Slightly Less Than Keen Eyes

[itsallovernow]

cofax7 posted a link to a New Yorker article about science fiction (oh, pardon, speculative fiction) television, and particularly Battlestar Galactica.

And I run smack into the problem of the genre fan upon reading this, the umpteenth article that declares a love for BSG and a disdain for other scifi, by whatever moniker.



First of all, for the love of all the gods, not every genre fan thinks they are Captain Kirk, or knows what script error happened on page 42 of the violet page of the script from Season 2 episode 12. Not everyone cares how the lasers work, or what the sexual mating habits are of the aliens seen for 6.3 minutes at the end of the episode that shall remain nameless. We are not all techno geeks or SCA wannabes, and not that I've got anything against anyone else's interests or the way they enjoy their genre, please please stop showing your ignorance by assuming that we are any less diverse, intelligent or educated than any other group of people.

It's gotten to the point where I'm resenting the press that BSG is getting because of the endless assumptions by a group of people who frankly should know better. Yes, BSG is good television. It's often great television. Is it good genre television? Shrug? Not really. The world building is not exactly monumental when it comes to projecting humanity in the future. It's a mishmosh of old mythology and slightly futuristic tech with a governing structure and a look that mirrors 21st century earth. The cylons are not an alien race, but a projection of the fears of a society that finds itself increasingly reliant upon technology that they don't understand. And even these fears aren't new, or in fact terribly significant.

And while BSG is indeed in space, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's pushing us to understand new cultures or new ideas or new visions of the universe around us. It is asking us to question our definition of humanity, our definitions of right and wrong, war and peace, and I very much understand that this feels far more accessible to those who find green skin and strange accents to be off putting. However to the same media that things bumpy foreheads are some sort of fucked up cliche best left in the playroom, dudes, have you been to Hollywood? Have you met any actual actors? Have you seen a movie in the last 60 years? Because if you have, and you can tell me that 80% of what's projected on screen isn't a bigger fantasy than a Klingon with a raygun, then I want you to give back the celebrityrouged glasses right now. And then you can prove to me that Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise aren't aliens. Can't do it, can you?

Battlestar Galactica doesn't have to build alien worlds because that isn't the story it's trying to tell. And honestly, it's the same story we've been reading for the past three thousand years. It's Odysseus and Aeneas and Moses and the Israelites. It's nostos, and searching for a home. It's finding a way to govern a citizenry and maintain the threads of what makes us human. It's damned good storytelling, but it's not an example of speculative fiction at it's finest. It's just an example of television at the top of it's game.

The fears of genre television - particularly from the mainstream and the media - seem to be that if they like an example of genre, they will instantly fall into the stereotype of believing that the created world is real. That they'll start wearing vulcan ears and translating Star Trek episodes into Latin and believing that reality tv isn't scripted. Oh, wait. Every media experience requires by in, and yeah, genre fans tend to buy in and express themselves in ways that are more florid than most, but dude, my friend Larry stood in line for 6 hours to sit in the front row of American Idol and no one thought that was strange. Well, I did, but then I don't understand that phenomenon at all, so maybe I can relate more to the general media than I thought.

But here's the thing. While I really enjoy BSG, I get angry on behalf of the rest of the genre - good and bad - for getting ignored in favor of something that is completely rejecting most of the conventions and still getting hailed as fabulous science fiction, getting taunted and teased and given ass-backwards half compliments instead of some real recognition for pushing the boundaries of storytelling. In an era of detective shows that use the exact same format (would you that in the Law & Order or the CSI version? Gritty angst or flashy flashback?), of sitcoms so bad that a former stoner with wicked eyebrows finding karma seems like the second coming of comedy, of fading reality shows and a prime time juggernaut that makes my head hurt and makes me wish for a tsunami to drown the lot of them, why aren't we celebrating the shows that take risks? I guess that's what we're doing with the media flurry over BSG, and I am grateful, really I am. This isn't resentment over the show so much as it's resentment over the choice, the language used to praise it. But you know it's getting repetetive when I feel resentment on Stargate's behalf.

