The movie Arrival (Villeneuve, 2016) is a science-fiction film wherein aliens visit Earth and the protagonist Louise Banks is tasked to communicate with them in hopes of determining their purpose.
Arrival is a sombre movie that uses dark visual styles and melancholic soundtracks to create an unnerving and often intimate portrayal of the original short story by Ted Chiang, ‘Story of Your Life’, found in Stories of Your Life and Others (2002). Both versions explore the idea that technology has the ability to save humanity if “peacefully shared” and can “found world peace” (Esaki, 2019, p. 9).
In both, the mere presence of interplanetary life causes worldwide panic, wherein humans are rioting, looting, panic-buying, and preparing for war. And worldwide excitement, wherein humanity wonders what the aliens want, what they can offer, and why they have visited. Both the film and the short story present these alien figures as something that needs to be solved (what is their purpose?) with the future of humanity at stake (Esaki, 2019).
The movie focusses heavily on the reality of time and the differences in perception between humanity and the aliens, whose bodies and language are free of time but they somehow maintain the concept of past and future, to the intrigue of Louise. Both Arrival and ‘Story of Your Life’ can only be fully understood and appreciated when a reader reorders the narrative chronologically.
The Hidden Plotline: Motherhood
However, underneath the major plotline of how one perceives time lies another less-assuming plotline, of which I argue is the most important moral discussion brought to light: the plotline of motherhood.
During the short story and the film, the life of Hannah, is introduced through the use of a parallel narrative with small sequences that cut the main plotline. Viewers of the movie Arrival are made to believe in her not-yet existence, whilst readers of ‘Story of Your Life’ are subconsciously aware that the child is someone in the future due to the use of the future tense ‘you’ll’.
Accordingly, this essay will examine the representation of gender and motherhood by discussing the portrayal and function of female bodies in Arrival and ‘Story of Your Life’; the essay ultimately argues that—contrary to most feminist reviews of the movie—Arrival does not fairly represent the female lead Louise, especially in comparison with ‘Story of Your Life’.
Lack of female agency
Louise’s determination to act unprompted in Arrival fails to portray the same strong female lead found in ‘Story of Your Life’, leading to a stereotypical lack of female agency often present in cinema and media. Throughout Arrival, I could not help but notice a distinct lack of action from the main character Louise.
Although, the differences between the movie-Louise and the short-story-Louise may have been highlighted because I read the story first and watched the movie second, there was a distinct difference between the two in their determination to act unprompted.
For example, in Arrival during the first scene when Colonel Webber [Forest Whitaker] visits Louise asking her to translate some alien words (giving some flimsy reasoning for her having top-secret clearance and stating that is the only reason why he is in her office and not elsewhere), Louise acts shocked and scared at hearing the alien noises, only managing to stutter before quietly saying “I don’t know”.
In comparison, during the same scene in ‘Story of Your Life’, Louise is confident and dominates both the room and the discussion with her presence, even going so far as to shrug as an answer to Colonel Weber’s questions; at one point, she even tries to “break it to him gently” (Chang, 2002, p. 114), that she cannot understand an alien language simply because he demands her to do so.
Even though ultimately Louise translates for them, in Arrival she did not get the translation job because she is the best in her field, but because she has top-secret clearance and the other male linguist is not up to par. This brings forth the question of feminine representation in Arrival, specifically the portrayal of female agency and the portrayal of a modern woman versus a ‘conventional’ woman.
Films that aim to have a feminist tone should
“explicitly or implicitly challenge, rather than subscribe to, dominant representations of female identity” (Hankin, 2007, p. 60).
The Louise from ‘Story of Your Life’ is a modern woman who is career-focussed, who is happily middle-aged and unwed, and who is a strong woman confident in her skills as a linguist and able to act based on her own volition; each of these characteristics explicitly challenge the female status quo in society. In comparison, Louise from Arrival often appears unsure of herself and her skills, and is decidedly less action-oriented, often being pushed to act by her male colleagues.
Male directed cinema
Research shows that in movies directed by men (which Arrival is), women often have less agency or capacity to act and they often fail to act in high-stakes situations, or are manipulated by men to act (Kunsey, 2018, p. 34). This is the issue with Arrival compared to ‘Story of Your Life’—Louise consistently fails to act.
Louise is afraid to jump into the spaceship, so she is physically grabbed by a male and they jump, forcing her along; Louise doubts her own abilities to communicate with the aliens, so her male colleagues tell her “you can do it”, and suddenly she can; Even in the film’s climax, Louise only knows how to ‘save the world’, for lack of a better phrase, because a male, General Shang, prompts her.
