lost the ring in zero-gravity while making a bowel movement—one of the most intimate of private sphere acts which the astronauts had to perform in the “public” space of the capsule. Another of the astronauts remarks that the ring is “not NASA approved equipment for space travel,” implying that marriage and NASA are not completely suitable to each other. The ring floating through the capsule represents the in-between time of the space flight, when the wife is at home worrying before the television set and the husband’s tie to the earth has been suspended. Toward the end of the film, the ring returns to its owner, implying that marriages may indeed survive the launch into space. Two astronauts pronounce the word “home” at important junctures in Apollo 13. Jim Lovell, the film’s central astronaut, husband, and father, uses the word once the magnitude of the problem is revealed: “Gentlemen,” he asks of fellow astronauts Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, “what are your intentions? I want to go home.” In an interview with Lovell broadcast on television during the mission, the astronaut speaks of a plane accident he had previously averted, “You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.” Moreover, Ken Mattingly, the astronaut left earthbound because of a health problem (he later flew on Apollo 16, as mentioned above), tells the crew upon their return, “Odyssey. Houston. Welcome home.” The relationship between Apollo/

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NASA and home in the 1990s is also displayed in Lovell’s words at the end of the film, when he states that Apollo 13 was his last mission and that he watched subsequent ones either from Mission Control or from his home. After Apollo 13 the Space Race was for Lovell what it had always been for his wife: a televised event. After acting in Apollo 13, Tom Hanks decided to film the entirety of the Apollo story as recounted in Andrew Chaikin’s A Man on the Moon, published with Time-Life. With a running time of 639 minutes, From the Earth to the Moon aims in part to complete the story of Apollo known to the public by including those formerly left out: “Powerfully told as never before, these are the stories of the men, women and children, who lived, breathed, and manufactured from the power of the human will, one of the greatest achievements in the history of man” (back of box, HBO Home Video). Chaikin had devoted some space to the wives—in particular Marilyn Lovell, Susan Borman, and Joan Aldrin—and this grew into The Original Wives Club, part 11 of the series. At the beginning of this part, narrator Hanks asserts that the wives suffered stress “equal” to that of their husbands, “as if they themselves had made the voyage from the Earth to the moon.” The film is then framed with a Junior League fashion show featuring the Next Nine wives, the wives of the second group of astronauts (for Gemini and Apollo), chosen in 1962.2 The odd attempt to put a feminist spin on the Space Race is repeated in the film when the emcee of the show calls the women “hard working pioneers in their own right.” This phrase falls flat, however, as the “pioneers” continue to show off the latest “out of this world” outfits for earth women: was walking the runway in NASA-inspired garb truly “equal” to dressing for spaceflight? Astronaut wives appear off and on throughout the 12-part HBO series, but they are the special focus of The Original Wives Club. Directed by a woman, actress Sally Field, the film asserts some centrality in the space story for the women of Apollo—they are at least 1/12th of the story. The real women of the Next Nine were neighbors in suburban Houston and began to meet regularly in December 1963. Two Mercury wives are represented in the film: Trudy Cooper and Marge Slayton. These two are the grandes dames of the wives club, the older and seasoned astronaut spouses who give direction to the women; meanwhile, the actress who plays Trudy Cooper, Sally Field, directs the film. In reality, Marge Slayton organized the A.W.C., Astronaut Wives Club, for the Mercury and New Nine wives. The New Nine wives were: Pat White, wife of Edward White (who died in the Apollo 1 fire); Marilyn See, wife of Elliot See (who died

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in an aircraft accident); Marilyn Lovell, wife of Jim Lovell (who flew in two Gemini orbiters and then in Apollos 8 and 13); Susan Borman, wife of Frank Borman (who flew on Gemini 7 and Apollo 8); Jane Conrad, wife of Pete Conrad (who flew two Gemini orbiters and Apollo 12; Jane Conrad is the “Jane” of Wolfe’s The Right Stuff); Jan Armstrong, wife of Neil Armstrong (who flew on Gemini 8 and the first man to walk on the moon); Faye Stafford, wife of Tom Stafford (who flew on two Gemini orbiters and on Apollo 10); Barbara Young, wife of John Young (who flew on two Gemini orbiters and Apollos 10 and 16); and Pat McDivitt, wife of Jim McDivitt (who flew Gemini 4 and Apollo 9) (Figure 3.2). Although laudable on the surface, the depiction offers a lifeless portrayal of astronaut wives. The magazine Life had portrayed the wives as “thrilled, proud, happy”; this film merely turns the tables and portrays them as anxious, angry, and alcoholic. The wives wait, drink, smoke, cry, and prepare deviled eggs—they are heroic, but their heroism is of a particularly banal type. They are constantly warned—by each other, by their husbands, by NASA—that they may hurt their husbands’ chances of flying in the Apollo program, and this is certainly based in reality. The wives are also there to protect and support each other. Their principle duty is, however, to avoid divorce. Early in the film, a wife states clearly that in terms of NASA’s reaction it is better to be a widow than a divorcee, “At least you get out of here with some dignity,” and that there is “a code of behavior” if one is a widow. Yet there are no real clashes with their husbands, who are portrayed as sometimes slightly

Figure 3.2 Club.

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The wives gather for coffee and deviled eggs in The Original Wives

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testy but always supportive; none of their infidelities are mentioned. Through the creation of women who are visually perfect in every way, even when they tear up or drink too much, The Original Wives Club reinforces the image of the wives that NASA wished to display and that Life subscribers saw from 1959 to 69. Rather than breaking through to the “real” women of the Space Race—and I’m not sure we can ever know what that might mean—the film endorses an artificial representation of them, creating in effect “stand-in” wives. These are not women, these are astronaut wives and NASA wives: they are media effects who remain on display in a never ending fashion show. Before films about space wives, there were the articles in Life magazine, which had an exclusive contract for the personal stories of astronauts and their families. The contract with Life, worth one million dollars, cemented the nexus joining NASA, the media, and consumerism.3 How the wives were managed and mis-managed by NASA and Life contributed to the construction—the very early embodiment—of the female astronaut. During the decade of the Space Race, astronaut wives were the focus of Life time after time, from “Seven Brave Women behind the Astronauts” of 1959 to similar articles on the Gemini and Apollo wives and children through to the end of the 1960s.4 A major factor in the success of this promotion was the choice of the most popular American photojournalism magazine as conduit of astronaut and astronaut family stories. As the largest circular of its kind in the United States, Life guaranteed a national audience; as a magazine that brought together the political and the domestic under the broad title Life, it turned history, including space travel, into the everyday. By signing contracts with the Mercury 7, Life presented itself as the only media outlet to truthfully represent the Space Race, although other media (including LOOK magazine) featured the astronaut families. Life’s 1959 profile of the Mercury 7 wives was unusual in that each woman wrote a short piece describing her state of mind. (The Mercury wives were Anna or Annie Glenn, Louise Shepard, Trudy Cooper, Marjorie Slayton, Rene Carpenter, Betty Grissom, and Jo Schirra.) She was not the main character of the story—her narrative was secondary to her husband’s arrow of time—and NASA tightly controlled what was written, but the essays did offer some semblance of agency to the women. A common denominator in the brief pieces, which revealed the “brave inner thoughts of a spaceman’s wife” and which carried subtitles such as “There are no dark feelings” and “I have never been worried,” was an emphasis on the faith of the astronaut’s wife. This faith concerned both spiritual

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and material matters; faith in God was complemented by faith in technology, NASA, and the U.S. government (sometimes collapsed as one). Anna Glenn asserted: “NASA would surely not undertake a program like Project Mercury unless they knew what they were doing”; Louise Shepard mentioned her “faith in technology” and her “strong spiritual faith”; and Trudy Cooper had “an awful lot of faith in the engineering and technical skills of the people in this country.” Women were handed the role of bolstering the space program and U.S. values through their determination to believe, rather than through their propensity for action or any specific talents. Their confidence in NASA was underscored in the magazine with a photograph of the seven posed around a Mercury capsule, four of them touching it with their hands. (This image and the preceding quotes are from the September 21, 1959, issue.) Ironically, Rene Carpenter remarked later that “Life was the one thing I trusted, because you couldn’t trust NASA” (cited in Andrew Smith 217). Several years later, after all the hoopla was over, Rene Carpenter pointed out that the wives were treated with kid gloves because the “assumption was that our husbands were going to die” (cited in Mann 18). The wife was viewed as worthy of pity because she seemed always on the verge of becoming a widow, but the wives insisted that they worried only over household matters: “The only real concern I have now is in catching up on my sewing so the girls’ school clothes will be ready” (Trudy Cooper); “If I worry about anything, it’s about little things like when he will get around to fixing the closet door” (Marjorie Slayton). (Both quotes are from the September 21, 1959, issue.) Several wives noted that their concerns had been much greater when their husbands were test pilots; all claimed that the hoopla was rather mundane. This nonchalance was emphasized in the many Life photographs of the women playing with their children and hamming with each other. The domestication of space travel on the part of the wives—its representation as even more mundane than fixing a closet door—served a purpose: it contributed to the public’s faith in NASA, the government, and the nation. When the first U.S. man in space, Alan Shepard, launched in the spring of 1961, Life had Louise Shepard narrate the activities of his earthbound family (May 12, 1961). The family’s reactions are recounted step by step as they experience events through the television set (they were not present at the launch). One year later, Life devoted a cover story by Loudon Wainwright to John Glenn’s orbit and the next week to his family’s experience of the space flight, again mediated by the television set (March 2, 1962). Interestingly, the magazine cover proclaimed

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“The Glenn Story Nobody Saw: At Home with Annie and the Kids While John Orbited the Earth,” although the cover photograph itself was of John Glenn. In the narrative, Annie and her two children are joined by relatives, friends, and a minister as they keep vigil during Glenn’s three orbits. Wainwright presents “the women” as constantly busying themselves with domestic chores: making coffee and breakfast, doing dishes, sweeping out the hearth, preparing lunch. Meanwhile, a visiting male friend ensures that the three television sets are “working properly” and “television technicians” occupy the front lawn. The Glenn Story “nobody saw” was the story of a family before three television screens, presumably for the three networks. As they played out the emotions of a nation, they were recorded in Life as alternately nervous and relieved. The “story nobody saw” was, in the end, seen by all of Life’s readership. Finally, with the 1969 Apollo 11 launch and walk on the moon, wives were once again featured in the pages of Life, but on a smaller scale; Jan Armstrong, Joan Aldrin, and Pat Collins were photographed and described in their tense moments before television sets. (They were fully covered in Armstrong et al., First on the Moon.) In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as the U.S. reeled from social upheavals that threatened the image of the nation as unified by specific values, including that of family, fissures were revealed in the positive domestic narrative of the astronaut invented by NASA and Life. Although there were wives who remained committed to their husbands and committed to hiding their anxieties and fears (see, for example, Pat Collins’ poem to her husband before his Apollo 11 flight [Collins 352–3]), the mirror was cracking. When Rene Carpenter was interviewed for an article in The Washington Post in 1974, she claimed she no longer thought of either the space program or her marriage to Scott (“Look, I don’t remember the space program and I don’t think about my marriage” [cited in Mann 18]), who himself went on to three more wives. The stereotypical astronaut wife who responded to reporters as NASA wished her to, with the words “thrilled, proud, and happy,” was by the time of Apollo 12 holding up posters in front of reporters with these words displayed satirically.5 Even the image of the astronauts themselves was sullied. In the most egregious example of this, Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin broke an unspoken vow to NASA when he published a 1973 memoir detailing his struggle with his family and with depression. Joan Aldrin remarked that she had expected the moon mission to change her marriage, making it “so much more magical and meaningful and magnificent because he [her husband Buzz] had done this

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wonderful thing, whatever it was that he was going to do.” However, the moon landing did not have this effect: “Maybe six months later I realized that our marriage was exactly what it had been before, that if we ever had an argument, we argued still over the same things, but we still shared the same ideals and principles” (Armstrong et al. 198–9). An astronaut wife memoir published in 1978 revealed the dire personal circumstances of a space wife during the Apollo years. Mary Irwin, wife of Apollo 15 astronaut Jim Irwin, wrote in The Moon Is Not Enough that her attempt at “keeping up appearances” contributed to her descent into depression. When she first arrived in Houston, she writes: Almost immediately, without a word from anybody, I became aware that astronaut families are strictly bound by an indefinable public image—patriotic, all-American, courageous, super family-oriented, always doing and saying the right things . . . Certainly I did not want to risk spoiling this image, however false it was. (64–5) Within a few years, Irwin tired of the image imposed on her: “I began to realize that being an astronaut’s wife meant being almost a nonentity” (84). Like Buzz Aldrin, Irwin records that NASA wished to keep her depression and treatment from reaching the press, while at home she worked to keep her marriage together, with the knowledge that divorce would jeopardize her husband’s moon slot. What saved the Irwins’ marriage was a common devotion to religion (Jim famously had a religious experience on the moon) as well as Mary’s decision to become, as she says, more “submissive.” As for Buzz Aldrin’s memoir, it ends with the hope of a renewed connection with his wife, but Buzz and Joan divorced soon after the publication of the book and the former astronaut has remarried twice. Before divorce became more socially acceptable as the 60s passed, the only way out of marriage was through widowhood and an isolated and often impoverished future (astronauts were notoriously denied life insurance). The most well-known widow of the Space Race was Betty Grissom, wife of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronaut who was slated to be the first man to walk on the moon, Gus Grissom. Grissom died along with Edward White and Roger Chafee in the Apollo 1 fire on January 20, 1967. The Apollo capsule, which Gus Grissom had pronounced a “lemon,” was being tested when an electrical wire problem started a fire that ripped through it and caused toxic fumes that killed the astronauts. Media attention was focused on Betty and her two sons—as a nation

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mourned with them. During the subsequent congressional hearings on the accident, however, a North American Aviation employee suggested that Grissom could have caused the fire by stepping inadvertently on a wire. The media hopped on the story as they had on the “exploding hatch” incident that had plagued Grissom in his Mercury flight, although this time the media defended the astronaut; still, a second cloud tainted Grissom’s reputation. Almost 4 years after the fire, Betty Grissom filed suit against North American Rockwell and she and her sons received $350,000 for the pain suffered by Grissom in the last 15 seconds of his life. But this time, the widow’s reputation suffered: Grissom was lambasted by the press and the public for being unpatriotic and wanting to profit from the risks that her husband willingly took. In her memoir, Starfall, she tells of her financial difficulties after widowhood and complains of the public’s and NASA’s ignorance (in NASA’s case, purposeful) of her fate.6 In the chapter “Good-bye Togethersville” (“togethersville” was a term used to describe astronaut culture in the early years), Betty Grissom also states that although it may have seemed natural for astronaut widows (there were eight by the end of 1967) to form their own group, she felt no special tie with them. However, the widows were singled out by other wives—“Everyone was making plans to fly down to Acapulco for Easter weekend. One of the wives said, ‘But there’s no widows going to be allowed on this trip. This is going to be a fun trip’ ” (Grissom 216)—and by male astronauts who wanted the widows out of the pool of recipients of payment from Life. “I realized right then that the astronauts didn’t give a damn about the widows,” wrote Grissom (222). This reality is reflected in The Original Wives Club when widow Pat White tells another astronaut’s wife that she intends to move away from Houston: “I can’t stay in this town anymore. Nobody cares about me. They cared about Ed. Ed’s gone, I’m not.”7 A look at the representation of the potential widow’s situation in the opening passages of Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, in which the women are married to military jet test pilots, underscores the wife’s tie to the home and the degree to which the male astronaut was an effect of her earthbound body. In the second chapter of the novel, “The Right Stuff,” what it takes to be a test pilot and what it takes to be a man are summarized and equated: the Right Stuff is bravery. It is the 1950s and the men are involved in speed experiments at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station and the Muroc Army Air Field. The Right Stuff (the capital letters are Wolfe’s) defines those men who escape becoming corpses. But it is the test pilot wives’ “stuff” that opens the novel; the first chapter is called

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“The Angels.” The Angels are the women who spend their days at home fearing the arrival of the “Friend of Widows and Orphans” (4, 6), the man in black, “a clergyman or a comrade of the newly deceased” (2) who will pronounce them Angels. Yet the clergyman or comrade—“a competent male death messenger” (6)—is the angel of death who brings the news to the newly widowed, the messenger who turns the wife into a death angel. Wolfe’s first chapter begins in 1955 with Jane Conrad, wife of Pete Conrad (later of the Next Nine), who represents the pilot wife. She has nightmares and hallucinations of the male “figure” (10, 12) coming up her sidewalk. She watches from her window and waits for the doorbell to ring. In Wolfe’s novel, the threshold dividing public and private spheres represents the threshold of life and death; the sound of the doorbell serves as sign of the passage from one state to the other. Wolfe’s housewives are isolated in their homes; unlike Jeannie, they cannot blink their way out. Instead, they can only establish a disembodied relationship with others, in this case other pilot wives, through the telephone. Whereas the doorbell serves as communicator for the man in black and stands in for the passage from the outside world into the home, the telephone— located within the home—serves as relay between the wives as they piece together the goings-on outside. From the opening lines of The Right Stuff, Wolfe identifies the telephone as the medium of communication between angels: “Within five minutes, or ten minutes, no more than that, three of the others had called her on the telephone to ask her if she had heard that something had happened out there” (1). The idea that “something has happened” is relayed to the wives in a “circuit”: “the fever rises by the minute as five, ten, fifteen, and, finally, nearly all twenty of the wives join the circuit, trying to find out what has happened, which, in fact, means: to whose husband” (2); “After thirty minutes on such a circuit—this is not an unusual morning around here—a wife begins to feel that the telephone is no longer located on a table or on the kitchen wall. It is exploding in her solar plexus” (2). The ring of the doorbell is more foreboding than the ring of the telephone, but it is over the phone that the arrival of the messenger of death is prepared: “all the telephone calls from the wives were the frantic and portentous beating of the wings of the death angels” (2). The Angels’ conversations are brief and involve a code, or shorthand: Jane, this is Alice. Listen, I just got a call from Betty, and she said she heard something’s happened out there. Have you heard anything? . . .

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Connie, this is Jane Conrad. Alice just called me, and she says something’s happened. (3) The emphasis on first names, the repetition of phrases (“something’s happened”), and the use of vague, or code, terminology (“something”) renders the women’s conversation meaningless to those out of the circuit. At times, the words have no real message beyond that of the medium itself: I am on the phone to so-and-so, who was just on the phone to so-and-so. The wives avoid the absence of the pilot—the absence of his dead body, the object that cannot be spoken—by cramming their would-be exchanges with names and repeated empty phrases. They make contact only to make nothing of this contact—and that, it is implied, is the message of the medium. The telephone is the technology that allows the widowhood of the wife to be known, to be narrated by Wolfe, and to become part of a larger narrative on men, women, and space. (For a real example of a wives’ phone loop as late as 1970, see Lovell and Kluger, 120–1.) Wolfe’s women have their own dialect, “Wife Lingo,” which identifies them in the way that the “Right Stuff” identifies the men. Both “Wife Lingo” and “Right Stuff” refer to something that cannot be spoken: the Right Stuff is bravery, a quality that cannot be expressed in words; Wife Lingo is talking, but talking in circles. The Right Stuff makes of the men potential corpses; Wife Lingo provides a means of simulating talk about these corpses. The corpse will not appear on the doorstep, it is suggested, if one refuses to speak of it directly. And by speaking only through the telephone and then only in snatches and with constantly changing interlopers, the women become themselves disembodied voices, voices that deny the reality of all embodiment, including and especially that of burnt corpses. The contrast between the women’s (and men’s) avoidance of terms indicating death and Wolfe’s description of a dead pilot is startling. Only Wolfe, the author, can speak of death in a straightforward fashion: But Jennings, an amiable fellow, a promising young fighter pilot, was now a horrible roasted hulk—with no head. His head was completely gone, apparently torn off the spinal column like a pineapple off a stalk, except that it was nowhere to be found. (5) The curds were Bud Jennings’ brains. The tree trunk had smashed through the cockpit canopy of the SNJ and knocked Bud Jenning’s head to pieces like a melon. (6) This is what the women can’t or won’t say, Wolfe suggests; something has happened, indeed.

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As important as it was, the telephone was not the only means by which information about the space program was relayed into the domestic sphere; other disembodied voices of the Space Race were heard by wives over the radio and the NASA “squawk box.” Yet television, of course, was the Space Age technology that defined the wife’s relationship to the absent husband—this time, she could see his body (in space) on the screen, although she herself was once again reduced to a voice. This was true in large part because, as Jodi Dean notes, the Space Age was “made to be watched [on television]” (69; see also McCurdy 4–5). And this was especially true as of Apollo 10, when color television images were broadcast from the capsule (and ultimately from the moon) on a regular basis. Television delivered messages about space flights and Space Age consumer products into the home and defined middle-class wives’ relationship to technology during the Space Race—it encouraged women to experience the world from inside the home at the same time that its presence in the home designated domesticity and “women’s place” as forevermore intertwined with technology. Satellite television mediated bodies, the bodies of the astronaut and the wife, by linking these two together for communication purposes; it also pointed to the disembodied aspect of all bodies in space, however.

II. The Engineered Century8 I have argued that in fictions of women in space the woman’s body is typically tied to earth and to home and the man’s body to space and the unfamiliar. This opposition follows a traditional one in western culture: material woman serves as backup or support to ethereal man. Yet things are not so simple. Depending on the issues that U.S. society was grappling with during the years in which particular films were made, some narratives set up a strict opposition between home and space while others—most, in fact—situate the astronaut and wife bodies in ambiguous interstices, or inter-spaces. In The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, and The Original Wives Club, produced during the family values decades of the 80s and 90s, women stay earthbound and work to draw men (as with the force of gravity) back from space to the earth. Meanwhile, their homes are filled with technological gadgets that allow them (at least seemingly) to defy their earthbound natures by communicating with each other and even with their men in space. It was not true that in space no one could hear you scream: the wife was almost always on the end of the line.9 This section looks more closely at how household technologies

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contributed to defining woman’s embodiment as an anchor to the man in space, himself busy with his own gadgets—the capsule and its buttons and buzzers. That women of the 1950s and 1960s were aligned with household technologies as extensions of their bodies points to an effort to bind women to earth; however, these technologies also suggest a means of escape from the prison of the living room, through satellite and other space inventions. This step in the construction of the female astronaut was crucial: once she could manage the household as would an engineer, she was deemed ready, in some sense at least, to launch into space. The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, and The Original Wives Club place space wives in suburban homes in Houston near the Johnson Space Center. Beginning in 1962, special developments were built in that area with the Mercury and Next Nine astronaut families in mind. The Mercury astronauts had not lived in the KSC area, and their wives were banned from launches, because NASA believed that the women’s presence could distract the astronauts. However, in the 1950s and 1960s the Cape area was home to thousands of “space wives,” the wives of engineers and technicians who worked for NASA or technology and aerospace firms. The wives in these households fall within the category—within the orbit—of “women in space.” They may even be called “astronaut wives,” since their home lives were impacted significantly by the man-in-space program. A brief look at their situation will illuminate the connection between astronaut wives and the technologies of the home. Germaine Greer devoted a page of The Female Eunuch (1970), in the chapter “Misery,” to astronaut wives. For Greer, the misery of the wives came from NASA’s “deliberate desensitizing of astronauts,” which led the wives to “drunkenness and promiscuity” (279), and Cape Kennedy was identified as the environment for this misery. A short article published in Time magazine in July 1969 also bluntly described the lives of KSC workers and their wives in sharp contrast to the Life articles. According to Time : the technicians who assemble and service the rockets have chosen a tense career that has taken its toll on their personalities, their marriages, and their community. Local psychiatrists and social workers describe the prevailing pattern of life as “the engineer syndrome.” (“Life in the Space Age” 38) The “engineer syndrome” is the product of an unnatural local environment: “ ‘It’s not a natural environment,’ complains Ray Forbes of General Electric, who visits the space center for launchings but leaves as

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soon as he can. ‘Down here you oversmoke, overeat, overdrink, overworry and undersleep’ ” (38). Nor is it a natural site for monogamy: Professionals [prostitutes] were unnecessary, explained a succession of bartenders and bellhops, because of the numerous eager amateurs, among them single girls and divorcees drawn to the secretarial ranks of NASA and the space contractors. Liaisons often begin at “Thank God It’s Friday” parties that fill the bars until past midnight, or at the frantic launch and splash-down celebrations thrown at the Mouse Trap or The Missile Lounge in Cocoa Beach. (43) “Cape Cookies”—as the women were referred to—seem to have attracted all astronauts except for John Glenn, NASA’s poster boy of upstanding morals. The visiting Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts easily found female companionship in Cocoa Beach bars, as depicted in The Right Stuff. Wolfe also notes that the Cape was characterized by “Drinking and Driving”: “And like the Edwards of old, the Cape, this godforsaken afterthought in the march of terrestrial evolution, turned out to be a paradise of Flying & Drinking and Drinking & Driving and Driving & the rest, for those who cared about such things” (128); and “Cocoa Beach was so Low Rent that nothing on this Earth could ever change it . . . Even the beach at Cocoa Beach was Low Rent” (Wolfe, 127).10 Out-of-control parties in motels and bars were one side of the “engineer syndrome” coin; on the flip side was an obsessive emphasis on control and order in the private sphere. The same Time article noted: [these men are] “intelligent, perfectionist males who are usually intolerant of the feelings of those around them,” says Psychiatrist Burton Podnos, administrator of the local Mental Health Center. “Absorbed all day in scientific precision, engineers are apt to accuse their wives of sloppy housekeeping if they find an unwashed coffee cup in the sink. It is hard for them to understand why there is not an effective system for toilet-training the baby.” (38) The so-called “science of household engineering,” promoted since the turn of the century and especially in the 1950s and early 60s, represented husbands and wives as integral parts of a system called the home. But the distance between missile engineering and domestic engineering revealed that in fact husbands and wives were on different spinning trajectories, distinct allowed orbits. Space science and home economics could not be

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reconciled in this scenario. A third figure, the psychiatrist, appeared on hand to listen to tales of domestic engineering gone awry; we can now better appreciate the importance given the psychiatrist Dr. Bellows in the series I Dream of Jeannie. Divorce was common due to the abundance of available women and because the men brought home expectations that the engineering of their domestic space should equal the precision engineering at KSC. As a KSC official stated, “We need a great many understanding wives here” (quoted in Faherty 114). As the Mercury 7 wives’ accounts of happy households in Life may be seen to have opened the Space Race, divorces in Houston beginning in the late 60s may be seen to have closed it. Whereas Cocoa Beach represented the wild beach party that never ended but that was kept separate from astronaut wives (although not from wives of other KSC workers), Houston came to represent the family life of the astronauts as well as its demise. One role of the wives was to ignore the infidelity, as Betty Grissom did. She explains: I went through a hard few months and finally made up my mind there wasn’t anything I could do about it and I wasn’t going to sit around and worry . . . I’m not saying Gus didn’t have girl friends [sic], but . . . .” (136) Buzz Aldrin comments that this state of affairs ran counter to the representation of astronauts and their wives in Life: I suppose the portrayal we received in Life and subsequently in nearly all the media, helped the space program a great deal . . . To read it was to believe we were the most simon-pure guys there had ever been. This simply was not so. (302) According to astronaut Gene Cernan, talk of divorce began in 1968 and the “divorce bubble” burst in 1969: “the debris landed everywhere, upsetting the delicate, invisible support system that had protected astronauts and their families from the ugliness of the real world” (241). The first casualty was the marriage of Donn Eisele. This era marked the beginning of the end of the “Wives Club.” In the film The Original Wives Club, the last meeting of the wives has only four present, and one of these is about to move away. The wives remark that Eisele’s divorce, rather than excluding him from the space program, appeared to pave the way for further divorces.11 When Time magazine foregrounded the “engineering syndrome” it highlighted a term—“engineering”—that had taken on broad meaning

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by the 1960s. To engineer something means to control and manipulate a process or object, and “engineering” expressed middle-class American values of control and orderliness. The terms “household” or “domestic engineering” were phrases familiar throughout the twentieth century. Magazines such as Ladies Home Journal (est. 1883) and Good Housekeeping (est. 1885) spread the gospel of the home as a system requiring proper management. From the late nineteenth century, the home was identified as a machine to be managed scientifically and with efficiency, and this management was the duty of the housewife, as expressed by home economist Christine Frederick in 1919: Household Engineering has only tried to show the new, modern conception of homemaking, with its many possibilities for scientific work, for the use of improved machinery in the home, for less waste in materials, energy and time—to the end that the woman herself, and her family, and the nation be developed to the fullest power and vantage ground in health, happiness and true prosperity. (515) Frederick and dozens of other authors produced handbooks and manuals to help women learn the principles by which the home could be managed through “scientific work,” much as a laboratory. The use of modern tools was central to this management, especially those that functioned automatically, whether a “revolving table server” or a dishwasher.12 The twentieth century promoted the exploration and exploitation of both inner and outer space, both domestic and alien spheres, the space of the home/body and the space of the void of space. At the same time that western culture welcomed the conquest of a New Frontier, it encouraged families to take shelter in homes that would protect them from potential (nuclear) fallout from this quest. After WWII, American domestic engineering and management came to depend on a connection between the home and space technology, a “relationship among domestic appliances, femininity, and rocket science” (Spigel, “From Theatre to Space Ship” 228). Rocket science was credited with having created spinoff technologies useful in the home, the most famous example of which was Teflon. Ironically, the connection between women and “modern household aids”—ever newer and better vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens, coffee makers, refrigerators, electric irons, etc.—was touted by the Mercury 13’s Jane Hart as making it timely to send women into space: “Our affluent society, after all, has provided so many household aids that the intelligent, energetic housewife can find many hours to devote to other useful purposes” (Qualifications 8). But in fact the quests for space

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and home supremacy were often at odds: after Sputnik, the U.S. media and public blamed American engineers for having focused too much on home appliances and not enough on beating the Russians to space. Whichever way one looked at it, women, (space) technologies, and the binary earth/home were intricately tied to the point where one could not be thought without the other. Rene Carpenter underscored this intricate bond by inventing a comical scene with an imaginary reporter. When asked what her second wish was, after her husband’s safe return, she replied, “Well, Nancy, I’d wish for an Electrolux vacuum cleaner with all the attachments” (as recounted in Wolfe 323). Astronauts also saw themselves as interfacing with new technologies, as was evident in the Mercury 7 members’ desire to maintain control over their capsules. The design of the astronaut “into [these] systems” (Glenn, Qualifications 48) was part and parcel of the selling of the Space Race as a national feat that required heroic individuals (male astronauts) using ever newer—or at least appearing to be newer—technologies to overcome both the Soviets and earth’s gravity. NASA drew upon and reinforced twentieth-century fascination with technological gadgets that seemingly endowed both the individual and the nation with purpose. At the same time, space technology was promoted as a boon to earth technologies. As Michael L. Smith explains: “Space men were hailed as deliverers of a storehouse of unanticipated wonders, from Teflon to improved electrocardiographs” (207). Glenn’s statement after his return to earth, “Now we can get rid of some of that automatic equipment and let man take over” (quoted in McCurdy 216, and Michael L. Smith 202), suggested a nation of consumers who were ultimately ambivalent about technology: automation was good as long as man and woman at least appeared to remain in control. Engineering, which walked the porous boundary between technology and science, was argued to be the appropriate field of study or profession for astronauts, although a distinction between engineer astronauts— daring and ready to forego safety—and the engineers at Mission Control—reluctant to push the envelope—was clearly drawn. As noted in Chapter 1 of this study, engineering as a field of study and work was all but shut off to women in the 50s and 60s, in part due to the idea that women could not understand, much less master, technology. This belief was reflected in and reinforced by the zany interactions between women and domestic gadgets in television shows: at times, the gadgets were seemingly on “automatic pilot” and ran amok; at other times, the women’s errors caused the machines to go haywire. It was a contradictory stance,

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given that women were welcome to train in home management or economics. The technologies or gadgets that made women part of the hardwiring itself of the home—as astronauts were presented as part of the capsule’s hardwiring—were the telephone, radio, and especially television. Although these technologies predated the Space Race, they took on meanings during the 1960s that aligned them with space engineering as integral to the success of the nation’s domestic—and, by extension, international—tranquility. I Dream of Jeannie is a good example of a sitcom that relied for humor on the disconnect between women and technology. The misuse of devices is especially evident in the first-year episode “The Americanization of Jeannie” (episode 8; aired November 6, 1965). Jeannie is desperate to play the role of the modern housewife, desperate to participate in a female national identity that prioritized the use of “miracle” gadgets. She thus finds employment outside the home demonstrating “the miracle oven” at Sam’s Discount Center. She exaggerates the appliance’s abilities by blinking a roast and a cake cooked to perfection—talk about automatic pilot—causing the female audience to swoon and pull out their checkbooks. Tony, spying from the corner and well aware of Jeannie’s manipulations, mutters to the women “when you get home, it won’t work.” The hoax is revealed after a housewife accuses Jeannie of being a fraud, and Tony must lead a perplexed Jeannie from the store. Jeannie has been manipulated by advertising: her crime is to have made a “miracle” oven produce miracles. The true American housewife seemed, however, to have understood at least to some extent that terms such as “miracle” and “space age” exaggerated the qualities of gadgets.13 Both Apollo 13 and The Original Wives Club place emphasis on Marilyn Lovell as the prototypical—the most representative and “representable”— wife of the astronaut. She was, not surprisingly, a wife whose marriage endured. In Apollo 13, Marilyn tells her husband how she spent her time during his Apollo 8 mission: “When you were on the far side I didn’t sleep at all, I just vacuumed over and over again.” Husband and wife have differing relationships to technology: while Jim commands the capsule, Marilyn performs the same domestic task over and over. Yet the repetition compulsion of the vacuuming housewife also suggests a cover or screen for something else, such as her fears. Indeed, the realism of Apollo 13 is in part validated through an insistence on the wife’s anxiety, which removes her from one-dimensional representation in Life magazine—in which domestic chores are themselves the only worry—to the

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two-dimensionality of Apollo 13, in which wives do chores to fend off the fear of widowhood. But Marilyn vacuuming is in the end not a sign of her “control” over herself or over her home. The reference instead brings the vacuum of space and the vacuum of suburban life into stereoscopic focus. Indeed, descriptions of outer space by astronauts as a boring, desolate void, and the surface of the moon as flat and uninteresting remind one of the white middle-class housewife’s experience of the home, that is, of “the problem with no name” as delineated in Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. Although “time-saving” appliances were meant to lead to a lessening of household chores and although housework was cast as a “science” requiring an education in consumerism, women despaired of the repetitive, boring, and vacuous nature of their tasks. The home had itself become a vacuum cleaner that sucked women into a comfy cocoon—a genie’s bottle, a capsule—that was in fact a void, a black hole: they may as well have been in space. As a film, Apollo 13 is very much in control of its gadgets and technologies, down to the details, and for this reason it is known among NASA employees and other fans as the most realistic film produced to date about space travel. Although the film is about technology gone awry, it suggests that the machine’s (a liquid oxygen tank’s) malfunction is not man’s doing—not the result of his mismanagement of technology—but rather an opportunity to take over the automatic pilot of the machine and display the engineer’s ability to manipulate technology so that it does the right thing. As Andrew Smith has noted, until the 1990s the Apollo 13 mission was viewed as a failure (180). Without the “successful failure” recast as NASA’s “finest hour,” the film would have no premise—it itself would fail. In fact, this film is less about the successes of the Space Race (why not a drama about the first walk on the moon?) than about the dangers of space technology and the need for human men—engineers—to intervene. On the one hand, NASA is displayed in the film as a place where the simplest of technologies fail: an overhead projector, for instance, does not work. On the other hand, the organization’s men are savvy enough to put a “square peg in a round hole,” and thus remove the threat of CO2 poisoning in the capsule. By not dealing with the full causes of the malfunction—Hanks, in a finale voice-over as Lovell, refers to a “damaged coil,” but the problems with the oxygen tank were numerous and the subject of a lengthy investigation—the focus is put on the mission as a success, not a failure, of men. And this “successful” failure of technology drew immense crowds to the movies: technology was in the end successful, as the film reaped millions.14

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One technology that did work in the 1960s was television. The Space Race is intimately tied to this technology, first introduced in 1939, in part because if the Apollo launches and moon landings were not seen by the public they would not have been believed. The relation among nation, family, consumerism, science, and technology would not have stuck, so to speak: “The manned space program demonstrated that the national purpose had joined the other commodities of consumer culture as something that could be televised and sold” (Michael L. Smith 207–8; and see Spigel, Welcome 108). Television contributed positively to NASA’s selfpresentation, but ultimately the relationship between television, family, and space was ambivalent. That the Space Race was televised added to Americans’ sense of superiority, in part because the Russian orbits had been kept secret; television was also thought to bring the world (and the solar system) into the public’s living room—this was good. But the launching of the American satellite Telstar in 1962 and the increased use of television that followed also exposed the family to a new level of penetration and surveillance from the outside—we’re watching them but they may also be watching us, it was feared. This paranoia was transferred, in popular culture, onto extraterrestrials. On the positive side, television encouraged family togetherness mediated by the console; on the negative side, television fragmented the family, as some shows were gendered as masculine, others feminine. Critics noted, furthermore, that men were watching television, and the women on it, more than they were watching their wives. Television was informative, those in favor of it argued; television was a vacuum, stated others.15 Television commercials claimed that their products were simple enough for women to operate; women who operated television sets were seen as intrusive in the home, as taking an active role best left to husbands. Television became significant in the new scientific management of the household, especially as concerned the gaze in the home—who could look at whom and who would look at what (Spigel, “Domestic Space” 25). Along with the gaze, the voice was appropriated; the “control voice” that introduced the episodes of The Outer Limits (1963–65) said it all: “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission.” Finally, from early on, television told women that their place was not in space; in the “First Woman on the Moon” episode of Men into Space (1959–60), the spacewife is told by her husband, “Your place is on earth at home where I know you’re safe.”16 A very real example of the link between the sitcom, television, and space was the fact that the final episode of Jeannie was preempted by the

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Figure 3.3 Astronaut wife Susan Borman (Rita Wilson) irons, drinks, smokes, and watches I Dream of Jeannie in The Original Wives Club (dir. Sally Field, 1998).