Genre television, genre film and books, whether we call them scifi, fantasy or speculative fiction push the concepts of storytelling, push the limits of our imagination. Instead of stopping with who's sleeping with who, we push all the way to she's sleeping with what? It's an exploration of world's and possibilities, of the great big What If's, and the Oh God No's, and the idea of wonder and amazement and the ideal and end of everything. It's a way to push our minds to the point of conjecture, of conjure, of cohesion and conviction and connection.

I don't know where I'm going with this rant, know I circle and cycle, and what I come back to is that I'm angry with a media who knows that they can sell a story based on the tag, "I hate scifi, but I love BSG" and leave it at that. I'm angry with reviewers who watch Desperate Housewives and find Star Trek far fetched, who ask to be stimulated and intrigued by the technology we have at our disposal, and then reject the products of those efforts. And maybe the press for BSG will lead to a wider acceptance of genre and the genre fan. Maybe it will be a gateway to more good storytelling (in a way that SciFi's endless stream of truly terrible B movies just ain't gonna be). Shrug. But it feels an awful lot like damning genre with faint praise and holding up an admittedly great show as an example of something that it's not.

However, as this is a rant, and not a rallying cry, if there are people out there on my flist who don't care much for genre and yet love BSG, tell me why. Tell me what keeps you interested and invested, and more importantly, tell me what it is about science fiction that seems otherwise offputting to you.

Comments

[raithen.livejournal.com]

oh, you have NO idea how fascinating this is to me (and smrt tv should publish a (possibly slightly more polished not to say this isn't polished. I'm scared of offending. Remember, a vague disclaimer is not our friend) version of it ;).

As an academic, I was always fairly interested in possible worlds theory, because of my interests in "genre" fiction and in storytelling in general (which I find that genre fiction and genre tv often do exceptionally well). And the way we build possible worlds, whether we call those fantasy or sci fi or just plain fiction is just the same. It's execution, and tropes, nothing more. Though I don't quite get WHY the media feels the need to label and categorize and dumb down.... *sigh*

I've seen a few mins of one ep of BSG, so I can't really comment on like or dislike. But I will say I liked Buffy cuz it was well written, and because it told stories I cared about. Not because it was or was not genre. Though I very nearly DID NOT watch (hell, I didn't for the first two years) because it was "horror" and because it had vamps in the title. So I don't know.

And speaking about circling around and not making sense....

Anyway, I'm gonna point my friend jaan_quidam over here, if you don't mind. He is an American Studies PhD candidate with a strong interest in TV as pop culture and he DOES watch BSG, I'm pretty sure. ANd uses Farscape in his work, and stuff.

[raithen.livejournal.com]

it's jaanquidam, sorry ;).

and I was thinking about possible worlds, and pulling up some of the work I did in a grad seminar on the topic, and I was thinking about how all worlds, especially used fictionally, are only "possible" worlds. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen brings imaginary places into a real setting. In life, everyone sees the world in a slightly different way. Existence is really about world creation, and so to say that one genre (and now we get into the other area that I studied - I always liked my advisor's definition of genre as "stabilized enough or stabilized for now" ways of group texts and experiences) is more or less "real," more or less stylized than another is quite ridiculous. I mean, House, MD? Is NOT realistic.... A diagnostician working with the diseases they have shown?

Would have lost more than a couple of patients. etc. etc. TV, movies, novels, they are all about stylizing, about creating an effect. They are not about "truth." And lets face it, the whole notion of truth gets into murky ontological grounds that touch on journalism, documentaries, non-fiction and the entire world (A Million Little Pieces, anyone?)

And now my brain hurts. ;).

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hee - it's not at all polished. It's not even really proof read:)


And do me a favor based on this: Though I very nearly DID NOT watch (hell, I didn't for the first two years) because it was "horror" and because it had vamps in the title. So I don't know.

