Saurian Cinema: Gender & Jurassic Park
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ค. 2020
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It's incredibly telling that Bellin characterizes Sattler in the triceratops scene as a "nurse" and not a "doctor". She's not providing care and comfort to the sick tric. She's investigation symptoms and environment to determine the cause of the illness. She's being a pathologist. A medical doctor.
There's an annoying level of sexism baked into feminist criticism written by men.
Thank you! I was thinking the same thing... it's hard to analyze sexism when the reviewer themself have experienced life within a sexist (or just privileged) point of view same with race, class etc.
And Lexi isn't "a preteen playing videogames", she's a preteen girl hacking the shit out of a security system built and maintained explicitly by men. In 1992.
It makes me wonder if Grant was the one tending to the dinosaur instead of Sattler if this would be read as Sattler being put in the *submissive* role while Grant *dominates* the scene as a *doctor*
Yeah, he clearly went in with an ax to grind before he started.
@@runakinsley3450 I think it's completely safe to say that would be the case.
As a trans person, I'm totally okay with being represented by a pack of voracious mutant raptors.
same
Seconded.
Thirded
Fourthed
In an interesting personal twist, I'm a trans person who dreamed of being a velociraptor from this movie when I was a child. I don't think it was a sign, but it's funny to think about.
And yet, despite the very valid critiques of Jurassic Park, the sexism in that film is NOTHING compared to the sexism and hostility towards women in Jurassic World, which was made 20+ years later. I actually find it sort of a male POV question to even ask "Was Jurassic Park sexist?" (OF COURSE IT WAS). The question might be better framed as "In what ways does Jurassic Park handle gender well, and in what ways does it fall down and convey problematic ideas," which is more or less what you DO answer, and I really appreciate that.
Women are still kind of picking their battles when it comes to art, and overlooking problematic themes where the overall messaging / representation is more positive than negative.
Also, time period is key. I was 23 when this movie came out. I had friends (female) who worked in STEM, and they really struggled to carve out a spot in that world. An archeologist friend was subjected to almost constant harassment when out at digs. A geologist friend was the only woman on site 99% of the time and was hit on, belittled, joked about, demeaned. I have friends who were some of the first wave of coders who were dealing with constant harassment from male-dominated programmers, too.
In that context, Ellie Satler's character was kind of a big deal, and even just having the young girl be the "computer geek" versus the young boy (in the book, it was the boy).
Meanwhile, Jurassic World to me almost read as a male revenge-against-women script, in terms of some of the themes and representations. It was particularly brutal to the Zara character, who was treated as a punchline for not wanting her fiance to go to strip clubs before their wedding, and then is killed in an (unnecessarily) violent way that goes on for minutes. The character of Clare is wearing ridiculous shoes, is a punchline for acting "tough" (that semi-undressing scene out in the jungle), and the boys disrespect her at every turn. There's one "Is that Aunt Clare?" moment where she saves the Chris Pratt's character... but then, like five minutes later, the boys are adamant that they want to go with Chris Pratt's character for protection, not her, even though they know NOTHING about him and so far all they DO know is that he needed saving by Claire.
That doesn't even get into the "all women want children they just don't know it yet" b.s. that Claire's sister aims at her successful, career-oriented sister.
So yeah, I'll take Ellie Satler any day over that hot mess.
+
Great take down of Jurassic World.
All this could be blamed on Colin Trevorrow's writing and possible view on gender, when you read through at his script on Rey and Poe for Star Wars Episode 9.
In Jurassic World it really stood out to me how Claire berates the nerdy tech guy into opening the T-Rex pen by saying, "be a man for once in your life!" And it's like .... hang on Claire he is risking his life to stay here and help you guys. I guess the only way to impress Claire is to be the literal alpha male of a pack of dinosaurs.🙄🙄 Seriously, was this movie written by an incel??
@BLAIR M Schirmer Which still makes it sexist. Women are to be protected because they can't act on their own and the only thing worthwhile is that they are pretty to look at and innoicent. You know, like a prestigious toy or a pet. Men on the other side are either proactive and selfless heroes or disposable fodder and villains. So why don't we just wish for better female AND male characters in movies? Those also aren't mutual exclusive.
Its a bit tangential, but I was wondering if you had any thoughts on Sarah Harding in JP: Lost World? In the book she's hyper competent and basically carries the entire expedition on her back, but in the movie she's constantly having to be rescued and just keeps making really bad decisions despite all her experience in the field with large predators. It just always bothered me how she was rewritten from being the action hero of the book to be the hapless damsel for the movie. With how Jurassic World treats Claire and Zara, it just feels like the movies have been getting less progressive since Ellie
You know, another thing worth noting about Lex is that in 1993, you did NOT see relatively normal teenage girls being depicted as "hackers" in films. Jurassic Park was one of the first mainstream movies to really say, flat out, it's OK for girls to be into computers. And this is particularly noteworthy compared to Lex in the book, who was only something like 6 years old and completely useless. Tim did EVERYTHING, while she cried and caused problems.
,
(And seriously, that line in the essay about Lex "playing a video game" is so stunningly dismissive and false in-context that it makes me genuinely question whether the author was even advancing a serious thesis, or just looking for an excuse to be misogynist-by-proxy.)
Misogynist-by-proxy: brilliant new word for my daily use. Your comment deserves more likes
misogynist-by-proxy - Love it! And exactly how I see this narrative. Not sure how the human plot of Ellie Loves Grant but Ellie wants kids and Grant doesn't. (Which trust me, is a huge compatibility issue in regards to spending your whole life with someone) Grant hangs out with kids and Ellie hopes maybe that will change his mind to equate to OMG THIS MOVIE TOTALLY DISMISSES ALL WOMENZ BECAUSE GRANT NEEDS TO BE HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD
...
What?!
In the book, Tim was the computer person, and also the older sibling.
Is the same when he critiziced Lex using kitchenware...in the damn kitchen. What was she supposed to use? bricks?
