wisb-Guardian-Express

(This review is as spoiler free as I can make it.  In doing so, there are a lot of things that I'll say without context, as the particularities of certain characters or plot elements have not been revealed in the trailers and are rather important to the viewing experience -- mystery!)

Tom Cruise's new science fiction action adventure has been in theaters for a week-ish, and it has already opened the taste debate.  A great deal of "average viewers" have come out of Oblivion with positive feelings, remarking that, while far from a perfect film, it succeeds as entertainment with a sliver of substance.  Critics have not been so kind.  They've called the film self-serious, absent of self-awareness, a ponderous mess, and so on and so forth.

I couldn't disagree more.

While far from perfect, Oblivion is what Prometheus promised to be last year:  a high concept, thrilling exploration of the human condition through the lens of science fiction.  Where Prometheus failed to deliver (see here and here for my take), Oblivion has filled in the blank, offering the same visual awe of 2012's "big film" with a far more coherent and cohesive plot, consistent (though incomplete) characters, and a few decent twists and turns.  Most of all, Oblivion gives us a few answers, even if it never quite explains everything in the end.  All this combine to make a film that, in my mind, deserves a little more credit.  After all, it's not
often that we are given action-oriented science fiction that also has a little something to contemplate, right?  For that reason, I see Oblivion as an attempt to revitalize action-oriented SF with just a smidge of actual substance -- a film that, despite its flaws, is entertaining and a tiny bit cerebral.

If you don't know already, Oblivion follows Jack Harper (Tom Cruise), haunted by strange dreams, and Victoria (or Vika; Andrea Riseborough), his companion and communications overseer, as they monitor the "strip-mining" of Earth's resources for use by humanity off world.  From the opening moments, we learn that Earth was invaded decades ago by an alien species called the Scavs; humanity responded by nuking the Earth, forcing the surviving humans to move off world to Saturn's moon, Titan.  Jack and Victoria have been tasked with maintaining a fleet of defensive drones as remnants of the Scav forces attempt to sabotage the operation.  But Jack's dreams are not what they seem:  they are memories.  And as everything Jack knows about the world is uprooted by his discoveries, he will reveal an even more terrifying truth than the destruction of Earth.

Sure, the film's central conceit is certainly not original.  Post-apocalyptic SF is almost always cliche before you get into the particulars, and inserting an alien invasion doesn't help with originality points.  Even the somewhat hokey voice over is so painfully common in genre films that it's difficult to take it seriously (in the case of Oblivion, the voice over is actually important, but it does feel out of place, even by the end).  However, what I found most compelling about Oblivion was its method for exploring familiar territory:  fusion.  Cross-genre narratives are not unheard of in SF, but they are less common (at least in explicit form).  Here, Joseph Kosinski (the director behind TRON: Legacy -- my review here) fuses post-apocalypse with alien invasions and cyberpunk (an element I won't discuss here for fear of spoiling the narrative).  Part of telling good stories with old material is finding a different way to approach that material.  Oblivion does just that, pitting the "man on his own" trope on the same stage as a cyberpunk-ian identity crisis.
It's perhaps for this reason that I didn't find myself bored while watching Oblivion.  Kosinski's writing and direction, while flawed in places, provides a deliberately measured approach to these familiar concepts, refusing to resort, as a standard, to visual or action antics for the sake of furthering the plot -- though you'll find some of that here too.  Rather than become trapped in a long, drawn-out action sequence, Oblivion takes a slower approach, unfolding the layers of mystery piece by piece.  While there are certainly plenty of pretty (if not sexy) action sequences in Oblivion, they are, if anything, necessary components to the narrative, rather than mere eye-candy (in my mind).

Equally arresting is the dramatic contrast between the natural and the artificial -- a visual aesthetic as much as a thematic one, which is made apparent from the start, with extensive scenes involving Cruise, well, cruising around an "empty" Earth in advanced aircraft.  It shouldn't surprise, then, that so much of the film is concentrated on the visual aesthetics of both the post-apocalypse and cyberpunk, blending the relative order of technology into a world of natural chaos.  From a purely visual perspective, Oblivion is absolutely gorgeous -- even more so, in places, than last year's Prometheus.  Several minutes are spent presenting vast natural wildernesses, rocky "deserts," the natural encroaching upon the remains of human civilization, buried buildings, forgotten ships resting on dried seabed, and so on.  Even the action sequences -- high-energy and, at times, emotional -- are well-rendered, and themselves as visually arresting as the natural and artificial environments that dominate the set pieces.  It is unmistakably a gorgeous film.
Cruise performs well in this environment, bringing a sense of heartwarming nostalgia in one moment and deliberate confusion in the next.  Contrary to what other critics have said, I see Cruise's performance as nuanced, reflecting a character torn between two realities:  the one in which he is living and the one that lingers in the background like a ghostly echo (the one to be uncovered).  The film is undeniably about Jack's journey to find himself and his place in the new world awaiting him, and Cruise plays well to this theme.  Truthfully, this is not exactly outside of his artistic territory, as some of his previous films have pitted one man (and his secondary character set pieces) against a new reality (War of the Worlds is a recent example).  He seems well-fitted to this sort of role, and here delivers a performance that, while not on par with Will Smith in I Am Legend (a far more challenging role, I think), is far from weak or forgettable.  I wouldn't say this is Cruise's best performance, but it is certainly one I will remember.