Apollo 13 disaster (Cox 191). Another example is the depiction of the astronaut wife in The Original Wives Club as watching I Dream of Jeannie (Figure 3.3). As for Apollo 13, the film opens with a scene in front of the living room television, as space families watch the Apollo 11 moonwalk. The film plays on multiple screenings of the astronauts and thus on the artificiality or theater-like nature of the Space Race: both the Apollo 11 success and the Apollo 13 failure were televised live—and here they are re-broadcast in a Hollywood film. Apollo 13 offers a plethora of wiveswatching-television scenes, just as the wives were photographed for Life before the television set. But in Apollo 13, the television set becomes a true mediator between wife and space only after the mission is in jeopardy. Until then, television stations were uninterested in broadcasting the mission. The Space Age and the televising of it—in the end, eerily similar events—were, in a very real sense, over by 1970. Thus, Lovell’s family begins his mission without visual confirmation of his status except when Marilyn leaves the home and goes to the Johnson Space Center to see him on film. Instead, the wife has a squawk box from NASA that is identified as a technology specifically meant to keep her informed and that is placed in the privacy of her bedroom: The box served as a listen-only intercom that allowed an astronaut’s wife to monitor the communications between her husband and the Capcom around the clock. Better than 90 percent of what families could ever hope to hear on this party line was incomprehensible—a lot of

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numbers and vectors that even the flight controllers themselves occasionally found tedious. But Marilyn and the other wives were listening less for the words than they were for the Tone—the Trouble Tone— and for this the box could be indispensable. (Kluger and Lovell 119) In the film, Marilyn cries as she listens to static over the squawk box with astronaut wife Jane Conrad beside her. Once the mission begins to fail, the media understand the prospects of high ratings and the home television becomes the primary bearer of bad, but eventually good, news. The wife can now access her husband on television. The principle television, in the living room, is watched by Marilyn, the children, and at times their minister, a protocol man, and astronaut wives, especially Jane Conrad (Figure 3.4). A second one is set up in the family room for Blanche Lovell, the astronaut’s mother, who is kept isolated from the rest of the family, ostensibly to shield her from family and media hysteria. A third set is in a classroom and is watched by the oldest Lovell son with his classmates, since he is away at a military boarding school. Although Marilyn learns of the mission primarily through the television set—and thus is aligned with it—she becomes angry with the medium of television several times during the film. When she is told initially that the networks are not covering the mission, she is angry (this is reinforced with an image of Blanche’s confusion about why her son does not appear on the nursing home television). If the problem in space is a malfunctioning oxygen tank, the problem on earth is that although the television functions, it refuses to tune to the right channel, so to speak. Once the Apollo 13 men are all over the news, Marilyn turns

Figure 3.4 Marilyn Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan) catches up on news about her astronaut husband by watching television in Apollo 13 (dir. Ron Howard, 1995).

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her anger to the press gathering on her lawn and refuses to allow them to set up equipment. In direct retaliation for the networks’ lack of interest in her husband’s story until it turns disastrous, she states, “if they have a problem with that they can take it up with my husband.” This reinforces the idea that Apollo 13 the film is about television and the relationship between television and Apollo: what the viewers (the Lovells and we, the moviegoers) desire in the end is for the television to function, for it to turn back on, signaling that the men have arrived home safely. By contrast, The Original Wives Club does not foreground the television and the squawk box as technologies tying the wives to the astronauts. An impressive scene shows Susan Borman simultaneously ironing, drinking, smoking, and watching TV: she irons because she is a housewife; she drinks because she is a NASA wife; she watches Jeannie because she herself is spectacle, a “woman in space.” The overall lack of emphasis on television in the film underscores, however, the film’s stated intent to portray the wives themselves, and not the relationship between wives and astronauts (at least in terms of astronaut missions). When a relationship is represented, it is usually that between two wives from among the group. A significant scene depicts the relationship between communication technology and women, however: the June 1965 visit of the so-called “Gemini twins,” Pat White and Pat McDivitt, to the Johnson Space Center, where they are the first wives to speak to their (Gemini IV) husbands in space (Figure 3.5). As with the chimpanzees Ham and Enos, who served as surrogate astronauts before the Mercury flights, the wives’ task here is

Figure 3.5 The Gemini twins (Pat McDivitt and Pat White) talk to their husbands in space. Photo: NASA.

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to simply push a few buttons. But unlike the chimps, one of them—the ever-nervous Pat White—is unable to perform. Ed White gently tells his wife, “You got to push the button honey . . . that’s good.” Technology, represented by the buttons and the wives’ headsets, is the intermediary that allows husbands and wives to communicate, but this wife is so nervous and so inept that her conversation with her husband becomes, like the telephone conversations at the beginning of The Right Stuff, devoid of meaning: the only message is the medium. The emphasis on women’s hair becoming entangled in the headsets caps this off as a scene that proposes less the success of the women/space connection (even if by way of the husband) than woman’s childlike inability to follow simple instructions (Figure 3.6). It’s a wonder they can iron and watch TV at the same time. In 1999, 4 years after the release of Apollo 13, audiences in America were treated to a very different depiction of the female “earthbound astronaut” in the sci-fi fantasy The Astronaut’s Wife. The title defines the astronaut’s gender and thus demonstrates that at the turn of the millennium astronauts are still coded as male; it would be hard to imagine, indeed, the title The Astronaut’s Husband. The title reminds us also, and without any quaint window dressing (such as the wives “club” of HBO), that the wife of the astronaut remains a subject of some interest. In fact, this film declares that the astronaut wife’s story is the story. The film draws inspiration from a long line of tales of the rape/impregnation of the human woman by an alien male as well as from director Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968). The fantasy underlying these narratives is that of

Figure 3.6 The Gemini twins of The Original Wives Club, played by DeLane Matthews and Jo Anderson, sprout bigger hair than the real Pats. Photo: NASA.

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human breeders having sex with aliens and carrying and giving birth to alien fetuses. These stories ask how women adjust to being “wives” of aliens and how extraterrestrial offspring fit into the nuclear family.17 They place emphasis on women’s ability to “embody” the Other by giving birth to it. Unlike the Marilyn Lovell portrayed in the Sally Field film, whose offspring are human to the point of sheer banality (her most scintillating adventure as a mother is her children’s tonsillectomies), these women have “babies” who are threats to the very existence of (Mother) Earth.18 The Astronaut’s Wife does not shy away from repeatedly and insistently foregrounding these family issues. Astronaut Spencer Armacost’s body has been overtaken by an alien during his trip into space; he is thus raped, metaphorically, by the alien during extravehicular activity. At home in Florida, the previously gentle Spencer impregnates his wife in an aggressive scene that borders on rape—something is clearly amiss. This sets up an invasion of inner (domestic) space by outer space, an invasion that NASA cannot or will not impede or contain. Significantly, this film has its own “man in black,” an African American and former NASA employee who warns Jillian Armacost of the danger around her. Unlike the man in black of The Right Stuff, however, this one does not foreshadow the astronaut’s death but rather warns that woman’s body is now the carrier of the death of the human species. The technology at issue in this film is (satellite) radio: the two astronauts perform their EVA, exposing themselves to the alien, while repairing a satellite; the wife of Spencer’s colleague kills herself in the shower with a plugged-in radio (Figure 3.7); Spencer leaves NASA to become a “static” man for a

Figure 3.7 The death of an astronaut’s wife by electrocution with radio in The Astronaut’s Wife (dir. Rand Ravich, 1999).

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mysterious corporation; the company has a modern weapon capable of turning off “everything,” since all is electricity in this world; Jillian listens frequently to the radio when at home; and it becomes clear that the alien transmits itself through radio waves. In the climactic scene, Jillian attempts suicide in her kitchen by flooding the floor and plugging in the radio, but decides ultimately to electrocute her husband, the alienastronaut. This heroic earth woman scenario is undermined, however, when the alien travels from Spencer’s dying body into the body of his wife, through radio waves. By the end of The Astronaut’s Wife, the wife has killed the astronaut and become herself alien. And, as in Rosemary’s Baby, the mother accepts her inhuman offspring. In a reference to man’s ignorance of the female alien menace, the widow Jillian takes an unknowing pilot as second husband and stepfather to her alien twins. She assumes a new name and a new hairdo and moves to Timber Cove, Texas, traditional home to astronaut wives (Figure 3.8). In the final scene, the twins listen to science textbooks through headphones; they are experiencing the frequencies that teach them that their purpose is to fly the static weapon over the earth, destroying humanity in the process. The role of the modern astronaut’s wife, we are made to understand, is not merely to attend launches and watch television (although Jillian does these things); her role is to marry NASA astronauts/ pilots and play host to alien children. She is combination wife, widow, mother, and alien. After the quasi-realistic depiction of the astronaut wife and household manager in The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, and The Original

Figure 3.8 Jillian (Charlize Theron) kills her astronaut husband, gives birth to alien twins, and remarries in Houston in The Astronaut’s Wife.

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Wives Club, the wife becomes a fantastic creature who mimes the domesticity of the real woman; she is a Marilyn Lovell combined with Jeannie, combined with the extraterrestrial mother-monster of the Alien series of films. Despite 1980s and 90s family values, which encouraged an emphasis on the anxieties of the astronaut’s wife, Space Age moviegoers continued to value the theme of the fantastic female alien and merged wife, mother, and alien onto the body of woman.

III. Mothers in Space In The Astronaut’s Wife, Jillian Armacost does housekeeping and works outside the home as an elementary school teacher. By choosing this career for the film’s main character, director-writer Ravich opts for a profession that is believable, non-controversial, and easily representable—a few scenes in the classroom and you’re a teacher. It is hard not to sigh at the situation proposed by this film at the turn of the twenty-first century: men are astronauts, women are wives and school teachers, and human mothers accept alien progeny since children are their primary concern. Similarly, at the end of Contact (1997) astronaut Ellie Arroway is shown giving a tour to school-age children, and in Catherine Bush’s space novel Minus Time (1993) the female astronaut had in the past created and hosted a television space show for children. In these and other fictions, the woman in outer space—whether spouse of the astronaut or astronaut herself—is brought down to earth to play one of the roles that earth offers its women: that of educator of children. She works, yes, but her work is an extension of her domestic role. With Christa McAuliffe, the shuttle Challenger astronaut whose death at launch was broadcast on television countless times in 1986 (competing for number of broadcasts with the Apollo 11 moon landing), the U.S. public encountered a real wife, mother, and teacher whose body became that of a woman in space. Instead of having to choose between woman (wife and mother) and astronaut, McAuliffe was meant to embody both, and both roles were collapsed onto her body. In NASA/TREK, Constance Penley has illuminated the multiple ways in which McAuliffe was “mismanaged” by NASA; this “mismanagement” was inevitable in a society that carried such conflicting desires concerning woman’s place in the Space Age. It is not surprising that McAuliffe, the first woman civilian chosen for spaceflight, was neither a military pilot nor a scientist, but a teacher. The Reagan-era Teacher in Space Project (TISP) purposefully chose the teaching profession as appropriate to the 1980s civilian in space competition. Teachers

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were said to be recognizable to all, since all Americans had known—and surely admired—teachers. It was also a woman-dominated field, which made the choice of a woman astronaut a good bet. Although Sally Ride was the first American female astronaut to go into space, one must look to Christa McAuliffe for a “sister in space” of the earthbound homemakers of Life magazine, Apollo 13, and The Original Wives Club. For despite her profession as a teacher and her training for the mission, McAuliffe was represented in the media in many ways as the typical “astronaut’s wife.” McAuliffe was, as it were—and although not exactly chronologically— the appropriate intermediary step between the astronaut wife of the 1960s and the female astronaut of the 1980s and 90s. The intermediary woman goes into space but does not threaten men. As a woman liberated by second wave feminism, she has a career, but her career reinforces her role as caretaker, nurturer, and representative of Mother Earth. When McAuliffe leaves the house it is to teach and it is in this way that she represents the woman of the 80s–90s: she is firmly entrenched in domesticity but public enough to at least attempt to enter space. Although there was another woman on the Challenger who was a professional astronaut, Judith A. Resnick, I focus here on McAuliffe, whose particular role was to straddle and make acceptable the historical passage from the astronaut wife to the full-fledged female astronaut (Figure 3.9). As we shall see, it was in many ways a position that was impossible to maintain.

Figure 3.9 Christa McAuliffe resting after egress training. Photo: NASA.

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Given western culture’s superposition of the earth and woman as related images or symbols, Sally Ride’s foray into space may be interpreted as monstrous, or as a perversion of gender. In some sense, however, McAuliffe’s moment in space could be naturalized since, unlike Ride, she was a “natural” woman (mother, wife, teacher) rather than a scientist, medical doctor, engineer, or pilot. Yet McAuliffe’s flight turned monstrous because of its spectacular failure. McAuliffe as astronaut became unthinkable when her body, that of a wife and mother, was fragmented in space. On a symbolic level, and with 20/20 hindsight, McAuliffe simply could not/should not have been encouraged to leave the earth. She should have been vacuuming, watching television, writing on the chalkboard, or grading papers—she should not, by any means, have tried to escape gravity’s pull. Again on a symbolic level, this is why the Challenger could not ultimately take off, or why its takeoff was so shockingly, and sadly, aborted. The explosion just after launch made very real the unspoken fears of astronaut wives, that their husbands would return to earth as corpses—but this time those corpses included one of them. What was furthermore lauded as recognition of the average U.S. citizen/ civilian as worthy to fly into space ended up a dance in the minefield of the “exceptionality” of McAuliffe: “Christa” was like all other women but Christa was going into space and no one else was—this contradiction characterized the media’s representation of her. And, as Penley has shown, the mismanagement of the contradictions written onto her body continued after her death, in jokes and criticisms that referenced McAuliffe’s apparently quite average intelligence. The emphasis on McAuliffe as the first “civilian” in space led to this term becoming code for “woman”: the representative or “average” citizen was a woman employed in the public sphere. Woman was, at long last, a full citizen, in the sense that “civil” and “public” are synonymous. But McAuliffe was not a pilot from the military corps or a holder of a Ph.D. in engineering or physics; she was thus not an “official” astronaut, and “woman” and “astronaut” continued to be, in her case, mutually exclusive categories. But at the same time, by her civilian nature, she represented, ironically, a wrinkle in the masculine universal—she was the domestic, the earthbound, that which could hamper man’s desire to defy gravity. Whereas Judith Resnick could be written off as a female impersonating a male (as a woman who was not a “real” woman), McAuliffe could only and always only be viewed as a woman. And for this reason it was a done deal that the first civilian in space had to be a woman, wife, and mother, for it seemed that only a woman civilian could

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successfully masquerade as astronaut. In the public imaginary, she was in space pushing buttons and at home vacuuming, watching TV, and grading papers—all at the same time. McAuliffe thus stands out as an inevitable step in the U.S. invention of women in space and the embodiment of the female astronaut. This step follows the idealization and then demystification of the astronaut’s wife and runs concurrently with the actual training of women as astronauts. A representational continuum situates her directly following the wives, since she herself was both wife and amateur, the stand-in for a “true” female astronaut. As civilian, she represented Nation; as astronaut, she represented astronaut wives. These heavy representational loads were made weightier by her status as a public school teacher. In addition, she represented the mismatch of women and science/technology, since NASA officials reported after the tragedy that she was not able to understand some of the basic principles of spaceflight. The symbolic implication of McAuliffe’s death is that women cannot be both protected and sent into space at the same time; their status as “astronauts” remains laden with ambivalence. A novel of the 1990s that extends the trajectory from the housewives of Apollo, through the housewife and mother astronaut, to a woman who is at once mother, wife, teacher, scientist, and astronaut, is Minus Time (1993) by Canadian author Catherine Bush. In writing the novel, Bush anticipated American astronaut Shannon Lucid’s 188 days in space in 1996, the most days spent in orbit at the time by an American and by a woman (her record was broken by Sunita Williams in 2007). Lucid was a mother at the time of her extensive stay on Mir, the now defunct Russian orbital station. She was also a biochemist specializing in the effects of space on human health and she conducted experiments on her own body. Due to delays for the repair of the shuttle that eventually returned her to earth, Lucid spent about six more weeks in space than was expected. Bush anticipated Lucid’s voyage and was influenced by the recent McAuliffe tragedy. The Challenger becomes the Victory in the novel, and the explosion is seen live on television (at school) by astronaut Barbara Urie’s two children. Urie is a university scientist specializing in physics and medicine. Her research concerns the “human capacity to adapt to microgravity and life in space” (Bush 110). She is a wife and the mother of two young adults, Helen and Paul, and the first Canadian mother in space. She spends 9 months on a space station but her continued stay is put in doubt when her male colleague in orbit experiences a health emergency.

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Unlike Lucid, Urie is not delayed in returning to earth but may in fact have to cut her stay short. In the end, it is her own decision whether or not to come down with her colleague, and she decides to stay put in orbit. Bush leaves this mother and wife in space on a mission without an end date, ensures that she will establish a record for time spent in space, and makes of her an ultimately positive symbol of the wife and mother detached from the earth. In this way, the novel represents a step toward imagining the female astronaut; in this way, it is a utopian work of literature. It is notable, however, that the novel’s main character is not the astronaut, but her daughter Helen. By focusing on Helen, the novel embraces the idea of the astronaut as mother while imagining a future in which beings of all genders can be astronauts and be related to astronauts. Helen is a university dropout who, while her mother is in orbit, becomes involved in a radical environmental movement called United Species. Among other things, this group opposes space travel and the space station where her mother lives. Helen’s story is told with flashbacks to her childhood, a time when her mother and father together represented the stability of terrestrial family values. But as a teenager, Helen experienced the absence of her parents when they wandered afar, separately: David moved from earth disaster to earth disaster (due to his work in disaster relief); Barbara left home for astronaut training. Helen’s disappointment with her parents’ need to leave behind their home—her feelings of neglect and abandonment— are in the end resolved through a reconnection to her father and a reconciliation with her mother’s mission. In the meantime, she comes to understand that whereas risk—felt most urgently in the “minus time” period just before a shuttle launch or before an important decision— must be assessed, one must be open to accepting it. As Barbara puts it: “Whatever kind of life you lead, you end up taking risks. You have to satisfy yourself that the risks are under control and that what you are trying to do justifies them” (111). A comparison of the beginning of the novel The Right Stuff to that of Minus Time is revealing of a historical and cultural shift that took place between the 1970s and the 1990s, during the (gradual) invention of the female astronaut. Whereas The Right Stuff poses the test pilot/astronaut’s wife as the first character in its history of space flight—a character who frets at home and makes phone calls but never herself flies beyond her suburban setting—Minus Time offers the reader grown children who watch their mother’s launch, and not at home in front of the television.

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In this heretical version of the stereotypical launch scene, Helen and her brother Paul do observe the launch in Florida, but their annoyance with NASA protocol has led them to do so from a (safe) distance. Their car radio informs them of the passage of time, represented by the countdown to liftoff. Only later, when they watch television, do Helen and Paul realize that NASA had replaced them and their father at the launch with a “backup family” (13), just as toward the end of the novel the news media replace them with a “simulated family” reading a scripted encounter with Urie (151; 155). One of many things that the choice of an astronaut who is a woman and mother allows Bush to do is to turn NASA and news media protocols upside down: Bush reveals how dependent these organizations are on the astronaut family and how perverse this dependence can be. The stand-ins reveal the extent of NASA’s investment in family and the image of the astronaut as a family man. In the case of the female astronaut, Bush implies, the image of family is disrupted. This makes perfect sense: man goes into space (as in The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, and The Original Wives Club) leaving the worried but intact family at home. When woman goes into space, however, the family implodes: Urie’s husband is nowhere to be found and the children purposefully ignore the staged media moment of liftoff. The presence of the mother in space shatters the family on earth. Yet it is in the end precisely because of her mother’s time in space that Helen reconnects with the earth (through the environmental movement), her father, and her mother. The “successful failure” of the launch scene confirms this: minus time is the time of connection to earth, space, mother, and father. As we have seen, in Apollo 13 and The Original Wives Club communication between the women at home and the men in space is mediated by television and the squawk box. Helen also stays in touch with her mother’s image and voice with the help of technology—the television and the telephone. But the difference between the films and the novel in this respect is glaring: the astronaut wife of the 1960s and 70s, represented in the 80s and 90s, communicated with her astronaut husband, but this communication was mediated by Mission Control and the news media. This is why the image of woman watching television is so recurrent in Apollo 13—these scenes comment on the relationship between gendered bodies, space, and time. Television allows access to, at the same time that it defers, contact. It sets up a network of communication only to consistently subvert communication through insistent monitoring. In Minus Time, however, the television/phone hookup provides more

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direct access to the (mother’s) voice and body. It is suggested that contact with the mother’s/woman’s body is more intimate, and that it is a private affair: Helen and her mother are not monitored. Helen has a feed line at her apartment that allows her to view her mother in real time on television; they may choose to speak by telephone in the same real time, or view or speak without doing the other. The medium here is not the only message: messages between mother and daughter, although often disappointing to them, are felt as connections, both visual and verbal. In addition to going where no author has gone before by providing a view of space through the lens of a female astronaut’s daughter, Minus Time offers a positive conclusion to the story of connecting earth and the extended space family. Douglas Coupland, another Canadian writer, also presents a view of a disintegrated family of which one member launches into space. As in Minus Time, the scenario of the woman astronaut leads ultimately to a rejuvenation of the family. In All Families are Psychotic (2001), Sarah is an astronaut and the sole female sibling of three adult children of the divorced Janet and Ted Drummond. During the week before her first launch into space, as the family converges on Cape Canaveral, all hell breaks loose: Sarah discovers that her husband, Howie, is cheating on her with her co-astronaut’s wife (as it turns out, Sarah herself is having an affair with her colleague); brother Bryan discovers his girlfriend Shw (an assumed name) is pregnant and wants to sell the child; brother Wade, who is HIV positive, discovers his girlfriend, Beth, is pregnant; Ted, the verbally abusive father who used to work in aeronautics, reveals he has liver cancer; Ted’s young wife Nikkie reveals that she is HIV positive; and Janet, the novel’s central character and family matriarch in spite of herself, continues a struggle of her own with HIV. All the while, a question of maternal anguish underlies the plot: will a letter written by the young Prince William to his mother Diana and meant to be buried in her coffin be callously sold to a suspicious European businessman interested in cloning, or will the posthumous mother–son relationship be protected? After romps through Disney World, swamps, sleazy motel rooms, and hospitals, the characters manage to make it to the launch site, where they are seen by Sarah on a monitor before she boards the craft: and what a decrepit crew they were: Bryan and that creepy Shw, both bruised and black-eyed, with Bryan also slathered in zinc ointments, and Shw on crutches. Dad was there with his hand on Nikkie’s tush,

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and at Nikkie’s side was a man with a forearm swaddled in bandages— who on earth? Howie was nowhere to be seen. Big deal. Mom and Wade, meanwhile, were both testimonies to the nurse’s craft, trussed and slinged and wrapped and becrutched. Beth still looked as if she’d been plucked from a rerun of Little House on the Prairie. And lastly there was a suave Europerson—why are Europeans always so easy to spot?—next to Janet with his arm around her. (273) These characters—whom NASA surely would prefer to replace with stand-ins—are juxtaposed with the 1960s ideal, the family of Sarah’s astronaut colleague, Gordon Brunswick: “Her family stood beside the Brunswick family, Fuji-film bright, wearing matching polo shirts and chunky necklaces made of binoculars, recorders and cameras” (273). But Sarah knows that Alana Brunswick is sleeping with her husband, and she with Alana’s. And she knows that despite all the physical malfunctions of her family members (and she has her own—a birth defect left her without a hand) it is indeed a family, her family. And the family will continue, Sarah knows, for she and Gordon plan on conceiving in space. Prince William’s letter is, meanwhile, in Sarah’s possession: she has been asked by Wade to release it into space, where the mother–child bond will remain sealed. Whereas in Minus Time the daughter of the astronaut connects to her mother through technology, in All Families are Psychotic, Janet—mother of the astronaut—is a woman defined by technology, as much as her daughter the astronaut: she is hooked, not on the vacuum cleaner, but on the internet and haunts cybercafés: “Thank God I can finally read my e-mail. Thank god I can be in a place with a few people who aren’t scared by technology and who don’t fear the future” (36). Janet’s technophilia is countered in All Families by examples of medical technologies gone awry, for example the thalidomide ingested by the pregnant Janet has caused Sarah’s handicap. But the fact that Coupland’s female astronaut is physically disabled adds to the importance of this novel as a step toward the embodiment of the woman astronaut: technology allows Sarah to do all she needs to do in space. Both Minus Time and All Families demonstrate that technology has wrecked havoc on earth but also that, when used wisely, (space-age) technologies may renew family ties. Wolfe’s “angels” thus morphed from the 1960s to the first decade of the twenty-first century, from supportive wives to disgruntled wives, from home engineers to NASA crew members, and from earthbound wives

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and mothers to mothers and daughters in outer space. The Space Race and attempts at representing it follow the never smooth trajectory of women through these decades, alternately confirming and revising the allowed orbits of women at various moments of the race. In the next chapter, the use of non-human primates as “stand-ins” for male human astronauts in the early Mercury years is introduced as a further complication of the space story, one that reveals once again U.S. culture’s ambivalence toward the idea of women in space. *** As I complete this manuscript, the BBC has come out with a fabulous 1-hour documentary on the Apollo wives, filmed at the reunion of wives in Houston to mark the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission (dir. Andrew Tait). Ten of the wives, all in their 70s, participate in the film; seven of them are divorced, the other three widows. They talk of the trials and tribulations, as well as some of the high spots, of having weathered the Apollo years with husbands they rarely saw. This is, according to the trajectory I have traced in this chapter, a logical step in the evolution of the astronaut wife on film: after her inclusion in the From the Earth to the Moon episode on wives, she is now filmed as herself, speaking for herself, with no men in sight. She is part of a series (a BBC series of television films on Apollo), but she nevertheless has made strides since we last met her. And, she sings. Clare Whitfield, ex-wife of Rusty Schweickart, pulls out her ukulele and offers her “Divorce Song”: I won’t be here to have opinions, I won’t be here to say what I think, I won’t be here to keep my mouth closed, You can be right on your own. You can be right about the children, You can be right about the money, You can be right about the universe, You can be right on your own. You can be macho man in your airplane, You can be spotless man in your bathroom, You can be right about the universe, You can be macho man on your own.

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Chapter 4

Chimpanzees in Space and Gorillas in the Mist

I find it a little ridiculous when I read in a newspaper that there is a place called Chimp College in New Mexico where they are training 50 chimpanzees for space flight, one a female named Glenda. I think it would be at least as important to let the women undergo this training for space flight. (Jerrie Cobb) I was yet to learn that the symptoms manifested by persons who were to arrive at Karisoke and find themselves unable to adapt to the work at camp or census studies were strikingly similar to those of some astronauts undergoing isolationtraining for outer-space missions. The malaise may include sweating, uncontrollable shaking, short-term fevers, loss of appetite, and severe depression combined with prolonged crying spells. I termed the condition “astronaut blues,” a very real sickness. (Dian Fossey)

The transcripts of the 1962 congressional hearings on astronaut qualifications constitute the historical record of an attempt by a group of U.S. women pilots to make inroads into early space history. For its part, the 1960s television sitcom I Dream of Jeannie is a fantasy of the blond genie who would impact the Space Race from a suburban home. During the sitcom’s run in the 1960s, astronaut wives were written into the Space Race as earthbound support systems for their husbands. But white western women (pace Jeannie’s supposed stance as Arab) have not been the only group whose access to space in the 1960s and 70s was narrated and debated. Narratives of the Space Age have been characterized by the intertwining of science and technology with twentieth-century understandings of race and species as well as gender. As John Rieder remarks in his very important book, there is an associative link among evolutionary theory, anthropology,

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colonial ideology, and early science fiction (2), although I would argue that this link continues today. Standing in the shadow of the white male astronaut, men of color, women of all races, and non-human animals have made occasional bold attempts to write themselves into the space story. In this chapter, I retell the story of the “space chimps,” who were launched in the same years that the Mercury 13 were tested. Rhetoric employed in discussion of these “apes in space” has relied, in large part, on constructions of identity that hold the white male human as standard: the chimps were “not” human, but were close relatives—they were primates. Gender was not really at issue for these surrogates, who could be male or female; what was at issue was species. In addition, a less obvious but tenacious association was drawn between these non-human primates and human primates that have been considered “sub-human” in racist western discourse, specifically black Africans. And curiously, while white U.S. women were impeded from participating in the mission to colonize space, they actively sought to participate in a major neocolonial narrative of Africa that contributed to the making of primatology, the study of non-human primates.

I. We Are the Monkey By the beginning of the twenty-first century, several generations in the United States have been raised on the Curious George stories by author Margret Rey and her husband, illustrator H.A. Rey. The first of the seven original stories of 1941–56 tells of how the “man with the yellow hat” finds the monkey George in Africa, brings him to a U.S. city, and puts him in a zoo. In a subsequent story, George adapts badly to the zoo and is taken in as a roommate by the man. Like Jeannie, George is a nutty creature always getting into messes, principally because he is just too darned curious. The man with the yellow (safari) hat, who represents the colonizer, always manages to guide George back to civilized ways, as he chuckles at his pet’s, the African animal’s, antics. Curiously, H. A. Rey was not only the illustrator of these tales, but also an amateur astronomer who penned a children’s guide called The Stars: A New Way to See Them (1952). One of the George stories combines this interest in the stars with interest in the monkey: Curious George Gets a Medal, published in 1957. In it, George becomes “the first living being to come back to Earth from a space flight” (198), and for his display of the Right Stuff, George receives a gold medal with the inscription “TO GEORGE, THE FIRST SPACE MONKEY.” As with many of the Curious George tales, this one arrives at its climactic scene only after a circuitous

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narrative path through a series of unrelated events; in other words, he does not go directly into space. The doorbell rings, George answers, and a mail carrier gives him a letter. The monkey cannot read, but he is inspired to learn to write as he awaits the return of the man. He makes a mess trying to fill a fountain pen and in an effort to clean up creates an even larger mess with a box of powdered soap and a garden hose. His home flooded, he sets out to borrow a portable pump from a nearby farm. After accidentally releasing a herd of pigs from a pen, George attaches the pump to a cow and begins his return, but he must pause to hide from the farmers who are hot on his trail. He jumps onto a passing truck marked “Museum of Science.” Science has finally entered the story, but more patience is demanded of the reader seeking a connection between outer space and George’s adventure. George sneaks into the Museum of Science, which turns out to be a museum of natural history. The monkey wanders from gallery to gallery, past stuffed animals—an owl, a giant turtle, a whale—when suddenly, “In the next room George saw something so enormous it took his breath away. It was a dinosaur” (184). George, both curious and hungry, decides to eat the dates hanging from a plastic palm tree; although he knows the dinosaur is stuffed, he does not realize that the tree is also a fake. A family enters the gallery and George freezes, posing as part of the display, with a decidedly silly look on his face: “The monkey did not move. He stood so still they thought he was just another stuffed animal . . .” (186). Once the family leaves, George climbs the tree and pulls at the dates until he causes the entire exhibit to come crashing down: Guards came rushing in from all sides, and underneath the fallen dinosaur they found a little monkey! They pulled him out of there and brought him to Professor Wiseman who was the director of the Museum. Professor Wiseman was terribly angry. “Lock that naughty monkey up right away,” he said, “and take him back to the Zoo. He must have run away from there.” (188–9) At this moment—three-quarters of the way into the story—the spacemonkey connection is revealed. The man with the yellow hat arrives at Wiseman’s laboratory, brandishing the letter from earlier in the story, in which the Professor asks the monkey to volunteer to go into space. Wiseman proposes to forgive George for his museum mishap if he agrees to serve as the first astronaut. (Apparently, Wiseman is director of the neighborhood space program as well as museum director.) George dons a space suit, a brief training period ensues, and George is transported to

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Figure 4.1 Illustration from Curious George Gets a Medal by H.A. Rey. Copyright © 1957 and renewed 1985 by Margret E. Rey. Copyright assigned to Houghton Mifflin Company in 1993. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

the launch pad. Professor Wiseman counts down and the first space monkey blasts off (Figure 4.1). The flight is not without suspense: as scientists, museum workers, and the man with the yellow hat anxiously observe George on a television screen, the monkey, groggy and dazed, hesitates to grasp the lever that will release him for his return to earth. Will George pull the lever in time or will the mission be aborted? “Why didn’t he pull the lever? In a few seconds it would be too late. The ship would be lost in outer space with George in it!” (196). But the monkey reacts just in time, parachutes to earth, and receives his medal: “It was the happiest day in George’s life” (199). In imitation of the storytelling style of the average 4-year-old, the meanderings of this tale lead the reader on a series of detours before arrival at the finish line. It is possible, however, to connect the dots between these seemingly unrelated events. On one level, the story is about reading and writing and thus about narrative: the letter, addressed to an uneducated reader, provokes a desire to write, which leads to the flooding of the living room with ink. All is forgiven at the museum when the man with the

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yellow hat produces the original document and George signs on to go into space, receiving an engraved medal in return for his efforts. On another level, the story is about the animal kingdom and the distinction between real and artificial representations of the natural order. The presence of animals on earth is limited to three sites: the farm, where domesticated creatures are liberated by George; the Museum, which houses stuffed animals; and the zoo, where Professor Wiseman will send the monkey if he does not agree to leave the earth. These domesticated sites are opposed to the larger imaginary space of the African jungle, from which George comes. Finally, this primordial jungle is set in opposition to another space in the tale: “outer” space, George’s destination. Curious George Gets a Medal draws on an associative chain in western culture linking colonialism, natural history, and space travel. Literary scholars have commented on the link between the civilizing mission of colonialism and the need to civilize George by attenuating his curiosity. According to Jane Cummins, George is a “colonial subject” and the Curious George series a “miniature version of the colonialist project” with its “civilizing mission” (69–70; Cummins reads the stories in the light of slave capture narratives). Moreover, the Curious George books are purveyors of what Donna Haraway has termed “teddy bear patriarchy” (see her article of this name), an ideology founded on connections between eugenics, taxidermy, monopoly capitalism, and the politics of natural history museum display. George invites the western reader to visit the wilderness with him and poses as a simultaneously knowledgeable and innocent simian guide to the construction of the so-called “natural” origins of man. But George represents the future (space) as well as the past (Africa). His presence at the museum establishes space science as a colonialist endeavor. The story intimates, furthermore, that there is only one way to preserve natural history (our origins, the past, the idyllic prelapsarian garden) from the mess that unchecked curiosity (original sin, capitalism) has made of it: the grafting of the laboratory of space science onto the natural history collection, the turn to a utopian future that will absolve the failures of the past. As the Wise Man says, “everything will be forgiven, if you are willing to go” (192). Curious George Gets a Medal reflects and comments on a very real historical connection between non-human primates and space travel. Beginning in 1948, monkeys and (later) chimpanzees were sent on jet and rocket missions as surrogate humans, their mission to deliver information to scientists concerning the adaptability of primates to space travel. Space was defined in the 1950s as beginning 50 miles from the earth’s surface,

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so many of the earlier flights with animals did not reach space per se, but they do form a crucial prehistory to the story of space travel. Through them, in the early post-War period, natural history, non-human primates, the garden of Eden, and our origins met space science, human primates, the cosmos, and the future. An evolutionary chain, so to speak, was established conjoining zoo, natural history museum, and outer space, under the banner of spaces envisioned and consciously constructed to house colonial subjects.1 Almost everything said about race and species in this chapter may be found in Curious George Gets a Medal; yet gender seems curiously missing from the tale. The omission is curious because narratives of colonialism in the jungle (and outer space) typically foreground sexual difference. Still, although Curious George Gets a Medal appears to elide gender as a subject, “man” is everywhere in the tale: colonialism and space science are conversations had “between men,” including the “man” with the yellow hat, professor Wise “man,” and the curious male monkey. The domestication of the jungle as zoo and museum exhibit, and the conquest of outer space are men’s work, and they are marked, repeatedly, as such. The collusion between white male human primate and male non-human primate is especially telling: the man with the yellow hat, Professor Wiseman, and George—explorer, scientist-naturalist, African animal—form a triumvirate of colonial figures particular to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century western quest for knowledge of “other” peoples and species and the cataloguing of this knowledge in zoos, museums, and laboratories. As the animal/human boundary is breached in the postmodern era and as speciesism has emerged as an “ism” interconnected with sexism, racism, ageism, and heterosexism, among others, it is important to ask how narratives of boundary crossings between human and animal— especially human and non-human primate—both incorporate and subvert accepted beliefs about race, gender, and species.2 When Baby Fae received a baboon heart in 1984, this event marked a pinnacle of interspecies research and theoretical writing in many disciplines, a pinnacle that brought human and non-human primates together and that was in the works since at least the 1960s. In addition, at the same time that human–animal crossovers became medically plausible, human– extraterrestrial crossover narratives—usually involving a mixture of human and alien DNA—became more and more popular. The addition of extraterrestrials as “species” to narratives of the subversion of human– non-human boundaries is part of what I want to call “extraterrestrialism,”

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a discourse that favors both real and imaginary incursions into space and the search for and interaction with aliens. Non-human primates and extraterrestrials occupy the same continuum due to their “not human” status. However, whereas “speciesism,” like sexism and racism, implies a negative stance with regard to a category, the term “extraterrestrialism,” at least as yet, does not. To be an “extraterrestrialist” implies a positive view of outer space and a perceived need to extend the human community into space. 3 If extraterrestrialism implies an interest in or even coveting of life on other planets, and promotes the human colonization of space, the desire to remain earthbound may be termed “terrestrialism.” In a 1971 paper titled “The Extraterrestrial Imperative,” the German scientist Krafft Ehricke argued, for example, that humans must leave the earth to colonize space or at least develop industries on other planets or in interplanetary space. His point was not to reject the earth, but to continue human life on earth and beyond: “Earth and space are indivisible” (26). Ehricke argued that since terrestrial resources are limited and since humans cannot be made to limit their consumption, scientists must look to space for answers. Far from minimizing the importance of the earth, extraterrestrialists like Ehricke emphasize it. By contrast, theorist Zoe Sofia summarized in 1984 the stance of a more negative “extraterrestrialism” and its “distancing devices which provide the illusion of escape from the moral implications and physical effects of the techno-reproductive choices we make” (59). In related work, ecofeminist Yakov Garb concluded that the “whole Earth image,” the famous image of the earth taken from space, is a pornographic extraterrestrialist motif, since it “objectifies” the earth and renders the planet seemingly lifeless. One would have to want to leave the earth willingly to capture this image (Garb 271–2). Paradoxically, both Ehricke and Garb used womb imagery in describing the earth: for Garb, we deny our mother by leaving her womb; for Ehricke, we mature beyond the womb. This brief analysis of just a few of the points made by critics who have used the term reveals that “extraterrestrialism” is still an –ism under construction.4 The multilayered categories of species, gender, and race merge in the explosive notion of the extraterrestrial. I do not mean that extraterrestrialism is or will be in some way more significant than other oppressions; rather, I mean that extraterrestrialism draws on earthlings’ existent multitude of anxieties relating to identity formation. In a reading of science fiction film, Penley argues that a collapse or erasure of sexual difference in the second half of the twentieth century prompts science fiction to

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displace sexual difference onto the human/non-human contrast (“Time Travel”). But species and extraterrestrial difference should not be read as “displacing” gender difference or as somehow arising chronologically “after” it; instead, species—and even extraterrestrials—have always already been part of the matrix of identities established in the west.5 Gender and race, instead of being supplanted by species, will surely continue to be implicated and imbricated in the new formulations of species that include non-earthlings. In the same way, extraterrestrialism will not supplant speciesism, but merge with it as it takes us into space or warns us to stay put at home. Indeed, the origin of the term “alien”—the word derives from “alienate,” or to make Other—implies that a wealth of differences may be grafted onto it (see “alien” and “alienate.”). The Space Race was a significant event in the history of humans’ use of non-human animals as surrogate Others. Beginning in 1948–49, monkeys blasted off as part of the Air Force’s early spaceflight experiments at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Alberts I, II, and III, rhesus monkeys, died in accidents from their suborbital flights: Albert I died on the launch pad, II and III from parachute accidents. Five Aerobee flights followed in 1951–52. Mike and Pat, the cebus monkeys of Aerobee III, reached 36 miles and were then retired to the National Zoo. Sub-orbital flights continued in 1958–59 with Jupiter launches piloted by Gordo, a squirrel monkey, and Able (rhesus) and Baker (squirrel). Project Mercury began with monkeys when Sam and Miss Sam (both rhesus) flew in 1959–60 in the Little Joe flight series. Anecdote has it that the two monkeys embraced upon Miss Sam’s return.6 Project Mercury involved chimpanzees, and these became the nonhuman primates most associated with the Space Race. In 1958, 65 chimpanzees from the Cameroons (now the Republic of Cameroon) were brought to the Holloman Aeromedical Field laboratory, where they were trained as astronauts. At that time, the Cameroons were administered by France and Britain. As with other European colonies in Africa, independence came in the late 1950s—officially on January 1, 1960. The concurrence of the time frames of the end of the colonial era in many countries and the early years of the Space Age is certainly significant and adds to our interest in the fact that African chimps became surrogate (western) humans. One of these Cameroonian chimps, Ham (number 65, originally called Chang; HAM referred to Holloman Aeromedical), flew in the Mercury-Redstone 2 mission in January 1961 and paved the way for Alan Shepard to become the first U.S. man in suborbital space in early

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Figure 4.2 The chimp “Ham” in the Biopack Couch for the MR-2 Flight of January 1, 1961. Photo: NASA.