@@selanryn5849 And Lex was a brat who tended to whine, and neither of the kids were into dinosaurs. I liked how Steven Spielberg swapped the kids ages and made them more mature. Only thing I didn't care for was having Lex turn on the flash light. In the books, the T-Rex was naturally drawn to their car because of Regis exiting the vehicle in a panic and he left a scent.
“The gaze”
Me: *🌈THE GAYS 🌈*
There’s a reason I threw it up in print on the screen. Otherwise EVERYONE was gonna misunderstand, lol.
coldcrashpictures the clarification is much appreciated 👍🏼
I definitely thought Gays too :D
@@coldcrashpictures LOL - why are guys going to listen to 30 minutes of being trashed because they were born male when it's clear that is what is going to happen after the first 5 minutes.
Look, If you being a guy is so bad, throw yourself off a cliff. Make the world a better place. We self respecting men will carry on.
@@citycrusher9308 just so you know, this video was incredibly fair to Jurassic Park and talks about 1) the possible interpretation that the whole movie is a sexist dumpster fire that constantly trashes on its female characters and 2) why thats a reductive interpretation based on a lot of scenes in the movie.
If you can't handle individual characters being called sexist, maybe that's more your problem, especially when the characters in question actively try to keep capable female characters from helping out in a survival situation. Not every character in the movie acts this way and not every character is sexist.
I’m trans and the next time someone asks me stupid questions I’m just gonna answer “like Jurassic park”
Yes. Just yes.
🤣❤️
Omg pls record it when you do.... it’d also be great if you put that on a t-shirt
thats a great idea....im going to do this now too haha
Make sure to screech, hiss and make your hands like claws as you walk away.
Hey, female botany student here! I think it's really funny that Bellin accuses Sattler of having "a female (pre)occupation with plants and flowers". There's a really good book called The Discovery of Jeanne Baret by Glynis Ridley, which is a biography of the French botanist/voyager who first helped describe the now common ornamental plant bougainvillea (among many other things). The book gets into the history of botany and women's role in it. When Carl Linnaeus first began systematically describing the many branches of life, he focused on plants (as he was a botanist) and particularly on their reproductive morphology - i.e., what their "boy" and "girl" parts looked like and how many they had. This was seen as very SCANDALOUS and INNAPROPRIATE FOR WOMEN TO READ, although people eventually chilled out a little and decided it was fairly harmless if the ladies wanted to frolick in fields of flowers and "play scientist" that way. Meanwhile, for the majority of human history, medicine was herb (plant) based, but while doctors pretty much had to be men to be acknowledged as such, the people that actually recognized medicinal plants in the field were "herb women," usually peasant women who actually had a practical knowledge of plants and their healing properties. So for much of history, while men were seen as the only "serious" scientists in the field of botany proper, women actually had much more valuable field experience with plants - though their contributions to the science were very much overlooked. (P.S.: That's not West Indian lilac. That looks like blue porterweed, a Florida native :) )
As a trans person, I dig being compared to a blood hungry velocipastor
fellow trans person here, from the way that conservatives, and the right wing in general, talk about us you'd assume we were bloody hungry monsters so there's that I guess? I'll never get over the fact that I anger and scare conservatives by just existing :)
Velocipastor, hahahahahahahhahahahahhahaha.
Laura there actually is a movie called Velocipastor and it’s just what it sounds like.
Or an angry dilophosaur.
"Good boy"
"IT'S MA'AM!"
Oh, the typo gremlin strikes again... I don't know why it thought that was what I meant...
That being said, a trans reading of Velocipastor might be interesting
I disagree with a lot (maybe all) of Bellin's arguments on this film (not that he's not onto something) , but especially the one about Ellie at 12:06. Ellie is a paleobotanist. She's focused on the leaf because that is her seeing her life's work in front of her - prehistoric plants. Grant is the paleontologist seeing his life's work in front of him - dinosaurs. I'm not saying he is doing this, but it *almost* seems as if he's degrading her field of expertise.
Also: Lex and Ellie save the day!
Great video! I'm excited to see the rest of this series, Serge! "Jurassic Park" is my favorite film of all time!
As a fellow Ellie obsessed with science and the natural world, I found this movie a really fun and important part of my understanding of women in science. I always viewed Ellie as a competent, science driven force in an environment of mostly selfish men. I personally have criticism of the movie- and I also think that it does reward nuclear familial units- but also think it’s more complex than that. So I appreciate this analysis, well done.
One thought is when Grant notices the live dinosaurs while she’s focused on the leaf... she’s engaging with her field in that moment. To Grant, that’s just a leaf, but to Ellie, that’s a complex and deeply important part of her experience as informed by her expertise. So yes, the dinosaur is more dazzling and awe inspiring, but Ellie is still being characterized as excited, competent, and scientific in that moment looking at the leaf, if you read it from her perspective.
THIS. Ellie was a big role model back then, given how rarely female scientists were depicted. And her digs at the men were actually pretty unusual in a movie like that.
I really love her character, too - that scene with the leaf never struck me as if she needed a man to show her what was important just that she spotted something interesting and mind boggling nobody else had noticed. How she immediately took charge of the sick dinosaur situation, yeah could label it as a nurse - but in all honesty it's kind of sexist in itself, because if anything she plays doctor in that scene. I also liked how they handled her in the third movie, there is nothing to scoff at if a woman wants to have kids, I like how she was still friends with Alan - she just did her own thing. But then again maybe it's also because I like that Alan still didn't want kids of his own - just because you found two kids you kind of liked, doesn't mean you immediately want a baby of your own ...
Also with Lex, yeah I guess one could say she was punished for being a female who was curious, but I never felt it that was the case. To me, she was the nerdy indoor person who loved spending time with her computer (omg I could relate to her so well) and that was why she was constantly piled on - I've seen that happen a lot to nerdy indoor-type boys in movies. So I always saw more of a gender flip with her character.
@@ellakruz elle means she/her in French, maybe that has something to do with it? Or that a lot of powerful women were named Elizabeth? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elle_(name)
@@JCAndrijeski Another reason I love Jaws 3 so much. The cast includes two female marine biologists, Kathryn and Liz (one of her assistants), both of whom actually take part in some of the important action scenes.