What was the particular turn off of this conceptually? Can you pinpoint it?

[elishavah.livejournal.com]

My gripe about this article is that I can't figure out what it said that hasn't already been said. Did it propose and prove through evidence a new perspective or theory? Not a one. Did it provide any new insight into already-available information? I sure didn't see any. So what was it for? I'll tell you: to put The New Yorker's flag in a hot/hip/attention-getting pot. Feh. I have no respect for journalists and publications that fill their whitespace by doing that; all they're doing is reinforcing the skew that's already out there.

And maybe the press for BSG will lead to a wider acceptance of genre and the genre fan.

Not when every single article I've seen (outside of the niche pubs) is defining "genre" and "genre fan" the way they are, which is basically the same definition as "Everyone in the Red States owns a pickup with a gun rack, except for that family over there who're like us, but they're like a miracle or something."

::sigh:: That article was painfully condescending. I'm waiting for the day when they stop discussing good "genre," or good "soap," or good "drama," and just talk about whether the storytelling is any good.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

to put The New Yorker's flag in a hot/hip/attention-getting pot. Feh. I have no respect for journalists and publications that fill their whitespace by doing that; all they're doing is reinforcing the skew that's already out there.

Exactly!! And that's a part of my frustration I haven't keyed into but makes utter sense.

That article was painfully condescending. I'm waiting for the day when they stop discussing good "genre," or good "soap," or good "drama," and just talk about whether the storytelling is any good.

Exactly. I think that's all I want. Well, not all, but much of what I want. Discussion of story as story, of the strengths of it, of accessing the story and analyzing the tools without the prejudice.

[raithen.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for the day when they stop discussing good "genre," or good "soap," or good "drama," and just talk about whether the storytelling is any good.

This would be nice, but seems a bit of a pipe dream. Because of centuries of tradition - we have always talked about works of literature based on the type of literature they are. And storytelling itself is in part alwasy judged to be good or bad based on the way it enacts and subverts the features of the genre to which they are said to belong. And when generic boundaries are crossed, the discussions get more intense, and often more interesting, for a while, anyway.

[raithen.livejournal.com]

I do, however, tend to agree with thea - it would be nice if the generic labels could be taxonomic, rather than judgmental, categories....

[(Anonymous)]

You know, I have to disagree. I found the first paragraph of that article to be right on the mark -- not the stereotype of genre fans, but the line about how genre -- SF in particular -- is bigger than most people are willing to realize. I'll forgive a lot for a recognition like that.

BSG is Science Fiction, or specfic, or fantasy, or space opera, or whatever it is that isn't Here, Now. It's made up. It's very accessible SF, though, because of the (uncreative and absurd) production design and the (inconsistent and nonsensical) world-building. I don't know that the content of the show matters so much as that it Looks Like mainstream television, and therefore isn't scary and alien to people.

Love the rant, Thea. It's my rant, too, although I usually bring it out when people start talking about Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishigiru. They're writing science fiction too, damnit!

[pellucid.livejournal.com]

I absolutely agree. I, too, was frustrated by this article--though BSG is still on my "to get to eventually" list, so I couldn't really form the opinion I want to form since I'm so unfamiliar with the show.

But I've been thinking a lot recently about what it is that attracts me to certain types of shows and not others, or what draws me to different shows in different ways. Why is it that I have a tendency to grow obsessive and fannish about sci fi/fantasy, whereas even the best-written "realistic" television is something I just enjoy and then turn off and go on with my day? I suspect it has quite a lot to do with possible worlds and about giving a show scope to ask certain kinds of epistemological and ontological questions that you don't get in more "realistic" drama. Certainly something I intend to probe more fully.

