Boys and Girl: Gender in Tron and Hackers

In just fifteen years, the American public’s perception of computers completely changed. In 1982, when Tron (Lisberger, 9 July 1982, USA) was released, personal computers were new and expensive. Few people knew how to manipulate them, let alone truly understood how they worked. But by 1995, when Hackers (Softley, 15 September 1995, USA) opened in theaters, personal computers were so commonplace that even high school students would own laptops. Both films, though widely different, show an imagined virtual reality inside a computer. In this essay, using the comparison of Tron and Hackers, I will analyze how these films portray the human in and out of the virtual reality, and discuss how each virtual reality is collapsed upon gender.

Inside the computers of Tron, the human is represented by a program which looks just like the program’s human counterpart, or “user.” Even though Flynn is bodily sucked into the computer, he is mistaken for a program throughout the entire film. The Master Control Program (MCP) even threatens to “delete” him, as the MCP would any other program. Though the human is supposed to be the master of the computer and its programs (his own creation), the MCP in particular has gained control over its user. Dillinger’s virtual counterpart is the program Sark, who works for the MCP. This mirrors the fears that many American’s had of computers at that time. Without a clear understanding of the boundaries of computer technology, computers developing a mind of their own and rebelling against users seemed a legitimate threat.

Fast forward thirteen years to the time of Hackers – a time when there was mainstream knowledge and acceptance of computers. Characters in this film wholly dominate the computer technology. A quote from the Hacker Manifesto: “[A computer] does what I want it to do. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...or feels threatened by me...or thinks I'm a smart ass...”(1) It was proven over time that computers would not somehow manage to overtake humans. Rather than fighting the technology (as in Tron), the hackers fought each other instead. Whoever was faster, smarter, and with more processing power would win the battles of control over pieces of cyberspace.

To create a visual of cyberspace, both Tron and Hackers utilized gender ideas. Tron is particularly male-oriented. First of all, every single program is male, except for one, Lora/Yuri. Her character doesn’t do anything to move the plot forward or even to help destroy the Master Control Program. Her only purpose is to look pretty in her glowing skintight outfit.

Christine Cornea explains, in science fiction films “[men] stands for ‘mind’ and [women] for ‘body’.”(2) Secondly, the computer-reality is also very masculine. Everything is very geometric and square – shapes generally associated with the male.


I believe the male gender is most prevalent in this film because computers were uncharted territory in the early 1980s. Traditionally, men do the dirty work of discovering and mapping new areas before deeming it safe for women and children. Discovering cyberspace is really no different from venturing into an unknown land. If anything is to go terribly wrong, men are generally expected to face whatever monsters exist before women are exposed to it. However, this can, and has led to severe problems with sexism. Certainly many women at the time faced discrimination in the workplace, with lower salaries than their male counterparts and “supportive discouragement and condescending chivalry.”(3) It has taken years for women to be respected as computer-literate. Even in Hackers, the character Dade Murphy is stunned to find out that the mysterious “Acid Burn” who overpowered him while hacking a TV station is not only a girl, but an attractive girl. The stereotypic female in Tron is helpless and in need of a male guide to avoid deletion. Telotte explains, “science fiction cinema has provided… a genre dynamic in which, most often, men do while women watch appreciatively.”(4) Though Lora is supposed to be a scientist, with all the education that career implies, when faced with a computer rather than a test tube she is portrayed as ignorant.

Hackers shows the strengthening of women in the computing communities. By 1995, computers were commonplace in schools, and children were growing up learning the technology. Further, in cyberspace it is truly impossible to differentiate gender. Screen names hide ethnicity, gender, physical appearance, and any other “human” characteristics. A person can create a completely new identity on a computer. The character Dade Murphy has three identities. At one time he can be the young criminal “Zero Cool,” the angst-ridden teenager Dade, or the hacking genius “Crash Override.” Certainly Angelina Jolie’s character Kate Libby’s screen name is the gender-neutral “Acid Burn.”

To visualize cyberspace, Hackers portrays it with both male and female imagery. The curvy lines in the screen capture below are associated with the feminine rather than the angular geometry of the male-oriented Tron.

