by Andrew
If memory serves, when my taste for Babylon 5 was first revealed here at ObWings, there was some discussion of another sci-fi show called Firefly. As luck would have it, I received both Firefly and Serenity as Christmas gifts, and Amanda and I had time to watch the full series and the film over the holiday. Given it’s a Friday going into a long weekend (for some, anyhow), this seems like a fun opportunity to discuss the show’s merits, both relative to the film and relative to B5 and other sci-fi shows and films out there. Not to mention a good open thread. Have at it.
Well see, now I’m going to have to skip this thread after this comment as (a) I have the Firefly/Serenity discs but haven’t watched them; (b) plan to watch B5 at some point; and (c) inevitably there will be some BSG 3.0 thrown in, which I have to wait for the DVDs to come out before watching (don’t ask).
So a happy holiday weekend to all, hopefully we’ll not be at war with Iran until the workweek starts again.
Go Saints!
The nickel version of my opinion is that B5 and Firefly are complete inverses of one another. That doesn’t make one superior to the other, just that they have almost nothing in common beyond the space travel bits.
[On reflection that’s not quite true as both show the failures of Order (capitalization quite deliberate) and the virtues of independence, though what that means is quite different in the two series.]
Firefly is one of those shows that so many people seem to stumble into by accident, word of mouth, or (as in my case) a friend with an evangelizing spirit. It’s the epitome of a hidden gem.
We got Firefly a year ago and still haven’t had a chance to watch it (“Honey, the baby’s finally asleep, want to try to watch a DVD? … Honey, are you asleep too?”) Maybe next time this topic arises…
Go Saints!
You’re not a native Saints fan, are you Ugh?
They’re the closest thing we have to a pro football team here in Mississippi.
I’m one that caught the Firefly bug from an evangelist.
I was more or lessed dragged to a Firefly Marathon party arranged by some local fans in anticipation of Serenity’s theatrical release. I was tepid about the whole thing… until about 5 minutes into the pilot 🙂
I liked the movie enormously when I first saw it. As time has goes by, I like the series more and the movie less. Not because the movie isn’t good – it’s quite good – but because it abandoned most of what made the series so eccentric and charming. Not to mention that some of the more interesting loose ends the series left hanging were, shall we say, rendered moot by the movie.
Although I’m a B5 fan as well, I think that Firefly/Serenity is far better at both social commentary and basic dialogue. Joss is a more honest observer of the whole good/evil thing, inasmuch as few of his characters are fully one or the other (perhaps Niskanin). His characters are wittier (Jayne excepted), allowing him to pepper the audience with bad puns and inside jokes.
I think B5’s dialog and wit stack up just fine with Firefly, bearing in mind that Whedon and Straczynski have very different styles of both. Whedon’s a lot more wired into the pop-cultural Zeitgeist; Straczynski is – I don’t want to say “more of a classicist,” but don’t know how else to put it. He painted with a much broader yet subtler brush, anyway.
Also, B5 had so many more seasons in which to create its milieu, and its characters. I can’t think, offhand, of any popular series characters whose character arcs were as profoundly developed – who came out at the end profoundly different people, and got there as a natural consequence of what happened to them, rather than just being wanked that way – as G’Kar and Mollari.
Make sure you watch the entire series, in order, first, before the movie Serenity. Faux screwed the fans by inexplicitly showing them out of order, which confused the crap out of us, and that’s why the show got killed in its first season.
You’ll love the movie better that way. It’s very very good. You can’t compare to B5 – the story plot of B5 was greater, but the graphics and characters weren’t as strong (well, some of them). I loved both, as others say above, for different reasons. Like Casey says, the B5 gang was much more developed. If only Firefly had that chance.
I don’t have anything really to add other than “I’m a leaf on the wind.”
I thought Serenity was the best movie of ’05 (that I saw), but my tastes are known to be both ‘eccentric’ and voluminous.
Speaking of best movies, does anyone else think ’06 was a really down year? Gun to my head, I’d have to say either Little Miss Sunshine or The Prestige.
I haven’t seen either, though I do want to see The Prestige. But with movies like The Queen, The Departed, Blood Diamond, and Babel, I’m not sure how you can say 06 was a down year. Lotta good, intelligent movies out there.
I watched the first episode of Firefly (“The Train Job”) with my mouth hanging open, repeating occasionally to the friend I was watching it with – “omg, it’s cowboys in space, how could anyone have thought this was a good idea?” “omg, they’re counting on no one noticing the spaceship hovering over the train?” “omg, no one DID notice the spaceship hovering over the train?” “omg, they’re Robbers With Hearts Of Gold, how sweet can you get?” and mostly “I may vomit” (Sheridan Whiteside should have been reviewing).
Yes, it got better. Kind of. Cowboys in space is still never a good idea.
Actually, The Train Job was, I think, the third episode in the series. It was just the first to air, as was referenced above. Fortunately, when we watched it, everything was in order, which made it much less confusing.
I am interested by how many people really liked Serenity, though. I kind of regretted watching it, as a) it seemed to throw out a lot of what had gone before in Firefly and b) the characters weren’t nearly so fun to watch.
Cowboys in space is still never a good idea.
!!!
Are we talking merely literal cowboys here, or metaphorical ones, too? Because, I mean, Han Solo . . .
Anyhoo, anyone who hasn’t listened to Joss Whedon’s commentary on the Serenity DVD yet, do so — it’s illuminating, amusing and heartbreaking in equal parts. And his commentaries on the Firefly discs, esp. the ones with Nathan Fillion, are just briliant.
Thanks for the reminder, Phil. I haven’t listened to the commentary on any of the disks yet. I’ll wager it adds quite a bit to the enjoyment, especially of the series.
I like Firefly and everything, but the Whedon cult never ever shutting up about it has kind of soured me on–I dunno, not Firefly itself, but just talking about it. It’s a cute, clever little series! It’s fun! And it only ran one season and one movie and it doesn’t have the thematic or intellectual heft BSG has at its best.
(And the cowboys-in-space thing was arguably done better in Cowboy Bebop, another show about space-travelling independence-loving weirdos.)
Han Solo was only a good idea because he was played by Harrison Ford.
I really liked Firefly, never saw Serenity. Still, it didn’t sink its hooks into me like Lost did, or Star Trek: TNG or DS9, or The X-Files. Maybe it would have if it had gone on longer. I mean, the first seasons of TNG and DS9 weren’t anything special.
As for best new movie I saw this year, I’d go with The Fountain. But there were a lot of movies I probably would’ve loved I didn’t see, such as The Queen.
The Queen, The Departed, Blood Diamond, and Babel
Of those, I’ve only seen The Departed. The Queen looks interesting, but not for $9. The other two? Well, along with Children of Men, why do I need to watch a movie for hard-edged dystopianism? At least The Descent (also awesome) is somewhat escapist, even though not exactly cheery.
Joss Whedon Rocks…. But babylon 5 is one of my favorite series too.
I really really hate that firefly was cancelled. Lots of idea’s and development, and I really liked the characters. The only convention I’ve ever been too was Serenity 2 in London…
I agree though that the film was less good than the series, mainly because it couldn’t do the character developments as well as a tv-serie can.
Lost lost it’s appeal to me in the beginning of S2. I *like* arc and it started to feel like they didn’t really know where they were going to anymore. I really really hope that BSG won’t go that way, but I think it is a risc.
I like Star Trek, great entertainment, but I wouldn’t label it *good* even though some episodes are great. In that area I’m looking forward to the Dresden Files in a few weeks. The books are great ‘brain snacks’, so I hope the series are too. Easy entertainment for tired parents 😉
Apparently, both an Indiana Jones movie and a Star Trek movie are in the works
I know Westerns are supposed to have cheesey theme songs, but the one for Firefly was really bad. Other thann that, I like it a lot. paul and I have a tradition of dinnner together once a week followed by desert, movie, and cigars onn the deck. For the last couple of weeks Firelfy episodes have been our movie.
Anyone thinking about getting into Firefly should watch the “real” pilot instead of the Train Job, which was written almost literally overnight after the Fox execs demanded it.
Surprised no one has mentioned Buffy. Firefly might be better, but Buffy had seven great seasons, each with their own arc, and a lot of great character development. In a lot of ways, it shows that Joss Whedon has the capacity to create characters almost as broad and interesting as those on Babylon-5, with enough time.
The three shows (B5, Firefly, and Buffy) work in some very different ways, but all are among the best TV shows I’ve ever seen.
And all three really deserve to be watched in order – you’ll miss a great deal of the power of the shows just seeing episodes here and there.
Oh, and Serenity was great, though a little disappointing, mostly because it really ought to have been developed slowly over a whole season instead of forced into a 2-hour movie. I don’t think it was necessarily untrue to the show – it just had to spend too much time explaining plot elements and suggesting character developments instead of just letting them unfold naturally.
Oh, and cowboys in space is clearly one of the best things ever. I absolutely love that it’s a futuristic society that feels realistic. Unlike utopian Star Trek TNG world or the vaguely distopian authoritarianism of B5, the Firefly world is an interesting take on how the rich/poor gap would play itself out given the events.
And I love the theme song.
I watched the first episode of Firefly (“The Train Job”) with my mouth hanging open, repeating occasionally to the friend I was watching it with – “omg, it’s cowboys in space, how could anyone have thought this was a good idea?”
I thought the exact same thing, except I thought “cowboys in space” what a great idea!
Malcolm was a great character, as striking as Picard/Stewart (Star Trek) and Adama/Olmos (BSG) …. not to mention Malcolm and Inarra had fantastic on screen chemistry.
Watched the series and the movie on hols in October. Wonderful! I too thought ‘cowboys in space’, great idea.
B5 is far more epic of a show, but this may be owing to having 110 shows in which to develop everything instead of 14-6 (ish?). The first 14-16 episodes of B5 are on their own no where near as good as the firefly season. It also seems to me that in firefly he is telling stories about the people and the over all story gets in there somehow, in B5 he is telling the over all story and the charachters get in there somehow. If that makes any sense at all.
As a side note, all of you trekie B5 haters out there should give it a chance, meaning atleast watch the first season in it’s entirety…they take their time getting to know everyone
I think that the first time I laid eyes on Morena Baccarin I became interested in the show.
One question, why do they always utter expletives in Chinese?
BTW, cowboys in space is hardly a new idea. If you haven’t seen Outland yet, Sean Connery essentially plays Gary Cooper from High Noon.
I’ll take Farscape, Red Dwarf, and Futurama over anything mentioned so far.
I thought B5 was a well written show with some great characters and some that lacked nuance. But it hit far more often than it missed. It’s the only one I’d put in my top 5 (which is rounded out by Doctor Who).
I thought Firefly/Serenity felt more like a role-playing game than a TV show. I was entertained, but I didn’t think it was great.
BSG just rubs me wrong.
One question, why do they always utter expletives in Chinese?
Because “The Alliance” was the US/Chinese alliance, and the basis of their government — so the culture was a fusion of Chinese and American influences. And frankly, Chinese is a very satisfying language to curse in — or so I’ve been assured by people who speak it.
More practically, because you can’t say the American curse equivilant of “Well, someone just slid something undesired into one of my orifaces, no doubt about that!” on broadcast TV.
You can, however, say it as crudely and filthily as you want in Chinese (even badly accented Chinese) because the Powers That Be don’t consider obscentities in foreign languages to be obscenities.
I thought the Asian overlay – the swearing, the “Chinatowns” everywhere, the geisha-like Companions – was one of Firefly’s best touches. Not only was it a nod to pop-culture, it made demographic and historical sense: if humanity leaves Earth en masse, Asians will comprise a majority of the population then as they do now.
I thought the 19th Century American-style Wild West frontierism a harder sell, logically – but liked it anyway.
Firefly might be better, but Buffy had seven great seasons, each with their own arc, and a lot of great character development.
Six at most, and probably no more than five or four. Those were, however, brilliant.
Oh, and just before Serenity they released little teasing video’s about River Tam (viral marketing). They now put those together.