For the media at large, though, I think it is this stereotype of the obsesssed fan that is off-putting. As with this article, the obsessed fan type tends to get generalized into the Klingon-speaking Trekkie; yet how much would that New Yorker journalist also look down her nose at precisely what we do in LJ fan circles--read and write fanfic, discuss shows, etc.? It's a manifestation of TV enjoyment that for some reason falls outside the norm, and as with most things that fall outside the norm in capitalist conformity land, being a "genre" fan of any stripe is subject to denegration. It's a shame, because lots of people are missing out on a lot of great TV.

[ixchup.livejournal.com]

I like Ben Browder's description of "obsessed fan" and going to conventions and such fannish stuff--science fiction fans of the dressing up variety are no worse than football fans who paint themseves in their team colors and wear weird hats. Yet, football dress up is accepted whereas wearing pointed ears and knowing Klingon is not. Our culture is strange.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that everything we do here would be met with equal amounts of disdain, or not. You never know. But people get just as strangely obsessed about all sorts of things and the media tends to cut them slack that they don't offer up to genre fans;)

I think it's the assumption that everyone is the same that frustrates me, that we aren't as diverse as any other population.

And yeah, I've tried for years to figure out what grabs me about certain shows - why some are viewing only, and others compel participation. So far, it's entirely an IMO situation. Compelling characters and a universe of wonder seem to be the only variables they have in common.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

V. yummy thoughts in there. I have no such strong feelings about the media reaction to BSG and the slamming of other sci-fi that seems to accompany it far too often, but I kept nodding again and again.

This I loved so much I need to tell you:

I'm angry with reviewers who watch Desperate Housewives and find Star Trek far fetched

Spot-on.

Battlestar Galactica doesn't have to build alien worlds because that isn't the story it's trying to tell. And honestly, it's the same story we've been reading for the past three thousand years. It's Odysseus and Aeneas and Moses and the Israelites. It's nostos, and searching for a home.

YES.

Thanks for sharing. Seriously.


...I need to get my hands on the PK Wars, really. I am afraid to watch the last eps of S4 before that...

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

You're more than welcome:) The rambly, non-proof read thoughts are thankfully free:)

And dude, make sure you have the mini accessible after you watch the end of Season 4. Although I do feel like everyone should have to wait a few days to simulate what the real time viewers had to go through:) Believe me when I say that David Kemper is an evil genius.

[medie]

it might not be a rallying cry but I'm still going to say HELL YES to this because I'm not just seeing it in the bloody news. I listened to one commentary on the BSG s1 DVDs and I will never ever listen to the rest of them the same attitude permeates every fricking word that comes out of Ron Moore's mouth and his little friend, same goes with a ton of the people in the fandom.

I love BSG but the attitude of the media, the producers and a good chunk of the fans has put a SERIOUS edge on it for me. I can like it but as a fan of the rest of the genre I listen to this crap and get pissed off. It's literally shaping up for me to be that if I want to keep watching the show I have to force myself to ignore the rest of it.

Someone needs to remind these guys they are, quite lierally, reinventing the wheel.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Someone needs to remind these guys they are, quite lierally, reinventing the wheel. Oh god yes!! And yeah, I've been pretty happy with my decision to watch the show as an uninvolved viewer (aside from interacting with a bunch of people I adore on my flist).

Too many well-intentioned but grating declarations of how much the show is reinventing science fiction. It makes me angry at the message, which rubs off on the show which itself doesn't deserve my wrath. I like what it's doing as a teller of stories, but that is not new. And even there, the themes aren't new.

[mosca.livejournal.com]

Ugh. And I really like Nancy Franklin's writing on TV a lot of the time, so this was especially disappointing.

I'm kind of the inverse of what you're talking about: I'm a SF fan who doesn't much care for BSG. One of the biggest reasons for that is something that you expressed beautifully: The world building is not exactly monumental when it comes to projecting humanity in the future. It's a mishmosh of old mythology and slightly futuristic tech with a governing structure and a look that mirrors 21st century earth. The thing that I love about good SF is not its literal, extrapolative realism but its ability to capture me in a plausible, detailed world. I know that's something that many non-SF fans find off-putting -- they have to suspend their disbelief and adjust to a universe with radically different rules. So perhaps one of the factors that contributes to the mainstream adoration of BSG is exactly the thing that keeps me from enjoying it.