However, even in Hackers, computers still seem to be male-dominated. The film has one heroine and six heroes, and the only other female character (Margo, an executive with the oil company) is computer illiterate. Further emphasizing the continued male dominance in computer technology is when Dade attempts to “help” Kate during their interrogation by calling her “just my girlfriend” and saying “she knows shit about computers.”(5) Calling an “elite hacker” ignorant about computers seems to be the worst kind of insult, yet Kate is actually grateful for Dade’s lie. The fact that this lie could be so believable is another indication that computer-literate women were still considered a novelty.

In both Tron and Hackers, humans are imagined manipulating a computer generated reality. To visualize this new world, both films use gender-specific imagery to illustrate cyberspace. These gender ideas follow the societal notion of computers as a masculine realm, which was only beginning to change in the mid-1990s when Hackers was released. Though the challenges the characters in both films face are quite different (in Tron the main villain is the Master Control Program, and in Hackers our heroes battle against tech-savvy humans) the films provide a unique historical snapshot of how computers and technology were perceived by the American public. As computers were made accessible to more people, a fear of out-of-control machines was replaced by a common acceptance of the technology. Tron and Hackers colorfully illustrate attitudes towards technology and provide striking visuals of sexism in cyberspace.

Notes:
(1) The Mentor, “Hacker Manifesto” http://records.viu.ca/~SOULES/MEDIA112/hacker.htm
(2) Christine Cornea, Science Fiction Cinema (New York: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 167.
(3) Diane Barthel, “Review: Untitled,” Social Forces. Vol. 67:1 (September 1988): 268. http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-7732(198809)67%3A1%3C268%3AMSBSAC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M&cookieSet=1
(4) Telotte, “Feminism” Science Fiction Film: The Critical Context, 49.
(5) Hackers, dir. Iain Softley, perf. Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, 1995, DVD, MGM, 1995.

Works Cited:
Barthel, Diane. “Review: Untitled.” Social Forces Vol. 67:1, September 1988. http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=00377732(198809)67%3A1%3C268%3AMSBSAC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M&cookieSet=1
Cornea, Christine. Science Fiction Cinema. New York: Rutgers University Press, 2007.
Hackers. Dir. Iain Softley, perf. Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie. 1995. DVD.
MGM, 1995.
Telotte. “Feminism.” Science Fiction Film: The Critical Context.
The Mentor. Hacker Manifesto. Phrack, Inc., 1986.
http://records.viu.ca/~SOULES/MEDIA112/hacker.htm

Tron – A Psychedelic CGI Romp

Tron (Lisberger, 9 July 1982, USA) is remembered and still admired today for its pioneering use of CGI technology. Unlike many science fiction movies of the earlier twentieth century, Tron does not have an underlying theme critiquing the American government or addressing national fears on war. Instead, Tron is about computers, and the relationship between users and the programs they create.

Tron’s director, Steven Lisberger, is known for his science fiction films. Though he is not the most prolific director (IMDB lists only five films (1), four of his five films are science fiction. Tron especially fits the mold of a science fiction film. Though the setting is in the present time (the 1980s, when the film was released) rather than the future, the film takes place primarily in another dimension. The story presents the classic battle between good and evil in a new and bizarre setting: the inner workings of a massive computer. One can be sure Tron is science fiction because it is a fantasy about technology, and fits neatly into Isaac Asimov's definition of science fiction as "a branch of literature that deals with human responses to changes in the level of science and technology.(2)" Certainly the main conflict in Tron's storyline about a man (Flynn) being sucked into a computer so that the computer may teach him a lesson in humility and then destroy him, could be interpreted as a commentary on the quickly developing personal computer technologies that most consumers did not fully understand.

Tron's narrative balances neatly between both the "marvelous and the uncanny. (3)" Inside the computer, the character Flynn uses his mind as a human user, rather than a digitized program, to make seemingly magical things happen. He is able to regenterate broken objects and save himself from deletion. This is certainly uncanny. An example of the marvelous in the film is the entity of the Master Control Program controlling not only the computer, but the people outside of it as well.

It is difficult to discern what most influenced the director in the creation of this film. Perhaps it was the new developments in personal computer technology and video/computer games. Maybe it was simply the perfect opportunity to experiment with the new CGI technology. It has even been suggested that it was psychedelic, and influenced by the hallucinogenic drugs the director might have experimented with in his youth. Historically speaking, all of these three influences make sense.