Oblivion's two biggest problems, however, are pacing and secondary characterization.  The film seems motivated by two separate concerns:  a desire to explore the human condition through a deliberate and nuanced "man on his own" narrative and an equally powerful desire to provide an action thriller replete with some familiar SF trappings.  Sometimes, these desires do not mingle well, resulting in huge action sequences that are offset by canyons of slow material.  In the case of Oblivion, the extreme rise-and-fall motion feels like it is delaying the conclusion, adding more "mysteries" to be solved for later.  While these reveals are clearly crucial to the ending, I get the sense that a little trimming or re-organizing of some of these sequences could have helped better pace the discovery process.  Alternatively, perhaps Oblivion simply tries to bite off more than it can chew for a two hour movie.  There's simply too much rising-and-falling here; at times, it is almost exhausting.  The problem, however, is that there probably isn't a solution for this -- at least, not one that wouldn't gut some of the film's major conflicts.
Related to this is the problem of character development.  ]Jack Harper understandably receives the bulk of the attention, while the secondary characters receive are themselves sometimes merely set pieces.  In particular, the two primary "love interests" -- Victoria and Julia -- receive little attention, despite playing a crucial role in Jack's growth as a character.  Oblivion is, essentially, a film of the "one man against the world" variety.  The female characters, in that model, aren't necessarily crucial for Harper's development.  In some sense, Victoria and Julia (Olga Kurylenko) are only a few steps removed from being pure objects, which is unfortunate when placed in the context of Jack's "awakening."  All the same identity crises and worries hit them too, yet because of the film's central focus on Jack as "male center," their development as characters is unfairly stunted.  While both Kurylenko and Riseborough put on great performances, they unfortunately have less material to work with than Cruise.  None of this, of course, should be a surprise, considering how action-oriented films often portray secondary characters -- as caricatures or set pieces.

Despite these flaws, however, I see Oblivion as a bit of a sleeper classic.  It may not change the way we view SF cinema, but it certainly fills in a gap left behind by the existing variety of mind-numbing SF action flicks (G.I. Joe and Transformers 2 and 3, I'm looking at you).  With just the right amount of substance, Oblivion provides both heart and entertainment.  I, for one, enjoyed it a great deal.  You just might, too.

Directing: 3.5/5
Cast: 4/5
Writing: 3.25/5
Visuals: 5/5
Adaptation: N/A
Overall: 3.9375/5 (78.75%)
Inflated Grade:  B (for solid action, compelling ideas, a decent plot, and gorgeous visuals)
Value:  $7.50 (based on a $10.50 max)

In a recent New York Times review of the SF action adventure film, Oblivion, Manohla Dargis opens with the following:

If only it were less easy to laugh at “Oblivion,” a lackluster science-fiction adventure with Tom Cruise that, even before its opening, was groaning under the weight of its hard-working, slowly fading star and a title that invites mockery of him and it both. The agony of being a longtime Tom Cruise fan has always been a burden, but now it’s just, well, dispiriting. You not only have to ignore the din of the tabloids and swat away the buzzing generated by his multiple headline-ready dramas, you also have to come to grips with the harsh truth that it no longer actually matters why and how Tom Terrific became less so. No one else much cares.

This opening paragraph is followed by another much like it, in which Dargis argues pretty much the same thing:  Tom Cruise is on the way out because he's nuts.  This train of thought makes up most of the review.  There's little time spent actually defending why Oblivion is lackluster or why,
as Dargis suggests, there is something wrong with the film mashing together a number of different SF ideas (this is a charge that applies to basically all SF films these days, so it seems like a pointless argument if you can't add something, well, original to it -- ha!).
This is not how one writes a review.  When you come into a film with a pre-loaded bias -- in particular, a bias against an actor/director as a person rather than as an actor/director -- your ability to assess the quality of that film will be greatly diminished.  Dargis suffers from this problem.  Because she cannot see beyond Cruise as a person, she cannot honestly assess Oblivion on its own terms; she's assessing the film as a reflection of an individual.  In other words, Dargis' review is about why she doesn't like Tom Cruise, not Oblivion itself -- not "Tom Cruise" the actor, but "Tom Cruise" the person.  That Dargis cannot set aside the tabloids and Cruise's various eccentricities is telling.  Anything she can say about a movie involving Cruise will be tainted by her personal biases, something made apparent by her desire to front-load the personal barbs over an honest assessment of the man's work.

Many of the other reviews I've read have not done this.  David Edelstein made a Scientology joke in his review on Vulture, but it was not the central "thesis" of his argument about Oblivion.  Others might drop a hint at Cruise's personal life or nothing whatsoever.  But most of them justified their critiques of Oblivion by addressing the film itself.  They wrote actual reviews, not character assassinations.

