What? I made it to a page and a half before my eyes got blurry and I simply couldn't go on. Another fine stimulating article filled with interesting observations and facts that make me think about things....Like what is my cat doing

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When I saw the title of this article, I though, "oh no, I don't think I'm up for another battle of the sexes". But then I read this:

"And the spy boss shown taking orders from Ryan in the promos later reminds her: "You have $50 million of my property in you, so I guess you could say I'm your landlord.""

OK, ladies, that's spooky. That almost neocon creepy. I would agree with someone who said that that comment betrays and promotes an attitude of utter domination of a woman by a man.

Now, from the Department of "You've come a long way, baby!":

"The new Bionic Woman, then, certainly looks like progress. Gone is the Wagner blond. In is Ryan's brooding brunette."

Oh no you di'in't! Is this, then, the feminist legacy: women are more realistically portrayed these days by not making them all blondes? How far away can equal pay be now?

(BTW, fun fact, not to be a spelling nazi, but it's "blonde" for a woman, and "blond" for a man)

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Let's not forget Harry Mudd of Star Trek, who was a big fan of fem-bots. He even created one of his nagging wife, just so he could switch her off whenever he wanted.

I suppose it's fun to analyze the politics of a show, but what makes a show good is not whether it's politically-correct, but whether it's good. In fact, politically-incorrect shows can often be more powerful and "political".

The Harry Mudd episodes are a good example. If they came out today, some of today's feminists would probably trash them to pieces. But I thought they were powerful commentaries on the empty promises of trying to create "perfect" women.

It seems a lot of feminists make the same mistake, thinking some PC, anti-Barbie-Doll version of the ideal woman is necessarily a better one, or a happier one. The good part about this article is that it seems to wander closer to that realization towards the end.

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...thought about that 3rd Terminator robot.

Speaking of which, I found some feminists' reactions to that movie to be quite revealing...

The (female) 3rd Terminator robot kills dozens upon dozens of people all over the place, causes immense damage everywhere-- but when Arnold's Terminator fights with her in a restroom, feminists (Ariana Huffington, for instance) said it was a misogynistic image to have a woman's head smashed into a toilet.

So the 3rd Terminator can slaughter people left and right- that's fine. But as soon as SHE gets struck, we must grab the torches and pitchforks because it's a horrible image which has been seared into our brains. Perhaps it enables violence against women, whereas the woman's much larger spree of violence enables no one?

This was a little bit bone-headed, no? But it's very typical of how feminists tend to act.

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...beer commercials reflect ones' taste in mores.

But wouldn't prohibition, accompanied by a government crackdown on related media one doesn't approve of be a so much more streamlined approach to solving your neighbors' ills?

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I mean the idea that women could be somehow replaced by robots pre-supposed that we are trying to design a world for men. Some of us are trying to create a better world for people. The idea of sex-bots which perform sexual functions for either gender (or indeed sexual inclination) is already a fact of life with vibrators and other electronic toys. What other function would you want your fem-bot to perform? Loving you, caring about you, engaging in interesting conversation, being a companion for you, doing household or other work? Maybe what these people are looking for is a real life woman.

The whole fem-bot concept is just odd.

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She's smart but she's not thinking!

Very dangerous combination. As for the fem-bots, we've had Barbie for over 40 (?) years now and we have had women and girls trying to emulate the top heavy figure and wasp waist so I don't see how additional harm will be done.

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I am excited to watch this show.

To me (a male) I am looking forward to seeing issues that sci-fi will bring out in it. Will the Corvis character be a cautionary tale about losing humanity in attempts at perfection (eliminating weakness).

It is interesting that the author didn't talk about the other show with Fembots. The new Battlestar Galactica, which Katee Sackoff played Starbuck, the brash pilot who likes to smoke, drink, gamble and have sex. Or the fact that there are a few fembots, including Tricia Helfer who came to acting from the model world.

The issue of the 'landlord' that paid for it is another interesting one, but I don't think it is an exclusive feminist issue. Slavery was not gender specific, neither was indentured servants. The idea that this was done to her without her consent, and that she is no obligated to the people the subjageted her to it is a great ethical situation that should be examined.

Now the $6 Million dollar man was remade, and he served the folks that remade him, but he was already in the government as an astronaut and maybe military (weren't most astronauts back then in the air force as test pilots too). So he would be inclined to follow orders. Of course you could twist it into to a workers comp issue, and that the mission with physical therapy :)

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I have a better interpretation of the Bionic Woman than this fluff, hot air, and resentful bitterness. The show was made for entertainment purposes only! It's not hard to figure out.