Well, much of this has been said already, but I can’t resist throwing in my $0.02:
1. Cowboys in space is *always* a good idea…but usually badly executed.
2. _Buffy_ had about 4 great seasons, even though some of the best episodes were in some of the worst seasons.
3. _The Train Job_ was written *over a weekend* b/c Faux wanted a different pilot episode. It’s amazingly good given that fact.
4. BSG is great fun, but it relies too much on the shaky-cam, quick cuts, and especially that disorienting zoom-in-and-out thing. Listen closely to lots of those lines and you come to realize that a lot of quotidian crap can pass for interesting when you add some zooming in and out.
5. Jayne’s lines are actually extremely witty. (almost random example: “For psychology that ain’t half dumb.”)
B5 was a better show as science fiction, though it was hardly hard SF. Firefly’s universe falls apart if you think about it for more than ten seconds, but had more amusing dialogue and more endearing characters than most of B5’s humans (B5’s nonhumans were always the interesting ones).
“Jaynestown” (written by Ben Edlund, creator of The Tick) was the best episode.
The mysterious thing about the Chinese elements in Firefly was why there were so few characters of clear East Asian ethnicity, but that subject seems to be pure flamewar fuel.
I’m glad Matt pointed out the lack of Chinese people in the great Chinese future….
“I’m glad Matt pointed out the lack of Chinese people in the great Chinese future….”
Chinese major characters, which, yes, was an omission. There were plenty of Chinese people on screen, most of the time, though.
I was pleased by that element of Whedon’s ‘verse, because it’s always bugged me at how so much sf, particularly on tv, tended to ignore the fact that the majority of the human race is either Chinese or Indian, and that barring vast holocausts in the future, that will continue to be the case for quite some time to come.
Otherwise, I’ve blogged (or in the case of B5, said on Usenet back then, including some back-and-forths with JMS) far too many tens of thousands of words, and hundreds of posts, about all three tv series (and plenty of others) under discussion for me to feel enthused about repeating myself again.
In the end, I’m a big fan of neo-BSG, Firefly, Buffy, B5, and also ST: DS9, though I’m also pretty critical of the flaws of Trek, and pretty critical of the derivative nature of B5, though a lot of that reaction is based on far too much contact with ignorant fans of B5 who thought JMS was being creative and inventing new stuff, rather than mining the rich veins of 1940s and ’50s written sf for television.
If I wanted to single each out for praise, I might say that B5 was, so far, the best serial space opera tv series yet done, neo-BSG the most realistic tv show in an sf setting yet done (though only barely sf, by virtue of basic premise, and the examination of what it means to be human), Firefly a uniquely Whedonesque take of great humor, emotion, and entertainment, and DS9 the best of the Treks, in terms of character development, serial drama, complexity of plot, and examinations of moral implications of war and other decisions. And Buffy was a terrific use of fantasy as metaphor, plus all the great writing, character development, humor, etc. (I don’t dislike any of the seasons, though the 1st was the simplest, of course, and I do understand most of the problems some people had with the last season, or another one.)
And, yeah, “The Train Job” is, in fact, as most folks vaguely familiar with Firefly know, the third episode, written over a weekend in response to Fox’s demand for a script by Monday, after they rejected “Serenity, Pt.1” and “Pt. II,” the two-hour pilot, for initial broadcast, which was a completely insane decision. “The Train Job” is a fun episode, but a pretty bad choice to see as one’s first episode, whereas “Serenity” (not the movie) was — well, hey, it’s almost as if it was made to be the introduction: wacky!
oh, one other thing. B5 has (atleast for the fighters) plausibly reaslistic flight dynamics in space (IE they don’t behave like atmospheric craft) I <3 attempts at realistic physics.
Got to throw in the Stargate series in to my top five, if only for longevity.
I’ve been catching up on Stargate SG-1 on DVD, and I’m quite fond of it; it’s excellent popcorn, and good light entertainment.
The other shows all rate more highly, in my book, in the categories of trying to do more serious work, at least at times, and SG-1 (and the first season of Atlantis, all I’ve seen so far, on DVD) is nothing but light entertainment, but I do like it very much as light entertainment (in fact, I have disc 3 of Season 6 sitting here at present, and I’ll start watching Season 9 on DVD when I’m finished with 6, having already seen 7&8).
I wouldn’t say that longevity, per se, makes a series notable, though. That piece of sh–, er, badness, Andromeda went on for some years after they fired Robert Hewitt Wolfe and it went to hell, for instance; I’m sure many of us could name a lot of crappy sf tv series that nonetheless managed to last for some years.
That piece of sh–, er, badness, Andromeda went on for some years after they fired Robert Hewitt Wolfe and it went to hell, for instance…
Do not, I beg of you, get me started on that.
I was not the biggest fan of Buffy or angel, but I have become one of Firefly‘s biggest fans. It just… works. The whole underlying philosophy behind it — what if the future was just like now — the characters, the wit, the tautness of it. It all works. Also, Nathan Fillion owns the screen.
The best episode, by the way, was Out of Gas. It’s probably some of the finest writing for TV I’ve ever seen anywhere ever.
Yes, I’m a fan. Sue me, I can bloody justify it!
The annoying thing about Andromeda is that it really had promise in the first year, in Wolfe’s hands. It turned to crap when Mr. Muscles, the star, took control, and made the stories completely incoherent, but with lots of explosions.
We could name, however, with some effort, a couple of dozen sf series that were so crappy that almost no one would even think of mentioning them in the same breath as a decent series, and mostly we don’t even remember, or notice, them (Cleopatra 2525, for instance [I had to look up the numbers to get them right], even if it did have Gina Torres).
Italics begone!
Crappiest sf series that I still watched religiously: UFO.
“Crappiest sf series that I still watched religiously: UFO.”
Gerry Anderson actually did some mildly interesting things at times in his series (which tend to exemplify “sci-fi” over “sf,” insofar as the distinction survives), though never with anything that made you think in the least — but stylistically.
UFO at least had catchy theme music, and amusing styles for the Future People to wear, and style their vehicles with, and so on.
The plots and characters and writing were, ah, nothing to write home about (although Space: 1999 was yet far more ludicrous and eye-rollingly, achingly, bad), but it had some style.
I was quite fond of the original Captain Scarlet when I was 6 years old, myself.
Missed ever seeing Captain Scarlet. In that time frame I was probably more into The Invaders.
Come to think of it, we should probably check out Bush’s pinky finger.
“Come to think of it, we should probably check out Bush’s pinky finger.”
Setting aside that the show was a cheap knock-off of The Fugitive, it would be amusing to watch George W. (and Dick C.) glow on national tv, and disappear.
Both Andromeda and SG-1 are series I watched the first season off because others seemed to like them – and some other series had to grow on me too.
But both series irritate me too much to give S2 a chance…
Odyssey 5 is another worthwile serie that got killed unjustifyably.
For people that are up to date with neo-BSG (otherwise you’ll get spoiled), there is a gag reel of S3….
I should probabely say “people who”. Gary is back, so I have to be more carefull 😉
“Both Andromeda and SG-1 are series I watched the first season off because others seemed to like them – and some other series had to grow on me too.”
SG-1 grew on me, as did the characters. Andromeda grew into a hideous, putrid-smelling, fungus.
I don’t think you’ll be missing great art if you don’t try SG-1 further, although I find it pleasant popcorn, myself (biased somewhat by finding Amanda Tapping as cute as a bug, I admit, but I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t change my mind if I thought it was a lousy show; I seriously recommend not wasting a moment further on Andromeda.
Of course, tastes vary, so this advice might be all wrong for you. The appeal of Farscape continues to elude me, for instance. I keep trying it, and every single time I’m just bored bored bored. And I’ve tried at least a couple of dozen episodes, over varied seasons, though more from the first and early ones. I keep finding the characters boring, the plots boring, the situation uninteresting, the writing boring, and I have serious suspension of disbelief problems. (Tried yet again a couple of hours ago for the first ten minutes of an episode: utterly uninteresting.) Oh, well.
What’s S2? Is that a typo or is there some series that I’m not thinking of?
What did people think of Angel? Well one person above didn’t like it, but how about the rest? I finally saw most of the series on early morning TV last year–it was witty, as you’d expect from Whedon. On the whole I liked it, though I found Angel’s troubled kid a pain in the neck (no pun intended and anyway, he wasn’t a vampire himself) until reality was changed and the kid turned out okay.
I thought Andromeda was pure popcorn from the beginning–pleasant enough if there’s nothing really good on and you’re bored. But it was a while ago and maybe I’m forgetting traces of potential greatness before it turned to fungus. I stopped watching it after the first year or two– not by choice, it seemed to have disappeared or went to cable or something, I can’t remember what, and in my current cabled state I only recently saw an episode that I’d never seen before. And yeah, it was putrid.
“What’s S2? Is that a typo or is there some series that I’m not thinking of?”
I assumed the usual nomenclature, as in “Season 2.”
I liked Angel quite a far amount; I just liked Buffy a little better; but I like Angel quite well.
Again, the character development, and changes and growth in the characters (redundant, but work with me here) were, like those in Buffy, playing to a strength of Whedon’s, I think (on Angel both Wesley’s and Cordelia’s arcs were pretty strong, I thought; I wasn’t particularly wild about the character of Conor, though; it should be unsurprising that nerd characters like Fred appeal to me.
“I thought Andromeda was pure popcorn from the beginning–pleasant enough if there’s nothing really good on and you’re bored.”
As I said, the first season was quite promising. This was when the show runner was the creator, Robert Hewitt Wolfe (the amount taken from Gene Roddenberry amounts to reusing the same name, Dylan Hunt, from Roddenberry’s previous tv movies, Genesis II, the remake, Planet Earth, and the, yes, third remake, Strange New World, as well as a couple of equally trivial points).
Wolfe’s scenario was originally written for a the new Star Trek series, incidentally (Paramount went with Enterprise, instead); the roots are perfectly clear when one knows this.
Anyway, he was canned by Kevin Sorbo, who held the real power with the producing/distributing company; Sorbo has no clue whatever about sf, or decent writing, but knows scripts that highlight his muscles and characters, and have lots of explosions. And that’s about all that was left of the series after the first season, although the actors, who ranged from decent to pretty good, I thought, struggled manfully on. But the show was thereafter never anything other than an ego vehicle for Sorbo, and the conviction that the more explosions and utterly pointless fistfights you have, the more viewers you will have.
Shoulda previewed; “fair amount,” and I broke the link to Genesis II.
Randy Paul: One question, why do they always utter expletives in Chinese?
And, according to native Chinese speakers, always mispronounced and hideously inappropriate Chinese?
And, according to native Chinese speakers, always mispronounced and hideously inappropriate Chinese?
I’ll field that one.
Because none of the actors (and possibly none of the writers) actually spoke Chinese, so they got basic translations and gave it their best shot without the benefit of any native-Chinese speakers on hand to make sure the lines were properly translated and pronounced.
Andrew: Because none of the actors (and possibly none of the writers) actually spoke Chinese, so they got basic translations and gave it their best shot without the benefit of any native-Chinese speakers on hand to make sure the lines were properly translated and pronounced.
Well, yes, that’s obviously why in the direct sense. In the larger sense: if you’re going to use Chinese in a TV series, why not expend a little extra money to hire a native Chinese speaker and make sure the lines are appropriately translated and pronounced?
Ans: because you do not quite believe that any native Chinese speakers will be watching the series, or – if they do – that their opinion matters in the slightest.
Buffy was excellent, rising to occasional brilliance. Angel was good, rising to occasional excellence. Firefly (I did watch three or four episodes besides “The Train Job”) was… meh.
Ans: because you do not quite believe that any native Chinese speakers will be watching the series, or – if they do – that their opinion matters in the slightest.
Isn’t that a logical assessment for a show aimed at a U.S. audience? Do many TV shows make it in China?
I love, love, LOVE Farscape — but I didn’t start watching it until well after it was cancelled, and almost by accident.
It’s anarchy in space, and I’m not sure I’d even call it sci-fi most of the time. However, if you’d like a really interesting look at it, try here: Television Without Pity’s Farscape Recaps. For a particularly good example, their recap of A Human Reaction is rather good. (So is the episode).