May of that year. Enos (number 81), who came not from the African “colony,” as it was called, but from a farm in Miami, orbited the earth in November 1961 and was mimicked in February 1962 by John Glenn in his Mercury-Atlas 6 (Friendship 7) flight. Subsequently, other non-human primates—squirrel and rhesus monkeys, and chimps—had the Right Stuff, but none knew the glory of these first two chimpanzee space heroes (Figure 4.2). The question of whether or not speciesism had a role in NASA’s choices—were the animals treated as equal to or inferior to humans?— characterizes arguments over the fate of these chimps and their descendants, for the story of the space chimps is not over. Because chimps can live up to 60 years, a few of the young ones brought from Africa were still living until recently, and many produced offspring referred to at times as space chimps. Born in the mid to late 1950s, the original chimps formed part of the baby-boomer generation, and media hype concerning them in the late 1990s incorporated notions held dearly by that generation. In 1998, the year that an elderly John Glenn returned to space, the space chimps and their families were in the news. Since the end of Project Mercury, many of the primates had been on loan to researchers, notably at the Coulston Foundation in New Mexico, where they were used in HIV and hepatitis research. In the 1990s, this Foundation was found by the Department of Agriculture to have mistreated its animals on numerous occasions. There were about 25 space chimps and their offspring at the Foundation at the time, and about 250 total chimps there. By the

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end of the 1990s, the U.S. public was infuriated: how could these “heroes,” these “veterans” of space be rewarded in such an uncaring manner? Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, for example, pointed out the enormous debt we owe the space chimpanzees. They, and their descendants, have served us in so many ways—initially as substitute humans in space research. Now it is time to repay this debt by giving these veterans the peaceful and permanent retirement they deserve. (“No Mercy for Space Chimps!” emphasis mine) Defense of the chimps drew on vocabulary from the space program, primatology, the military (“veterans”), and gerontology. In terms of the latter, Frederick Coulston, at the time in his 80s, planned to use the chimps to study human aging; Aldrin was himself retired; and, as already noted, chimps can live to be 60 years old, close to the traditional retirement age for humans in the United States. In addition, Glenn, who had already retired from the space program and from the Marine Corps (and then retired from the Senate in 1999), was 77 when he participated during the Discovery mission in tests concerning aging and space travel. Critic John McCullough has called the project of sending an elderly white human male into space the “Geriatric Disposal Initiative” (38), an initiative that “laid [Glenn] to rest” at the same time that it “put [him] to work” (39). Would the space chimps be both laid to rest and put to work, in imitation of the retired human astronaut? The chimpanzees, mocked by astronauts in the early years of the space program, were lauded in the late 1990s as superheroes of the baby boomer-generation; as such, they were owed, like the humans of that generation, decent health and retirement benefits. But Coulston drew on the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) admonishments concerning full retirement and argued, Why let them retire? I won’t retire. Most people I know, even if they retire from a job, continue to do something good. You aren’t going to let these chimps just [go] out there and suffer in a sanctuary. This is their home. (http://www.msnbc.com/news/167403.asp) The rhetoric of aging and retirement was heavy; seemingly all that was missing from the debate was a plan to send the aged chimps themselves into outer space. Beginning in 2001, groups of chimps from the Coulston Foundation did receive their “social security” and were retired to—where

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else?—Florida. That Florida is at once the state most associated with the space program in its early years and a preferred site for the retirement of baby-boomer human primates is a salient coincidence. A “colony” of 21 retired chimps was established at the newly founded Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care (CCCC) in St. Lucie County, not far down the Atlantic coast from the Kennedy Space Center. Carole Noon, founding director of the Center, acquired the chimps after she sued the Air Force. She was aided in this battle by Jane Goodall—the Dian Fossey of chimps—who asserted: “My only hope is that one day all chimpanzees in research facilities will be retired and no more chimpanzees ever used again” (http://www.primarilyprimates.org/). Thus, about 3 years after Glenn was re-suited for space flight—an episode hawked by the media as proof that the elderly male still had the Right Stuff—the descendents of space chimpanzees were preparing for full retirement in Florida. And at the turn of the twenty-first century, when animal rights are fought for through legal channels and speciesism has become all but a form of discrimination, when the massive population of aging baby boomers concerns demographers, and when the AARP constitutes the wealthiest nonprofit organization on the planet after the Vatican, it is a sign of the times indeed that the fate of these chimpanzees should be addressed with such intensity. Speciesism, ageism, and extraterrestrialism (the desire to send chimps into space) were conjoined in the story of the space chimps. Sexism also reared its head, in claims that NASA preferred chimps to women. There was no real competition, of course, in this choice. Jerrie Cobb complained at the 1962 congressional hearings about the apparent choice of chimps over women: I find it a little ridiculous when I read in a newspaper that there is a place called Chimp College in New Mexico where they are training 50 chimpanzees for space flight, one a female named Glenda. I think it would be at least as important to let the women undergo this training for space flight. (17) In fact, Minnie, a female, was backup to Ham and Enos, and James Fulton, the most pro-Mercury 13 member of the congressional subcommittee, noted the gender of other early animals in space: [Secondly,] when the scientists first started putting living animals in space, it is rather remarkable that both the dogs and the monkeys were

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all without exception female. Both Russian and American scientists put female animals into space and suddenly they stopped, when they found they were successful. (22; in fact, male monkeys were also used) In addition, when Glenn stated that NASA sought the most qualified person, Fulton responded, “You must remember that Ham made a successful trip too. Ham was able to. I think a woman could do better than Ham” (58). Certainly one would imagine that Jerrie Cobb was as capable of pulling a lever or pushing a button as Ham, Enos, or John Glenn, for that matter. To summarize, there occurred both an alignment of women and non-human primates as “other” to male humans and a reversal of this alignment when chimps were identified with human men as the only ones who could blast off. Astronaut Gus Grissom pronounced his own alignment in the 1983 film The Right Stuff. In response to John Glenn’s complaint that his fellow astronauts were spending too much time frolicking with “the cookies,” Grissom stated: “The issue here ain’t pussy. The issue here is monkey. Us. We are the monkey.” The astronaut’s anger was prompted in the film (and the scenes are truthful) by Wernher Von Braun, who believed that human astronauts were redundant and who posed the mocking question, “Which will be first, the man or the monkey?” That the Mercury 7 astronauts initially had no special role in the design of the capsule added to their annoyance: they were “spam-ina-can,” joked Chuck Yeager, no better than the Cameroonian chimps. In other words, what made the astronauts into the butt of a joke—into monkeys—was not their dalliances with young women, but rather that they were not singled out in the primate order—another primate could replace them. It was a given that they would not be replaced by women, mere cookies, but Ham and Enos seemed to have the Right Stuff.7 Even at the time of the Mercury 7, age—as well as gender and species—was at issue: John Glenn was 38 when he was accepted as a Mercury astronaut and 40 when he flew in Friendship I. It was clear at the time that NASA was stretching things in his case, as it had with his lack of a college degree. In the 1990s, a “Send Jerrie Into Space” movement emerged and Cobb campaigned for the Discovery job. But it was almost as if sending John Glenn twice could make up for his earlier humiliation before the monkey. A 2000 space film, Space Cowboys , may be interpreted as the appropriate baby-boomer apology to the “young” Mercury 7, who are represented as elderly in this film. It is as if they themselves—the young men—were transported into the future. Cobb and the women are left out, in this space race between male primates,

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Figure 4.3 Two of Team Daedalus (Tommy Lee Jones and Clint Eastwood) in Space Cowboys (dir. Clint Eastwood, 2000). What’s worse—forced retirement or 50 g’s?

the human and the chimp, represented in Space Cowboys when the young astronauts learn that a chimp will replace them in space. Years later, however, a falling satellite that menaces earth must be destroyed and no ape understands the technology needed to save the planet; only the aged Daedalus team does. In this film, again, the problem is not “pussy,” it is age. It is assumed that the astronaut will be a human male; the question is, how old will he be? (Figure 4.3). This does not mean that age has displaced gender anymore than it means that species had displaced gender previously. What it means is that species, age, and gender have all been used, at times overlapping, to define or reinforce exclusions of certain primates from space. While the discourse on the space chimps draws on evolution as a paradigm, it is noteworthy that the evolution from non-human primate to white human male can occasionally slip up, yielding primate mutations that serve as the missing links of the evolutionary chain. These unnatural links are often represented as race, gender, and species “others.” In the early 1960s, the issue was both monkeys and women. The women who were unofficially tested were the primates who actually were denied access to space and replaced by the human male, pace Space Cowboys. The issue was always one of the interconnection of gender, species, and race, as NASA decided who would be permitted access to space and prepare the way for the colonization of other worlds. In the end, the crucial difference was not only that between men and monkeys, as films such as The Right Stuff and Space Cowboys would have us believe, but also that between women and monkeys. And the monkeys, seemingly more “human” than women, won. They got the medal.8

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II. The Colonialist Imperative A connection between the space chimps, Africa, and Florida was made in an episode of I Dream of Jeannie called “Fly Me to the Moon” (episode 62; aired September 12, 1967). The show plays on historical astronaut fears that men were second to chimps, when Dr. Bellows proposes that Sam the chimp replace Tony and Roger as astronaut. Dr. Bellows rejects the men’s hurt egos with a reference to evolution: when Roger claims “We’re the senior astronauts,” the psychiatrist replies, “It’s all a matter of heredity.” When Tony and Roger are assigned to train Sam, Tony pouts, “Orbiter 5 needs a man,” to which Roger replies, “We don’t have a man, we have a monkey.” But they don’t have a monkey for long. Jeannie, who half understands the astronauts’ dilemma, turns Sam into a human played marvelously by Larry Storch. “Where are you from?” Roger asks the strange man; “the Cameroons,” he replies. Dr. Bellows then goes on a rampage because his chimp is missing and Tony and Roger, now clued in, try to force Sam the human back into his true chimp state: “Don’t let him [Dr. Bellows] take me, he treated me like a monkey,” Sam whines, to which Tony responds, “You are a monkey!” Jeannie, again confused, turns Tony into a chimp instead of Sam (Figure 4.4), and the chaos continues until Sam the chimp is finally shot into space, with Tony at Central Control encouraging him to press the green and red buttons at the right time. In the end, Tony is reconciled to having a chimp as colleague as long as humans remain in control.

Figure 4.4 Jeannie (Barbara Eden), Roger (Bill Daily), and the chimp Tony at NASA Headquarters in I Dream of Jeannie.

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In Chapter 2, I introduced the dual image of the Florida Space Coast as primitive and natural but also futuristic and technologized. Jesse Kercheval specifically compares the area between Orlando and the Atlantic coast to the grasslands of Africa; in doing so, she brings together Florida and television’s Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom (1963–71): Outside Orlando, the land on either side of the highway turned incredibly flat. It stretched away into the hazy distance broken only by pine trees with low, umbrella-like branches. It reminded me of something, and when I realized what, I poked Carol. “Hey, look,” I said, “the Dark Continent.” She sat up and opened her eyes. It did look like Africa, like any minute we would see lions in the dry grass. My father took his eyes from the road for a second. He shook his head. He didn’t see the similarity, but then he watched a lot less of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom than Carol and I did. (56–7) Jesse understands Africa as she understands Florida and outer space, in large part through fantasies broadcast on the television screen (and she is an avid fan of Jeannie). The comparison of the “dark continent” of Africa to the “dark skies” of outer space is not new. What has not been considered in detail, however, is the historical link between these two spaces, that is, the ideology of colonialism. The history and cultures of modern Africa are certainly linked to the colonial period, when racial subjugation infused western understandings of that continent. Narratives of outer space invariably borrow outright the vocabulary and logic of the colonial period. The dark skies are thus fashioned into a New Frontier to conquer, one often imagined as inhabited by “aliens of color.” This is related to the fact that the Space Race took place during the Cold War, the era during which countries and regions of Planet Earth were assigned, as token “colonies” (areas of influence) to the United States or the U.S.S.R. The race to space was a crucial indicator of the hold that the first-world powers had over other countries: the United States needed to outshine the U.S.S.R. in space to maintain (the appearance of) its dominance on earth and attract newly independent countries—in Africa, especially— to capitalist rather than Marxist models (see McCurdy’s chapter “The Cold War”). Africa and Florida are imaginary (mythical) “tropical” communities that produce some similar cultural meanings. Each has a colonial history: Africa was occupied by, especially, the Portuguese, British, and

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French; Florida by the Spanish and British. Although Florida is known today for its vacation and retirement communities, it was long known as a swamp teeming with malaria-infested mosquitoes, alligators, panthers, and “primitive” native humans who were loathe to accept the religion of the Spanish colonizers. Sounds like Africa. Florida is, seemingly, a more complicated space: home to the advanced technology and kitsch of the Kennedy Space Center and Disney World, the state continues to be associated with utopian visions of unconquerable wilderness, this despite the many environmental disasters it has suffered at the hands of human primates. Florida is, if technically only in our imagination, a tropical state (only the very southern part is geographically subtropical), but it is also a state that forms part of the first-world U.S. geopolitical system. At the same time, Florida is home to populations of Caribbean so-called “third world” nations, including Cuba and Haiti. In addition, it is a state that is not only geographically but conceptually “out there”: it is home to bizarre plants and animals; shifty developers and drug deals gone awry; lawlessness and vigilante justice; and its ecotourism includes Disney World and Cape Canaveral. Florida has a separate history from that of the 13 colonies and it continues to be considered a “spacey” place by many Americans. Haraway has traced a connection between outer space and the tropics: “Space and the tropics are both utopian topical figures in western imaginations, and their opposed properties dialectically signify origins and ends for the creature whose mundane life is outside both: civilized man” (Primate Visions 137). Haraway links this dual imagination system to the opposition of the west and the “third world,” but beyond this linkage does not consider the colonial imperative to conquer both dark continent and dark skies. In 1969, at the height of the space frenzy, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, widow of aviator Charles Lindbergh, published Earth Shine, a book meant to be a lyrical evocation of Florida and Africa, and thus with very different goals than Haraway’s. One essay in the book is devoted to Cape Canaveral, one to Africa. In the preface, Lindbergh makes an association between the two places: Is there a bond between these two essays that they should be linked together in a book? Africa, a last stand of primitive life, and Cape Kennedy, summit of a scientific civilization—what have they in common? At first glance nothing except their extremes. But today, even extremes are interrelated. (vii) “Today” is the Space Age and the “extremes” are those we have already encountered: the primitive and the civilized; nature and technology;

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Africa and Florida. In one essay, Lindbergh pays homage to the “primitive” space of Africa, defined for her by its animal kingdom and not by its human inhabitants: the Masai are presented as belonging to “pre-history.” The other essay presents the technological mecca of Cape Canaveral become Cape Kennedy, a space of machines that is, nonetheless, humanized in that the machines are controlled by men. And the Cape is surrounded, Lindbergh reminds us, by a wildlife refuge, with the heron as its mascot. Two quotations borrowed by Lindbergh from astronaut communications suggest to me (although not to her) a comparison between Florida as site of rocket launches and Africa as site of the launch of slave vessels heading to U.S. shores: We have a beautiful view of Florida . . . we can see the Cape, just the point . . . at the same time we can see Africa . . . (32) The sky is pitch black . . . the moon is quite light . . . a vastness of black and white, absolutely no color . . . forbidding, foreboding extents of blackness . . . (34) Without making the association explicit, the astronauts read outer space as a sea of blackness from which color has been banned. “Absolutely no color” can be applied to the term “black,” which in the popular imagination is a non-color. In this reading, the moon—the planetary body that space science means to conquer—is “colored” white, while outer space—in the absence of nearby planets and stars—is rendered black, and therefore forbidding and foreboding. In addition, when read in conjunction with Lindbergh’s first quote, Florida appears as the “white” space of man and his rockets, and Africa the “black” wilderness of chaos and nothingness. Lindbergh applies, then, the colonial gaze to both spaces—but especially Africa—and her conclusions depend on this gaze, structured as it is by the west’s positing of Africa as a land of ancient “alien” races (see Rieder’s book on science fiction and the colonial gaze). Africa, in its preservation of “the roots of life, the roots of man himself” (x), reminds (presumably white and western readers) of “our” terrestrial nature, Lindbergh argues. The race to space teaches us the same thing, she adds, for it is from the perspective of outer space that we understand the significance of Africa in terms of the globe. Africa is defined by its status as synecdoche for the planet as a whole: there are certain places on the globe where one has much more sense of the planet than in others . . . and especially when the great continent

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of Africa first unrolls before the eyes . . . Even to think of Africa is to see it as it is on a globe. That huge shoulder, bulging out into the Atlantic, is as unmistakable to earth men as it was to the astronauts who saw it from thousands of miles out in space. (ix) Here, astronauts stand in for imaginary extraterrestrials and recognize Africa as the center, the original garden, of the planet called earth. Finally, Lindbergh’s concern for terrestrialism, in the sense of the care of the planet, leads her to end her text with a warning about Africa in the modern age, a warning that would ring true to a primatologist like Dian Fossey: Nor can anyone stop the clock in Africa [although elsewhere Lindbergh describes Africa as outside of time and history]. The new African nations are going to grow, increase their population . . . Inevitably, unless protected by parks and reserves, wild animals will lose their habitat . . . (70) This extinction of wildlife will lead to man’s loss of “breathing space” (70). Indeed, Lindbergh seems to suggest that the breathing space human primates have lost in Africa may be reestablished with the journey to space, where breathing is possible with the aid of technology. There are multiple ways of assessing the transfer of the ideology of colonialism from the earth, and especially Africa, to space. Lindbergh’s reading points to a very literal mapping of colonialism onto Africa and then onto outer space. The globe is the point of contact between these two colonized spaces, the reader may infer, as Africa represents the globe as a whole and outer space represents the only place from which we can adequately view the earth as whole. Lindbergh’s essay suggests, then, a cartographic or global assessment of the colonialist tendencies of the space program. Another means of approaching the complex interaction of what might be called terrestrial and extraterrestrial colonialisms is through reference to the acclimatization policies of colonial powers. The language of acclimatization and assimilation as applied to primates—both human and non-human—is common in space narratives and is drawn from nineteenth-century colonialist discourse. “It may be said that the whole of colonization is a vast deed of acclimatization,” Auguste Hardy wrote in 1860 (cited in Osborne, 145.) And indeed, as Michael Osborne has shown, nineteenth-century Europe saw a concerted effort involving several disciplines—scientific, agricultural, political, educational—to

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define the ways in which people, animals, and plants could be usefully moved across national boundaries and set up to be fruitful and multiply in their new homes. Indeed, acclimatization is only necessary if one leaves one’s home, and colonialism as a process involves either the leaving of one’s home or the invasion of one’s home by another. Acclimatization was, in particular,—at least in the French colonial world—a model of colonization especially geared toward the animal kingdom (Osborne 174). The importation of colonial animals served both agriculturalists and naturalists. Influenced by transformism, theories of acclimatization involved the adaptation of species to new conditions. During the second half of the century, acclimatization of the races also became an issue, as theories of racial anthropology and heredity came to dominate certain branches of the sciences (89–90). If “the whole of colonization is a vast deed of acclimatization,” then surely the race to space is an extension of that deed. Science fiction literature and film are chock full of scenes of the acclimatization of terrestrials to foreign geographies and, in turn, aliens experiencing the culture shock of earth. The moment at which the astronaut decides that the air on the alien planet is amenable to humans and removes his helmet— while motioning to his cohorts to remove theirs—is a representative scene of the acclimatization to other worlds, for a breathable atmosphere is necessary to the narrative of space conquest. A further type of acclimatization of astronauts in the history of the space program has been one of acclimatization not to the alien planet but to the spaceship, to the vessel that would carry us to other worlds. This is precisely why chimpanzees and monkeys were used as surrogate astronauts in the 1960s: to test the effects on primate physiology of weightlessness and other by-products of the space journey. Chimpanzees and monkeys were not meant to be acclimatized to life in space or on another planet; they were meant to be acclimatized to the journey itself, the journey up and the journey down. The 2000 film Mission to Mars (dir. Brian De Palma) doesn’t do a very good job at provoking the viewer’s imagination concerning extraterrestrials. The ending, which presents an alien straight off a cereal box, is a great disappointment. Of more concern is the film’s assimilation of the (negative side of the) alien and the African—its projection of the dark continent of Africa into space as an alien landscape. The African American character in the film, Luke Graham (played by Don Cheadle), is the only surviving member of a first journey to Mars. A second mission has as goal to discover what happened to Luke and his colleagues and, if possible, rescue them. Luke is discovered in a greenhouse he has built for oxygen and food. The greenhouse is a jungle setting, however, because

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somewhere along the way Luke has transformed from African American astronaut into savage African. When he is found, he is hairy, wild, and mad—he eyes an axe that we presume he will use to kill the white male astronaut who has found him. But after care from the white female astronaut—presumably a medical expert—Luke is “returned” to civilization, this in a scene where he is shown as clean-shaven. In a twist, Luke is identified early in the film as having written a Ph.D. dissertation on the “colonization” of Mars. But despite his expertise on Mars and acclimatization as wild man in the jungle of space, it is not Luke who joins the alien at the end, but the white man (Gary Sinese, not grounded this time). The white, male astronaut has the honor of explaining: “that’s where I’m going . . . that’s what I was born for.” Luke and the female astronaut are left behind as the white man goes boldly into the future. (See Adilifu Nama’s excellent discussion of this film). By contrast, a positive assessment of associations among Africa, African Americans, and outer space is found in the work of African American artists who link the future of the global black community to a future in space. As noted in Chapter 2, the Space Race may be seen as reinscribing a master–slave dialectic that is all too familiar to African Americans. NASA’s unwillingness in the 1960s to foster the presence of blacks in its scientific, engineering, and astronaut ranks points to a white-only future in space. Historically, African Americans demanded that the government concentrate less on a race to space and more on the problems of American cities, poverty, education, and racial justice. In turn, African American astronauts had a hard time making it into space.9 However, paralleling this opposition to extraterrestrialism—opposition to leaving earth—is a concerted effort on the part of some members of the black community and some whites, notably Mark Dery, Sun Ra, and George Clinton, to appropriate outer space as a potentially utopian field for escape from the master/slave binary. This cultural movement was labeled “afrofuturism” by Dery; George Clinton has referred to “afronauts”; and De Witt Douglas Kilgore has devoted a study of science fiction literature to what he calls “astrofuturism,” his term for the currents of the pro-space movement that imagine space as a utopian blank page for rewriting earth’s tragic mistreatment of people of color.10 Mainstream (white) audiences in the United States, however, are more likely to see the type of antics involving the black astronaut in Mission to Mars than to hear Sun Ra’s music. Left to degenerate on the planet—like the African American astronaut of Planet of the Apes (1968), who is killed off early in the film—the man of color degenerates according to a

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familiar western myth of the seemingly natural de-evolution of Africans. The African American astronaut is left on what for all intents and purposes is a deserted island, a jungle in which he rediscovers his “roots,” while the white male astronaut continues space exploration and colonization, continues to go boldly forth. This representation of the black astronaut is disturbing in its subscription to a racist ideology that characterizes colonial conquest stories, including that of the conquest of space. In Chapter 6, we shall see what happens when popular film endeavors to put a black woman into space and the confusion of arrows of time that this produces. But next, the place occupied by the white woman in the binaries of Florida/Africa, outer space/dark continent, and human/non-human primate is explored through a reading of Gorillas in the Mist.

III. The Old Lady Who Lives in the Forest Without a Man Stories of human–ape interactions are plentiful in western culture. When NASA sent monkeys and chimps into space, it added to a list of such narratives, running from Tarzan to King Kong to Curious George stories. As we have seen, chimps were woven into the master narrative of the 1960s Space Race—while chimps were included, women were excluded. And yet, women and chimps have been compared in western culture as representing the “almost” human, the bestial that forms a boundary between the white man and all that is Other, all that calls out for colonization, for “civilizing.”11 In the late 1950s and early 1960s, chimps were snatched from Cameroon during the waning days of colonialism, and sent into space as surrogates to prepare the way for white man’s neocolonial forays into the dark skies. Also in the 1960s, a white woman named Dian Fossey came to Africa, not to collect chimps and blast them into space but to live with non-human primates in the mountains of Rwanda and produce a postcolonial narrative of their social lives. As men were evolving into space men, this woman and others like her seemed to “deevolve” into earthbound missing links. Historically, white women have been written into stories of western colonialism as nurses, educators, and/or wives. With the advent of second-wave feminism and the ensuing explosion of interest in gender, however, a new role for white women in colonial and neocolonial Africa opened up—that of the primatologist. In this section, I want to

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introduce women into Curious George and the Space Race by reading the story alongside Gorillas in the Mist, the book and the film. Dian Fossey, heroine of both Gorillas (she penned the 1983 book; Michael Apted directed the 1988 film), was a U.S. primatologist working in 1960s–80s Rwanda. Whereas George is not ostensibly about gender and Gorillas in the Mist is not ostensibly about outer space, a juxtaposition of these narratives exposes the multiple ways in which outer space has been fantasized as virgin colonial space awaiting the arrival of colonists and their wives. The book Gorillas in the Mist recounts the conservation work that Fossey did in Africa from 1966 to 1985. Based loosely on this record of Fossey’s years with the gorillas, the film Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey codifies the relationship between white woman and gorilla, between gender and species, in predictable ways: Dian loves the gorillas and they love her. But the relationship can only be fully appreciated when read in conjunction with two very present discourses of the 1960s and 1970s: feminism, including “women’s” and/or “feminist” primatology; and neocolonialism, including space exploration by human and non-human primates. Haraway has called women and apes “odd boundary creatures” because they function as go-betweens who signify—as they destabilize— evolutionary, technological, and biological narratives (Simians, Cyborgs, and Women). The actress Sigourney Weaver, in her roles as Dian Fossey and Ripley (of the Alien series), is, I propose, an ultimate boundary creature on whose body the discourses of primatology and extraterrestrialism have been written. Weaver’s body has been molded to represent both the white woman in the African field who cozies up to gorillas and the white woman in deep space who shares an intimate moment with the monstrous (and dark skinned) alien Other. Patricia Ticineto Clough has usefully compared the films Gorillas in the Mist and Alien in an essay on the historical shift from natural science to computer science. This shift might be called a move from “Planet of the Apes” to “Planet of the Aliens.” Drawing on her work, as well as that of Haraway, I want to consider how primate bodies have continually appeared and disappeared, been negotiated, contested, and revised, in the discourses of popular culture (including dominant cinema, popular and children’s literature, and junk science). I am interested in how this has occurred during the twentieth-century passage from modernism to postmodernism, natural science to space science, and the colonization of Africa (the “dark continent”) to the colonization of space (the “dark skies”). In particular, the discourses of feminism, primatology,

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speciesism, and extraterrestrialism have worked together for several decades now to create a space for the racialized and gendered human, animal, or extraterrestrial body in the context of “other worlds.” The film Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey is a very 1980s version of the “colonization” of the African jungle by white female primatologists in the 1960s–70s, at the inception of a “post” or “neo” colonialist period. This narrative reveals that women’s primatology is a retelling of the colonial story, but one in which the white man who aimed to conquer the black man and game animals of Africa is replaced by the white woman who wishes to merge with the ape. The female primatologist is, in some sense, a second-wave feminist version of the “man with the yellow hat.” She appears as a category of identity at the same moment as feminism’s revival, and she reinvents the trip to Africa as the prerogative of white women naturalists. If women couldn’t master the machine, it would appear, they would be allowed to master the monkey, or at least cozy up to him or her. The logical end to this trajectory is the reconstruction of the category of the gendered ape (gorilla, chimpanzee, orangutan). As NASA was making astronauts of apes, Fossey was making men and women of them. The myth of Dian Fossey at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a result of the popular culture and media narratives that have developed around her since her murder in 1985. James Krasner has convincingly argued that Fossey cannot be easily assimilated to Jane Goodall (who studies chimps) and Biruté Galdikas (who studies orangutans), the other socalled “ape ladies” of anthropologist Louis Leakey’s female prodigies. This is because her character—or at least the narratives of her character left to us in biographies and her own personal journals and letters—reveals a rejection of the stereotypes of woman in the jungle, that is, of both the objective scientist and the naive innocent. Fossey was a dedicated researcher, active conservationist, maternal surrogate to graduate students and gorillas, lover of dogs, monkeys, chickens, and parrots, unmarried and childless woman, and adept survivor (until the very end) of the political intrigue that swarmed around her. She was also, however, an imposing physical presence who elicited fear and anger, a sometimes-alcoholic, lover of married men, fan of pornography and vibrators, and occasional sadistic dispenser of punishment upon native Rwandan poachers. She was also known to mistreat her students and to ridicule conservation officials. The negative reading of Fossey insists that whereas the gorillas liked her, she failed at negotiating social relations with other human beings. In the film, Fossey—nicknamed by the locals “the old lady who lives in the forest without a man” or “the woman who lives alone on the

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mountain”—foregoes legitimate or civil union with a white man, the National Geographic photographer Robert Campbell, in order to continue what might be considered a perverse interspecies relationship with gorillas. Were she to paraphrase Gus Grissom, Fossey might say to Bob: “The issue here isn’t dick, but gorillas.” In the central scene of the film, “the big love scene with the gorilla” (Modleski 326), Fossey lies in the grass with the male Digit, her closest primate companion, and they fondle each other (Figure 4.5). All the while, Fossey’s male human lover watches, posed beside his National Geographic camera equipment. As Krasner has noted about the relationship between photography and the female primatologist: “Leakey no doubt understood that readers who would not be interested in evolutionary theory or animal behavior would be arrested by photographs of middle-class white women embracing apes” (239). Fossey and Bob return to her cabin and make love for the first time just after this scene, seemingly spurred on by Digit’s earlier caresses. The film thus places the human man–woman “touchacross-difference” (the term is Haraway’s, Primate Visions 149) as higher on a scale of intimacy than the woman–gorilla touch. Alternatively, we may interpret the juxtaposition of the scenes as a suggestion that men are attracted to women who are attracted to non-human primates.12 It is worth remarking, however, that the Fossey book called Gorillas in the Mist, rarely discussed in critical readings of the film, presents not one but two touching scenes between the white woman and the young male

Figure 4.5 Dian Fossey (Sigourney Weaver) and the mountain gorilla Digit touch across difference in Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (dir. Michael Apted, 1988).

