0093NOTAmazons

0093NOTAmazons_Groening

Matt Groening, creator. Futurama, episode "Amazon Women in the Mood." TV Series. Curiosity Company: 2013.

The creators and writers of Futurama are well-renowned for including references and sight-gags that might be considered slightly esoteric and incredibly nerdy. This episode is the first of several to reference classical mythology in a substantial way, and possibly the only episode wherein figures from classical mythology make up a significant portion of the episiode's characters.

An interesting note is the apparent conflation between Amazon women and cavemen. Although they are ruled by a giant super-computer, the Amazon women are decidedly lo-tech. They wear clothes made of hide and bone, use wooden clubs and spears as weapons, and speak in the halted, grunting manner often associated with cavemen.

In this episode, the Planet Express delivery crew is stranded on the Planet Amazonia. Their assembly includes Fry, Leela, Bender, and Amy, as well as buffonish and casually sexist space-hero Captain Zapp Branigan and his first officer Lt. Kif Kroker. The team discovers a tribe of giant alien Amazon women who are ruled by a man-hating computer called Femputer (voiced by Bea Arthur). Femputer sentences all the men to death for the crime of being male, and the ladies of Planet Express (plus Bender, who, as a robot is technically without any biological gender) have to find a way to save them.

The Amazon women are portrayed as giant, scantily-clad, and voluptuous, with many of their speech-patterns and clothing choices and weapons modeled after popular depictions of Cro-Mag man. Despite what their enormous size, musculature, and fighting abilities might suggest, they are extremely feminine in a comically sterotypical way. The Amazon women can be heard talking about subscriptions to Cosmo Magazine, worrying about their weight, and how in women's basketball, the good fundamentals make up for an inability to dunk.

The writers use the inclusion of the Amazon women to satirize stereotypical depictions of women in popular culture and underscore the dangers and problems that stem from gender inequality. The conflict of the episode is resolved when the male and female characters figure out how to work together in a mutually supportive, respectful manner.

Slide by CB.