Clever Girl

by Leigh Malaihollo

I am a person who happens to be a mother. I’m raising 2 boys in a time of monumental shifts and changes.  I also have to buy them clothes. If kids clothes are anything to go by, dinosaurs are for boys and unicorns are for girls, which indirectly translates as Science is for boys and, well, unicorns are for girls. Which brings me to a very important question: have the designers of these clothes never seen the 1993 film Jurassic Park? The film that presented us with a bunch of kick ass, clever girls on the big screen? The film that sparked a passion in countless little guys AND GIRLS (and non-binary people) that led to the golden age of Palaeontology we are now seeing (it’s here, look it up)?  Those little kids grew up, became Scientists and are now discovering new species, unearthing fossilised findings that are shaping our understanding of our planet. These scientists are making connections between species survival and global warming, something that may come in handy as we face an uncertain future. Jurassic Park led to the diversification of a stuffy old, white male occupation. And we’re reaping the benefits of that now. It also happens to be an old film full of feminist undertones, maybe even some overtones. And watching it for the first time ever as a lanky teen happens to be one of the best things to happen to me. Let me unpack this for you…

1993, the year the film is released, I am 13 years old and being raised by one, sometimes two women. My Mother and Grandmother had moved us to England 3 years prior. A life in Africa was left behind for good, as was my connection to my Dad and his side of the family. My mother had convinced me that I could be raped and killed at any minute. I was, according to her, “pretty”. This made me a prime target apparently, and this theory seemed to be backed up by a spate of kidnappings in the South African city we had lived in. Girls my age and of my appearance were going missing, never to be seen again. Their smiling faces graced posters on shop walls, haunting me. One of the girls was kidnapped on our road. She went to my school. I started having night terrors around this time. I was a target to be hidden away, covered up and locked up. I wished I was a boy. Every day, that wish. The freedom that would bring. But it began before the girls went missing. The fear. The constant fear of the outside and of men was instilled at birth. It was the deep and irrational fear instilled in colonial white women living a privileged life in a stolen country. Would Mother England be the safehaven my own Mother led me to believe it was? Would it all change when we planted our feet upon her green and pleasant and safe lands? Would I be free from the fear of being a girl? Soon after arriving in England, I was beginning to sense that the answer was a firm no.

Girlhood and Womanhood are complex in Jurassic Park. Of course, all of the dinosaurs are female and the men of the park attempt to control them. Their breeding, their environment. Well, anyone who has seen the film knows how that works out for the guys. Not very well. They cannot contain them and the big, scary, toothy gals take control. These maneaters just will not behave!! The human females of the film are complicated, as all humans are. Lex Murphy is the 12-year old girl who doesn’t care much for dinosaurs (her younger brother does) but loves technology, relishes in it and isn’t afraid to do so publicly. She’s a hacker, which translates indirectly as she’s smart. She’s subversive and she’s in a male world. In fact, it’s her knowledge of computers that literally saves the lives of the remaining characters at the end of the film. Clever Girl indeed. Lex is of course the same age as me when I first saw the film, and the character I would have supposedly related to the most at the time. 

Freedom was not exactly forthcoming for me in our new life, despite moving to a sleepy village in the heart of Devon. No more bars on the windows, no more riot and bomb drills at school. Those were rituals practiced in white colonies where fear and guilt taint everything. I was now allowed out with my friends, to roam around the village. Climbing walls and trees, wading through the local river and getting chased by angry ducks. It was idyllic, and physically liberating. I almost felt like a boy. But the fear was still there, a white noise in the background that occasionally peaked into a screech when I felt threatened. In particularly isolated fields or riverbanks, I felt it looming. An ominous threat. Visions of rape and death tarnished the fun. I feared boys showing any sort of interest in me. I purposefully tried to make myself less attractive whenever possible to avoid attention from them. I tried to make myself disappear in their presence. I was terrified of their sexuality. When Andrew Bartram asked me out at school, I hid in the toilets and felt physically sick and shaken, as though he had picked a fight with me, thrown a punch. 

Lex Murphy gets scared in the film. She whinges and whines and she screams in fear more than her younger brother does. But she is also sure of her capabilities. She exudes a confidence also seen in the older female character of Dr Ellie Sattler. Sattler is a well-loved film character. She represents the woman who wants it all. A career, kids and a man. And by the end of the film, we believe she can get it all. She claps back and shuts down sexist comments from male characters throughout the film delivering some iconic lines. 

Malcolm: “God creates dinosaurs, God destroys Dinosaurs. God creates Man, Man destroys God. Man creates Dinosaurs.”

