August 2013

Film Lists

Star Trek Movies and TV Shows: Ranked by Me

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On August 11th, Badass Digest released a Trekkie-voted ranked list of all the Star Trek movies to date (plus Galaxy Quest, for some reason).  It’s a strange list, to say the least.  Why is Galaxy Quest on there?  Other than the fact that it’s a mostly-direct parody of Star Trek, it isn’t actually a Star Trek movie.  And why did they stick Star Trek Into Darkness at the end, when it’s obviously not the worst film on the list? OK, so I have a good answer for that last question.  We talked about this a little in a recent Shoot the WISB episode.  Basically, the reversal of the Khan narrative probably came off as a slap in the face to Trekkies.  I even think it smelled disgusting, even though I kind of like the idea of switching things around.  After all, Spock isn’t supposed to be an emotional man, so the idea that he’d break down after the supposed death of Kirk adds some weight to the moment.  But…it wasn’t handled well.  There wasn’t enough character development; the death of Kirk was handled in the way you’d expect a comic book to handle it:  he’s dead…wait, no, not really, here’s some magic *poof.*  At least in Wrath of Khan, Spock died.  He was dead dead dead.  The film never says “hey, we’ll magic him into existence…right at the end.”  If you’ve never seen Search for Spock, you really do think the guy has friggin died.  And that’s a big deal.  The audience sometimes needs that slap in the face. But I digress.  Prepare to be pissed off.  The following is my ranked list of Star Trek movies, minus Galaxy Quest: 12.  Star Trek (you can see why I still hate the film here and here) 11.  Star Trek:  Insurrection (the villains just didn’t do it for me; it felt too much like an unnecessarily extended episode of the regular show, and the absurdity of the plot never seemed to gel or follow through for me, despite some nifty action sequences in the end) 10.  Star Trek V:  The Final Frontier (I want to like this film, but too much of this film’s central elements are ridiculously underdeveloped; for example, both Sybok and the “god” thing at the end are given almost the same amount of characterization, despite the fact that the latter is only in the film for maybe seven minutes — we never really know who Sybok is, except that he’s kinda nuts) 9.  Star Trek:  Nemesis (there are certainly a lot of problems with this film, most notably in the convoluted plot; however, Tom Hardy does a fantastic job as Shinzon, and Captain Kirk really does almost get sucked dry like a character in a vampire movie, which seemed pretty cool to me) 8.  Star Trek Into Darkness (though I quite enjoy this sequel to Abrams’ first ST film, it certainly suffers from reboot-idis; case in point, the fact that the writers could not include Khan in this version of the universe without making annoying and poorly conceived references to the original Wrath of Khan.  More on my thoughts, along with some others, here) 7.  Star Trek:  Generations (I think if I watched this movie again, I’d like it a lot less than I do in my memory; that said, I love the continued development of Data as a character, let alone the fact that this film really does give a lot of closure to the original TNG series — plus, saucer separation = awesome) 6.  Star Trek III:  The Search for Spock (the one thing the original ST movies did well was comedic development between the principle cast; having Spock’s katra, or soul, trapped in McCoy’s body pretty much makes for comedic gold.  Add in Christopher Lloyd as the villain and you’ve got a pretty decent ST film) 5.  Star Trek VI:  The Undiscovered Country (while the villain doesn’t have quite the prowess of Khan, his obsession with Shakespeare adds a certain creep factor to this otherwise straightforward political assassination thriller — overall, I thought it did pretty damn well for itself, particularly considering the political implications of an alliance between the Federation and the Klingon Empire) 4.  Star Trek:  First Contact (the Borg are probably my favorite villain species in the entire ST franchise; the best part of this film, however, involves seeing humanity make that first stretch to the stars and all that comes with it) 3.  Star Trek:  The Motion Picture (I know a lot of people hate this movie, but I’ve always found it infinitely fascinating; it kept with the original narrative of exploration at the heart of the show, and the discovery itself was so cool) 2.  Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan (you all know why this is in the top two slots; everyone loves this movie) 1.  Star Trek IV:  The Voyage Home (my grandma loved this movie, and so she made me watch it…a lot.  Obviously, it still has a special place in my heart, and it played a crucial role in my childhood love of whales and the ocean.  Also:  the movie still makes me laugh) And here’s my ranked list of Star Trek TV shows: 6.  Star Trek:  the Animated Series (it exists, and that’s good enough for me) 5.  Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine (there are aspects of this show I really like, but the fact that it takes until season two for anything interesting to happen and that some of the actors are just horrible makes me unable to move this higher on the list) 4.  Star Trek:  the Original Series (it’s classic, I know, but I didn’t grow up on the original series, so I can only put it in the #4 slot because of its classic nature — don’t kill me) 3.  Star Trek:  Enterprise (everyone hates this one for some reason; I liked the attempt to have a single narrative riding through everything and the focus on humanity as the new kid on the proverbial block.  I’m also in agreement with