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... this article is bizzarly backward in it's interpretation of American TV. The new Bionic Woman reflects a wariness of feminist or women's place in society? Frack off! It's the same old garbage... women can have their "I'm sexy and powerful" fantasies (like Wonder Woman, Charlies Angel's, and the Bionic Woman) but as even this article mentions, those chicks are OWNED. Their adventures and clothing are just fashion and flash, not symbolism and metaphor. They are what they are - women in US culture. A culture where women are submissive to men.

American "entertainment" has, about, five actual female characters. All are submissive to the male culture around them. It matters little if you give your female protagonist super-powers and then make it clear she is only gets power FROM MEN.

There's nothing feminist going on here, only fantasy. That is, girls are allowed to fantasize that they can be bionic and jump high and fight other fembots in the rain, but only if they remain submissive to the men the entertainment is ACTUALLY aimed at. Lara Croft is about her tits, not her guns. Charlies Angels are sex sluts, not detectives. Wonder Woman is wearing just the most tit popping mistake ever invented.

Big weirdness... the original Bionic Woman with Lindsay Wagner is far more feminist and realistic in that the character was never owned by anyone or beholden to a male power structure. Today's Bionic Woman is a barslut who accepts that her body is literally OWNED by the male. Yet the article here doesn't seem to get that even though it mentions the fact.

Also, I can't believe this article mentions David Eike (who produces the new Bionic Woman) and doesn't mention the new Battlestar Galactica... a show that is filled with robot sex objects. Who actually have sex. Come on... Alternet, this article gets a thumbs down for being culturally illiterate.

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"For all its girl-power PR, the new Bionic Woman is not nearly as enlightened as Ryan suggests."

And yet, that didn't prevent Alternet from placing a promo for the show right beside the article.

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What is the ideal woman supposed to be like and why should there be a show about her?

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Bjork - All is Full of Love
Definitely worth 4:10 of your time

http://youtube.com/watch?v=EjAoBKagWQA

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I see absolutely nothing here for feminists to celebrate. Nothing.

Other commenters have tackled the faux-feminist faux-empowerment phenomenon in this insipid television show at sufficient length, but I'll pause to endorse their views in general before moving on to my primary point. There's no good news in the images of women presented here. But it's worse than presenting the heroine as owned by her lover and subservient to him. Much worse.

You see, real women are being told that to be powerful in any sense, they need expensive modifications. Plastic surgeons are going to love this show.

But that's not the worst of it.

This show, like most of the others on television, crams violence aplenty between the commercial breaks. It's part of a trend in media towards desensitizing us to violence. And who is it who bears the brunt of that desensitization?

Women.

Another feminist writing for Alternet recently took aim at the porn industry and delicately suggested it was time to begin seriously censoring it for encouraging the debasement and humiliation of women. More power for government to control speech, sure, why not? That pesky 1st Amendment is "just a piece of paper," as Bush famously said. Never mind that censorship opens the door to authoritarianism. If you like the patriarchal cruelty we're seeing in a democracy, you'll love cruelty under an authoritarian patriarchy.

It's all about desensitization, and the feminists don't get it. Media is pummeling empathy into the ground in our culture. A study of television conducted a few years ago found that if the real world experienced the rate of violent death shown during prime time broadcast television, the human race would depopulate itself in just a few weeks.

It's desensitization that enables men to regard women as objects. It's desensitization that enables men to look at violence as a solution to their problems. Desensitizing influences are everywhere: movies, television, pulp fiction, the evening news reporting road rage, routinely police brutality, the death penalty. One-quarter of the world's prison inmates are locked up in our prisons, and we don't care. We start wars eagerly (though we weary of them, it's not empathy that gives us pause). We shower spite on celebrities. Hate is as reflexive as brushing our teeth.

And we're supposed to take heart because, in this show, women are doing the desensitizing?

The show invites girls to fantasize themselves on a killing spree, to fantasize themselves with fantastic strength and invulnability, to fantasize, in short, that they have the same powers men fantasize about. But it's accessible only to those with fantastic wealth; it's accessible only to those who undergo body modifications. I can't think of a more direct super-capitalist message than that one. If you're rich, if you consume technology, you can win. Better get cracking and earn your fortune!

And, oh, by the way, it doesn't matter how many people you step on as you climb to the top. You're desensitized.

But winning is not what we need at all, if women are to improve their treatment at the hands of men. What we need is empathy. Why has the American feminist movement failed to grasp that essential fact?

Because at its root, American feminism is itself devoid of empathy. It got that way through outrage; it's desensitized.

Cheer for Jaime Sommers all you like, feminists, but you're cheering for the destruction of all your hopes.

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Is there not enough porn on the net to amuse whomever (of what ever sexual persuasion) wants to watch it for about forever?

