The movie Jane Fonda has “complicated feelings” about
The true cinema icon Jane Fonda has transcended the very nature of the movie star and has become a bastion of social activism as a forthright advocate for environmental protection and women’s rights. But aside from her desire to make the world a better place, it’s perhaps her remarkable filmography that has given her such a legendary status.
With two Academy Awards for ‘Best Actress’ for Klute and Coming Home and several more nominations for movies including Julia, On Golden Pond and The Morning After, Fonda’s efforts on the film circuit speak for themselves, and even as far back as the 1960s, she had made an impression with Cat Ballou and Barefoot in the Park.
As the 1960s drew to a close, Fonda played one of her most memorable roles, the film that established her status as a 20th-century sex symbol. Starring in the lead role in the 1968 science fiction film Barbarella, directed by Roger Vadim, Fonda was on the precipice of global stardom, but interestingly, she still holds mixed emotions about the film.
“The film came out in 1968; I’m talking about Barbarella,” Fonda once told Glamour. “My husband, the French Russian film director Roger Vadim, directed it, and Terry Southern wrote the script. The President of the United States has assigned Barbarella, that’s moi, the task of landing her spacecraft on the evil planet which has been taken over by a terrible scientist.”
“I’ve complicated feelings about the film,” the iconic actor added. “The President has asked Barbarella to fly her spacecraft to the planet all by herself, so that’s kind of feminist, right? I’m the one that’s gonna rescue this planet from evilness. But then, once I get there, it’s all about making love and having strange sexual adventures.”
It was indeed Barbarella that shot Fonda into stardom, and her space-faring heroine in the sex-driven science fiction movie was indicative of the kinds of projects that were being made at the height of counterculture. But on the other hand, her portrayal was not the kind of feminist outlook she wanted to deliver, hence the conflicted feelings.
“So there’s that, which was a bit objectifying of me and of women,” Fonda continued. “So I had a little problem with the film because right after the film, I left my husband and came to the United States and slowly became a feminist. So I kind of for a while rejected the film Barbarella.”
She signed off with her final thoughts on the classic movie, “When I regained my sense of humour, I watched the film and I thought, ‘Oh’. Henry and I grew fond of it and embraced it.”