SF/F Commentary

Open Road Media and Genre-Bending Novels (and a Book Sale)

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Open Road Media is running a sort of awareness campaign / sale for novels which essentially defy categorization.  There are quite a few interesting books on the list, so in case you’re interested in that sort of thing, here are the details: Jonathan Carroll. Edward Whittemore. Robert R. McCammon. James Morrow. All of these authors have written novels that defy our understanding of conventional genres. More than just literary fiction, these novels rejoice in the fantastic and the sublime. Since their initial publication, many of these stories have been categorized as science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and “other.” This week, Open Road Media is celebrating these tales of the in-between. Novels that, for one reason or another, refuse to be categorized. We encourage you to take a look at the ten ebooks we’ve selected and expand your conception of genre fiction. The titles with the asterisk* will be on sale for $3.99 or less until August 20th. 1. The Summer Isles* by Ian R. MacLeod2. From the Teeth of Angels by Jonathan Carroll3. Black Light by Elizabeth Hand4. Sinai Tapestry* by Edward Whittemore5. The Eighth Square* by Herbert Lieberman6. Expiration Date* by Tim Powers7. Mine by Robert R. McCammon8. The Broken Land* by Ian McDonald9. The Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow10. The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti by Stephen Graham Jones Cross genre boundaries and join the conversation this week. Feel free to share your thoughts on your site, or contribute to ours. Even our authors are speaking out. “The real reason I write across genre lines,” explains Stephen Graham Jones,” “is because I want to see cool stuff.” You can find details about the books on sale here. There’s an interesting question behind all of this:  what are some of your favorite genre-bending stories?  And so that’s the question I’ll leave you all with: What are some of your favorite genre-bending novels, short stories, or films?