That is exactly what Dargis did -- she went for the jugular and forgot to actually write a review.

If you haven't seen it already, Strange Horizons recently released their assessment of the data for books reviewed and reviewers, divided by gender, at major SF review sources.  It's definitely worth checking out.

(Yes, I mentioned this in my post on gender normativity earlier today.)

In a past episode of The Skiffy and Fanty Show, we (Paul, Liz Bourke, and myself) discussed, however briefly, the paucity of women among published science fiction authors in the UK.  Specifically, we were talking about their minority status in the present while acknowledging the existence of a long string of incredible female SF writers in UK SF history.  Though I am not an expert on the UK SF scene, my impression as an American peeking in has confirmed the notion that there is a great deal of sexism within the broader fanbase, and a systemic gender-bias problem in the publishing sphere.  The latter has been attributed to sexism (today); I am not convinced that this is necessarily true -- at least, not in the sense of a deliberate action.  The former is probably a reflection of who speaks as opposed to a true assessment of UK fandom as a whole, and it is certainly true that this perception is changing.  Perception, of course, is not everything.

I say all of this not because I want to talk specifically about the UK scene, but rather because the recent discussions surrounding the Clarke Award's all-male finalist list offers one of many
gateways into what I actually want to talk about here:  the perception of SF as a boy's world.  I'm certainly not the first to take on this argument, or at least to funnel it to the public.  In 2009, an anonymous writer blasted science fiction for having given in to the whims of the lady folk, adopting narrative stylings specifically geared towards everyone not-male.*  The post elicited a sea of negative responses (expected, really) and once again opened the floodgates on discussions about the position of women in genre.  In 2011, David Barnett asked where all the women had disappeared after Damien Walter's post calling for the public to name the best SF novels resulted in a remarkably male-centric list (I still think we're recovering from that one).  Other related discussions have occurred since:  Ann Grilo recently discussed the visibility of women in our community; others covered the news that women are still encouraged to use male pseudonyms because men don't read books by women; ladybusiness analyzed the available data to determine the gender divide among reviewers and the books they discuss; and, throughout most of 2012, Jim C. Hines explored the way women are posed on SF/F covers.  Most recently, John Scalzi and Strange Horizons have dived into the debate again -- the former ran the gender divide numbers on his Big Idea feature; the latter did the same for several major publications with review sections.

I'm understandably scratching at the surface here...

The continued discussion about the position of women within our community, whether as characters, writers, or reviewers, has made me wonder why science fiction, in particular, has remained such a boy's club.  I spent a short while trying to Google an answer to the question, assuming bloggers, critics, and so on would have covered this topic as frequently as the "absence of women" topic -- but I came up empty.**  There are probably a number of obvious reasons:  publishers have traditionally held a bias against female writers (intentional or otherwise -- as a result of submission numbers or for some other reason I know not); SF's readership is perceived as primarily male; or a host of nonsense reasons, from "women don't like space stuff" to "SF is written for boys."

That last phrase, however, may have some unfortunate truth to it.  Before you dig your claws in, let me explain.  SF has been seen as a relatively boy-oriented genre since its arrival into pop culture.  The Edisonaides, the Pulp Era adventures, and so on and so forth have traditionally been viewed as the domain of men.  The reason for this, as far as I'm aware, has little to do with whether the themes of SF are "men-oriented themes," but more to do with the traditional assumptions about gender.

You'll notice that I included "gender normativity" in the title of this post.  Because science, war, technology, and other traditional thematic subjects in SF are still perceived as a "male thing," SF has maintained an image as a genre "for boys," even while great women writers (and male writers) have challenged this perception by either writing SF OR inserting female characters into a "male world."***  Gender normativity, as I understand it, assumes that there are behaviors and positions that are inherently "male/masculine" or "female/feminine."  In literature, gender normativity tends to function by way of associating genres with gender:  romance and certain non-fiction categories for the ladies; SF, business, and so on for the menfolk.  SF's association with careers and fields that are still dominated by men has helped keep it on the male side of the spectrum, even while women have rightly challenged the paradigm within fandom (or outside of it).  Let's face it, the last decade has seen a dramatic change in the dialogue surrounding this subject...

Gender normativity, of course, is complete nonsense.  There is no such thing as a "female behavior" or "male behavior."  Culture determines these boundaries, which is why children are frequently indoctrinated into assumptions about what are acceptable "gender practices" throughout their lives.  Girls are supposed to wear pink, play house, maybe get into the liberal arts or social sciences, and pay attention to their looks or behave in submissive ways (see Jane Kilborne's excellent video, Killing Us Softly).  Men, however, are supposed to wear "boy clothes," play with cars or soldiers or other "aggressive" objects (even firetrucks fall into this category), and otherwise behave in aggressive ways, from asserting oneself physically to associating intellect with domination.****  When people behave outside of these paradigms, our culture does not respond kindly  (see this story about a little boy who wanted to wear a dress).  And it's all nonsense.  A girl playing cops and robbers is no more behaving like a boy than a boy playing house is behaving like a girl.  These positions are, in truth, completely interchangeable.  Our culture is what says it's not OK for a boy to play house or a girl to play cops and robbers.  There is no biological necessity for these divisions.