Television Without Pity is, of course, a must-read site for good or bad shows. The level of snark is amazing. 🙂
Andrew: Isn’t that a logical assessment for a show aimed at a U.S. audience?
So there are no native Chinese speakers in the US – or if there are, their opinion can be dismissed as unimportant?
Isn’t that a logical assessment for a show aimed at a U.S. audience?
And I have to admit, I’m about as impressed by this argument as I would be by the argument that since most Americans can’t tell a bad fake British accent from a real one, it really doesn’t matter if a character who is supposedly British on an American TV series is played by an American doing a bad fake British accent…
Well, let’s get down to brass tacks, Jes. The only arguments I’ve ever seen you be impressed by were your own, so the odds were pretty good I wasn’t going to get anywhere.
And yes, I’m yanking your chain.
The number of native Chinese speakers, worldwide: 1.1 billion.
Number of people who can tell a fake British accent from a real one: just over 60M.
So, actually, I’d say it mattered more to get the Chinese right than it would to get the British accents right… though I suspect Andrew’s right and Whedon was thinking parochially. (“No one’ll ever know… hardly anyone speaks Chinese!”)
Andrew: The only arguments I’ve ever seen you be impressed by were your own
Really? I wrote your last post for you?
The Chinese phrases in Firefly. (I blogged this a couple of years ago, natch.)
If Jes were less interested in insulting Joss Whedon (and anyone who doesn’t share her aesthetic reaction to Firefly), over a deeply implausible, and pretty offensive, claim (“No one’ll ever know… hardly anyone speaks Chinese!”), she might take note that there’s no such language as “Chinese,” nor any one dialect of Mandarin with a sole pronunciation. In my limited experience, it’s not remotely unusual for some Chinese folks to make fun of the accents of other Chinese folks. In, you know, that really callously indifferent-to-Chinese-people place, China.
Damn italics. Mind of their own, I tell you, always trying to escape, and — dare I say it? — rule the world!
Okay, stop again.
“And I have to admit, I’m about as impressed by this argument as I would be by the argument that since most Americans can’t tell a bad fake British accent from a real one, it really doesn’t matter if a character who is supposedly British on an American TV series is played by an American doing a bad fake British accent…”
I’m unclear what the point is here, given the incredible number of immensely bad “American” accents that can be heard (along with some excllent ones) on British tv.
Newsflash: actors in one country don’t all do accents from another country well. Film at 11.
As well: tv is made in great haste, and an sf series in particular will never have enough money, and will never lack for flaws that make it discernable from reality. Alert the news media.
“So, actually, I’d say it mattered more to get the Chinese right than it would to get the British accents right…”
Whereas back in the real world, selling British rights will matter to some at least small degree for an American tv program, whereas selling broadcast rights to China was and is, for the time being, an effective impossibility, due to China’s media restrictions. (This could change, but it hasn’t yet.)
Not that the British rights would likely be anything close to make or break for most any American tv program, Fox network or elsewhere, in most any case, as I understand the economics of it.
But the main point as regards the question of accents is the one I already made, which is that the British do foreign English accents badly — certainly, at least, American accents — as much as anyone, so you’re on pretty thin ice making this another Example Of How Dreadful Americans Can Be.
In, you know, that really callously indifferent-to-Chinese-people place, China.
I know you meant that ironically, but it’s actually kind of true. There’s a lot of latent and not-so-latent racism in China, not only directed outwards — my dad has a funny story about “being Chinese” he might share — but inwards, too, towards the non-Han peoples of China. In Hong Kong, for example, the Hakka were basically marginalized unto extinction although I think there might be a few villages clinging to life somewhere; some small number incorporated into daily Hong Kong life, the rest mostly fled.
The attitude is actually even worse than that because there’s an annoying Chinese habit of describing peoples who lived within the present Chinese borders as “Chinese” and peoples who lived outside the present borders as “non-Chinese” in clear defiance of any meaningful historical analysis, but that too I got secondhand from my dad.
Note: it’s actually even more complicated that that, since AFAIK China traditionally wasn’t racist, it was culturalist: anyone who followed the forms and mannerisms of the Chinese culture, however defined, would be accorded respect worthy of a Chinese person, while those who failed to were considered barbarous and unworthy. It was the Europeans who gradually convinced the Chinese that the distinction wasn’t just cultural, i.e. learned, but racial, i.e. innate.
Ans: because you do not quite believe that any native Chinese speakers will be watching the series, or – if they do – that their opinion matters in the slightest.
Or because you can’t find any Chinese speakers whose performance you like for the major characters — or who you think will be marketable to a Sci-Fi audience — and you don’t worry too much about the Chinese accents and/or pronunciation because a) the characters themselves probably aren’t that fluent to begin with or b) the Chinese language has morphed more than the English language or c) this is being made for English broadcast television and hence it’s more important that that language be spoken fluently. Or all of the above.
Or alternatively d) you’re just trying to a pick a fight. In which case: congratulations! You win a Kewpie doll and a lifetime supply of eh!
Actually I thought Hugh Laurie did a pretty good American accent on House. He may be the exception that proves the rule.
Anarch: Or because you can’t find any Chinese speakers whose performance you like for the major characters
Actually, I wasn’t even thinking of that: the odds of an American TV series aimed at the “general public” being made with a significant proportion of non-whites as majority characters* were so far out of sight I just didn’t consider them.
What I thought of was hiring a native Chinese speaker (Joss Whedon ought to have been able to find at least one in Los Angeles) to advise on what Chinese expletives were appropriate (the native Chinese speakers discussing it said that it sounded like someone who didn’t know Chinese at all had picked them out of a dictionary) and, if they could, to find someone who could advise the actors on how to say them as expletives… though I admit that would be more difficult.
Interesting article on Whedon and Chinese, which quotes this interview.
Q: Well that bridge has been burned. In the universe of Serenity, Chinese is spoken, Chinese is a general influence – but there are no Chinese people.
Whedon: It kind of happened that way. We auditioned Asian actors. We auditioned pretty much every race for every role. Including for Simon after we cast River. She looks kind of Asian, and they could be half brother and sister. It was just how it worked out. And then some people have been offended by that, but ultimately the cast is fairly multi-racial and absolutely the people who are supposed to be playing those parts, so what are you going to do?
Q: Is there like a nerdly explanation, like the Chinese superpower is in another part of the solar system?
Whedon: No, I don’t have a fan wank for you there.
Q: Is that what it’s called?
Whedon: Yeah, a fan wank is an explanation for a discrepancy or an unfinished bit – ‘Well, this is because of such and such and such and such,’ when clearly the writers didn’t think of that.
Q: As a Marvel writer shouldn’t you be handing out No-Prizes for that?
Whedon: No, I don’t think you get a No-Prize for noticing there aren’t any Asian people.
Q: But you hand out No-Prizes for explaining it.
Whedon: No-Prizes were really for like catching. Now we’ve gone from No-Prize to fan wank, which I think is part of the beauty of how much nicer people have gotten in this community. We’ve gone from ‘Let’s point out their mistakes,’ to ‘Let’s paper over the cracks.’ Let’s make it so it’s more enjoyable for everybody.
I suspect that it wasn’t that he was so oblivious that he didn’t hire a native Chinese speaker, he just thought that his wife could be enough of a resource.
Whedon: It kind of happened that way.
Funny how often it just does, isn’t it?
this is a great link, if you can click on the stop button before it redirects, or check the Google cache. It is a 7 part interview with Whedon. The script doctor stuff was new to me, though I sure a lot of y’all were already familiar with it.
Actually I thought Hugh Laurie did a pretty good American accent on House. He may be the exception that proves the rule.
I think his performance is fantastic but I’ve never bought his accent as native American one. [Not “Native American”, although I doubt I’d be convinced of that either :)] About the only major non-American celebrity nowadays whose American accent I find really credible is Naomi Watts and even then I can catch her out (usually when she’s shouting or speaking loudly, as her ‘r’s slip out of American rhoticity).* I used to be able to catch American actors out when doing British accents, but I’ve been surrounded by enough bad British accents in the past few years that I’ve lost my ear for it and, even more annoying, I can no longer say which English accent goes with which region (except Yorkshire, which is bloody obvious).
Which reminds me, I nearly started a flamewar elsewhere by saying how thankful I was that BSG is allowing Lucy Lawless to speak in her native accent, as I find her performances much more naturalistic when she’s not trying to grate out an American accent. This… did not go over well.
* If you count John Barrowman from Doctor Who/Torchwood you can throw him in there too, but since he actually grew up in the US he’s at least honorary American.
In the interests of playing Devil’s Advocate here, not that I agree with Jes in the larger sense, quite often on commentaries for The Simpsons it’s mentioned that the producers go out of their way when having another language spoken on screen to make sure that it’s actually translated correctly. In the most recent season, they have two amusing anecdotes about it:
1. In the episode “Das Bus,” Otto the bus driver is picked up in the ocean by a Chinese fishing trawler. They had already had the dialogue for the Chinese translated, and were going to record it, when another native Chinese speaker told them, “Oh, most people who work on fishing boats in that part of the world are from [X province or region], and would say this instead of that,” so they rewrote it.
2. In the episode “Mountain of Madness,” Homer is being guided up a mountain by two Sherpas. They wanted the Sherpa dialogue to be accurate, so they called the people who produced the TV adaptation of Into Thin Air and asked who they used to translate dialogue for their Sherpa characters. They were told, “Um, the what now? We just made it up.”
Whedon: It kind of happened that way.
Funny how often it just does, isn’t it?
Yes, it’s amazing that, in a country where only 9% of the population derives from Asian or Pacific Islander roots, that very few of our actors are members of those ethnic groups. Absolutely staggering.
Meanwhile, Gina Torres is black/Cuban, Nathan Fillion and Jewel Staite are Canadian, Ron Glass is clearly African American, and Morena Baccarin is Brazilian. Clearly Joss Whedon is an America-centric racist asshole.
I’m amazed that people can actually act in a credible accent, though any accent in a performance can’t be pure because it has to be understood by those who don’t speak it. I also think it is revealing that comedy seems to be easier to do in accent. This isn’t to take away anything from Renee Zellweger (Bridget Jones Diary) and Kevin Kline (French Kiss), but I think having a comedic element makes it easier.
A brit who I think does good American accents is Tom Wilkinson, the thing he did with Sissy Spacek (in the bedroom) was just amazing.
Here’s my fave Hugh Laurie thing, him presenting at the Emmies
I quite often can’t hear the difference between american and english, so I don’t have a problem 😉
I really love Farscape, it’s in my top 5. I liked Angel, but it was one of the series that needed to grow on me. At first I felt it was just a sort of detective series in a different setting, it lacked obvious arc. And after that it even took in the character I disliked most in Buffy – Wesley. In the end though I felt that one of the examples of Joss’ mastership was the growth of Wesley.
Gary; since you seem to hand out nits, could you save a few for Jesurgislac?
Yes, Tom Wilkinson was very impressive in ‘In The Bedroom.’ I was born in Maine and most of my family still lives there, and he would have fit in with them pretty well.
though any accent in a performance can’t be pure because it has to be understood by those who don’t speak it.
This… doesn’t make any sense to me. Could you explain?
“I know you meant that ironically, but it’s actually kind of true.”
I’m aware of that; was part of my point.
“Actually I thought Hugh Laurie did a pretty good American accent on House.”
His is great (from the limited amount I’ve heard; my access to the Fox network disappeared a couple of years ago when the local affiliate moved their antenna); there are certainly quite a few British actors who do splendid American actors, which is why I wrote that “some excllent ones” (American accents) are heard from British actors, along with some dreadful ones. (Kenneth Branagh is usually very good, for instance.)
The major error the lesser British actors tend to make is to do just that — an “American” accent, rather than a Boston accent, a rural Georgian accent, a N’awlins accent: something specific. Instead, we frequently see “American accents” that sound like nothing heard in America, but instead only like some weird thing that only sounds like a Brit who has no grasp of American accents.
