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The meaning of sci-fi
This was spawned by a discussion I had with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maddoggirl in this thread. I'm making a post of it because my comment got too tl;dr for LJ, lol.
I'm not making this post to publicly expose you, MDG. I think this is a very interesting discussion, and the more people get involved, the more interesting it'll get, even if this might be a subject on which a lot of people here have very strong feelings, having been brought up as sci-fi geeks or having found their one true love in that genre. If this gets nasty - I don't think it will because the people on my f-list are all nice and awesome, but if - I'll freeze comments.
A popular opinion among RL people is that while sci-fi might be a more or less entertaining way to pass your time, there's no intellectual merit in it. I've even heard fanfic writers voice the opinion that while fanfic on "deep" literature and tv shows is intellectual challenging, sci-fi is just shallow, bad narrative.
In my opinion, this is as wrong as it gets.
Because that's exactly what fandom is about, isn't it, finding meaning in ostensibly meaningless early evening entertainment shows. Anime, cheap sci-fi shows, silly movies like Hot Fuzz or even groups of barely full age fake-emo hard rock boys writing terrible music and acting as if they were the evilest rock stars ever - all these things inspire people to find meaning and write about it.
Here you'll find an entry bydeelaundry in which they quote a statement by hithah about fanfiction. It's rather short, but I'll c&p the most important part.
I think fanfic is more like going to one of those kid-friendly restaurants and seeing that little basket at your table with six crayons in it. And that's all you get. Six colors. And they're weird colors too, like periwinkle and raw umber. And maybe some kid chewed on one of them and it's all messed up. Now try and draw something with only those six weird colors.
That's fanfiction. All you get is a TV show, which is, like any TV show, caught in the restrictions of having to be family-friendly, interesting, entertaining, not too superficial and cheap to produce. Any TV show is like that. Doctor Who, being a different genre than for example House, has different premises, but the goals are the same: raising the figures.
Don't kid yourself, people. House isn't deeper than Doctor Who or sci-fi. What's deep about House? You have the scruffy, highly intelligent genius, an outsider, who doesn't manage to fit into society because of his intelligence and unwillingness to compromise his strong opinions on wrong and right. You have terribly researched med babble, inconsistent, often shallow characterization (just think about Wilson in Half-Wit. What the hell was that? That was so out-of-character, watching it hurt my eyeballs. Or Cuddy's character. How cliché does it get?) and some really bad acting (Omar Epps, whoever told you you could act was clearly mistaken, and RSL, if you're that bored with TV, you should go back to New York). All of season 4 was a disaster as far as consistency and characterization was concerned - seriously, to me it felt as if they were writing those episodes on a caffeine high in the nights before the shooting. And as far as the argument about the general concept of every episode being the same is concerned - I've never seen a show that turns that concept into an art more than House.
There's about as much meaning in House as there is in Doctor Who. The point where the two differ is that while the meaning of House mostly refers to every day issues, Doctor Who - like any sci-fi - deals more with the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything. It's the question of whether or not humanity is essentially good at heart, what it is that we would do if we were put in a position where we could exploit a different culture, whether humanity would be able to survive an apocalypse or not.
It's a postmodern concept, sci-fi in general and Doctor Who in particular. It questions everything, and it challenges the recipient to accept completely new ideas. Take Doctor Who science. The Doctor, being a more or less omniscient being, uses a sonic screwdriver and flies around in something that looks like a police box from the 50ies. He says things like this is my timey-whimey detector and laughs at people who don't know what a happy prime is. Doctor Who science challenges the audience to accept that humanity knows nothing about science, and that we are in no position to seriously talk about things like time travel if we don't even know how to build a pencil-shaped sonic device that opens any lock (except dead locks) and explodes robots, if used correctly and in combination with a sound system.
Have you ever read the Hitchhiker? I didn't particularly like it, because I thought the narrative style was terrible, but the ideas in that book are the exact sort of postmodern out-of-the-box thinking that Doctor Who applies as well. You're given the answer to the question of Life, the Universe and Everything - but you're missing the question. It all boils down to wanting to make people accept that they don't know anything, and that they never will know anything, and that they should stop kidding themselves that this isn't so, but at the same time accept that the only purpose in life that you can have, the only purpose that would ever have the chance to give your life even only the slightest bit of meaning, is trying to find out more about Life, the Universe and Everything.
That's sci-fi. As I said, it's a different sort of meaning than House, but it is not in any way less intellectually stimulating. I can accept if someone says they're not interested in this sort of meaning, but I can't accept them claiming that this meaning either doesn't exist or is worth less than meaning in the classic sort of sense as it is applied in classic literature or ostensibly deep movies and books.
maddoggirl in this thread. I'm making a post of it because my comment got too tl;dr for LJ, lol.I'm not making this post to publicly expose you, MDG. I think this is a very interesting discussion, and the more people get involved, the more interesting it'll get, even if this might be a subject on which a lot of people here have very strong feelings, having been brought up as sci-fi geeks or having found their one true love in that genre. If this gets nasty - I don't think it will because the people on my f-list are all nice and awesome, but if - I'll freeze comments.
