The Situation Of The Gravity.

Along with the rest of the civilized world, I went to see Gravity this weekend.

I case you're living under a rock, this is the latest CGI mega-sensation from director Alfonso Cuarón. It's about a medical doctor (Sandra Bullock) fixing electronics components on the Hubble Telescope and otherwise flailing around outer-space in the eensiest pair of LuluLemon Bikram shorts one could ever hope to find within with earth's orbit.

First of all, this movie is exhilarating. It's one of those that you watch with white-knuckled-clenched-fist anxiety the whole way through so that you walk out of the theater feeling all spaghetti-legs. I was dazzled by the graphics, and found it totally worth the cost of a movie ticket and a smuggled in pack of Twizzlers.

Unsurprisingly, it's caught some major heat from the experts in all things outer-space, especially one Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who got his space undies all in a bunch over the flawed portrayal of the mechanics of low earth orbit. And scores of other real-life astronauts are chiming in.

But shouldn't we be glad that we are having occasion to celebrate space exploration in a fun and sensational way? Should we equivalently persecute Jules Verne for fictionally allowing people to walk around in caverns in the core of the earth that obviously don't exist. I don't thinks so. Shouldn't we just enjoy science fiction for what it is: fiction?

Maybe broadly, should accountants start blowing up twitter every time Carrie Bradshaw invests in a new pair of Manolo Blahnik's because there's no way someone on a journalist's salary can afford that! It's fiction, we're not watching it because it's real life.

But as a woman in STEM I have to jump briefly on the hater bandwagon. I really bristled at the opportunity missed by having the heroine of a science thriller, who is doing obvious electrical engineering in outer space, cast as a medical doctor. It seems like there may be a better suited profession for Dr. Yoga-Shorts, say, maybe an electrical engineer? Astrophysicist? Regular-world Physicist? Computer Scientist? Mathematician? Mechanical Engineer? Anything in STEM? Anything at all?

I'm imagining the conversation of the focus group around the table the day they decided on that one: "Engineer? Nah, not sexy enough, let's make her an MD."

It makes no sense at all.

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