SF's problem, I think, stems in part from these assumptions about gender, however flawed or nonsensical they may be.  The degree to which gender normativity influences who gets involved in the SF sphere (primarily as a writer or a publisher) is up to debate.  In our contemporary moment, which I think marks the dawn of a full-fledge "wave" of feminism (either the 3rd rearing its head again, or a 4th, distinct wave), the challenge to these normative assumptions has resulted in a slow upheaval.  More and more, we're becoming aware of the struggle for inclusion in our genre.*****  We need to keep having this discussion to upend all the assumptions we hold about masculine and feminine behaviors, to change the way our culture views gender, and to change the publishing game.

Onward, ho!

*No, I will not link to that post.  You can read the highlights in the critiques.

**To be fair, I didn't spend a long time at it.  If you happen to have any interesting posts trying to determine why women don't write SF, please drop a link in the comments.

***I'm oversimplifying here.

****Again, I am oversimplifying to make a point.

*****Not just in regards to women, of course.

In a recent Flavorwire interview, Mark Johnson, the producer of Breaking Bad (a show I'm told is really good), offered this little gem:

I wish... It’s complicated. I can’t get into it because it only gets me angry, because I’m so proud of that movie… For a while there, and someday we may actually get there, we actually talked about doing a television show which would be sort of fun because it would be a TV show looking at a movie that’s looking at a TV show, something like that. So I wish I could answer you and I wish we did have a sequel or certainly a half hour comedy based on it. So we’ll see. It’s not over.

Needless to say, some of us are excited.  I've previously said that Galaxy Quest would make a terrific TV show.  I still believe that, though I certainly wouldn't complain about a sequel film if the
studios put up the dough to make one.
The primary benefit to a film is its length.  With two hours, you can effectively create a parody and adventure story all in one, without disrupting the viewing process with the disconnected sitcom form -- every moment leads to somewhere else. But films also limit the comedic frame, as overloading those two hours with references, jokes, and so on can pull apart the plot.  This is what has happened with the various incarnations of Scary Movie -- each became less and less about the characters existing within a parody and more about the parody itself.  The result?  Crappy films.  Granted, a lot of folks would disagree with me, but I'll stick by the claim.  Under the proper writing and direction, Galaxy Quest 2 could easily surpass its predecessor -- the folks who were behind the original should return if a sequel film ever happens.

Having said that, though, I have to admit that a TV series might offer a different set of useful conditions for a parody.  First, Galaxy Quest is an obvious parody of the most popular science fiction TV show of all time:  Star Trek.  While the film never tries to follow the exact format, that doesn't mean it wouldn't benefit from taking things to the episodic level.  Personally, I would prefer to see 45-minute episodes rather than the traditional 23-26-minute sitcom form.  Doing so would let the writers play with the interconnected storylines, parody the narrative form of Star Trek and other TV franchises, and develop characters and comedy in a more efficient, laugh-track-free zone.  Galaxy Quest doesn't deserve a laugh track, but it does deserve sufficient space to explore the parodic form.  A film might let the franchise expand and develop certain aspects of its universe, but a direct narrative parody would do so much more.
Of course, this is what I think, and I'm nobody.  I've never written for television.  All I've got to work on are my personal desires and the shows I've already seen.  Besides, Doctor Who has done well for itself, has it not?  Galaxy Quest could be the American response, if you will...

What do you all think?

(The title for this post is insanely long...)

While perusing Amazon.com earlier this morning, I came across this interesting edited collection.  There isn't a lot of information currently available about the collection, except this brief blurb:

In science fiction, technology often modifies, supports, and attempts to "make normal" the disabled body. In this groundbreaking collection, twelve international scholars – with backgrounds in disability studies, English and world literature, classics, and history – discuss the representation of dis/ability, medical "cures," technology, and the body in science fiction. Bringing together the fields of disability studies and science fiction, this book explores the ways dis/abled bodies use prosthetics to challenge common ideas about ability and human being, as well as proposes new understandings of what "technology as cure" means for people with disabilities in a (post)human future.

Kathryn Allan, the editor, is probably best known as @bleedingchrome on Twitter, and, in academic circles, is one of those rising new voices (she presented at ICFA this year and has one of those PhD things).  She is, apparently, one of the few science fiction scholars working in disability studies -- an interesting field I imagine.

I'll try to put together an interview with Kathryn in the relatively near future (the book doesn't come out until August).  For now, enjoy the blurb and the cover!