I'm angry with reviewers who watch Desperate Housewives and find Star Trek far fetched

Me, too. A couple of months ago, I read an article on Grey's Anatomy, written by a doctor. She declared GA a bad show on the grounds that its medicine is totally unrealistic. I've always read the show as a radically stylized fantasy, a superhero show in which the heroes are doctors. Buffy the Medical Intern. It's not set in our reality any more than Farscape is. And I'm drawing that comparison on purpose: the two shows are delightfully surreal and deeply human in much the same way.

I think it was Samuel R. Delany who wrote that "realism" is just SF that's sufficiently similar to our reality that we don't pay attention to the differences.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

So perhaps one of the factors that contributes to the mainstream adoration of BSG is exactly the thing that keeps me from enjoying it.

I think this is true (and it's one of the things that Raithen and I were discussing earlier when I asked her specifically what it was that initially kept her from watching Buffy). For me personally, I enjoy BSG, but find it off putting at times. I don't want to lose myself in any aspect of the world it's created. It's not far enough away from our reality, and it's far, far too dour.

And I love that analogy of Grey's Anatomy (I have the same theory about West Wing). And it goes along way to explaining why I adore Grey's Anatomy, and find other medical dramas so dull. (Although I did go on an ER binge for awhile).

[yahtzee63.livejournal.com]

Well said. Every single time I read that a scifi show is the "anti-Star Trek," I think, "Let's see if they turn out half as many truly great hours of TV as any of the first three Trek shows did." I'm still waiting for one to live up to that mark.

There's a lot of bad apples/oranges comparisons in TV writing, which tends to suck. We in fandom ought to know better.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hee - I will say that when Farscape defined itself as the anti-Trek, they did it both with love and with appreciation. And with the knowledge that they were far, far more interested in body fluids:)

But yeah, I think that the original Trek, and the following series produced some fabulous television that made you think and wonder and pause.

[ixchup.livejournal.com]

Thea, I've come to bury Cesar not to paraise him... probably the wrong quote but I so am in harmony with your rant/rallying cry. I have been reading and watching science fiction for over 30 years and in some ways it is more "real" than the dreck they put on TV or write in novels because it explores the human condition from many angles. Ursula LeGuin's hermaphrodites, Roger Zelazny's immortals of Amber and other places, Cliffard Simak's talking dogs and keepers of Waystations for aliens; all of these ideas explore and enrich us with ideas outside of the norm. And I am enriched for reading them.

I personally cannot watch BSG because it is so dark, but as good TV I admire it so much more than the police procedurals, comedy, and reality shows on mainstream channels. And I am pissed as well that reviewers diss science fiction shows and express admiration for this, the latest and greatest of a long line of well-written speculative fictions. Presentist arguments annoy the life out of me. When Star Trek came on the scene in 1965 it was daring and Utopian at a time when boys were dying in Viet Nam and the world was changing. Now it is an old war horse. Stargate used to be very daring in its time nine years ago. Babylon 5 was amazingly good political and geographic stories, and so on and so forth.

So bravo for you taking a stand. I stand with you. And I miss Farscape.

[sugargroupie.livejournal.com]

You do good ranting. And while the writer makes a few good points, I can't take her seriously when she's being so condescending. I think BSG is a good show, sometimes it's fantastic; but its hardly what I consider to be the highest standard of science fiction.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Snort. Thanks:)

And agreed. It's a good show, sometimes it's a great show. But...

[cofax7]

Just stumbled across this just now: it's been a while since I hit that site. But the column pretty much nails it. Excellent human drama, questionable science fiction.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link!!

I made the argument to Cranky nearly six months ago that BSG wasn't science fiction, and I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one with that perception. And of course that's all in the definition, but I think that the way I'm limiting my definition says a lot about genre, and a lot about how I still need to categorize.

hah

[electricland.livejournal.com]

p.s.: two posts down from this on my Friends page was this. I am amused.