Okay, so draw a line under it (not something I'm usually inclined to promote). Jerk away to your heart's (or whatever) content but criminalise any new porn.

I suppose it might end up with it being like the 19th century stuff with big ladies in corsets, but how much of a sacrifice would that be to draw the line under continuing victimisation?

Crikey, I'm not a censor or prude by nature or a disapprover of guys having fun. I can't even defend a stance of women being more honorably screwed as Wal-Mart employees than as porn stars. (And, guys, you are very vulnerable in regard to downloading kiddie porm, even if only once.)

So can we not consider trying to make a society where nobody gets screwed without REAL consent?

How about no more NEW porn victims?

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That's either hilarious or shameless. A metaphor amplifies. How can technology (unless you mean AI which is a pile) that is immitative of human capacity to begin with be a metaphor for anything? "Flat screen, flat screen, burning bright. Having trouble with your light?"

Appealing to artistic categories to justify comic book story-telling borders on the nausiating. Is there no limit to the barrenness of pop cultrue, even when it's about barren (but powerful; which is all that counts, right?) women?

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With all this said, it starts in 30 minutes. I for one, will be able to enjoy it without assuming feminism and exploitation.

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This was a dumb, and very incomplete quote because it leaves out the situation and the dialog. Miguel Ferrer's creepy corporate/gov-mint type, totally cynical character does tell her all those bionics belong to him, which he figures means he is her landlord. But...

She tells him that she has a good idea of what she can do now (having experimented with her bionics, including combat martial arts) and then tells him that if she rolls with the program, it is on HER terms, not his. As she leaves, Ferrer's character turns to his psychologist character (very strong woman) and says to her that they have a good candidate for their program.

This is not one-pointed or one-sided (as claimed in this article), and the only way to make the point made above was to cherry-pick the landlord/ownership quote, because that was only one part of the back-and-forth between the characters. Sackhoff, for example, is (here) the first bionic woman who has gone rogue. She sets her own wild card. The supposedly all-controlling Ferrer character doesn't seem to have as much control as he thinks.

So, if you make a point please make one which is really there.

Further note: This show also borrows a lot of feeling from Blade Runner and the symbiants (listen to the background music) as well as a lot of actors from Battlestar Galactica (I am assuming because of the executive producer who also comes from BG).

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Horrible...barely readable.

What is with the junk feminism on Alternet lately? Jesus. It's been a string of these Andrea Dworkin wannabes followed by this nonsense.

Look. I'm sorry that Alicia Rebensdorf is jealous of robots. I'm jealous of male robots. That is not gender specific. Robots are simply better looking than us.

*sigh*

Look, feminism is on the cutting edge.

Naomi Zack - Brilliant up and coming philosopher.
Naomi Klein - Brilliant analysis of political science.
Amy Goodman - Best TV journalism available. Brilliant commentary.
Alicia Rebensdorf - is jealous of robots.

That pretty much sums it up. The question for me is why do I keep coming back and torturing myself by slogging through these terrible articles?

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with the idea of fembots at all. It's been a fantasy of mine for a long time to just let men prey on them while the real human women relax and get to be free from fear for a minute.

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A fembot with a "perfect" body, completely mute, able to multiply at will (or on command), and has a keg for an intestinal system?

Completely ripe for feminist analysis, especially since the entire body of work is shown.

The problem I have with the analysis of the Bionic Woman is that it is only 1/24 of a whole. Thematic analysis is impossible to do when only part of a whole is shown, at least in serial drama television. For example, Heroes was a show about internal and external change, destiny vs. choice, being "normal" vs. being yourself, etc.. If you analyzed the first episode, you would simply be left with a vague idea of where the show was going.

Another example would be Battlestar Galactica (which David Eick produces). In the miniseries and first season, you can start to sense difficult portrayals of our foreign policy that many Americans would feel uncomfortable dealing with. The question would have been, "will they go the full Monty"? Well, they did, by having an occupation of the "heroes" in a desolate land, mirroring our Iraqi quagmire.

What I am saying is, lets see where Eick is going to take us with the ideas of freedom and feminism before we analyze the show. I would love to see a new analysis at the end of the first season (as long as the show is, and probably will be, licked up). That would be "kick-ass".

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Didn't most of us say we didnt finish it? We gave it a chance, it sucked, we stopped reading. What world are you living in?

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...I have often wondered if the likes of "Bewitched" and "I dream of Jeannie" were someone's way of saying "you CAN'T have it all. The ONLY way to have it all is to possess magical powers, which is of course impossible."

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Did anyone else hear Sarah Jessica Parker is in jail???

I saw this on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Sc2bLeI0kU

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