@@Barbayat79 The leaf is sensible enough for her to look at. I used to think she was a paleo-biologist, but I learned later on with a later viewing that she was a paleo-botanist. Suddenly her interest in plants made a lot more sense.
I am more than willing to consider myself both agender and raptor-gendered
What are your prefered pronouns?
Thats so epic /gen
I will address you as Raptor then.
@@roddo1955 agender people typically use everything but idk if that represents everyone, but I think my sample is big enough since I've met of agenders
It’s interesting to note that in the book, Grant has no issue with children and in fact likes them and is immediately kind to Tim. (Spoilers) Muldoon also lives, as does the lawyer. Meanwhile Hammond dies a pitiful death, eaten by Procompsognathus. And Malcom “dies” before the second book reveals that isn’t the case, if my memory serves correctly.
Also, in the popular consciousness, most people tend to forget the dinosaurs are female. Pretty much anyone you can find who isn’t a super nerd for these films will call all the dinosaurs a he, except for maybe dinosaurs that are popularly coded as female such as sauropods and triceratops (another interesting discussion on the gender coding of animals by humans). Basically, I don’t think most viewers are going to walk away seeing the dinosaurs as feminine monstrosity because that fact is forgotten almost immediately in favor for how dinosaurs are presented masculinity in almost all other media.
EDIT: I need y’all to realize I’m not trying to make a statement one way or the other. The arguments in the video talk about how Grant’s characterization and how the deaths of Muldoon and the lawyer play into that argument. I just thought it was interesting that these are completely different in the book
Pretty much, Nice to see some one else who read the book there are not as many of us as there should be.
Having children? Truly such internal prejudice.
@@theswampus670 I read the book after watching the movie as a kid. At the time my Dad was working at Millipore and I was super excited to read how the lab grown dinosaurs were hatched in artificial eggs that use Millipore membrane. I then went on to read most of Crichton's books. I really loved Sphere.
The book was INSANELY sexist though... not sure you should tout that as a model. The sexism was bad enough, it was difficult to read... and I was pretty used to that in books back then. The movie was positively progressive compared to the book.
The supposed female-ness isn't really coded into the dinosaurs, the point is that they have a single sex identity that is literally and unnaturally enforced by human society, and that this is something to overcome. The film celebrates the dinosaurs reproducing in spite of this attempted control. There are problems with the film, but the dinosaurs don't really act as a characterization of "harpies"
Having watched, I’m convinced that it’s all about perspective EXCEPT Satler being the only one of the main adult cast credited by her first name. That is straight up bullshit sexism. I didn’t even remember her name was Ellie. She’s Satler. Would they credit Malcolm as just ‘Ian’?! No.
Honestly, crediting Malcolm as "Ian" treats him with the patronising contempt I think he deserves, haha.
The crediting does irritate me, but at least she is referred to as Dr Satler in the film.
This is actually common in academic and professional circles where I come from. Female doctors and PhDs are called by their first names while their male counterparts are addressed by their last names. It's regressive sexist b.s. I don't know if it's the same or similar in other cultures.
Mounawar Abbouchi
Female politicians tend to get patronizingly called by their first name too. Hillary, Condi, Elizabeth, Nancy, Tulsi, Patsy, Gerri, Joni, Sarah...
@@elijahculper5522 Unless they are the NOTORIOUS RBG ! Who can ONLY be addressed by her full name or her badass acronym or else a team of ninja judges will beat your ass.
Yeah, ironically the toys got it right, calling her "E. Satler" in the same format as all the other characters.
Love this, am dying with laughter at Bellin; the meta of him mansplaining and condescending, while doing so in regards to pointing out the reductive treatment of women in the film, is delicious. I was a girl when the first JP came out, and my reading was that this was a total girl power movie; it's Dr Sattler who sees the truth of the situation clearly, it's she and Lex who restore power, nay, who create power by way of feminine problem solving. Also, It is Ellie who gets the defining line of the movie (not the one made famous later by a meme), "Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the earth." This was the battle cry for myself and all my girlfriends :) PS, I grew up to become a Paleontologist :)
100% I even have that last line tattooed on me! (above a t-rex of course)
Also, it's all the female dinosaurs leading the revolution against men, escaping the control men where trying to enforce, and kicking their butts (and eating them).
That’s the spirit. Push hard enough and you can help eliminate the simping desire in guys who possess any shred of healthy self-preservation. It allows them to steer clear and re-evaluate what exactly they have sacrifised for. Everybody wins. 👍
It just goes to show that the reading and interpretation of art sometimes has as much to do with who it is that is viewing it and doing the reading as the content of of the work itself. If Bellin's reading is all about basing his conclusions on the gaze of the characters within the film, I would argue that it is also important to consider the perspective of the gaze of the viewer in making their interpretation.
Unrelated, but what's it like to be a paleontologist?
As a nonbinary person, gotta say your extremely chill opinions about gender are really refreshing on to see on youtube.
Similarly I find your media analysis using feminism as a framework tends to come out interesting and I quite enjoy watching your videos, I was thrilled to see this video title and the video did not disappoint.
"Subduing two recalcitrant sisters by literally tying the knot"
This is gibberish, right? I love selective readings but this guy is just being pretentious. Alan Grant isn't marrying a dinosaur.
Specially so when the scene could also be interpreted as "fuck yeah lesbians" LMAO
And it isn't even a male and female tying the knot, it's two females.
Things just get over analysed but I like listening to the words i dont understand
@@penrilfake yeah that's what I thought the point was, until I realized that lesbianism was never part of the discussion and that would have been another tangent. It's not very conservative, straight, and patriarchal to marry lesbians
Can we stop for a moment and just think about why we are gendering seatbelts in the first place?
So like, I was the crazy dinosaur nerd girl in school. I had a million dinosaur figures, I knew all their names, I read all the books I could get my hands on, I was OBSESSED with the 'walking with dinosaurs' documentaries, I went to the museum and was so obsessed with the dinosaur rooms that my family would literally LEAVE me there and go see the rest of the museum while I hung back and just stared at the ominously lit skeletons. I was the whole shebang.