Re: hah

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hee - you mean genre isn't about squid and wizardry:)

another couple pennies

[leadensky.livejournal.com]

Good rant.

For what it's worth:

I don't think of myself as Kirk (I'm more a Spock gal, myself), and while I don't have dialog memorized, I do get worked up over alien mating habits. (Particularly when they're human-based aliens written by people who are butt-ignorant about biology.)

I think that SF is the process of asking what if... - which everyone knows - and then (this where my contribution is), getting people to listen to the answer.

Sprinkled with a sense of wonder - both at the universe, and at the questioning of the universe.

So. For me, BSG is - beyond the para-military, young-Dobermans-in-love, post-apop, stars-n-shiny-explosions-everywhere elements that seal the deal - simply stellar for just asking questions that need to be asked - today, as much as they have ever been asked - and getting people to listen to the answers. So you can call it storytelling if you like, but I think there is a fundamental difference between SF and the rest that is not - that does not, deliberately, ask.

(note: my def of "sf" is subject to change w/o notice. *g*)

- hg

Re: another couple pennies

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hee - as someone who's gotten pretty worked up about human/alien mating habits herself, let's say I can relate:)

And yeah, I do think the basic premise of sci fi is asking what if, and it stems from there. But we also have cultural definitions of what science fiction means and does.

Sprinkled with a sense of wonder - both at the universe, and at the questioning of the universe. Which further supports the idea of removing the boundaries of labeling, because all good art should do this.

And yeah, one of the reasons I continue to watch BSG is for the questions they keep asking, the ways they explore those questions. But I do think storytelling is what I mean, speculation and weaving a tale full of layers and metaphors and questions, wherever it happens to take place.

[searose.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the article, so I speak on generalities.

Yes, I am amused by anyone surprised by an appeal based on initial labeling. "This is [X], so how could *I* like it as I do?" Obviously there was something undiscerned about an individual that enabled this, right? Some ticket punched, some intrigue heightened.

A hook is a hook, and it doesn't matter what the brand name is (as the fishies might say), only that the hook works. And there are many guilty pleasures in the world that might appall their 'victims'. *eg*

My secret theory is rampant fear of perceived immaturity. Yes, what other people might think of someone, if only the truth were known. I'm a selfish critter, so screw that noise; I'll like what I happen to like, but I can remember self-conscious days of worry... some time ago. I also don't need to talk a good game in order to justify falling for an interest. It happened, period. One day I aspire to be an Ultra-Adult who can pursue whatever she desires with blithe spirit, full responsibility assumed in that mature way.

Which means I'll be tagged as being a 'permanent kid', though I'll be tagging others as bound tightly to playground rules of arbitrary randonmess and purpose. Perspective being crucial to most everything.

You've got many a good point noted, Thea. It is aggravating when someone tries to marginalize, codify, and/or restrain encompassing broadness. We do tend to love formulaic safety (of assumption?), even when it doesn't really exist reliably in human imagination.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

We do tend to love formulaic safety (of assumption?), even when it doesn't really exist reliably in human imagination. And this really, is the justification for all genre, all art - good, bad and firmly in the middle.

[fourteenlines.livejournal.com]

All I have for this is a big giant: "Sing it, sister!"

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hee:) You wouldn't say that if you'd every actually heard me sing:)

[kerlin.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes. This is the rant I've had burning under the surface since I read the article. Thank you for putting it in such brilliant words for me.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hugs you. I actually liked this article more than most, but it's the prevailing sentiment that KILLS me.

[beck-liz.livejournal.com]

Thank you. You know, I'm glad that people who aren't normally into science fiction enjoy BSG. Really. But when they say stuff like "transcending the genre" it makes me want to grind my teeth. As if the genre of science fiction is a bad, silly thing, unlike all other genres. Pfft.