A recent article in the New York Times argues that the original Star Trek was not a true science-fiction show, but rather a pastiche of old b-movie genres. Each episode would find the Enterprise parked in orbit around a different planet, whose landscape consisted of old genre movie sets and props left on the studio lot, representing a different genre: the gladiator-movie planet, the detective-movie planet, the gangster-movie planet. Science fiction, however, has always been a promiscuous genre. Let me explain what I mean: All genres are friendly, but some genres are a little friendlier than others. They like to mingle, to the extent that one rarely finds them alone. This is not a new phenomenon; nor did Star Trek, as the argument goes, really represent a new height in cultural literacy. It is as old as epic. The hero of Virgil’s Aeneid, the great epic poem of the Roman empire, sails his ship from one classical genre to the next, tragedy in Carthage, a paean to athletics in Sicily, pastoral in Italy, cosmological poetry in the underworld, and finally martial epic a la the Iliad. In both cases, it is the romantic element that allows for this quick change of scenery and genre, the episodic structure of the journey from one island world to the next. Aeneas and his crew sail on the wine-dark sea; the crew of the Enterprise through the darkness of space. Star Trek has old b-movies; the Aeneid the poetry of the ancient world.
Science fiction always asks a question in the form, “what if…?” What if the machines we create to help us start thinking for themselves? What if we make contact with an alien race somewhere among the stars? A sub-genre of science fiction is the spaceship adventure, which always asks the same question: “what if we could fly not only to the other planets in our solar system but to the stars themselves?” Like the naval dramas of Joseph Conrad or more recently (and less remarkably) Patrick O’Brian, these stories are about a microcosmic hierarchical society under pressure, surrounded by a vast and dangerous void, hopping from one outpost of civilization to the next. The vastness of space, though, can be not only the vastness of the ocean, but the broad vista of an open landscape as well. Joss Whedon, in his short-lived sci-fi series Firefly, turned space into the wide-open plains of the American West. The planets in Firefly did not each represent a different genre; they were each aspects of the same genre, the western. The crew of Serenity would rustle cattle, rob trains, and get into bar fights and shootouts, while sticking primarily to what they called the “frontier-planets.” Space, though, is also, as we know, where no one can hear you scream. The closed world of the spaceship, as Alien proved, is thus also the perfect setting for a horror film. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The best you can hope for is to jettison a nasty creature out the air lock.
Perhaps the most promiscuous of genres, though, is the medical drama. As the setting of the spaceship as the bridge between different worlds is at the heart of the spaceship adventure, so the hospital (or its rough equivalent) as the segregated zone in the modern world where life and death decisions are made is at the heart of the medical drama. ER is the baseline, the medical drama as pure and simple as it gets, but there have also been medical dramedies (Gray’s Anatomy), sitcoms (Scrubs), soap operas (General Hospital), detective shows (House)—even a medical western (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, anyone?).
Maybe if these genres are so successful at getting along, it is because they are relatively low-maintenance. At the heart of every genre is a specific philosophical concern, a dilemma that the culture that produced it is working out. The medical drama gets its particular charge from the ethical questions surrounding the life and death decision. Is it right to sacrifice one life for another? How much risk is acceptable in the attempt to save a person’s life? How do we escort people out of this world and how do we usher them in? For science fiction, the question is primarily historical rather than ethical, a concern with the unpredictable effects of technological progress. Will our technology outstrip our ability to control it? Will it be a tool for peace and equality or a weapon for domination and war? Will it do more harm to our world than good? Will it lead us into dangers we can hardly imagine? To raise these issues, though, demands relatively little in terms of character and plot. The setting, a spaceship or a hospital (or a space hospital—wouldn’t that be cool?), does most of the work.
Think, by contrast, of a not-so-promiscuous genre enjoying an immense amount of popularity these days: the police procedural. All police procedurals are essentially the same. The cops may change along with the high-tech methods they employ but the story stays the same: each episode a crime is solved. This never varies and the plot very rarely ventures into the territory of other genres. If science fiction and the medical drama are consummate flirts, the procedural is the confirmed bachelor. The problem is, it demands too much: a crime scene (preferably with a body) and a bunch of detectives. These are things that can only exist in the modern city. The procedural thrives on its anonymity-- only the city serves up fresh bodies with fresh secrets on a daily basis. It cannot be penned in, say in a hospital or any other confined setting-- it needs its dark alleys and blind corners, the places where the systems of surveillance and control break down. On the other hand, it cannot survive in the vast emptiness of space (not enough bodies), nor in the wide open spaces of the western. The zone between lawlessness and civilization, between order and chaos is where the “wild” in “wild west” comes from. The crime scene investigators would get bushwhacked before they could pull out their white gloves. The big exception to this rule that procedurals do not mix might be Law & Order, which is a police procedural plus legal drama; but, even though there is always interaction between the detectives and the lawyers in the show, its two halves tend to separate out, like oil and water. It is not a mixed genre show, but a show in which two genres share a single hour uneasily.
