This was interesting to me in that its kind of an out of body (or out of film?) example. What I mean is, the prior examples of self reflexivity in this portion of the book are all instances in which the inward reflection calls into question the viewer and their own ideologies in comparison to those presented by the film. In the Dog Factory example, the self-reflexivity comes about by examining the industry itself and the technologies of the film industry at the time. This is not only a clever usage of the technology but a genius way to dispel the mysticism and lack of understanding surrounding filmmaking and film as a whole.

This is a great succinct way of describing the gender based gate-keeping of modern fandom. That there is an often natural assumption within science fiction that the audience is male has been what has kept the genre consistently successful. With one focal crowd, it's hard to miss. However as stated with Star Trek, there is and has been large room for gender focus interpretation in it's larger universe of media and fan created content. However in Star Wars this doesn't exist to the same extent, which I think is largely one of the reasons the Disney trilogy struggled to succeed on a massive audience scale. Being so embedded in a male-focused genre and drawing from so many tropes historically aimed at a masculine audience, the new trilogy struggled to speak to a wide audience both because of it's lack of focus and it's pre-established fan base.

Scenes like this are what makes Ripley's relationship with Ash in Alien so interesting. These hallmarks of sexism exist in a lofty contextual sense when Ash initially disobeys Ripley's command to keep quarantine towards the beginning of the inciting incidents of the film. He's insistent that his way is right and refuses to take orders from Ripley. I say 'lofty contextual' because to an educated viewer, we know why he refuses to follow Ripley's order. To the uneducated however, he simply seems like he thinks his way is right and he goes over Ripley's head. As things persist he grows more cold and commanding towards Ripley until finally he tries to kill her by shoving a phallic object down her throat. This idea of sexism in sci-fi being the killer of women in the genre is given literal physical form in Ash.

This is an interesting illustration of a cross section of different social categories that have curiously came into conflict in recent times as sensibilities grow more accepting among the more conservative in our society. The idea that women have no place in X fandom is the same kind of gatekeeping as saying women have no place in X scientific field. This is an instance where real science and the actual concept of sci-fi share an issue. Both are gatekept by men still to this day, and the correlation is there according to Keller.

Had I read like 3 more seconds down the page before writing this quote would have illustrated my previously mentioned point much better. Pretend that I did ;)

The dehumanization of women in sci-fi really boils to a front when you think of things like this. So often does the dehumanized subject try and express their innocence or inability to control themselves. I'm not sure if this is indicative of some sort of power fantasy held among sci-fi filmmakers, or if it's their acknowledgement of the fact that they have watered down female influence in their film.