Tis a sad day for science fiction fans, at least for those reading the Sunday New York Times. Two articles leap out at you, one on Star Trek, one on Star Wars. While all the news might not be bad, the headlines sure are depressing.
"Is the Trek Over?"
"Is There Life After 'Star Wars' for Lucasfilm?"
The first article is about the fact that the latest Star Trek show, the irritatingly insignificant "Enterprise," is coming to an end on May 13, and that next season, for the first time in 18 years, there will be no new Trek on TV. Muses co-executive producer Manny Coto in the article, "It's like there's a certain number of science fiction fans, and that's it. It's a genre that appeals to a certain type of individual, and there's not a lot of them."
"Is the Trek Over?"
The second article isn't quite so dismal. While George Lucas goes on the record saying that he plans to stop making movies permanently--""I have no intention of running a film company," said Mr. Lucas, whose new film, "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith," will be released this month. "That is the last thing in the world I'd do""--there is some news that almost bowled me over. Being in Scotland, I may have just missed this, but there are plans for two new Star Wars tv shows in the near-future. This could just mean kids cartoon shows, but it could also mean live action, possibly filling a huge hole for mainstream sci-fi fans that has been created by the demise of the Star Trek franchise. Oh, the possibilities.
"The future for Lucasfilm"
----
(Update thrown in the middle here) I just ran across another article filled with "real" science fiction writers bitching and moaning about how Star Wars made life so hard for serious science fiction purveyors who cared about things like ... science. Ursula K. LeGuin said Star Wars simply took "these very stock metaphors of empire in space and monstrously bad people and wonderfully good people and plays out a bunch of stock operatic themes in space suits. You can do it with cowboy suits as well." Ray Bradbury even had the gall to say that Lucas should have stopped after the first movie back in 1977. Has he seen Empire Strikes Back?! I realize that they have valid arguments, but generally I just feel like shouting at them to shut up and enjoy the film and their popcorn. As Manny Coto said in the Trek article, there arent a huge number of "real" science fiction fans, so these writers are dealing with a small target in the first place. Blaming Star Wars for simplifying and stupidifying science fiction is pointless--it's the realm of entertainment we are talking about here, no one has a right over "types." This is why government attempts to control what passes as entertainment strike so many people as odious; it claims a degree of judgment that no one really thinks is valid, and tries to establish that certain types of entertainment end up degrading and hurting the "better" forms of entertainment.
This article has been written so many times before I've lost count--it's like Tom Cruise's love life, which always seems to revive itself right when his new movie is coming out to capitalize (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, wow i'm shocked). The conclusion to the article is the amazingly overdone conclusion that Blade Runner is a better movie than Star Wars. There really is no point in making that conclusion; it is like saying David Beckham is better than Tom Brady--both play something called in name "football" but are in fact separated vastly by a difference in what football means to them.
Anyway, here is that article.
"Star Wars Sucks"
-----
Frank Rich does a splendid bit on South Park and how a new conservative screed is arrogantly embracing the show for its attacks on liberals. He ties the book into a greater sense of "Olympian arrogance and illiberalism" that has pervaded the Republican Party in its overconfidence since winning another election. He moves from South Park to the cultural "cleansing" movement that seeks to ban South Park, "inappropriate" material on television, and kick Howard Stern out of the public eye. For a liberal seeking to maintain faith in the face of the FCC mafioso's attacks on good ol' dirty fun, it is an encouraging article, and one of Rich's better efforts to date. And now I really want to see the March 30 episode of South Park, which Rich describes thusly:
"In the March 30 episode, Kenny, a kid whose periodic death is a "South Park" ritual, lands in a hospital in a "persistent vegetative state" and is fed through a tube. The last page of his living will is missing. Demonstrators and media hordes descend. Though heavenly angels decree that "God intended Kenny to die" rather than be "kept alive artificially," they are thwarted by Satan, whose demonic aide advises him to "do what we always do - use the Republicans." Soon demagogic Republican politicians are spewing sound bites ("Removing the feeding tube is murder") scripted in Hell. But as in the Schiavo case, they don't prevail. Kenny is allowed to die in peace once his missing final wish is found: "If I should ever be in a vegetative state and kept alive on life support, please for the love of God don't ever show me in that condition on national television."
This is why liberals love South Park and conservatives are supposed to hate it--because it lampoons this entire culture of correctness by dint of its subject matter. But still, I am interested to read this new book Rich talks about, called South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias, by Brian C. Anderson. It should be a hoot. Fun fact: a new Pew poll shows that 56% of Americans think the conservative effort to cleanse entertainment is more damaging to the nation than the actual content being attacked.
