Can you see?

 

Writing for Bright Wall / Dark Room (one of the premier film sites around today), Emmy Potter’s essay  – “Can You See?”: Navigating the Murky, Powerful Waters of the Female Psyche in Minority Report decolonizes what appears to be another formulaic Tom Cruise vehicle. Her insight turns the genre on its ear by focusing more on the female characters potential to subvert the traditional (read patriarchal) and corrupt (built on the dehumanization of women) systems of power.

Below are a couple of excerpts but the whole essay is worth a read.

“On its surface, Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report is a dark, slick, sci-fi thriller centered on a man on the run (it’s the second film in his unofficial, early 2000s “Running Man Trilogy”). But Anderton’s destiny, and that of the other men in the film, hinges upon the abilities, memories, and empathy of women. More specifically, the gifted female precognitive at its center, Agatha. While the film explores such heady themes as free will versus predetermination, the ethical boundaries of technology, and fractured parent/child relationships (this is a Spielberg movie, after all), Minority Report also enters the murky waters of the female psyche. And once it goes there, all the men struggle to stay afloat.”

 

 

 

“Though disguised as a neo-noir, in many ways Minority Report is really a sci-fi allegory about how corrupt systems thrive through the subjugation of women, the exploitation and dismissal of their pain, and the underestimation of their emotions and abilities. The film shows that when women dare to express their emotions fully, they not only expose the flaws in the system, but threaten its destruction. Any woman who persists in asserting her own humanity is disastrous to men who have spent their entire lives denying it.”