inside Jurassic Park’s Visitor’s Center, the former capital of Hammond’s empire; this image
represents Isla Nublar’s transition from a patriarchal society to a feminized nation-state.
Conclusion
Girl power, a phrase popularized by British pop group the Spice Girls in the mid-1990s, is
linked to third-wave feminism, promoting female empowerment and independence (Taft 69).
Although Sattler and Lex both demonstrate girl power throughout the film, Jurassic Park’s girl
power is most prominently demonstrated through its dinosaurs. Ultimately, Jurassic Park
functions as an early cinematic text in third-wave feminism, with its dinosaur population serving
as a collective metaphor for femininity.
In the film, Jurassic Park’s administration is entirely male; contrastingly, each of the park’s
confined dinosaurs is deliberately engineered to be female. Resultantly, Jurassic Park can be
viewed as a patriarchal society whose economy is founded on the monetization of femininity,
with the park’s dinosaurs serving as second-class citizens. The narrative of Jurassic Park, when
interpreted as a feminist text, alludes to and challenges the hegemonic gender roles embedded in
modern society. Halfway through the film, after the Tyrannosaurus fails to appear during the
initial tour of the park, Malcolm, still disapproving of Hammond’s absence of bioethics, laments:
“God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man
creates dinosaurs.” Sattler humorously responds, “Dinosaurs eat man…woman inherits the
Earth.” However, as the entirety of Jurassic Park’s dinosaur population is female, it is arguable
that in the context of Sattler’s quote, the dinosaurs are women, and are set to reclaim their
natural inheritance, i.e. sexual equality.
Works Cited
Altman, Rick. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Cinema Journal, vol. 23, no. 3,
1984, pp. 6 – 18.
Bayne, Emma. “Womb envy: The cause of misogyny and even male achievement?” Women’s
Studies International Forum, vol. 34, vol. 2, 2011, pp. 151 – 160.
Beukeboom, Leo W., and Nicholas Perrin. The Evolution of Sex Determination. Oxford
University Press, 2014.
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