Everything Old Is New Again

This is cross-posted to my LiveJournal blog here. Feel free to comment in either place if you like. This is a summary of the presentation I gave at SFRA 2007.

1. Introduction

[1.1] I had several requests from people who wanted a copy of the paper I presented at SFRA 2007 (our panel was against some mighty stiff competition!). Although I spoke off notes and a proper paper does not exist, I’ve reconstructed the bones of my argument here. I hasten to add that our panel was not a proper panel, where we read papers stuffed with theoretical frameworks and dense quotations from critics; rather, we spoke to spark discussion with the audience and create a dialogue.

[1.2] The panel was called, “The Golden Age of SFTV Is Now,” and we discussed current SFTV offerings. Several of the texts I discussed are not yet available in the United States, notably both series of Life On Mars (LOM) and series 3 of Doctor Who (DW). At the request of audience members, I got rid of all specific textual examples of DW series 3 to avoid spoiling anyone, and I will do that here. However, spoilers may exist for all aired eps of the following programs in particular: Battlestar Galactica (BSG), LOM, ReGenesis, and series 1 and 2 of DW.

2. Outline of the argument

[2.1] I began by showing a clip from Life On Mars (LOM) that summarized the setup of the show, which is about a cop in Manchester, England, in 2006 who mysteriously gets thrown back into time to 1974, where he returns to police work, but in what seems to him to be a wholly alien world. This clip beautifully illustrates my point about the old and the new colliding. (My other goal was to make people want to see the program, and I like to think that I succeeded. By the way—BEST. SHOW. EVER.)

[2.2] My focus is the rethinking and repurposing of texts to keep them relevant. (See my blog post here about this activity and Robert Heinlein.) I discuss specific changes in the SFTV genre to keep the texts relevant. BSG was repurposed by taking the basic characters and situation from the old show and then entirely reimagining it. LOM creates a collision between the old and the new by having a modern person confront the police procedures of the past, with his ideas, which seem to be a matter of course to us, looked at askance by his work colleagues. DW takes an old franchise and cleverly updates it for a new audience. And ReGenesis‘s “twenty minutes into the future” take on the hard sciences deliberately creates collisions between the old and the new, both in the presentation of science and in the topics and themes evident in certain episodes.

3. Changes in the SFTV genre

[3.1] An earlier presentation at the conference by Lisa Yaszek noted that our reading of SFTV still uses criteria established during the cold war. I argue that this is slowly changing, and the new SFTV does certain things to the genre that update it. However, the “new” that I discuss is in opposition to this cold war–era “old,” which is the default way to structure a text, with set ways of reading the genre.

[3.2] One such updating is handheld camera work, originally used in the SF genre by Firefly, and used to great effect by BSG in particular to create a sense of realism and immediacy. This helps with the suspension of disbelief required with SF in general, because SF is not congruent with reality.

[3.3] Another updating is the inclusion of long story arcs, championed by Babylon 5 and before that by the original DW, which featured story arcs that covered an entire season. Many SF shows, such as Farscape, BSG, and ReGenesis, play with long story arcs, which permit better character development as well as complex plots that reward faithful viewing. However, the default in the SFTV genre is still stand-alone eps that can be syndicated.

[3.4] A third updating is the inclusion of a moment of emotional closure at the end of an ep. This is a further nod to character development, and it’s also a nod to audience members (usually the female demographic) whose desire for character closure is equal to the desire for plot-driven narrative closure.

[3.5] Finally, SFTV updates the genre by creating character-driven as well as action-driven stories. SFTV is thus less idea-driven that perhaps it was in the past, particularly during the heyday of the original Star Trek, when SFTV was more a genre of ideas (now it is often action-adventure). Further, plots are created to resonate with current events.

4. Gender, sex, and race

[4.1] Perhaps the most obvious example of gender changes in the SFTV genre is the character of Starbuck on BSG, which recast Starbuck as a woman. BSG also further problematizes gender by creating the Cylons and making them human; the character of Six is a wonderful updating of the robot. BSG in general features many strong women characters. Gender equity is a much bigger deal now, as evidenced by LOM, which features 1974-style overt sexism against a female police officer that strikes the modern audience is patently ridiculous, and which is delicately handled by the protagonist. In both texts, the juxtaposition of old and new makes the point.

[4.2] In addition to gender concerns in the show itself, SFTV is also retooling to appeal to a female audience, partly by casting more women in strong, crucial roles, but also by reworking the stories, as noted above, to include relationship- and character-driven plots.