Dr Sattler: “Dinosaurs EAT man. Woman inherits the Earth”

Dr Sattler faces danger head on and uses her female intuition to guide her to action when the males around her are, metaphorically speaking, impotent. She calls out the ol’ park owner and uber controlling male and grandad John Hammond for his “sexism in survival situations”. She is told time and again she can’t, she shouldn’t, she mustn’t. But if the dinosaurs keep eating all the men, woman will inherit the Earth…eventually.

A few years had passed since I first saw these clever women on the silver screen. I was navigating my way through adolescence, trying to break out of the limits of our village as my friends had already done. But I found myself more and more restricted. Constricted. As my own sexuality eventually and awkwardly burgeoned and I grappled with wanting to be desirable despite being terrified of being desired, my Mother’s grip on me grew tighter. Shame became central to our lives. Shame was the punishment du jour, tout les jours  and the tool of control. My mother expressed her disdain for anything too expressive, such as gaudy earrings, modern art  and even Jeff Goldblum. To be too expressive was to be shameful; embarrassing. Better not to be noticed or spoken about. Nothing new was to be tried or tested. Boundaries must never be pushed. I was to be soft, well-spoken, clean-living, mystical, unattainable and virtuous. When I was very little, I always played an angel in school nativity plays, because I was blonde and pale. Those traits indirectly translated as angelic in Apartheid South Africa. But I was growing up and becoming a teenager in the late 90’s listening to grunge music and refusing to brush my hair. I was becoming disgusting and tainted. But I knew my limits. I knew I could not be very clever, very expressive, very loud, very funny, very anything really. I was encouraged to set the bar low. I couldn’t, I shouldn’t, I mustn’t.  When I was 17, all hell broke loose when my mother found out that I was taking the pill. Long and detailed letters were left on my bedside table at night, listing everything that was wrong with me. Sharp insults were underlined with a ruler and pen. I had brought shame and condemnation upon myself and I was to pay.

The men of the park start by taking control of the lady dinosaurs reproductive rights. Uber creep and Park Owner John Hammond insists on being there for the birth of each dinosaur he has engineered the creation of. More control. He ensures all the dinosaurs are female so that they cannot breed without his say so. Big control, controlling bigly (as another old uber creep might say). But, as our intrepid characters soon discover, the ladies do breed outside of the lab. They breech the rules and to hell with the system because “Life Finds a Way”. Control and chaos are central themes in this film, they drive it in many ways. And the control of females vs the chaos of their freedom is beautiful and frightening to behold. Despite having guns aimed at them, electric fences around them, scientists exploiting them and cages enclosing them, the ferocious gals that scare the boys take control of the park, the Island, their freedom. Three cheers for the Jurassic Lasses! 

A teenage me attempted to take control of my own life by taking control of my body. Or more precisely, food and eating. Like so many young women before and after me, restricting food gave me a false sense of autonomy. It also meant I could curb the curves that were forming here and there, physical changes that repulsed me at the time. I wanted to stay lean, skinny and boyish for as long as possible. I did not want my femininity or softness to bloom. Rather not be seen, not be spoken about. Disappear physically. I became a ghost-like figure that haunted my own life for years. But, ever the complex creature, I was smart. Smart enough to get the grades to enter my choice of University. At home, I was discouraged. Don’t go too far, you shouldn’t, you can’t, you mustn’t. I ran. I ran, as soon as I could and as far as I could. I ran to education and to learning and to boozing. A lot of boozing. And to my own creative space in which I flourished. I chose an expressive subject to make up for years of suppression and depression. And found liberation on stage, in wild characters. I cut all my hair off and got a tattoo. Life found a way.

Dr Ellie Sattler puts on elbow length gloves and delves her hand deep into dinosaur crap. But girls should be clean, pretty, quiet. Dr Ellie Sattler grabs a shotgun, jumps in a jeep and comes to the rescue of an injured Jeff Goldblum in a storm. She hoists him onto the back of the Jeep and drives like a demon whilst being chased by a tyrannical T Rex, screaming “SHIIIIIT” at she does so. But girls are supposed to be saved, pretty, quiet. Dr Ellie Sattler volunteers to run through Raptor territory to get power back  to the park, despite knowing men have gone before her and not returned. But girls can’t, shouldn’t, mustn’t.

Dr Ellie Sattler is the heroine I needed at the time. She’s the hero we need now. And she’s not taking any of your “SHIIIIIIIIIIT” 

*PLAY JURASSIC PARK THEME MUSIC VERY LOUDLY NOW IN YOUR HEAD