But wait, there's more.
Our heroine has a past. A dark secret. No, nothing explaining why a physician would be sent to fix the Hubble. Rather, she has suffered the tragic loss of a child. She is a tot mom, to use the screeching harpy vernacular. Or was, to use the tense-correct vernacular.
You hear that, space debris?
Now it's personal.
Dear Hollywood: Stop tellling me my ovaries define me. It's as if they can't conceive that a character is relatable unless they have participated in gametofusion. An obstacle is not really overcome unless a family is dragged over it. A struggle is not noble unless a family bears witness. No life worth living unless it has propagated, and no death tragic unless it creates orphanage. Partum ergo sum. It is decreed.
Occasionally this cheap dramatic hook makes sense, in a Syd Field sense. The sci-fi classic Aliens stood on its own as a tale of of survival at long odds, but including a symbolic maternal relationship between Ripley and Newt personalized what could have devolved into an exercise in military porn and corporate shaming. Giving screen time to astronaut wives in The Right Stuff lent another dimension to the danger and pressures of the Gemini missions. Ditto Apollo 13, where we understand the situation is indeed dire for Jim Lovell because we see his son bravely viewing the action unfold on TV. Meanwhile, childless CM pilot Swigert clearly had nothing to lose because an Air Force chaplain consoling an anonymous cocktail waitress doesn't fetch a good Q score. Family also features prominently in Manhattan, a dramatization of the Manhattan project currently airing on WGN. Wives suffered much for the top-secret work their scientist husbands did while living in the harsh conditions of Los Alamos, albeit not as much as the wives living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Confidential to Manhattan: So, um, what's with all the made-up characters? Was this a legal thing? Apparently the Oppenheimer estate gave permission for his name and likeness to be used; the Groves estate did not. Also: Sidney Liao. Seriously? In the post-Pearl Harbor zeitgeist there's no way an Asian is working anywhere west of the Mississippi, let alone in Los Alamos. And finally, no offence Manhattan writers, but you guys have no clue how actual scientists actually talk. I'm half expecting when Faus Kluchs finally appears, you'll have him spouting lines from Return to Wolfenstein. If you want better dialog, send your scripts to labkittydesign at gmail dot com and I, a real actual scientist, will "punch them up" properly for a nominal fee.
Granted, Sharknado would have felt empty had Shepard chain-sawed his way out of a Great White with only random strangers cheering him on (and when he proposed to his ex-wife at the end of the sequel? Not since Matthew proposed to Mary on bended knee surrounded by the immaculately groomed lawns of Downton Abby have so many manly tears been shed). But all too often, family is to drama what a love interest is to a war film or a cute child sidekick is to an action film. Saving Private Ryan would have ground to a halt had Spielberg included a Pearl Harbor-esque love triangle. And as soon as Indy quipped Short Round get my stuff, we all knew the sequel was not going to live up to Raiders.
So, too, with Gravity. Would we have thought less of Sandra Bullock's character without a child in her backstory? That unless somewhere in her past she had been injected with sperm and successfully completed embryo implantation, blastula elaboration, and expulsion of a fetus, her character would not have a tale worth telling? You can almost feel the heavy hand of audience testing lurking here. I'm just simple folk, but I rekon imma enjoy yer talky more if the floaty lady had a tot. Let's go to the flow chart:
MIT physician = elitist zero
MIT physician tot mom = everyman
Welp, guess we better get Sandy back in the studio to ADR some lines about a dead kid.
LabKitty will never experience the glorious transformation from worthless meat husk to citizen exemplar, for my personality is one of the most efficacious contraceptives ever invented. Still, parenthood envy is not the wellspring of my ranting. Rather, parenthood is simply, wholly, roundly unnecessary, either for drama or a dramatic life. Rosalind Franklin didn't have children. Neither did Lise Meitner or Emmy Noether. I doubt you're going to see their stories on Oxygen. But that makes them no less worthy. (You know who did have children? Casey Anthony. So did Barbara Bush, and that didn't work out so hot either.)
Members of Jezebel Sapiens are not lesser for not having exercised their reproductive capacity. It feels weird having to point that out in the 21st century, but here we are. And so it goes, from Silver Screen to the boardroom to the classroom to the bedroom. The potent and omnipresent teacher Hollywood, as we used to speak of government until Timothy McVeigh robbed us of Brandeis' bon mot. So I beseech thee Hollywood: knock it off. Our leading ladies do not require children, dead or otherwise, for us to care about them. It might be a tough sell in the multiplexes at first, but they'll come around. Any group of people who demanded a Fred sequel can be sold on anything.
In closing, an olive branch. I know it's easy to quarterback from the stands. To carp, to snark, to blog. As such, I present dialog in Gravity as it should have been scripted, for you to reference in your future endeavours:
GC: So, astronaut Bullock, is there a Mr. Bullock?
SB: Hey, George. Look at me. Look. Are you looking? Yeah, what am I doing right now? That's right: I'M FIXING THE FREAKIN' HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE. What difference does it make if there's a Mr. Bullock?
There ya go. No charge.
LabKitty: the voice of reason in a world gone mad (tm).
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