I’m 100% sure the reverse is also seen and heard from lesser American actors doing “British” accents, which are no less specific, of course (it’s amazing Britain stayed our ally after Dick van Dyke’s “Cockney” in Mary Poppins, to point to the most famous awfuly-done American “British” accent). That’s back to my point: not all actors are great at accents. Wherever they’re from.
Of course, this isn’t as useful in demonstrating that Americans Are Particularly Stupid, Self-Centered, and Brutish, but what can do you?
Jes: “Actually, I wasn’t even thinking of that: the odds of an American TV series aimed at the ‘general public’ being made with a significant proportion of non-whites as majority characters* were so far out of sight I just didn’t consider them.”
Which given the dozens of series on American tv with overwhelmingly non-white casts makes you pretty [pick an adjective; “ignorant” and “belligerent” would seem appropriate ones].
“What I thought of was hiring a native Chinese speaker (Joss Whedon ought to have been able to find at least one in Los Angeles) to advise on what Chinese expletives were appropriate”
Except that the point wasn’t to be “appropriate” (none of the characters are “appropriate”), but to pick things to say that were funny.
Jes:
Yes, you’re right. You’ve uncovered that Joss Whedon, typical American, is another indifferent and callous racist. Congratulations!
Anarch:
I may be misunderstanding, but I understand the claim to be that if an authentic accent were to be unintelligible to many people unfamiliar with it, you wouldn’t be allowed to be that authentic in your accent in many productions, which seems a straightforward enough, if debatable, proposition. (A lot of folks apparently found Brad Pitt’s accent in Snatch, a film I’ve not yet seen, unintelligible.)
“I really love Farscape, it’s in my top 5.”
This is probably useless, but I’m still trying to understand the appeal: can you tell me what it is I’m supposed to find appealing, or like, or enjoy, about the show?
(Please don’t take any disagreement from me as evidence that I’m trying to say that you’re in any way “wrong,” as I would never say such a thing about personal taste; it’s just a matter of subjective reactions, with no objective right or wrong involved.)
an American TV series aimed at the “general public” being made with a significant proportion of non-whites as majority characters
The Wire! Go watch The Wire!
Well, I already knew that thinking Firefly was lousy was one of Fandom’s Ten Most Unpopular Opinions, but I’m slightly amazed at the bad reaction to noting that native Chinese speakers found that Joss Whedon’s use of Chinese in the series really, really crap.
The Wire! Go watch The Wire!
*looks it up in IMDB*
Yeah, I think I will, if I get half a chance. Sounds good.
“but I’m slightly amazed at the bad reaction to noting that native Chinese speakers found that Joss Whedon’s use of Chinese in the series really, really crap.”
Here’s the explanation: a) you are speaking as if you’ve surveyed the the majority of native “Chinese” speakers of the world, or at least Britain, and are entitled to speak for them, whereas I kinda doubt you actually even spoke to a mere, oh, 200, or even 30, Mandarin and Cantonese speakers around the world about this; and b) you’re being incredibly (but typically) condescending and deeply insulting in blatantly accusing Joss Whedon, his production company, and Americans in general (doubtless with exceptions noted), of being racist, callous, self-centered, indifferent, arrogant, tools and fools.
But why anyone should be bothered amazes you.
(That you don’t like Firefly, no one sensible is apt to argue with or care about; taste is taste; that’s not relevant, save that you choose to put it forward as if it were, rather than copping to why you’re being called on being actually offensive.)
The Wire is the best. Better than BSG, which is saying something. Plus, it’s filmed in Baltimore, so every so often I’ll be driving to work and there will be a scene from the Wire. (Once, sometime in early 2005, I was driving to work and there was a bunch of people with signs saying: Carcetti for Mayor, and I thought: another campaign? already? And: Carcetti? Then I realized it was the Wire shooting.
This is probably useless, but I’m still trying to understand the appeal: can you tell me what it is I’m supposed to find appealing, or like, or enjoy, about the show?
Because it’s almost entirely about characters. Sci-fi is an afterthought.
The story arc is rather elaborate, long, and contains serious character transformations — close to the level of changes undergone by Mollari and G’Kar in B5.
Some of the characters are insanely fascinating — the problem is if you watch just an odd episode or two, it’s rare to actually see it. (Which is why I suggested reading the TWoP recap of “A Human Reaction” — the recapper goes into detail about the significance of events that would bypass anyone just tuning in).
I got hooked on the pilot, but the series didn’t start moving into excellence until about the back end of the first season.
Just as an example: The relationship between Scorpius, Grayza, Braca, and Sikozu is the weirdest, most bizarre and convuluted set of conflicting loyalties I’ve ever seen. And those are background characters. It’s what goes on when behind the scenes.
“Because it’s almost entirely about characters. Sci-fi is an afterthought.”
Presuming you’re using “sci-fi” is the generally popular sense, these days, of being merely another term for science fiction, rather than the term of art it’s been in the sf field for decades, since Forry coined it as another of his zillion horrible puns, and everyone made fun of it, which is to specifically distinguish “really really awful tv and movies that are really bad sf,” you’re saying I should like it because it’s bad science fiction, that the science fiction aspects are an afterthought.
Uh, okay. You do realize I have a long history, going back to 1975, as a professional science fiction editor, right?
“I got hooked on the pilot, but the series didn’t start moving into excellence until about the back end of the first season.”
That’s true of a lot of science fiction tv series, which is why I’ve given Farscape so many chances. In fact, I’d say that it’s not uncommon for sf series to take until late in the second, or even third, season, before they’ve really established everything clearly and deeply enough for quality to start shining through with any consistency (Firefly and neo-BSG are quite unusual exceptions). It’s a structural problem as regards the complexity of decent science fiction, and world-building, and the limitations of serial tv, and it’s difficult to overcome; non-sf/fantasy programs that don’t have to build a whole new world don’t have that problem at all. There tends to be a trade-off in either not being able to spend enough screen time on building a smart, plausible, different world, at the expense of characters and story, in the first season, or not paying much attention to the world-building, and winding up with crap sf.
I’m, to be sure, entirely able to separate what’s good science fiction from what’s good tv; Babylon 5 was, as I said, 100% derivative — an utterly hackneyed mess of tropes and cliches from the written sf of the 1930s, ’40s, and 50s, but it was good tv, and as a translation of old tropes into tv, an enjoyable, if utterly derivative, synthesis, even if it had not one idea that wasn’t decades old in science fiction.
Neo-BSG is even less accurately describable as science fiction, other than by a) setting; and b) the one idea of investigating what it does and does not mean to be human, and if “artificial” life can be human. Beyond those two aspects, there’s nothing science fictional about BSG at all.
(It was back in the late Forties and early Fifties that James Blish popularized his “call a rabbit a smeerp” description of how changing names and settings, to space, or the future, doesn’t in the least make a story science fiction; the long-running ad campaign of Galaxy, starting in the early Fifties under H. L. Gold, running a sample passage from a Western, and then substituting nonsensical “science fiction” terms, variants of “smeerps” for “rabbits,” and using the tag line “You’ll Never See It In Galaxy!” was pretty much the death knell, in the field, for the confusion of setting with the examination of genuine ideas and novel situations.)
But, in any case, good characterization is always good, of course. Thanks for your POV.
Uh, okay. You do realize I have a long history, going back to 1975, as a professional science fiction editor, right?
What, pray, does that have to do with the price of food cubes on a commerce planet w.r.t. Morat’s comment? I mean, really. The tech elements are secondary to the characters. I’m sure you understood that just fine. No pedigree and claims to authority needed.
I like Farscape because of the characters, and because the aliens are alien, and because the heroes screw up a lot. Characters develop and interact with each other and there are consequences to actions that carry through seasons. Oh yeah, and Scorpius is the best bad guy ever.
Like Cinnabari, I love Farscape because their aliens are subtle and nuanced and alien. They rarely fall into the sad trope of the alien monoculture and they seldom end up being simply humans in makeup. A lot of it isn’t apparent from episode to episode (because it’s subtle), but over the course of seasons you get to the point where John Crichton himself is alien, which is a good antidote to Star Trek’s tendency towards make everyone more human over time.
And if that is not SF, neither is Philip K. Dick.
Farscape is not about science and technology, it’s about the ways in which technology and exposure to the alien transforms individuals. It’s also about military technology and power and xenophobia.
“What, pray, does that have to do with the price of food cubes on a commerce planet w.r.t. Morat’s comment?”
I was attempting to point out that telling me that “Sci-fi is an afterthought” in the series is not a positive for me.
“and because the aliens are alien,”
And that’s where it falls down for me, compared to written sf; that might be a crucial point, I suspect; to me, they seem incredibly false and shallow as aliens, and yet the series rests heavily, if not almost entirely, on selling that notion.
That really might be the crucial distinction between my response and that of fans of the show, actually. Y’all find them very alien, and convincingly so; me, I see them as standard these-aren’t-aliens, they’re-people-with-tics-and-hats.
Mind, I’m not trying to convince you you’re wrong; if they work for you, and clearly they do, great! More power to you.
(And the flip side is that attempts to argue me into finding them convincing and interesting as aliens are unlikely to succeed.)
“The tech elements are secondary to the characters.”
Minor point: to confuse an essential science fiction nature of a story (or the absence thereof) with a “tech element” is to completely fail to understand what actual science fiction is.
“Farscape is […] about the ways in which technology and exposure to the alien transforms individuals. It’s also about military technology and power and xenophobia.”
Those are interesting themes, of course.
Farscape was also remarkably uneven, with some terrific episodes and some cringe-inducing ones. But the production design (and, in particular, the creature effects) are what kept me coming back for more. It also had a pretty wicked sense of humor at times.
I could probably fill several pages with complaints about the series (starting with the main character, who is, in my view, an entirely unneeded audience surrogate — imagine if Star Wars had featured a fish-out-of-water character transplanted from 20th-century Earth), so it’s not like I’m encouraging anyone to rush out and rent the DVD’s. But boy, was it gorgeous to look at (when the camerawork wasn’t inducing motion sickness, that is).
I agree with morat20 that the characters are fascinating. It also was a serie that didn’t really appeal until S2 (yes, that’s season ;)). I started loving it from the DVD’s, I’m not sure I would have managed from once-a-week tv.
Some people I know cannot see the puppets as real characters and it stops them from liking the series. Others just don’t like the ‘rhytm’. They feel it is too… too jumpy, too loud, too shrill. Some really like it because it has so many popreferences. Non of that is true for me.
I like the solutions they sometimes come up with (the translater, the toothbrush, etc.). I like how different the characters are and how they still learn to operate as a group. There is a lot of grey in Farscape, and a lot of humor, both of which appeal to me.
B5 and neo-BSG are more accessible formats, I’d expect more people to like those series. They are… I dunno, smoother. Farscape is less smooth, but at least as complicated with the interpersonal relationships and better at the character development. IMHO of course 😉
Gary Farber: That really might be the crucial distinction between my response and that of fans of the show, actually. Y’all find them very alien, and convincingly so; me, I see them as standard these-aren’t-aliens, they’re-people-with-tics-and-hats.
I understand where you are coming from, but has there been a series made that got closer to your ideal than did Farscape?
as her ‘r’s slip out of American rhoticity
rotisserie?
Otherwise, I second Gary and Anarch on the whole “Chinese” thing, which as far as I’m aware isn’t a language. And I’d like to add that “American” isn’t an accent, either, unless you’re sufficiently intonation-deaf that a Maine accent and a Georgia accent sound the same, in which case I give you an “eh”.
I saw Children of Men yesterday…Very impressed. It’s not often that you want to see that bleak a movie again. (Some of this may be Clive Owen-related, granted).
Everyone says this it really is uncanny how plausible they make it feel–a combination of “ripped from the headlines” imagery, the lack of your standard future-y stuff, and how off-hand and taken for granted it all is. I wonder if it will work as well 10 or 20 years from now. (I hope it *won’t*.)
“so it’s not like I’m encouraging anyone to rush out and rent the DVD’s.”