Before Andrew Niccol's Gattaca (1997) begins in earnest, we are compelled to think about its underlying ethical dilemma:  is a meritocratic system based on (mostly pre-selected) genetic variables justified, even if that means denying some people equal access simply because their genes say there is something wrong with them?  If you have seen the film, then you know how the story ends -- the genetic "weakling" succeeds at doing the impossible, throwing into question the very notion that one's genetics are an absolute determination of one's potential.  Thus, one possible side question is:  without the aforementioned meritocratic system, would Vincent/Jerome have fought so hard to succeed?  Questions like this are why films like Gattaca, The Truman Show, The Minority Report and, to a lesser extent, District 9, Logan's Run, and
Soylent Green (just to name a few) are such profound models of ethical problems put in action.

Gattaca is one of the few films that does so directly, offering the following William Gaylin quote in first the few moments: "I not only think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to."  It is difficult to tell whether the film is a direct response to Gaylin's belief, a partial acceptance of the principle, or a violent refutation.  I am, however, partial to violence.  Gaylin's quote is put in place without context, almost as if to tell us that this is a future we very well might see -- and soon -- not because it is "happening now," but because we will give in to Mother Nature's demand.  The natural progression for an intelligent, technology-oriented species such as ourselves is to tamper with what makes us "us."  In one sense, you might think of Gattaca as Andrew Niccol's answer to that notion:  yes, we might do it, but the ramifications will create an underclass marked (just like with race or gender) by factors beyond their control. The moral quagmire, however, makes race and gender look relatively tame.*
Unlike most (if not all) arguments about race or gender, there is a logic behind Gattaca's worldview.  There are no real, scientific differences between Caucasian, African, Asian, and so on -- at least, not differences that matter in a meritocratic sense.  But the opposite is true for Vincent/Jerome; he is, in fact, a genetic "weakling," containing within him flaws that limit his lifespan and his cognitive/physical abilities.  A world where such information is freely available, as it is in Gattaca, has two main options:  it can discard all other subjective factors for selection, or it can shift to the only seemingly objective standard by which to judge people's capabilities -- genetics.  It's a purely logical system, when you get right down to it, and that, in a sense, is what makes Gattaca a more disturbing dystopia than more violent, direct incarnations.
But underneath this is another important factor:  choice.  William Gaylin's quote suggests that we'll tamper because that's what nature wants, implying that genetic augmentation and genetic meritocracies are natural progressions for human civilization.  Yet doing so will mean punishing people for their parents' behavior.  Vincent/Jerome, as a "god child" (someone born with natural "chance"), is not a participant in his creation; thus, all the disadvantages his genetics offer are ones he could not change even if he wanted to.  The dilemma, as such, is yet another question:  if ability is mostly determined by one's genetics, and many jobs require a great deal of natural ability, do we relegate entire segments of the population to menial labor in order to increase "productivity" despite the fact that many of those people had no hand in their own creation?  And is doing so the best course of action for this society?
Yes, it is (says Gattaca in my mind).  And we're not supposed to feel particularly good about that prospect, in part because most of us recognize the terrifyingly logical discrimination at the heart of the film.  In the end, Gattaca wants us to reject this entire idea, to throw our chips in with Vincent/Jerome -- after all, he does exceed his genetically-determined potential.  But Vincent/Jerome is the exception that proves the rule.  There is no way to know if his success will shatter the perceptions of his world, though it is possible to read the various events in the final moments of the film as leading to that conclusion.  However, I tend to see the end as confirmation:  Vincent's/Jerome's success isn't public, and, therefore, whatever change he might represent for this genetic meritocracy can never be fulfilled.  We will tamper with Mother Nature, yes, but we will also have to accept and adapt to its vulgar consequences.

(Can you tell I'm a not terribly optimistic about genetic testing?)


*When I say "tame," I am referring to the concept's logic, not to the historical treatment of groups based on race or gender.  From a conceptual point of view, race and gender, for the most part, are illogical.  We know this only because we live in a world where the vast majority of us agree that having different skin or gender does not mean that you are, by default, inferior to another group.  The only way to maintain that belief in any pure sense is to intentionally maintain paradoxes in one's mind -- I think these paradoxes are what compels some to violence, since the psyche cannot keep contradictory ideas afloat if such ideas are connected to identity construction.

If you have been following the Hugo Awards discussion, then you'll be familiar with the various forms of this argument:  if you don't show up and do the work, then you should stop complaining.  In the Hugo discussion, it translates to the following:  you don't like how the awards work, but you don't bother to show up to the meetings, so your opinion is really irrelevant; if you don't like it, show up and change it...or STFU.

To illustrate, I present you some actual examples:

Firstly, the WSFS Business Meeting is entirely self-selected. It is not a representative body of any description : the people who participate are there entirely on their own recognizance, & the only opinions they can reasonably be expected to bring are their own. So, to expect them to “engage with wider debates,” when the people who consider themselves to be part of those “wider debates” don’t bother to come themselves, or to form committees & send delegates to represent their views (thus splitting among ten or twenty people what can be the problematic costs of attending a Worldcon), or to “engage” with the people who do attend in any other fashion than writing derisive comments about them on the Internet, seems a bit (to use your words) “self-serving”. 

