We’re 40+ days into social isolation here in the grand northern territory of Bemidji. Life continues unabated. There have been a mere handful of COVID-19 infections, everyone is supposed to wear masks, and online classes are expected to continue, making those 40+ days of isolation into 7 or 8 months without normal social interaction, friends coming to your office door to chat about something mundane, or the musings of students in out-of-date classrooms. All hail coronavirus for its may gifts of disruption and death (76,000 and counting in the U.S.).
It is, of course, hard to look at the world around us under almost any circumstance. We’re witnessing in unexpected, undesirable, and exceptionally disturbing ways the influence the political system can have on our ability to live, whether in the literal sense of working for life or in the more fanciful manner of extracurricular whatsit that makes life enjoyable. Not in the sense of restricting movement, mind, but in its ability to deprive us of the resources for survival during a legitimate medical emergency and to use the political system to forcibly remove access of those resources, giving so many the choice between bankruptcy or the risk of death for themselves, loved ones, or strangers. As an academic, I’ve always had a keen sense of the impact of the political process on our lives, especially now. We have always faced what we will likely see in the near future: state budget cuts and other funding decreases that will see many of our friends and colleagues on the streets, salaries slashed, programs destroyed, etc. That awareness is clear in the halls of academia, in brief face-to-face meetings with your next door neighbor, in meetings, and at social gatherings. The political is inescapable there — as it is for many people outside of those privileged halls. And it is now clearer than ever as we read the news about our profession that the future we face is not the one we had hoped for.
Yet, part of the feeling of “now” is that the political is always inescapable, that our lives are hopelessly in the hands of the political system, itself a twisted squid monster of profound inconsistency. Worse, it has always been that way — and so deeply felt by people who have been under the boot their entire lives. So many of us are just now feeling the crunch in a time that seems, well, hopeless. Is there an end to this pandemic? What will we look like when we get there? What parts of our lives will be permanently changed? Even if we set aside the blatant white supremacy in some of the “open up” movements, it’s impossible not to see a privileged desperation to hold on to the old world — a privilege many of these people happily sacrificed in the face of 9/11, a moment of immediate and horrendous death that our own government is predicting will be the COVID-19 norm every day for an indeterminate amount of time. We are facing something that can’t be quantified — we can only guess — and whose immediate and longterm quality is a patchwork of speculations that sown together look like a family quilt sown by Rob Zombie.
In the face of that, activities I’ve considered “releases” have been a release in a different way. Podcasting has been a part of my live for a decade, giving me an outlet to share my appreciation for science fiction, fantasy, and horror in its many incarnations. The Skiffy and Fanty Show is also more than that. There is catharsis in laughter and tears, banter and discussion. We explore the absurd and wondrous and find meaning in a genre that has so often been viewed as a thing for children or nerds and as an quite juvenile form of literary and cinematic creation. Podcasting on these things has also been a privilege of a different sort: it ties into my day job in expected and unexpected ways, giving me just a glimpse at what “doing what you love for a living” really feels like. Yet, the deeper into this pandemic we get, the more podcasting’s catharsis becomes something else: a release of anger, rage, confusion, speculative dystopia, and coping. It becomes a political act in ways that it never had before.
The Skiffy and Fanty Show is not a deliberately political podcast, even though our subject matter, SF/F/H, is itself political and one cannot discuss these genres adequately without recognizing the politics therein. Some of the greatest works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, after all, are about the real world funneled through the fantastic and the estranged. Yet, the intense isolation and the deeply political nature of this pandemic has made it difficult if not impossible to exclude deliberate political talk in our recording sessions. Many weeks ago, my co-host and I recorded a “Talking About Coping in the Time of Corona” episode that ended up less a discussion of what we’re doing to cope than an exercise in coping through a rambling mess of musings and grumblings about the present situation in the United States. It was perhaps the most explicitly political and most unintentionally political episode we’ve ever released — this despite recording numerous episodes on diversity in SF/F/H, the political narratives of genre films or books, engaging political issues in author interviews, etc. A similar thing occurred in several more recent recording sessions, highlighting for me that something has definitely changed for me (and my co-host) as a “maker.”
The emotional toll this situation has taken on so many of us, including myself, is palpable. The absence of a definitive answer — and the more troubling truth that any definitive answer we might receive will be premature or a lie — has set the stage for pent up emotions that need a place for deposit. We’re trying to make sense of a reality that doesn’t make sense, from pandemics with no end to a political system that seems irreparably broken to everyday occurrences of violence, ignorance, and apathy that seem to sap the hope right out of the room. And we’re doing it from positions of relative privilege, either because we still have a paycheck or can still see forward a little while longer before everything finally hits the brick wall at speeds that make the infamous crash test dummies blush.
Still, that endless sense of hopelessness has certainly had the impact of making podcasting an occasionally grumpy experience. We find ourselves quicker to anger and to grow frustrated with ourselves, one another, and others. Normal moments of clarity are drowned out by tsunamis of doubt and bitterness and anger, some justified and some the product of this inescapable nightmare. Podcasting as outlet becomes more than just a place to rant about the horrors of the day; it becomes a place to lash out because it is one of the few things in life we still have control over. Misplaced though this may be, I see it as the natural consequence of the reality we’re living in (if attacking people on Twitter is not your preferred outlet). Turning to the political and letting loose emotions are natural byproducts of a political and social atmosphere in which one can express themselves without necessarily being heard. So few people read your Tweets and other social media posts, and even less those with the ability to do anything to make this nation a better place to live in — politicians, policy makers, and your occasional billionaire who happily fires employees for complaining about well-documented poor working conditions.
Essentially, podcasting as a gateway to joy and wonder — for me, at least — has run head first into the oddness of our reality: the value of community thrust against a malignant cancer of hyper-individualism; financial stability and equity stripped away by billionaire squirrels hoarding every nut; and the wish for foundations ripped apart by the many-tentacled monstrosity that is uncertainty. Podcasting will remain joy and catharsis; after all, we are hopeless geeks on the show, and we cannot help but explore the myriad wonders SF/F/H has to offer. But it will also remain an outlet to express the intense emotions of doubt to people who will listen, even if that’s just a friend or a handful of people on the Internet who actually care what you think even if what you say doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
So what is it like to make podcasts in the time of corona? Fun, joyful, cathartic, political, confused, enraged, geeky, twisted, wondrous, laughable, and more. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have grading to do…