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gorilla; these are subsequently collapsed in the film into one scene. Peanuts, not Digit, is the first gorilla with whom Fossey actually comes in close contact. While she is out with Bob, Peanuts approaches her: I lay back in the foliage, slowly extended my hand, palm upward, then rested it on the leaves. After looking intently at my hand, Peanuts stood up and extended his fingers against my own for a brief instant . . . Since that day, the spot has been called Fasi Ya Mkoni, “the place of the hands.” (142) Bob did take photos during this session, but he did not record the exact moment of contact. On another day, Fossey recounts, she lies in the vegetation without Bob as Digit approaches her, “He stood pensively gazing down at me before patting my head and plopping down by my side. I lay my head on Digit’s lap.” She then proceeds herself, from this vantage point, to take a photograph of Digit. Although Campbell did exist and did take photos for National Geographic (and was Fossey’s lover), his stint as voyeur photographer is an invention of the film. It exists to ensure the viewer that sex is really reserved for white men and white women, although white women and gorillas make nice (foreplay) friends. In the end, the film’s rewriting of the autobiographical scenes leads to a bland coupling of human and human that can’t match in intensity (because we are so used to it, perhaps) the interspecies intimacy Fossey wishes to translate in her book. Since the 1960s, female primatologists have created a type of primatology (some call it “feminist”) that foregrounds the female non-human primate as a veritable modern identity, a category of identity that arose at the same time that second-wave feminists began to reassess the category (of human) “women.” The latter process was characterized in the 1980s by a tendency to rethink the exclusions of feminism—the creation of “sub”-categories of women such as women of color, “thirdworld” women, lesbians, working-class women, etc. (see Spelman’s study). Meanwhile, while animal rights and anti-speciesism activists argue that we should treat non-human primates as we treat humans—that is, endow them with civil rights—the general category “primates” has begun to replace that of “humans.” Through this process, “female non-human primates” are appended as a sub-category to the category “women.” In 1981, as Dian Fossey toiled away in the jungle, feminist primatologist Sarah Hrdy’s important study of women, apes, and evolution, The Woman That Never Evolved, appeared. This book, heavily influenced

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by sociobiology, runs roughshod over conceptions of primate life that resembled too closely Father Knows Best, but with the father as an aggressive upstart or alpha male. Hrdy argues that non-human female primates, far from being passive partners to males, are extremely assertive in their sexuality and compete actively with rivals. Females are strategic in their quest for good sex, and they thus have evolved. In related work, Donna Haraway is as interested in the construction of the female primatologist herself as in the construction of the female non-human primate by female primatologists. Haraway argues that the significant contribution of female primatologists has been an emphasis on the female orgasm as “strategy” (they want good sex), one that plays an important role in natural selection and one that, like undetected ovulation, confers advantage to certain females. Haraway thus points to the female orgasm as lying at the heart of Hrdy’s work. Whereas one might argue with Haraway’s emphasis on this topic over others, her discussion of how the female orgasm defines the becoming woman of the female ape in the scientific literature such as Hrdy’s is engaging. For Haraway, the “discovery” of the female non-human primate’s sexuality— her orgasm—parallels white feminism’s “discovery” of the female (human) orgasm, and thus of the second-wave woman. Haraway asserts: In a process in which Hrdy took significant part, of renegotiating the conventions that set the value of the body for political discourse, orgasmic sexual pleasure became for (unmarked, i.e., white) women what it has been for (unmarked) men before, the sign of the “same,” i.e., of the capacity to be (mis)represented as the unmarked, self-identical subject—at least for a few intense seconds—in postmodern conditions. (Primate Visions 355–6) White women (and apes), presumably, could thus begin to live as unmarked subjects, as agents of the same, instead of as non-male. While appreciative of Haraway’s insights, I prefer to label the difference between being merely female and being woman—which Haraway defines through the orgasm as strategy—as one of “choice.” In this I follow the primatologist Meredith Small (of the generation following Hrdy), author of a study of the sexual behavior of female chimps called Female Choices (although I make no claim that Small would agree with my interpretation of her work). For Small, the female orgasm is only part of a larger picture (138–48). Choice of mate among female non-human primates was for Hrdy a sign of evolved femaleness—a sign of what I am

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calling “being woman,” or belonging to the category “women.” We might also call this choice “selection,” all the while bearing in mind that this selection called “choice” is not so much natural as cultural, and thus it breaks down the easy nature/culture binary. In other words, I propose that what separates modern, female/feminine/feminist primatology from traditional, male/masculine/traditional primatology is the choice that is afforded the female non-human primate as sexual partner. Choice is a loaded term for feminism. It is a baby-boomer term that acquired modern meanings with 1960s and 70s feminism, meanings that revolve especially around the issue of abortion: feminists are “prochoice.” But the question also extends to other choices: whether or not to work outside the home; whether or not to engage in sexual activity (where women are denied choice in this arena, the result is rape); whether or not to marry and reproduce, etc. These choices, or allowed orbits, are cast in a positive light in liberal feminist thought, and primatology may be seen, in this light, as a meeting of animal rights with feminism. The idea of choice or selection of a sexual partner among females did not just suddenly appear in the 1970s—evolutionary scientists had already noted that females choose their mates. But females had been considered extremely picky. In sociobiological terms, females selected only mates that would further their competitive advantage, using “sexual strategies.” So, it was thought, they must choose quite rarely to engage in sexual activity. New primatology research such as Small’s discovered, however, that these females were actually not very discriminating—they might have sex with low ranking males or even females (the latter especially among bonobos). Non-human primates were having relations much more often than necessary to propagate the species and were sometimes “choosing not to choose”: “Thus began a historical search to understand why female choice theory said one thing and the females themselves did another” (Small 85). Finally, they were often saying flat out “no”: according to Small, 43 percent of male Japanese macaque advances are refused by females (109). The choice on the part of (male) primates to ignore these strategies was a means, Small suggests, of admitting female sexuality but maintaining the general passivity or inactive nature of that sexuality: “Modern texts in evolutionary biology and behavior concede that females may be sexually motivated, but a female’s ‘need’ to be choosy and not waste a precious conception renders her almost impotent” (Small 91). Choice, as I use the term here, is the choice not to discriminate among male partners and therefore to have sexual relations when and with

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whomever one wishes. This is a choice not to be discriminating, a choice that was highly prized in middle-class, pre-AIDS, U.S. youth culture. Small concludes that female primates seem to enjoy variety for variety’s sake (176). Sometimes sex is all about sex and not about reproduction; sometimes it is not at all about sex, but about social goals. What Dian Fossey and others have discovered among the apes, or that with which they have endowed apes (the distinction is not totally clear), is choice. Although Fossey does not set out explicitly to study gorilla female sexuality and in fact rarely comments on it, she places herself, as anthropomorphized gorilla, in the center of a raging battle concerning female sexuality, nature, and choice. While feminists were concerned in the 1960s and 70s with redefining human women as beings defined by choice, primatologists in the field were busy underpinning that reassessment of choice through its extension to non-human female primates. And, especially after Fossey’s gruesome death, her own choices in life— including her choice to rebuff certain male solicitors—were examined by biographers and film directors in light of our understanding of what constitute primate sexual selection family values. It is no surprise that a film produced in 1988 would have as its main character a woman concerned with her choices in life. Indeed, how “modern” women constructed their families in the 1980s became intricately tied to how they viewed choice relative to two events: the choice to join the workforce (outside of the home and even in the jungle) and the choice of whether or not to procreate. From the 70s to the 90s, discourse on women and work had everything to do with discourse on women and the family. At the same time, discourse on the behavior of apes in the wild was shot through with references to their “choices” and their “family” units: The defining trope of “family” has been integral to the discourse of gorillas from the earliest western encounters. The history of primatology is marked by a traffic between representations of gorillas and representations of the nuclear family, constituting a discourse in which the gorilla occupies an anomalous and liminal position as almost a member of “the family of man.” (Nash, “Gorilla Rhetoric” 97) In his essay on the representation of the gorilla and family values in the west, Richard Nash equates a modern concern with the extinction of the gorilla—this is Fossey’s impetus to study the mountain gorilla—with a fear that the patriarchal family is nearing extinction: “underlying

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anxieties about the extinction of the gorilla are framed in terms of unspoken anxieties about the end of patriarchal authority and the collapse of the nuclear family” (97). Could the mountain gorilla be saved from extinction? And how could a human female, whose “species” had just lately appeared on the evolutionary scale, promote this salvation? In choosing Digit over Robert, Fossey chose a type of marriage: exogamous, interspecies marriage. She also chose work over sex, again revealing that choice, not orgasm in particular, is the issue.13 Fossey’s choice of Digit in the film raises distinct questions concerning the failure of a patriarchy based on the human male; at the same time, it safeguards woman’s identity as maternal by rearranging Fossey’s nuclear family to include the almost-human mountain gorilla. As such, this choice of gorilla as mate (and baby gorilla as child) instead of male human would seem to indicate that human women have (de-)evolved into animallovers. Sarah Hrdy’s “woman that never evolved” (“the woman that lives alone on the mountain”) becomes—in a society fearful that white women are dismissing marriage and over-using birth control and reproductive choice—a species that has appropriated natural selection for an unnatural purpose: choice. The many narratives of Dian Fossey that have appeared in the years since her death indicate that her “sum over histories,” far from being extinct, is ever-evolving. Indeed, as the evolution of female primate sexuality— human and non-human—has evolved, so has the popular image of Dian Fossey. Fossey is presented as both evolved and de-volved, as at once ahead of her time and yet surprisingly primitive; she has become a prime example both of Hrdy’s woman who never evolved and Small’s choosy woman. The anthropomorphism of which Fossey was repeatedly accused—the fact that she wished to communicate with the gorillas as well as observe them— has been projected onto Fossey herself, but in reverse: Fossey has become a primitive animal. Two quotes from those who knew her are indicative both of the degree to which Fossey humanized the gorillas and the degree to which she was animalized or “bestialized” (as gorilla): “She got killed because she was behaving like Dian Fossey” (Bill Weber, cited in Montgomery 215) and “I didn’t realize at the time that Dian was a gorilla” (Biruté Galdikas, cited in Montgomery 151).14 The understanding in the 1970s of gender as a category constructed upon sexual difference was in part effected by the birth of choice as a modern means of assessing and expressing decision-making, determinism, and destiny. Female primatologists, whether “feminist” or not, formed a central, heretofore “missing” link in the postcolonial,

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post-1950s revision of the concept of gender. One might go so far as to argue that “women” exist in part because some female human scientists decided to attend to the behavior of some female non-human primates— this in “the field” or “the wild,” that is, a space from which (white) man was noticeably absent (except when a popular magazine needed him there). As these white female human scientists—Fossey, Goodall, and Galdikas—capitalized (unwittingly) on the second wave of western feminism and the second wave of western colonialism (neocolonialism), gender emerged from biology and “women” emerged as a class to be reckoned with. Since the 1970s, popular culture has collapsed the categories “primatologist” and “woman”: while all women might not be primatologists, all primatologists are perceived to be women (see Strum and Fedigan, preface), from Fossey and Hrdy to Small and Carol Noon, of the Captive Chimpanzee Care facility in Florida. And once “women” became visible, as a class or category that is not biologically determined, choices needed to be made. By turning to the non-human primate population as model for female—now, “women’s”—choice, women primatologists such as Hrdy and Small were folding gender back into colonialist and “sexist” politics, in their new forms as post- or neocolonialism and gender-based. Dian Fossey figures as a go-between, a “woman between” Africa and the west, a figure set up to negotiate difference according to the reader’s and viewer’s expectations and preconceptions. She is the scientist/objective viewer who studies nature in Africa, at the same time that she “goes native” and reveals primitive, violent tendencies, expressed through her choices. We can imagine Louis Leakey, who felt that women made first-rate primatologists, telling Dian before her journey what Professor Wiseman told George, “Everything will be forgiven, if you are willing to go.” “Everything” included colonialism, the sin of white man, who is redeemed by second-wave women in the jungle. As we envision colonies built in space, we continue a legacy in the west that has pre-assigned roles to women and apes in the colonial project.

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Chapter 5

The Astronaut’s New Clothes: Naked in Space in Nude on the Moon, Barbarella, and Alien

I explained to Jerrie Cobb right at the start that it would be very difficult to integrate women into the space program. I told her quite frankly that it would mean special space suits . . . (Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Flickinger) Dr. Durand, could you hand me a garment? . . . Would you hand me some boots? (Barbarella) I had to clothe their nakedness. (Stephen Hawking)

The central topic of this chapter is how the clothing of the woman astronaut contributes to her identity as astronaut, that is, how clothes make the female astronaut. Indeed, although in western culture nakedness is identified with truth (“the naked truth”) there is a concurrent tradition of reading clothing as an indicator of what lies within the body—soul, mind, or identity—much as physiognomy reads personality from facial features. Women’s clothed bodies are, in particular, subjects of such readings: subjected to high heels, girdles, and panty hose, women dress up as women and clothes are fundamental to the masquerade, or performance, of gender. The striptease functions as a moment of truth, one in which the truth of woman is unveiled as lack, a lack that only clothing can fill. Moreover, as Ruth Barcan points out, the clothed/ naked opposition not only divides humans into categories, but also creates a boundary between humans and non-human others: “Most fundamentally, it has divided the non-human from the human and has

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divided humanness into ‘types’ or gradations: male/female; civilized/ savage; sane/insane; normal/deviant and so on” (2). To be clothed is to be, fundamentally, human, and it is the type of clothing one wears that identifies what type of human one is. Nudity has both positive and negative meanings in western culture. At the root of this contradiction is a fundamental ambivalence toward nature, for being nude is being in a state of nature. Nature may signify goodness, purity, wholeness, and universality; on the other hand, it may indicate degradation, filth, chaos, and the animalistic. As Barcan notes, “nudity functions paradoxically as the ‘unnatural natural’ ” (9). The clothed/naked opposition is thus caught up in contradictions and functions as a dialectics, with any stable meaning assigned dependent on context (Barcan 12–14). The vacillation between these contradictions is best represented by the striptease, for it is in the moment of undressing (and to some extent, I would argue, redressing) that the full power of clothing is felt. In the tension between the absence or presence of clothing, incarnated in the striptease, humans realize just to what extent they are defined as human because of clothing. It is precisely the process of undressing/dressing that reveals the “truth” of gender, rather than the moment of complete nakedness. And it is in the process of undressing/dressing that gender is constructed as a mark emanating from the woman: “The plain truth of masculine subjectivity is contrasted with the veiled mystery of feminine subjectivity, notoriously unknowable. Femininity is imagined as both inauthentic (a mimicry) and deceitful” (Barcan 62).1 Barcan points out, furthermore, that western ideas of nudity are built on a legacy of colonialism, which saw “primitives” as uncivilized and savage persons in large part because of their lack of clothing in contrast to Europeans (Barcan 150–63). Naked “primitives” were viewed at the same time, I would add, as hyper-masculine (their nudity a sign of power and violence) and yet somehow feminine (their nudity a sign of innocence and weakness). Since colonial discourse has been used to describe human forays into space, and since women and people of color are projected into space as (typically) aliens, it is important to attempt an understanding of how the nude/clothed opposition has been carried into space. In imagining the taking of human civilization into space, science fiction films grapple with the contradictions associated with dressing and undressing, that is, with the striptease. A peace-loving Barbarella makes the point as she clutches her weapons over her bare chest: “Armed,” she says, referring to herself, “like a naked savage.”

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Female astronauts, whether real or fictional, have not escaped this conundrum. The invention of the woman astronaut—the revision of woman so that her place in space may be thinkable—has historically involved the creation of “special” space clothes for them. White, clean, and accessorized with the U.S. flag, the astronaut’s suit makes the man, but can it be ready-made for women? Until astronaut suits could be made unisex, the space suit was an obstruction on the road to space for female would-be heroines. As noted by Amy Foster, until the design of a modular suit for the space shuttle, the idea of redesigning men’s suits for women was considered unacceptable, due mostly, it was claimed, to cost (170). This roadblock to the creation of the woman astronaut was, like other roadblocks put in her way, narrated on the silver screen. Before women astronauts could begin to colonize outer space by first killing off the alien Other, they had to dress for the job. Ripley, the heroine of Alien, cannot survive the final scene of the film without the protective layer of the astronaut suit, traditionally identified with the male spaceman. This spacesuit is a last resort, but one that allows her to kill the alien invader before a return to her essential (barely clothed) nature as woman.

I. Dressing for Success The myth of the male astronaut in the United States has a firm foundation, that of the myth of the male pilot, in particular the fighter pilot. Coming just upon WWII, the Space Age had a ready-made hero to reinvent and propel forward, as jet fighter pilots morphed into astronauts and continued to push the envelope, this time into outer space. Women aviators, especially Amelia Earhart, were also looked to as heroines of the flight age; however, these heroines were not wanted in the space capsule. Drawing only on fighter pilots, NASA limited space in the capsule to men who represented the New Frontier of a country that saw itself as missionless after WWII: “Those who lamented the nation’s atrophied ‘moral energies’ found the ideal restorative talisman in the ethos of the astronaut” (Michael L. Smith 199). The astronaut of science fiction has not been a sex symbol, but he has been a hero: “They are cool, rational, competent, unimaginative, male, and sexless. These qualities make them the heroes of the genre, as they are heroes of popular culture” (Sobchack, “The Viginity of Astronauts,” in Kuhn, Alien Zone 107).2 Given that the astronaut became the American hero of the 1960s, and given that he remains one today in spite of the falling off of public

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interest in space missions, it is not surprising that popular culture in its many forms of expression has drawn on his image. One area of popular culture that has presented the glamorous and sexy astronaut is romance literature. Two short novels, Beyond All Stars and A Hint of Splendor, offer the astronaut in his glory, in both the capsule and the bedroom.3 Published in the 1980s—after the admission of the first women as NASA astronauts—these stories created strong astronaut heroines as the men’s love interests. Whether suited up for space or naked on earth, these couples cannot hide their sexual prowess anymore than they can hide their technical know-how. The female astronaut heroine had found her place in the capsule, as long as she showed enough cleavage. This would also often be true in popular film. As the colonial mission became the extraterrestrial imperative in the 1960s and 70s, white women as well as women and men minorities (descendants of the colonized) posed a problem for NASA, in part because the traditional explorer and colonial hero was the white man (in a yellow hat) accompanied by a white woman who was not his equal but his helpmate. In Beyond All Stars, the heroine is a white female but the story also refers to the integration of blacks into the space program in the form of an African physicist crewmember. In fact, the female astronaut herself initiates the Kenyan as astronaut by dressing him up as astronaut. In a scene reminiscent of fraternity hazing, Ann Lafton demonstrates the EMU (Extravehicular Mobility Unit, Figure 5.1) to the

Figure 5.1 Extravehicular Activity outfits for the Shuttle. Photo: NASA.

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novice, Terrence Mubata. The dialogue concerning this garment among Ann, Mubata, and two white male astronauts, Harry and Chuck, reveals quite a bit about gender, race, and clothing in the fictional NASA locker room: “Now we put you in the EMU,” Ann said in a voice heavy with doom. Terrence blanched [an interesting detail, given his race] and looked nervously at Harry and Chuck, who hovered nearby like vultures. “This sounds like something filled with unpleasant tubes and catheters and other objects to make a man feel very uncomfortable.” ... “First you put on the liquid cooling and ventilation garment. This is to keep you from burning up in the suit. Next you put on your trousers.” Ann handed him the pants and watched as he climbed awkwardly into them. “Okay, now slide the upper torso unit over your head.” There was a strangulated sound from somewhere within the upper body piece. “Help!” came Terrence’s muffled voice. “That undergarment is riding up on me.” “You forgot to tell him to hook the undergarment thumb loops before he pulled on the upper torso.” “Oh God, that’s right. Here, Terrence, just a minute.” The three experienced pilots got the scientist out of the top of the suit and smoothed down his ventilation suit. They then showed him how to hook the thumb loops, taught him how to hook the two pieces of the suit together, put on his radio, adjust his oxygen flow, and finally put on his gloves. The helmet was dropped over his head, and he was ready. It had taken almost twenty minutes. Then minutes later they had him back out of the suit. ... “With practice [Harry says] you’ll be able to get into the whole mess in five minutes.” “I’ll believe it when I see it,” the scientist grumbled, but he still had his good-natured smile. All three of the professional astronauts laughed. The men clapped the Kenyan on the shoulder while Ann gave him a hug. “You’re going to be fine.” (McKenzie 70–3)

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As NASA has evolved, it would appear, the African primate on site is no longer a Cameroonian chimp, but a scientist, and the white woman is no longer a primatologist, but a space professional who trains the African man. Colonial-era stereotypes creep into the narrative as the innocent Mubata—Rousseau’s Noble Savage—smiles good-naturedly, even when he is caught up in a serious wedgie (“the undergarment is riding up on me”). That Ann leads this fraternity-like game is a gesture to her status as a modern woman, one who laughs with the good old boys in the locker room and at the African, and one who ultimately hugs the latter in a gesture that is both maternal and paternalistic. The woman astronaut directs the striptease and the subsequent dressing up of Mubata as astronaut. In the meantime, she undresses in private with the “real man” at the base—the injured but never flaccid Edward Saber. When worn by (white) men, the space suit represents the display power of NASA, the translation of both its technical mastery and command of national purpose. “Spacesuits would provide the emperor’s new clothes” (Michael L. Smith 193) to a country hell-bent on fabricating an image of superiority. As a suit for heroes, the spacesuit confers individuality: “They [the suits] are expensive, exotic, exclusive, and singularly iconographic” (Lantry 210). When worn by woman, however, the suit may appear as an anxiety-inducing envelope, one that liminally connects the feminine with industry and technology, as well as with fashion, while at the same time denying both: when one wears the unfashionable suit, one cannot be a woman; when the suit is worn by a woman, it cannot be a technology. Since man works with the technological and also returns home every day to the domestic, he may both wear the suit and be snuggled into the domestic at the same time without this image raising questions of gender out of place. The ideal woman, however, is identified with the domestic: she does not go home to it, she is it. She cannot work with technology, for she does not work—she is. Moreover, as the incarnation of the “bad mother,” she represents the underside of technology, technology gone bad (in Alien, the crazed computer is called Mother). To clothe woman in technology and insulate her, the domestic itself, into the home-awayfrom-home of the astronaut suit is at best absurd and a cause of derision, at worst monstrous and a cause of anxiety. Alien melds these two extremes of the continuum by having Ripley strip before donning the astronaut outfit, and then showing her only partially dressed again after she removes it. Alien manages to escape the binary, in other words, by turning Ripley’s dressing act into a striptease—into nakedness as a process— and thereby contributing to a new fashion style, one that might be called “astronaut chic.”

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The astronaut suit serves a dual representational function. It represents, first, a feat of masculine technology, one developed by NASA, the military, and private companies or contractors such as Goodrich and the David Clark Company: “Here, man is both literally and figuratively in the machine; the space suit is a machine garment” (Lantry 218). At the same time that the suit stands for intricate technological advances, it represents the maternal shell, the portable domestic space. Mercury 7 astronaut Wally Schirra entitled his essay on the astronaut’s suit “Our Cozy Cocoon” and repeatedly used the home metaphor, as well as references to the snugness and insular quality of the suit: “The suit, then, is a kind of cabin-within-a-cabin or a portable home-away-from-home” (Carpenter, et al. 113); “our little homemade environment” (116); “it fits us so snugly that we have to use thirteen different zippers and three rings to put it on” (112); “Sliding into the couch is a little like slipping a gingerbread man back into the cookie cutter. Since we are all differentshaped cookies, we need our own private little recesses to lie in” (110); and “Because space suits are personalized garments, you need to make more alterations on one of them to make it fit properly than you do on a bridal gown” (113). John Glenn extended the metaphor of clothing to the space capsule: “We sometimes joked, ‘You don’t climb into the Mercury spacecraft, you put it on’ ” (104). The repeated images of sewing and baking—domestic activities of the ideal white middle-class wife in the early 1960s—as well as womb imagery such as that of the snug cocoon, indicate that the mythology developing around the space suit had as much to do with feminized domesticity as with masculinized technology. The astronaut profession developed from that of the pilot, in particular the military pilot, as was shown in Chapter 1 of this study. So it is not surprising that early astronaut suits were tailored from military pilot outfits, which owed some important characteristics to hot-air balloon and deep-sea diving experiences, as well as related pressure chamber experiments, from the nineteenth century. Space suits may also be traced to an earlier history of war-time protection of the male body, that is, to the history of medieval armor (Kozloski 157). As we will see further on in this chapter, women’s space suits were said to present particular problems for NASA and this was one reason why the training of women astronauts was delayed; these problems also evolved from issues with female pilot clothing. But before turning to women’s bodies, it will be helpful to trace the development of the men’s flying and space suits. As Lillian D. Kozloski states in her informative history of astronaut suits, Orville Wright wore “an ordinary business suit, a high-collared shirt, and a tie” (2) for his

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inaugural flight in 1903.4 It quickly became apparent, however, that special clothing was needed for pilots to overcome two main problems: cold temperatures and lack of oxygen, the latter related to a lowering of pressure at high altitudes. Lack of oxygen could lead to medical conditions called hypoxia and explosive decompression (7). Leather helmets—more like masks—goggles, gloves, boots, and jackets were used in the initial costume design for pilots. NACA, the military precursor to NASA established in 1915, turned the design of military pilot clothing over to an Aviation Clothing Board. Oxygen masks connected to canisters and other advances allowed pilots to enter the stratosphere (the top layer of earth’s atmosphere) in the early 1920s. At this time, the Army Air Corps began to investigate pressure suits, as did B.F. Goodrich and other companies. Rubber outfits, helmets with visors, oxygen hoses, and cemented-on gloves characterized the models developed by barnstormer Wiley Post and Goodrich employee Russell Colley in the early 1930s (11–15). Pilot outfits for high altitude flights were beginning to be bulky affairs, especially when pressurized, but the Army and the Navy made advances in providing mobility and ventilation in these systems in the 1940s (15–22). The term “G-force” was used to express the pressure from acceleration and Colonel W. Randolph Lovelace, who would later have such an important role in the Mercury 13 story, subjected himself to dangerous G-force experiments. A woman, Alice Chatham, a graduate of art design school, was instrumental in many advances of the 1940s and 50s (24). In 1945, once the pressurized cabin was invented, the first partial pressure suit was designed by James Paget Henry, and this revolutionized the field as it allowed pressure but without restricting mobility (26–7). Lovelace, Chief of the Aero Medical Laboratory at Wright Field, Ohio, led efforts to develop a partial pressure military suit, the first of which was announced in 1947 (28–31). In the 1950s, the Air Force and Navy worked on pressure suits using “linknet,” a nylon layer that was worn under the pressure layer; the Air Force produced the model that was later modified and used as the Gemini suit (31–40). This suit was used in the X-15 when Mach speed was attained in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, and an X-20 suit was also developed. Meanwhile the “Mark” models developed in the 1950s used nylon and neoprene layers which reduced the weight of the suits. The Navy Mark IV was a testament to the need for multilayers suits: the pilot wore “waffle-weave” underwear for cold weather, a “modified anti-g suit,” and then a “torso suit” (39). This was the suit that was modified and used by Mercury 7 astronauts, the first to reach earth’s orbit (40).

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Dozens of suits were developed by companies and branches of the military in the years leading up to Mercury, and dozens more suits would be developed during the 1960s. Orbital flight required a new type of spacecraft, one that was able to sustain human life for longer periods than those required for pilots: “In essence, the wearer would be enveloped in an oxygen-controlled, pressurized mini-spacecraft” (42). A suit was needed to complement this capsule. Twenty-one pressure suits, their outer layer “aluminized” for high temperatures, were developed by Goodrich for the Navy and used by the Mercury 7. Each astronaut had three suits, made from body casts (Alice Chatham cast their heads), which served for training, flight, and a spare. Layering of the “cocoon” had become more and more intricate: The suit had zippered openings for donning and doffing, a neoprenecoated nylon layer to prevent leakage, an airtight neckring bearing, fabric-fluted shoulder and knee joints to allow the astronauts to move, and an over-garment fabricated of high-temperature resistant aluminized nylon. The vulcanized, double-walled garment with a perforated inner wall permitted the body pores to breathe. Air flowed into the suit through a waist connector, circulated throughout the suit, and exhausted through a pipe in the helmet. The helmet locked into the suit’s special padded neckring. (44) For the second suborbital Mercury mission, flown by Grissom, a “urinecollection device” was added (47). This was all a far cry from Orville Wright’s business suit: the astronauts were in the business, yes, but it was the business of survival and comfort while orbiting the planet. Gemini suits, developed by the David Clark Company, were built for “long duration” flights of a few days to 2 weeks. In addition, the Gemini program introduced spacewalks. When the public thinks of astronaut suits it normally thinks of the pressure suit developed specifically for Extravehicular Activity, or EVA, that is, when the astronaut either stands in the capsule with the hatch open (in which case the copilot must wear an EVA suit as well) or leaves the capsule to walk in space, typically tethered to the capsule. This image is the most popular one of spacesuits, perhaps because it is the most impressive: this suit must function as both suit and capsule, as total protection, for the astronaut. These suits added an extra insular layer on the outside (actually, 17 layers for the torso piece) and the gloves and boots, all detachable, were now multilayered (63–5). The helmet also involved three layers of visors (64). The first

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U.S. EVA was accomplished by Ed White in 1965 on the Gemini 4 mission. International Latex, or ILC Dover Industries, known for manufacturing brassieres and girdles, developed the Apollo suit. Apollo missions involved working on the moon, which created special needs, in particular easier ways to take on and off the suits: A system for eating and drinking under zero gravity conditions while suited was called for, as well as a mechanism for communication. Provision had also to be made to collect and store or, if possible, eliminate body wastes. It was believed to be especially important that the suit be easy to don and doff without assistance in the confines of the Apollo spacecraft. In practice, however, the crew helped each other. (75) A Portable Life Support System (PLSS) was also needed for moon walks. Two types of “soft” suits and one “hard” suit were developed for the various Apollo needs. Sixty total different suits were made for the Apollo missions, each with up to 21 layers. The Apollo EMU consisted of the constant wear garment (CWG), the liquid cooling garment (LCG), the pressure garment assembly (PGA), an integrated thermal micrometeoroid garment (ITMG), a PLSS, an emergency oxygen system (EOS), and a waste management system (84). Astronauts were now wearing layers of “systems.” The waste system was modified to include a “solid containment system” in addition to the urine containment device. For each three-man mission, 15 suits were needed, including training and flight suits. “Coveralls” were used instead of suits when the crew did not need as much protection (91–2). Perhaps the biggest change with the introduction of the shuttle in the 1970s—with the first shuttle flight in 1981—was that the suits would no longer be one-time, disposable, items, but reusable and interchangeable. I suggested in Chapter 1 that the seven-member crew of the shuttle expanded the notion of “crew” to include mission specialists, thus creating space for women on board. I would also propose that the new notion of the reusable and interchangeable suit parts contributed to the welcome of women into space. As Kozloski summarizes, although without an emphasis on gender: The time had come to progress beyond single-mission suits. Reusable space suits for the Shuttle program incorporated improvements generated from an advanced hard suit technology project that

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provided multisize equipment with life-times of eight years for soft goods (textiles) and 15 years for hardware. Shuttle suits were to be manufactured as modular components in small, medium, and large sizes. Extra-small and extra-large sizes were added in January 1978. (124) Instead of molding each suit to the man, suits were now made in multiple sizes, allowing for various body shapes. It was also decided that these suits would not normally be worn in the shuttle, but would be easily put on, within five minutes and without assistance, whereas “It took Apollo crew members as long as an hour to suit up, and they required assistance” (125). During flight, shuttle astronauts after the first four missions wore blue coveralls and jackets. After the Challenger disaster, however, the crew returned to wearing partial pressure suits, now colored bright orange (127; 138). These were called Launch-Entry suits (LES), while today the astronauts wear full-pressure suits called Advanced Crew Escape Systems (ACES) (Young 138). How the shuttle astronaut dons the EMU gives us an idea of the many shortcuts taken by Ripley in Alien. Spacesuits are kept in the shuttle’s air lock, which the astronaut enters when preparing for an EVA (130–1). Inside the lock, the astronaut puts on the urine device, then the liquid cooling and ventilation garment (LCVG), then the lower torso assembly (LTA), then the hard upper torso assembly (HUT), which is attached to the wall: “Crouching under the HUT, the astronaut reaches up into the arms to pull on the flexible sleeves, adjusting head and body into position” (131). The two torsos are connected with a ring. The total weight of the EMU is 260 pounds, but astronauts do not feel the weight while they wait 40 minutes to adjust to pure oxygen and pressure changes before going out into space (133). In reviewing this history, one begins to wonder what the “problems” really could have been in developing suits for women in the 1960s. Beyond the issue of added cost (see Weitekamp 76), issues concerning disposal seem to have culled more commentary, but of course clothing and disposal of waste are related. Historian Patricia Santy bluntly states that the private toilet was the answer to the problem of getting women into space: “the development of the private toilet—probably more than any other reason—encouraged NASA that females could finally (and without embarrassment to the agency) be integrated into shuttle missions” (51). Amy Foster also notes the emphasis on privacy in NASA’s plans for the shuttle (161–2) and how central the toilet was to privacy.5

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The shuttle toilet was designed with the special “problem” of women in mind: Because of their recessed plumbing, women have a special problem urinating hygienically in weightlessness. To solve this problem, NASA studied the issue in detail. This involved the photography of the urination function performed by a group of women volunteers. Based on their data, NASA developed a unisex toilet that is used on the shuttle. (Pogue 71–2) Apparently, the splatter effect of women’s urination was recorded in photographs and then somehow resolved so that the female astronaut’s pee would not get lost in the zero-gravity space of the shuttle (Jennings and Baker note that “The cups for women are shaped differently than those for men to accommodate anatomic differences” [384]; Foster provides a description and drawings of the funnels, 182). A new type of EMU collection system was also needed once women were on board. The men continue to use a version of the Mercury urine collection device, “attached to undergarments with Velcro and connected to the astronaut by a rubber sleeve” (Kozloski 136). Women wear, instead, a pair of underwear called the “disposable absorbent containment trunk” (DACT) which is “lined with a transmission layer that conducts liquid waste to a very absorbent material that can hold more than a quart of liquid” (Kozloski 136).6 Foster provides extensive discussion of all of the material problems associated with women in space, and she identifies waste management during launch, EVA, and reentry as more of a challenge than toilet design. The illustrations she provides are indeed interesting, in particular a photograph of Sally Ride’s Disposal Absorbency Containment Trunk, basically bicycle shorts combined with adult diapers. Menstruation is not mentioned, but the DACT would apparently take care of that as well. Jennings and Baker report that “Despite considerable initial concern about female crewmembers experiencing menstruation in space flight, menstruation has not presented a problem” and “Female astronauts on the Space Shuttle have access to multiple sanitary products for menstruation, including pads, minipads, and tampons in plain and deodorant versions” (384). Use of oral contraceptives is recommended and widely used (384). In terms of disposal of excrement, a fecal containment system (FCS) had been used for Apollo, but was dropped for the shuttle because it was never used (NASA has its astronauts on a diet to control the output of “fecal matter”).7

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A NASA publication emphasizes that the spacesuit protects the astronaut but also reinforces his autonomy: “With this protection and equipment, the astronaut becomes an individual spacecraft” (“Wardrobe for Space”). With the shuttle suits, the publication continues, astronauts can “take their environment with them.” This is especially true of the EVA/EMU unit, of course, which has an “umbilical” tether, but otherwise “gave [Apollo] crewmen the independence they needed.” This report refers to the “urine-collection device” instead of a MAG, although they are most likely the same thing. Thus, the progression in the development of the space suit has gone from single garment with one use for one man to layers and reusable components that may be reused for multiple astronauts. The suits have urine and excrement containment systems and this, combined with the shuttle private toilet, has led to less concern about sending women into space.8 The Space Shuttle Operator’s Manual (Joels and Kennedy) is written for the reader who imagines that s/he will serve one day on the shuttle. It devotes one page to clothing. “[T]he Crew Systems Division issued you a smart-looking outfit consisting of a cobalt-blue jacket and trousers with a short-sleeve navy-blue cotton knit suit” (2.20; this is before the Challenger explosion). Gone are the days of the annoying pressure suit, the guide explains (except in the case of an EVA). Shuttle outfits are sporty, colorful, and made to make you move. The advent of the smart shuttle suit has surely influenced depictions of women in space. On the cover of the romance novel Beyond All Stars, Ed and Ann embrace, he in military uniform (since he does not go into space), she wearing the sporty shuttle flight suit. The cover of A Hint of Splendor is even more revealing: the characters Elissa and Greg embrace, with Elissa’s cleavage pouring out of her top. Both books place their couples in front of the shuttle on its launch pad. As the shuttle guide suggests, these new outfits were “comfortable and functional” (2.20), and “[E]xpansion pleats in the shoulders make it easier for you to move and flex while wearing the jacket” (2.20). As for other items of clothing—socks, gloves, etc.—they are identical for women and men: “All clothing, except underwear, is the same for both sexes.” The diagram that accompanies this description makes this fact crystal clear. A woman is (finally) chosen as default astronaut and the clothing worn by men and women is listed. The only distinction concerns underwear: “Brassiere (female personnel only). 1 per day” (2.20). In the twentieth century, U.S. women pilots negotiated the categories “women” and “pilots” in part by incorporating feminine dress codes into

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their pilot-wear. During the first half of the twentieth century, women pilots switched from high heels to flat shoes and back again when they entered and emerged from planes. Pilot Harriet Quimby, the first woman to fly solo across the English Channel (in 1912), designed a single garment that allowed her to change from a skirt to a pair of trousers and back. Mercury 13 pilot Myrtle Cagle made a symbolic gesture to the issue of women pilots’ clothing by making her wedding dress from a parachute. (Both outfits are on display at the International Women’s Air and Space Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.) In discussions of whether or not NASA could accommodate women in space, the issue of attire was occasionally raised. General Flickinger, who supported the Lovelace tests of the Mercury 13, was quoted as saying: I explained to Jerrie Cobb right at the start that it would be very difficult to integrate women into the program. I told her very frankly that it would mean special space suits, that there were a number of physiological reasons why it just wasn’t practical. (“Chauvinist Astropigs?”) Wally Funk, who continued the astronaut testing as best she could after the Lovelace tests were stopped, used one of her mother’s girdles to substitute for the G-suit worn by male astronauts in the centrifuge test. She withstood five Gs with this women’s version of a G-suit: Funk had not understood precisely that G suits function by squeezing one’s lower extremities, not the midsection. The merry widow could have done her significant harm, constricting Funk’s ability to breathe deeply and restricting blood flow into her chest. In fact, her successful run on the centrifuge occurred in spite of Funk’s misguided use of a corset, not because of it. (Ackmann 176) In certain situations, then, traditional women’s clothing such as the girdle could be tailored to reproduce the special suits created for men. A more acceptable female figure associated with flight has been the traditional female stewardess, the domestic face of the commercial airline business. Since the mid-twentieth century, stewardesses (now referred to as flight attendants or crewmembers) have flown as symbolic mediators between the out there and the at home, their presence morphing aircraft into flying suburban homes. In the early days of commercial flight, the very fact that women were on board allayed some of the

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public’s fear of flying: if women were up there, passengers reasoned, flying must be safe (McCurdy 221–2). In addition, many of the earliest stewardesses were also nurses. In the 1960s and 70s, these women’s short dresses were the target of ogling and comedy routines, as the young and slender women induced passengers to “Fly the Friendly Skies.” Discrimination in terms of age and body size and restrictions on marriage and pregnancy were routine. In 1968, director Stanley Kubrick’s seemingly forward-looking 2001: A Space Odyssey relegated women to the role of Pan Am stewardesses. This was in part because the film envisioned the conquest of space as following naturally from the success of aviation in the twentieth century: in the film, passengers take interplanetary trips in spacecrafts that resemble planes. The clothing attribute that marks these women as “women in space” is their footwear: their mod anti-zero-gravity shoes keep them “down to earth” as they serve beverages and space food. Neither NASA nor Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke (author of the novel 2001) were able to imagine professional women astronauts in the 1960s, but they were able to imagine nice-looking domestic servants in space. We have already seen that one assignment NASA allotted to women in its early years was that of “computer,” that is, mathematical calculator. Another was that of seamstress. Both are time-honored “feminine” occupations: the calculation of household budgets was central to the middle-class household from the nineteenth century on, and sewing garments has been associated with women since the beginning of history. David J. Shayler and Ian Moule describe the seamstresses of Apollo: Women were also involved in the manufacture of the spacesuits worn by the Apollo astronauts. Some of the International Latex Corporation seamstresses who worked on the Apollo spacesuits were Delema Austin, Delema Comegys, Doris Boisey, Michelle Trice, Julia Brown and Delores Zeroles. Another female ILC employee Iona Allen, made the lunar overboots that Neil Armstrong wore when he made his historic “one small step.” To slow itself down after re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, the CM [Command Module] deployed three large parachutes, and one of the master parachute riggers for Apollo was Norma Cretal. (95; see also Lantry) Women computers and seamstresses had this in common: their work was detail work and it involved calculations. Some seamstresses were referred to as “technicians,” a term that was also used to describe the men involved

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with spacesuit technology. As already noted, Harriet Quimby made her own outfit for flying and Myrtle Cagle made a wedding dress from a parachute. Although the Quimby outfit was a practical means of refashioning pilot outfits for women and the Leverton dress a quirky refashioning made for pleasure, both garments indicate that seamstress work, the feminine, and flying were related. Two time-honored objections to putting women into space have been the lack of proper clothing for them—their bodies are not “standard,” that is, not male—and the menstrual cycle, a problem of elimination, or containment. Although the latter objection was unstated, the fact that menstrual blood might stain the white astronaut suit, that container of the body and its fluids, was certainly on the minds of those at NASA. During WWII, the Civil Aeronautics Administration thought it dangerous for women to fly planes during the menstrual cycle as well as three days before or after. WASPs routinely listed themselves as having irregular cycles to avoid this issue (Ackmann 38, 74). The age-old association of the menstrual cycle and female hysteria also found its way into the Space Age in a 1964 article in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology of 1964 (see Chapter 1 of this study). The design of pressure suits for pilots and early astronauts was influenced by the design of women’s girdles and corsets. This history has been traced in an article by Matthew H. Hersch, who refers to the years immediately following WWII: At a time when women’s fashion again celebrated the severe lines of the corset, pilots relied increasingly upon a variety of tightly laced garments to compensate for forces and pressures placed on the body during flight. Throughout the postwar period, constraining garments of Nylon were a fixture of both women’s high-end fashion and men’s space exploration; to meet the accelerating demands of their customers, firms specializing in the manufacture of corsetry and pressure suits were transformed as each sought to reach dynamic new markets for their products. (346) The industries of foundation garments for women and pressure suits for male pilots used “complementary technologies” in an establishment of “iconic representations of postwar American modernity, beauty, and power” (Hersch 347). Although diving suits have their place in the history of pressure suits, “The lightweight corset, and not the diver’s suit, seemed to serve as the model for postwar ‘partial pressure’ suit designs”

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(Hersch 355–6). The problems of G-forces intensified the assimilation of girdles and pressure suits: “Some early ‘anti-g’ suits were virtually indistinguishable from corsets” (Hersch 350), partly due to their use of straps and laces. By the early 1960s, the corset was cast aside in favor of the Lycra “panty girdle.” As we have seen, ILC Dover manufactured the Apollo suit; this company also manufactured Playtex brassieres. Another interesting connection between the history of pressure suits and that of women’s underwear is that Wiley Collins, who had first imagined a career in fashion for himself, sewed his pressure suit on his wife’s sewing machine (Hersch 349). These industry connections between fashionable women’s wear, founded on the hour-glass shaped body, and practical pilot/astronaut wear in the post-War period point to a type of transvestism involved in the design of clothes for a future in space. In some sense at least, gender would infiltrate outer space, even if only under the multilayers of the astronaut suit. And after all, it is to some degree what is under the suit that counts, for this is where the appropriately applied amount of pressure turns the male into an astronaut and the female into a woman.

