If space is the final frontier, as Captain James T. Kirk boldly says, here is some advice for women: Revolt!
Revolt against the depiction of women as either extras, sex kittens or receptionists – including a token black receptionist – aboard the starship USS Enterprise, where their fate is to either not-so-boldly succumb to the charms of William Shatner or, in the case of Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, with a hand to her ear and a melodramatic pause, relay a phone call to the Captain, who sits a few feet from her in a Mid-Century Naugahyde office chair –– his arm resting on a command panel of gum drop-shaped lights and buttons that do nothing.
Revolt, too, against the depiction of gun-toting heroines like Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley, who is less a scientist than a member of a mining crew aboard the commercial starship Nostromo; who reprises her role in three sequels of the “Alien” franchise, showcasing her proficiency in firearms over the course of 57 years, between 2134 AD and 2191 AD, where she goes from firing a blow torch and a grappling hook to unloading clips of ammunition from an M41A Pulse Rifle; who displays as much interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as the titular villain does in small talk.
Revolt against stock characters in general.
Revolt against films with a message instead of a beginning, middle and end.
That applies, too, to the double-X version of “The Three Musketeers,” where a trio of black female mathematicians in “Hidden Figures” ensure the safety of a white man’s journey into space, while, in reality, they cannot even share the same space – they cannot use the same toilets – as the most ignorant white woman during the story’s time and place.
There are exceptions, I know, such as “Gravity” and “Arrival.”
The latter is, however, ironic, inasmuch as the female lead (played by Amy Adams) is a linguist who mostly “speaks” through her use of a black marker on a whiteboard. She translates an alien language of complicated circular symbols, thereby saving the world from nuclear war between the U.S. and China by unlocking the mystery of time and seeing the future.
I prefer female scientists of the kind DreamUp champions. Students and teachers who get to hear, and come to believe, three words independent of politics – three words that transcend politics – because those words hold the following truths to be self-evident to all women, blacks and whites, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics: Yes We Can.
Yes we can dream of sending experiments to the International Space Station.
Yes we can make these things happen.
Yes we can see these things happen.
The work, therefore, endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.