And even though I had seen Jurassic park at least a hundred times in my life... at least. I was so shocked that I covered my mouth when you said "Dr Sadler, the only adult human female in the film" because it just hit me like a freight train that thats the truth. Lex is there thats for sure, but she's also a child and not much of a role model, more a child audience surrogate. I don't know, the realisation that one of my favourite movies only has one adult female in it is kinda shocking and depressing.
This is somewhat unrelated but as I do more and more film study, both at Uni and at home I realise how many movies I loved as a kid either had very few female roles or none at all. How many movies right now are like that. How deeply embedded that patriarchal truth is. One time while looking for movies on apple TV my boyfriend and I just noted mentally down how many films had a woman in the poster card and holy shit thats not fun...
If it helps any, you can see Dr Sattler being the only woman as a symbol of how science fields were (and continue to be) largely a boys' club, yet she fought her way up there to be considered a master of her field. I think a lot of the feminist reading of JP (the all-female, trans dinos escaping captivity imposed by an all-male team) could maybe fall apart a bit if the in-universe world of JP had more equality. Still kinda sad that it doesn't pass the Bechdel test, but the test isn't an all-encompasing, undisputable law :)
Yeah. I’m black and AFAB, and if it’s about science? Fuck it, you’re not gonna see a black person. Unless they die first. Or have something comedic to say. And as a person born into a society where I’m expected to be a woman, they’re barely there. It’s like you have to pick: black man or white woman.
*dangerous woman by ariana grande starts playing*
Me: Ugh his mind
"loose women on the prowl" is definitely a new view of Jurassic Park for me
I literally fist pumped when I got this notification. Im not ashamed
That CinemaSins *ding* triggered my fight-or-flight response, thanks.
Serge: "This is not a TERF-friendly channel"
You dropped this king 👑👑👑
"A Marxist reading of Planet of Dinosaurs"
Lingers on man being impaled and screaming in agony.
Yeah...now I see it.
As a trans man who has JP as one of his top ten movies, this analysis is both wonderfully thought out and surprisingly reaffirming. Great job!
Ayyyy glad we can both love this movie together ❤️
Wondering if there could be a part 2 of this focusing on the sequel series? Because I have ALOT to say about the sexism on display in the JurassicWorld. High heels? I mean really? 🤦🏼♀️
Jurrasic World was super problemmatic with gender/race for a whole bunch of reasons. I actually found JW, despite the 20 year difference between them, to be way LESS problemmatic.
Jurassic World is not a good movie. The tropes relating to gender roles is one of the movie's many problems.
JC Andrijeski You mean Jurassic Park?
oh yes that did drove me nuts in the cinema back then..
A female athlete performed a few different length dashs in heels and proved it was possible, my headcannon is that she got some drag performance heels, those babies are hard to break for men and women have an even harder time breaking them.
I never thought of the dinos as gendered. Even though they specify that all the dinos are female sex, when you look at them on the screen they are just dinos. Like how you don't think of a random group of dogs or any other animal of a group of girls or boys. I feel like it's only relevant to the scientific aspect of the plot and sex doesn't point to gender.
But in a binary society, 'no gender' actually means 'male until proven otherwise.' How many people name a stray, then it has puppies and they have to change the name? I also never gave much thought to the gender of the dinosaurs, when the guy was calling the Dilophosaurus by male pronouns I never noticed. (Until I re-watched it 2 weeks ago.)
You needed dinosaur boobs to notice lmao
This is an interesting funny thing that doesn't play the same way in other languages. In my native language words have a gender, so instead of the neutral "THE", you have to use a an article with a gender, and the word dinosaur is masculine so you would use the masculine article, same with dogs or cats. So it happens often that kids think dinos dogs and cats are all male until they learn otherwise. However, the word "panther" for exemple is feminine, so I used to think all panthers were female. So in my language it was even more difficult to remember all the dinos being female because even when using the word dinosaur, that in english would only need a neutral article, you would use a gendered article that, in this case, is masculine. I don't know if I explained myself properly, but I thought this was an interesting thing.
@@DAEsaster I'm not really sure that's true about animals in US culture. I think we tend to default to a genderless "it" unless there's something about the animal that fits our view of masculine or feminine. So when we look at a snake or a worm or something, we'll say it because we have no way of fitting it into our general gender schema. But we might default to "she" for cats because we think of lithe, graceful, more quiet animals as being more feminine, while we'd default to "he" for dogs because they're loud, energetic, and messy (although it's usually pretty easy to tell a dog's gender, so we'd probably just look first). When it came to the dinos, they had kind of a Schrodinger's gender for me; they were "it" until I absolutely had to use a gendered pronoun for them. The only ones that I really defaulted to the masculine for (by which I mean that it seemed kind of weird for me to think of them as female) were the triceratops (because of the horns) and the t-rex (because big, scary monster). And I'm pretty sure I had a bias toward the feminine for the pterosaurs because they're smaller and less overtly powerful. But otherwise, every dino could have been she or he at pretty much random and it wouldn't have changed my mental view of them.
@@romeocastillo316 this comment really illustrates the idea that in our society, male is the default unless proven otherwise (by boobs etc). You could say the dinos need balls to notice they are male, otherwise, of course they're female.
What bothered me about Dr Sattler is her polite acceptance of the sexism she’s subjected to. She’s a perfect hero(ine) when it comes to problem-solving, but also passively compliant to what the men throw at her.
It's completely realistic though. Women dealt with that constantly back then, especially in male dominated fields like most STEM. If you commented on every instance of sexism back then, that would literally be 80% of your interactions with a lot of men. Women had to pick their battles even more back then than they do now. You want to see sexism, read the Crighton book JP was based on. The movie is positively feminist in comparison.
Yeah, if she had stopped to argue sexism everyone would be dead. The one looking for a fight in fact was Hammond
There's absolutely nothing dated about the sexism on display in Jurassic Park. The fact that people are talking about competent women having to play along with sexism at work in order to just do their jobs in the past tense makes it very clear we have a lot more work to do just making people aware of the ongoing problem.