II. Cosmic Striptease Outer space women in film have worn an array of space outfits, from the bulky to the practical and from the sexy to the goofy. Sexy outfits belong in almost all cases to aliens who are gendered as women, from Aelita of Aelita: Queen of Mars and the cat women of Cat Women of the Moon, to Zsa Zsa Gabor and her cohorts in Queen of Outer Space (dir. Edward Bernds, 1958), Sil of Species (dir. Roger Donaldson, 1995), and Leeloo of The Fifth Element (dir. Luc Besson, 1997). Aelita is a 1920s vamp: flat-chested, slim, with dark hair that is cut like a helmet around her face, a unibrow, and intense eyes, she wears a revealing outfit that accentuates her small breasts with breastplates (three of them!) and an odd crown with pipe cleaners jutting out of it (Figure 5.2). Nyla, in Devil Girl from Mars, is fully clothed in a black leather outfit topped with a cape. Her hair is covered with a black helmet made of the same material, shaped box-like in memory of Aelita. Nyla is endowed and she sports a 1950s-style brassiere that makes her breasts resemble missiles (Figure 5.3). The infamous Borg Queen of the Star Trek movies has no hair, but her head is covered in the dark vein-like patterns that cover her whole body. But in fact, the tubes that form a pattern at the back of her head resemble a hairdo. She wears

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Figure 5.2 Aelita’s Martian dress attracts the earthman Los in Aelita: Queen of Mars (dir. Yakov Protazanov, 1924).

Figure 5.3 The Devil Girl seems to snicker at the bland clothing of the human male (Devil Girl From Mars, dir. David MacDonald, 1954).

a low-cut black form-fitting outfit and this, combined with her lipstick and sultry look, gender her as a woman. Earth women, on the other hand, are usually dressed to make coffee and sandwiches or to act as communications officers or nurses.9 Cat-Women of the Moon is a good example of the contrast in most 1950s and 60s films of the apparel of the earth woman and that of the “female” extraterrestrial. The woman on the ship, Helen, is dressed in the same shirt and trousers as the male crew. She does show her femininity from

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Figure 5.4 The female astronaut dresses like her male counterparts but the Cat-Women dress to kill in Cat-Women of the Moon (dir. Arthur Hilton, 1953).

the beginning, however, in two ways: once they have reached outer space and the crew is able to get up and move around, she opens a compact and looks over her hair and makeup; soon after, she feels strange and we later learn that a mysterious connection is being established between her and the Cat-Women. (She does wear a space suit, as do the men, when they first walk on the planet.) The aliens on the moon are, on the other hand, dressed to kill, in latex form-fitting full length outfits that give them a sexy, slinky, cat-like look (Figure 5.4). Their dark hair is pulled back and they have widow brows, like Nyla. The original Star Trek television series combined the cat woman and the no-nonsense communicator in Uhura: not an alien, she was nonetheless of a different race than most of her shipmates and like all the women on board the Enterprise she wore short, tight “uniforms.” In Return of the Jedi (dir. Richard Marquand, 1983), Princess Leia, a human, bares most of herself in a bikini version of Aelita’s outfit and there is something of Jeannie, or Jeannie’s dark-haired sister, about her. She is most often, however, shrouded in a white dress that leaves her formless. Although from the 1950s to the 70s there were certainly instances of women wearing fairly realistic space suits, these were rare. Helen in Cat-Women does, but she is outnumbered by the rest of the crew—even when a woman does wear an outfit, the emphasis is still on the man in the suit. Jeannie is shown doing an EVA in her harem outfit, while Tony wears a NASA suit. The women of the television show Lost in Space (1965–68)

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sometimes don suits, but when they do it is a family affair. In Queen of Blood (dir. Curtis Harrington, 1966), the alien woman is identified as an astronaut and wears a (feminine) astronaut’s suit that is removed once she is on the human ship and begins sucking the blood of the male crewmembers (she eventually lays hundreds of eggs in a foreshadowing of the Alien series’ monstrous mother). The earth woman on the ship also wears a space suit, but it is not nearly as sexy (nor is she). It would appear that the spacesuit was such a central facet of the making of the male astronaut as hero, that it was almost unthinkable to dress a woman up in it until women actually made it into the NASA corps of astronauts. Even after this, a woman in a suit could appear to be an oddball or an object of curiosity or confusion: was “she” really in the suit or was that a man in there? Specifically, I propose that dressing a woman up in an astronaut suit became more and more acceptable after Alien. Indeed, we see more and more women in suits in the films that followed, such as The Abyss (dir. James Cameron, 1989), in which a deep-sea diving helmet substitutes for a space helmet, and Mission to Mars, which narrates the voyage of a husband and wife in space (they both wear EMUs when he dies in space). A significant commentary on the wearing and removal of clothes in space is Doris Wishman’s Nude on the Moon (dir. pseudo. Anthony Brooks, 1961), a film that is all about outer space as home to undressed women aliens. Since the Garden of Eden, clothes have represented the fall from innocence; they also require at least a primitive sense of technology and industry to make them. Nude on the Moon presents pre-lapsarian and pre-industrial aliens who manage to wear tiny panties, but that’s it. Born in 1912, Wishman wrote, directed, and produced underground nudist and sexploitation films from the 1960s to the 90s. With Nude on the Moon, Wishman, who also directed Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962) and Behind the Nudist Curtain (1963), firmly established herself in the 1960s category of directors who delighted the (underground) public again and again with the underside of the “beach blanket bingo” fantasy. This fantasy of scantily clad teenagers frolicking on the beach was countered by a genre of films that showed the dark side of this fantasy by disrobing the coeds and/or frightening them with monsters from the deep, ocean or space (see Chapter 2). In Nude on the Moon, aliens assume the role of the bikini girls: they are scantily clad and they awaken the boys to human sexuality. Wishman’s “moon dolls” reveal that underneath Annette Funicello’s bikini top were breasts and underneath her bikini bottom was a crack. Wishman’s nudist fantasy was filmed at an odd tourist attraction near Miami called Coral Castle, itself the work of a man whose fantasy of a

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woman was carried to unusual lengths. Coral Castle (also called Rock Gate) is a tourist attraction listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is a true Florida original: along with sites such as the Ponce de Leon Fountain of Youth, Disney World, and the Kennedy Space Center, it represents the fantastic imaginings of men. The compound was begun in the 1920s, but the process of construction used remains an enigma. Edward Leedskalnin, a Latvian immigrant, spent 28 years building the walls, furniture, living quarters, and garden sculptures of the “castle” from coral rock (oolitic limestone) single-handedly, supposedly at night by a lantern. It would appear that being jilted by a young fiancée originally inspired him. How he could himself lift rocks that weighed more than a ton is not known; he himself spoke of electromagnetism and the use of a “perpetual motion holder”—must have been some type of alien technology. Dr. Jeff Huntley, a young and handsome rocket scientist, plans a trip to the moon with the Professor, an older man wise to the human male’s need for romance and domesticity. At the beginning of the story, the Professor is concerned that Jeff has not yet settled down and started a family; Jeff replies, “Science is my life, and nothing else.” The stereotype of the scientist who values work in the lab above domesticity and sex is familiar, as is the tale of the sexual awakening of the young male. The Professor and Jeff plan a four-day trip from Miami to the moon, using incredibly hokey spaceship technologies. Their spacesuits are bright red (the Professor) and green (Jeff) and include silly silver breastplates as well as helmets that don’t attach to the suits. They quickly remark that the moon looks different than what they had imagined: there are palm trees and recently mowed grass all around (a mythical Florida!). They also remark that they have only enough oxygen for 13 hours, although the lush landscape clearly indicates that photosynthesis is taking place. As the Professor takes specimens from nature and lots of notes, Jeff takes photographs with a hokey camera. Our spacemen soon discover a nudist colony—although the women and men actually wear panties—ruled over by a buxom Queen who looks just like Jeff’s secretary at home (yes, it is the same actress). The aliens spend their time lounging around on carved rock furniture and bathing in hot springs. The women’s breasts are counterbalanced by the antennae that protrude from their heads, for these creatures are telepathic. The women’s panties ride low in the back and reveal their cracks (Figure 5.5). When the Queen becomes Jeff’s focus and first crush, the Professor forgets his previous advice to him and admonishes:

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Figure 5.5 Two out of three women expose their cracks in Nude on the Moon.

Figure 5.6 The Queen of the Moon and the spaceman in Nude on the Moon (dir. Doris Wishman, 1961).

“Remember what we came here for! . . . You’re acting like a schoolboy . . . Don’t forget, we’re scientists.” But Jeff is on cloud nine: “I’ve never felt like this in my life!” (Figure 5.6). As Jeff, his visual sense alerted, takes photographs of the topless moon dolls, the Professor takes copious notes—“highly useful data”—on the women. Neither comments on the fact that the aliens are naked and have tanning lines. Some touching between Jeff and the Queen occurs, and soon the alien women are

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actually posing for the camera, in sensual group shots. Finally, the Professor warns that their oxygen is getting low, but Jeff refuses to leave. He will stay or else bring the Moon Queen back to earth, he asserts, to which the Professor responds, “She could never live on earth!” Jeff remains stubborn, but the Queen knows that he must return home to survive; she knocks him unconscious and the Professor leads him to the ship. Jeff awakens enraged and discovers he has left the camera behind; “Oh, no, our only proof!” laments the Professor. Once back in Miami, Jeff recognizes his love for the secretary Kathy: “You’re here on earth,” Jeff exclaims, “I didn’t lose you after all!” The couple will soon, it is implied, be nude on earth. The Professor spies on them and indicates a sense of satisfaction. The topless women in space wear skimpy panties strategically lowered to show their buttocks cracks. The moon women thus “moon” each other, the visitors, and the film spectators. Western culture has long associated the buttocks with the moon and “mooning” has been a social statement for centuries. The rear end suggests two half moons and “butt cleavage” suggests the quarter moon. Perhaps lurking in the human subconscious is a woman (a “woman in the moon”) mooning the earth, taunting it with her crack. Nude on the Moon’s theme song puts it well: “I’m mooning over you, my little moon doll,” for the moon women “moon” over and for Jeff, the Professor, and film spectators. That the moon is often associated in western culture with women’s sexuality and reproduction (for its 28-day cycle), also underlies Wishman’s utopia on the moon, a nudist colony that is an outer space pre-lapsarian Eden. Although these “noble savages” are innocent in that they are nude but do not seemingly engage in sexual activity, the facts that the women look vaguely like porn stars and that Kathy the secretary is clearly up to no good suggest a fantasy of wild savage sex in space. In the end, Jeff must leave the earth to recognize gender difference among humans, and topless alien women with butt cleavage reveal this to him. The film is a good example of the strategic use and non-use of clothing in scenes of relations between human males and alien women; the encounter with the Other turns on the dressed/not dressed opposition.10 The DVD version of Nude on the Moon includes a second film on nudity in space, a short filmstrip called Cosmic Striptease, perhaps made by Wishman. The title may be taken from a short story by Harlan Ellison in which nude Martians broadcast scenes of life on their planet to earthlings (published in 1958 under the name E.K. Jarvis). In the short film, a female astronaut in a spacesuit has somehow landed alone on an alien

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Figure 5.7 The female astronaut undresses to placate the aliens in Cosmic Striptease.

planet and notices with fear that she is ogled by odd little aliens with eyes popping out from long antennae. Apparently because she isn’t carrying a firearm to ward off the little men, she begins a striptease that she relishes as much as the aliens do (Figure 5.7). The origin of this type of scene in space films is also the original film on space travel, Georges Méliès’ 1902 Un Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), which gives us men and women lounging on the stars (women) and planets (men). In addition, female Marine cadets wearing shorts and tights display the space capsule and then shove it into the rocket, reminding the audience of women’s role in space travel: she exposes her body as she exposes the technologies of the male astronomers. A more significant treatment of women and their missing apparel in space is director Roger Vadim’s infamous 1968 Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy. The film stars Jane Fonda as a “five-star double-rated astronavigatrix earth girl” in command of, and alone on, her own ship. The story is set in the future, when the universe is almost universally free of neuroses, anxieties, and war, and when the physical act of intercourse has been replaced with pills that facilitate orgasms without messiness. The film opens with a striptease, but one for which there are no spectators except the film audience. This famous astronaut striptease sets Barbarella up immediately as an astronaut who is all woman, from beginning to end, from hair to toes, whereas Ripley’s striptease in Alien, as we will see (a striptease requires patience on the part of the reader, after all), comes

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at the end of the film when she is revealed to be a woman for a few moments and only afterwards dons an astronaut suit. Barbarella is, then, Alien in reverse. The difference is significant. By opening with a scene of the unveiling of the female astronaut, Barbarella signals that the film will be about the denuding of woman, the stripping of her chance at representing the astronaut as a serious heroine. In choosing to close the film with a striptease, Alien puts off its denuding of the heroine as merely a woman, but then clothes her in an astronaut suit, allowing her to stand in for the male action hero. As the opening credits roll, Barbarella floats in her weightless ship, and it certainly looks easier to undress in zero gravity than on the earth (Figure 5.8). As the schmaltzy song “Barbarella” plays (“It’s a wonder, wonder woman, you’re so wild and wonderful”), the astronaut does a slow and purposeful striptease, beginning with her gloves, until she is shown to be nude beneath her shiny black, silver, and green spacesuit—no CWG or waste containment system for Barbarella! The viewer cannot see her face at first because her visor is black, but it is quite clear from the way she moves around that she is not John Glenn. The camera lingers on her helmet and as the visor opens on its own we finally see Barbarella’s face, her messy hair, glazed expression, and slight smile (Figure 5.9). As she removes her helmet, letters pour out of it, forming her alias: “Jane Fonda.” Barbarella’s suit is of the detachable kind, which contributes to the dual goal of making it easy to undress and suggesting that the astronaut woman is fragmented, that she is but a conglomerate of detachable body parts. As she twists and turns in the space of the ship, film credit letters spill from Barbarella’s flowing hair—talk about writing with the body!

Figure 5.8 Barbarella removes her spacesuit piece by piece in the opening sequence of Roger Vadim’s film (Barbarella, 1968).

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Figure 5.9 Barbarella gazes through her space helmet.

Once she is completely nude, the song ends as does her weightlessness, and the naked astronette falls to the shag-rug floor. We then see her listening, naked, to her commander, who issues her orders on a video monitor. When she offers to “slip something on,” he replies: “Don’t trouble yourself, this is an affair of State.” Evidently, Barbarella’s work for the government will not be the kind that requires clothing. A famous earth scientist and astronaut, Dr. Durand-Durand, is missing and Barbarella must find him and destroy the “positronic ray” weapon he has developed, securing peace in the universe. “Why would anyone want to invent a weapon?” Barbarella naively asks. Once Barbarella’s boss has signed off, she clutches her new weapons to her bare chest and states, “Armed, like a naked savage.” An association is thus drawn among female nudity, savagery, and weapons/technology. As Lisa Parks has pointed out, however, Barbarella’s real weapon—her technology—is her body (263). The Queen of the Galaxy’s mission requires her to dress and undress again and again in a frenzy of human female/male alien sex scenes, prompted by her desire to pay back the kind aliens who help her along the way. When she is not asking “Parlez-vous français?” she is saying “you saved my life,” which is code for “Let’s have sex.” Ultimately, Barbarella helps save the universe by having an inter-galactic—so to speak—orgasm, which destroys one of Durand-Durand’s secret weapons, the “excessive machine,” which kills by inducing orgasms; Barbarella enjoys it so much the machine goes up in smoke. Along the way, Barbarella is defined not so much by her specific clothing as by her multiple changes of attire. She wears a tight black and white outfit only to trade it for an emerald green one, only to choose another black one, again and again. Each outfit has

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matching boots, some reaching up to her thighs. Barbarella’s very being, and along with it her stance as astronaut, is defined by the removal and then changing of clothes: her adventure in space is an adventure in sex and wardrobe. This is the naked truth of the female astronaut in the late 1960s.11 Cape Canaveral National Seashore, near Merritt Island and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is a good place to see the truth of nakedness in space in action. National seashores and wildlife refuges do not have restrictions on nudity, but rely rather on local law. Brevard County, Florida, does have an ordinance against public nudity, but it does not have the funds to police the seashore. On entering the National Seashore, tourists see a brown sign—the familiar brown sign of national parks—with an odd inscription: “Nudity prohibited on beaches.” Why might this warning be necessary? One discovers why if one rides to the end of the peninsula, to the last parking area, where parking may or may not be available on a busy day and where a patrol car sits in view of everyone. The day my family went to the seashore we saw no park officer in the car; he was elsewhere. As we walked along the beach, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a nude man lying in the sun. Goodness, I thought, isn’t he the exhibitionist? But “they” were soon all around us, large nude women and small nude men, playing volleyball, sunbathing, and eating barbeque. We were surrounded by aliens. My 6-year-old daughter demanded to know why she couldn’t take her clothes off; because we had forgotten the sunscreen, I replied. Her father took on his “I’m cool, no problem” attitude, but I expressed my discomfort and we turned back toward the parking lot. On the wooden crossover we saw him: the park ranger, half submerged in the bushes and surveying the beach with a pair of binoculars. He was fully clothed in long pants and long sleeves in the 95-degree weather; he was clearly overdressed, which added to his own alien qualities. We asked him about the nude beach, about the sign along the road which apparently served no purpose, and about what he thought he was doing. He told us of the complicated legal maneuvers, the uproar in town (Titusville), that these were not locals but people from Orlando (the big city—they were aliens conducting illegal activities), and the ultimate decision by the park service to turn a blind eye, so to speak, to this beach party. His role was not to monitor the nudity, but to ensure that there was no pedophilia occurring, for anytime men are naked in public in the U.S. fear of the pedophiliac rears its head. All of this in the shadow of KSC launch pads. Government officials observing

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naked aliens on the beach, as if they had just dropped from the sky or washed up on shore. Nude on the moon, indeed.

III. In Space No One Can See You Undress Part of the attraction to modern audiences of the Alien series of films is that the categories of Alien and human are at various times merged, coupled, opposed, and reposed as alternatively eerily similar and essentially different.12 The pairing of Ripley with the Alien in its various forms and life stages is central to the drama—it is the drama. No longer is woman paired with the astronaut; instead, she is paired with the Alien and then merged with it, only to re-emerge from it. The Alien series takes us through these couplings (marriages) and de-couplings (divorces): “By Alien Resurrection . . . the female protagonist has integrated the monstrous feminine into her very DNA, emphasizing the interchangeability of Alien and Woman” (Gallardo C. and Smith 6). Ridley Scott’s Alien is not the Terminator, the white cyborg clearly gendered as male and posed over and over in distinct contrast to human players—men or women—in another film series (beginning with The Terminator, dir. James Cameron, 1984). Instead, the Alien is destroyed by Ripley, but at the same time the heroine is defined by the Alien. Much of the pleasure derived from the film series depends on the undecidability of the two: is Ripley truly human and is the Alien completely alien?; is Ripley female, masculine, or masculinized?; is the alien male, feminine, or emasculated? The term alien remains curiously open to the undecidability of species, but also of gender. Although David Giler, a producer of Alien who helped write the final script, has claimed concerning Ripley that “We really just had the secretary change ‘he’ [in the original script] to ‘she’ ” (The Alien Saga), the undressing scene at the end of Alien is clearly filmed for a female actress (would we really see a male character’s crack exposed?), if not specifically written for one. All of this comes down to an identification in western culture of “alien” with “woman.”13 Alien ends with a scene that draws the viewer’s attention to the role of clothes in making the woman an astronaut: Ripley undresses before the Alien, dresses herself up as astronaut, and then undresses once the Alien is destroyed. By suiting up as astronaut, she protects her body from the void of space into which she will force the Alien, himself dressed for the occasion. For aliens and marginalized humans are dressed up as the Other, with dark skin as under (and often over) garment:

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“Skin colour . . . is reflected by SF [science fiction] as the key vector of difference” (Roberts 105). It was with Ridley Scott’s film that the term “alien” began to be commonly used in science fiction film as a noun, instead of an adjective, and then acquired its seemingly ubiquitous postmodern usage in the “alien chic” of popular culture (the term is Badmington’s). The subsequent films in the series reinforced this image. After a brief reading of the significance of this novel word, we will see that Ripley’s dress up as astronaut defines her as the white human survivor in contradistinction to the Alien, who is racially marked, or clothed, as black. (The man under the Alien’s outfit is a black actor, reinforcing the idea that the Alien is black through and through, from his undergarment to his suit.) Science fiction films from the early twentieth century on have used terms such as thing, invader, devil, terror, Martian, creature, monster, them, and it to describe extraterrestrials, often in their titles; this was especially true in the 1950s and early 1960s. Just a few examples are: The Thing from Another Planet (dir. Christian Nyby, 1951); It Came from Outer Space (dir. Jack Arnold, 1953); Invaders from Mars (dir. William Cameron Menzies, 1953); Devil Girl from Mars; and The Astounding She-Monster (dir. Ronnie Ashcroft, 1958). During the first decades of the Cold War, these terms evoked fear in audiences of a deadly enemy “out there” that could harness atomic power—often in the form of some type of “rays”—to annihilate humans. The neutral terms “them,” “it,” and “thing” were especially capable of translating vague but nonetheless substantial fears of science out of control, projected onto extraterrestrial creatures whose technology was imagined as more advanced than that of humans. It has often been remarked that Alien is original in that it created the first female action hero on film; another original feature is that it added the noun “alien” to this list, a term that in many instances has replaced the others. The screenplay was titled Star Beast until the writer Dan O’Bannon changed it to Alien (O’Bannon has stated “I knew I had found a really hot title,” Scanlon and Gross 2.) The relatively novel title and the very novel heroic female survivor are related. As Gallardo C. and Smith remark, “By conflating the typical male hero of science fiction with the female survivor of slasher films, Alien became the first science-fiction film in which a female (rather than a male) represented humanity, effectively destabilizing gender difference” (9; see also Bell-Metereau 210). The change in gender for the action hero, from man to woman, and the change in species of the enemy, from beast to alien, involve shifts in ideologies of species and gender.14

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If we had to assign the crew of Alien titles used by NASA, they would be “payload specialists,” a gender-neutral term. The crew of the commercial spaceship Nostromo work for “the Company” to tow mined ore from deep space to earth. They are five men and two women; one of the men is black, two of them are workers (they are actually called engineers) while the rest are officers; both of the women are white and professionals. Despite these race, gender, and class distinctions, the crew basically wears the same type of casual and unisex work clothes, trousers, and T-shirts with jackets (some marked Nostromo on the back). They do have personal preferences—Ripley wears white high-top Converse sneakers and Brett wears Hawaiian shirts—but they are similar in their interchangeability. (Refreshingly, the clothes do not reflect 1970s styles in particular.) When we first see the crewmembers, they are in their white underwear, which function as pajamas. Their “Mother,” the central computer, wakes them up from their hyper sleep, and they dress. Space clothes proper, by which I mean partial pressure or pressure suits, are only needed when crewmembers leave the ship or when the shuttle is open to space at the end. The helmet is an important signifier of the astronaut and there are ample views of helmets in Alien. As the camera pans through the quiet ship at the beginning of the film, helmets are seen on top of the seats in the bridge; a close-up reveals that these are “emergency” helmets. When the computer, Mother, starts up, the spectator sees her buttons reflected in one of these helmets. Indeed, one of the useful aspects of helmets in film is that they may be used to comment on filmmaking, since reflections can be seen in the visors. The film capitalizes both on the ability of the helmet visor to reflect what is outside of it and to hide what is inside of it. This becomes important in the final scene (Figure 5.10).

Figure 5.10 Ripley gazes through her space helmet in Alien (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979).

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When three crewmembers, Dallas, Kane, and Lambert (a woman), descend to the alien planet to answer a (phony) distress signal, they wear bulky, white EMUs with dark armor on the shoulders and lights on their dark helmets. The suits were designed with reference to Japanese medieval armor: “They’re space suits, but they’re also very Gothic, with very rich surface texture” (Scanlon and Gross, n.p.) Close-up shots of the helmets reveal ornamental raised designs on them that resemble some type of hieroglyphic writing. In fact, the filmmakers were interested in hieroglyphic-like forms: one of the original ideas for the alien planet was to locate a pyramid there, with hieroglyphics on the walls of the inner chamber (Scanlon and Gross) and Ridley Scott states in his commentary on the film (included with the DVD) that he wanted the title “ALIEN,” projected at the opening of the film, to resemble hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics are, of course, symbols of an ancient civilization. That they appear on the helmets not only creates a link between the crew and the alien civilization of the planet, but also places emphasis on the idea that the helmets themselves signify, or create meaning, however mysterious. (The white helmet that Ripley puts on at the end when she is in the shuttle also has designs on it.) In their EMUs, Dallas, Kane, and Lambert enter the alien ship on the planet and discover the “fossilized” body of an ancient astronaut, showing evidence that it has “exploded from inside.” The dead astronaut, called the “space jockey” by the filmmakers, is a warning sign to the human astronauts, but Kane nonetheless proceeds to descend into the bottom of the ship, where he finds rows and rows of “leathery” eggs under a blue mist. As he peers into one of the eggs, the Alien latches onto his helmet, burns through it with acid, and clings to his face. Back on the ship, science officer Ash cuts through the helmet and breaks it in two. Kane, stripped to his underwear (which includes a loose shirt that ties up the front as a corset), is now covered not by a helmet but by the “face hugger.” With the hugger gone, Kane regains consciousness only to undergo the antics of the “chest burster” in the next scene. He dies as the alien astronaut did, with a large hole left in his chest. Scriptwriter Dan O’Bannon has remarked that the image of “homosexual oral rape” in this scene is meant to “ ‘make the men in the audience cross their legs’ . . . ‘Kane’ is being made ‘not a man’ ” (cited in Gallardo C. and Smith 37). This type of “making” of gender and its effect on the audience is repeated in the final scene, when Ripley is “made a woman.” Little critical attention has been paid to Lambert, the other female crewmember of the Nostromo, beyond the mention that she represents the hysterical woman, a figure in space and horror movies straight out of

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the 1950s. Indeed, the hysterical woman signals to the spectator that the only action allowed the otherwise passive woman is the moment of The Scream, the moment when her mouth is wide open and filmed in close shot, the moment when something like a rolled up magazine can be shoved in the opening (the robot Ash does this to Ripley). Lambert fulfills Barbarella’s remark that “a good many dramatic situations begin with screaming,” although the Queen of the Galaxy screamed for different reasons than Lambert. In a triangle scene involving Lambert, Parker, and the Alien, the woman becomes fodder for the Alien when he grabs Lambert, arms wide open, and she screams in response. This prepares the final scene between the Alien and the potential second woman victim, Ripley. Parker intercedes to save Lambert, but is murdered. The Alien can now return to his “seduction” of Lambert: The Alien dispatches (Parker) quickly, as he has done with all the men. In the case of Lambert, it takes its time, moving slowly. Its tail gradually ensnares her leg and moves upward, suggesting penetration. The audience does not get to watch what it actually does to her, but the sounds of Lambert hyperventilating broadcast over the intercom are strongly reminiscent of the grunts and heavy breathing occurring during sex, turning her death into a perverse rape-murder. (Gallardo C. and Smith 52) In the end, both Parker and Lambert are dead, Lambert strung up with naked legs and a foot dangling down for Ripley to see. This scene is significant in that it denies Parker the stereoptypical role of the protector of woman, shows the Alien’s exaggerated interest in female humans, and sets up the finale with Ripley and the Alien. By contrast, much critical attention has been given to Ripley’s striptease at the end of the film, and understandably so. Critics agree that the film feminizes Ripley at the end, although the degree to which this happens has been debated. Whereas James Kavanagh downplays the scene (“The image presented to the viewer here is hardly sensational by any standards . . . ” [“Feminism, Humanism and Science in Alien” in Kuhn ed., Alien Zone 77]), others have read it as “coded as a sexual assault” (Gallardo C. and Smith 77); a “sexual encounter” (Gallardo C. and Smith 57); or a rape (the Alien “attacks Ripley, like a fantasy rapist” [Judith Newton, “Feminism and Anxiety in Alien” in Kuhn ed., Alien Zone 85]). Whether or not the scene is read as a sexual attack, Ripley’s striptease is recognized as an action that reinvents her as a woman, through voyeurism: “We are suddenly, and bluntly, reminded of her sex . . . she is staked out for us, and

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for the story—and so there grows an inescapable conclusion, that we and the monster are watching her together” (Gallardo C. and Smith 54–6); “Ripley no longer represents a rational and asexual functioning subject, but an irrational, potent, sexual object” (Sobchack in Kuhn ed., Alien Zone 107); “she is fleetingly feminized when she undresses in the space pod, a glimpse of sexual difference at odds with the impersonal egalitarian structure of the rest of the film” (Catherine Constable, “Becoming the Monster’s Mother,” in Kuhn ed., Alien Zone II 184); “Ripley’s body is pleasurable and reassuring to look at. She signifies the ‘acceptable’ form and shape of woman” (Barbara Creed, “Alien and the Monstrous Feminine,” in Kuhn ed., Alien Zone 140); “In the end, Ripley remains the heroine, but she is no longer a final girl, a mix of masculinity and femininity. Rather, she has been ‘fixed up,’ fixed into femininity” (Clough 65); “By rendering her available to male voyeurism . . . she now signifies a wholly intelligible form of femininity” (Ros Jennings 197); “The Alien manifests no erotic intention until its lust erupts during the final showdown with Ripley” (Greenberg 93). Ridley Scott himself categorizes the scene as sexual. In commentary on the film (with the DVD), the director states that others involved in the making of Alien kept asking where the sex was, so he had Ripley strip at the end: “there’s a sexuality to this whole scene . . it’s subtly sexual . . . or is it just me?” Clearly, it’s not just you. I agree that this scene works to establish that Ripley is a woman so that the audience will willingly accept her as the final survivor: a woman is the hero, but she is only a woman, after all. But I propose also that this gendering of Ripley is not, in fact, “fleeting”; instead, it builds over the course of several scenes, beginning with Ash’s “rape” of Ripley with a girlie magazine and ends with Ripley going into hyper-sleep in her undies. When Ash attacks Ripley, on a couch under photos of nude Asian women tacked to the wall, Parker intercedes and saves her. Ripley then takes control and tells Parker to gather supplies, as they prepare to “blow this fucker off into space” (Ripley’s words). The first step Ripley takes to prepare for launch is to pull her hair back and up with a clasp. This simple gesture surprises because it is the first time Ripley herself points to her gender, as opposed to the men doing so. With her hair up, Ripley moves on to a major component of her en-gendering as woman: she focuses on the ship’s cat. This is, of course, contrary to the character of the woman who has all along been concerned with the safety of humans, but it reinforces her new stance as a caring female: the cat is the “reassuring fetish object for the ‘normal’ woman” (Creed in Kuhn ed., Alien Zone 140). Meanwhile, the Alien does away with Parker and Lambert, and then moves on to share a close-up scene with the caged cat. Once in

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the shuttle, Ripley belts herself in, launches, and watches the Nostromo explode. She can forget the Alien now (“I got you, you son of a bitch”) and focus on the cat, which she places in a sleep pod. She then enters the closet for a sleep robe and the spectator sees part of a helmet, a foreshadowing of what is to come. Ripley undresses to her undies and her hair is at issue again: as she pulls up her T-shirt to reveal an undershirt, her hair falls down. She is now exposed, and we can only assume that the Alien, camouflaged among the controls of the shuttle—a being now merged with technology—observes her, or will shortly. Ripley faces the spectator then turns her back to us: She is calmly choreographed to provide a complete 360-degree pirouette as she struggles with her necklace [a “feminine” moment, like that with her hair clasp] and then sprawls over the instrument panel to check the controls with her rear view emphasized as sexually available. From the moment she touches the controls a flashing strobe light comes into play, erratic but slow enough to be reminiscent of a flashgun going off with Ripley in its sights. She is, in other words, like a pornographic model on display. (Ros Jennings 195) Ripley reveals her crack as she leans over the controls, at the same time leaning over the Alien (Figure 5.11). But Ripley is not a plumber and this is not meant to be funny: how can it be anything but a sign of her sexual availability? We do not see Ripley’s breasts, but we can see that they are small and that her body is boy-like, in strong contrast to the full feminine tops of Wishman’s moon women. Spectators do see Ripley’s crack, though, as a stark reminder that she is a woman in space, that she is naked under her undergarments, and that the “fault” (break, mark, crack) of gender is the fault of woman, who must veil it if she is to survive. And as we spy her crack, the Alien’s hand, or claw, comes out of the machine and its double mouth opens, as the Alien awakens to woman’s presence. When she notices the Alien, Ripley jumps into the closet (the closet is the “archetypal space reserved for the slasher heroine” [Gallardo C. and Smith 55]), where weapons including an axe are stored; the closet is, of course, the right place to find clothing. Ripley looks out of the closet window at the Alien and then to the puffy white spacesuit beside her. As the camera pans down her body, she steps into the legs. Once the torso is on, with its white armor shoulder pads and breastplate, Ripley dons the hieroglyphic helmet and grabs a harpoon

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Figure 5.11 Ripley checks the controls, allowing spectators to check out her crack.

(the suit is the same as that used to descend to the planet except it has been sprayed completely white). We now see her face not through the door window, but through the helmet. She is ready to emerge. She sits and buckles in again, chanting “you are my lucky star,” but this 1930s love song cannot be meant for the Alien. The Alien appears in all its phallic glory—its head is incontestably an oversized male organ. At this point, the space helmet again serves to signify the astronaut, as the Alien moves alongside it and Ripley spies him through the visor. He has overstepped his bounds by peering into the helmet and Ripley responds by blasting him into space. Jennings comments on the use of audio during this moment, which is broken due to the use of the helmet: By breaking the link between what we hear and what we see, we are left with a soundtrack of a disembodied fucking scene complete with an intense climax which takes place both in terms of sound and narrative, when the huge phallic head of the alien rears up close to Ripley’s head, and she pushes the release button for the pressurized door. (Ros Jennings 196) When the Alien finally falls away for good, Ripley appears in her undies again, although we have not seen her remove her spacesuit. She is a woman again but she holds only the cat—rather than open to the Alien’s or spectator’s voyeuristic gaze, she is the nurturer, the good mother, preparing to sleep with her baby. With her striptease, Ripley engages in what might be called species eroticism, as Dian Fossey had, although here the species is non-primate.

