On sci-fi and grittiness

[eye_of_a_cat]

(Note - for the purposes of this, I'll be sticking to science fiction in film and TV, rather than books. That's a slightly different conversation.)

I love the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, up to and including the finale. It has its flaws - lagging sense of direction from time to time, weirdly forgetful writing, and a bit too much focus on the furrowed and angst-filled brow of Lee Adama, to name a few - but it's really, really good. And most of that goodness, without a doubt, comes from how beautifully dark and gritty and postapocalyptic it is. Main characters die, horribly and often. Humanity is nearly extinct. The ship that holds the last remnants of the population together is falling apart. This is the future, red in tooth and claw.

Most of the critics, obviously and justifiably, welcomed BSG with open arms. It's science fiction, but it's serious! It's dark! It makes disturbing points about contemporary American foreign policy! (Of course, some critics took all this to mean that it's not 'really' science fiction at all, merely a drama series set in space and therefore it's okay to like it, non-geeks!, but seriously - it's about killer robots who live in space, so give up.) I don't disagree with any of this as well-deserved praise, but I do take objection to the argument which quite often follows: that what's so good about BSG isn't that it does gritty realism very well, but that it does gritty realism at all, and that sci-fi which goes down this route is inherently better than sci-fi which doesn't.

To put it another way, I don't think BSG is superior to Firefly or Wall-E by virtue of being bleaker.

And yet there's a growing tendency, among sci-fi dabblers who don't want to be associated with all that silly stuff and among sci-fi fans who don't want people thinking their hobby is childish, to start thinking along just those lines. Good sci-fi is dark. Good sci-fi isn't suitable for children. Good sci-fi uses futuristic settings as allegories for contemporary issues. Good sci-fi certainly doesn't feature any cute robots, or aliens in ridiculous make-up, prosthetics, and costumes.

Make no mistake, I'm not disputing that Ron Moore did a great job of rebooting BSG. At the same time, I'm really glad that Russell T. Davies didn't go down that route with a dark, gritty, unsuitable-for-children Doctor Who, because that would have sucked. I'm glad J. Michael Straczynski was unapologetic about including weird-looking aliens as main characters. I'm glad Pixar created a cute, huggable robot. I'm glad George Lucas didn't design Star Wars as a thinly-disguised commentary on American politics of the 1970s, and I'm really, really glad he had absolutely no problem at all with escapism, because sci-fi would be a poorer place without someone to decide it needed Wookies, alien jazz bands, and Boba Fett.

Sci-fi is a big, broad genre. It's always had room for all of this, and it would be a shame if we ended up shrinking it out of a desire to make it 'better'.

Comments

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

You won't believe how often people come into my room, look at my bookcases, register that I am a Serious Reader (note: they don't generally notice the pre-20th century stuff at first, so this is based on just the 20th c fiction), and say in astonishment, "I wouldn't have expected you to have sci-fi!" We're talking about the likes of Ursula Le Guin and Primo Levi here. (I think they'd faint if they realised how many silly audiobooks I listen to, never mind the TV series we watch.) Sometimes you have to point out gently to the poor dears that works like 1984 are sci-fi, too. People have very odd misconceptions about sci-fi. Not to mention the myth that if you enjoy "classic" literature at all, then you must be a puritan who considers herself to be a Higher Being and who would never touch ordinary stuff. I think that's why they're SHOCKED, I tell you, that I like sci-fi.

If I have one complaint about a lot of sci-fi film and TV series, actually, it's that we could do with a bit more "nature red in tooth and claw" and a bit less grey. Either the space ships are grey, or the aliens' skins are grey, or the military uniforms are grey, or everyone's wearing grey because we all know that in the future, the chic colour will be grey. It's terribly boring to look at.

[countrycousin.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[marymac.livejournal.com]

Totally.

This is why I'm in permanent love with Farscape. They did four series worth of hard-core cutie-breaking with Muppets. Jim Henson Creature Shop Muppets and cartoon flashbacks. Gritty would have ruined it.

[kittiethedragon.livejournal.com]

I'm just generally sick of "Look how dark and gritty we are!" in movies. And equally sick of "Look how indie and 1970's we are!" (Yes, I'm looking at you I-want-to-appeal-to-the-indies-and-hipsters movies).

Real isn't always dark!Good lord, look at Jurassic Park. People dying left and right, serious questions about what we should and shouldn't explore, debating whether or not man is ever fully "in control". But no shakey cam. No unnecessarily faded palette (hell, it was wonderfully resplendent) and dim lighting. I could go without the requisite "OMG I CAN COUNT YOUR PORES PLEASE ZOOM BACK OUT!" moments, but that's kinda a standard.

And I hate Rick Berman. Despise the man. Star Trek is supposed to be about hope and possibility and dealing with the impossible and absurd because hey, that's life. It did not need All Ships Are Grey Now Except Enterprise No Wait Let's Have A Grey Enterprise Too. It didn't need Let's Make Interiors Depressing. It didn't need the friggin' Borg. And it certainly didn't need someone who hates Star Trek running Star Trek. Suddenly everything is black or grey or drab something or other. Ships look like they were designed by over-eager fanboys.

HATE.

And then Abrams... I feel like we're giving him enough rope to hang us all. I think I've read that fanfic (but it was fun and pretty... but it had so many stupid things... but... fun... ARGH!).

And WALLE was cute and managed to do an Eco/self-reliance message without BEATING US IN THE FACE WITH IT LIKE HAPPY FEET DEAR GOD WE GET IT I LIKE PENGUINS TOO PLEASE STOP THIS I WANT TO GET OFF.


...


I should have slept more last night. >_>;;

Short of the long: I agree with you.

(Funny note, the Rifle they use in BSG is the Beretta CX4 Storm with a custom flash-hider–the thingy at the end of the barrel. Beretta, noticing many of it's buyers were also falling for this new show released an OFFICIAL Beretta CX4 flash hider identical to the one on the show. Oh Noes Time Paradox!)

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Well said.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I AGREE.

I hate the fallacy that bleaker is somehow better. I got around that by simply acccepting that people are going to think of me as a hack for writing characters who don't spend half their time having traumatic experiences and the other half sitting around brooding about them. Because a steady diet of grits is just unpleasant.

I also figure that anyone who feels that science fiction isn't a "real" genre is simply sabotaging themselves. Poor insecure dopes don't even know what they're missing.