And:

Want to be a SMOF? Volunteer to work on conventions. Come to Business Meetings. Get involved. Be competent. Convince others to vote for things you want. In short, cooperate with other people and show that you’re not a crank. But even that relatively low bar is too much for some people.

And (this one is actually ironic, since the WSFS system is not actually properly democratic):

I had complaints and gripes about the system. People told me how hard it was. They said, “Don’t bother.” I did it anyway, by the book and within the rules. Sometimes I lost, sometimes I won, but the fact that Democracy is Hard Work wasn’t by itself sufficient to discourage me. If you really think this is important enough, then do it already! Otherwise, I’ll continue to consider it whinging.

And:

So let me pose a hypothetical. You own an apartment in a building, or a flat for the British. And your complex has a management committee that sorts out things like communal gardens, upkeep, roof maintenance and the like. 

Typically these things are voted on and people take part. Would you feel just as entitled to moan about how decisions were taken if you’d never been to a meeting, never attended and done nothing other than write letters complaining about how everybody else did it? 

Because I’m sorry, that’s what I am seeing a lot of, and I see it pretty much every year, either complaining about the Hugos, or moaning about how expensive Worldcons are to attend and how unfair it is to charge so much. 

That can’t be helped. But as you point out, there’s a lot more to Fandom than the Worldcon and the Hugos. But just because you are a Fan, it doesn’t mean that that is a two way street.

These arguments are repeated over and over, defended ad naseum, and accepted by a select few as "the way things are, and the way things should be."  Jonathan McCalmont has called this a strategy of derailing and silencing.  I'm not convinced of the latter, but it is certainly a variation of the former.  At worst, it is a tactic used to devalue an entire subset of opinions by identifying them as "outside" a given arena of engagement, where only quality action occurs.  If you are not an attendee of that arena, your opinion is inherently worthless (or at least worth less than anyone who takes the time to follow the "proper channels").

These arguments should sound familiar in another sense, too:  they are often used against marginalized groups to de-legitimate civil disobedience.  I don't want to suggest that the folks speaking out about their frustration with the Hugos are a marginalized group; rather, I make this connection because I find it strange that a tactic of the immensely privileged has been re-purposed to marginalize "dissent," even when that dissent arrives from other privileged individuals (most of us are white males, after all).

The problem with this tactic is that it is completely impractical, and downright classist.  In an ideal world, you could easily verbally slap someone for bitching about something in which they take no part.  In that ideal world, we'd all have access to cheap and fast transportation.  In that ideal world, we'd all have Star Trek transporters in our living rooms.

But we do not live in that ideal world.  In a very real sense, we live in a far less ideal world than we lived in as little as 6 years ago, before the recession took its toll.  Many of us are making less than we ever did before, or aren't making anything at all.  Some of us are trying to get our degrees.  Still others live in parts of the world where the cost of transportation is prohibitively expensive -- hence why the World SF Travel Fund exists.

I happen to be attending Worldcon this year.  There are a number of reasons for this:

1. I made more money in 2012 than I did in 2011.
2. I will make close to the same amount in 2013, which means I won't have to stress over paying for summer this year or next.
3. Worldcon is in San Antonio, which is reasonably close to where I live, and thus less expensive to fly to from my current city of residence.

If #1 and #2 weren't true, I wouldn't attend (and I'm not sure if I'd pay for a supporting membership).  For me, Worldcon is prohibitively expensive in general.  Maybe fortune will change that in the future.

Currently, I am both a graduate student at a major public university and adjunct faculty as a state college.  In terms of my finances, that means I receive a small stipend as a student and supplemental, non-guaranteed income from adjuncting (i.e., my course load is not fixed and I am paid by-the-class, rather than a standard salary).  Last semester, I worked roughly 80-100 hours a week to make enough money to qualify as lower middle class.  If you've lived as an LMC, you know that's not a lot of money (at least, not in the U.S.).  I am a fairly frugal person, so I tend to stretch my money moderately well to take small vacations and the like -- these are things I believe are crucial to keeping a clear head.  But even that is sometimes a little difficult to manage...

That I'm attending Worldcon this year is the result of luck and hard work.  I probably won't attend in 2014, unless I do not fulfill any of my academic duties (conferences, travel-based research, etc.).  I'm hoping that I can save up enough to do so, but the only reason I have the luxury is because I happen to live in a certain part of the world, where my $ has greater value.  This is not so for people from other parts of the world.

What these "attend the meetings or STFU" arguments expose is a profound sense of financial privilege, if not in actuality, then in mentality.  I don't know if the folks who go to the business meetings are better off than myself (financially), but the way they speak about the wider community seems to suggest that they think everyone else has that privilege, despite the rare moment when they acknowledge that attendance is not universally possible.  I hope this is not the mark of a more insidious ideology within the WSFS community.  Yet I can't help feeling that these arguments are made as an excuse to ignore what members of the wider community are saying.  Since we cannot voice our arguments at the actual meetings, we aren't worthy of the WSFS committee's ears.

