The Girl Who Was Plugged In

"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" is a science fiction novella by American writer James Tiptree, Jr. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1974.

Plot summary

The story takes place in a dystopian future where the world is controlled by a capitalist regime. Despite advertising being illegal ("ad" is, in fact, a dirty word), corporations are still able to persuade and control consumers by the celebrities they create for product placement. The protagonist, seventeen-year-old Philadelphia Burke, or P. Burke, is enlisted to become one of these celebrities after a suicide attempt fueled by society ostracizing her due to her Pituitary Dystrophy, better known as Cushing's Disease. While recovering in the hospital, she is chosen by a scout to become a "Remote Operator" for the beautiful corporate creation, known as Delphi, who was grown without a functioning brain from a modified embryo in an artificial womb. Though Delphi appears to be a normal fifteen-year-old-girl, she is controlled through a satellite linked to P. Burke's brain, which is still physically located in her original body.

The Remote and the Operator

The purpose of a remote and a remote operator, such as Delphi and P. Burke, is to remove the fear a company might have that a normal celebrity could act of their own accord. P. Burke controls Delphi, making her say and do whatever the company tells her to. That being said, after months of training, Delphi is strategically placed in a minor documentary film, and she becomes a media sensation overnight. Her job is to act as a celebrity traveling all over the world, all the while subtly buying and promoting products to influence the public in favor of a company.

A Harsh Reality

P. Burke not only falls in love with the life style, but Delphi as well. Acting as a perfect teenage girl, P. Burke has everything she has ever wanted. She has fame, respect, wealth, power, and eventually love. Paul Isham, the rich and rebellious son of a network executive, notices Delphi on the set of her Soap Opera and falls in love with her. P. Burke - and, by default, Delphi - reciprocates his feelings, but cannot let him know the truth. He eventually discovers and misunderstands the situation, believing Delphi is a normal girl who is enslaved by implants. He breaks into the lab where P. Burke is and is shocked to see Delphi being controlled by an unattractive, bedridden woman connected to countless machines. Out of rage and confusion, he rips the wires out of P. Burke, killing her. Delphi remains biologically "alive" and is put under the control of another operator.

Analysis

The underlying discussions that take place in relation to "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" tend to focus on the female body and gender embodiment. In her article titled ""Whatever It Is that She's Since Become": Writing Bodies of Text and Bodies of Women in James Tiptree Jr.'s "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" and William Gibson's "Winter Market"", Heather J. Hicks puts focus on Tiptree's take on female embodiment in the form of P. Burke. Tiptree uses phrases like "pumped-out hulk", "girl brute" and "carcass" to devalue P. Burke, which further increases her feeling of uselessness in the story. This negative version of female embodiment is shown in contrast to the positive embodiment seen through Delphi, who is described as "flawless" and "beautiful". This means that P. Burke is willing to get rid of her own physical body in order to move up in society because she understands that it will never happen any other way. Social status within this society is so dependent on perfection and beauty that those who do not fall into that category want to move into better bodies. Hicks says this is precisely what gender disembodiment means within the context of "The Girl Who Was Plugged In". Not only does Sheldon use a male pen name, but her writing style is viewed as masculine as well. This further contributes to the gender embodiment that Tiptree tries to undertake. Like those in the story, consumers in the science fiction world want a body image that represents what they deem worthy. In the story, people want an idealized female body, and in the real world science fiction consumers want a male body producing their stories. Hicks says the way in which P. Burke is ousted by Paul "suggests a conviction that her own body of work would not endure the revelation of her female body."

A male author for a male audience

One notable characteristic of "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" is how the author used a male narrator to tell the story to a predominantly male audience in order to play with the reader's expectations of how the story will pan out. The story is being told by way of a male narrator most likely to a 1970's male science fiction consumer. The story continuously being told through a male point of view comes to highlight issues that male readers might have when reading this short story. According to Stevenson, Tiptree utilizes this way of telling the story in order to influence male readers expectations of P. Burke and of the ways the story will turn out upside down. The narrator rebukes the reader on several occasions for having these false expectations. Stevenson gives an example of this with the actual attempted suicide of P. Burke on the park bench. P. Burke desperately wants to achieve this ideal body, but she cannot due to her physical appearance. According to Hollinger, P. Burke is performing the gender ideal through a distance by controlling Delphi. In a society where the only way to achieve happiness is by conforming completely to a constructed ideal, P. Burke has little choice but to live through the perfect girl body that is Delphi. Hollinger sees P. Burke as a representation of the body that is utterly insignificant in the eyes of society. In the opinion of Scott Bukatman, of Stanford University, Tiptree forms the body into something unclean and decaying through phrases such as "dead daddy", "rotten girl" and "zombie". Hicks suggests the use of crude words for the main character only gets worse as the story progresses to emphasize an unappealing display of female disembodiment. Consequently, P. Burke feels more human as Delphi than as herself because society finally accepts and recognizes her existence.

References

<br />