Contrastingly, none of these issues with Louise’s lack of agency can be found in ‘Story of Your Life’. Therefore, it can be argued that Arrival changed the personality and characteristics of Louise, making her adhere to the stereotypical portrayal of females present in cinema and media (Milburn, et al., 2000). This representation of female gender in Arrival is both inaccurate of Louise Banks’s original character in ‘Story of Your Life’ and is problematic in its adherence to stereotypical representations of female agency in male-directed cinema.
Free will or determinism?
The illusion of free will in Arrival and ‘Story of Your Life’ ignites questions surrounding the ethics of motherhood and the implied societal constructs of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ pregnancies. In philosophy, the theory of free will is a central point of discussion because it is contradictory to the deterministic view of the universe (Monroe & Malle, 2010).
Both Arrival and ‘Story of Your Life’
“reconceptualise the very idea of choice itself” through “Louise’s experience of non-linear time” (Latimer, 2020, p. 2).
Many viewers would argue that Louise should be able to change her daughter’s unfortunate rock-climbing death found in ‘Story of Your Life’, which may be why Arrival changed her demise to a rare, uncurable form of cancer: the end result is the same but the perception of being able to avoid it is very different.
However, this change of Hannah’s cause of death leads to two very different interpretations of the same story. As readers, we can reconcile with Louise’s decision to have Hannah as we see the potential ways to possibly avoid her accidental death. Chiang once discussed the concept of free will in ‘Story of Your Life’ by saying that
“If you know what’s going to happen, can you keep it from happening? Even when a story says that you can’t, the emotional impact arises from the feeling that you should be able to” (Chiang, 2014, section 16).
In ‘Story of Your Life’, Chiang clearly states that the future is unchangeable:
When you’re three and we’re climbing a steep, spiral flight of stairs, I’ll hold your hand extra tightly. You’ll pull your hand away from me. ‘I can do it by myself,’ you’ll insist, and then move away from me to prove it . . . I can almost believe that, given your contrary nature, my attempts to protect you will be what create your love of climbing. (Chiang, 2002, p. 160)
Readers still see the potential for change, and hope for it, even though it has been stated that it is inevitable. Although Louise tries to change the future by deterring her daughter from climbing, that is ultimately what creates her daughter’s love for it—her attempts to avoid the future she knows also creates it.
Contrastingly, in Arrival, Hannah’s death through the form of an uncurable cancer creates a sense of Louise being a selfish mother, who chose to put her daughter through inexplicable pain simply for, seemingly, her own happiness. This change in death creates an unusual emotional dichotomy between two similar storylines.
Having the ability to choose is a major concept that has been circulating reproductive politics for many decades (Solinger, 2005) and many people would view Louise’s decision to have Hannah as the ‘wrong’ choice, including the father, Ian, who ultimately leaves Louise because he cannot cope with the knowledge that Hannah will die in the future, explicitly stating that she “made the wrong choice”.
The choice of reproduction
In the opening sequence of Arrival, Louise states that
“there are days that define your story beyond your life”
—as this quote suggest, and both the film and story explore, there are consequences beyond an individual when one chooses to reproduce (Latimer, 2020, p. 2).
In modern society, ‘choosing’ to reproduce is becoming a point of ethical discussion surrounding the environmental impacts of human population (Stohr, 2014). Contrastingly, having free will is to have the ability to choose freely between alternative courses of action with no interference from external or internal factors (Baumeister, 2008).
This illusion of free will questions the ethics of reproduction, specifically in relation to the assumed human ability of ‘choice’; however, Arrival unfairly casts a selfish tone on Louise’s decision by removing the implied possibility of change found in ‘Story of Your Life’. This representation of Louise is both unfair and unfounded, yet archetypal of female characteristics in current media and cinema.
Reproductive futurism and female autonomy
The idea of reproductive futurism (Edelman, 2004, p. 29) and the “not-yet” (Duden, 1993) are both key elements in Arrival and ‘Story of Your Life’ used to analyse gender and motherhood. Pregnancy itself usually is understood as a process that belongs to the foetus and not the woman: it is
“a state for the developing foetus for which the woman is a container” (Young, 2005, p. 46).
Louise effectively embodies this idea; her current person is obsessed with the thought and vision of the future, possible daughter Hannah—she is but a container for the idea of Hannah.
In reproductive politics, the theory of reproductive futurism exists, wherein a figural ‘future’ child is a symbol of the future (Edelman, 2004, p. 29); this figural child is used to limit the rights of current citizens to protect the idealised, future child (Latimer, 2020, p. 3).