I wouldn't go as far as calling her passively compliant, I think on the opposite that she's a great exemple of strong female caracter of that period done right. She's proactive and competent and she can take the lead when she need to. In a way, I see many of my friends who are feminist activist in the way she react to that sexism. To me, she seem more tired and exasperated by the men she's surounded by than accepting, in a "choose your battle" kind of way. To paraphrase her when she talk to John Hammond, it was not the time nor the place to start arguing about it. However, I'm a bit sad they didn't expand on it in the sequels.
@@Torlik11 exactly. She's clearly been dealing with this bullshit For A Very Long Time.
This is so good it hurts
Also, when you said "The gaze" my brain briefly understood "The gays" 💁🏻♂️
so did mine...
Hey I mean half the thesis is two seconds away from calling half the dinosaurs lesbians so how far would that interpretation be 👁️👄👁️
That would be another kind of gaze, so not that far ;)
He's refering to the "Male Gaze" the idea that female characters are presented primary as objects of male desire.
Okay Cate Blanchett
Well, if there's one thing Tumblr and TV tropes did right it was bringing attention to the fact that Rexy is awesome. Long live the queen.
I haven’t even watched 20 seconds and I’m already ecstatic
"The intersection of art and entertainment is my LANE"-definitely want that on a tshirt
"Trans rights are human rights." Can't agree more. I wish more people also took the stance that literal humans deserve human rights, as humans.
OMG, from the beginning of the video, I thought to myself: hmmm... he redecorated his set/room, that picture looks like one of those film color analysis thingies, that's pretty cool!
"Sure, men might cause all the problems in Jurassic Park, but they're also the ones who fix them"
Oh yeah? Who gets the park systems up and running? Ellie and Lex! 😂 I mean, granted it's too late by that point -- the Rex and the raptors are already loose -- but it's still framed (however briefly) as a triumphant moment both times, and in fact if it weren't for Lex, some or all of the characters in the door lock scene likely would have died.
So, as a feminist, a lit major, and a huge Jurassic Park fan, this was fascinating! I wasn’t aware of Bellin’s essay, and I really, really like your approach to it---you didn’t say he was all right or all wrong, you engaged with each position individually and in a way I felt was very intelligent and honest. From what you relayed in this video, I feel some of his claims were reaching, to say the least, but also he picked up on some stuff that I think was very much worth pointing out. And I also think that, like you said, you can find stuff in the film that rebuttals plenty of his claims too, but this also doesn’t make him entirely wrong either.
I find that a lot of people seem to feel that examinations like this are “ruining” films, but I disagree--for me, it enhances them, and I’m perfectly capable of saying “my favorite film did such and so wrong, it’s still great and I still enjoy it”. Jurassic Park is, I think, a product of its time, but also very very good for its time too, as many other people in the comments have noted with regards to the profound impact that Ellie’s mere presence had for them. I think that it was very feminist for what it was and when it was. This doesn’t make it perfect or above criticism, but it also doesn’t make it a shitfest either. Which, again, is what I like about this video---that you didn’t claim either extreme.
Also, as a lit major and thus someone who spent four years having to write essays like Bellin...I can say from personal experience, sometimes academics know they’re reaching like crazy but we do it anyway because we need to support our claims for our paper ;) Sometimes it’s not about believing your own argument (though I’m not saying that Bellin doesn’t believe his) so much as it’s about being able to argue it well, and I do admire all the things he picked up on and managed to argue as being significant, whether they actually were or not. Just because I don’t agree with something, doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate how well it was argued and defending. I would definitely be interested in getting a copy of that book now!
Thank you for doing this, it was really engaging and I feel it was done a lot better (more fairly, more thoughtfully, more analytically) than many other people would have. It brought up stuff I never spotted or thought about, and gave me new things to consider on both sides, which is great!
(P.S. When I was a kid, it fucking THRILLED me that all the dinos were female!)
Ooooo yes your analysis on how he uses Bellin’s observations to compare it with the modern audience is spot on. There were several things that I never noticed before that were interesting and worth discussing!
I just wish there was more transparency in giving that sort of experimental argument. I was an English major too and I liked that the practice encourages you to try on different lenses and play around with arguments, but I wish it was clearer that that’s ultimately what it was: play. This isn’t to say literary criticism is necessarily frivolous, but as we are discouraged in academia from distinguishing our actual beliefs from “for the sake of argument” or even devil’s advocacy, writer and thought end up being conflated and I don’t think that makes for healthy discourse. That’s part of why I love video essays like this: outside the box of academia, thoughts are free from this ride-or-die style of argument.
Do you ever have those moments where you think: This universe is too strange, it’s almost scary?
I studied biology, paleontology and marine sciences…
Then you mentioned “The Land Before Time” was released on exactly the same day you were born.
You look kind of my age. So… I just had to check.
And…… It was released on exactly the day I was born!
Oh! And an instant subscribe of course.
Your channel is - without a doubt - one of the most underrated channels on the internet. You deserve so much more attention. I'm linking this video to everybody I think has the brains to appreciate it.
No, I absolutely want to be represented as a pack of voracious raptors, that'd be sick as hell.
As Alfred Hitchcock once said, it’s just a movie
Does anyone else get the impression from what we are shown here that Bellin doesn't really like women?
I'm going to have to watch this again to work out the specific points. But his quotes didnt make me think Jurassic Park had a negative/reductive attitude towards women. It felt like he was projecting
My impression was that Bellin came in wanting to condemn the movie, and for that Started from the conclusion.
Great video!
Some thoughts on the Gender subject.
1. If the film is aiming to reaffirm the heteronormative family-unit... then Sattler is kind of a weird woman to do it through. I mean, she's a sciency action-girl. Hardly the kind of "domestic" wife-mother/emotional-support character that you'd expect from such a narrative (and there are plenty of examples of those in cinema). Yeah, Grant is the protagonist, so she is often framed in relation to him. But I feel like this is a bone that weights much heavier in relation to this theme than any discussion of her Gaze.