SF/F Commentary

Talking About Wonder Woman and Her “Problems”…Again

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Some time back, I talked about the path I hope the studios will take for a film adaptation of the Justice.  Since such an adaptation will naturally include popular characters like Wonder Woman and Flash, I felt compelled to talk about why the studios had to approach the whole venture carefully to avoid the pitfalls of camp that continue to plague the characters.  Now, I feel compelled to talk a little bit more about Wonder Woman, and it’s all Tansy Rayner Roberts’ fault. Last month, Tansy Rayner Roberts took a stab at the reasons why people think Wonder Woman won’t work in film.  I agree with Roberts that most, if not all, of the reasons are pretty dumb, especially the argument that movies with female superheroes are stupid.  Nope.  Nope nope nope nope nope.  There are certainly bad movies which include female superheroes, but those movies suck because they are bad movies, not because you’re being asked to root for the ladies.  Not surprisingly, people do actually go to movies involving female superheroes.  Shocking, I know.  I mean, how the frak is that even possible?  It must be witchcraft…or a Kenyan government conspiracy involving the IRS. Anywhoodles. Roberts’ rightly points out, in agreement with Shoshana Kessock on Tor.com, that one of the major “problems” with Wonder Woman concerns her explicit feminist nature: I think Shoshanna at Tor is right on the money with her article – the “problem” with Wonder Woman is that most people don’t know how to deal with an unapologetically feminist character. Writers panic. Executives panic. The way that women in particular are written in Hollywood is so vastly different to the way that superheroes tend to be written, that when the two concepts are combined, fear and cosmetics companies and ice-cream tend to get thrown at the resulting mess until it goes away. I also agree with this premise, which is why I like the idea of Wonder Woman as a character, even though I think she frequently falls prey (in the public consciousness of her character) to a certain kind of campy optimism.  Done right, she could make for a profitable and, well, qualitatively good franchise of films.  I’d love to see some well-written Wonder Woman movies.  Watch her battle to save the Earth and for equality. Of course, the character hasn’t always had this optimistic feminist view of things.  I don’t know if Roberts has read the recent Flashpoint crossover event, but I would certainly like to hear her opinion on the portrayal of Wonder Woman and the Amazons in that particular set of comics.  If any major event in the DC universe has been officially put in the studio’s list of “stuff we’re not going to put on the screen…ever,” it would be Flashpoint.  Well, there are probably other things in there, and some sexist jackass is probably sitting in an office somewhere thinking about ways to kill (in the comic book definition of the word) Wonder Woman after turning her into a “misandrist” villain.  Maybe not… I actually really liked her costume in Flashpoint… For those unfamiliar with the comics, I’ll briefly explain the main thrust of the Flashpoint event, though I won’t tell you how the event got started, as that would ruin the reveal at the end.  Basically, something happens and the entire DC universe is rewritten, changing the entire power structure of the Earth.  From the first few comics, we learn two crucial things:  Wonder Woman and Aquaman had originally agreed to marry in order to unite their kingdoms, but an assassination plot led to the death of Wonder Woman’s mother (i.e., the Queen), followed by a massive war between the two kingdoms.  Half of Europe is under water, the United Kingdom has been taken over by the Amazons, and all is chaos.  In the middle of all of this, we learn that an entire faction of the Amazons (enough that Wonder Woman’s ignorance of their doings is rather difficult to believe) has been doing two things:  1) enslaving or killing men, and 2) subjecting women to genetic and psychological re-wiring to make them part of the Amazons, too.  Can you see why this wouldn’t work all that well on film? Now, I’m not one to make grand Men’s Rights claims about misandry (these claims are, to put it bluntly, brainless).  I don’t buy into the idea that feminism is the hatred of men.  I’ve never met a feminist who hates me because I have a penis; I have met men who hate women because they have vaginas.  But setting aside the motivations for the power games in Flashpoint, the simple fact remains that the Amazons are not portrayed as particularly positive feminists.  If anything, I wouldn’t call them feminists at all in this alternate universe.  They actively express their hate of men, engage in activities which involve the oppression of men, and manipulate, destroy, and/or augment women in an attempt to inject new blood into the ranks.  They are, in effect, pretty much frakking evil (Wonder Woman, as I’ve noted, may not actually know what is going on under her nose; either that or she’s naive as hell)(truthfully, there aren’t that many “good people” in the Flashpoint universe).  They’re kind of like a literal representation of what anti-feminists imagine actual feminists are like.  You know the narrative:  they run around trying to think about ways to oppress men, keep everything for themselves, ruin society, and so on and so forth.  Basically, they’re an idiot’s wet dream. I bring all of this up because I think it’s important to recognize that Wonder Woman as a character can, as Roberts points out, ruffle feathers, in no small part because she is, largely speaking, an open feminist and advocate for women’s rights (in my experience, anyway).  Flashpoint, however, is a terrible deviation from her positive narrative.  And it’s canon.  It’s part of her development in the modern age of comics.  Studios will avoid it like the plague for what they think

Retro Nostalgia

Retro Nostalgia: Aliens (1986) and Ripley’s Maternities (Some Rambly Thoughts)