Although Hannah is definitively a future child, Arrival and ‘Story of Your Life’ still challenge the assumption that to reproduce is to protect the future and argues that the choice of reproduction is not—and should not—be linked to the concept of futurity. Louise seemingly has the choice of opting not to have Hannah but she ultimately chooses to do so, possibly due to her
“sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would” (Chiang, 2002, p. 157).
In society, however, there is an implication that anyone with the ability to reproduce always believes in reproductive futurism, regardless of whether they have or want children (Power, 2010, p. 256); the implied importance of ‘protecting the species’ creates an unfounded sense of importance on reproduction to the point that those who choose not to reproduce are condemned.
Louise knows that Hannah will die and that she will not be able to stop it, but she still ‘chooses’ pregnancy. Her decision brings forth a new discussion on the
“temporal promises usually inherent to ‘choice’—promises of an open future made possible by intergeneration reproduction” (Latimer, 2020, p. 3).
The “Not-Yet” foetus
Duden (1993) introduced a term of the “not-yet” to summarise the complex legal status of a foetus where it is both understood to be part of a woman’s body yet separate from it. The unborn
“is never there with certainty. In spite of many signs and intimations of its presence, one can never be sure about it” (p. 9).
The not-yet represents the irreversibility and reversibility of life that does not-yet exist (Carruthers, 2018, p. 321). Hannah herself is the embodiment of this not-yet—she is both there for the reader and viewer, yet simultaneously does not-yet exist.
Carruthers (2018) argues that forcing the reader and viewer to connect Louise with pregnancy and reproduction brings forth the idea that Louise is maternal even without experiencing maternity, and reproduction is “transient and cyclical” (p. 325).
In ‘Story of Your Life’, Louise is a maternal subject who is not “in service of reproducing the future” (Baraitser, 2014, p. 6). Throughout Louise’s attempts to converse with the aliens and ultimately ‘save humanity’ from their self-ignited war, both the short story and the movie explore Louise’s relationship with her daughter, Hannah.
In the movie, the viewer is led to believe the daughter is from the past, with typical flashback scenes and present scene structures leading the reader to construct meaning based on their assumed notions of time. However, in the short story, the reader is never asked to believe that these events are of the past; in fact, they are explicitly future orientated in tone:
“‘Why?’ you’ll ask again. You’ll be three” (Chiang, 2002, p. 155).
The weaponisation of maternalism
In Arrival, the depiction of Hannah as a being of the past presents a maternalised version of Louise who is gripped by the grief of losing a daughter and who is seemingly unable to cope with the stresses of her interactions with the aliens—her motherhood, or current lack thereof, is presented as one of her deficiencies in the film.
In opposition to this, in ‘Story of Your Life’ the future of Hannah and the possibility of maternity becomes a source of strength and inspiration for Louise, and her current reality is dependent on her understanding of her future loss. Louise is not-yet pregnant, she is not-yet a parent, and she has not-yet lost a child (Carruthers, 2018, p. 321).
By presenting this idea of the not-yet child and parent, both Arrival and ‘Story of Your Life’ raise questions on the ethics of reproduction through the lack of chronological storytelling (Carruthers, 2018, p. 321).
The idea of the “not-yet” and reproductive futurism in Arrival and ‘Story of Your Life’ undercuts societal expectations that to have a child is to reproduce for futurity and simultaneously raises questions on the autonomy of women during maternity, and the perceptions of women without maternity.
Ultimately, Arrival presents an unable Louise: one who cannot function without the reality of her child. This depiction unfairly represents Louise and females in general as emotional, unstable beings who are unable to act autonomously without the carrot of reproductive futurism to placate them.
Conclusion
Both Arrival and ‘Story of Your Life’ explore concepts of motherhood and pregnancy in relation to moral discussions around the importance of reproduction in the twenty-first century.
Ted Chiang discussed the notion of free will in ‘Story of Your Life’ and the implications of it when choosing to have a child. Many women are demonised for choosing to not reproduce, but both Arrival and ‘Story of Your Life’ explore the emotional dichotomy brought on by Louise’s decision to reproduce despite knowing her child will die early.
This essay highlights the problematic differences between the representation of gender and motherhood between Arrival and ‘Story of Your Life’, making reference to female agency, free will, reproductive futurism, and the not-yet.
Ultimately, this essay declares that, in comparison with ‘Story of Your Life’, Arrival is a stereotypical representation of femininity and motherhood common in modern cinema and media, and this unfair representation of Louise undermines the questions on reproduction and motherhood Chiang originally explored.
Works cited
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