2. This point I'm more uncertain off... but I feel there is some disconnect in talking about the "gender" of Dinosaurs. Fundamentally, I don't think people and audiences read animals/saurians in the same gendered terms as they do humans (especially when lacking in sexual dimorphism like these in Jurassic Park). Yeah they may be an all-girl posse of man-eating carnivores, but the implications of that seem kind of stymied by the fact that they're.... animals. On the other hand, I acknowledge that the reading definitively "works" in relation to the text of the film. The plotpoints are there to craft this narrative. But it just seems so.... strangely alien and disconnected to transplant anthropomorphized notions to Mesozoic creatures. I for one have never heard anyone in RL even note the gendered aspects of the Dinosaurs existence in a manner similar to this, even as a joke or throwaway comment.
(are there any smart-people out there who can articulate this disconnect better than I can?)
3. I think it's pretty cool that Sattler is both a career-woman and seems to be down with the kids. Usually, career vs family is presented as a source of conflict for female characters. Here, the two notions are able to coexist seemlessly in tandem.
I think our society tends to gender things a lot. I for one subconsciously find myself thinking of different cars as feminine or masculine based on certain features. As for applying gender to prehistoric animals, people tend to default dinosaurs to male. Despite Jurassic Park’s plot points about their animals’ sex, most people will still call most of the dinosaurs ‘he.’
Society also delineates certain animals to make or female. For example, dogs are seen as male while cats are seen as female. The same applies for dinosaurs. Carnivores like T Rex or raptors are seen as masculine while herbivores like sauropods, triceratops, or parasaurolophus are seen as feminine. Some herbivores are seen as masculine though, such as pachycephalosaurs. Then there’s maiasaura “good mother lizard” who people see as exclusively female.
Your disconnect is probably a scholarly sign. You’re seeing these creatures as animals and not under the codified view humans assign to objects and creatures. But I think you’re in a minority for seeing this gendering as strange. Which of course, not a bad thing.
A lot is made in the film of the dinosaurs being female. It's a very specific plot point and it is underlined at many points by many characters throughout the film. Whether a casual viewer pays attention to it or not, the film treats this fact as very significant.
I found it odd that this video is talking about Dinosaur gender. Gender is a social construct, not all of the dinosaurs are social. They were all female, that is a sex, not a gender. Why people confuse the two baffles me.
@@tiredgardener
people's projections, as @Shoulderpads-mcgee is describing are discussed
it's not about confusion (mostly)
you _can_ know the distinction, and still perceive them gendered
it's our social conditioning 🤷🏻
I think the movie was trying to have girl power And family power. To try and be like "you don't have to be a boring housewife to be a good mom!" You could see it as a last-ditch attempt to keep women content in their place.
"Ask me some time how a union could have saved Jurassic Park."
I would love a similar take (Marxist reading?) of Jurassic World! The nightmare of poor exhibit design and bullshit safety precautions (that may apply to the whole series, but it really stuck out to me in that movie).
it's intentional, Lucas and Spielberg hate Capitalism.
@@Kuudere-Kun as ironic as that is
Seriously, the whole place was a monument to cut corners and financial chicanery. Between the underpaid unskilled laborers handling the raptor transfers and constructing, the lack of anything like safety standards on anything, that whole thing with the miniature elephant from the books they used to drive up funding, and indulging in the stupidest expense before they had anything running functionally at all; it's little wonder the place collapsed. About the only thing they did well was putting that mess well away from other people, but that was mostly to make sure it was a controlled environment, and it still lead to those things breaking out later.
Series Dinosaurs, that was based largely off The Simpsons, had one dark ending. Very powerful.
@Jay Abbott lmao WHAT
@Jay Abbott out of context level: GOD
Jay Abbott
Support human extinction
Do the right thing
End the human disease
That's the first time i think a video about dinosaurs movies as surprising and insightful. Thank you, really.
When I was watching the movie again when I got older, I was shocked about them being all-female to only assume the dinosaurs in Jurrasic Park had no biological sex. It made total sense now why it is about sexism and gender.
"I'm not arguing that a pack of verbatious mutant raptors is the best way to represent the trans community [...]"
Well I mean, I think it's pretty rad (signed a member of the trans community).
Bravo, i agree that deep analysis should be done on all films, but i wonder how much of this is picked up by general audiences and children in particular. People tend to find meaning when they look for it, and i doubt many people go into a movie like Jurassic Park look for anything other than cool dinosaur action. I've been watching Jurassic Park longer than i can remember and i never saw Ellie or Allan as greater than the other, but my perspective is certainly affected and different as i was always told that Everyone is Equal regardless of Sex, Gender, Orientation or Race.
P.S. this is one of the few times a Sponsor on anyone's channel has been something i might Buy.
Seriously these Fromes are amazing, and i'm not big on putting up art personally but the have some of my all time favorites and i plan to buy them.
I agree and disagree at the same time, lol. Just because people are not always consciously aware of subtext and symbolism in art doesn't mean they do not subconsciously pick up on it. Art is shaped by our society and I think it is being niave to think that culture and belief systems do not get reflected back into art. They absolutley do.
@@katiest.vincent4283 great comment!
It amazes me (in a good way) how people can take a fun movie about dinosaurs and use tiny detail in the costumes, sets and even where character are looking to build a case for the movie to be about patriarchy.
It just goes to show you that you can make anything prove anything if you look hard enough
ICE AGE? That's patriarchy. Manny is straight. Yep that's suppressing. Sid? He's sexist. I have no evidence for that. But I'm pretty sure.
P.S.- youre totally the most interesting youtuber ive found in the last year
I really like how fairly you treated Bad Takes Bellin here: You take everything he says in good faith, walk through his reasoning and evidence, and then offer your own thoughts. You didn't set out to prove him right or wrong (even though the dude is oh-so-easy to dunk on), but to continue the conversation. I know that's what academic media analysis is SUPPOSED to do, but you do it particularly well. I think I'm gonna have to subscribe, my dude... as soon as I'm done wheezing over Bellin's interpretation of the T-Rex as a strong, independent homewrecker.
(Wait a minute, if the theropods in the movie are a bunch of rampaging single women, does that mean we're supposed to find them sexy or something? Bellin, please explain.)