[4.3] BSG again serves as a good example of the updating of race relations for a new audience. Race is partially subsumed into the Cylons, who now look human. The Other has been recoded as female, and as a robot. DW’s Rose, who is white, is in an interracial relationship with her boyfriend Mickey, who is black. However, my best examples of the problematics of race (and gender) are all from series 3 of DW by Martha, and so I will not discuss them here. Sex is updated in BSG by being treated frankly; however, most shows—including, disappointingly, BSG—do not treat homosexuality very well, despite the fine example of B5 years before in the person of Ivanova. DW’s character Captain Jack, who stars in DW’s spinoff, Torchwood, is bisexual, but he’s a fun, zany, outrageous character from another time and place.

5. Technology

[5.1] Technology is an interesting example in the “everything old is new again” paradigm because several shows treat it as a throwback, notably LOM, which uses old technology (the protagonist tries to use 1974-era tools to perform 2006-era functions, such as tape-recording interviews with suspects); and BSG, in which old technology can’t be infiltrated or subverted by the Cylons and is therefore safer. In these series, technology isn’t an end or an answer or the main driver of the plot; it’s a tool that permits a job to be done.

6. Conclusion

[6.1] SFTV has changed to make the genre more relevant to the concerns of its audience and to permit large-scale storytelling. The new shows do not hit the reset button that so infuriates Star Trek fans, whereby each episode stands alone and the characters never change or grow. The updating permits these more character-driven shows to deal with complex, difficult issues, including ones that mirror current events.

Reclaiming Heinlein

This is cross-posted at my LiveJournal blog here. Do feel free to comment in either space.

1. Reclaiming Heinlein

[1.1] At the 2007 SFRA/Heinlein Centennial meeting, at a panel about Heinlein’s importance in the field of SF literature chaired by prominent SF writers, several people in the audience noted that Heinlein was their gateway into SF. They wished their children, grandchildren, nieces, or nephews to share the joy they remembered with Heinlein’s juveniles, and so they gave them as gifts. But, as many audience members noted, these children perceived Heinlein as irrelevant, and they did not enjoy the texts.

[1.2] Why would this be? Some people at the panel thought that it was the fault of the children—that they were not sophisticated enough readers, perhaps; or their minds had been taken over by video games, rendering them unfit for texts that require some kind of attention span. Others thought that the texts dealt with things (like…Nazis) that current children find irrelevant.

[1.3] Although it certainly seems a truism that excellent literature is always relevant, if only for the beauty of its writing, I’d argue something quite different. Yes, Heinlein is dated. His sexual politics in particular are problematic: his characterizations of female characters are definitely a product of their time, and they haven’t aged well; and as the panelists and audience agreed, Heinlein’s later writing wasn’t as fine as his middle-era stuff. Still, we read, for example, Shakespeare and consider him vitally important.

[1.4] I argue that there are two reasons why we consider Shakespeare relevant for today. First, and most importantly, Shakespeare is crucially important in understanding the English-language literature that came after. There are so many allusions and citations by other authors to Shakespeare that to know nothing about Shakespeare means that you will miss the joke, an entire other layer of meaning implied with a single phrase that evokes an entire other text. You simply can’t hear “to be or not to be” or think of Juliet on a balcony without the entirety of the texts tingeing the context.

[1.5] But second, we continually reinvent Shakespeare, and thus we ensure he remains relevant. In short, Shakespeare is relevant because we make him so. Producers stage Shakespeare interestingly, perhaps by setting it in the Nazi era or some other time period, to comment on current events or to imply certain things about the characters; they may use casting choices laden with contemporary meaning; and scholars analyze Shakespeare in terms he’d find most surprising, such as feminism and deconstruction.

[1.6] If Heinlein is to be relevant to today’s youth, then we must make him so. As teachers, we must reclaim the texts in such a way that it is placed within a framework that new readers will find meaningful. (Perhaps a dense deconstructive or feminist or posthuman reading of Heinlein’s juveniles is in order? Although I’m sure such texts exist and I simply know nothing about them.) Shakespeare’s legacy informs countless other texts; not so with Heinlein. The question then becomes, is Heinlein worth the trouble of reclaiming? Is his work so important to the field of SF that we need to ensure that Heinlein remains perennially relevant? And if he is so darn important, then why isn’t this work being done?