That mentality has done more damage than its defenders probably realize (in part because I suspect they don't think this is the argument they are making).  The problem, as I see it, isn't that nobody wants to take the time to make change happen; rather, it's that people who express their opinion publicly -- particularly one that conflicts with the status quo -- feel marginalized, excluded, and denigrated by a subset of the community who has made their opinions perfectly clear:  you're not one of us; your opinion doesn't matter.

If you don't follow me on Twitter, then you are unaware that I am attempting to teach a somewhat unusual American Lit survey in the fall.  Basically, I am not teaching the traditional American canon (i.e., the greats of U.S. literature).  Instead, my course will offer a broader interpretation of "American" to include works from U.S. writers and writers from the Americas at large -- North, Central, South, and the Caribbean.  Essentially, this course will be designed to challenge the traditional canon in almost every way; even the U.S. texts I select will offer a challenge.  While I am familiar with a great deal of work from these regions/areas, there is always the possibility that I've missed something I should seriously consider for inclusion -- hence, this post.

If you have a suggestion for a short story, play, or novel that is from one of these regions, please leave a comment.  I am also open to suggestions for U.S. works written by traditionally marginalized groups (Native Americans, people of color, etc.).

So suggest away!

P.S.:  Translations are more than welcome (and expected, considering the range I've selected).  As long as I can get it in English, it's open game.

The Hugo Awards discussion continued quiet eloquently with this post by Renay at LadyBusiness.  She does a fine job adding depth to thoughts I have had since Justin's harsh criticism for the awards and its process (thoughts I also shared in the latest episode of The Skiffy and Fanty Show).  Hopefully Renay's thoughts will bring us all down to Earth, even if only for a little while.

Go read!

I've often wondered if there is something unique about the "serious" science fiction of the first 30 years on the 20th century (i.e., non-pulp work).  Surely critics more familiar with the era can attest to this with some degree of authority, but since I do not have that experience, I must speak from what little authority I have as a reader and a relatively new teacher of SF/F literature.

From this limited perspective, Fritz Lang's remarkable 1927 film, Metropolis, resembles visionary works such as E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" (1908) and Karel Capuk's R.U.R. (1920), each drawing in no small part from earlier SF writings, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) or the lesser known Copellia by Arthur Saint-Leon (among others).  The machinic imagination of mankind, in a sense, has always been a part of SF's consciousness, right from the earliest "true" SF novel, Frankenstein, to the most important (stylistically and philosophically) productions of the era traditionally know as the "Pulp Era" -- a more accurate label would be "The Formative Era."*

It is this machinic consciousness that I think defines the era's most serious ventures in science fiction -- serious is defined here as not written exclusively for entertainment purposes (see the works I've already mentioned as examples).  For Metropolis, there is a deeply political motive behind the machinic elements:  1) the mechanization-of-man critique of the industrial revolution (imagined by Lang through the brilliant shots of bodies in perpetual motion while maintaining the "machine"); 2) the terror of the Other as imagined through the Machine Man (in this case, there is a third possible interpretation, which takes into account the film's overtly religious imagery and the mythological allusions surrounding the feminized machine "monster").  Plenty of film critics have talked about these issues already, so there's no point covering them in detail here if I have nothing new to add.  However, so much of the important fictions of the era are so deeply concerned with the development of man in relation to his/her technology that it's impossible to ignore the issue when discussing a film like Metropolis.
In a sense, I think of Metropolis as what E.M. Forster might have written if he had turned "The Machine Stops" into a full novel, or, perhaps more accurately, the combination of Jack London's political dystopia The Iron Heel (which I discussed here) and E.M. Forster's technological consciousness.  Lang's film does not shy away from the profound terror that the marriage of religion (broadly speaking), politics, and industrialization (might have) produce(d) -- bodies worn down, bit by bit, until there are no bodies left to move the machine (thus, the machine "stops"); class systems split between laborious dystopias (the under "world") and glorious utopias (the great city of Metropolis itself);** the religious iconography of the broken utopian dream (all hail the machine) and the socialist revolutionary (she is our savior from evil, for she brings us messages from the heart, not from the machine); and the groundbreaking imagination of Lang himself, who made Metropolis into a reminder that utopia has a cost.

