Could Mars need TWO moms?

I’m currently watching Mars Needs Moms. I like to watch movies during dinner and it was the only thing starting when I sat down, so I thought, I can sit through anything, I’ll try this out.

It’s really bad. The movie is lame. And, clearly, the whole “Mom (read: the woman) is the only real parent” theme really bugs. (Long story short: Martian females aren’t very maternal therefor they kidnap good Earth mothers to steal their maternal essence and download them into “nanny bots.”) Why they don’t kidnap good Earth fathers too? It seems to be playing on the whole dads don’t parent they “babysit” stereotype.

But but-but-BUT, I was truly surprised at one moment in the film. Something that seemed far more open-minded then I would have expected from the movie…

At one point the martians discover that a long time ago they used to be raised by their martian families instead of nanny-bots. And the photo above is the cave drawing that they found. I actually had to pause it because, at first glance it looked like a lesbian couple. Then I thought, oh, perhaps not, that’s probably a mom holding one child, with her second older girl child next to her, because a) up until that point the movie downplayed the importance of men, and b) if they’re as sexist as they’ve come off, then they certainly wouldn’t allow the idea of a same-sex couple to be acceptable. Right?

But, I listened very intently to the language used right after discovering the cave drawing, because I was hoping they’d explain what I was looking at. But the explanation was actually wonderfully un-gendered.

Alien: “What is it?”
Kid: “It looks like a family. You know, kids and parents.”

And then later…

Alien: “You were not meant to be raised by machines, you were meant to be raised by families, by parents.”

Parents! Not “kids and a mom and dad,” or “father and mother.” That made me happy.

Aaaaand then they went and shot themselves in the foot when the mega-bitch alien in charge explains that they created the nanny-bots because the women didn’t have TIME to raise kids while the men were just basically idiots always dancing and playing around.

What’s even more interesting is that, when I tried to see if anyone else caught on to that, or gave the film any props for not defaulting to describing same-sex couples, I just found the opposite — beyond bloggers calling the film out for being terrible, and anti-fathers, they also called it “anti-gay.”

I get that the film is sexist, AND a total piece of crap, but I’m not sure about the anti-gay part. Because I did notice and appreciate the use of “parents” in the film’s description of a family instead of “mom and dad.”

I’d love to hear from any of my readers that have also seen this film. What did you guys think?

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3 Comments

  1. Cat

    Haven’t seen it! But iiiiinnnnteresting! Definitely sounds like someone in the movie’s production was trying to up the gender equity to some degree! Cool!

  2. Cat

    THAT WAS SO MANY EXCLAMATION POINTS

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