Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Baron Harkonnen as Pedophile

One of the most disturbing characters in all the sci-fi genre is Baron Harkonnen, Paul Atreides's nemesis in Dune. Harkonnen is one of the first clear depictions of a pedophile in science fiction history, which alone makes him unusual. The character is quite well drawn, but nevertheless I find it disturbing how easily Herbert seems to conflate pedophilia with homosexuality, as the Baron's ambigous sexuality seems to stay rather on the homoerotic side. This is particularly noteable in the Dune miniseries, which unlike the Lord of the Rings movies, does not try to hide problematic elements of the original text (for which I give it credit). Yet you would think an intelligent sci-fi author could have gotten beyond that canard, even by as early a date as 1964. Just goes to show you that a genre that promotes human rights has not always done so consistently.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

The Year of the Sex Olympics

An interesting TV movie from the late sixties, Year of the Sex Olympics was in many ways a precursor to reality TV and its effects on television audiences. It is most notable for featuring Nigel Kneale, of Quatermass fame. Kneale was a confirmed antique, seeing society as being controlled by the "masses" who had no respect for art and culture, but instead were manipulated by media corporations and government officials. The movie's not nearly as risque as it sounds, but the idea in and of itself is hilarious and sustains the first third of the movie (which is about how far I've gotten). Definitely not for those who like the "Real Housewives of Orange County". It is noteable that Kneale was not the only person who expressed a prescience concerning reality TV. Peter Watkins's Privilege in many ways also predicted elements of reality TV that would later become standardized.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Space 1999 and Racial Diversity


Space 1999 is a show that is often forgotten by sci-fi fans. Initially hugely popular, the series soon fell off, mainly because of its reputation (justly earned) for poor science and poor scriptwriting ability (despite the presence of otherwise able writers like Johnny Byrne, of Keepers of Traken fame. And yea, I think that's a good episode. Prove me wrong!). One thing that was very notable about Space 1999 was the multiracial, multinational cast. There was an Anglo-Asian woman, two white Brits, two Anglo-Africans, and three white Americans in the cast. Although there were no Russians because of Cold War concerns, Space 1999, like Star Trek, generally had a more positive view of the Eastern Terror than was common among Western television writers of the time. And I think that in many ways Space 1999's depiction of race was more positive than Star Trek's. For instance, the two black characters were both clearly intellectuals, avoiding the kind of animalistic casting of blacks that Uhura occasionally seemed to represent (let me dance to a Swahili tune, Mr. Spock, and get your Vulcan sex organs in an uproar). Although Americans represented the senior staff at the base, there was definitely less of a gung-ho, conquest of space narrative in Space 1999 than there was in Star Trek. I think in many ways Space 1999 resembled Babylon 5 in depicting a racial harmony that was less forced and less influenced by PC American standards of multiculturalism than Star Trek. People got along, not by denying difference (as in Star Trek), but by acknowledging it. Coincidentally, Space 1999 had one of the most pro-alien narratives of any sci-fi series up to that point and deserves acclaim for that. Regrettably, in season two much of the diversity in the series was lost, as the show took on a more American tone, but Space 1999 still stands as a landmark in nuanced racial depictions in science fiction.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Gollum . . . mentally ill?

Note: A post from my other blog that I thought you might find interesting. Biblical counseling\nouthetics, by the way, is an evangelical form of therapy that among other things, argues that most mental illness is the result of sin.

I really wonder why there has to be a study about this. While professional therapists are debating Gollum's psychological deviancies, real life evangelicals are being exorcised by deliverance ministers and nouthetically confronted by biblical counselors. That being said, I don't really have a position on Gollum's mental illness or lack thereof. I think it's rather silly to apply psychotherapeutic techniques to a literary character. I do wonder, however, what the nouthetic diagnosis of Gollum would be? Doesn't bear thinking about.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

C.S. Lewis, Phillip Pullman and Childhood Indoctrination

Hey guys: Just an entry from my other blog that I thought was very applicable to this one.

