Month: September 2006

So does it matter whether we split fantasy off from science fiction off from horror?

Since I’ve just gotten through defining genres as interconnected families, the answer is obviously “no.” Even if we did, the stories wouldn’t pay any attention to us. They’d keep interbreeding and forming shocking mésalliances and running away together in the dead of night, as they’ve been doing for centuries.

There are some interesting comments as well, including one from, Fiction Theory, who writes:

…it seems like the film industry is far more comfortable with crossovers and genre-mixers than any other media.

I mean, how many people who wouldn’t touch sci-fi go see films which, in book form, are 100% sci fi – but because they’re “action”, they don’t mind the alien.

Such as Independence Day. A lot of people I know who wouldn’t go near the sf/f section of a bookstore adore that movie. It clearly *is* science fiction. It’s got aliens, spaceships. But the movie categorizes itself by what happens in the movie, not by WHY it happens.

Of course, as science fiction, Independence Day is a pretty lousy example. It is an effective action film, there’s no denying that. (I enjoyed it immensely the first time I saw it.) But as science fiction it falls pretty short. (Seeing it again, I’ve had to wonder, what the hell was I thinking?) I think it succeeded largely in spite of its science fiction elements, not because it couched those elements in the familiar and more box-office-friendly guise of an action movie. What’s at work in Hollywood, I think, is less crossovers of different genres than the occasional genre element sneaking its way into more conventional fare.

Then I read the release in full, and I was no longer sure if this anthology was such a great idea. Don’t get me wrong: I think encouraging female artists is a terrific idea. I definitely think there should be more comics by, about, and for women. There should be comics — and all art — from a multitude of perspectives. But this particular anthology, “The Girls’ Guide to Guys’ Stuff,” seems pretty counter-productive on that front, and it seems to be reinforcing a lot of stereotypes on both sides of the gender gap. As one reader, Anun, comments at the link above:

The way the call for the anthology is worded, it sounds like it discusses “Those BOYS!” in a loving/exasperated way, which is akin to most magazine articles in Cosmo and also tries to designate certain things like “video games” and “the Terminator” as for boys.

Women should have the freedom to write about men and topics like video games, etc., but there’s something very disheartening about asking them to do so as if men define these topics for them. If the goal is to get more women interested in comics, to showcase more of the smart, sexy, empowered and independent women already working in the medium, why then only stories that revolve around men?

Of the more famous dystopian novels — Orwell, Huxley, et cetera — Jain goes on to write:

Now that we know that the biggest utopian ideas of the 20th century — communism, fascism, the perfectibility of mankind through technology — were not only insane but also destined to fail, the classics of the genre can seem a little outdated.

Frankly, though, I’m not convinced we know anything of the sort. The communism of the twentieth century certainly appears in hindsight to have been flawed and, in its execution, prone to massive failure. But I don’t know that the underlying idea of it qualifies as insane — or, more importantly, that we’ve washed our hands of it entirely. (Last I checked, the world did still have a few Communist countries left in it.) For my money, Jain has a much better case for the insanity of fascism or that which underlies the belief in the perfectibility of man. But I also think it’s safe to say that those two ugly heads haven’t reared their last just yet either.

I haven’t read We, so it’s difficult to comment on the rest of Jain’s article. The book she describes sounds an awful lot like George Lucas’ film THX-1138, and so it’s a little surprising that Jain doesn’t herself make that connection — especially after she compares Huxley’s Brave New World (somewhat unfavorably) to the film Gattaca. Jain’s basic premise is that while most dystopian novels now read as somehow quaint or out-dated, We has lost none of its staying power over the years. I can’t comment on the latter half of that, but the former does seem a little suspect. It’s true we don’t live in the future worlds that Orwell or Huxley envisioned, but I don’t think those visions have been proven any less plausible or frightening.

Still, Jain’s closing point is worth noting:

Orwell’s dystopian tyrants rewrote books, and Huxley’s simply destroyed them, because they feared such things might awaken the humanity in their citizens. The real-life tyrants under whom Zamyatin lived feared art’s power as well. There’s something comforting in that thought — that as long as we have books and music, religion and history, humanity can be brought back to itself. And yet Zamyatin gets at a scarier idea: For people without humanity, art has no effect.