Hm, nope. His thesis about male protagonists going up against the _vagina dentata_ of nature as embodied by the female dinosaurs doesn't hold water since the only reason those men are in that situation in the first place is _male arrogance,_ not female domination. That's one of the main themes of the film, for gods' sakes: male scientists charging into areas they have no idea how to control. How did he manage to ignore it?
"YOU NEVER HAD CONTROL, THATS THE ILLUSION!!"
I was curious to see where this would go and I'm happy to see it going in a new direction I haven't seen before.
Now THAT is a cool ad.
Yes! I don't usually remark on sponsorships, except maybe to say I'm happy when a creator I like gets a sponsor, but those paintings are a neat idea and look really cool.
I was focused on how good it is that I was mildly distracted from the content...
&happy to see explained where it comes from.
That's really unique!
painting _and_ reaction to ad!
You’re charming, knowledgeable, a film buff, like dinosaurs, good looking, AND an ally.
We stan
As a kid, after watching the movie, and reading the book in two languages, I actually believe my strongest impression of the stories (besides WOW DINOSAURS) was how incredibly cool it was that the dinos had the ability to spontaneously change their sex.
That might have been foreshadowing for me.
I never really interpreted the dinosaurs as women, which was the first big problem I had with Bellin's entire interpretation. I live in a culture where violence, speed, and aggression are coded as male or masculine, so that's how I interpreted the Dinosaurs, the raptors in particular. The fact that the dinosaurs had female primary sex characteristics in the text of the movie never registered with me as an important detail. I honestly doubt most members of the general public even remember that the dinosaurs were supposed to be female.
I absolutely loved Jurassic Park but my biggest gripe with it was Lexi, in the film I absolutely despised her, after the film I despised the director who had turned her into an awful, screaming stereotype.
Really? But she's actually much better than she is in the book - in the book Tim is both the dinosaur nerd and the computer guy, and Lexi contributes absolutely nothing. TBF, I read it when it came out, so my memory could be off, but I remember when the film came out being relieved that it at least wasn't as sexist as Chrichton's book.
When I was a kid I liked her because she had moments of expertise. But as an adult I highly dislike her for screaming, putting them in danger often, and being a puddle of melted butter half the time.
Yknow I don’t take much issue with a child screaming when frightened, especially in a sci-fi horror
@@willberman1562 I agree. I'm a cis gendered girl and if I was in the same situation at her age, I would have been a screaming mess myself. It's easy to sit there in a movie theatre and scoff at screaming kids, but in real life, there are no plot armor and movie ratings to ensure the kids survive. It's only the audience who knows that the movie is not real, not the characters.
I disagree because her screaming actually adds to the horror of the scenes she's in. If she was just sitting quietly throughout the whole T-Rex car attack for instance it would have been so unrealistic, anyone would be screaming their head off lol.
Plus she's not a totally helpless child and gets a few great moments of agency and heroism, the two biggest ones being when she takes charge during the raptors in the kitchen scene and then hacks the system to restore the power (which allows them to contact the mainland and send a helicopter... she literally saves EVERYONE.)
Even just smaller moments like when she climbs the fence with Alan whilst Tim is the one who is scared (and almost dies as a result) show that she had her own brand of strength. Lex is the best kid in the series for me.
now all I want is a tshirt that says "loose women remain on the prowl" with a t rex on it
...is that a dinosaur eats man, women inherits the earth screen printed tee? Because if so, we have to stan
THAT’S MY SHIRT. I HAVE THAT SHIRT. My Jurassic Park obsessed boyfriend bought it for me. He’s a boy after your own heart.
You saw Jurassic Park in the cinema when you were five years old?! 😲
I can believe it.
My brother took me to see Jurassic Park in theaters when I was 5. It was the first movie I saw with surround sound and it scared the hell out of me. Still one of my favorite movie theater memories now that I'm older though!
This was my first movie too! My dad and I went to go see it when I was 7. I cried at the end because I was so tore up about a priceless T-Rex skeleton being destroyed lol.
I first saw jurassic park in vhs when i was 4, little kids can totally watch it
My son's best friend saw JP at 3 years old, and now at 6 he is a massive dinosaur nerd, while on the other hand my son has just started accepting Tom & Jerry, a show that was previously scaring him as too intense.
I was going to complain that you didn't post videos anymore and then I got the Channel notification.
Good job as always, I love your videos.
Fantastic work on this video!! I highly look forward to your future stuff
THE FAN BOYS WILL CRUMBLE
AS A DINOSAUR MYSELF I FIND SEXISM SOMETHING THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN BEST LEFT BEHIND IN THE ORDOVICIAN TIME.
i love looking deeper into movies and dissecting them through different lenses.
I love how much character is in the end of the poop scene. Sattler's wandering off mumbling to herself, Malcolm can't stop making quips, and Grant steps in something he clearly doesn't like. Sattler's pragmatic, Malcolm's a full-of-himself jokester, and Grant's a grouch.
If I was Bellin I would love the fact that you take my work so seriously.
This video was amazing to watch
omg I am only a few minutes in and this is so me. All the connections! YES
Thank you for not trying to be like most popular critic channels on TH-cam and instead identifying where a criticism is fair and where it is flawed. You did an excellent job dissecting Bellin's arguments of Jurassic Park. I find myself agreeing some times with you and other times with Bellin, which is how I believe a debate should work.
Your Frome ad is by far the most interesting and content relevant sponsor I have maybe ever seen on TH-cam.
ETA: The music references in the description make my librarian heart happy. ❤
Jurassic Park is one of my favorite films. As a woman, I find the theory presented in this video kinda silly, I agree with your determination about it but at the same time, I'm not sure if this theme is conscious or if it's just a part of the work by complete accident. I don't think they intended either theme but I do think they were going after the arrogance of people in power (politicians, scientists, etc) who think they have control over nature, which coincides with men in the film but could be anyone in power, honestly.
