'Gravity' is Sexist

Rating: Null/10 (25 October 2013)

Spoiler Alert: This post will ruin the closest thing to a 'twist' that Gravity has. It's not a huge deal, but if you haven't seen the movie and don't want any plot spoilers, best to move along.
Sandra Bullock's character is the most panicky, inept person ever sent into space. It's never explained why a medical doctor with only six months of training is somehow adding equipment to the Hubble, probably because there's no world in which this would happen. Science fiction movies have certainly had more panicky people in space (Bill Paxton in Aliens?) but Gravity isn't a science fiction movie. It takes place in present times with present technology, in space. It's realistic fiction, comparisons should be more to Apollo 13 than any sci- fi. For the first half of the movie, Sandra Bullock basically has no agency and takes no useful action to save herself. George Clooney unflappably holds her hand through every action and swoops in with his magic jetpack whenever she inevitably does something wrong. She spends a good deal of time literally tethered to him as he does all the work. By all appearances, George Clooney's character would have survived the entire ordeal easily had he not been forced to frequently expend limited resources and take gigantic risks to save Sandra Bullock's "damsel in distress." The only back-story for her character is how emotionally damaged she is because she is a mother who lost her child. There's no screen time given to how awesome at her job she must be to have landed this incredibly rare and prestigious opportunity, nor is any given to showing her being more competent than anyone else at any task she performs in the movie. There is a point in the movie where she has given up all hope and just decided to die. Rather than taking this moment for her to find the strength within herself to carry on, she instead hallucinates George Clooney back into the picture to be Space Daddy and tell her exactly what she needs to do. Whatever else you may think of Gravity, don't think that it is doing a good job of portraying a strong female role. It's the opposite. This is just one more story reinforcing "in catastrophic situations, men are cool as cucumbers and women freak out and get emotional" stereotypes.
Alfonso Cuarón may have fought to have a female lead in Gravity, but having a female lead and having an admirable female character are two totally different things.
And now for some pre-facto rebuttals:
The circumstances were unprecedented, any man or woman could have panicked in that way. That's true, but not just anybody did. The reference points we are given in the movie are the cool, collected man and the panicky, inept woman. But ultimately she saves herself! Yes, but there's both the problem of hallucinating a man to tell her what to do and that we are never shown a single thing that she does that seems like it is better or different from what our male character would have done, and he's only dead because of her. Her inexperience was central to the tension of the plot, it had to be this way. I disagree. This isn't Apollo 13 where we're recounting some historical actual space disaster. This is a movie about everything in space blowing up. There would have been tension and doubt as to her survival even if she were exactly as cool and collected as George Clooney. So how should it have been, then? How about this: just swap the roles. Sandra Bullock (or someone maybe a bit older) plays the cool, collected experienced astronaut who is paired with a rookie astronaut on his first mission. This probably can't be George Clooney because I can't really imagine him playing a rookie or panicky anything. How about Bill Paxton? Who cares, it's just a movie. A movie that is garnering universal critical acclaim, huge box office success, likely award nods, and is also talked up for having a female lead. We're showering praise and success and reinforcing the idea that damsels in distress are a great way to tell stories. I believe that media and entertainment hold immense sway over the attitudes and behaviours of our culture, and I find it frustrating how few opportunities are seized to portray fantastic, strong female characters, especially in engineering or scientific roles. The world needs more Ellen Ripleys, not more Ryan Stones (that's the character's name, if you've forgotten. I had).