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And although the “gender” of the Alien is at times undecidable, Ripley’s striptease, what Gallardo C. and Smith call “the ‘empowerment in tiny panties’ ending” (23), points to its masculine position. Ripley, who until this moment had herself been fairly undecidable in terms of gender, is categorized as a woman through her cat fetish and the passive display of her crack and the Alien assumes the active voyeur position. This is also a scene that establishes the interracial nature of Ripley’s and the Alien’s sexual encounter, described by John Rieder as a black on white rape scene: Thus a film with moments of great power and genuine thematic interest winds up, in the strip-tease sequence near the end, by subjecting its viewers to the hackneyed scenario of the white woman’s flesh being exposed to the non-white rapist’s salivating visage . . . a titillating, sensationalist exploitation of rape. (“Embracing the Alien” 53) In the Alien sequels, Ripley becomes a mother (Aliens), has sex with a male human (Alien3), and becomes impregnated by the Alien (Alien Resurrection). In Alien, she takes a first step in that direction, and the first step is to undress and, apparently, to be threatened with interspecies sex. At the climactic moment of encounter—“first contact” between human and alien—Ripley becomes a true astronaut: she wears a spacesuit for the first and only time. The astronaut suit protects her from the vacuum of space when she opens the shuttle hatch to eject the Alien, but it also serves the symbolic purpose of identifying her as a professional who can operate without the permission of Mother. The suit suggests to the audience, moreover, that Ripley will survive the threat of the Alien—how can she not, with such a technologically advanced suit of armor? She survives because she clothes her (essential) nakedness within the folds of space technology fashion, after having seduced or disarmed, so to speak, the Alien. In the Alien series, outer space becomes the Other, the new Orient, the new Africa, where white human males—called film directors—make use of women’s bodies in particular ways to promote colonization through the eroticization of the human female/non-human (extraterrestrial) relationship. Outer space becomes the backdrop to revisions of race and gender made possible by the scenario of western woman’s “first contact” with the Other. Inner (deep and dark) Africa—the “third” world—is replaced in Alien with the “fourth” world of space. Both third and fourth

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worlds are first presented as pure, virginal spaces untainted by civilization (science and technology): Fossey climbs into the mountains to commune with gorillas instead of dealing with the effects of colonialism—the effects of history—down in the valley; outer space is an empty stage on which Ripley may seemingly undress safely, as do the moon dolls. These apparently untainted spaces promote the interaction among race, gender and species as open to negotiation. But in the end, both Gorillas in the Mist and Alien fail to offer novel revisions of the civilizing mission. When Ripley puts on the astronaut suit—thus becoming a killer—the narrative follows the curious George model of awarding the medal to the first primate who can successfully conquer space by writing western and human notions of gender, race, and species onto it. Ripley needs to masquerade as astronaut, but to do so she must also masquerade as a woman, and at the same time. With Contact, we turn, 20 years after Alien, to a film that once again suits a woman up as astronaut, but instead of confronting “it,” “the terror,” or the beast, Ellie Arroway confronts a tame, fatherly, alien—with a small letter “a.”

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Chapter 6

Making Contact

You son of a bitch . . . Jean-Luc, blow up the ship. (Lily Sloane) Small moves, Ellie. (Ellie Arroway’s father) The film Alien was innovative in several ways, including that it popularized the noun “alien” as a reference to extraterrestrials. Until then, “alien” had almost always been used as a noun to refer to a foreigner—the Other of the nation—and in particular an illegal or enemy nonnational. The projection of the word into outer space, in the form of space aliens, formed part of the rhetorical underwriting of the projection of western colonialism into space. It is no surprise that outer space movies became a popular craze in the 1950s: not only was this decade the first of the Cold War, with its fantasies of Soviets using atomic energy to blast away U.S. citizens, but it was also the last decade of many of the west’s colonies in Africa and Asia. These colonies, many of which had known their first encounters with “white aliens” from Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, were fast moving to independence. By the 1970s, however, it was evident that colonialism was not in fact over, but rather had been extended by another version of itself, called neocolonialism. Outer space became a terrain of post- and neocolonialism, with outer space movies that staged “aliens,” instead of mere monsters, in novel yet somehow eerily familiar encounters with humans. “Alien” was thus borrowed from political and national discourses and applied to outer space creatures. Similarly, the term “first contact” has been used by both anthropological and science fiction discourses to refer to an initial encounter between previously unknown peoples or beings, whether western and non-western peoples or space aliens and (western) humans. This chapter is concerned with contact between

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earthlings and aliens and how gender and race are integrated into outer space first contact stories.

I. First Contact The term “first contact” is used by anthropologists to describe the first meeting of human cultures previously unknown to each other. In western history, first contacts have traditionally been ventures of white “civilized” European cultures into the spaces of non-European, “primitive,” and racialized cultures. The romanticized version of this tradition designates the white man as individual hero of either God (as missionary) or Nation (as military man or explorer) acting alone on a dangerous quest. The term has been most widely used in reference to the 1492 “discovery” of North America and contact with Native Americans in the Caribbean. The term is also often used in relation to more recent western inroads, for example in Brazil among the Yanomami ethnic group. But the most significant use of the term in the twentieth century has been in reference to the encounter between Australian whites and the indigenous people of the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. In 1930, Australian prospectors Michael Leahy and Michael Dwyer journeyed into the Highlands of New Guinea searching for gold, but instead encountered indigenous groups that had not yet met white people. Leahy returned with his brother Danny in 1933 and continued exploration, which included the taking of film footage. Using this film record, anthropologists Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson made an important documentary film about the Leahy expeditions, First Contact, in 1982, and published their book of the same title in 1988. Several anthropology publications and films that followed showcased the term or its shorthand, “contact,” including Edward L. Schieffelin and Robert Crittenden, Like People You See in a Dream: First Contact in Six Papuan Societies (1991); Contact: The Yanomami Indians of Brazil (dir. Geoffrey O’Connor, 1991); and Mark Anstice, First Contact. A 21st Century Discovery of Cannibals (2004). New Guinea and Brazil would thus appear to be the favored scenes of twentieth and (thus far) twenty-first-century first contacts between western white men and non-western people of color on the planet earth.1 New Guinea as an ur-location for first contacts has also been taken up by UFOlogists. Sightings of a spaceship in the sky with “men” waving out from it were reported in 1959 by a British missionary who gathered locals to witness the event. William R. Forstchen writes of the “Papua Incident”:

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“If ever there was an event that clearly indicates that ‘something is happening,’ this one is it, yet due to the remoteness of the region, lack of photographic evidence, and the fact that the majority of witnesses were ‘natives,’ it seems that the Papua Incident has all but slipped through the cracks” (in Fawcett 16; Fawcett is the editor of Making Contact. A Serious Handbook For Locating and Communicating With Extraterrestrials). On the one hand, Forstchen writes, the events in New Guinea should be believed because most of the locals were fairly well-educated and westernized; on the other hand, the fact that they had not heard and read about UFOs due to the remoteness of the region (and were therefore not educated about them) is itself “proof” that they could not have concocted the story. During the years leading up to the end of colonialism in much of the world—years in which first contacts with humans on earth were thought (sometimes with a dose of nostalgia) to be over—UFO sightings were conjured up to extend first contact narratives into the future. Again, Brazil features in many first contact anthropology stories and in early UFO reports, such as Forstchen’s description of the 1946 “Araçariguama Incident” in the same volume. Although the typical first contact earth scenario involves the white western man, the story of a white woman, Eliza Fraser, has become a central myth in the making of the Australian national ethos. Eliza Fraser’s first contact was, significantly, accidental—it followed a shipwreck rather than a purposeful seeking out of unknown cultures. A Scottish woman and the wife of a sea captain, Mrs. Fraser lived for several weeks in 1836 with Aboriginal natives (the Badtjala) on an island (now Fraser Island) off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Although Fraser was not the first contact that the natives had with Europeans—whom they believed to be ghosts of their ancestors—she was the first white woman that Aboriginals saw; she was also the subject of an influential “white captivity” narrative (Schaffer 10–11). One of the lynchpins, so to speak, of this narrative was the moment that Mrs. Fraser’s clothes were removed by the Badtjala (see McNiven, et al. 1). In the years following her “rescue,” Eliza Fraser’s story was told and retold in the nineteenth century as a fantasy of the clash of Empire with the “primitive,” with the establishment of race as the colonial difference par excellence. As recent studies indicate, the story of Mrs. Fraser has been revised over and over by writers and artists from 1840 to the present day. These narratives contradict each other and often involve gross exaggerations of the white woman’s treatment on the island. As Kay Schaffer points out, Fraser was represented not only as an innocent white woman suffering at

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the hands of men (including the Badtjala and the white convict who found her), but also as a bad mother, a betrayer of men, and a liar (8, 18–19). In addition, she was represented as an exhibitionist who sold her body to the public in London by showing her scars (Brown, in McNiven, et al. 15). As a white and female body, Eliza Fraser represented the double imperative of colonialism: to conquer native people of color and to project a civilized veneer, represented by the pure body of the white mother. Fraser’s “good” body—in need of constant protection— was used to shore up ideals of nationalism and civilization in nineteenthcentury Australia and Great Britain: These early sensationalized and popular reports of this event represent Mrs. Fraser as an innocent white victim of colonialism and her Aboriginal hosts as barbarous savages. These “first contact” narratives of the white woman and her Aboriginal “captives” impacted significantly upon England and the politics of Empire at an early stage in Australia’s colonial history. (McNiven, et al. 2) But the popular media at the time of her “rescue” also made her to represent the underside of the proper woman: she was a bad mother who had somehow involved herself sexually with the convict who rescued her and then sold her body to earn a living. This signifying body was forgotten from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s, when it was resurrected as a potent emblem of nationalism: “Since that time [the 1970s] Mrs. Fraser has become a figure of note within an Australian nationalist mythology and an internationalist post-colonial arena” (McNiven, et al. 4), and part of that resurrection has included a reading of the convict rescuer as a national hero. Anthropologists have noted that the first contact phase with “primitive” humans is inevitably followed by the domination of the technologically superior (western) society over the other and the subsequent demise of those contacted. Technology is the measure by which first contact plays out. For anthropologists, first contact is a matter of engaging with “primitive” groups—although the term is no longer used—that is, groups that are represented as prehistory, pre-modern, and pre-industrial. Although discovered in the present, these peoples seem to be living in the past. First contact involves, then, a sort of time travel to the past; although the two groups live in the same historical moment, one group acts as if it is living outside of history. Significantly, it has been noted that first contact can actually lead to a further “de-evolution” of “primitive”

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peoples: “There is increasing recognition that ‘first contact’ and colonialism can precipitate a return to conditions of primordiality from the point of view of indigenous peoples” (Scott 169n12). The relationship between time and first contact in anthropology echoes that of time and first contact in science fiction, which is often concerned with first contact in some future time and space. In science fiction, the contact is not intraspecies, but rather interspecies: it is between humans and aliens. The first appearance of the phrase in science fiction was in the 1945 novella First Contact, by Murray Leinster. Whereas the Michael Leahy expedition predated Leinster’s novella, the term “first contact” did not become common in popular anthropological discourse until the 1983 film by Connolly and Anderson, suggesting that the film title was borrowed from, or at least perhaps influenced by, its use in science fiction. By the time the Star Trek film version of “first contact” appeared in 1996, the term had become “generic” according to a court that dismissed Leinster’s relatives’ 2000 suit over the use of the phrase in the Star Trek film title. Science fiction film has made consistent use of the term, including the 1984 sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, called 2010: The Year We Made Contact; “Emanuelle: First Contact,” an episode of the 1994 television series Emanuelle in Space; and Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel Contact, from which the 1997 film Contact was made. Numerous other science fiction novels and films, as well as studies of the possibility of extraterrestrial life, have used the terms “contact” and “first contact” in their titles. In this chapter, I examine two science fiction films dating from the 1990s that narrate first contact encounters for what they reveal about imagined first encounters between humans—in this case, women—and aliens. Eliza Fraser in outer space, so to speak.2 Before we can usefully examine Star Trek: First Contact and Contact, we should understand two concepts related to the idea of first contact that are important in these films, especially the first. These concepts are the “Prime Directive” and the “time-loop paradox.” Those familiar with the original television series Star Trek (1966–69) and its offspring (five more television series and 11 films) will remember the Prime Directive, Starfleet General Order 1: This directive requires that Starfleet personnel not interfere with the normal and sacred cultural evolution of alien lives and cultures. It prohibits Starfleet from introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technologies into alien societies. Alien activities must be judged within

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the framework of the respective alien society, by its cultural terms, within its social frameworks. This Prime Directive is supposed to take precedence over any and all other considerations and carries with it the highest obligation. (Vivona 177) If a new culture is discovered in the universe, in particular one that is not technologically advanced—meaning, in the twenty-fourth century (Star Trek time), that it has not developed warp drive—it is to be left alone. Ethno-tourism is strictly forbidden. The Prime Directive is the counterpoint of the notion of first contact: in the twenty-fourth century, first contact will no longer lead to the destruction of less-advanced civilizations by technological ones. First contact with “primitive,” “aboriginal,” or “native” aliens is to be avoided at all costs, no matter how positive one may imagine one’s potential influence. Of course, the Prime Directive has been discarded again and again in Star Trek episodes and films, and it is discarded in the film analyzed here. Overlooking the Prime Directive serves a narrative purpose: it makes for a better story. For without contact, there just isn’t much new on the New Frontier. As noted previously, historical first contact experiences on earth have involved a sort of time travel back to a romanticized version of human origins as “savage,” “innocent,” or “primitive.” They have involved the influence of the “future” civilization on the “past” one, for it is difficult to return to the past without altering at least that particular past’s future. The term “time-loop paradox” is used to describe ethical issues that are similar to those raised by Star Trek’s Prime Directive, as well as concerns that through altering the past, one may alter one’s own future. (In science fiction, when the Prime Directive is invoked during time travel, it is called the “temporal Prime Directive.”) The master narrative of the “time-loop paradox” is Ray Bradbury’s short story “A Sound of Thunder” (1952), in which a journey to the era of dinosaurs leads to changes in the future. As Bradbury shows, even a small misstep—in this case one of the travelers veers off the established path and inadvertently kills a butterfly—may lead to a major political change in the “present.” The paradox of time travel also concerns the very existence of the “new” future: if the future is different, then travel to the past would itself perhaps not occur to begin with—so would the butterfly still be dead? The temporal loop is at times imagined to continue unabated, allowing the past to repeat itself ad-infinitum, but with potential variations; this is the subject of the popular film Groundhog Day (dir. Harold Ramis,

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1993). Time travel into the past is, therefore, a rejection of linear time and with it western notions of progress and (Darwinian) evolution. This aspect of the paradox was explored in the late 1960s and early 1970s in a series of films, Planet of the Apes, that narrated de-evolution as a result of time travel: The notion of time travel rather than linear poses a circular revision of evolution. These [Planet] films have evolutionary transition between apes and humans reproducing life in a circular framework. The five films all together contain a “time loop paradox story” typical of science fiction films. (Allen 11; Allen refers to Penley, “Time Travel”) The time-loop narrative combines a long-held interest in time travel in science fiction with fictions of generational, and even evolutionary, progression/regression. In addition, the “grandfather paradox,” also suggested in these films, involves reproduction and the conundrum associated with traveling back in time and thwarting one’s own (future) birth. Incest may be suggested in tales that cause a person to go back in time and fall in love with a (future) parent. Robert A. Heinlein’s story “All You Zombies” (1959) is the most famous depiction of time travel sex with one’s parent.3 If women are to be on a par with men in outer space, they must be the protagonists of contact stories. Science fiction film has offered women a place in first contact narratives of the future. Although these tales are colonialist in nature, what is odd about them (in the sense of unexpected) is important: the lone woman, white or black, reaches out to the “advanced” civilization, often represented by white men. The 1990s saw back to back feature films that followed this model and carried the loaded terms “first contact” and “contact” in their titles. Perhaps influence from Leinster’s story and the Connolly and Anderson film reached a peak in the 90s due to frenzied imaginings about what the turn of the century might bring. As we consider the situation of women earthlings in these films, we consider turn-of-the-twenty-first century Eliza Frasers who travel by “ship”—but through temporal vortexes and wormholes—and make contact. The extraterrestrials that Lily (of the Star Trek film) and Ellie (of Contact) meet are, however, more advanced than they are and these beings have instigated the travel in the first place (although Ellie was listening for them), in a reversal of the colonialist time loop played out on earth.

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II. Contact in the 1990s Whereas difference in space is to be expected (we are talking about aliens, after all), difference on earth has been traditionally shunned in space narratives: In concert with [a] narrative de-emphasis on human sexuality and women, biological sexual functions—intercourse and reproduction— are avoided in their human manifestations and, instead, displaced onto mutant and alien life forms and into technological activity. (Sobchack in Kuhn ed., Alien Zone 105) In Alien, it is the alien who reproduces, and the “mother” of the ship is a computer. It is not just sexual difference that is avoided in space narratives, however; most also elide race difference on earth. Star Trek was original in that the Federation would be gender, race, and species (in terms of extraterrestrials) integrated, although most of the key players were white, human, and male. But NASA did not imitate Star Trek in the 1960s. If the Mercury 13 history reveals “gender trouble” associated with women in space, launching a person of color was “race trouble” that NASA also wished to avoid in the 1960s. Aliens could be dark-skinned, but not astronauts. And when race and gender difference were collapsed onto the same person, in the case of African American women would-be astronauts, there was “double trouble.” In the Mod Squad television series (1968–73), race and gender identity in the United States was limited to three examples: the white male (Pete); the black male (Link); and the white female (Julie). We see this triad repeated in the Space Race with Alan Shepard (who flew in 1961) playing Pete; Sally Ride (1983) playing Julie; and Guion Bluford (1983) playing Link. A place in the Mod Squad in Space for the African American woman did finally open in 1992, when Mae Jemison flew her only space flight, on the Endeavor. (I will return to Jemison.)4 To back up a moment, just as the story of women in space did not start with Sally Ride, the story of African American men in space did not start with Guion Bluford. If Jerrie Cobb had champions in the form of Flickinger and Lovelace, African American men wishing to go into space had Edward R. Murrow. In a 1961 letter to James Webb, director of NASA, the well-known journalist wrote: Why don’t we put the first non-white man in space? If you boys were to enroll and train a qualified Negro and then fly him in whatever vehicle

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is available, we could retell our whole space effort to the whole nonwhite world, which is most of it. (Quoted in Phelps xvii–xviii; see also Atkinson and Shafritz) Although Kennedy wanted to pursue the possibility, Webb replied in a brush-off that NASA had similar requests about women (Phelps xviii). The familiar excuse given was that there were not qualified black test pilots. Before Bluford, there was Air Force Captain Edward J. Dwight, Jr., an engineer who trained as a test pilot in 1962 because of pressure that Robert Kennedy exerted on the Air Force. His rocky career with NASA crash-landed, much as that of the Mercury 13 did. The narrative developed around this crash identified the white astronaut hero and family man as a more preferable representative of man in space: Much like the astronaut essays in Life, when Ebony first presented Col. Dwight, it used metaphors of suburban family life, showing him at home reading books to his children and wife. But when NASA dropped Dwight from the space program, Ebony reported this by focusing on the fact that Col. Dwight was also in the middle of a divorce. In this way, the African American broken family was ultimately connected to the black man’s inability to serve as a symbol of heroic space travel. (Spigel, “White Flight” 62–3) As Lynn Spigel explains, Ebony blamed the divorce on the problems the Dwights had finding appropriate housing due to segregation at the time. (Phelps documents the many other pressures suffered by Dwight due to his race.) Following him, Guion Bluford, like Sally Ride, benefited from new laws that led NASA to integrate the class of 1978 with women and blacks—but no black women. Thus, whereas Star Trek could imagine black women in space, NASA could not. I shall return to the figure of Uhura—the black female communications officer in the first Star Trek television series—in the last section of this chapter; for now, a few words about the real first black woman in space, Mae Jemison, are in order. (It is interesting to note here, though, that Mae Jemison’s inspiration for joining NASA was Uhura, in the form of actress Nichelle Nichols.) Because Jemison, like Sally Ride, flew as a mission specialist, the question of test pilot training was not at issue (Bluford was also a mission specialist). She flew on the shuttle in 1992, but then abruptly left NASA. Constance Penley has read Jemison’s

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surprise departure from the space agency as part of a general “mis-management” of women at the space program (NASA/TREK 53–8).5 After her stint at NASA, Jemison starred as a lieutenant (Uhura’s rank) in a 1993 episode of Star Trek: Next Generation, thus showing again that although the NASA shuttle had no black women, the Enterprise did. As we will see, in 1996 a would-be African American female astronaut was beamed on board the Enterprise-E in Star Trek: First Contact.6 The entire Star Trek project is predicated on the fantasy of human/alien contact. A Star Trek film that sets first contact between earthlings and aliens in 2063, whereas the Enterprise-E is from the twenty-fourth century, could only present first contact through the use of time travel. The premise is that Captain Picard and his men and women must travel back in time to stop the Borg, a conglomerate of “assimilated” cyborg beings, from interrupting first human contact with Vulcans. The Vulcans are willing to make first contact because they have seen that the earthlings have discovered warp drive, the technological feat that Star Trek’s Prime Directive sets up as the precondition for making contact. In 2063, in a post-WW III Montana, a faction of humans living at a former nuclear missile facility works to continue the construction of a rocket ship, the Phoenix, that will carry Dr. Zephram Cochrane, its designer and pilot, for a brief test run into space at warp speed. Cochrane, a rather ornery drunk who loves rock and roll, is the inventor of warp speed, a term used by the creators of Star Trek to explain how Federation ships are able to travel faster than the speed of light. If first contact is to be made, Cochrane must make his flight while the Vulcan ship is in the neighborhood. The Borg, who work to assimilate all life forms in space, have traveled to the past to stop Cochrane from making his voyage. In this way, the Enterprise in the twenty-fourth century will not be able to destroy the Borg, so there will be no Enterprise in the future. So that Star Fleet will not be erased from history, the Enterprise’s crew, also transported to the past, ignores the Prime Directive and helps Cochrane manage his flight. First contact, the touch across difference, comes in the form of a handshake between Cochrane and the Vulcan commander. Viewers who watch closely, however, notice that before shaking hands with the Vulcan, Cochrane squeezes the fingers of his earthling assistant, a woman. Lily Sloane is an African American scientist/technician who helps Cochran design the Phoenix and endeavors to keep him sober enough to get the ship in orbit. I want to emphasize that she is also the human who makes first contact with an alien in this film, despite all appearances to the contrary.

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Viewers and critics remark two narratives in First Contact: the story of Cochrane and his close encounter (considered the “past” in the film), and the story of the Borg Queen and Captain Picard (considered the “present”). For Christine Wertheim, among other critics, although the Cochrane story is the principle plot, the Borg’s story is the more interesting one (see also Consalvo). In my reading, I leave the Borg and Data behind, with the recognition that the meeting of the Borg Queen and Data the android may be analyzed as a “first contact” event. I turn instead to the subplot of the primary plot of the movie (Cochrane’s story), that is, I turn to the story of Lily (Alfre Woodard), the African American woman of 2063 who boards the twenty-fourth-century Enterprise-E. Although several Enterpise crewmembers travel back in time to earth, Lily is the only earthling who travels to the future, where she meets an alien being, Lieutenant Commander Worf. This moment precedes, at least in terms of the running time of the film, Cochrane’s flight and the arrival of the Vulcans on earth. It may thus be viewed as the true “first contact” of the film. When the Borg attack the missile silo where the Phoenix is stored, it is Lily, not Cochrane, who remains there to protect the rocket. Thus, when Picard and others appear on earth, she is the first person they meet. Lily begins to attack the strangers, but she is ill due to exposure to theta radiation, and she passes out. She is brought to the ship and treated by Dr. Beverly Crusher, who claims that the Prime Directive will not be disobeyed since Lily will remain unconscious on the ship. But soon, a very conscious Lily (goodbye, Prime Directive) manages to procure a phaser (“It’s my first ray gun”) and attempts to overwhelm Picard. Instead, she and Picard become fast friends. Lily is presented as a technician or assistant who has assisted in building the rocket that Cochrane flies. As such, she may be seen as a “woman in space,” due to her work for the “space program” of 2063 earth. Indeed, Lily is the old “assistant” to the man in space, but I would not go as far as to downplay her role as critics such as Wertheim, who calls her Cochrane’s “companion,” do: “She is a sort of all-purpose PC Other, a black female technician who nevertheless remains permanently a sidekick, supporter to the two white male heroes, Picard and Flyboy [Cochrane]” (82–3). Although we still await a central heroine who is both black and female, we have Lily, a character more interesting than this and other readings of First Contact have suggested, if they mention her at all. For on the Enterprise Lily comes into contact with a world that was previously unknown to her, a world in which humans, cyborgs, and aliens battle it

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out. Lily is Lilith, the first wife of Adam in some versions of the JudeoChristian creation myth, and she is Lucy, for a time the oldest hominid (partial) skeleton known of: she is a first contact creature who influences the advanced society of the future by convincing Picard to allow his crew to abandon ship. (Her name also resonates with “Lily white,” drawing attention to her non-white status.) The character of Lily thus reveals that there is a third narrative in the film and a second time travel loop in addition to the one that takes Enterprise personnel to Montana. Beyond the stories of Cochrane and the Phoenix, and Picard and the Borg Queen, there is the story of Lily on the Enterprise. Lily makes first contact with an alien on the Enterprise: Lieutenant Commander Worf. When she sees him, she is astounded and fearful; his simple and soothing reply (if one can call a Klingon soothing) is “I am a Klingon.” That’s it. There is no “touch across difference” here, but there is, very briefly, first contact. For Carol B. Duncan, Lily is Cochrane’s “partner” and fits into a tradition of the representation of black women in science fiction film as “heroic mothers” who are sometimes sexualized, but more often presented as sages and confidants. Lily is of the sage/confidant type: she is the only person able to convince Captain Picard to abandon ship and thus save the crew: “she clearly articulates the moral dilemma with which Picard is faced, outlines his choices and convinces him in no uncertain terms about the moral right of abandoning ship” (48). But the cultural reference that affirms for Picard that Lily is right does not come from Lily. When Picard quotes from Moby Dick (and the white whale), Lily announces “I haven’t read it,” thus casting doubt on her role as sage counselor and setting up the stereotypical opposition between white, educated male and black, uneducated female. Picard explains the future to her; Lily explains to him that a desire for revenge can be a dangerous thing. And, in the end, he kisses her good-bye (Figure 6.1). As the crew takes leave of the earth—before the arrival of the Vulcans—Picard steps forward and in front of his crew kisses Lily on the cheek. This is not an interspecies kiss, nor is it a kiss with an extraterrestrial—and it is not sexy at all—but it is indeed a touch across difference in terms of time, space, and race. Picard represents the very advanced future, characterized by peace; Lily the primitive past, characterized by war. As the white man kisses the black woman, he imitates Taylor’s and Fossey’s kisses (considered in the next section). First Contact’s other kiss, the sexualized one (and on the lips) between Data and the Borg Queen, reinforces that Lily and Picard are just good friends. But their relationship and Lily’s

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Figure 6.1 Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) kisses Lily (Alfre Woodard) goodbye in Star Trek: First Contact (dir. Jonathan Frakes, 1996).

sighting of Worf, the alien, are signs that black women in space may eventually get credit for making first contact. Several months after Lily met Worf and was kissed by Picard on the silver screen, audiences were treated to another first contact, this one between a white woman and an extraterrestrial who appears in the shape of her deceased father. In July 1997, woman finally ascended into space as the lead astronaut in a film—or did she? Whether or not the character Ellie Arroway actually goes into space is debatable, and the fact that her voyage is debatable is just the point. Although we seem ready at the turn of the twenty-first century to accept woman as astronaut, we remain uncertain as to whether or not she should successfully lift off, whether or not she should leave her (and our) home. This is what the alien means by his desire to approximate her home—a home away from home— when he says that he has taken her father’s form so that she will be more comfortable (in part because there will be no possibility of human– alien sex). Contact is not about time travel, at least not on the surface, but the woman astronaut’s journey to space plays out as a reunion with her father, whom she lost at a young age. In this way, Contact combines the first contact narrative with that of the time loop. Dr. Ellie Arroway believes that she has blasted off and that she has visited the planet Vega and met an alien on a beautiful beach that simulates Pensacola, Florida, or rather that imitates a drawing the nine-year-old Ellie had done of a Pensacola beach. When the young girl is identified as gifted in math and science, her widower father buys a ham radio and helps her contact other radio enthusiasts far away from their Wisconsin home. Pensacola is the farthest

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Figure 6.2 Spacewoman Ellie Arroway (Jody Foster) meets with her “father” on the beach in Contact (dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1997).

place Ellie contacts, which spurs her to make a picture of it. The connection in Ellie’s memory between this beach and her father is used by the alien species to evoke calm in the astronaut when she arrives on the planet Vega (Figure 6.2). It is, moreover, a reference to the coming together of the uncivilized (humans) and civilized or advanced aliens, since the beach is a peaceful and historically significant site for the merging of cultures that are at different points on the evolutionary scale (as we saw in Chapter 2). It is notable that the alien in this story is friendly, much as in one of its influences, the aptly titled Close Encounters of the Third Kind, made 20 years earlier (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1977). The alien is a father-figure, not the out-of-control monster of Alien. As Gallardo C. and Smith remark, Ellie is presented as having a “father fixation”: When Dr. Arroway finally does get into the alien machine after her male boss is killed (it seems Tom Skerritt is always in the way of some woman) and travels the cosmos at faster than the speed of light to meet the aliens, the alien she encounters takes the guise of her father, and, of course, no one believes her story. Such is the usual lot of women in the science-fiction film. (2) Is Arroway hallucinating a reunion with her Daddy and is this what space flight for women is all about? Or has she in fact discovered the difference of the alien, a difference that comes from the alien’s ability to download memories and assume human form? In any event, the U.S. government insists on a different story, one in which the spaceship has never launched

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but rather fallen immediately into the ocean—a splashdown before the fact, in other words. The audience discovers at the very end that Ellie was right all along, but the characters in the film do not. Ellie’s claim is trumped by the government’s assertion that she was only out of “contact” for a fraction of a second. In the end, she must be content with her lover Palmer Joss’s “faith” that she has made first contact, making of Contact what Mette Bryld has called a “high-tech salvation myth” (“Gender” 410; see also Cosmodolphins). This uncertainty underscores the principal philosophical debate of the film: the clash between religion—spirituality, or belief—and atheism, or scientific fact. Throughout the film, Ellie represents the latter: her scientific training, common sense, and refusal to feign a belief in God mark her as entirely grounded, this although her SETI research is labeled fringe science (SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, is a real project devoted to initiating first contact with aliens). The male protagonist, Palmer Joss (who does not sleep with Ellie in the Sagan novel, but does in the film, thus establishing Ellie early on as a “woman”), represents belief, including the belief that one should leave well enough alone. In the end, spectators of the aborted liftoff in the film are left with questions: has Foster made contact or hasn’t she? And, if she has, with whom has she made contact?—with an alien species, as per the original intent of the voyage, or with her father? Is her father, symbolically, an alien? Will women astronauts leave Mother Earth only to come face to face with their fathers? Are they perpetually condemned, in popular culture, to aborted liftoffs and familiar faces met only in their fantasies? Is first contact all about first contact with Daddy, and not Mommy (who has been killed off in the film and placed in a nursing home in the novel)? These questions occupy us at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The scene toward the end of Contact when Ellie enters her small round spacecraft is a significant contrast to Ripley’s time in the shuttle of the Nostromo. There is no undressing scene for Ellie, who wears a full body shiny suit with headphone and microphone, but no helmet (Figure 6.3). The fact that she does not wear a helmet allows the spectator full view of her head and instantly identifies her as a woman, with her long hair pulled back. The camera lingers on her face during Ellie’s time in the capsule; we follow her every emotion on her face. The woman’s face is thus the screen onto which the spaceflight is projected. The same is true to some extent of Ripley, although her face is covered with a helmet in the scene in which she blasts off—or rather, in which she blasts the Alien out into space. Before this happens, the Alien moves close to a helmeted Ripley and at one point clearly looks at her profile; when she turns toward

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Figure 6.3 Ellie gazes into space without a helmet in Contact.

him the spectator sees her fear and this marks the moment at which she presses the ejection button. Leading up to this, the camera lingers on Ripley’s helmeted face as she utters “lucky star, lucky star” again and again. In a similar way, Ellie is shown uttering one phrase over and over during take off—“I’m good to go, good to go”—and then, as she travels through the series of wormholes, “So beautiful.” Contact is, then, clearly influenced by Ripley’s earlier ride in space. The two films set up a tradition of filming the woman astronaut, with or without her helmet, with all eyes on her face and all ears on her utterances. Indeed, it would be hard at this point in time to imagine or take seriously three women astronauts sitting in a capsule, as the men in Apollo 13. The image of (singular) Woman—in particular her face—dominates the cinematic space. Ellie Arroway and Ripley, 20 years apart in age, one in a science fiction film that is determined to look “real,” the other in a horror film that looks real enough to still scare the audience, are the most significant women astronauts on film in the last 25 years of the twentieth century. Both are heroic and act on their own; they are fearless “women” but still professionals, and smart. Both act alone, Ripley to kill the Alien, Ellie to hug him. In terms of the history of women in space, these two stand as complimentary and at the same time contrasting antipodes. In 1979, Ripley survived the fight of her life in space; in 1997, Ellie Arroway returned home safe from her own type of encounter with the alien Other.

III. Kissing Cousins My discussion in this chapter draws considerably on the interplay in certain films of the complexities of the space-time continuum, the hazards of time travel, and the hazards of sex and species (including

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extraterrestrial) difference. Barbarella had sex with everyone in the universe, but that was in 1968. Thirty years later spectators saw only kissing cousins on screen: the rather lame kiss between Lily and Picard, and Ellie Arroway’s hug with her father. Of course, there have been other fantasies of human–alien contact in the 1990s that draw on sex as the method of contact (Species is the best example). But the two films that wish to take seriously the notion of “contact” only refer obliquely— tastefully—to skin to skin contact. The 1924 Russian film Aelita: Queen of Mars is the prototype film of the relationship between human male and alien female, that is, of first contact. Aelita watches through her telescope as Los the engineer kisses his human wife on earth. The kiss is a novelty to Aelita and she simply must experience it; Los obliges her when he lands on Mars (never mind that the whole space flight is simply Los’ dream). Subsequently, 1950s films were full of alien women seeking out human men with whom to procreate, although the moment of contact was in general avoided. In the 1960s, an era of sexual license, Barbarella had full contact with serial alien partners. In the same decade that primatologist Dian Fossey was snuggling with gorillas in the wild, a fictional male astronaut incited a cross-species kiss on screen, in Planet of the Apes. This film and its sequels made use of the time-loop paradox in building a drama in which the female chimp could stand in for “woman.” It also threw the Prime Directive to the wayside as Captain Taylor struggled to understand his origins—in other words, to understand why he would ever want to kiss a chimp. I want now to investigate five significant kisses in films that are interested in other species, including aliens; this will form our own “kiss good-bye” to the question of contact. Taylor and Zira. It is commonplace, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, for humans to refer to themselves as “cousins” of chimpanzees, or of the other non-human higher primates. And as we saw with Dian Fossey, efforts have been made especially since the second half of the twentieth century to establish “contact” between our cousins and us, to the point where primatologists have endeavored to teach language to chimps. At the end of Planet of the Apes, Taylor pounds his fists on the earth—on beach sand—before a decomposing Statue of Liberty. As his mute female human companion, Nova, awaits him atop a horse— wearing her ever-present confused look—he reacts with horror at the discovery that he has never in fact left earth. This revelation leads him to understand that in earth’s future humans (will) have been enslaved by non-human primates. Taylor’s, and the viewer’s, sense of history as

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progress and evolution—as a march forward away from the apes— has been critically turned on its head. Taylor’s return is a return to the primitive, for the primates remain primitive to Taylor, at least in some sense, and earth’s humans have barely evolved at all. It is, finally, a return to the beach, to the shore, in a replay of the falling space capsule image and the fantasy of the astronaut stranded on a deserted island (see Chapter 2). Taylor is accompanied on his voyage by three astronauts: a white man (who survives but is lobotomized), a black man (killed immediately by the apes, then displayed in a natural history museum), and a white female, the beautiful blonde, Stewart. This “new Eve,” to quote Taylor, is discovered dead and decomposed when the male astronauts awaken from their artificial sleep (Figure 6.4). Eric Greene comments: The fact that Planet’s producers put a woman into space fifteen years before the U.S. space program did, only to kill her off within the first fifteen minutes of the film, suggests that the presence of women in outer space, or at least in the fictional space of Planet, posed a problem for the producers. Of the three woman characters in Planet, Stewart has violated male space in both name and body and, having spoken not a word, dies almost immediately, thus neutralizing her as a source of competition for power with the male astronauts. (36–7) Stewart is quickly replaced by the dark haired Nova, her name a synonym of Eve, a primitive female human who looks sexy in Stone Age apparel and gazes silently (she can’t speak) at her man. But Taylor’s preferred

Figure 6.4 The female astronaut in Planet of the Apes is dead on arrival.