I'm working on a class I'm teaching for the winter, about Lewis and Tolkien. I've been rereading essays on both men's works, and one issue that occasionally comes up is the Phillip Pullman\C.S. Lewis debate. Now, I like both Pullman and Lewis, though I think Lewis is a slightly better writer (that may just be childish preference talking, however). But I am disturbed that both Lewis and Pullman saw fiction as a vehicle for proselytizing to kids. I contrast this with Tolkien and J.K. Rowling, who did not seem to have the same goal. Both Tolkien and Rowling believed in certain values and morals and fought for those, but they did not believe in using children as religious pawns, so the issue of belief vs. nonbelief was largely kept to the side. It is no coincidence, in my opinion, that Tolkien and Rowling are better sellers and favorites. They express universal truths that we can all believe in, while not forcing people to subscribe solely to the author's point of view (this is particularly true of Rowling). I think the continued popularity of Pullman and Lewis speaks to the continued marginalization of children in our culture, where they are used as little more than political weapons by one religious\non-religious group against another.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Mel Gibson and The Passion of Frodo


Imagine, for a moment, Mel Gibson directing Lord of the Rings. How would the movie differ? Well, according to Tolkien, the Dwarves were kind of the Jewish people in the Lord of the Rings. This presents a problem for Gibson, as the Dwarves are clearly among the good guys. So Gibson, I theorize, would blame a Dwarvish banking conspiracy for Frodo's withdrawal from Middle Earth. Perhaps Frodo would die in the Gibson version, a victim of Dwarvish machinations. It would be amusing, though hardly ethical, to see Gibson dressing the Dwarves in first century Jewish garb and giving the Dwarves Pinnochio-sized noses to prove how "evil" they are. But fortunately for those of us who still believe in ethics and morals, or just plain good taste, Mel Gibson is not planning on directing the Lord of the Rings.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Is Frodo Baggins a Holocaust Revisionist?

Mcsweeney's has a hilarious send up of both academic criticism and the Lord of the Rings. They have another send up of Return of the King in addition to their send up of Fellowship of the Rings. One of the questions that bears asking from their work, however, is whether Frodo and Bilbo are in fact post-de-facto Holocaust revisionists, trying to justify the orcicide of Mordor. I thought that idea, while hilarious, actually is pretty serious at the same time. Is Frodo Baggins a kind of David Irving, saying we "Only killed 500 orcs, not 500,000"? The problem is, Lord of the Rings, while never consciously racist, does have a strong undercurrent of unconscious racism going through its text, and that racism can not easily be denied. So, perhaps in the future, we should have a movie entitled "Judgment at Hobbiton", though unfortunately Spencer Tracy won't be able to star in it. So, I throw this out to you LOTR fans. Are you sure you're getting the real story about Mordor? We only have Frodo's word for it.

P.S. Supposedly Lord of the Rings is the Nazis favorite current reading material. Go figure.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

OCD and science fiction's responsibility to the mentally ill

Budd recently brought up Orson Scott Card's novel Xenocide, which created a religious movement out of OCD. As someone who suffers from OCD, I have always been fascinated by Card's depiction in Xenocide. I think OCD is a deeply underused mental illness in science fiction, even more than the almost equally underused schizophrenia and bipolar. Phillip K. Dick, at least, portrayed the complexity of schizophrenics lives in unusual, tender terms. But OCD is even a more interesting mental illness, in sci-fi terms. What Xenocide pointed out is that OCD has some evolutionary benefits. For instance, my OCD gives me literally almost superhuman powers of concentration. I can read 300, 400 pages a day often, or work on a paper for 10 hours straight, and not be tired. I think contemporary science fiction too often emphasizes the victimized or maladaptive elements of mental illness, without realizing that mental illness is not necessarily maladaptive, if channeled in the right directions. Of course it causes problems. But so does one's sexual orientation and science fiction authors don't routinely demonize LGBT people (nor should they).
I think science fiction really needs to come to terms with its own history of psychophobia. Obviously, I am in part talking about Scientology. I don't think its any accident that it was science fiction that created the most deeply anti-mentally ill ideology of the last century. Science fiction, from its conception, has always emphasized the power of the ubermensch, and therefore neglected the hidden powers that undermensch populations can also have. Science fiction's history of ableism and racism is directly linked to its inability to divorce itself from the myth of the superhuman. But I'd really like to science fiction to link itself to the underdog for a change, not for the Paul Atreides's, Enders, and Supermans of the world. Science fiction, quite simply, owes mentally ill people for the crimes done in science fiction's names. And it's about time that mentally ill people collect.