A popular opinion among RL people is that while sci-fi might be a more or less entertaining way to pass your time, there's no intellectual merit in it. I've even heard fanfic writers voice the opinion that while fanfic on "deep" literature and tv shows is intellectual challenging, sci-fi is just shallow, bad narrative.
In my opinion, this is as wrong as it gets.
Because that's exactly what fandom is about, isn't it, finding meaning in ostensibly meaningless early evening entertainment shows. Anime, cheap sci-fi shows, silly movies like Hot Fuzz or even groups of barely full age fake-emo hard rock boys writing terrible music and acting as if they were the evilest rock stars ever - all these things inspire people to find meaning and write about it.
Here you'll find an entry by
deelaundry in which they quote a statement by hithah about fanfiction. It's rather short, but I'll c&p the most important part.I think fanfic is more like going to one of those kid-friendly restaurants and seeing that little basket at your table with six crayons in it. And that's all you get. Six colors. And they're weird colors too, like periwinkle and raw umber. And maybe some kid chewed on one of them and it's all messed up. Now try and draw something with only those six weird colors.
That's fanfiction. All you get is a TV show, which is, like any TV show, caught in the restrictions of having to be family-friendly, interesting, entertaining, not too superficial and cheap to produce. Any TV show is like that. Doctor Who, being a different genre than for example House, has different premises, but the goals are the same: raising the figures.
Don't kid yourself, people. House isn't deeper than Doctor Who or sci-fi. What's deep about House? You have the scruffy, highly intelligent genius, an outsider, who doesn't manage to fit into society because of his intelligence and unwillingness to compromise his strong opinions on wrong and right. You have terribly researched med babble, inconsistent, often shallow characterization (just think about Wilson in Half-Wit. What the hell was that? That was so out-of-character, watching it hurt my eyeballs. Or Cuddy's character. How cliché does it get?) and some really bad acting (Omar Epps, whoever told you you could act was clearly mistaken, and RSL, if you're that bored with TV, you should go back to New York). All of season 4 was a disaster as far as consistency and characterization was concerned - seriously, to me it felt as if they were writing those episodes on a caffeine high in the nights before the shooting. And as far as the argument about the general concept of every episode being the same is concerned - I've never seen a show that turns that concept into an art more than House.
There's about as much meaning in House as there is in Doctor Who. The point where the two differ is that while the meaning of House mostly refers to every day issues, Doctor Who - like any sci-fi - deals more with the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything. It's the question of whether or not humanity is essentially good at heart, what it is that we would do if we were put in a position where we could exploit a different culture, whether humanity would be able to survive an apocalypse or not.
It's a postmodern concept, sci-fi in general and Doctor Who in particular. It questions everything, and it challenges the recipient to accept completely new ideas. Take Doctor Who science. The Doctor, being a more or less omniscient being, uses a sonic screwdriver and flies around in something that looks like a police box from the 50ies. He says things like this is my timey-whimey detector and laughs at people who don't know what a happy prime is. Doctor Who science challenges the audience to accept that humanity knows nothing about science, and that we are in no position to seriously talk about things like time travel if we don't even know how to build a pencil-shaped sonic device that opens any lock (except dead locks) and explodes robots, if used correctly and in combination with a sound system.
Have you ever read the Hitchhiker? I didn't particularly like it, because I thought the narrative style was terrible, but the ideas in that book are the exact sort of postmodern out-of-the-box thinking that Doctor Who applies as well. You're given the answer to the question of Life, the Universe and Everything - but you're missing the question. It all boils down to wanting to make people accept that they don't know anything, and that they never will know anything, and that they should stop kidding themselves that this isn't so, but at the same time accept that the only purpose in life that you can have, the only purpose that would ever have the chance to give your life even only the slightest bit of meaning, is trying to find out more about Life, the Universe and Everything.
That's sci-fi. As I said, it's a different sort of meaning than House, but it is not in any way less intellectually stimulating. I can accept if someone says they're not interested in this sort of meaning, but I can't accept them claiming that this meaning either doesn't exist or is worth less than meaning in the classic sort of sense as it is applied in classic literature or ostensibly deep movies and books.
In defence of science fiction
I disagree. I disagree so much with that statement. Science fiction, by virtue of its very name, is removed from the world we know, can inhabit a whole new universe in some cases, and the very best of the genre manages to do this while also proffering strong parallels and insights into our world. Arguably this can’t not be done at all – we must have something to relate to within the science fiction medium, otherwise it becomes irrelevant. While I admit that yes, there is sci-fi that is dated and cringe-inducing (see Star Trek: The Original Series and the earliest episodes of The Next Generation), there are also products of the genre that are nothing short of mind-blowing.
I refer Your Honours to the new series of Battlestar Galactica. (Having already written a 3500 word academic essay on the show and its parallels to post-9/11 America, I am biased. And unashamedly so. But I digress.)