The first personal computer, the MITS Altair 8800, was put on the market in 1975 (4). By 1980, a competitive market for personal computers had developed. Microsoft and Apple split the market 50/50, and the race to create more powerful, smaller, and affordable computers was on (5). The ongoing battle in the film between the user and computer can be interpreted as worst-case scenario on the fast growing computer technology. A particularly telling scene in the film is when the Master Control Program threatens to blackmail its own creator unless Dillinger allows it to pursue its own will.

Video games too were becoming hugely popular in the early 1980s. Pac-man was introduced in 1980, followed by Donkey Kong, Centipede, and Tempest in 1981 (6). Tron capitalized on these arcade games. In this screen capture, our hero, Flynn, plays a computer game against another program.

Though this scene appears almost like a comic book with its bright neon lights, the scene is actually presenting a fight to the death.

The film graphics in Tron were revolutionary for the times. Tron was the first film to combine CGI and live action (7). It has famously been noted that some Disney animators refused to work on this movie because of fears that computers would put them out of business (8). Nevertheless, funding for the film continued, and Disney released the film as a major motion picture. Lisberger explains that “the film was so revolutionary, that the Motion Picture Academy refused to nominate Tron for special effects because they said we 'cheated' when we used computers which, in the light of what happened since, is just mind-boggling.(9)” In the figure below, see the neon lines decorating the characters.

These lines, along with the background, were added onto black and white filmed live action shots (10).

John Lilly, the famed “psychonaut” who experimented with LSD and Ketamine in isolation tanks, is quoted calling Tron “the most spiritual movie ever made.(11)” Flynn’s entrance into the computer is very reminiscent of the color organs or visualizers popular during the time.

Perhaps some of the visuals are influenced by drug use – director Steven Lisberger has admitted to experimenting with hallucinogenics: when asked “did you come out of the drug culture?” Lisberger answered, “I came out of the 60s, and I had experiences, shall we say. I turned on and tuned in. (12)” Other science fiction films of the early 1980s were surely influenced by drug culture. Certainly Altered States (Ken Russell, 25 December 1980, USA) and Scanners (David Cronenberg, 14 January 1981, Canada) dealt with the mind and body altering effects of drugs.

The 1980s can be defined by new personal computer and video game technology, developments in animation and CGI in popular movies, and the drug culture of the decade. Tron incorporates all of these factors to be first-rate and engaging science fiction film.

Notes:
(1) IMDB, Steven Lisberger. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0513974/
(2) Christine Cornea, Science Fiction Cinema (New York: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 2.
(3) Telotte, "Introduction: The World of Science Fiction Film," 11.
(4) Robert X. Cringley, “A History of the Computer – Micro,” Triumph of the Nerds, 1996. http://www.pbs.org/nerds/
(5) Ibid.
(6) Petri Kuittinen, “History of Arcade Games,” 1997. http://users.tkk.fi/eye/videogames/arcade.html
(7) Dominic Von Riedemann, “Benchmarks in CGI History,” 2007. http://animatedfilms.suite101.com/article.cfm/20_benchmarks_in_cgi_part_1
(8) IMDB. Tron. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/
(9) Riedemann.
(10) IMDB. Tron.
(11)Daniel Robert Epstein, “Steve Lisberger – Exclusive Tron (Disney) Interview.” http://www.ugo.com/channels/filmTv/features/tron/interview.asp
(12) Ibid.

Works Cited:
Cornea, Christine. Science Fiction Cinema. New York: Rutgers University Press, 2007.
Cringley, Robert X. A History of the Computer – Micro. Triumph of the Nerds, 1996.
http://www.pbs.org/nerds/
Epstein, Daniel Robert. Steve Lisberger – Exclusive Tron (Disney) Interview.
http://www.ugo.com/channels/filmTv/features/tron/interview.asp
IMDB. Steven Lisberger. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0513974/
IMDB. Tron. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/
Kuittinen, Petri. History of Arcade Games. 1997.
http://users.tkk.fi/eye/videogames/arcade.html
Riedemann, Dominic Von. Benchmarks in CGI History. 2007.
http://animatedfilms.suite101.com/article.cfm/20_benchmarks_in_cgi_part_1
Telotte. Introduction: The World of Science Fiction Film.