[1.7] I admit that my answer to my question above—is Heinlein worth reclaiming?—would be no. It’s hard to look at a cultural moment so close in time to ours, without the benefit of hindsight, but Heinlein’s prose is not ravishing, his characters timeless, his struggles truly epic, even if they take place on the Moon. It was Philip K. Dick, after all, not Heinlein, who was chosen to expand the pantheon of canonical American writers in the Library of America. I would read Heinlein not for the sheer joy of it, but because he is an important SF figure at a particular moment in time. In short, I would read his books for historical completeness. Of course it’s hard to say where Heinlein will be in twenty years’ time. Dick seems relevant today because he deals with ontological concerns that relate to the human condition. That translates better into today’s climate, although he shares with Heinlein the problem with women characters (when they appear) so endemic in work of, say, the 1950s. Heinlein writes adventure stories about boys and men (and occasionally girls and women), often to teach a lesson, but it’s hard to make didacticism compelling. That’s part of the problem.

[1.8] Of course, it’s unfair to compare Heinlein with Shakespeare. Still, my analogy remains valid: if Heinlein is really that important in the SF pantheon, then we must ensure that he remains so by doing the work that goes along with handing someone a book—work that is apparently not in the process of being done, if the anecdotes told at the panel hold true. Instead of a pat on the head and an “Enjoy!” (which is all that is necessary for Harry Potter), the text may need a gloss: “This one is about individualism,” one may advise; or “When I read this, I thought x, but it strikes me that you might find y more relevant.” Certain books, such as Starship Troopers, may seem more relevant in today’s era of war, of fighting an enemy without ever winning. Teachers need to teach his work, and scholars need to study it for it to be truly reclaimed.

[1.9] Heinlein needs to be analyzed in such a way that we find relevance for today, not merely remembered for its importance at a crucial time in our lives—that golden era when we discover SF and its boundless possibilities, and the direction of our lives is changed forever. That’s what we’re remembering when we hand Heinlein to children. We aren’t remembering Heinlein’s greatness as much as feeling nostalgia for a moment of wonder. To foster that sense of wonder in children today, we should consider choosing another text.

SFRA 2007: Kansas City

What follows is a summary of the papers I heard at the 2007 SFRA meeting in Kansas City. I’ll blog separately about my own paper; and about my thoughts about reimaging and repurposing old texts, and whether or not doing that is worth our time.

This entry is cross-posted at LJ here.

July 5, 2007: Plenary Session: The Importance of Robert A. Heinlein (Goonan, Gunn, Pohl, Steele)

The distinguished authors briefly spoke before inviting discussion. The importance of Robert A. Heinlein (RAH) reached consensus: as Pohl put it, RAH was important because Heinlein put together all the elements of other SF (Smith’s far-flung space opera; Weinbaum’s alien aliens; van Vogt’s alien POV) and made all these astounding things seem normal. Steele noted that RAH was one of the four greats (along with Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke), and he was to SF what Hemingway was to 20th-century American literature: after Hemingway, you couldn’t read or write the same way any more, and with RAH, itw as the same way.

RAH was also important because his work, particularly his juveniles, provided a broad entry into SF and made it broadly appealing. He was important (as Gunn noted) in publishing because he pioneered the SF best-seller as a genre; he opened the market in the previously impenetrable-to-SF slicks; and he broadened teh market for juveniles.

Discussion touched on RAH’s libertarian political beliefs; his juveniles as sophisticated, adult SF (but without sex); his career’s rough division into early, middle, and late stages, with the middle stage being his best work; and his problems writing women characters. Discussion also indicated anecdotally that RAH juveniles no longer serve as an entry text into SF for today’s adolescents, because his work strikes adolescents as less relevant.

July 6, 2007: Fighting Futures (Sharp, Yaszek)

Patrick Sharp, in “Monsters from Darwin’s Id,” talked about gender and Darwinism in 1950s SF films, concluding that Darwinism was applied by the films’ creators to argue that the evolution of the use of technology would permit humanity to survive. The threat of the atomic bomb, these films argue, can be defused by rational, science-based society. Women contribute via male selection and do not themselves upset the patriarchal order. Savagery is implicit in a matriarchal structure (as in giant ants); if a woman is in charge, then things are in dire straits indeed.

Lisa Yaszek, in a paper about adapting Golden Age SF written texts to the screen, discussed Judith Merril’s Shadows of the Hearth, which was turned into a film called Atomic Attack, in terms of the change in the role, from word to film, of the female protagonist. The text version focused on the female protagonist’s being thrust into a position of power because of her rationality and her ability to get things done. In the film version, the heroine was subsumed to the civil defense hero, and the heroine ends up going back into the kitchen. Yaszek noted we still judge SF storytelling by the criteria established during the cold war, and that the films created at the time were often helped out (stock footage, or financial support) by the U.S. government in exchange for positive portrayals of the military and the government.