The new series of Battlestar Galactica is not cheesy. It is not overblown. And it sure as frak isn’t ‘cringey’. Here we have a ragtag fleet of some 50,000 humans, the last of their race, desperately trying to outrun an army of Cylon machines that decimated their home worlds and find Earth. This is where the science fiction aspect stops. From here we have a drama about a group of people trying to keep hold of what makes them human without descending into lawlessness, chaos and self destruction; as one character eloquently and passionately puts it, “we’re not a civilisation anymore. We are a gang, and we’re on the run and we have to fight to survive. We have to break rules, we have to bend laws. We have to improvise!”
Perhaps this is my academic bias and pride in my previous work showing through, but I don’t see that above quote as anything other than what it appears to be – a reflection on a post-apocalyptic society with which we can all identify. There are deliberate echoes of post-9/11 America in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, and while the scales of disaster are so vastly different, this show above all others of its time and genre leaves the viewer with no choice but to re-examine the world around them, and to question the morals of leaders and the consequences of actions.
This parallel is perhaps more poignant because of the two core species in Battlestar Galactica – the fleeing humans and the Cylons hell bent on their annihilation – the most simplistic comparison is that the humans are the Afghans and Iraqis, and the Cylons are the Americans and allied forces.
Admittedly this moves beyond the original comment, which pertains only to science fiction dialogue, but any dialogue is begotten of actions, and actions are begotten of circumstance. And circumstance in this context is the situation that forms the universe and storyline of the novel, film or television show. And this is also an argument solely about Battlestar Galactica, which limits the scope of the argument’s impact. But quite frankly, I don’t care. Battlestar Galactica is a well-conceived, superbly written and acted science fiction saga. It is also by far the most intelligent of its genre around today. The universe and situations may be far removed from what we are familiar with, but the characters are human; flawed, capable of mistakes and in so many cases of ambiguous morals and willing to do almost whatever it takes to ensure the survival of their race.
To repeat the point: this is, quite simply, science fiction at its best.
Re: In defence of science fiction
But why does it have to stop?
Hee. I think this is why I don't like BSG. I don't argue with anything you said above, except with the statement about it being the most intelligent of its genre around. Because, quite honestly, I don't consider BSG a real science fiction show. Sure, it has a science fiction setting, and science fiction characters, and science fiction bad guys. But what does the show do with these things? It cannibalizes them to turn itself into a show with the classic sort of meaning while mostly discarding what science fiction is all about (I say mostly, because I know there are science fictional aspects in there, which are, however, mostly left-overs from the old show).
I don't want to say I don't think BSG is a good show. It is. But it's not a show in my tastes, because of the reasons I pointed out. This might sound a little cheesy, but BSG makes the idealist in me queasy. Since I wonder, why does a science fiction show that could be brilliant and awesome on its own have to try and "be like all the others", i. e. using the science fiction aspects merely as a tool to be like any other of the "deep and well-thought-through" shows out there.
In my opinion, BSG is not a good example to present in defense of science fiction. Not because I think it's bad, but because I think its ideas don't have much to do with science fiction. There are many people who say they don't like BSG because they think it's too dark. I guess this is where the difference between science fiction and what BSG is doing shows best: as
It surely is a well-thought-through show with some continuity and good characters, and I agree with most of what you said. Aside, you know, the science fiction aspect ;).
Oh, and TOS might be dated, but it is not cringe-inducing. I love me my crazy whacked-out 60ies shows xD.
Re: In defence of science fiction
That's not quite what I meant. And while I try to think of what I meant ;)... yeah, what I was trying to say is that that is where the traditional definition of science fiction, so to speak, stops. It's not to say BSG's any better than any other science fiction show out there; it was to some extent created to reflect modern society, which limits its scope somewhat. And yes, it is pessimistic and dark, which also goes back to its nature as a mirror of sorts.
I concede my argument was overblown, probably because I nearly gave myself an aneurysm trying to make the arguments in my original essay flow and make sense to someone who wasn't me (ie, the guy marking it), which was partly what I was trying to condense for this. I also started out arguing dialogue, and moved into entire scope... again overblown. I would also like to take the opportunity to slightly amend my statement regarding TOS; it's dated and (to me) cringeworthy in terms of its dialogue and "black and white" standpoint. And although I stand by my argument that BSG is good science fiction, I think this may also be another example of, yeah, of my fingers moving too fast for my brain to comprehend exactly what it is that I'm trying to say. Nothing new there really :)
Re: In defence of science fiction
But, yeah. As I said. Not saying it's a bad show. It's surely interesting, for people who like that sort of thing. Just not the science fiction show I'd pick if someone asked me to tell them a good sci-fi show.
And TOS is awesome. From the bouncing cardboard rocks to the tunnels made out of tin foil. Bubblewrap aliens ftw! xD
Re: In defence of science fiction
I wouldn't either, because it is largely atypical.
And yes, TOS was lots of fun. I need to go back and find some of the eps again, methinks... I don't remember watching any of it in years!
Re: In defence of science fiction
this is a wonderful metaphor!
Re: In defence of science fiction