At some point she developed a sense of humour about Barbarella, but it was gone the next interview I read. Perhaps in this age of Xena and arse-kicking[sic]women who delight in the very babe terminology that had previously been considered such an insult, the 1967 comic-book character come to life is finally justified. At the time, says Fonda (mostly)it was just another excuse to compartmentalise and exploit women. And it must be admitted, despite many years of physical comparison between a younger Fonda and Sigourney Weaver, Barbarella was no rocket scientist. T)he sardonically-challenged astronaut was nearer in style to the British wartime comic strip Jane than to Ellen Ripley - a good-natured ingenue clueless about the world (or the galaxy)and, on some or other premise, permanently half-naked. Barbarella was her last flirtation with popular cinema before feminist enlightenment, committed roles and regular controversy took over, and apparently her one and only dabbling in science-fiction (strictly speaking, fantasy). Since the sexual politics that underpin Barbarella have now evolved beyond recognition, whatever misogynism it once conveyed only reads as out-of-date sociology, and the film's native cheerfulness is restored.

SEX APPEAL...?

The flake: Alice; the hopeless case; the spirit of innocence and goodwill - also the sexual adventuress, the woman whose insatiability breaks Milo O'Shea's lethal orgasm-inducing machine. The film continues in the literary tradition of Gulliver's Travels and -if you really want to look too deeply into it- 18th century pot-Enlightenment romanticism, i.e. a gothic sentimentality towards the 'undiscovered' world, both geographically and psychosexually. Whew! Most often, though, Barbarella is a damsel in distress, the woman who isn't kidding about being unable to change a tyre. Told you it was a fantasy.