July 6, 2007: New Critical Perspectives on SFTV (Maus, Stannish, Doran, Spirko)

Derek Maus, in “Megaparodies of Fan Culture in the Revived Doctor Who Television Series,” discussed the text’s parody and play with fan culture, where fandom is both warned of the dangers, and celebrated. The Series 2 episode “Love and Monsters” was closely analyzed. Maus also noted that the series used alternative media (Martha Jones’s blog), which connected to the fan base; and also noted that the new show comments directly on current events, further parodying today’s world. He concludes that DW is telling us to pay better attention to what’s important around us: the world is so much darker, madder, and better.

Steven M. Stannish discussed “Orientalism, Egyptomania, and ‘The Pyramids of Mars,’” the latter a 1975 Fourth Doctor adventure. He used Said and other Orientalist theory to argue that the stereotypes presented are comfortable to the viewer by presenting Egyptians and Middle Easterners as a reflection of anxiety. The script and language (including bogus hieroglyphics), as well as the use of modern-day Arabic (subtitled in English) presented as ancient Egyptian create an atmosphere that doesn’t attempt to be realistic, but that this kind of stereotype was comfortable to the viewership, creating a kind of coded shorthand; yet the show was aware of this and likely manipulating these symbols directly.

Christine M. Doran, in “Farscape: The Domestic in Danger,” used criticism on domestic theory to inform a discussion of the character of John Crichton, arguing that Crichton sought to defuse threats to the domestic by turning the alien into a friend, who may then be brought into the family. Farscape is interesting because the one who must change (Aeryn) is female, and a male figure becomes the domesticating force, an interesting gender reversal. The theme of the show is, “Will John humanize the aliens?”

Robert Spirko, in “Cylons vs. Cybermen,” talked about a posthuman world without humans. Media SF is often technophobic; it fears the loss of the human body. Yet Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica present compelling images of the rise of the machine and of new views of humanity. Spirko linked this to the Singularity: the desire to transcend the human body, which may end up going horribly awry, with transcendence resulting in inhumanity.

July 6, 2007: The Golden Age of SFTV Is Now (Rodrigo, Hellekson, Jacobsen)

This mini-panel featured brief sketches of ideas by the three presenters, followed by longer discussion with input from the audience. Shelley Rodrigo discussed technofetishism in techology-based procedural shows like CSI and Bones, which she argues are a kind of revamped SF that ultimately argues that rationality and science will answer all questions and catch the guilty. Karen Hellekson discussed the repurposing and intermixing of the old and the new in such TV shows as Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica (both recently revived) and Life on Mars (set in the past), concluding that the old texts are being tweaked to appeal to a new audience in terms of gender, race, class, and genre expectations. Craig Jacobsen talked about a kind of chimerism of narrative, with a huge number of densely interweaving texts (a trilogy of movies, a trilogy prequel, novel tie-ins, fan fiction, novelizations, DVD commentary, rereleases, etc.) creating a large, unruly whole that problematizes the whole notion of the text or what is available to study—or appropriate to study (what is canonical?).

July 7, 2007: Giant Fallout (Goodridge, De Los Santos, Rockwood)

Kelly L. Goodridge, in “Pacificism and Paranoia in The Day The Earth Stood Still, discussed this important cold war–era film in terms of increasing anxiety. A peaceful alien comes, yet no one will listen to him, and in fact, they seek to destroy him. The film depicts a kind of top-down paranoia, with the fear coming from above: the military. The message, however, is that unity is necessary for humanity’s long-term existence, and that individuals can make a difference in the world.

Oscar De Los Santos, in “Extra Large: Exploring Giant Creature Cinema,” linked films that feature giant creatures (lizards, ants, spiders, etc.) to the anxiety of the bomb and to war. He linked the cold war to the war on terror; the giant creatures mirror the political climate. The cratures embody the anxiety (war, nuclear bomb, epidemic), and the people around it reflect the criticism the film makes (apathy? indifference? agency?). Discussions of The Host (2007), a Korean film inspired by the SARS epidemic, and Transformers, an American film that reassuringly glorifies the military, show that the formula is still active.

Bruce Rockford, in “Heinlein’s Starship Troopers,” discussed both the text version and the film version and overtly linked the hivelike unity of the miltary with the very bugs they are fighting. Citizenship is granted via military service, interestingly linking these two concepts. Rockford noted that the old 1950s films now resonate in a new political climate. Starship Troopers is interesting because the struggle is all; the war is never really won. It results in a stratified society engaged in endless war.