It’s in syndication, every Saturday at 5 p.m. in my local (Denver area) broadcast tv media market, which is why I keep trying.
Dutchmarbel, there are a couple of very funny Farscape references in the 200th episode of Stargate SG-1, by the way (although the episode can’t really be fully appreciated without, well, having seen the previous nine years of the series; and in particular, “Wormhole X-treme,” the 100th episode, and the previous episode featuring the Marty character, although those alone would seem dumb and boring out of context, in all likelihood). (“Titles with ‘X'” in them sell better!”)
Hey Anarch,
What I meant was that by and large (possible exceptions being Brad Pitt’s turn in Snatch and Del Toro in The Usual Suspects), the audience has to understand what the character is saying, and the authenticness (is that a word?) of the accent is secondary to that. It is interesting that accents have become part of the realism that we demand because the people who made movies often resisted people speaking with an accent (Try to find a 30’s flick with someone speaking in an accent rather than mannerisms from a character). But even now, the accent is part of the character, and it only becomes incomprehensible if they want to make it a point that they are speaking so the audience doesn’t understand them (think of the section in Transpotting that is subtitled)
I suspect that the next linguistic frontier is historically realistic dialogue, and audiences will be more conscious of when words enter the language.
“I understand where you are coming from, but has there been a series made that got closer to your ideal than did Farscape?”
No, I’ve never seen particularly convincing aliens on tv.
Let me clarify a couple of things again:
a) whether I judge a tv show to be good tv, and of quality, is entirely different from whether it’s good science fiction, and vice versa. Saying it’s good sf doesn’t at all mean I think it’s a good tv show. Saying it’s bad sf doesn’t mean I think it’s a bad tv show, or one I don’t like. Likewise, asserting that it’s good tv doesn’t mean it’s good science fiction, and neither would noting that it’s bad science fiction make it a bad tv show, or one I don’t like.
b) I, overall, quite like B5 even though I point out that it’s entirely derivative of written sf from half a century earlier. I adore neo-BSG, even though I note that it’s really just barely sf, by virtue of the examining the nature of what it is to be human or not, and that the setting (space, future) doesn’t otherwise make it science fiction in the least.
And lastly, I’m inordinately fond of the Treks, not because of their inherent quality, which varies from reason to awful, absent appreciating them as Star Trek qua Star Trek, but overwhelmingly because of nostalgia, and what the original series meant to me when it was first broadcast, when I was 7 years old, and in reruns thereafter.
c) There’s been very little on American tv, ever, and only a pretty small number of movies, that I’d classify as real sf.
I’ve made lists in the past, but have none around at present. The series that have come close to real sf are largely anthology series, which don’t have the structural problems that an episodic drama has in creating science fiction; as I said, the nature of episodic tv, and that of science fiction, work against each other to make doing both simultaneously, and regularly, almost impossible.
(In short, the authentic science fiction tends to be neophilic; in most cases, the story presents you with some new idea, concept, notion, or at least set of images and thoughts; what makes it science fiction, rather than fantasy, then, is whether it’s based on a possible real world, at a minimum [if it’s derived from a notion connected to a scientific notion, or some at least remotely plausible alternative scientific possibility]; on the other hand, I don’t want to play the “let’s define science fiction” game”; it’s a fool’s errand, and it leads nowhere interesting.
Anyway, Twilight Zone and Outer Limits had a fair number of science fictional stories in their day, in all their incarnations, as did the Fifties Tales of Tomorrow.
Dramatic series: not so much. Some scattered episodes at times, more or less.
Part of the problem is that when an idea is new, it’s science fictional. When it’s repeated for the tenth time, it isn’t any more: it’s just a standard trope. And by the fiftieth time, it’s probably just a cliche.
So warp drive/hyperdrive was very exciting back in 1922-38. Afterwards: not so much science fictional, as simply either a device, or a cliche. Etc. And thus, again, a major problem for most non-written sf (which requires zillions of dollars, the colloboration of hundreds of people, and an at least semi-mass audience, as a rule, compared to a simple story, which can be as alien as imaginable, simply because it takes place only in the mind, and is the creation of a single person’s vision).
Excellent media sf: 2001. Good media sf: 2010. Not sf: Star Wars (it’s science-fantasy/adventure).
Really mediocre sf, at best, and really only very sporadically: Star Trek.
Bad media sf, aka “sci-fi”: monster movies.
Then there’s stuff like The Matrix, which has the sense-of-wonder of good sf, and some admirable sf qualities, but fails as hard sf, aka that which is scientifically plausible, and which is only a subcategory of sf, one particular type of sf, because of stuff like the ludicrousness of the notion that you’d power a civilization with the heat of human bodies, which is completely idiotic.
If there’s ever been a dramatic, episodic, tv series, that presented new and good sf ideas almost every episode, it’s not springing to mind.
But I still love certain “sf series” even if they’re not particularly science fiction episode by episode.
Given that 99.99% of all sf ever done is in written text form, not in a visual medium, I’m actually very unfussy about definitions, relatively speaking. It’s pretty much only in relation to the infinitesimal percentage that shows up in the visual media that the topic tends to come up at all in my conversation.
Otherwise, I don’t care to attempt to delineate, or go looking for, the borders of genre; it’s a waste of time. I note again my friend Chip Delany’s explication.
“the authenticness (is that a word?)”
Authenticity.
Gary: the rest of SG1 is on my ‘watch if I have time’ list. But for the moment I have to see 6 BSG episodes before they start broadcasting again, 5 eps of heroes, 3 of Veronica Mars, I have to finish watching ‘the 12 kingdoms’ and next week they’ll start the Dresden files which I want to see because I like the books (nice brain snacks).
There are new Robin Hobbs to read, I’m retrying Sarah Douglass, Stephen Erickson is on the reading table next to my bed and I actually have a small bookshelf behind the table because it doesn’t fit anymore. And that’s just the SF/Fantasy.
So it might be a while :).
Whoops, should have read thru the comments. What Gary said. I agree it is a debatable proposition, but I look at it in terms of the development of what is required for audiences to suspend disbelief.
Funny anecdote about accents in movies, I use them to teach English dialects (and from there, the History of English) to Japanese students, so I have to emphasize that the accents often are not ‘the real thing’, (though they can be hard enough for the students to understand as is), but in developing the movie list that students have to watch, I put some queries on various linguistic lists, both asking for interesting movies, and asking for critiques of movies. One movie that I this is relatively authentic was Ken Loach’s Kes, (which wasn’t premiered in London because they thought that no one would understand the Yorkshire accents) and I got a long email saying how certain actors were not speaking with a Barnsley accent where the movie was set, but were actually from Donchester, and how could I think for a moment that the accents were realistic. I wrote back explaining that the purpose of the exercise was not to get my students to be Henry Higgins, but to realize that there are a wide range of accents and dialects and if my students could place the accent in the correct half of the island, I would be over the moon.
Authenticity
Hah! Slowly, word by word, the language attrits…
rotisserie?
Actually, kind of, yes. There was a restaurant in town here — maybe it’s a chain, I don’t know — called American Rotisserie and when I was trying to explain the difference between British and American accents to someone a few years back my brain slipped and I said American Rotisserie by mistake. It’s now become my own personal in-joke 🙂
Drive-by observations:
I’m one of the people who can’t get past the muppet-look to be able to enjoy Farscape. My brother tells me it’s awesome, but I couldn’t work up enough interest to watch past the first couple of episodes. Maybe I’ll netflix it someday.
I love neo-BSG and Firefly, and have a secret shameful desire to read fanfiction crossovers between the two.
Jes, let me add my recommendation to hilzoy’s re: The Wire. I personally believe it is the best television series ever made. Bar none.
I saw part one of the early seasons of B5 (the one with the big war against the Shadows). It struck me as having great concepts, but the acting and dialogue (except for the Londo and G’Kar characters) needed some work.
As always, people’s mileage may vary considerably. Except for The Wire, about which there can be no disagreement. 😉
Someone once described the Farscape universe as the sewer into which Star Trek drains. I’d exempt DS:9 from that, at least to a degree, but one appealing element of Farscape was the utterly chaotic nature of it.
And what I meant by “sci-fi being almost an afterthought” was a rather poor shorthand for expressing that technology was for the most part not part of the plot. There’s not a lot of “we need a new phase variance coil”. There was little (and less and less as time went by) appeal to scientific solutions.
At one point the main character returns to Earth, wherein scientists examine the FTL drive he attached to his ship. He told them he didn’t understand how it worked either — he just knew how to install it. Futuristic technology wasn’t magic, it was everyday and as mundane as the brakes on your car.
Wormholes were, of course, an exemption to this — but even they were something magical that only John understood. He uncovered them in equations and science, but to use them was art. In a lot of ways John’s character is what the show is about — he starts off a peaceful scientist, incapable of and adverse to violence. He’s thrust into a violent situation, around violent people (professional soldier and a warrior, to name two). He’s forced to become a warrior, and to meld his passion for science with it’s destructive capabilities.
Farscape is chaos embodied. It is, in a lot of ways, the very antithesis of Trek — which I am fond of, don’t get me wrong(although the Dominion War part of DS:9 is much closer to Farscape than the rest of the Treks). Chaos, dirt, moral ambiguities and utterly shocking violence — and the slow change from peaceful scientist to alien warrior is good to watch.
Seriously, if you want to understand what a Farscape fan sees in Farscape, read this. It’s a recap of an episode entitled “A Human Reaction” (probably the best of Season One) and while the show probably isn’t for you (no slam there — tastes differ, and I’m not one to claim mine is somehow superior to anyone elses’) reading that will get you an idea of what other’s see in it. Jacob’s recap managed to put his finger on all the things I liked about Farscape, in much better way than I ever could.
In the end, though — I just love the interaction between John, Scorpius and Harvey. (And I like how the BSG took the Harvey idea and ran with it too.). Good TV is John’s deal with Scorpius to save Aeryn from the Scarrans — or Harvey’s manipulations of John and the subsequent encounter over the ice planet. (That was some tough TV to watch).
Or hell, just watch Aeryn try to deal with John A’s death and her interactions with John B. (Short version: Aeryn and John have attraction. Before said attraction goes anywhere, John gets effectively doubled. The crew splits (a John going with each) and the John’s flip for which one goes with Aeryn. The has a relationship with that one, he dies, they come back to the other half of the crew — where John B is very much alive and very much still in love. How would you like to stare into the face of your dead love day in, and day out?)
Just for the record, Kes, which like most Ken Loach films, I’ve not seen (but have added to my Netflix queue), though I’ve been reading about him for decades now, and have seen a handful of his films, did go on to win the British Academy Award (BAFTA) for best film of the year; Roger Ebert also noted, back in 1970, an Edinburgh Grand Prize.
Yeah: the notion that it’s Really Really Important to Get Accents Completely Right is pretty, ah, new, shall we say, to both the British and American film and tv establishments; I’m unclear that there are other, more concerned with the authenticity of accents, film/tv industries out there in the world.
Since Jes is so familiar with the feelings of “Chinese people,” she can doubtless testify to the extent to which the Chinese tv industry goes to make sure that an American Maine accent is differentiated from a Massachusetts accent, and a Leeds accent from one from Essex, in their productions using Britons and Americans; I’m sure the Chinese are much better about this, given the huge importance of distinguishing accents in English in the Chinese tv market.
Oh, and last bit about Farscape: I also liked it because it managed to tell complex stories about its female characters and make them interesting in their own right without limiting them to being romantic partners or stereotypes (though the latter did start to creep in a bit during S4 due to network pressures). The “women” always had roles that were not just defined by who they were involved with, or who the fanbase wanted them to be involved with.
Less of an SF reason to love the show, but a reason nonetheless.
(though the latter did start to creep in a bit during S4 due to network pressures)…err…make that “former,” not “latter.”
Not that we need to add much to what’s already been said re: Hugh Laurie’s American accent, but I find it completely convincing, to the extent that I keep forgetting he’s not American.
