by Mr Banks to stay; her interventions tend to be reduced to talking about her activism (when her husband is not present) or to compliment or agree with her husband (when he is present); she is always about to leave for some rally or demonstration, especially at times when she is needed to perform motherly functions (she tries to avoid staying with the kids when Bert brings them back home and asks him – a stranger to her – to take care of them); at times it seems that she is not even useful to the suffragist cause, or that her role in it is rather petty (while her friends are in prison, her role is reduced to singing and supporting from a distance).
So, the reimagining of this secondary female character from caring mother to absent mother and vociferous suffragette further accentuates the distance between the book and the film. The political and ideological stance adopted by the film through this very conscious and unnecessary reconfiguration of the character becomes clear as feminist ideas are made to clash with the standards of parenthood that the film, purportedly about American values and family reconciliation (Lawson, 2013: 244), upholds. In this regard, Mrs Banks’s use of her “Votes for women” band as the tail of the children’s kite at the end of the film symbolises her abandonment of the feminist cause and her embracing of true, wholesome motherhood.
As has been shown, the poetics of care and non-patriarchal femininity that pervades the book is redacted and substituted for by the all-too-cheerful adventures of a “superwoman” of sorts (Mary Poppins) that take place in an otherwise man’s world. The feminine world of the book is replaced by a masculine one in which the men do things and the women are either absent, their role is insignificant or dependent upon male figures, or they are, as in the case of Mary Poppins herself, perfect according to patriarchal standards.
4 Jurassic Park
Based on Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel of the same title, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (Kennedy, Molen, Spielberg, 1993) was written for the screen by Crichton and David Koepp and produced by Universal Pictures. It is one of the very few pre-2000 films ranking in the top fifty highest-grossing films of all time1 and has been described as “a feminist masterpiece” (Fisher, 2014: 206) on account of the active and powerful roles played by its only two female characters, Dr Ellie Sattler and Lex Murphy. Indeed, the reimagining of these characters is one of the most complex transitions to take place in a 20th-century book-based family feature, as both downgrading and upgrading strategies are at work. As in the case of Mary Poppins, there are plot simplifications, some of which are due to technical reasons, as it would be difficult to fit all the adventures that take place in a four-hundred-odd-page book into one single family feature. Some others are not so easy to account for. For example, the novel initially recreates a rather feminised atmosphere, with a series of female characters playing essential roles in smaller background plots: Dr Roberta Carter and the midwife Elena Morales, used to introduce the narrative framework of raptors’ attacks outside the island; Tina Bowman, the girl who tells the doctors about the bird-like creature that bit her – a main feature of the dinosaurs both in the book and in the film; Alice Levin, the technician who identifies Tina’s drawing as that of a dinosaur, contesting Dr Stone’s interpretation; and Dr Ellie Sattler, whose role is rather important in the first half of the book. With the exception of Tina (who is the basis for a much less significant character in the 1997 sequel) and Ellie (who is also key in the 1993 production), these female characters do not appear in the film. In this way, the initially feminised atmosphere of the book is substituted for by a masculine narrative framework in the film that places the focus on the men working in the park and the men working in the mine. This is, nevertheless, counteracted in the film by its complex treatment of Ellie and Lex.
As stated above, Ellie plays a central role in the first half of the book. Furthermore, her relevance in the story is not relational: she is introduced as a paleobotanist whose relation to male characters is exclusively professional. In fact, male characters who patronise or objectify her are disparaged: Bob Morris, the lawyer from the Environmental Protection Office who “gapes” at her (Crichton, 1990: 38); Donald Gennaro, the lawyer who makes the sexist assumption that Dr Sattler is a man (Crichton, 1990: 73) and then shows an interest in her (Crichton, 1990: 195); Dr Ian Malcolm, the mathematician who makes a patently inappropriate comment about her looks (Crichton, 1990: 83); and Tim, John Hammond’s grandson, who is distracted by her legs (Crichton, 1991: 108,109). Also, Ellie is introduced as a strong and independent character (Crichton, 1990: 38), and she is shown to be a hard-working, intelligent and valued professional working side by side with Dr Alan Grant (Crichton, 1990: 48, 55, 61–62, 66, 72–73, 97, 99, 102, 183), knowledgeable about her field and articulate (Crichton, 1990: 38–39, 48, 50–51, 52, 100, 139, 180–183), and inquisitive (Crichton, 1990: 51, 132, 133, 135, 194). However, as the novel progresses, the character is reduced, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to very few interventions and a caring role (Crichton, 1990: 267–268, 279, 281, 351–352, 360); she becomes less knowledgeable (Crichton, 1990: 233); her suggestion to follow the compys in the middle of the storm seems careless (Crichton, 1990: 235); her skills are reduced to being able to decipher crackly messages on the radiophone (Crichton, 1990: 252); it is emphasised that she is Alan’s student (Crichton, 1990: 271), which contrasts the academic and professional status she is given in the first half of the novel; although she is good at distracting the raptors (Crichton, 1990: 369–370, 372–374, 375), she ends up being tricked by them (Crichton, 1990: 385–386); and she is ignored by Tim (Crichton, 1990: 428). In sum, in spite of very few epiphanic moments, such as her guessing of where the raptors’ nest is (Crichton, 1990: 431), she becomes dispensable in the second half of the book.
In the film, Ellie undergoes some downgrading. For example, her relevance for the story is made to depend on her romantic relationship with Alan. This is an important aspect of the film’s hidden agenda precisely because their romantic relationship is not even the focus of the main plot: it is, as in the case of other hinted heterosexual romances (Mary Poppins, Jumanji) a given that serves as the backdrop of the main storyline. Moreover, this romantic relationship is made explicit from the very first scene (in which Ellie puts a bandana around Alan’s neck and he subtly feels her bum) and at several points throughout the film, from beginning (Ellie is shown to be very keen to have children and insists on making Alan more receptive to the idea; there is a slight rivalry between Alan and Ian as the latter flirts with her) to end (the way Ellie looks at Alan next to the children in the helicopter). Making female characters relational is a common strategy in blockbusters. In Jurassic Park, this transformation is uncalled for and perpetuates the idea that the reason why women are present in the story and their relevance in it depend on the kind of relationship they hold with men, and that heteronormativity is the dominant, assumed and natural realm of family films (Martin, Kazyak, 2009).
At the same time, Ellie’s character is also upgraded in the film. To begin with, unlike in the novel, she is not Alan’s student, although his academic and professional status is clearly above hers (this is made clear by the differences in their interventions and their body language both at the excavation site and in their first meeting with John Hammond). Also, she is not only knowledgeable, articulate and a valued professional (John states she and Alan are “the top minds” in their field), but she is also a much more active, empowered and independent character in the film. When hell breaks loose in the park, she does not stay in the lodge to take care of Ian, but rather she goes out to do things: she becomes a doer, a problem-solver and a dinosaur-fighter, all of which are male prerogatives in the novel. Indeed, in the film she does the things Donald Gennaro does in the novel: she is the one to venture out with Robert Muldoon to look for the kids and, later on, to get the park’s power back on. And she is the one who actually restores the power in the park. Not coincidentally, the character has been described as “a pioneer for female characters in monster/action/adventure blockbusters. She handles herself in the face of the dinosaurs better than most of the male characters, and does so as a brilliant, strong and confident super-woman” (Fisher, 2014: 206). Her depiction in the film though is far from perfect patriarchal constructions such as Mary Poppins or Catwoman, coming closer to a feminist reinterpretation of the character.
Hers are