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(What follows are some random thoughts I had while re-watching James Cameron’s Aliens.  I’d love to open up a nice discussion about the film, so feel free to leave a comment agreeing/disagreeing with or adding to my argument(s).) I’ve always loved the relationship between Ripley and Hicks.  Obviously, it’s implied that there’s a significant romantic link between them, but the film makes light of it through jokes, in part so the very real problem — survival in the face of certain death — never falls prey to the romantic narrative underneath.  And there’s also a sense — for me, anyway — that Ripley and Hicks don’t actually have to develop a romantic relationship for there to be something between them. A lot of people also read Aliens as a narrative about maternity.  I’ve started to think about the narrative as a metaphor for unexpected parenthood (and child mortality), too.  If you think about it, the first chunk of the film focuses on Ripley’s return to the world; one of the reveals is the death of her child, whose death she cannot prevent.  While an inaccurate metaphor for infant mortality or some equally naturalistic death of one’s child, these sections of the film seem remarkably like a story about a parent dealing with the death of a child.  In this interpretation, Burke takes the form of a father (I can’t think of a single mention of the biological father of Ripley’s daughter, so I assume one of the two is out of the picture — probably Ripley, which is unusual in the real world).  Since Burke represents Ripley for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, who seem to be the ones in control of everything, he also acts as a kind of father figure in the remotest sense.  Her relationship with him, as such, is strained by his link to the Company and to her past (i.e., the death of her child, etc.).  I also think there’s something profoundly disturbing to read into Burke’s actions near the end of the film, in which he tries to infect/impregnate Newt and Ripley with xenomorphs (a rape and child abuse metaphor?). The other maternity narrative is one we’ve all probably heard before:  Ripley’s “adoption” of Newt.  I think of Newt not necessarily as the adopted child in a traditional sense, but more as a discovery of a child you didn’t know you had.  Ripley jumps into the role of mother figure quite naturally (she is technically a mother, after all), but she also seems to acknowledge the distance between them.  These two elements suggest to me that Newt is supposed to take the place of an unexpected child.  But I’ll admit that this idea is not as thought out as I would like. I won’t suggest that Aliens is a perfect film from a feminist perspective, but it’s hard to imagine it as anything else.  Every aspect of the narrative involves questions about the place of women in worlds that for so long have been the domain of men.  After all, in 1986, women didn’t serve in combat positions in the U.S.  In Aliens, they do (even Ripley, though she sort of gets roped into it).  Women are shown doing a lot of things our culture likes to tell them they can’t do.  They can have children and work jobs “meant for men.”  They can serve in the military, use weapons or heavy machinery, fly complicated aircraft, fight for themselves, and on and on and on.  True, most of the women die in this movie, but so do most of the men.  This is one of the reasons why I love this movie.  It doesn’t pander to a masculine audience in the same way as other SF action movies.  Ripley isn’t eye candy here.  She doesn’t run around bending over so you can see her toned abs or the curves of her breasts or her toosh or whatever (not that she’s not physically attractive, mind, but most of the characters in this movie end up covered in filth and wounds; the whole Megan-Fox-bends-over-a-car-so-we-can-stare-and-her-tumtum wouldn’t make any sense in that context).  If anything, what makes Ripley such an attractive character is the fact that she is a character.  And, honestly, I think she’s probably the greatest female protagonist in all of science fiction. But maybe I’m stretching with that last statement… ——————————————————– Note:  I may return to this film for the Retro Nostalgia feature.  Keep an eye out for that.

SF/F Commentary

Shakespeare Roleplaying (or, the Ridiculous Things Adam Callaway and I Do on Google+)

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This is what happens when Adam Callaway and I are bored and talking to one another on Google+.  We turn into Shakespearean wannabes!  Enjoy: Me: I am made of air.  Adam: More like water.   Me: Nay, careful knave, for I am beseeched by sun bursts in this blessed hour of whitefall. Have at thee!   Adam: Let’s do this.   Me: In whose blessed light hath thee been scorned, knave? By what weighted fringe hat thy ears been boxed in pheasant rank! Wouldest thou fell the beast who birthed thee if thee could see thine eyes turn life to minstrels?   Adam: Ahhh…my jest! By the final gray rays of Urth’s dying sun do I curse thee.   Me: Curse! Curse, say thee? What breath breathed in blank halls giveth thou such petty gift? Forsake thy oath for squabbles of pilfered magic, sir?   Adam: Pilfered?! Surely you jest. These arcane tongues are hard earned in the deepest catacombs of Baldric caverns, where the great gray eye of Sol cannot peer. It is there that magics breed in silence. It is there that I harvest them.   Me: Pilfered, most dearly, for in thy trek to those dank caverns you tender the trips of your fallen gardens. Haste thee to rend souls to flour for Urth, for thy cultish fancies. Haste thee to scoop matter from cantankerous old fool whose minds are but trifles before Urth. Nay, you are no sorcery, Mandrick. Thou art the whistler of demons, whose sad songs make plight in the halls of emperors.  Adam: Aye. I do whistle for demons. And the demons come for me. I draw them into my breath, nurture them in my lungs with sweet, longing words of innocence lost and promised revenge, release them with a poisonous flick of my many forked tongue. They flee into the world, the world of this cinder Urth, so long removed from glorious golden light, to rend holes in the flesh of our world, sink there teeth into the severed ganglion of humanity’s last bastionic hero, and drink. Drink deeply my demon dogs.

