C.S. Lewis: Reappraisal

I'm going through C.S. Lewis's letters right now, and frankly I find myself appalled at some of the things Lewis said. Lewis seemed to have a fairly virulent dislike of homosexuals, which was only matched by his disdain for communists and the laboring classes. I do understand that Lewis was tormented, possibly in homerotic ways, in his British boarding school experience, and frankly I would not be surprised if Lewis struggled with some sense of sadism or homoeroticism himself (not that I'm equating homosexuality with sadism, just saying Lewis might have.). But I don't think there's a similar excuse for his position on labor.
I'm going to an Episcopal church right now, and so you'd think I would feel closer to Lewis than I did before. And I still do have a certain fascination with the Inklings' charm. Whatever one might say about them, they were great novelists. But I can't escape the feeling that Narnia and Middle Earth were corrupted in some sense, by the very real prejudices Tolkien and Lewis exhibited in their works.

Atlas Shrugged movie

Do we really need this? Ayn Rand's mammoth novel is being made into a trilogy of films, the Star Wars of the Libertarian\Tea Party crowd. Frankly, I've never understood the appeal of Rand's writings. I don't find her to be particularly individualistic, whatever the claims of her supporters. Certainly, socialist Jack London's Martin Eden stacks up quite well against Atlas Shrugged as a study of individualism. I do think that Anthem is a reasonably scary, well done dystopia, but again I don't think it measures up to the dystopias of Jack London or George Orwell. We all, of course, know why capitalist-friendly Hollywood is producing Ayn Rand, but not Jack London. It doesn't take massive intellectual skills to see John Galt and company call the rest of the world "phoney". It does take such reading skills to understand why Martin becomes the social pariah he does, even as a successful individualist. Oh well.

British Invaders: Best Sci-Fi Podcast out there

I just wanted to spend a post talking about British Invaders , which I believe is the best sci-fi podcast out there right now, along with the Babylon 5 Podcast. What makes British Invaders so unique is that its two hosts are utterly charming (and quite non-American in outlook. One's Canadian and one's British). Moreover, British Invaders deals with major British sci-fi series not normally covered in other podcasts, such as Survivors, Blake's 7, and Red Dwarf. The episodes are not too long (I actually wish they were a little longer, say 45 minutes), but the guys do a great job at expressing their love for British sci-fi. I especially recommend you check out their excellent description of Survivors, which really made me want to check out that series, as well as their episodes on Blake's 7. Keep it coming, British Invaders! We love you.

Queer Cyborgs

Watching Lady Gaga's Alejandro video, I suddenly realized she had read Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto. Well, maybe not, but certainly both Haraway and Gaga realize the power of the cyborg imagery to disrupt traditional male\female, man\machine binary polarizations. The cyborg is a sort of permanent hermpahrodite, neither one thing nor the other, but stuck in a liminal space. Gaga celebrates the cyborg imagery through her combination of cyborg imagery with fascistic elements borrowed straight out of Fritz Lang and the 90's cult classic Dark City. I don't know how comfortable I am with gay cyber Nazis, but there it is . . . if it was not weird, it would not be Gaga. I can at least say one thing for Gaga . . . she's a lot more readable than Haraway, and with a catchier beat.

Stargate SG-1 and links to the military industrial complex

Please check out Stargate SG-1's wiki. According to it, the U.S. military supplied the series with a considerable amount of equipment over the years, including jet fighters. The show was even awarded a medal for positive portrayals of U.S. Air Force personnel.

Now pardon me, but it's bad enough the military is recruiting poor city kids and evangelical kids in the churches. Now the military-industrial complex is invading the sci-fi television screen and I am royally pissed. Not that I can do much about it. I suspect such links have always existed. One can't get equipment in Hollywood without the military censoring one's portrayals, to make sure they conform to the military's definition of true combat heroism. Any contextualization of war's costs, or what our "enemies" may feel or experience, is left permanently out of American war rhetoric. Seeing Stargate SG-1, I have that very rare wish that we were actually more, rather than less, like France (I can't stand France normally. Derrida, ugh!). At least French civvies no better than to trust their government, and understand that nation states play by the rules of realpolitik, not patriotism. So long as the American right does not realize this, we are going to be in big trouble.

The Entertainment business : Jerry Orbach, Space Rockers, and Buck Rogers

Science fiction often gets things laughably bad when dealing with the entertainment business. No where is this more evident than the series Buck Rogers, which predicted that disco music would be the dominant art form in the 25th century and then further contended that it would be spread by sinister rock managers like Jerry Orbach! Yes, Jerry Orbach, the cop who is impossible to hate (well almost impossible).
Seriously, though, sci fi television needs to come up with a more biting critique of the entertainment industry which of course its not likely to do, being as it's part of the entertainment industry. Only Max Headroom came close to offering up a compelling portrayal of a media dominated, entertainment-saturated culture. But I guess it may be too much to ask entertainment to stop being entertaining in the service of being enlightening instead. So, for the foreseeable future, expect to see more space disco than you'll ever see Headroom-like shows again.

Inklings article done

I just submitted an article to Mythlore on the Inklings, focusing on the graphic novel Heaven's War and James Owen's Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica. Basically, I'm talking about the mythopoeic elements in both works, as they relate to the Inklings. Wish me luck with this one guys. It's the fourth essay I've sent out (I've had one accepted and I'm waiting on an answer for the other two).