It’s a good thing, then, that we like this genre so much. Currently there are more murders on TV in a year than there are in many major American cities. And that’s saying something.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Star Trek & Optimism
Much has been made of the supposed renewed optimism of American culture embodied by J. J. Abram’s new Star Trek reboot. The movie represents, so the argument goes, our readiness to hope again for the future of mankind, after the darkness and pessimism of recent years. The 800-pound gorilla in the room is, of course, Battlestar Galactica, which for the past four years has treated TV viewers to an unrelentingly bleak picture of our potential future, one marked by war, genocide, terrorism, and the possible self-inflicted extinction of the human race—before, that is, the series dissolved in a shower of warm platitudes in its forgettable final season. The Star Trek franchise, on the other hand, has always maintained a vision of the future marked by relative peace and tolerance. Its mission was not the desperate struggle for survival of the last remnants of the human race, but the quest for knowledge and community with other societies among the stars. There is something, though, that bothers me about the enthusiasm with which the revived optimism of Star Trek is being greeted. It seems to me somehow false. Hope cannot be manufactured. It cannot be bought and sold. It has to be earned. Science fiction’s vision of the future has to fit its culture’s present conditions. Otherwise, its optimism is just denial.
The most remarkable thing about the new Star Trek is how much it is Spock’s movie. Spock is given a rich backstory, a moral dilemma, and even a future self who comes back in time to wreak havoc and then bring the young protagonists together. Kirk’s backstory is nothing more than a doodle. Rebellious kid who grows up without a father learns to love the service as much as the service learns to love him. Essentially it is Top Gun. Every Maverick, though, needs an Ice Man who flies straight and logical as his wingman. The trick Star Trek pulls is to make its Ice Man the more interesting of the two. Spock has more to struggle with than Kirk in the film, the destruction of his home planet, the genocide of his race, and the death of his mother, and he handles it with more grace. He is not a foil for Kirk’s daring and charisma. He is not a wet blanket of logic. He is a man who has learned to temper his emotions with reason. In this sense, he is more of a man than the petulant Kirk. And once the plot gets humming we are treated to a genuine shock. The traditional Kirk and Spock roles are upended. The power dynamic that always kept logic in thrall to passion is reversed. When the first captain of the Enterprise, Captain Pike, leaves the ship, it is Spock he puts in charge and Kirk he makes his first officer (that is until Spock rudely maroons Kirk on a planet of enormous ice beasts and even larger and more absurd ice dinosaurs).
What is striking, however, is how right it feels to have Spock in command, the reasonable one, the mature one, the adult. The film is at pains to point out that Spock, in fact, makes the wrong decision, while Kirk makes the right one. Still, it is hard to escape the impression that it is, in fact, Spock who belongs in the captain’s chair. He alone befits the dignity of the office. The movie does what it can to keep Spock at its center. The famous introductory voiceover, “These are the voyages…,” is read at the end of the movie by Leonard Nimoy, the original Spock. In the end, however, it has to be Kirk, the irrational hothead guided by instinct, who takes command of the Enterprise. It is the charismatic loose cannon and not the rational sophisticate who is chosen to lead. Here we go again.
Every generation gets the spaceship it deserves. Battlestar Galactica was the interstellar drama of the Bush administration. It had it all: war, torture, extremism, abuse of power. If the new series of Star Trek movies, which this film almost certainly kicks off, really aims to earn its optimism, its vision of a future characterized by progress and harmony, and its place as the vessel of the future, it needs a new captain.
