April 2013

SF/F Commentary

Movie Review: Oblivion (2013)

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(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

World in the Satin Bag

How Not to Write a Review (or, “Oblivion isn’t about Tom Cruise, dumbass…”)

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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.

SF/F Commentary

Literary Explorations: Gender Normativity, Genre Fiction, and Other Such Nonsense

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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

World in the Satin Bag

The Sequel We Deserve: Galaxy Quest…2 or the Show?

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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?

SF/F Commentary

Academic Spotlight: Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure edited by Kathryn Allan

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(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!

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