Probably Gwyneth Paltrow, etc do less well at Britishese, but I really have no idea. I’ve seen some truly atrocious attempts at English accents, but they were so bad that the trauma wiped out any association of those memories with actors or films. Probably something with Keanu Reeves in it. And I’m unsure as to whether Kelly MacDonald’s native accent is properly expressed in either Nanny McPhee or Gosford Park. I’m guessing the latter.
Gary,
Highly recommend Kes. I’m not sure if I would have understood later Loach films if I hadn’t seen Kes.
I’m also trying to find a memorable essay by Loach (in the guardian, maybe) where he, after complaints by critics that one of his movies (Land and Freedom?) was historically inaccurate, pointed out that critics failed to raise those points at all with other movies (the example he used was Reversal of Fortune, about Klaus Von Bulow) where entire fictional scenes are inserted and he wondered why that was the case. Needless to say, I think the question of authenticity as it relates to cinema is a pretty fascinating one.
“And what I meant by ‘sci-fi being almost an afterthought’ was a rather poor shorthand for expressing that technology was for the most part not part of the plot.”
Technology is irrelevant to science fiction; as I said, this is missing the point. You don’t find much technology in, say, Ursula Le Guin, Geoff Ryman, Gene Wolfe, or in any non-hard sf.
“Tech” is a tv trope. “There’s not a lot of ‘we need a new phase variance coil'” is a tv/Star Trek thing; it’s meaningless blather, and part of what defines not being sf; you don’t find it in science fiction (though in some hard sf you might find some considerable exposition on details of real science or technology, such as, say, Kim Stanley Robinson might engage in, or Hal Clement, or Wil McCarthy, or various others).
“Wormholes were, of course, an exemption to this — but even they were something magical that only John understood.”
Yeah, that’s not science fiction; that’s using terms as props and plot devices. It might as well be fantasy, and called “magic.”
Which, as I said, has nothing whatever to do with how good a tv show it is or isn’t, which is also a different question from whether a given show will appeal, or not, to a given person, no matter its quality by objective standards.
“‘There’s not a lot of ‘we need a new phase variance coil'” is a tv/Star Trek thing”
I should have noted specifically that “technobabble” (aka “treknobabble”) was a phrase invented on the Internet in the Eighties, to (accurately) describe what was in use on Star Trek: The Next Generation (and subsequently its successors, and similar tv show usage); it wasn’t invented, and hasn’t been subsequently used, in regard to actual science fiction, for which it would make no sense.
The distinction been actual science and technology, which may or may not be explicitly described in science fiction — it’s purely optional — and made-up babble, is by any usage a crucial distinction between science fiction and non-science-fiction (also known to some as “sci-fi”).
“Highly recommend Kes.”
Unfortunately, I had to put it in the “save” category; it’s not currently available on DVD.
Gary Farber: “Tech” is a tv trope. “There’s not a lot of ‘we need a new phase variance coil'” is a tv/Star Trek thing; it’s meaningless blather, and part of what defines not being sf; you don’t find it in science fiction (though in some hard sf you might find some considerable exposition on details of real science or technology, such as, say, Kim Stanley Robinson might engage in, or Hal Clement, or Wil McCarthy, or various others).
What about Cyberpunk? It’s heavily dependent on technology and technical jargon. Or maybe I just don’t understand how finely you are splitting these hairs?
such as, say, Kim Stanley Robinson might engage in, or Hal Clement, or Wil McCarthy, or various others
My favorites are Moving Mars by Greg Bear and just about anything by Gregory Benford and Charles Sheffield. More for the science than for the storylines, and the science is far beyond my ability to tell it from magic. The downfall of just about any technology that’s not current is that if we knew how things like that worked, we’d already be developing them.
Niven tends to be a little more real, sometimes, and Roger MacBride Allen has some interesting things in his novels (The Ring of Charon, notably). That sort of thing is of interest to me, but at some point it takes over the story, like in Bear’s Eon, which I eventually gave up on.
“What about Cyberpunk? It’s heavily dependent on technology and technical jargon.”
Aside from the fact that cyberpunk (no reason to capitalize it)is pretty much long dead (it was an Eighties movement), no, it isn’t. At all.
In point of fact, Bill Gibson, an old friend of mine from long before he sold a word of fiction, as I’ve mentioned here before, is one of the most non-technically inclined people there is; he’s never remotely claimed to have a clue about how computers work, and you can’t find any clue indicating otherwise in any of his fiction, because it isn’t true.
Cyperpunk is definitionally not hard sf, although one could certainly argue that some folks’ work lies on a border between them (I’m thinking Greg Egan, for starters).
“…how finely you are splitting these hairs?”
It’s not some strange personal view of mine I’m explicating here, for the most part; I’m giving a fairly standard set of points, overall, from the sf field, of what’s more than not (there are always plenty of things to disagree about, as well as outliers) the accepted wisdom of the field.
I mean, for about seventy years, hundreds of people at any given time have been writing thousands of extremely lengthy essays about these sorts of questions, while in more recent times, sf has become accepted academically enough for people to get doctoral degrees writing and arguing about it; there’s an entire science fiction subculture, albeit nowadays in a peculiarly aging and diluting form in many cases. If I had a lot — or much of any, besides the internet, and only limited interest in rehashing this (not that anyone is forcing me, of course) — I might go linking to essays from Foundation, Science Fiction Studies, The New York Review of SF, Extrapolation, Science Fiction Commentary, and on and on through hundreds of source journals/fanzines, for further discussion of this sort of thing. (The arguments going back and forth in the field in recent years are about more recent movements, like “mundane sf” and “the new space opera” and so on; there’s an entire science fiction blogosphere at this point, which I’m largely disconnected from.)
I looked at that recap of “A Human Reaction,” Morat20, and given that it’s 20 pages long, and seems to consist of close description of the events of the episode, I suspect it makes more sense for me to try to give the episode a chance when it comes around, rather than invest a bunch of time in reading someone’s description.
I think it’s a difference between what the average person thinks of as sci-fi, which would include Trek, B5, BSG, etc., and what sci-fi aficionados like Gary consider sci-fi.
“I think it’s a difference between what the average person thinks of as sci-fi, which would include Trek, B5, BSG, etc., and what sci-fi aficionados like Gary consider sci-fi.”
Absolutely. I meant to say, but didn’t get to it, that “sci-fi” is a fairly generally accepted neutral shorthand for what the general public refers to and thinks of as “science fiction,” and there’s no arguing that. It’s just that most of the professional field, and people close to it, including myself, are still somewhat old-fashioned about sticking to the nomenclature that’s been in use as regards “sci-fi” and “sf” for about fifty years.
And, of course, the distinction between the general public’s perception of what “science fiction” is, and the field itself’s perception (that is, the perception of those who work in the field, or otherwise are active on a more or less daily basis in it), is major.
Isn’t ‘sci-fi’ a term that gets some in the field really angry? Or has that become a term that people are more or less happy to use?
I always like Kurt Vonnegut’s observation that it isn’t that he minds being put in a drawer labeled ‘science fiction’, except that it is a drawer that critics tend to open up and pee in.
Slarti, for hard SF you might try almost anything by Stephen Baxter.
The closest thing to hard SF on TV that I’ve ever seen is a fifties series, Men in Space.
Gary Farber: Aside from the fact that cyberpunk (no reason to capitalize it)
I will try not to capitalize Cyberpunk in the future.
is pretty much long dead (it was an Eighties movement), no, it isn’t. At all.
And I didn’t realize there was a statute of limitations at work here.
In point of fact, Bill Gibson, an old friend of mine from long before he sold a word of fiction, as I’ve mentioned here before, is one of the most non-technically inclined people there is; he’s never remotely claimed to have a clue about how computers work, and you can’t find any clue indicating otherwise in any of his fiction, because it isn’t true.
I don’t understand your point here. Are you suggesting that the writers who pen Star Trek scripts have some idea of how a phase variance coil or whatever works? I’ve only read a couple of Gibson’s novels, plus a collection of his short stories, but they are full of technology both as textural elements and as central pillars of the plot. Rail guns and hovercraft and personality constructs and sockets in peoples’ heads that allow them to expand their knowledge, and mind-altering toxins, and such. Neuromancer and the other novels set in that universe would be meaningless if you stripped away the underlying technological elements. The plot of Neuromancer hinged on a scheme by the super-wealthy to attain immortality through technology, after all, and people in that world defined themselves by their relationship to technology (Case abhorring “meat” in favor of the ethereal cyberspace, for example).
Gary — And, of course, the distinction between the general public’s perception of what “science fiction” is, and the field itself’s perception (that is, the perception of those who work in the field, or otherwise are active on a more or less daily basis in it), is major.
Yes, and it is a lot more heterogenous and continually contested than you are letting on here. Sure, there is still a segment of SF scholars who make hard distinctions between SF and Sci-Fi, and most all will understand the distinction, but it’s not a very useful critical distinction. Mostly it gets trotted out every time someone starts off on questions of genre or canon which are somewhat interesting, but not very dynamic, given how thoroughly hashed over they are.
And saying that SF isn’t about technology because Gibson isn’t (or at least wasn’t) very technically adept is like saying that war literature isn’t about guns because Hemingway couldn’t shoot worth a damm.
There is an important critical dialogue between science and technology and a lot of interesting critical work is being done there right now. It’s not a hard line and it hasn’t been for some time. Many of the younger SF critics (and some of the older ones as well) have been cheerfully violating the boundary between science and tech for years. The same can be said for all of your careful genre distinctions. The boundaries are entirely permeable.
General agreement amongst SF scholars?…sure. Right up until you as a particular question. Then watch the arguments start.
And the above isn’t to suggest that a work with the same broad human themes as “Neuromancer” couldn’t have been written without invoking technology (substituting magic or spirituality for technology, for example), but rather to say that technology is, in fact, central to the thing that ultimately became “Neuromancer”, and that it is a defining characteristic of cyberpunk as a subgenre.
Posting to comments seems to be broken; or is it just my longer comment, with several links, that’s getting a Typepad “we can’t find that page” response?
Yes. Every time I try to make the longer post, I get this:
Could someone possibly fix this, please? I’d prefer to not have to strip the links out of my comment.
This is just speculation, but it may be that typepad is trying out some spam filtering that automatically kicks in after a set number of links, so the kitty might not actually be able to do anything. I know, I know, probably a serious sin to doubt the kitty’s mastery of time and space, but there you have it. How many links did you have in, Gary?
6. I’ll try splitting it into two comments.
Here’s the first half:
“Isn’t ‘sci-fi’ a term that gets some in the field really angry?”
I suppose it used to, to some degree. These days, in the field it’s largely a matter of how old you are and/or how recently you became active in the field, though I wouldn’t say that many of us older-fashioned folks who have been active in the field for many decades get angry these days (I hope not; unless one avoided the general public, one would be apt to be in a pretty perpetual state of irritation, if not worse); if you became active in the last ten, or perhaps a bit more, years, you’re probably apt to share the usage of the general public, and just use “sci-fi” as shorthand for “science fiction.” If you’ve been active longer, you’re probably less inclined to. Note again that I’m referring to people active in the field (writers, editors, artists, highly involved booksellers and fans active in running conventions or doing fanzines, some of the other folks involved in sf publishing, and so on; it’s a community, if a rather considerably larger and more subdivided one than it was back in the Seventies, let alone earlier, and I’m referring to the people active in it in some way), not people who are simply enthusiastic readers.
I certainly don’t mean to get on anyone’s case about the usage in any serious way; that would be pointless. I do tend to stick to the long-term usage, and occasionally will poke folks about it, but in terms of general, popular, usage in the English-speaking world, it’s a long lost battle, so I certainly don’t try to seriously fight it any more.
Back in, say, the Seventies and Eighties, when “sci-fi” was seriously used to describe science fiction only by Forry Ackerman, and people who didn’t know anything much about science fiction, there were still serious arguments over the proper usage, and avoiding confusion (and, as well, it was a way to instantly know that someone was extremely unfamiliar with the field), but those times are long gone now.
“Or has that become a term that people are more or less happy to use?”
Not “happy” in as many cases — although some old-timers are just fine with it now, to be sure — as “resigned.”