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Figure 6.5 Zira the chimp (Kim Hunter) agrees to let Taylor (Charlton Heston) kiss her in Planet of the Apes (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968).

female companion, at least in terms of a kiss, is in some sense the third woman of the film, simian scientist Zira. Although his desire for a kiss evokes the messiness of miscegenation and bestiality, he asks Zira for one and she complies, after some embarrassment and misgiving (Figure 6.5). This is, indeed, a moment of first (species) contact: This film perverts traditional romance narratives through a crossspecies union, and through reversal of the roles of hero and heroine . . . Zira’s status as a doctor, and her forcefulness in securing Taylor’s release contribute to the construction of Zira as perversely desirable in the narrative. But so does her position as “alien.” (Allen 6) Ultimately, the white male astronaut chooses to forego sex with the alien and return to a romanticized scenario of the lone explorer whose only companion is a creature in sexy cavewoman clothing (Nova). By refusing union with the scientist chimp (and yes, she is married to a chimp, thus assuring that no real hanky-panky will take place), Taylor resituates himself in a first contact encounter that involves his discovery not of the alien but of the savage woman, destined to be the mother of us all. The remake of Planet of the Apes that appeared in 2001 seems confused about all this kissing business. Although Taylor rides off with the human Nova at the end of the 1968 version, it is the kiss with Zira that the audience retains. The 2001 version wants to have it both ways: Captain Davidson kisses both the ape and the human at the end: first he gives Ari, who clearly has a crush on him, a chaste smack on her narrow lips, then he gives the human Daena, who clearly is jealous of the chimp, a more

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intimate smooch on her full lips. But he says goodbye to both and sets out on yet another journey of the lone and “virginal” (to quote Sobchack) male astronaut. So, although the 1968 film was daring in its staging of the interspecies kiss but conventional in its establishment of the human couple at the end, the 2001 version whitewashes, so to speak, both kisses by making the chimp–human kiss tame and the human– human a farewell kiss, thus denying the possibility of sex for the humans down the road. Dian and Peanuts. Fossey’s contact culminated in the famous touch across difference, the touching of the hands, between Fossey and Peanuts (Digit in the film), as we have seen. This first (peaceful) contact with a gorilla in the wild took place at the Karisoke Research Center in 1968. Fossey’s “touch across difference” with Peanuts was played out against the backdrop of two major “first contact” narratives: that of Fraser and that of Leahy and Dwyer. The National Geographic scene (In Search of the Great Apes, 1976) with Peanuts has become famous as the first visual recording of such a touch between primates. By “such a touch” I mean a communicative, even sensual touch, as opposed to the aggressive interactions that had previously characterized physical contact between humans and gorillas. Although not captured in the video, it is known that Dian actually kissed Peanuts. The fact that the first touch was accomplished by a female human with a male gorilla adds a sexual connotation to the scene, which the film Gorillas in the Mist uses as a segway to the love scene between Fossey and Robert Campbell. The scene thus belongs to a tradition of voyeur scenarios familiar to western spectators, and first contact becomes a sexualized encounter as well as a racialized one. We don’t know if Dian Fossey saw Planet of the Apes; probably not. But it is meaningful that Fossey’s touch across difference occurred at about the same time as Taylor and Zira’s kiss. The late 1960s was a time when interest in ape–human interaction was almost as compelling for the public as interest in the Apollo launches. Planet of the Apes, by drawing on the narratives of both primatology (what Greene calls “consciously fictive primatology” or “popular culture primatology,” 5) and the Space Race, combined the two powerful scenarios of first contact to attract viewers. Kirk and Uhura. Lily is not the first African American woman character of Star Trek, of course. Guinan (a play on “Guion” Bluford?), played by Whoopi Goldberg, is an alien bartender on Voyager. Mae Jemison, the first African American woman astronaut, appears briefly as Lieutenant Palmer in an episode of Next Generation. The “mother” of black characters on Star Trek was, however, Uhura, the communications officer played

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by Nichelle Nichols on the original series. The connection running from Uhura to Lt. Palmer, to Lily and then Guinan, reveals the intersections of race, gender, and species as played out in Star Trek. And Star Trek provides us with another intriguing “first contact.” On November 22, 1968—during that magical year—the first interracial (black and white) kiss to air on U.S. television did so in the “Plato’s Stepchildren” episode. In this episode, Uhuru and Kirk kiss on the mouth, in a contact that raised fear on the part of the director about the possible reactions of Southern white viewers (Nichols 193–7). As Nichelle Nichols recounts, many shots of the kiss were taken and then one shot of the scene without the kiss was done. Shatner and Nichols purposefully bungled the non-kiss sequence in order to ensure that the kiss be televised (Figure 6.6). According to Nichols, Shatner saw this as a chance to make television history: In the original script, Uhura was to have been kissed by Mr. Spock. But when Bill Shatner surmised that this kiss was historic and could generate a lot of publicity, he demanded that the script be changed. “If anybody’s going to get to kiss Uhura,” he said, semijokingly, “it’s going to be me—I mean, Captain Kirk.” (194) This kiss across difference parallels Picard and Lily’s kiss, which came 30 years later, except that the Star Trek kiss was sexy, perhaps in part because

Figure 6.6 Kirk and Uhura (William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols) kiss in the 1968 “Plato’s Stepchildren” episode of Star Trek (Gene Rodenberry, creator and executive producer; CBS).

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it was not voluntary.7 And in fact, there were no complaints about the episode, showing that the public was indeed ready at the time period for all kinds of contact between races, genders, and species. Lily and Worf. Were Lily and Worf to kiss, their touch would evoke the difference of species, but not race: Worf is played by a black actor and is readily identifiable as an alien of color. However, in 1996, the alien/ human kiss was shunned. In terms of the touch across difference, Worf would appear to simply “not fit in,” as Allen describes the African American astronaut Dodge of Planet: “The privileging of Zira’s and Taylor’s relationship leaves Dodge with no place and no identity, and not even a coherent whiteness with which to disidentify. Thus, not only does Dodge have no identity, he has no binary in this film” (9). Certainly, First Contact mixes up the differences in a more intricate and appealing way than Planet. In the end, however, and despite the presence of a strong African American female character, we are left with a kiss between humans, a kiss between male and female, a kiss that goes no farther than that of Kirk and Uhura and which is much more platonic. Ripley and the Alien. This brings us (back) to Ripley’s almost-kiss with the Alien. At the end of Alien, when she is helmeted and turns to the side, she sees the Alien looking at her profile, its doubly dangerous mouth extended. In the poster for the third film, Alien3, there is also the suggestion that the Alien wishes to kiss Ripley on the cheek. Gallardo C. and C. Smith say of this poster: “The juxtaposition of the two faces is a study in dramatic similitude: white and black, left and right, attacking and defending, alien and human, one would be hard pressed to imagine anything so different, and yet so similar” (202). The Alien and Ripley are opposites and complementary creatures at the same time, and the possibility—or proximity—of the interspecies, human–alien, kiss affirms this complex relationship. In conclusion, when women are involved, first contact is represented by the kiss. Traditionally, the kiss represents the sexual act, while at the same time condensing it, cleaning it up, and giving viewers a full look at the female protagonist’s face. The kiss of first contact is recognized because it seems universally known. When women do one day meet aliens in space, kissing, we are led to believe, will be on everyone’s mind. On the way to getting into space, the female astronaut has met a lot of characters, so to speak. Some of them have been white men who wished to block her way into space or assure that she only go there as assistant, navigator or communicator, nurse or coffeemaker. Others have been non-human primates who have, although not by their own volition, been deemed worthy as human male surrogates. Some women astronauts have

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perhaps had to kiss men to get to space; others have had to prove that they could do it all—have sex, be mothers, run the dishwasher, put on the EMU—at the same time. Others have used foul language to get their way, most notably the phrase “son of a bitch” (which Ripley uses on the Alien and Lily uses on Picard). Other women have been themselves alien creatures who want to blast the female astronaut not into space, but out of it. Over time, real women have indeed made it into outer space and without wrecking the spacecraft because of hormone levels or returning sterile and unable to reproduce for the nation. And, over time, human women have made it into space as astronauts in control, to some extent—as lone heroes—on the silver screen, notably in Alien and Contact. The road that led to Ripley and Ellie, like that followed by Jerrie, Sally, and Mae, was (and is) strewn with obstacles and interruptions; but, bolstered on the one hand by the titillation factor of women in space and, on the other hand, by an emerging desire at the end of the twentieth century to see women action heroes on the screen, they have at times succeeded at kicking the obstacles to the curb and blasting off to where no woman has been before. Small moves, Ellie.

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Conclusion

Black Holes and the Body of the Astrophysicist

In fact, it is inconceivable to me that the world of outer space should be restricted to men only, like some sort of stag club. (Jane B. Hart) If black holes do exist, Kip will get one year of Penthouse. (Stephen Hawking) But Sally really wasn’t an issue. After my tits joke, she avoided me like I was criminally insane. (Mike Millane)

At the end of the film Alien, woman is made the butt of a joke between men—the Alien and the male spectator. When Ripley shines a moon to the audience, gender emerges on the screen as an essential element in the tale of women in outer space. But gender had already exploded on board the Nostromo in another scene involving Ripley: the robot Ash forces her onto a couch and grabs a nudie magazine, rolls it up, and forces it into her mouth. In this symbolic rape scene, which echoes the Alien’s rape and impregnation of Kane, Ripley is made to swallow images of naked Asian women, and the Asian women in nudie photos on the wall above her are spectators to the scene. Ripley swallows images of her own, “other,” sexuality. Gender also materializes, so to speak, in the world of the astronaut in William Pogue’s response to a question about shuttle travel in his How Do You Go to the Bathroom in Space? (1999): “Having mixed crews of men and women has caused no problems. The work pace is very demanding, the people are all dedicated professionals and they have little time to be diverted by gender-related considerations” (124). In this example,

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gender appears as absence: these are astronauts, not men and women. The space shuttle, as noted in Chapter 1, has allowed for space for women beyond the earth’s pull, but this space is represented by Pogue as neutered. Let us contrast Pogue’s comment with another one by a male astronaut, one that concerns the early days of the shuttle and the working atmosphere on the ground. According to Mike Millane, dirty jokes were par for the course from the Mercury program to the shuttle. His memoir, Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut, is chock full of dirty words, dirty jokes, and just plain dirt. Several examples concern Sally Ride, whom Millane considered to be the most feminist and most difficult of the six women recruited with him in the class of 1978 (the class was known as Thirty-Five New Guys, or TFNG): A navy TFNG probably best summarized the military male attitude about women. We were standing outside Sally Ride’s office. She was absent and I took the opportunity to point out the bumper sticker on the front of her desk. It read, “A woman’s place is in the cockpit.” My Top Gun companion looked at the sticker and chuckled. “A woman is a COCK pit.” That was exactly how most of the military astronauts saw women in general and good-looking women in particular. We were flying blind when it came to working with professional women. (39) After referring to professional women as “alien creatures,” Millane continues with another reference to Ride: It was as if I had sexist Tourette’s syndrome. The joker in me would leap from my mouth. Only around Sally did I keep myself somewhat throttled . . . But Sally really wasn’t an issue. After my tits joke, she avoided me like I was criminally insane. (41) As if he was an alien. How may we reconcile these two assessments of gender relations among astronauts in and out of outer space? Is Pogue the “new” type of shuttle astronaut, who uses terms such as “professional” and “demanding” to effectively neutralize sexual difference in space? Is Millane, on the other hand, the “old” military type who understands space work as saturated with sexual and sexist meanings? These two astronauts are the extremes on a continuum that runs from a fantasy of women in space as no different from men to an equally extremist fantasy of women astronauts as already naked in space before they even leave the earth.

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The truth of life as a woman astronaut probably lies between these extremes. To use Denise Riley’s insights concerning the making of “woman,” most women at NASA are probably at times labeled as and experience themselves as “women”; at other times, they are labeled as and experience themselves as (gender neutral) “humans.” This is the lot of women, according to Riley, and this is what gender, and feminism itself, is all about: a back and forth assumption (donning) and rejection (removal) of what makes the woman.1 As the quotes given in exergue to this chapter reveal, the making and unmaking of the woman astronaut is a question of veiling and unveiling her body, in a striptease that is at times willed from within (I am not a woman today, I am human; I am a woman today, not merely a human) and at other times imposed from without (you will be a woman today, whether you like it or not; stop being a woman and start acting like a professional). In the 1950s, the verbal assumption and removal of the identity “woman” was directly represented on the screen. In Rocketship X-M (1950), Lisa criticizes the scientist on board for not being compassionate: “Aren’t you human?” she asks, but then quickly adds, “I’m sorry,” to which he responds, “What? For momentarily being a woman?” In Project Moonbase (dir. Richard Talmadge, 1953), Colonel “Bright Eyes” acts up and then calms herself down, explaining, “I’m sorry to have gone female on you, Major.” Although films in later decades downplayed this kind of talk, it was understood that women would “go female” on a regular basis, either by screaming (Lambert), stripping (Barbarella), being the “bitch” (the film The Abyss is the most depressing example), or hallucinating meetings with aliens (Ellie Arroway). I want to return to Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, which was mentioned in Chapter 1 as an example of popular science writing that aims to explain the theory behind space travel to the general public. Even in this supposedly neutral work (what could be more neutral than a quark?) woman is revealed to be the butt of a joke, or rather, a bet. When Hawking recounts a bet he made with another physicist he brings readers out of the discipline of physics and into (anecdotal) history. It is not the only anecdote recounted in the book, but it is the most unsettling: There are other models to explain Cygnus X-1 that do not include a black hole, but they are all rather farfetched. A black hole seems to be the only really natural explanation of the observations. Despite this, I have a bet with Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology

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that in fact Cygnus X-1 does not contain a black hole! This is a form of insurance policy for me. I have done a lot of work on black holes, and it would all be wasted if it turned out that black holes do not exist. But in that case, I would have the consolation of winning my bet, which would bring me four years of the magazine Private Eye. If black holes do exist, Kip will get one year of Penthouse. (A Brief History 94) Men making bets over black holes; private eyes and penthouses—where to start? There are at least two ways, two allowed orbits, of thinking through this odd insertion into an otherwise upfront, “here’s how,” book about the laws of nature. There are two ways, that is, of interpreting how this anecdote fits into a history of women in space. First, the very obvious and then the more hidden effect. As stated in Chapter 1 of this study, I like to consider myself part of the educated reading public. I’m also a (with or without quotation marks) woman. As I read Hawking’s book, I blissfully put gender aside (whatever that means) and focus on science, laws of nature, what’s out there and not what’s on earth, where all that messy gender stuff takes place. I do notice, of course, that about 99.9 percent of the scientists mentioned in the book, including the book’s author, are male. I put that approximate statistic aside, for I am no statistician and I mean to get through my reading even if it takes every brain cell I can summon. But halfway through, my brain cells stop working. They don’t need to. Things become simple, simplified, simplistic. I am woman. Stephen and Kip are men. They are explaining science and making bets over bodies like my own. They are discovering black holes and making women the butt of a joke. At first, the anecdote doesn’t much bother me. It’s silly, I think, and I merely wonder at Hawking’s lack of tact in bringing it up. Is he bragging? Is he using his friend Kip to say “See, I’m a man (too)”? Does he want to remain more cerebral-seeming than his vulgar friend (although we could go on and on about the title Private Eye), or is he secretly titillated at juxtaposing his intellect with the carnal nature of Kip’s approach to physics? Why didn’t they make a bet for issues of The New Yorker or Smithsonian? After reading the passage over four or five times, I allow myself to get annoyed, even appalled. This is what women in the sciences mean when they talk about a sexist culture that makes them uncomfortable. As a female reader, I am made uncomfortable. But imagine the female scientist, working at the same institution, in the same department, maybe in the same lab, as these guys place such a bet. Or maybe they place it secretly and it is revealed to the women (or lone woman, more likely)

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through the grapevine, unexpectedly, over cans of Mountain Dew, by yet another man. Freud states that there are three players in every dirty joke: the guy telling it; the guy he tells it to; and the woman who is silent but who functions as the butt, the bull’s eye, of it (Jokes 97–102). The lone woman scientist who eventually hears the tale (or reads about it in Kip’s book, where he lists a bunch of these bets) is the butt of the joke because, of course, the black hole is the thing bet on—it’s the “hairless,” “spinning,” “pulsating,” and “exotic” hole. (All of these terms are used by physicists to describe black holes.) Kip Thorne’s book, Black Holes and Time Warps, is in part a compendium of his betting problem. In 1971, for example, Thorne, who retired from Caltech in 2009, made a bet with the Indian physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar concerning the pulsation of black holes. Thorne won: “Chandrasekhar was supposed to give me a subscription of Playboy as my reward, but my feminist mother and sisters made me feel so guilty that I requested instead a subscription to The Listener” (298n7). In 1991, Thorne—who admits he enjoys “tweaking the establishment a bit” (481)—bet Hawking “that cosmic censorship is wrong; naked singularities can form in our Universe. Hawking bet that cosmic censorship is right; naked singularities can never form” (481). (One wonders here if Thorne and Hawking have viewed the short film Cosmic Striptease once too often.) Thorne writes: “The loser will reward the winner with clothing to cover the winner’s nakedness. The clothing is to be embroidered with a suitable concessionary message” (481), for “a naked singularity . . . would surely be a blow to the establishment!” (482). (Or perhaps they have re-read “The Emperor’s New Clothes” with space-time in mind?) This same bet is mentioned by Hawking in The Illustrated A Brief History of Time, but neither in A Brief History nor A Briefer History. Hawking does refer to it in The Theory of Everything, however, where he ponders astronauts falling into black holes; God; modesty; and cosmic censorship (Theory of Everything 46; physicist Roger Penrose coined the phrase “God abhors a naked singularity”). Hawking sums up his responsibility thus, “I had to clothe their nakedness” (The Illustrated 116). As for the Cygnus X-1 bet, Thorne adds an enlightening addendum to his telling of it: “Carolee Winstein, whom I married a decade after the bet was made, was mortified by the stakes (Penthouse magazine for me if I win; Private Eye magazine for Stephen if he wins). So were my siblings and mother” (314). Significantly, the Thorne-Hawking Penthouse bet is edited out in A Briefer. One way of more briefly recounting the history of time is, it would appear, to call off all bets.

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There is another level to the jarring nature of the Penthouse bet in A Brief History, that is, its seeming awkwardness in an otherwise serious work by a serious physicist. This is what feminist literary critics mean when they discuss the gender of language, the relationship between written texts and gender.2 Feminist literary and language criticism proposes that there is no neutral reader or writer; language is inevitably wrapped up with exclusions and allusions, to gender, race, sexuality, and all the constraints we place upon ourselves and others. It is silly of me to think that I can read a book about space science as if space science were not gendered territory, as if space has not always already been colonized by gender. After all, these are real people talking about real phenomena. These are earthlings, humans, whom Hawking continually refers to as “intelligent.” The universe is not caught up in the gendering of language because it has black holes; it is caught up in gender because it is known to us only through language. I want now to look at a similar text, one that is meant to present the contemporary state of astrophysics, but by a woman scientist, a woman in space. Janna Levin’s book, How the Universe Got Its Spots, subtitled Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space, is a rare example. Like Hawking’s, Levin’s book is an explanation of the universe for the laywoman and the layman, only in the form of a personal diary. Levin is professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her book purports to be a diary and also a series of letters, never sent, written to her mother. This last claim is rather quickly dropped, however, for these are nothing like letters one would write to one’s mother (even in the guise of explaining the universe to her) and we learn nothing at all about the mother in them, although we learn a bit about Levin’s father. The book is, more properly, an explanation of the universe written over time and dated, as a diary, with some commentary and anecdote concerning the author’s private life and her ideas on the private lives and motivations of historical physicists and mathematicians. Since the diary and the epistolary novel are literary genres associated with women, the book fits quite easily into the category of women’s literature. But the vast majority of pages delineate the concepts that Hawking deals with, along with some others (Levin is interested in a topological approach to the universe). In a few spots, Levin refers to herself as a female scientist and hints that there is a difference she would like to share, but these remarks are quickly put aside for a return to physics. Levin refers to the Kip bet: “There are lots of anecdotes about the principles of cosmic censorship and infamous bets made among the leading thinkers with prizes of whiskey and

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dirty magazines. We all have vices” (110). (The cosmic censorship hypotheses in physics deal with naked singularities.) A footnote leads us to Kip Thorne’s book: “Kip Thorne includes his bets as a subject topic in the index of his book . . . ” (110n1). Earlier in her book, Levin mentions the problematic nature of the term “black hole”: “It wasn’t until 1967 that the American relativist John Archibald Wheeler coined the name ‘black hole’ despite French resistance due to the obscene connotations the name acquires under translation” (73). Levin does not comment on her own position in a discipline which produces such terms, such bets and jokes. She brings up gender only to shut it down when she relates a meeting with a physicist acquaintance, another woman: I’ve known Lisa for eight years. She was a professor at MIT when I was a graduate student. We’ve never spoken about one very obvious commonality. We’ve never so much as alluded to our gender. The subject comes up today and we groan with an element of relief and a mutual eye rolling meant to indicate a sense of “if you only knew” or a “you can’t even imagine,” only we both do know and can imagine. I don’t ever talk about that anymore, I tell her. She’s just starting to talk about it, she confides in me. We laugh with appreciation at each other’s progress. (98) Levin’s decision to avoid the topic—to assume the identity of “human” instead of “woman”—explains her dismissive “We all have vices.” I do not mean to criticize Levin, not at all. I mean instead to contrast the positions taken by Hawking and Levin, who along with Kip—jokes always need a third person after all—create the “allowed orbits” of women in science and the type(s) of future they may expect to know. An explanation drawn from Levin helps to extend my discussion in Chapter 1 of Hawking’s summary of the concept of allowed orbits: Quantum mechanics says that the electron does not occupy a fixed orbit around the nucleus. Instead there is some probability of the electron being in a given location. This orbital, as it’s called, defines a kind of cloud around the nucleus where the electron is most likely to be discovered. The electron isn’t a particle whizzing around in this cloud. In a strange sense, the precise location of the electron is undefined until we try to measure it. Electrons in an atom can spontaneously appear and disappear on different sides of the nucleus without ever traveling in between. (67)

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We can modify our comments on history by adding this idea of a “kind of cloud” where events (particles, waves) are “most likely to be discovered.” A trajectory does not need to be defined or linear. An event may move in and out of our observable range; until it is measured, it’s almost as if it’s not there, or as if it is everywhere. It is clear, however, that the one who (correctly) measures is the one who finalizes the event—the one who writes history. Films about women in outer space incorporate the language of gender, including dirty jokes and messy bets. They wrestle with twentieth-century notions of gender and they present characters who wrestle with the very organs of sexuality. The belief that one day all bets will be off, the belief that a gender-free utopia may one day be had, is a cherished notion in some science fiction literature. In film, however, gender, race, and species trouble continue to plague the universe, usually confining women to very dismal allowed orbits. I hope to have demonstrated how just one figure (but a very significant one) in this struggle, the “space oddity” called the female astronaut, has managed and been managed by the alternately stereoptypical and novel space scenarios and historical realities of the second half of the twentieth century. By the end of the century, woman was poised to go alone into space—in Contact—but crash landed on the beach. The twenty-first century may well imagine her landing as successful and her meeting with aliens as a first contact narrative that breaks the cycle of neocolonialist discourse.

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Notes

Introduction 1

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The Rocket to the Moon is a translation of Thea von Harbou’s novel Frau im mond, originally published in 1928 (1930 for the English translation). An alternative English title was Girl in the Moon. Fritz Lang’s film was based on this novel. The chapter exergue is from page 83; the subheading below (“Welcome to the moon, you Girl in the Moon”) is from page 118. On the rocket men and Lang’s film, see Freeman 43–9 and Piszkiewicz 25; on the transition from the V-2 program to NASA, see Dale Carter’s study. From its beginnings, television put women in space, including Carol and Tonga in Space Patrol (1950–55).

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A version of this section appeared as “ ‘No Official Requirement’: Women, Time, History and the U.S. Space Program” in Feminist Studies 35.1 (spring 2009): 14–40. The members were Joseph E. Karth, Minnesota; J. Edward Roush, Indiana; William F. Ryan, New York; James C. Corman, California; Joe D. Waggonner, Jr., Louisiana; Corinne B. Riley, South Carolina; James G. Fulton, Pennsylvania; R. Walter Riehlman, New York; Jessica McCullough Weis, New York; Alphonzo Bell, California; and Walter H. Moeller, Ohio. Biographies of Low, Cochran, the Mercury 7, and the Mercury 13 were added to the Congressional Record. Family status was given for both men and women. See, for example, Margaret W. Rossiter’s two volumes on the history of women in science. Preceding the Mercury 13, pilot Ruth Nichols underwent some astronaut tests in 1959 through the Air Force. Betty Skelton, also a pilot, underwent some NASA tests and was featured in LOOK magazine in 1960. In addition, the Air Force, which for several years ran its own astronaut program, tested 12 of its nurses for potential spaceflight in 1973. None of this approached what the Mercury 13 went through, although this was unofficial testing. On the women preceding the Mercury 13, see Weitekamp’s study and Ackmann’s.

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See Steadman, Tethered Mercury (2001); Woodmansee, Women Astronauts (2002); Freni, Space for Women: A History of Women with the Right Stuff (2002); Nolen, Promised the Moon. The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race (2003); Ackmann, The Mercury 13. The Untold Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight (2003); Weitekamp, Right Stuff, Wrong Sex. America’s First Women in Space Program (2005); Shayler and Moule, Women in Space— Following Valentina (2005); and Kevles, Almost Heaven: The Story of Women in Space (2006). See also the documentary Mercury 13: The Secret Astronauts (History Channel, 1998) and the French documentary Space Ladies: Deferred Liftoff, produced in 2002. Weitekamp gives the most illuminating reading of the Congressional Hearings of 1962. The collective turn to the Mercury 13 runs parallel with a current Hollywood effort to foreground the men of Apollo as one of the “greatest generations” of twentieth-century U.S. history. I want to note here that Howard E. McCurdy’s study, Space and the American Imagination, has been most helpful to me throughout this book and should be consulted by anyone interested in the myths built around space history in the United States. On the term, see Carol Hanisch in Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader. Ironically, as astronauts attempted to bolster their images as engineers—as men in control—they had to wrestle control from engineers at mission control, who were dubious about the astronauts’ ability to manage the machines (Burrows 292). On women and engineering, see Rossiter; on technology and women, see Wosk, Webb and Suggitt, and Cowan. Cochran’s probable motives for arguing against the women included a personal rivalry with Cobb and her knowledge that her age would keep her from being the first woman astronaut. Such rivalry reveals how individual women who wish to appear exceptional can sometimes impede women as a group from making a mark on history. See Weitekamp’s discussion of this “requirement,” 126–8. Kim McQuaid’s article on the civil rights issues surrounding race and gender at NASA in the 1960s is most enlightening. The first use of the term “astronaut” was in a short story by Neil R. Jones, “The Death Head’s Meteor,” published in 1930. Today, NASA proposes two types of astronaut: “pilots” (including the commander and the pilot, or second in command) and “mission specialists.” Pilots must have at least 1,000 hours jet flying time, pass a physical, and be between 64 and 76 inches tall. Mission specialists must have a bachelor’s degree in engineering, the biological or physical sciences, or mathematics, three years related “experience” (the three years are preferably fulfilled with a doctorate), must pass a physical exam, and be between 58.5 and 76 inches tall. A third passenger on the shuttle may be the “payload specialist,” who is not considered an astronaut per se. With all of these sub-specialties, there is now space for women on shuttle missions. Foster provides a complete review of the details leading up the government’s acceptance that women would fly on the shuttle.

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See McCurdy, 5, on the link between information and entertainment in the Space Age. Jeffrey A. Weinstock compares Orientalism to “Extraterrestrialism,” which involves “constructions of exoticized space aliens” (330) and a “process of ‘othering’ that essentializes alien difference as inferiority” (336). See Chapter 4 of this study for my own use of “extraterrestrialism.” See Jack G. Shaheen’s book on the portrayal of Arabs in cinema history. Jeannie’s clothing and bottle interior are crudely modeled on the tradition of Orientalist paintings in the west (see, for example, J. A. D. Ingres’ painting, The Turkish Bath, 1862). On these images, see Ann McClintock, Imperial Leather. “The Cozy Cocoon” is how another astronaut described the Mercury 7 capsule and is a chapter title from Carpenter et al., We Seven. There have been many feminist studies of how the female body carries the weight of nature; see, for example, the work of Donna Haraway, Carolyn Merchant, and Denise Riley. Merchant claims that during the Enlightenment science replaced more community-centered forms of human relationships to nature. “The female earth” became the mechanized earth. My position is closer to Haraway, who emphasizes the fluid boundaries between science and nature, human and animal, masculine and feminine bodies. On women and technology, see Chapter 3 of this study. The inverse story, of spacemen who land on the moon and find that it looks just like Florida, complete with beach bunnies, is found in the film Nude on the Moon (dir. Doris Wishman, 1961), discussed in Chapter 5. The real town has capitalized on its proximity to NASA, but also on its status as fictional home to Tony and Jeannie by way of Hollywood: the town’s visitor’s brochure and website use a Jeannie motif; a small lane (actually, an extended entrance to the parking lot of a recreation park) has been named I Dream of Jeannie Lane, and the We Dream of Jeannie Festival is held every September. In 1996–97, cable television was host to a syndicated series called The Cape (astronaut Buzz Aldrin was a creative consultant). In a cross between I Dream of Jeannie, Apollo 13, and The Original Wives Club, The Cape presented, in 22 episodes, the drama of missions, suburban home-life, and soap opera-like relationship angst. See also Krafft Ehricke’s argument for mining in space. Popular culture manifestations of a fear of sea aliens and alternatively a need to connect/communicate with the creatures of the seas were 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (dir. Richard Fleisher, 1954), a 50s version of the Jules Verne novel; It Came From Beneath the Sea (dir. Robert Gordon, 1955), in which “it” was an octopus; Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (dir. Irwin Allen, 1961), a futuristic story with a nuclear submarine instead of a rocket ship, and the television series of the same name (1964–68); the television series Flipper (1964–67), about a friendly dolphin; Day of the Dolphin (dir. Mike Nichols, 1973), one of the most well-known 1970s versions of the friendly sea creature story; and just about anything produced by Jacques Cousteau.

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Lovell dedicated his memoir Lost Moon (later retitled Apollo 13) to his “earthbound astronauts,” meaning his wife and children. The third astronaut group of 14 men was chosen in 1963; six men in 1965; 19 men in May 1967; 11 men in September 1967; and seven men in 1970. There was then a hiatus until the 1978 group of 35, which included six white women and one black man. On this nexus, see the essay by Michael L. Smith and McCurdy 90–1. All astronauts through Apollo were held to the Life contract, although the financial benefits from it diminished as time passed. The 1970 book First on the Moon lists its authors as Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., “written with” Gene Farmer (senior editor of Life at the time) and Dora Jane Hamblin (the Life staff writer who covered the Apollo missions). The book intertwines the astronaut accounts, NASA recordings between the astronauts and Mission Control in Houston, and the wives’ and families’ accounts from home. It is the culmination of Life’s exclusive contract with the astronauts. See Hansen 289–90. See Wolfe, 322–3 on Rene Carpenter’s parody of the wife who utters these words to a reporter. Overall, Betty Grissom felt that she was denied what some of the other wives received for their roles in the Space Race, “We [Gus and I] never got any of the goodies, we just got the hard work” (159). The film The Right Stuff does a good job of displaying her frustration with the lack of “goodies,” including that she never met Jackie Kennedy. Buzz Aldrin tells his reader, through the voice of his wife, that this isolation is what happened to Jeannie Bassett when she lost her astronaut husband in a training flight in 1966. On widowhood, see also Dora Jane Hamblin’s Life article, “The Fire and Fate Have Left Eight Widows.” The term is Neil Armstong’s; see his “The Engineered Century.” “In space no one can hear you scream” was a tag line for the film Alien. On Cocoa beach as a party town at launch time, see also Armstrong et al., First on the Moon, 60–7. The statistics on how the Next Nine marriages ended are the following: six divorced (Conrad, Armstrong, Cooper, Stafford, Young, McDivitt); two wives were widowed (White and See; Pat White later committed suicide while planning an Apollo wives’ reunion); and two marriages endured (Borman, Lovell). At the end of the third volume of his work, Chaikin gives biographical information, including marital status (as of 1994), of the Apollo astronauts. Of those that walked on the moon, Buzz Aldrin and Edward Mitchell were on their third marriages; Neil Armstrong, Alan Bean, Gene Cernan, Pete Conrad, and John Young were on their second marriages; Charles Duke, Jim Irwin, Alan Shepard, and Harrison Schmitt were still married to their first wives. (David Scott has since divorced. Shepard, Conrad, and Irwin have since died.) One reason for the rise of scientific discourse on the home was a reduction in the number of servant households in the late nineteenth century; the wife became a manager of gadgets and machines instead of manager of household staff. For lower-income families, who did not have domestic help and who in

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fact provided it to middle-class families, “domestic engineering” was code for social reform. The automobile, always a challenge for Jeannie (she crashes Tony’s car several times), was conflated with the space capsule in the 1960s and it seemed natural that both were machines best left to men. In the words of Alan Shepard, “A capsule is quite a bit like an automobile” (Carpenter, et al. 174). Michael L. Smith has remarked on the selling of automobiles alongside the selling of space gadgets; he notes that beginning in the 1950s the advertising of cars depended on the “dramatic unveiling” of newer and newer technologies that were kept “secret” until revealed in advertisements, in imitation of the secrecy and unveiling of weapons during the war, in particular of the A-bomb (184–5). Passive car drivers could be convinced that they controlled the car, just as Glenn wanted to be convinced that he controlled the capsule, through the use of gadgets and slick names for auto parts (186–7). As Smith notes, astronauts did television commercials for cars and sat on automobile corporation boards. A predecessor of these films, in particular Apollo 13, was Marooned (dir. John Sturges, 1969). In this film, a three-man crew is stranded in space and must use their technical ingenuity to turn the mission into a successful one. The wives, played by Lee Grant, Mariette Hartley, and Nancy Kovack, are shown several times anxiously awaiting word of their husbands’ plight, but they are shown at mission control instead of in their own homes. The same is true of Capricorn One (dir. Peter Hyams, 1978), which stages a hoax Mars mission. The three wives, not in on the hoax, fret about their husbands’ fates at mission control. Finally, Countdown (dir. Robert Altman, 1968) gives small roles to the wives. See Sconce for a summary of some of these criticisms. He argues, “Television thus threatened to consume its subjects, if not into the actual vacuum of outer space [he refers to The Outer Limits], then into its own logics and fictions that existed in an ethereal space which, nevertheless, could often feel more real, more ‘live’ than the everyday material environment of the viewer’s home” (28). On this episode and on the metaphor of the home as spaceship in general, see Spigel, “From Theatre to Space Ship” and “Installing the Television Set.” Examples include Inseminoid (dir. Norman J. Warner, 1981); the Alien series; Mars Needs Women (dir. Larry Buchanan, 1967); and the silent short When the Man in the Moon Seeks a Wife (dir. Percy Stow, 1908). From Aelita: Queen of Mars (dir. Yakov Protazanov, 1924) to Queen of Outer Space (dir. Edward Bernds, 1958), Barbarella (dir. Roger Vadim, 1968), and The American Astronaut (dir. Cory McAbee, 2001), outer space women have sought after human men for kisses or more serious hanky-panky. “Real” stories of alien abduction, primarily told by women and involving a sadistic male-like alien or team of aliens, may also be seen as versions of this theme. Another variation is the story of human males raped and impregnated by alien “females” who have sometimes specifically come to earth or lured human males to their planets for procreation purposes (Species, dir. Roger Donaldson, 1995; Alien, dir. Ridley Scott, 1979; I Married a Monster from Outerspace, dir. Gene Fowler, 1958; Devil Girl from Mars, dir. David MacDonald, 1954; and the important Danish silent film Heaven Ship dir. Forest Holger-Madsen 1917, in which a human male and Martian woman produce offspring).

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Donna Haraway suggests a similar reading in the chapter “Apes in Eden, Apes in Space” in her book Primate Visions. It is difficult to exaggerate Haraway’s influence on my arguments here. Haraway’s Simians, Cyborgs, and Women explores these boundary crossings. Psychologist Richard D. Ryder first used the term “speciesism” in the 1970s. Since then, it has suggested a human belief that non-human animals are somehow inferior species. As for “extraterrestrialism,” I do not refer to the specific theory developed by Yohah Fortner, but I use the term in a more general fashion. Although we have not yet encountered an alien, and so extraterrestrialism as a form of oppression does not exist yet, popular culture space narratives suggest that alien discrimination will eventually come, naturally. Two 1980s films that imagine discrimination toward aliens are John Sayles’ 1984 The Brother From Another Planet and Graham Baker’s 1988 Alien Nation. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1982) offered an alien as member of the (human) family. See, for example, Jean-Bruno Renard’s essay on the “Wild Man” as predecessor to the alien. See also Richard Nash’s study, Wild Enlightenment. Russian scientists launched dogs into space instead of non-human primates. The most famous was Laika, who along with the satellite Sputnik II was not recovered. On the history of “animal astronauts” see Bergwin and Coleman, and Simmonds and Bourne. In director Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes, Captain Leo Davidson announces “Never send a monkey to do a man’s job,” seemingly in echo of the Mercury 7 astronauts’ discomfort with chimps preceding them in space. An early science fiction film that includes the non-human primate as character is Robinson Crusoe on Mars (dir. Byron Haskin, 1964), in which the astronaut is marooned on Mars with a wooley monkey named Mona, who wears a small astronaut suit, and a humanoid alien meant to play the role of Friday from Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe. Also notable for the popularization of links between prehumans, evolution, and the Space Age are 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968) and the 1960s–70s Planet of the Apes films. In the 2001 Planet of the Apes, the film opens with a chimp astronaut. On the space chimps, see David Cassidy and Kristin Davy’s documentary One Small Step: The Story of the Space Chimps (2008) and a rather different film, the animated children’s fantasy SpaceChimps (dir. Kirk DeMicco, 2008). Like that of the women of the Mercury 13, the space chimps’ time has apparently come. Ebony criticized the white Space Race in its September 1968 and other issues. On Ebony, African Americans, and the Space Race, see Spigel, “White Flight” and “Outer Space and Inner Cities” (in her Welcome to the Dreamhouse). See also Phelps’ book on black astronauts. Adilifu Nama devotes an insightful chapter to Astrofuturism. Ray Bradbury, a white author, depicted Mars as a promised land for American blacks in The Martian Chronicles.