Monday, September 13, 2010

On the Absence of the Orthodox from Science Fiction

I have yet to read a science fiction novel that deals with Greek or Russian Orthodoxy. Partly this may be because the Orthodox faith is more precarious than Western Christianity, and therefore less likely to survive into the future (after all, even Catholicism barely survives in the Hyperion series). But I think science fiction's lack of engagement with Orthodoxy, like its lack of engagement with Judaism, is because both of these faith traditions don't allow for the nice kind of fundamentalist\atheist, churchman\atheist simplifications common in depictions of Catholics and evangelicals. For instance, Orthodoxy, so far as I understand it, does not define so much what God is, as what He isn't, and therefore lacks the kind of juridical, judgmental nature of evangelicalism or Catholicism. Judaism, interestingly, emphasizes action over belief, and I think it therefore in many ways scares atheist writers who like to create nice binaries between religion and unbelief, binaries that are largely meaningless in the Jewish tradition. The smartest science fiction writers, like Dan Simmons, acknowledge the complexity of religious belief in these traditions, but the large absence of the Orthodox faith, and the lesser absence of Judaism, is a blind spot in contemporary science fiction that needs to be addressed

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Charity in Science Fiction

Charity, in the form of debt-relief, medical clinics, etc. is very absent from television science fiction and the spirit of charity is also often quite absent. In TV sci-fi, the good guys are good because the programmers say they are good, or because they happen to rescue a planet of miners with their fancy laserblasters, but not because they are actually good people as a whole. Blake's 7, Firefly, and Farscape are much more realistic in this regard, as all three series show the "good" guys often rejecting charity for expediency, like people do in real life. I think the most moving acts of charity in TV sci-fi are probably Steven Franklin's repeated efforts to help the populace of Down Below. Babylon 5 is one of the few TV sci-fi shows to portray the full weight of poverty on a population, and Franklin represents the decent humanitarian impulse we wish we had. None of these programs, again with the exception of Babylon 5 and to a lesser extent BSG, come out in favor of the governmental palliatives we know are the only true solutions to poverty and want.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

It Happened Here and Alternative History on Film

One of the most fascinating movies of the last four decades is It Happened Here , an alternative history set in a Britain which the Nazis successfully invaded. It Happened Here is significant in that the film does not pretend that the Brits would have acted particularly nobly under German occupation. The main character is in fact a collaborator, who is portrayed as no worse or better than the British partisans who are fighting the Nazi occupation. The movie was somewhat controversial when it came out, and some scenes had been removed until quite recently, because they were thought to encourage fascists.
Alternative history rarely appears on the silver screen. Watchmen, Fatherland, C.S.A., Death of a President (an alternate history in which George Bush was assassinated), and It Happened Here are the only cinematic alternative histories I know about. On television, Sliders portrayed alternative histories quite frequently, but not particularly persuasively. It Happened Here, along with C.S.A., remains the definitive classic of the genre, though Watchmen had its moments. But this genre is hugely underexploited and hopefully in the future Hollywood will see the potential for both entertainment and education in the alternative history style.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Afrofuturism

One course I would love to teach is on Afrofuturist science fiction. I am a big fan of African-American fiction, not because I'm trying to be politically correct, but because so much of African-American fiction is geared to people who grew up in religious, working class and lower middle class homes. Among Afrofuturists, I particularly like feminist Octavia Butler. Butler's works are some of the most radical in the science fiction genre. Even when she gets a little doctrinaire, as in Parable of the Sowers (kind of the Handmaid's Tale of Afrofuturism), her characters always have more complexity than those found in white feminists works, like Margaret Atwood. I also have Brother from Another Planet, the first Afrofuturist major film (so far the only one, though there were a couple of minor blacksploitation entries in the seventies), which is interesting but the sound quality makes it slightly hard to understand. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the classic of all Afrofuturist works, Black No More by George Schuyler. Black No More is a hilarious sendup of racism in which all blacks are turned into whites through a scientific process and a one of these new whites becomes a member of a KKK-like organization. Unbelievably, impossibly politically incorrect, especially in the racist thirties, Black No More is the ultimate in science fiction's exploration of race.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Science Fiction works I'm teaching this semester, any suggestions?

