a link

[salinea]

http://hoodedutilitarian.com/2011/11/i-reboot/

It would be a mistake to consider these narratives, however, without the context of their time period. While they might be offensive to some today, these female characters are progressive for their time in terms of what roles women play. Uhura was hugely significant, because she was an officer who had a job that involved more technology and know-how than making coffee; Barbara Gordon was one of the first female action heroes who acted on her own.

It’s relatively easy to compare social values of the sixties and of the current decade, and conclude that the position of women has significantly changed. What remains unclear is whether current treatment of women in fiction has improved proportionately. Reboots, meanwhile, provide the unique opportunity to directly compare the treatment of those values in narrative while taking into account the context of changed social environment. By taking the same story and telling it in two different time periods, one can easily juxtapose the treatment of values against said time periods.

[...]

However, there are some reboots in which the changed role of women in the narrative is not merely a recapitulation, but actually seems to be a regression. That is, not only has the treatment of women in narrative not improved proportionately to the changed role of women in society; some of these reboots would seem significantly behind their source texts even in the sixties. Christopher Nolan’s Batman reboot, J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, and to some extent Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who sequels and Sherlock Holmes re-imaging in some respects make female characters of the sixties sometimes look damn good.