"South Park Conservatives"
"Is the Trek Over?"
"Is There Life After 'Star Wars' for Lucasfilm?"
The first article is about the fact that the latest Star Trek show, the irritatingly insignificant "Enterprise," is coming to an end on May 13, and that next season, for the first time in 18 years, there will be no new Trek on TV. Muses co-executive producer Manny Coto in the article, "It's like there's a certain number of science fiction fans, and that's it. It's a genre that appeals to a certain type of individual, and there's not a lot of them."
"Is the Trek Over?"
The second article isn't quite so dismal. While George Lucas goes on the record saying that he plans to stop making movies permanently--""I have no intention of running a film company," said Mr. Lucas, whose new film, "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith," will be released this month. "That is the last thing in the world I'd do""--there is some news that almost bowled me over. Being in Scotland, I may have just missed this, but there are plans for two new Star Wars tv shows in the near-future. This could just mean kids cartoon shows, but it could also mean live action, possibly filling a huge hole for mainstream sci-fi fans that has been created by the demise of the Star Trek franchise. Oh, the possibilities.
"The future for Lucasfilm"
----
(Update thrown in the middle here) I just ran across another article filled with "real" science fiction writers bitching and moaning about how Star Wars made life so hard for serious science fiction purveyors who cared about things like ... science. Ursula K. LeGuin said Star Wars simply took "these very stock metaphors of empire in space and monstrously bad people and wonderfully good people and plays out a bunch of stock operatic themes in space suits. You can do it with cowboy suits as well." Ray Bradbury even had the gall to say that Lucas should have stopped after the first movie back in 1977. Has he seen Empire Strikes Back?! I realize that they have valid arguments, but generally I just feel like shouting at them to shut up and enjoy the film and their popcorn. As Manny Coto said in the Trek article, there arent a huge number of "real" science fiction fans, so these writers are dealing with a small target in the first place. Blaming Star Wars for simplifying and stupidifying science fiction is pointless--it's the realm of entertainment we are talking about here, no one has a right over "types." This is why government attempts to control what passes as entertainment strike so many people as odious; it claims a degree of judgment that no one really thinks is valid, and tries to establish that certain types of entertainment end up degrading and hurting the "better" forms of entertainment.
This article has been written so many times before I've lost count--it's like Tom Cruise's love life, which always seems to revive itself right when his new movie is coming out to capitalize (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, wow i'm shocked). The conclusion to the article is the amazingly overdone conclusion that Blade Runner is a better movie than Star Wars. There really is no point in making that conclusion; it is like saying David Beckham is better than Tom Brady--both play something called in name "football" but are in fact separated vastly by a difference in what football means to them.
Anyway, here is that article.
"Star Wars Sucks"
-----
Frank Rich does a splendid bit on South Park and how a new conservative screed is arrogantly embracing the show for its attacks on liberals. He ties the book into a greater sense of "Olympian arrogance and illiberalism" that has pervaded the Republican Party in its overconfidence since winning another election. He moves from South Park to the cultural "cleansing" movement that seeks to ban South Park, "inappropriate" material on television, and kick Howard Stern out of the public eye. For a liberal seeking to maintain faith in the face of the FCC mafioso's attacks on good ol' dirty fun, it is an encouraging article, and one of Rich's better efforts to date. And now I really want to see the March 30 episode of South Park, which Rich describes thusly:
"In the March 30 episode, Kenny, a kid whose periodic death is a "South Park" ritual, lands in a hospital in a "persistent vegetative state" and is fed through a tube. The last page of his living will is missing. Demonstrators and media hordes descend. Though heavenly angels decree that "God intended Kenny to die" rather than be "kept alive artificially," they are thwarted by Satan, whose demonic aide advises him to "do what we always do - use the Republicans." Soon demagogic Republican politicians are spewing sound bites ("Removing the feeding tube is murder") scripted in Hell. But as in the Schiavo case, they don't prevail. Kenny is allowed to die in peace once his missing final wish is found: "If I should ever be in a vegetative state and kept alive on life support, please for the love of God don't ever show me in that condition on national television."
This is why liberals love South Park and conservatives are supposed to hate it--because it lampoons this entire culture of correctness by dint of its subject matter. But still, I am interested to read this new book Rich talks about, called South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias, by Brian C. Anderson. It should be a hoot. Fun fact: a new Pew poll shows that 56% of Americans think the conservative effort to cleanse entertainment is more damaging to the nation than the actual content being attacked.
"South Park Conservatives"
posted by The Oracles @ 11:55 AM
1 Comments:
At 12:27 AM,
Ben A. Johnson said…
It's a really good episode of South Park.
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