No wonder, then, that these writers (Lang, Forster, and London, in particular) were never utopians, but realists who could not fathom the future without the immense, distressing struggle to shatter the machinic nature of man.  Metropolis, as an example, cannot help but tear down the foundations of the Industrial Revolution's grand dreams by stripping mankind of its humanity, literally and figuratively.
On the literal front, Rotwang (the mad scientist) creates the Machine Man, steals the likeness of Maria (the virginal "heroine), and turns the machine into the perfect, sadistic "human" anti-revolutionary, determined to destroy the entire system.  The theme is well known in science fiction circles:  the inhuman is always already a threat to humanity's "sovereignty."  Thus, the Machine Man's destructive tendencies are simply a transplanted fear of the mechanization of man embodied in the distressed/ing "heart" of Metropolis.  That Rotwange creates the Machine Man (and steals Maria's likeness) for his own ends (revenge) is not insignificant.  For a society that imagines itself as "utopian," it cannot control the irrational core of humanity:  emotion.
On the figurative front, Lang's repetition of mechanical choreographed "dances" suggest that adhering the machine's "whims" (or, rather, to humanity's desire to simplify the labor of life) is sacrificing the fluidity of the human subject.  Thus, we are presented with men rocking back and forth in stiff, "perfect" motions, turning dials as if part of a giant clock, where each individual is a gear that must move at just the right pace to keep the entire system running. Quite literally, a segment of Metropolis' people have sacrificed their humanity during their 10-hour work day to become the gears of a machine.  Unlike the Machine in Forster's short story, Lang's machine is laid bare.  We cannot unsee the machinic degradation of humanity, just as Freder (the "hero" of sorts) cannot unsee the lies told to him by his father (Metropolis is perfect; the workers are OK in their position and there is nothing wrong with the world as it is -- enjoy your life, my son).***

That these sorts of narratives appear frequently in the two or three decades after the turn of the century (20th, rather) seems somewhat expected, if only because we have the gift of retrospection.  The Industrial Revolution (the 1st and 2nd, really, since there were two distinct "moments") promised a "new" world (a frontier, if you will).  Lang is just one of many who apparently didn't see the "good" in the "new."  What he saw, if Metropolis is any indication, was the death of the human as an autonomous subject.  It shouldn't surprise us, then, that the same arguments are being had about the digital technologies of "tomorrow."  Is our increasingly digital (read "networked") culture yet another threat to human sovereignty, or will we weather this just like we did the Industrial Revolution?  Let's wait and see who tries to be the next Fritz Lang...


*The first 20-30 years of the 1900s were instrumental in the creation of SF as an actual genre.  Many critics include Frankenstein as SF only because it fits part of the "mold" developed by writers, editors, and publishers during the Pulp Era.  In truth, it is not SF in the generic sense, but rather in the sense of a literary history.

**Ursual K. Le Guin would play with this idea in her incredible short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" many decades later.  There are also elements of this theme in Logan's Run (the film, which I wrote about here) and many other great works from the Golden Age to the New Wave and on.

***I'm imagining dialogue that does not exist in Metropolis here.

I've made the following poll open to multiple answers.  If you could, select the three that you'd like to see me cover over for what remains of April.  Only three.  Period.  I've come to the conclusion that this will make things easier on me and you (you won't have to vote every single week to see your film get covered, and I won't have this constant rush to get to the film in the few days remaining after the poll).

I'm talking about this.  Do not click or scroll over the link if you don't want a beloved science fiction series ruined for you.  There will be no specifics below, so don't worry.

Whether you've read the link or not, the basic gist is this:  a certain someone has confirmed that they will or will not return to a TV show, and the media has reported this fact with glee.

Why is this a problem?  Because the moment I know an actor or actress is or is not returning to a TV show, I know howhow the show ends.  In this particular case, that is bad news indeed because it means the emotion I would normally feel at the end of a show like this will never come.  I have
no reason to be emotional.  I know what's going to happen before the series is even over.  In this case, the season has already been filmed, which means whatever has happened at the end is already written into the narrative.  Nobody is surprised.  Nobody has to find a way to get this person out of the show (or keep them in) without pissing off the fans.  They've already settled the issue.

None of this has anything to do with spoilers in and of themselves.  I don't have a problem with the media talking about things that have or have not already aired.  I do have a problem, however, when the headline is the spoiler.  In this case, that's exactly the problem.  The headline doesn't say "Will X be back next fall?  We Ask X About It" or something like that.  It just says "X will be back next fall" or "X will not be back next fall."  Unless I stop reading stuff on the Internet, I cannot avoid this bit of information.

Color me pissed off.

And they are:

10.  The SF/F and Related Blogs You Read
9.  Adventures in...Cancer?:  If Only You'd Been Bad Asthma (Or, Leading Up to Diagnosis -- Part Two)
8.  Hugo Award:  What I Nominated
7.  Literary Explorations:  What the hell is a "strong female character"?
6.  Poll:  The Retro Nostalgia Film (#7)
5.  Death Star Economics and Ethics? (Or, What Would You DO With a Death Star?)
4.  Link of the Day:  Liz Bourke on (Male) Rape in Epic Fantasy
3.  Hugo Awards Finalists (Plus Preliminary Thoughts)
2.  Top 10 Overused Fantasy Cliches
1.  Top 10 Cats in Science Fiction and Fantasy

I'm not sure what to make of this mishmash of old and new.  Either certain posts of mind continue to have some kind of lasting impact or aliens have set up some kind of auto-refresher that changes IPs so I can feel special about a blog.  The latter makes no sense...

April should be equally interesting, methinks.