A few links. Or #25 panel at Balticon here quoting from the Science Fiction Encyclopedia. (Hmm, here is a fuller quote, via Norm Geras.) Or why, here’s Mr. Stracynski in 1997 (and he’s fairly distant from the core of the sf culture, as it happens):
Here is a common opinion, from someone I don’t know.
Pt. II: Here is Lou Anders, a relatively recent sf editor. Jesse Sheidlower over at the OED compiles:
And so on.
Oh, incidentally, one of the things I’ve been doing in recent weeks is (in an unpaid capacity) going through the several thousand page manuscript of my old friend Bill P/tterson’s authorized biography of Robert Heinlein, to give him line-editing notes.
Okay, dividing what the software wouldn’t let me post as one comment into two parts worked. I still would hope that this will be changed, or is just a temporary glitch, and that we won’t be forbidden to make as many as six links in a comment (and even if we are, a posted policy, and the software going to a page that explains this, would be good, rather than it going to a page that simply says ObWi can’t be found, if I might suggest).
Oh, crap, in fact some of my comment disappeared somewhere from my copy. Drat, drat, drat.
Okay, one link was to Nayir’s compilation of some descriptions/definitions of sf.
And, yes, that’s eight links. It was my understanding there would be no math.
Slarti, for hard SF you might try almost anything by Stephen Baxter.
Yeah, his was one of those names that I omitted, although not deliberately. One of these days I’m going to accumulate some of his stuff, because lots of it seems to be interconnected. I’ve read Raft and Ring and Manifold Origin, although I think in the case of the last there was one or two novels that preceded it. Oh, and I just finished rereading Moonseed, which was very good.
Re: Gibson, his books wouldn’t be what they are without the technology, but neither would they be what they are without Gibson’s knack for juxtaposing words in the way that he does. It works for me, which is about the most I’m qualified to say about it.
I like Gibson. I think his awareness of technology, and his sense of what might be possible with it was at least sufficient to craft storylines with. It was enough, for me, to hold up my disbelief, particularly since my disbelief likes to be held up in that particular way. Whether he understood it in any important way outside of the storylines is fairly irrelevant. Whether there’s anything sensible about “recrystallized hexogene” or “shark-cartilage polysaccharides” (this is just on the first page of Count Zero, mind you) isn’t as important as what those things convey in the story: advanced shit that’s connectible to what we know now. Not being a writer, or particularly good with words, I’ll leave it there.
…and of course, not having a clue about what I’m talking about, nor having read those that do. Just to be clear.
Slarti: Otherwise, I second Gary and Anarch on the whole “Chinese” thing, which as far as I’m aware isn’t a language.
I thought of substituting “Mandarin Chinese” for “Chinese”, and then decided that would be unnecessarily pedantic.
Clearly I was wrong.
Andrew: I think it’s a difference between what the average person thinks of as sci-fi, which would include Trek, B5, BSG, etc.,
And most science-fiction fans, too. There are occasional SF cons where the organizers have tried to ban all reference to TV or radio or film SF from the program, but nothing in the world can prevent fans from continuing the conversation in the bar. 😉 You can still find science-fiction fans who have never seen an episode of Star Trek, but the last one I met lived in an area of Scotland where TV reception was poor-to-minimal and had therefore never bought a TV. Most science-fiction fans have a fun time criticizing the science in skiffy TV, but that doesn’t mean they won’t watch it – rather the reverse.
Otherwise, I second Gary and Anarch on the whole “Chinese” thing, which as far as I’m aware isn’t a language.
FWIW, I wasn’t actually talking about “Chinese” as a language but as an ethnosocial (?!) construct of dubious authenticity. I took as given that “Chinese” in this linguistic context meant Mandarin, just as “Chinese” in Hong Kong means Cantonese or whatever.
. . . you’re saying I should like it because it’s bad science fiction, that the science fiction aspects are an afterthought.
I am fairly certain from a careful reading that Morat didn’t tell you to like anything at all for any reason, but instead responded to a question from you about why he liked something.
And to settle the argument, the best TV sf show was Futurama.
I’ve read SF for about 30 yrs, the last 15 yrs mostly in English, and have talked to other fans in newsgroups in the Netherlands, but this is the first time I hear about a difference between SF and Sci-Fi. Is that an American thing? Or are the Dutch just not into it?
Our “label wars” are always about wether something is fantasy or SF and wether American Gods by Gaiman is horror or fantasy. And about wether Han Solo shot first of course 😉
but this is the first time I hear about a difference between SF and Sci-Fi.
I think it’s a thing with hardline fans – the sort that Harlan Ellison would be proud of. The kind of fans (or fen) for whom FIAWOL. Ordinary fans (for whom FIJAGH), as far as I’ve ever been able to tell, mostly don’t care.
Speaking of science fiction…the author’s name should look familiar to anyone who has read much of Niven’s Known Space stories.
There are two things going on with Gibson in particular and cyberpunk in general that it’s worth touching on.
#1. Gibson had a wonderful ear for dialogue. I think it may need some re-focusing now, but take his early novels and short stories and read them aloud. The characters all sound like the sort of people they are.
#2. Cyberpunk is very much about technology, but in a specific way: it’s about how technology changes society, and vice versa. Gary, do you have an attribution for “The street has its own uses for things.”? Bruce Sterling, I think, but I’m not sure. Anyway, that’s always seemed to me like the essence of the field.
(As for the influence of cyberpunk now, I’ll swipe from Walter Jon Williams and Greg Feeley to say that cyberpunk’s now merged with the general idea pool for sf. You can use motifs that originated in cyberpunk without any likely reader blinking now. And because so much of the movement was so thoroughly visual in style, it’s good fodder for film and TV, too. There’s active development of some of the basic themes in anime these days – it seems to appeal to a lot of anime creators, and at their best, they are saying things for the modern moment as timely as Neuromancer or Vacuum Flowers (which I want to see reviewed by someone thinking about mass media consolidation) then.)
The best sf tv series was Max Headroom and anyone who disagrees is getting coal in their stockings. Those with Bit Torrent can get it from TV Torrents, too.
On film, two of the rare ones that fit my personal favorite definition of sf, a human story that couldn’t happen without the technological content, are Strange Days and Until the End of the World.
Strange Days is a tight story with Ralph Fiennes as a dealer in black-market recordings of memories – technology introduced to replace wires for surveillance, we’re told, and promptly leaked to other uses. The entire story is about what this tech does to and for the dealer, his former girlfriend, his ex-cop buddy turned body guard, the ex-girlfriend’s paranoid manager, and others around them. And it’s about what marking the millennium means to them, with the story spanning the last few days of 1999.
Until the End of the World is a sprawling Wim Wenders epic of a road movie, also covering the tail end of 1999 and a bit beyond. It’s astonishingly vivid in its vision of a few years ahead of when it was made, with a lot of stuff that exists and virtually everything else feeling like it could, apart from the central MacGuffin. In the background is a nuclear satellite out of control and likely to come down somewhere, while in the foreground a motley crew of vagabond artistes, bank robbers, bounty hunters, and others turn out to be orbiting around the family responsible for a machine that can record sensory impressions. Built to aid the blind, it likewise has other uses. The costs of making it, hiding it from what the creator sees as misuse, and what its other uses mean for users around them are the guts of the story.
Until the End of the World is also in a place of honor on my True Fictions list for another reason. It goes on long enough to get past both of the obvious tragic endings, on and on, till there’s release for some and redemption for others. Life is like that, but film often isn’t.
“Part of the problem is that when an idea is new, it’s science fictional. When it’s repeated for the tenth time, it isn’t any more: it’s just a standard trope. And by the fiftieth time, it’s probably just a cliche.”
That is interesting. I wouldn’t say that a tragedy wasn’t a tragedy just because it was done before. In my view, an idea is science fiction so long as it
A) has not become reality
and
B) has not been shown to be impossible (though even then, for hyperdrives and the like the definition may need more).
The whole sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic thing applies too. Though I wonder how much people fail to appreciate that the comment applies to NOW. We are already at the point where your average smart person can’t adequately explain how things work well enough to actually replicate it themselves.
Dutchmarbel, re:
Robin Hobb–Loved the Farseer trilogy, though she has a sadistic urge to take her characters through the wringer, and then worse, and then even worse. Time doesn’t heal all wounds. But by the Tawny Man that was a bit much. I’m following my long-term rule of not starting a series until it is finished (Robert Jordan and Melanie Rawn taught me that one) but do you like the new series thus far?
Sarah Douglass–strangely she is one of the few major fantasy authors I’ve never read. She gets mixed reviews. If I were to read her, which books should I do?
I have a strange liking for Elizabeth Haydon, (I read Rhapsody, Prophecy and Destiny and thought they were very good–but I’m a sucker for music mixed with magic).
Steven Erikson is an interesting case. I would call what he writes something like “mythic history”. I got tricked into him because I didn’t realize “Gardens of the Moon” was part of a series. I’ve broken my rule about unfinished series because each book actually has an ending. I know lots of people who love him and lots who can’t stand to read him. In many respects he is a world builder and myth builder more than what we normally expect from a storyteller. J.R.R. Tolkien famously made his stories because he had invented a language and believed that a real language had to have stories behind it. I suspect Erikson feels the same way about his mythos (and yes I know it has roots in a RPG campaign).
“I wouldn’t say that a tragedy wasn’t a tragedy just because it was done before.”
Sure; that’s because tragedy isn’t in the least neophilic, and isn’t about sense of wonder. Science fiction is.
Thus we distinguish these two things, though, of course, there’s no problem in having a science fiction tragedy.
something Gary said:
I certainly don’t mean to get on anyone’s case about the usage in any serious way; that would be pointless. I do tend to stick to the long-term usage, and occasionally will poke folks about it, but in terms of general, popular, usage in the English-speaking world, it’s a long lost battle, so I certainly don’t try to seriously fight it any more.
This is exactly why the literary debate over what constitutes real “science fiction” always reminds me of the political debate over what constitutes a real “conservative”. Both labels have been coopted by modern pretenders whose claim their interpretation is validated by crass “popularity” or “power”. Both labels have die-hard purists trying to defend their long and honorable history from being relegated to mere etymology. And both labels are lost causes, because popular usage trumps in a living language, and fair or not, the mental prototypes evoked in most people these days by “science fiction” and “conservative” are “Star Wars” and “George W. Bush”.
Tragedy certainly can be neophilic. I give you the work of Henrik Ibsen, which is all about the woes caused by clinging to the past, as an obvious example. Some tragedy is a lot more liberal than the sf of someone like Jerry Pournelle or John Ringo – or for that matter a genuinely genius like R.A. Lafferty. Tom Stoppard’s careeer in theatre has a very strong dose of tragedy in the comedy about the evils of tyranny and the vital importance of moving on, of discovering rather than endlessly regurgitating, fo seeing rather than relying on others’ accounts, and acting rather than merely following.
Sebastian: I wouldn’t really recommend Sarah Douglass. I only liked her first trilogy (the Axis trilogy) and it is not Robin Hobb level. The trilogy following the original trilogy was not worth reading. This one is in a different setting, but so far I’m not impressed. Too many descriptions, not gripping enough. I’m not sure I’ll finish this trilogy even.
I never read Elizabeth Haydon but she sounds like my taste. Unfinished series though…. book 4 and 5 are allready written 😉
Robin Hobb; I’ve not read the newest books yet – I try to read the more or less finished series first, but it is hard 😉
Farseer trilogy I liked best. Lifeships trilogy is nice too, she’s a good writer, but I like the ‘darkness’ in Farseer.
Erickson I actually started reading on your recommendation 🙂
Books I read the last months and really liked:
– “the last light of the sun” (Guy Gavriek Kay) – based in Norsk mythology, nice story, but I really like his style, how he paints with words.
– Naomi Novik – Temeraire series. It is about napoleontic wars but everybody has dragons. Nicely written, the first three at least, and I started reading them because Jackson bought the filmrights 😉
– George Martin – A Song of Ice and Fire is planned to be 7 books long, fifth book is planned in Januari and I really really recommend the serie
– “Altered Carbon” (by Richard Morgan) if you like an interesting take on how technology changes humans and human society. Thrilling book, better than the ones after and can be read on itself.