The most remarkable thing about the new Star Trek is how much it is Spock’s movie. Spock is given a rich backstory, a moral dilemma, and even a future self who comes back in time to wreak havoc and then bring the young protagonists together. Kirk’s backstory is nothing more than a doodle. Rebellious kid who grows up without a father learns to love the service as much as the service learns to love him. Essentially it is Top Gun. Every Maverick, though, needs an Ice Man who flies straight and logical as his wingman. The trick Star Trek pulls is to make its Ice Man the more interesting of the two. Spock has more to struggle with than Kirk in the film, the destruction of his home planet, the genocide of his race, and the death of his mother, and he handles it with more grace. He is not a foil for Kirk’s daring and charisma. He is not a wet blanket of logic. He is a man who has learned to temper his emotions with reason. In this sense, he is more of a man than the petulant Kirk. And once the plot gets humming we are treated to a genuine shock. The traditional Kirk and Spock roles are upended. The power dynamic that always kept logic in thrall to passion is reversed. When the first captain of the Enterprise, Captain Pike, leaves the ship, it is Spock he puts in charge and Kirk he makes his first officer (that is until Spock rudely maroons Kirk on a planet of enormous ice beasts and even larger and more absurd ice dinosaurs).
What is striking, however, is how right it feels to have Spock in command, the reasonable one, the mature one, the adult. The film is at pains to point out that Spock, in fact, makes the wrong decision, while Kirk makes the right one. Still, it is hard to escape the impression that it is, in fact, Spock who belongs in the captain’s chair. He alone befits the dignity of the office. The movie does what it can to keep Spock at its center. The famous introductory voiceover, “These are the voyages…,” is read at the end of the movie by Leonard Nimoy, the original Spock. In the end, however, it has to be Kirk, the irrational hothead guided by instinct, who takes command of the Enterprise. It is the charismatic loose cannon and not the rational sophisticate who is chosen to lead. Here we go again.
Every generation gets the spaceship it deserves. Battlestar Galactica was the interstellar drama of the Bush administration. It had it all: war, torture, extremism, abuse of power. If the new series of Star Trek movies, which this film almost certainly kicks off, really aims to earn its optimism, its vision of a future characterized by progress and harmony, and its place as the vessel of the future, it needs a new captain.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
A shot across the bow for TV
Two of the greatest novels of all time were originally serialized. A Tale of Two Cities appeared in All The Year Round in 31 weekly installments in 1859. Crime and Punishment ran in The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments in 1866. The serial structure of the stories gave the reader at the time a sense of suspense and kept them coming back. It gave them something to discuss in the parlor or the pub (there were no water coolers at the time). What would happen to Charles Darnay or Raskolnikov? Tune in next time.
When we look back on these serial novels we see them backwards. We see them as great works of literature that were divided into a series of installments. In fact, they were a series of installments which together formed a great work of literature. Only after achieving success as a serial were the installments published together in one volume.
Might one not make the same case for the better TV series of our time? The Wire, Mad Men, even Battlestar Galactica? They appear first as weekly episodes and only later are published in a more permanent form, as one DVD box-set per season. The numbers are comparable. The twelve installments of Crime and Punishment is considered more or less the golden mean for a season of pay cable shows like The Wire. Dickens’ 31 installments for A Tale of Two Cities is not that far off from the 22 or so episodes that has become the standard for a season on a network or basic cable channel such as Syfy, on which Battlestar Galactica originally appeared. Shows such as these maintain the serial pleasure of suspense—they string you along from one episode to the next—but as a season, they cohere into a single, larger story with broader implications than any of their individual episodes can hold. Just like the novels of Dickens and Dostoevsky, these series are more than the sum of their parts.
The TV series taken as a whole and the novel also share a similarity of scope and scale. They can include multiple well-developed and nuanced characters. They can tell stories that span all social milieus and strata. The Wire, for example, includes as two of its major characters a homeless drug addict and the mayor of Baltimore. They can transport us from one place—a planet called Caprica—to another—a planet called Earth (a little farther apart than London and Paris but equally foreign to one another). They can range over large periods of time without seeming choppy or schematic. They can, in other words, give complicated social and political phenomena their due. Dostoevsky has poverty and crime in his contemporary Russia, and Dickens has the French Revolution. The Wire shows us the dysfunction of civic institutions in the American city. Mad Men uses the ad agency as a lens to examine the culture of consumption that got humming in the ‘50s. Battlestar Galactica gives us a futuristic analogue of the political and military apparatuses of a democratic society at war with extremists.