I stop paying attention for ten seconds and i hear you say "formal film analysis is absolutely obsessed with The Gays"
God, the framing and acting and everything in this movie is so good that I experienced similar emotional responses to these individual frames as I did when I watched the entire piece
thank you SO much for this essay! it was so nice to see a good analysis. and i love the new reading!
and this is a well-made video, too. the humor and the the editing are on point. really hope to see more in the future
"the fact that Tim's agency and sense of adventure tend to get rewarded by the narrative whereas Lex tends to get clobbered"
Yeah, it's kinda ironic that you preemptively respond to "nostalgic fanboy" commenters two seconds after saying that, because it's not true at all 😂 Lex's agency has a far more positive effect on the narrative than Tim's -- she saved the day by rebooting the door locks. I know what examples you would give in response, but getting sneezed on is not as important as saving the grownups from certain death. Sometimes a comedic moment is just a comedic moment.
Honestly it just feels like they’re both trying to find double meanings into random scenes in the movie.
Person: I’m trans
Child: omg I love dinosaurs
Today my wife and I visited my parents for the first time in months and it was great. I get home and sit down with the TH-cam and find out you are starting a new dinosaur movie series you just made my day!
This is the first time I haven’t skipped over an ad. Wonderfully presented :D I actually really love the concept of frome. Might buy myself a Lost in Translation one!
now i want to know what jordan "chaos dragon" peterson's take on jurassic park is
Firstly: Your music choices for your vids are consistently delightful.
Second: I obviously respect you making sweeping statements, but I do know some trans and nb people who would enjoy being represented by a pack of voracious mutant raptors.
Third: There's also a lot to be said about how the onus of codifying or defying every stereotype and feminine principal falls on the shoulders of either Ellie or occasionally Lex, and that if you look through the rest of the franchise the only time there are more than two women in the main cast, I'm pretty sure, is Fallen Kingdom. Not to mention the general monster movie trope where women can't be killed because a) they're "too fragile, it would be cruel" and b) there are so few that the optics look bad if we do kill them; which of course leads to Zari's brutal death in Jurassic World as a form of...equality? I guess?
Anyway, great stuff as always!
I recently discovered your channel and this was the first video I checked out. Great stuff! I loved the dissection of my favorite film. Really looking forward to watching more.
it is always a happy day when I have a popup alert on a new post video by you... THANKS
"I'm not arguing that a pack of voracious mutant raptors is the best way to represent the trans community"
SHUT UP AND LET ME BE A RAPTOR!!
It's cracking me up that the universal response in the comment section to his mild "I'm so sorry, I don't wan to accidentally offend you with my take" is something like "HEEEELLLLLL YEAHHHHH BOI THAT'S USSSSS! WE STAN!"
This was such a small part of the video but the way we refer to men by last name and women by first name INFURIATES me. In politics, in art, in history. While the whole SNC-Lavalin scandal was going down in Canada, Jody Wilson Rabould was constantly being referred to as "Jody" while all the male players were referred to by last name. When I read scripts (especially old ones) male characters are very often referred to by last name and female characters by first name. And even in history. Just look at the way Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley are talked about. In the modern era Mary Shelley is arguably more well known to the general public than her husband was, so tell me why nearly every source of information about them refers to him as Shelley and her as Mary? Why not refer to them both by first name because they have the same last name, or even just use their full names?
I never knew I needed this kind of content in my life. Stellar video and analysis. Instant subscribe my dude!
A phenomenally in-depth essay! Can't wait to see future installments of this new series!
So here's something I've always wondered - how cognizant do you think the authors (ie Crichton, Spielberg, etc) were of some of this framing? Like for comparison, I've watched Lindsey Ellis's videos of using film studies to analyze Transformers... and while I can't know for sure, I feel pretty confident Michael Bay doesn't think much deeper than surface level stuff - "explosions yay! hero shot cool!". Spielberg on the other hand, I have to believe is much more aware of what he's putting on screen, but to what reading I don't know.
As an artist / writer, I firmly believe it doesn't matter that much. It still reflects their worldview, prejudices, assumptions... what scares you, what you sympathize with... whether you deliberately impart messages in your art or not. It's usually much more clunky / soap boxy when people TRY to impart messages like this, and in my observation is rarely done, even in sophisticated, smarter films, the way most non -artists think it is.
@@JCAndrijeski Yup. I wasn't trying to criticize in one way or another. I was mostly just musing. One of the reasons I love Nolan films is he often refuses to inject intent. Really let's the audience think for themselves.
Authorial intent vs audience interpretation is a discussion that has been had many times. You may understand what the author was trying to portray or not, but you are also free to make personal interpretations of art because your lens (personal life experiences) may be different from the creators /be different from the last time you viewed the art (kid vs adult etc).
The Dilophosaurus kills Nedry because he keeps misgendering her. Now that's a take I can get behind.
You continue to be my favorite analysis channel. Also, thank you for the credits music. I needed a good laugh.
4:30 I love how you just let that moment linger for a few seconds
That shot is LONG. I finally cut it a couple of frames before he slips off the horn and falls VERY SLOWLY off the cliff.
Trans non binary person here, pleasantly suprised to learn one of my favorite youtubers is such an ally to me and my trans siblings. Thank you, very cool :)
Also, I love that your reaction to learning about trans people was "oh... like Jurasic Park."
"This is not a TERF friendly channel..." *SUBBED*
@dang_an1 Yeah... Im a basic bitch.
There's a lot here that I had never thought of. Thank you for posting it. I like watching stuff like this because I always see different things in my favorite media after doing so.
Absolutely love this series idea, great video as always!
Having read plenty of his books over the years, I am pretty sure that Crichton intended a overtly feminist narrative in the original novel, which managed to migrate imperfectly into the first film and was all but abandoned for the disappointing sequels. Its not uncommon for Crichton's female characters to get sidelined by film adaptations, alas. What happened to Sattler in Jurassic Park is nothing compared to the outright insulting HACK job done on Sarah Harding, most of the dinosaurs, AND Arby/Kelly in the Lost World adaptation.
I bet someone could make a jordan Peterson parody about this. That weirdo has some weird stuff about chaos and gender.
all your videos are golden and the quality never dips.
Yasssssssssss love a Sunday morning coldcrashpictures notification 👏🏽