So, I wanted to talk about my reading lists for the next two semesters. This semester, my reading list includes Fight Club, Native Son, Galatea 2.2, Martin Eden, The Trial, The Sparrow, and The End of the Affair. Only Galatea 2.2 and the Sparrow are science fiction works. Galatea 2.2. is the most serious mainstream literary exploration of the ethical and societal implications of artificial intelligence, while The Sparrow talks about how religion will change in the face of first contact. Both works are quite good, particularly the former, but next semester, I'm seeking to have truly outrageous titles in my course. Right now, I plan to teach Clockwork Orange, Iron Dream, The Kindly Ones, My Holocaust, Black No More, Indian Killer, and Captain Confederacy. As you can see, quite a few of these works are sci-fi (Clockwork Orange, Black No More, Captain Confederacy, Iron Dream). I was wondering if you guys could think of any good works to include? I'm looking for works that will push buttons, that are in some cases (most actually) gratuitously offensive and un-p.c., as I believe these works are the best at promoting meaningful dialogue in class. For instance, My Holocaust is about the academic practice of competitive genocide, in which people fight over "most victimized" status. If you know of any works along those lines, please let me know.

Friday, September 3, 2010

The Holocaust and Contemporary Science Fiction

Contemporary science fiction, particularly television science fiction, does not often deal with the Holocaust, and when it does it does so in relatively allegorical terms. The most concrete references to it occur in "Genesis of the Daleks" and the 3rd and 4th seasons of Babylon 5, but both series ultimately shy away from the precipice. I think that for the genre to evolve, it has to be willing to take such portrayals to the hilt. For instance, a depiction of an interstellar Nazi state could be a major work of art, if done correctly, and a good cautionary tale as well. Some of the best depictions of the Holocaust have come from alternative history tales, such as The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H., Boys from Brazil, After Dachau, and Iron Dream. These are truly memorable portrayals of evil that deserve and demand a second reading. More complex visions of fascism, such as those offered in movies like The Believer and books like Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. Realizing that Nazism has a perverse fascination on us that is not always salutatory will go a long way to at least partially mitigating its evils. I hope that in the future, television sci-fi can have the courage to show the Shoah, in the hopes of creating a more productive dialogue about what might have been, had the Nazis won the war.

Category: Politics

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Captain Confederacy

While perusing the web the other day, I came across this fascinating blog. It is an online reprint of a popular but highly (and I mean highly) controversial comic from the late eighties and early nineties, Captain Confederacy. Captain Confederacy tells the story of a world where there was an alternate Civil War, that the South Won. Now, the South is using superheroes to bolster up their propaganda campaigns, with the white superheroes always triumphing over the black ones. Eventually, Captain Confederacy resists, and gets involved in some serious miscegenation action with a black woman. The Southern forces of anti-racism eventually win and establish a more racially inclusive Confederacy.
As you can see, not for the faint of heart, and I can't say there weren't some parts that bothered me a little (and I have a very, very thick skin for such things.). But you got to admire a comic that so recklessly dispenses with both Southern stereotypes of blacks and Northern and minority stereotypes of Southerners. This comic sometimes seems to veer wildly from southern apologetics to daring anti-racist screed, often within the same issue (or even the same page). Whether you think it's racist or not, one thing is quite clear. The writers of Captain Confederacy had real guts, the kind of guts that got Norman Spinrad banned in Germany and Savoy publishers arrested in Britian. I'd rather have that kind of risk-taking than the intellectual conformism of the present, any day.

Category: diversity, multiculturalism