– Jim Butcher – Academs Fury, but it is an unfinished serie…
I will now stop looking behind me…. too many books I like…. 🙂
A Song of Ice and Fire is planned to be 7 books long
I just don’t believe it. That series has gotten totally out of control, which makes me sad because I remain very impressed by his insight. I’m going to be getting the next books out of the library–when they are finally released, that is.
But 4 was still really good… no dip yet 😉
Also; I like the guy. Shame I’m not in Haven to eat pizza with him 😉
“Shame I’m not in Haven to eat pizza with him ;)”
I declined to comment on a number of the authors mentioned in the thread so far, partially because my comments about several would, or could largely only be, personal, about their having been friends and stuff; having done that at times before on this blog, I figured I’d spare everyone, as it would simply be name-droppping to no end and point. (Or in a couple of cases, mildly unpleasant anecdotes, which would be utterly tacky, though the reputation of a couple of folks is well-known in the field; but, again, pretty much irrelevant to talking about their work; in other cases, I could discuss their work to an extent, but if I thought I had anything unusually insightful to say, I’d have likely said it. Unless it would take to long, in which case never mind, anyway.)
But, then, if you’re starting, well, I’ve known George (and Parris) since 1974-5, either first at Discon II, or at the ’75 Midwescon, or the Disclave and later. So there!
😉
Bruce: “Gary, do you have an attribution for ‘The street has its own uses for things.’?’ Bruce Sterling, I think, but I’m not sure.”
It’s buried somewhere in my brain — doubtless with the details of some of the issues of Cheap Truth I no longer fully retain 25 or so years later — but I don’t recall at the moment for sure if it was Chairman Bruce, or Bill. Sorry. I think Bill used it first, and Bruce picked it up from him, but I could easily be misremembering.
To conclude our name-dropping: have I mentioned the time Ian Ballantine turned to me on a panel we were on at a Boskone (I think it was a Boskone, not a Readercon) and said to me “so, tell me, what’s this cyberpunk about? Can you explain it to me?”
Oh, and Strange Days is on my list of actual science fiction films, even though the recording memories gimmick was fairly ancient, by then, although not so much in movies (though there’s Brainstorm [another real sf movie] and others); but they did write a real science fiction story, nonetheless.
I second dutchmarbel’s recommendation of Richard Morgan and Altered Carbon. I disagree, however, on it being better than Broken Angels or Market Forces, both of which I thought were outstanding (though for different reasons). I’m hoping to squeeze Woken Furies in between exam readings soon.
Yeah: the notion that it’s Really Really Important to Get Accents Completely Right is pretty, ah, new, shall we say, to both the British and American film and tv establishments; I’m unclear that there are other, more concerned with the authenticity of accents, film/tv industries out there in the world.
John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith, first Director-General of the BBC.
This notion that caring about accents is new is based purely on assumption that the Standard English accent isn’t an accent. Your ’30’s unaccented actor is accented. He just has the accent that you do not treat as an accent, for whatever reason.
I looked at that recap of “A Human Reaction,” Morat20, and given that it’s 20 pages long, and seems to consist of close description of the events of the episode, I suspect it makes more sense for me to try to give the episode a chance when it comes around, rather than invest a bunch of time in reading someone’s description.
But if you ever do see the episode, be sure to go back to Television Without Pity and read the recap. They catch nuances you’d never notice on first viewing, and they have the highest quality snark available.
Interesting quote, but I’d suggest that last line of Reith quote about ‘seeking a common denominator of educated speech’ automatically excludes a huge range of accents.
This quote is from the forward (or should I say, foreword) of the ACSE committee that met to decide what would be the standard broadcast English and was composed primarily of RP speakers, including Alastair Cooke (whose accent moved to somewhere in the MidAtlantic after his long stay in the US and Americans considered his accent British while Brits considered it American) The poet Robert Bridges was also a member and argued for a Northern Standard, (which would have really made me happy as I think a Scottish accent is incredibly sexy) but was obviously unsuccessful.
Also, Reith said this
the language, the speech and pronunciation … that the announcers were taught to speak … was the very best that we could do.
Obviously, what announcers were taught was RP, so it’s not like it was a level playing field.
Now, I’m certainly not suggesting that RP isn’t an accent, but I’m at a loss as to how to express the notion of accent when everyone is speaking it. Suggestions?
I’m not sure I get the problem. Everyone has an accent, in the same way everyone has a hair colour. We manage to talk about hair colour without needing to define a neutral, non-coloured hair type.
Jim Butcher, now there is really fun stuff. His Dresden Files (about the wizard detective) are lots of fun. Though I wonder if he is edging up the power level too high. It has one of my very favorite exchanges in a novel:
“Death Masks” page 74, 75 paperback edition.
Well, if you can show me someone in a 1930’s movie speaking in an honest to god accent, I’ll have to rethink my position, but the point is not that the standard language isn’t an accent, it is that it was so pervasive that no one considered the possibility of acting in a non standard accent. There is no tacit assumption that someone have a certain hair color is poorly educated, so the analogy to hair color is off in one dimension, but actually quite appropriate in another. If you had been in Japan in the 70’s, early 80’s, you would have had a hard time finding a Japanese person whose hair was not black, (excluding grey and white, of course) While Japanese would have had no problem saying that someone’s hair was a color other than black, if I said his/her hair was a color other than black, it would have automatically meant that the person was not Japanese. The japanese word “chapatsu” gives a hint of this
(link)
Also, while no one should ever look to a movie as a true record of how people speak, it is even less a reflection if you are talking about 30’s films.
I would argue that the desire to have appropriate (or at least appropriately seeming) accents, a trend which begins in the 60’s, is similar to the trend to demand more realistic special effects.
Your ’30’s unaccented actor is accented. He just has the accent that you do not treat as an accent, for whatever reason.
Or, in my case, do.
Also; I like the guy. Shame I’m not in Haven to eat pizza with him 😉
A couple of my friends took a class on Restoration England in college (*waves at them in case they’re reading*) and, being both anglophiles and easily amused, decided that they should travel from the North to the South of England, touring all the monasteries dissolved by Henry VIII and sampling the fish’n’chips at every available location. ’twas to be called The Pilgrimage Of Grease.
Gary: I never met him, but he invited readers of his lifejournal to join in when he tastes what he hopes is the best pizza in the world 😉
Anarch: IMHO it is hard to travel any part of Brittain and avoid the Pilgrimage of Grease.They LIKE oil… and butter…. and cream… 😉
Sebastian: I really like the Dresden files too. You know they start broadcasting a series about the book as from next sunday in the US?
Liberal Japonicus: I’m watching ’12 Kokuki’ at the moment, an anime series about a japanese girl who is taken to another world. She has red hair and her teacher and parents want her to dye her hear black, like all other Japanese girls. My spouse thought that was because one of the original tribes in Japan had red hair, so it’s kind of the mark of the Japanese aboriginal. Is that true?
“Oh, and Strange Days is on my list of actual science fiction films, even though the recording memories gimmick was fairly ancient, by then, although not so much in movies (though there’s Brainstorm [another real sf movie] and others)”
Gary, I don’t really see how one can get over the visual arts being behind the curve of ideas relative to written sf. After all, even the worst hack sf writer can do special effects cheaper than even the BBC’s bargain-basement efforts. [Blake’s 7, anyone?]
And if an idea doesn’t pan out in print, you’re talking about a few tens of thousands in losses, versus a few million. So the economics doesn’t favor cutting-edge sf being advanced on film or tv. All you can hope for is that it’s derivative of the better writers, and doesn’t cock up the execution too badly.
“So the economics doesn’t favor cutting-edge sf being advanced on film or tv.”
As I said, it’s an inherent structural problem that makes it extremely difficult, and practically/effectively close to impossible, particularly as a productions costs, and therefore need for a larger and larger mass audience, grows.
Hey Dutch,
There’s an intertwining of a couple of different threads, I think. The ‘original’ settlers of Japan (though this is really argued about) would be the Ainu, who have been defined as “caucasoid”, a term retains a turn of the century eugenics feel, and I don’t think people use that. That term isn’t linked up with red hair.
However, the world that Yoko goes to is more like a version of China, though the two historical periods would be the Three Kingdoms and the 16 Kingdoms, so I suspect they pulled the 12 number from the 12 tribes of Israel, which retains a great fascination (some Japanese have argued that the Yamato dynasty descends from the lost tribes, and it is possible that some Jewish merchants came to Japan via the Silk Road, funky link here)
The final thread is the news stories of Japanese students with a slightly reddish tint to their hair that is natural being bullied or forced by teachers to dye their hair, which then causes an uproar because the students are not changing their hair as an act of resistance (when I taught at Japanese high schools, teachers were always on the look out for the chapatsu girls, which I mentioned above), but were forced to change who they are in order to fit in better, which is much more problematic as a rule.
I suspect that all of these factors led to having Yoko have red hair as a sign that she is different.
Oh. See, here I thought that dm’s film was an anime version of 12 Monkeys.
thanks Japonicus, I’ve enlightend my spouse ;). So far I’ve seen about 1/3 of the series and I quite like it.
Slart: you’re appearantly as sparing with reading words as you are with writing them 😉
Only when it suits me, DM.
I looked at that recap of “A Human Reaction,” Morat20, and given that it’s 20 pages long, and seems to consist of close description of the events of the episode, I suspect it makes more sense for me to try to give the episode a chance when it comes around, rather than invest a bunch of time in reading someone’s description.
Sorry, I should have made it clear what it was when I linked to it. That’s what Television Without Pity does. They recap TV episodes (and occasionally movies, award shows, whatever). Often with a great deal of sarcasm, humor, snark — whatever is appropriate.
The reason I suggested you read that — as opposed to simply watching that episode — is because the recapper (Jacob) makes it very obvious what he likes about the show, why he likes it, and his recapping covers nuances that you won’t get in a drive-by viewing.
As with any show with decent character or story arcs, if you just watch an episode you’re going to miss a lot of the context.
Since your original question was along the lines of “I’ve never really gotten into/liked Farscape, what do you see in it?”, it seemed the absolute best way to show it was to let you see it through someone else’s eyes — someone who is a lot better writer than I am.
For myself? Character development, mythos, the way technology is potrayed (rarely understood on a technical level — much as most people drive cars, use computers, and have nothing but a general notion of how they work). The way humanity is explored through the characters, the way they explore and mingle nuance. And most of all, how they do it in the most chaotic cruicible imaginable.
And there’s a lot of good politics, a very good love story, and really good characters in there. What’s not to like — I mean, once you get past the puppet part. Also, production values are quite good. My wife — not a fan of the genre at all, unless it’s so cheesy as to be amusing — had at least that much to say for it. Art and set design, special effects, costuming especially (she sews and paints, so it’s what she notices) were very well done.
Admittedly, sometimes watching it makes you feel like you stumbled into the weirdest S&M club in Australia….
“Since your original question was along the lines of ‘I’ve never really gotten into/liked Farscape, what do you see in it?’, it seemed the absolute best way to show it was to let you see it through someone else’s eyes — someone who is a lot better writer than I am.”
I understand and appreciate your reasoning; thanks. However, since the ultimate point, really, is for me to either finally learn to like the show — or not — I don’t think reading a recap before seeing the episode would help do that for me, and I think it would, instead, go a considerable ways towards ruining any possible enjoyment I might find from watching it unspoiled. If/when I catch the episode, I can read the recap afterwards.
I am familiar with Television Without Pity, though I don’t spend much time with it.
Thanks for all the comments.
Outland excepted, Jes, I cannot disagree with you more.
The American civil War stll has powerful resonance in the States, and Wheedon’s choice to write a postbellum series with a SF backdrop was an interesting move that paid off well, especially for those of us that got to see the show in its intended order.
Also, the reason they cursed in chinese was because it’d let them get away with far worse obscenity than they could ever even think about in English.