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See Margot Sims’ hilarious study of the “bestialization of woman.” The woman primatologist who prefers apes to men is a stereotype in popular culture. In Planet of the Apes (2001), Captain Davidson asks the primatologist, “Ever consider an actual boyfriend?” to which she replies, “You mean do I enjoy being miserable? No thanks, I’ll stick to my chimps.” Here I am reading the film; the real Dian Fossey had a choice of a range of lovers, including Robert Campbell and Pierre Weiss, both married. It is not actually clear that she “chose” animals and science over marriage/relationships as the film would have us believe. Besides Montgomery’s book, I have also been influenced by studies of Fossey by Karla Armbruster, Harold T.P. Hayes, and Bettyann Kevles.

Chapter 5 1

2

3

4 5

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8

My understanding of masquerade, performance, and the striptease are influenced by a wealth of writings by feminists and cultural critics, from Joan Rivière’s classic essay “Womanliness as Masquerade” to Judith Butler’s work on gender as performance, as well as work on clothing and the opposition naked/ nude by Anne Hollander and Jacques Laurent, for example. For my summary, I rely on Ruth Barcan’s study. Like Barcan, I use “nudity” and “nakedness” as interchangeable, although others have built their arguments around an opposition of the terms. See Norman Mailer’s chapter “The Psychology of Astronauts,” which offers an insightful analysis of the artificial construction of the astronaut’s persona. Beyond All Stars, by Melinda McKenzie, was published in 1983 in the Rapture Romance series. A Hint of Splendor, by Kathy Clark, was published in 1986 in the Candlelight Ecstasy Romance series. What follows refers to Kozloski’s history unless otherwise noted. Foster’s thorough study of “gender trouble” at NASA includes discussion of the need for pyjamas on the shuttle; this was known as the “problem of nightwear” (166). Santy devotes a chapter in her study of astronaut qualifications to the ways in which the shuttle was designed for women as well as men, including its private toilet. As this book goes to press, the shuttle program has, of course, been discontinued. On the potential use of tampons on the shuttle, see Casper and Moore 317–18. These authors also discuss the possibility of sex and reproduction in space. Raymond Noonan remarks on NASA’s unwillingness to discuss the possibility of sex in space and the space agency’s negative reaction to strong public interest in the flight of the first married astronaut couple, Jan Davis and Mark Lee, who flew together in 1992 (133). Of course, the issue of toilets and privacy was only ever a concern because the default astronaut was male. Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions could have been flown by women without embarrassment if all the crewmembers on each mission (and the Mercury flights only had one) had been women. Women were seen from the beginning as something to “integrate into” the men’s corps; it was never imagined that there could be all-women flights.

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Sobchack comments on the “defused” sexuality of human women and the hyper-sexuality of alien women (“The Virginity of Astronauts: Sex and the Science Fiction Film” in Kuhn, ed. Alien Zone). In contemporary accounts of alien abductions of humans, women often insist that aliens have probed them, through the naval or anus, and implanted, then later removed, fetuses, only to graft alien DNA onto these (see Bridget Brown, “‘My Body is Not My Own’: Alien Abduction and the Struggle for Self-Control” in Knight, ed. 107–29). Perhaps aliens are drawn to human butt cleavage. Lisa Parks is right to point out the contrast between the absence of female astronauts at NASA in 1968 and the overwhelming presence of Barbarella’s physicality on the silver screen: “The film’s hypersexualization of its protagonist reflects the impossibility of a ‘real’ female astronaut during the 1960s, for it demonstrates how feminine sexuality was exploited not only to keep women out of space, but also to fetishize the only female astronaut in public view” (254). The films that have followed Alien are: Aliens (dir. James Cameron, 1986); Alien3 (dir. David Fincher, 1992); and Alien Resurrection (dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997). I focus only on the first film in this chapter because of space considerations and because I find it to be the most interesting of the four films in terms of what it brings new to the evolution of the female astronaut in popular film. On the identification of earth women as always already aliens, see Robin Roberts’ study, A New Species, and Jenny Wolmark’s Aliens and Others. See Vivian Sobchack’s chapter on the alien and alienation in science fiction for a thorough study of the history and significance of this figure through the mid-1980s (in her Screening Space).

Chapter 6 1

In the late twentieth century, regular run-of-the-mill humans, or at least those that could afford the trip, began to engage in “extreme ethno-tourism” in the Highlands, led by adventure tourism companies that promised contact with native New Guinean tribes and even possible first contact experiences. Although traditional first contacts were certainly shot through with encounter, in particular imperialist and racist, meanings, these forays into first contact popularize the ideological as a media event and tourist fare, allowing the man in the street to become, if only briefly, the anthropologist. These extremely unfortunate “adventures” may or may not be hoaxes (see the BBC video “First Contact,” which investigates whether one company hires natives to play roles in first contact scenarios). They are, in some sense, versions of the reality television series Survivor, which allows the average westerner to experience life as a “tribesman” fending for her or himself against hostile intruders (the other tribes in the game). One can surmise that space tourism will one day involve either “reality” or hoax versions of this “game” involving space aliens (See Rieder’s book on anthropology, race, and science fiction scenarios.).

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The most recent science fiction film to stage first contact is Avatar (dir. James Cameron, 2009). Avatar is basically Pocahantas (dir. Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg, 1995) combined with Aliens. Nota bene: No Prime Directive here. See the essays on time travel in Redmond, ed., Liquid Metal. Marleen Barr remarks on the “alien” status of black women in patriarchal society and discusses the presence and absence of black female characters in science fiction (98). Penley means the demeaning and sometimes stereotypical treatment of women; indeed, I was told by a NASA employee confidentially that from NASA’s point of view Jemison “was never meant to last.” Joan Higginbotham, the second black female astronaut, has also left NASA. Yvonne Cagle has not yet flown; Jeanette Epps is in training. “They are both compelled to kiss by evil, mind-controlling aliens, who force this degrading and ‘wrong’ spectacle for their own entertainment” (Adam Roberts 102–3). Roberts argues that in Star Trek white characters represent the ideal and black characters the marginal. He also argues that Klingons are meant to be a mixture of African-American and Native American (104). I agree with both statements.

Conclusion 1

2

Riley recommends that the swing back and forth between “human” and “women” can be used strategically in feminism: “My own suggestions grind to a halt here, on a territory of pragmatism. I’d argue that it is compatible to suggest that ‘women’ don’t exist—while maintaining a politics of ‘as if they existed’—since the world behaves as if they unambiguously did . . . Sometimes it will be a soundly explosive tactic to deny, in the face of some thoughtless depiction, that there are any ‘women.’ But at other times, the entrenchment of sexed thought may be too deep for this strategy to be understood and effective. So feminism must be agile enough to say, ‘Now we will be ‘women’—but now we will be persons, not these ‘women’ ” (112–13). See, for example, the studies edited by Deborah Cameron, and Holmes and Meyerhoff.

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Film and Television 2001: A Space Odyssey (Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1968). 2010: The Year We Made Contact (Dir. Peter Hyams, 1984). 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (Dir. Richard Fleisher, 1954). A Trip to the Moon (Dir. Georges Méliès, 1902). The Abyss (Dir. James Cameron, 1989). Aelita: Queen of Mars (Dir. Yakov Protazanov, 1924). ALF (1986-90; television series). Alien (Dir. Ridley Scott, 1979); Aliens (Dir. James Cameron, 1986); Alien3 (Dir. David Fincher, 1992); Alien: Resurrection (Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997). Alien Nation (Dir. Graham Baker, 1988). The Alien Saga. Legacy DVD Box Set (2001). Amelia (Dir. Mira Nair, 2009). The American Astronaut (Dir. Cory McAbee, 2001). Apollo 13 (Dir. Ron Howard, 1995). Apollo Wives (BBC, Dir. Andrew Tait, 2009). The Astounding She-Monster (Dir. Ronnie Ashcroft, 1958). The Astronaut’s Wife (Dir. Rand Ravich, 1999). Avatar (Dir. James Cameron, 2009). Barbarella (Dir. Roger Vadim, 1968). Beach Blanket Bingo (Dir. William Asher, 1965). The Beach Girls and the Monster (Dir. Jon Hall, 1965). Beach Party (Dir. William Asher, 1963). Bewitched (1964–72; television series). The Brady Bunch (1969–74; television series).

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231

The Brass Bottle (Dir. Harry Keller, 1963). The Brother From Another Planet (dir. John Sayles, 1984). The Cape (1996–97; television series). The Cape Canaveral Monsters (Dir. Phil Tucker, 1961). Capricorn One (Dir. Peter Hyams, 1978). Cat Women of the Moon (Dir. Arthur Hilton, 1953). Challenger (1990; television film, dir. Glenn Jordan). Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1977). Contact (Dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1997). Contact. The Yanomami Indians of Brazil (dir. Geoffrey O’Connor, 1991). Cosmic Striptease (1961). Countdown (Dir. Robert Altman, 1968). The Crawling Hand (Dir. Herbert L. Strock, 1963). Day of the Dolphin (Dir. Mike Nichols, 1973). Destination Moon (Dir. Irving Pichel, 1950). Devil Girl from Mars (Dir. David MacDonald, 1954). Emanuelle in Space (1994; television series). E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1982). Father Knows Best (1954-60; television series). The Fifth Element (Dir. Luc Besson, 1997). First Contact (Dir. Stephen Cory, BBC, 2007). First Contact (Dir. Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, 1982). Flipper (1964–67; television series). The Genie (Dir. Lawrence Huntington, 1953). Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (Dir. Michael Apted, 1988). Groundhog Day (Dir. Harold Ramis, 1993). Heaven Ship (Dir. Forest Holger-Madsen, 1917). The Horror of Party Beach (Dir. Del Tenney, 1964). I Dream of Jeannie (1965–70; television series). I Love Lucy (1951-60; television series). I Married a Monster From Outer Space (dir. Gene Fowler, 1958). Inseminoid (Dir. Norman J. Warren, 1981). Invaders from Mars (Dir. William Cameron Menzies, 1953). It Came from Beneath the Sea (Dir. Robert Gordon, 1955). It Came from Outer Space (Dir. Jack Arnold, 1953). It! The Terror from Beyond Space (Dir. Edward L. Cahn, 1958). It’s About Time (1965–66; television series). Lost in Space (1965–68; television series). Love Goddesses of Blood Island (Dir. Richard S. Flink, 1963). Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D (Dir. Mark Cowen, 2005). Marooned (Dir. John Sturges, 1969). Mars Needs Women (Dir. Larry Buchanan, 1967). Men into Space (1959–60; television series). Mercury 13: The Secret Astronauts (History Channel; dir. Robert Lihani, 1998). Mission to Mars (Dir. Brian De Palma, 2000). The Mod Squad (1968–73; television series). Mork and Mindy (1978-82; television series). Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom (1963–71; television series).

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Works Cited

My Favorite Martian (1963–6; television series). Nude on the Moon (Dir. Doris Wishman, 1961). One Small Step. The Story of the Space Chimps (Dir. David Cassidy and Kristin Davy, 2008). The Original Wives Club (Dir. Sally Field; Part 11 of From the Earth to the Moon various directors, 1998). The Outer Limits (1963–65; television series). Planet of the Apes (Dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968); Beneath the Planet of the Apes (Dir. Ted Post, 1969); Escape from the Planet of the Apes (Dir. Don Taylor, 1971); Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (Dir. J. Lee Thompson, 1972); Battle for the Planet of the Apes (Dir. J. Lee Thompson, 1973); Planet of the Apes (Dir. Tim Burton, 2001). Pocahantas (Dir. Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg, 1995). Project Moonbase (Dir. Richard Talmadge, 1953). Queen of Blood (Dir. Curtis Harrington, 1966). Queen of Outer Space (Dir. Edward Bernds, 1958). Return of the Jedi (Dir. Richard Marquand, 1983). The Right Stuff (Dir. Philip Kaufman, 1983). Robinson Crusoe on Mars (Dir. Byron Haskin, 1964). Rocketship X-M (Dir. Kurt Neumann, 1950). Rosemary’s Baby (Dir. Roman Polanski, 1968). In Search of the Great Apes (National Geographic Society, 1976). Space Cowboys (Dir. Clint Eastwood, 2000). Space Ladies Deferred Liftoff (Dir. Rebecca Boulanger, 2002). Space Patrol (1950–55, television series). SpaceChimps (Dir. Kirk DeMicco, 2008). Species (Dir. Roger Donaldson, 1995). Star Trek (1966–69; television series). Start Trek. Next Generation (1987–94; television series). Star Trek. Voyager (1995–2001; television series). Star Trek: First Contact (Dir. Jonathan Frakes, 1996). Sting of Death (Dir. William Grefe, 1965). Survivor (2000–; television series). The Terminator (Dir. James Cameron, 1984). The Thing from Another Planet (Dir. Christian Nyby, 1951). The Twilight Zone (1959–64; television series). V (1983-85; television mini-series and series). Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (Dir. Irwin Allen, 1961); Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-68; television series). When the Man in the Moon Seeks a Wife (Dir. Percy Stow, 1908). Woman in the Moon (Frau im Mond) (Dir. Fritz Lang, 1929). The Wonder of It All (Dir. Jeffrey Roth, 2007). X-Files (1993-2002; television series).

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Index

Note: Page numbers in bold denote figures.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 215n. 10 2001: A Space Odyssey 8, 159, 186, 218n. 8 2010: The Year We Made Contact 186 Abyss, The 164, 207 Ackmann, Martha 46, 158, 160, 213n. 5, 214n. 6 Aelita: Queen of Mars 2, 9, 161, 162, 198 Africa 15–16, 67, 116–45, 148, 150, 180, 182 see also colonialism, colonization, primatology African Americans (and blacks) 10–11, 13, 15–16, 47, 67, 104, 133–5, 148, 173–4, 180, 189–94, 199, 201–3, 216n. 2, 218n. 9, 218n. 10, 221n. 4, 221n. 6, 221n. 7 afrofuturism 134 Aldrin, Edwin E.(Buzz), Jr. 60, 86–7, 94, 124, 215n. 8, 216n. 7, 216n. 4, 216n. 11 Aldrin, Joan 82, 86–7 ALF 53 Alien 4, 6, 12–13, 16, 76, 136, 147, 150, 164, 168–9, 172–4, 174, 181–2, 189, 204–5 Alien sequels Alien Resurection 172, 180, 220n. 12 Aliens 180, 220n. 12, 221n. 2 Alien3 180, 203, 220n. 12 alien abduction 217n. 18, 220n. 10 Alien Nation 218n. 4 Alien Saga, The 172 Allen, Iona 159, 188, 200 Allison, Rhea Hurrle 27

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Amelia 45 Anderson, Benedict 55 Anderson, Robin 183 Anfuso, Victor L. 24, 37, 40–1, 43 Anstice, Mark 183 Apollo 13 4, 7–8, 13, 15, 45, 78–81, 91–2, 97–8, 101, 102–3, 105, 111, 197 Arabian Nights, The 61 Armbruster, Karla 219n. 14 Armstrong, Jan 83, 86 Armstrong, Neil 83, 87, 159, 216n. 4 Astounding She-Monster, The 173 astrofuturism 134, 218n. 10 astronaut 9, 31, 42–3, 214n. 15 qualifications 22–6, 29–31, 38, 41–2, 115, 219n. 6 see also under individual names, astronaut wives, Mercury 7, Mercury 13, NASA, space suits Astronaut’s Wife, The 15, 46, 78, 103–6, 104–5, 110, 113–14 astronaut wives 6, 9, 11, 13–15, 27, 33, 45–6, 58, 60, 76–8, 80–94, 98, 100–15, 135–6, 151, 161, 164, 184, 193, 198, 216n. 1, 216n. 4, 216n. 5, 216n. 6, 216n. 7, 216n. 12, 217n. 14 see also engineering (household), Life magazine see also under individual names mothers in space 106–14 see also Christa McAuliffe Avalon, Frankie 74 Avatar 16, 221n. 2

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Badmington, Neil 13, 173 Baker, Ellen S. 156 Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy 4, 16, 168–70, 169–70, 198 Barcan, Ruth 145–6, 219n. 1 Barr, Marleen 221n. 4 beach party film series 74 Beach Blanket Bingo 74 Beach Party 74 Behind the Nudist Curtain 164 Bell-Metereau, Rebecca 173 Bergwin, Clyde R. 218n. 6 Betson, Johnnie R. 39 Bewitched 50, 60 black holes 207–11 Blaze Starr Goes Nudist 164 Bluford, Guion 189–90 Bohr, Neils 20 Borman, Frank 83 Borman, Susan 83, 100 Bourne, Geoffrey H. 218n. 6 Bradbury, Ray 4, 187, 218n. 10 The Martian Chronicles 218n. 10 “A Sound of Thunder” 187 Brady Bunch, The 51 Brass Bottle, The 61 Brother From Another Planet, The 218n. 4 Bryld, Mette 72–3, 196 Burrows, William E. 26, 214n. 10 Bush, Catherine 4, 81, 106, 109 Minus Time 4, 106, 109–13 Butler, Judith 219n. 1 Cagle, Myrtle T. 27, 158, 160 Cagle, Yvonne 221n. 6 Cameron, Deborah 221n. 2 Cape Canaveral Monsters, The 74 Capote, Truman 80 In Cold Blood 80 Capricorn One 217n. 14 Carpenter, Liz 44 Carpenter, Rene 77, 84–6, 96 Carpenter, Scott 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 42, 66, 151 Carter, Dale 213n. 2 Casper, Monica J. 219n. 7 Cat Women of the Moon 8, 161–3, 163

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Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care (CCCC) 125, 144 Cernan, Barbara 77 Cernan, Gene 94 Chafee, Roger 87 Chaikin, Andrew 78, 82 Challenger disaster 52–3, 74, 106, 109, 155 see also Christa McAuliffe Chatham, Alice 152–3 Chawla, Kalpana 48 chimpanzees 9, 137, 140, 144, 150, 200–1, 218n. 7, 218n. 8, 219n. 12 see also primatology, space chimps Clark, Kathy 219n. 3 A Hint of Splendour 148, 157, 219n. 3 Clark, Laurel 48 Clarke, Arthur C. 159 Clinton, George 134 Close Encounters of the Third Kind 195 Clough, Patricia Ticineto 136, 177 Cobb, Jerrie 18, 24–37, 28, 39–41, 44, 46, 49, 115, 125–6, 158, 189, 204, 214n. 12 Woman into Space 25, 34, 41, 44–5 Cochran, Jackie 24–5, 27, 30, 36, 38, 40, 43 Coleman, William T. 218n. 6 Colley, Russell 152 Collins, Eileen 41, 46–7 Collins, Michael 216n. 4 Collins, Pat 86 Collins, Wiley 161 colonialism 15, 63, 119–20, 129, 132–6, 144, 146, 148, 181–6 see also Africa, primatology, space chimps colonization 11, 38, 66, 68, 116, 121, 127, 133–7, 147, 180, 210 Connolly, Bob 183 Conrad, Jane 83, 89, 101 Conrad, Pete 83, 89 Consalvo, Mia 192 Constable, Catherine 177 Contact (film) 4, 7, 12, 76, 106, 181, 186, 194–7,195, 197, 204, 212

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Index Contact: The Yanomami Indians of Brazil 183 Cooper, Gordon 26 Cooper, Trudy 82, 84–5 Cosmic Striptease 167, 168 Coulston, Frederick 124 Countdown 217n. 14 Coupland, Douglas 4, 112 All Families are Psychotic 4, 112–13 Cowan, Ruth Schwartz 214n. 11 Cox, Steve 56, 59, 66, 100 The Crawling Hand 8, 69, 74 Creed, Barbara 177 Cretal, Norma 159 Crittenden, Robert 183 Cronkite, Walter 79 Cummins, Jane 119 Curious George Gets a Medal (by H. A. Rey and Margret Rey) 16, 116–17, 118, 118–20 Davis, Jan 219n. 7 Day of the Dolphin 215n. 10 Dean, Jodi 29, 77, 80, 91 Defoe, Daniel 218n. 8 Robinson Crusoe 218n. 8 Dery, Mark 134 Destination Moon 53 Devil Girl From Mars 4, 10, 161, 162, 173 Dietrich, Jan 27, 30 Dietrich, Marion 27 Doane, Mary Ann 3 Duncan, Carol B. 193 Dwight, Edward J., Jr.190 Dwyer, Michael 183, 201 Earhart, Amelia 47, 147 Eden, Barbara 61 Ehricke, Kraft 1–2, 121, 215n. 9 Eisele, Donn 94 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 26 Ellison, Harlan 167 see also Jarvis, E. K. Emanuelle in Space 186 Engineering 19, 23, 29–34, 39, 41, 67, 85, 108, 134, 214n. 11, 214n. 16 see also television

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235

engineer syndrome 92–5 household engineering 15, 93–6, 216n. 12 Epps, Jeanette 221n. 6 E. T. : The Extra-Terrestrial 218n. 4 extraterrestrialism 120–1, 125, 134, 218n. 3 Extravehicular Activity (EVA) 154 Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) 148 Faget, Maxime 66 Faherty, William Barnaby 69, 94 Fallaci, Oriana 80 Faludi, Susan 9 Father Knows Best 140 Fawcett, Bill 184 Fedigan, Linda M. 144 feminism 2, 10–12, 19, 21, 23, 29, 44, 68, 82, 107, 121, 135–7, 139–44, 206–7, 209–10, 215n. 6, 219n. 1, 221n. 1 Fifth Element, The 161 first contact in Aelita:Queen of Mars 198 in Contact 186, 194–7 in Fraser narrative 184–5 in Planet of the Apes 198–201 in Star Trek: First Contact 191–4 time and 186 First Contact (documentary film) 183, 203 Fisher, Anna 47 Flickinger, Donald 27, 145, 158, 189 Flipper 215n. 10 Florida 14–16, 28, 48, 52, 55, 60, 64, 67–9, 72–4, 76, 104, 111, 125, 128–31, 135, 144, 165, 171, 194, 215n. 7 Fonda, Jane 168–9 Forstchen, William R. 183–4 Fortner, Yohah 218n. 3 Fossey, Dian 15, 115, 132, 135–9, 142–4, 198 Gorillas in the Mist (book) 136, 138 Foster, Amy 44, 147, 155, 214n. 17, 219n. 5

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Index

Fraser, Eliza 184–5 see also first contact Frederick, Christine 95 Freeman, Marsha 213n. 2 Freud, Sigmund 50, 53, 209 Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious 209 “Screen Memories” 50 Friedan, Betty 60, 98 From the Earth to the Moon 4, 8, 15, 45–6, 78–9, 82, 114 see also The Original Wives Club Frontier Thesis (Frederick Turner’s) 72 Fulton, James 37, 40, 43, 126 Funicello, Annette 74 Funk, Mary Wallace (Wally) 27, 30, 158 Gagarin, Yuri 35 Galdikas, Biruté 137, 143–4 Gallardo C., Ximena 172–3, 175–8, 180, 195, 203 Garb, Yakov 121 Genie, The 61 Glenn, Anna 84–5 Glenn, John 20, 24, 26, 28, 30–2, 40, 45–6, 66, 93, 96, 124–6, 151 Goddard, Robert 2 Goodall, Jane 125, 137, 144 Gorelick, Sara Lee 27 Gorillas in the Mist: The Story of Dian Fossey (film) 15, 136–7, 138, 143, 181, 201 Greenberg, Harvey R. 177 Greene, Eric 199, 201 Greer, Germaine 15, 92 Grissom, Betty 84, 87–8, 94, 216n. 6 Starfall 88 Grissom, Gus 26, 87–8, 94, 126, 138, 153 Gross, Michael 175 Groundhog Day 187 Hamblin, Dora Jane 216n. 7 Hanisch, Carol 214n. 9 Hanks, Tom 45, 79, 82 Haraway, Donna 62, 119, 130, 136, 138, 140, 215n. 6, 218n. 1

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Primate Visions 138, 218n. 1, 218n. 2 Simians, Cyborgs and Women 62, 136, 218n. 2 “Teddy Bear Pariarchy” 119 Harbou, Thea von 1–2, 213n. 1 Hardy, Auguste 132 Hart, Jane B. 24–5, 27, 29, 33, 37, 39–42, 44, 46, 49, 95, 205 Hawking, Stephen W.14, 17–19, 21, 145, 205, 207–11 A Briefer History of Time 209 A Brief History of Time 14, 18–21, 207–10 The Illustrated A Brief History of Time 209 The Theory of Everything 209 Hayes, Harold T. P. 219n. 14 Heinlein, Robert A. 188 “All You Zombies” 188 Henry, James Paget 152 Hersch, Matthew H. 160–1 Higginbotham, Joan 221n. 6 Hill, Carol 4, 17 The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer 4, 17 Hixson, Jean F. 27 Hollander, Anne 219n. 1 Holmes, Janet 221n. 2 Howard, Ron 45 Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer 139–40, 143–4 I Dream of Jeannie 6, 12–14, 49–50, 53–76, 54, 58, 61, 65, 77–8, 80, 94, 97, 99–100, 102, 106, 115–16, 128–9, 128, 163, 215n. 4, 215n. 8, 216n. 7, 217n. 13 I Dream of Jeannie Lane, Florida 73 I Love Lucy 58 International Women’s Air and Space Museum (IWASM) 14, 47–8 Invaders from Mars 173 Irwin, Jim 87 Irwin, Mary 87 It Came From Beneath the Sea 215n. 10 It Came From Outer Space 173 It’s about Time 14, 51–3, 56 It! The Terror from Beyond Space 8

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Index Jarvis, E. K. 167 “Cosmic Censorship” 209, 211 Jemison, Mae 17, 46–7, 189–91, 201, 204 Jennings, Richard T. 156 Jennings, Ros 177–9 Jetsons, The 50 Joels, Kerry Mark 157 Johnson, Lyndon B. 44, 48 Johnson Space Center 92, 102 Jones, Neil R. 214n. 15 Kelves, Bettyann 219n. 14 Kennedy, Gregory P. 157 Kennedy, John F. 2, 28, 35, 50, 69, 72, 190 Kennedy, Robert 190 Kennedy Space Center (KSC) 68, 70–1, 125, 130 Kercheval, Jesse Lee 76, 129 Space:A Memoir 76 Kilgore, De Witt Douglas 134 Kluger, Jeffrey 78–9, 90, 101 Kozloski, Lillian D. 151, 154, 156 Krasner, James 137–8 Kuhn, Annette 147, 176–7, 189, 220n. 9 Lang, Fritz 1–3, 213n. 1 Lantry, Douglas N. 150–1, 159 Laurent, Jacques 219n. 1 Leahy, Michael 183, 186, 201 Leakey, Louis 137, 144 Lee, Mark 219n. 7 Leinster, Murray 186 First Contact 186 Leverton, Irene 27–8, 30, 160 Levin, Janna 17, 210–11 Ley, Willy 2 Life magazine 15, 83–5, 88, 97, 100, 190, 216n. 4 Lindbergh, Anne Morrow 16, 130–2 Lindbergh, Charles 130 Lost in Space 4, 14, 50, 53, 56, 163 Love Goddesses of Blood Island 69, 75–6 Lovelace, W. Randolph, II 27, 39, 152, 189 Lovell, Jim 45, 78, 83, 90, 100–1 Lovell, Marilyn 78, 83, 97, 101, 104

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237

Low, George M. 24–5, 30, 33–4, 36, 38, 40–1, 44 Lucid, Shannon 47, 109, 110 Lykke, Nina 196 McAuliffe, Christa 11, 46, 48, 52–3, 106–7, 107, 108–9 McClintock, Ann 215n. 4 McCullough, John 124 McCurdy, Howard E. 27, 91, 96, 129, 159, 214n. 8, 215n. 1 McDivitt, Jim 83 McDivitt, Pat 83, 102 McKenzie, Melinda 149, 219n. 3 Beyond All Stars 148–50, 157 McNiven, Ian J. 184–5 McQuaid, Kim 214n. 14 Magnificent Desolation 4 Mailer, Norman 4, 45, 80, 219n. 2 Of a Fire on the Moon 4, 45, 80 Mann, Jack 85–6 Marooned 217n. 14 Maus, Gerda 2 Méliès, Georges 2, 168 Men into Space 99 Merchant, Carolyn 215n. 6 Mercury 7, 5, 24, 26–8, 31–2, 37, 45–6, 78, 80, 126, 218n. 17 astronauts of 27 survival training in Nevada desert 65 Mercury 13 23–6, 30–1, 38, 41, 45–7, 49, 116, 189, 190 members of 42 Meyerhoff, Miriam 221n. 2 Michener, James 4 Space 4 Mission to Mars 7, 133–4, 164 Mr. Ed 50 Mitchison, Naomi 4, 14 Memoirs of a Spacewoman 4, 14 Modleski, Tania 138 Mod Squad 189 Moeller, Walter H. 25, 37 Moon Is Not Enough, The 87 Moore, Lisa Jean 219n. 7 Mork and Mindy 53 Moule, Ian 159

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Index

Mullane, Mike 205–6 Murrow, Edward R. 189 Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom 129 My Favorite Martian 50, 53, 56 My Living Doll 50 My Mother the Car 50 Nama, Adilifu 134, 218n. 10 NASA / Glenn Research Center 46 Nash, Richard 142, 218n. 5 National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) 26, 152 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 5, 15, 22, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32, 33, 38, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 53, 56, 60, 69, 71, 72, 75, 76, 77, 78, 82, 83, 84, 85, 92, 98, 99, 109, 125, 126, 134, 137, 147, 151, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 174, 189–90, 207, 214n. 14, 214n. 16 Apollo program 44–6, 54, 56, 83, 86, 100 Gemini program 43, 54, 56, 154 Mercury program 46, 54, 122, 206 see also Mercury 7 Oral History Project 23 space shuttle Endeavour, launch of 71 National Air and Space Museum (NASM) 47 New Frontier 50, 69, 72 Newton, Judith 176 Nichols, Nichelle 202, 202 Nichols, Ruth 213n. 5 Nixon, Richard 77 Nolen, Stephanie 46 Noon, Carole 125, 144 see also Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care Noonan, Raymond 219n. 7 Nude on the Moon 5, 16, 164, 166, 166–7, 215n. 7 O’Bannon, Dan 173, 175 Oberth, Hermann 2 One Small Step 218n. 9

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Orientalism see I Dream of Jeannie Original Wives Club, The 8, 15, 78, 81–2, 83, 84, 88, 91, 94, 97, 100, 102, 103, 105–6, 111 see also From the Earth to the Moon Osborne, Michael 132–3 Outer Limits, The 53, 99 Parks, Lisa 170, 220n. 11 Penley, Constance 3, 16, 52–3, 106, 108, 121, 188, 190–1, 221n. 5 Penrose, Roger 209 Phelps, J. Alfred 190, 218n. 9 Piszkiewicz, Dennis 213n. 2 Planet of the Apes (1968) 5, 45, 70, 134, 188, 198, 199–200, 199, 200, 201 Planet of the Apes (2001) 200–1 Pocahantas 221n. 2 Pogue, William 156, 205–6 Post, Wiley 152 primatology 11, 15, 116, 124, 136–7, 139, 141–2, 201 see also Africa, chimpanzees, feminism, space Chimps Project Moonbase 207 Queen of Blood 164 Queen of Outer Space 161 Quimby, Harriet 47, 158, 160 Ra, Sun 134 Redmond, Sean 221n. 3 Renard, Jean-Bruno 218n. 5 Resnick, Judith A. 47–8, 107–8 Return of the Jedi 163 Rey, H.A. 116 The Stars: A New Way to See Them 116 Rey, Margret 116 Ride, Sally 11, 17, 21, 41, 46–7, 76, 107–8, 189–90, 204, 206 Rieder, John 115, 131, 180 Right Stuff, The (film) 13, 15, 78–9, 91, 103–5, 111, 126, 127 Riley, Denise 19–20, 29, 207, 215n. 6, 221n. 1 Rivière, Joan 219n. 1

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Index Robert, Crittenden 183 Roberts, Adam 221n. 7 Roberts, Robin 173, 220n. 13 Robinson Crusoe on Mars 218n. 8 Rocketship X-M 4, 10, 207 Rosemary’s Baby 103, 105 Rossiter, Margaret W. 33–4, 213n. 4, 214n. 11 Women Scientists in America 33–4 Roush, J. Edward 36 Ryder, Richard D. 218n. 3 Sagan, Carl 16–17, 186, 196 Contact 186 Said, Edward 63 Santy, Patricia 155 Scanlon, Paul 175 Schaffer, Kay 184 Schieffelin, Edward L. 183 Schirra, Jo 84 Schirra, Walter 26, 151 science fiction 3–6, 9, 12–14, 17, 50, 54, 78–9, 103, 116, 121–2, 131, 133, 134, 146–7, 173, 182, 186–8, 193, 195, 197, 212, 218n. 8, 220n. 1, 220n. 14, 221n. 2, 221n. 4 Sconce, Jeffrey 50, 217n. 15 Scott, Joan Wallach 24, 30, 186 “The Evidence of Experience” 30 Gender and the Politics 24 Secrest, Robert R. 39 Seddon, Margaret Rhea 47 See, Elliot 82 See, Marilyn 82 Shaheen, Jack G. 215n. 3 Shatner, William 202 Shayler, David J. 159 Shepard, Alan 26, 41, 85, 122, 189, 217n. 13 Shepard, Louise 84–5 Simmonds, Richard C. 218n. 6 Sims, Margot 219n. 11 Sinese, Gary 7, 134 Skelton, Betty 213n. 5 Slayton, Deke 26 Slayton, Marjorie (Marge) 82, 84–5

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239

Sloane, Jerry 28 Small, Meredith F. 140–1, 143–4 Smith, Andrew 85, 98 Smith, C. Jason 173, 175–8, 180, 195, 203 Smith, Michael L. 9, 32, 96, 99, 147, 150 Sobchack, Vivian 147, 177, 189, 201, 220 n. 9, 220n. 14 Sofia, Zoe 121 Space Age 2, 4–5, 13–15, 47, 50, 52, 77, 91, 97, 100, 106, 113, 115, 122, 130, 147, 160, 215n. 1, 218n. 8 space chimps 9–10, 15, 32, 102–3, 115–28, 123, 133, 135, 218n. 8 SpaceChimps 218n. 8 Space Cowboys 8, 45, 126–7, 127 Space Race 4–5, 10, 13, 15, 21, 25–6, 47, 51–4, 62, 67–9, 72, 76, 79–80, 82, 84, 87, 91, 94, 96–100, 114–15, 122, 126, 129, 134–6, 189, 201, 216n. 6, 218n. 9 women’s bodies as problems in 5, 39 space suits 1, 9, 16, 117, 145, 147–64, 148, 162, 163, 166, 167, 168, 169, 169–81, 170, 174, 179, 186, 196, 197, 218n. 8 Species 161, 198 speciesism 120–3, 125, 137, 218n. 3 Spelman, Elizabeth V. 139 Spigel, Lynn 50, 95, 99, 190, 218n. 9 Stafford, Faye 83 Stafford, Tom 83 Star Trek:First Contact 16, 186, 191–2, 193–4, 194, 201–3 Star Trek: Next Generation 8, 53, 191 Star Trek series 4, 8, 12–14, 53, 55–6, 161, 163, 186–91, 202, 221n. 7 Star Wars 12 Steadman, Bernice 28, 47 Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center 47 Sting of Death 74 Strum, Shirley C. 144 Studlar, Gaylyn 63 Stumbough, Gene Nora 28

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240

Index

Suggitt, Mark 33, 214n. 11 Sullivan, Kathryn D. 17, 46–7 Survivor 220n. 1 Tehranian, John 63 Television 5, 8, 12–13, 15, 33, 48, 50–7, 60, 63–4, 66, 68, 72, 76–7, 79, 81, 85–6, 91, 96–7, 99–102, 100, 101, 105, 106, 108, 112, 118, 129, 202, 213n. 3, 217n. 13, 217n. 15, 217n. 16 Tereshkova, Valentina 35, 44 Terminator, The 172 Thing from Another Planet, The 173 Thorne, Kip 207–9, 211 Time magazine 92–4 Trip to the Moon, A (film) 2, 68 Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin 2 The Twilight Zone 53, 61 V 53 Verne, Jules 4, 215n. 10 From the Earth to the Moon 4 Vivona, Charles 187 von Braun, Wernher 2, 126 Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea 215n. 10 Waggonner, Joe D. 25, 34–7 Wainwright, Loudon 85–6

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Webb, James 33, 44, 189–90, 214n. 11 Webb, Pauline 33, 214n. 11 Weinstock, Jeffrey A. 215n. 2 Weitekamp, Margaret A. 44, 155, 213n. 5, 214n. 6, 214n. 13 Wells, H. G. 4 Wertheim, Christine 192 White, Edward 82, 87, 103, 154 White, Pat 82, 88, 102, 102–3 Williams, Sunita 109 Wolfe, Tom 45–6, 78, 80, 83, 88–90, 93, 96, 113, 216n. 5 ‘Right Stuff, The’ (novel) 45–6, 78, 80, 83, 88–9, 110 Wolmark, Jenny 220n. 13 Woman in the Moon 1–3, 9 Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPS) 24, 38, 160 Wonder of It All, The 4 Woodmansee, Laura 214n. 6 Wosk, Julie 214n. 11 Wright, Orville 46, 151, 153 Wright, Wilbur 46 X-Files 53 Yeager, Chuck 46, 78, 126 Young, Amanda 155 Young, Barbara 83 Young, John 83

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