The most successful adaptations of novels are usually mini-series, which turn them into something akin to a shortened TV season. Examples of this are the BBC’s I, Claudius, or Pride and Prejudice, which is still considered the definitive screen adaptation after numerous movie versions. The complaint that is usually launched against film adaptations of novels is that they cut out too much of the book and reduce its complexity. The exception to this rule are four-hour mega-films, like The Godfather, which strive to retain much, but not all of the original’s sub-plots and twists. Rarely does one hear that a movie is better than the novel, except in those cases where the novel is considered mostly chaff and the adaptation presents us with the wheat. The Godfather, in fact, might be an example of that, or American Psycho. What movies do significantly better is adaptation of novellas, like Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Of Mice and Men. Short stories have to be puffed up to become films. Novels have to be cut down. The novella, which tends to focus on one plot line and a very small number of characters, is just right for a movie.
Novellas are certainly worthwhile endeavors. The Turn of the Screw and Heart of Darkness, for example, both remain gripping, powerful, and poignant to this day. They make the reputations of their authors as much as any of their novels. If, however, we want our narrative media to do what novels do best, to explore social and political issues that demand more than a handful of characters and a couple of settings, we will have to do away with the silly assumption that underlies our cultural reception of the screen arts, that film is the high art and television the low.
When we look back on these serial novels we see them backwards. We see them as great works of literature that were divided into a series of installments. In fact, they were a series of installments which together formed a great work of literature. Only after achieving success as a serial were the installments published together in one volume.
Might one not make the same case for the better TV series of our time? The Wire, Mad Men, even Battlestar Galactica? They appear first as weekly episodes and only later are published in a more permanent form, as one DVD box-set per season. The numbers are comparable. The twelve installments of Crime and Punishment is considered more or less the golden mean for a season of pay cable shows like The Wire. Dickens’ 31 installments for A Tale of Two Cities is not that far off from the 22 or so episodes that has become the standard for a season on a network or basic cable channel such as Syfy, on which Battlestar Galactica originally appeared. Shows such as these maintain the serial pleasure of suspense—they string you along from one episode to the next—but as a season, they cohere into a single, larger story with broader implications than any of their individual episodes can hold. Just like the novels of Dickens and Dostoevsky, these series are more than the sum of their parts.
The TV series taken as a whole and the novel also share a similarity of scope and scale. They can include multiple well-developed and nuanced characters. They can tell stories that span all social milieus and strata. The Wire, for example, includes as two of its major characters a homeless drug addict and the mayor of Baltimore. They can transport us from one place—a planet called Caprica—to another—a planet called Earth (a little farther apart than London and Paris but equally foreign to one another). They can range over large periods of time without seeming choppy or schematic. They can, in other words, give complicated social and political phenomena their due. Dostoevsky has poverty and crime in his contemporary Russia, and Dickens has the French Revolution. The Wire shows us the dysfunction of civic institutions in the American city. Mad Men uses the ad agency as a lens to examine the culture of consumption that got humming in the ‘50s. Battlestar Galactica gives us a futuristic analogue of the political and military apparatuses of a democratic society at war with extremists.
The most successful adaptations of novels are usually mini-series, which turn them into something akin to a shortened TV season. Examples of this are the BBC’s I, Claudius, or Pride and Prejudice, which is still considered the definitive screen adaptation after numerous movie versions. The complaint that is usually launched against film adaptations of novels is that they cut out too much of the book and reduce its complexity. The exception to this rule are four-hour mega-films, like The Godfather, which strive to retain much, but not all of the original’s sub-plots and twists. Rarely does one hear that a movie is better than the novel, except in those cases where the novel is considered mostly chaff and the adaptation presents us with the wheat. The Godfather, in fact, might be an example of that, or American Psycho. What movies do significantly better is adaptation of novellas, like Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Of Mice and Men. Short stories have to be puffed up to become films. Novels have to be cut down. The novella, which tends to focus on one plot line and a very small number of characters, is just right for a movie.
Novellas are certainly worthwhile endeavors. The Turn of the Screw and Heart of Darkness, for example, both remain gripping, powerful, and poignant to this day. They make the reputations of their authors as much as any of their novels. If, however, we want our narrative media to do what novels do best, to explore social and political issues that demand more than a handful of characters and a couple of settings, we will have to do away with the silly assumption that underlies our cultural reception of the screen arts, that film is the high art and television the low.
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