SF/F Commentary

The Fan: Discussing a Definition (in Dialogue w/ Jonathan McCalmont & Justin Landon)

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I’ve been inspired, you might say, to talk about something I’ve had the itch to talk about since I started reading the Hugo Awards voting packet.  I blame Justin Landon and Jonathan McCalmont for daring to talk about stuff, especially since they have a skill for ruffling feathers (with love, of course).  Over at Staffer’s Book Review, Landon criticizes the SF/F convention circuit for, as he puts it, privileging the voices of those without credibility; though Jonathan McCalmont appears to agree on the issue of quality, his post at Ruthless Culture takes a somewhat different track, arguing in the end that the problem with fandom is its insularity: On the other hand, I feel that traditional fandom has become so attached to its own history and institutions that it would rather see those institutions die than allow them to change in a way that would encourage younger people to join them…I think that genre culture should start reclaiming the word ‘fan’ and use it to denote not some inferior species of genre-lover but someone who actively participates in making genre culture a more interesting and vibrant place despite having no professional skin in the game. Fans are not passive consumers… they are the people who keep the conversation going. First, I recommend reading their posts in full.  I’ve, perhaps inaccurately, summarized their points rather briefly, and I’m certain Mr. Landon will despise me forever for having failed to quote from his article (sorry, Justine!).  Second, I see my own view of fandom falling somewhere within McCalmont’s; my criticisms of what qualifies as fan culture have always been informed by my own perceived contribution to the field in the capacity of a non-professional.  But my contributions are not explicitly non-professional, and it is here that I think I diverge from most definitions of fan culture. One of the things that bothered me about the special Blade Runner edition of Journey Planet (included in the Hugo Awards voting packet) was the editorial perception of fandom:  “However I never wanted this issue of Journey Planet to be another crop of academic articles about Blade Runner. JP is a fanzine, after all, and I wanted to gather articles that give voice to the less academic side to the film’s wide fanbase” (5).  Though the latter half of the quote appears to provide a reasonable motive — we wanted to explore the non-academic side of things — the emphasis on fanzine implies that there is something distinctive between the two categories:  fan and academic. I am all of the following:  a published academic in the genre field, a fan, an aspiring/publisher writer, and a geek.  These are not mutually exclusive categories.  The problem with assuming that they are is the same problem with trying to categorize genre fiction in general:  the distinctions do not exist in any stable form.  It is, after all, entirely possible to write academic articles as a fan, with the perspective of a fan in mind, primarily because an academic does not automatically cease to be a fan by engaging in academic discourse, nor does his or her contribution fall outside of the domain of the fan simply because their contributions are related to their possible profession.*  These seem like distinctions made by people who have an agenda of their own, or who derive some form of use value from maintaining a strict separation, as if keeping academia out of fan production would protect the latter from the former.  Whether Justin Landon and Jonathan McCalmont realize it, their previous posts about fanzines and/or the Hugo Awards have contributed to this very discussion. Yet the term “academic” has its own fuzzy internal distinctions.  Some academics are actually professionals, engaging with their chosen field in an explicitly professional manner (i.e., they make a living doing it); others are perhaps professionals in trade, but their contributions are informed by their love for a particular thing; and still others may simply find that the culture of academia, particularly in genre fiction, offers its own kind of fan community.  I see myself as a combination of these.  Though I expect to pursue a career in academia, my contributions have always been informed by my love of genre.  I would not have become an English major and pursued science fiction if I had not already developed an interest in the subfield.  There is also the fact that academia is an inherently curious discipline, though it certainly has its own problems of insularity. To illustrate what I’ve said thus far, I turn to the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (commonly known as ICFA).  Though the vast majority of the content at every ICFA could be called “academic panels,” few who attend the conference would say it exhibits the stereotypical functions of academia:  stuffy, fusty scholars who drone on for 20 minutes about yadda yadda this and yadda yadda that.  In the two years that I have attended the conference, the atmosphere has always been vibrant.  Fans (in the traditional sense), academics (who are often just fans who like to think endlessly about the meanings within literary work), and professionals (authors, critics, and so on who, well, are actually published or otherwise notable) all attend this conference.  As I’ve said before, however, these distinctions are far from absolute, so the types of people who attend are often mergers of supposedly rigid categories:  professional writers present papers; traditional fans head panels about their favorite authors; critics and authors discuss their own work or the work of others; and so on and so forth.  You might say ICFA is a little incestuous… I’ve attended and presented at the conference for the last two years (and the Eaton Conference in California the year prior).  There’s a reason why I’ll keep returning:  this is one of the few conventions where I actually feel at home as a fan.  The discourse of the convention is my discourse.  I can rant aimlessly about my love of Battlestar Galactica just as I can

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