But the X-flies wasn't really dystopian. The whole conspiracy thing never actually went anywhere. In the end, the X-files sputtered out because it choked on it's own internal inconsistency.
Science Fiction is doomed part 2: Zombies and Time Travelers Oh My
- Thread starter Yminale
- Start date
But the X-flies wasn't really dystopian. The whole conspiracy thing never actually went anywhere. In the end, the X-files sputtered out because it choked on it's own internal inconsistency.
But the whole tone of the show was all about paranoia and conspiracies and ominous hints of ghastly goings-on in the highest corridors of power, as well as unnatural atrocities and creatures lurking in the dark. Even if, ultimately, there was more smoke than fire, the idea was to create an air of unease and anxiety. "Trust no one."
It wasn't an optimistic show by any stretch of the imagination, and it was arguably the biggest genre show of the era.
Whether it ultimately paid off isn't the point. We're not talking about whether the show succeeded in delivering on its promises, but the vibe of the show at the height of its popularity.
I hate the concept of time travel stories, it is a story conceit that is almost never fully thought out. Even in great movies like BttF, STIV or Terminator the time travel elements do not make sense if you actually think them through. If Hollywood never made another time travel story again I would be okay with that.
But doom and gloom dystopian science fiction tales are fine with me because of one simple fact. It is exceedingly boring to read or watch people being happy and fulfilled(and takes exceptionally skilled writers to pull it off). Stories need conflict, they need drama and those things are hard to create in utopian settings.
I will concede however that all too often in modern science fiction the dystopian futures and apocalyptic settings are not fully thought out or logically developed. And sometimes too dark(something NuBSG flirted with). A few weeks ago I watched Andrew Niccol's "In Time" from last year, it plays with a lot of interesting ideas. But is ultimately unbearably stupid. Our heroes win because no one in the future remembers that banks can be robbed. It is idiotic. C'mon Hollywood, the future can be dark, just don't make it stupid.
But doom and gloom dystopian science fiction tales are fine with me because of one simple fact. It is exceedingly boring to read or watch people being happy and fulfilled(and takes exceptionally skilled writers to pull it off). Stories need conflict, they need drama and those things are hard to create in utopian settings.
I will concede however that all too often in modern science fiction the dystopian futures and apocalyptic settings are not fully thought out or logically developed. And sometimes too dark(something NuBSG flirted with). A few weeks ago I watched Andrew Niccol's "In Time" from last year, it plays with a lot of interesting ideas. But is ultimately unbearably stupid. Our heroes win because no one in the future remembers that banks can be robbed. It is idiotic. C'mon Hollywood, the future can be dark, just don't make it stupid.
Ian Keldon
Fleet Captain
The weird thing is that at one time in the US, our entertainment was counter-cyclical. Some of the sappiest, most "in your face" upbeat movies and entertainments came out of the Great Depression. People wanted to find some hope, even if only for an hour or two and vicariously.
Then we changed (I maintain it started in the 70s), and instead of trying to pull ourselves out of emotional funks with our entertainments, we started wallowing around in them and taking twisted delight in amping up our misery...
Why this happened I'm not sure.
Although some people dislike downbeat (maybe a lot,) I think the real issue is misanthropy. There does seem to be a lot of misanthropy around, particularly in things that are more commercial products cobbled from politically correct trends than art (new BattleStar Galactica is an excellent example.) Dragging in torture porn, playing around with justifications for genocide, revelations of the meaningless of it all (or the malice of Man/God/The Universe,) the assumption that human nature is immutable and nothing really changes are not just downbeat. You can snark it up and warp the plot til you have a happy ending, or at least some sort of heavenly redemption, but that's just upbeat. It's the delight in meanness that is so striking.
Even that meme is overstated. Yes, you had MGM's light entertainment that cheered people up during the Depression, but you also had a lot of films that explored the darker side of life, particularly from Warner Bros, in social message films and gangster films.
Filmmakers got more creative freedom from the 1960s and 1970s onwards, so the dark films got a lot darker from then on, but if you look at the top movies of each decade there's a mixture of upbeat and downbeat films. For a while in the 1970s there was a greater percentage of downbeat films than there had been prior or subsequent, but I think that has more to do with the level of creative freedom the studios gave to the film brat generation at a time when the studios were generally floundering more than anything else. From the late 1970s onwards popular entertainment was back to being a mixture of light and dark films and has remained so ever since.
Ian Keldon
Fleet Captain
^That's possible...
Hey, while I'm here, OVM...who is the hottie in your avatar?
Hey, while I'm here, OVM...who is the hottie in your avatar?
Yvonne Strahovski from Chuck.
Yvonne Strahovski from Chuck.
And soon to appear on Dexter . . . .
Meanwhile, about the Great Depression thing, let's not forget that that also coincided with the first Universal horror boom, beginning in 1931 with Dracula and Frankenstein.
So it wasn't all musicals and Shirley Temple!
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It's my opinion but I don't think most fans of the X-files took the internal mythology seriously. Sure there were the Art Bell types but they were already paranoid. Some one mentioned the old MGM monster movies but people didn't watch them as validation of their world view. People watched X-files and Dracula for the same reason people ride roller coasters and run around haunted houses for the thrill.
BSG, "Walking Dead", and "Falling skies" (and "Dexter", "CSI", "Game of Thrones" etc...), after 9/11 and Katrina I don't think people watch them for escapism. I really think it validates their already dark view of the world and that's why things are different.
Perhaps, but, conversely, how many people really watch space operas to validate their worldview? You're right that most X-Files fans didn't really believe in alien abduction conspiracies, but it's not like Babylon-5 fans took Vorlons and Centauri all that seriously either. So I'm not quite sure what that has to do with how pop fiction reflects the zeightgeist--or not.
And, please, it was Universal that was known for its monster movies, not MGM. That's like saying that Irwin Allen was best known for Star Trek! Or that Spider-Man is published by DC!
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Yminale, may ask how old you are? I honestly don't think 11 years after 911, public "mood" is any more darker or cynical then during the Cold War, when we "Knew" the Russians could destroy the world at any moment with a push of a button. I know as a child, that had me much more scared of the evils in the world then 911 has me scared of them today.
A Song of Ice and Fire was a big success as a series of novels in the pre-9/11 period when its first three books were published in 1996, 1998 and 2000, so I don't think the fact that the TV adaptation is popular now should be seen as a reflection of the current zeitgeist. It's just an engaging story.
No you may not. I be careful since that could be considered a personal attack.
I'm not talking about the Cold War. I was comparing now to the time after the end of the Cold War. TNG was definitely lighter than TOS and even with the X-files, I think people watched it for pure escapism.
Isn't the TV adaption different than the books. It certainly has more sex (don't know about the violence).
As far as adaptations go, it's very close to the books. The books have a lot of sex, too. They added in some sex scenes for the TV show, but left out others.
I'm not sure that comparing notes on our ages is necessarily an attack. I'm the first to admit that I'm an old coot whose attitudes have surely been shaped by growing up in the sixties--and watching classic old scifi and monster movies on tv.
We all have our own formative influences, depending on when we were born. For example, I got exposed to Dark Shadows at an impressionable age (thank you, Aunt Margaret) and have been obsessed with vampires ever since . . . .
Was there some halcyon TNG era after the Cold War? Possibly, but, from my perspective, that was just a temporary blip. Pre-STAR WARS, sf was, arguably, bleaker and more pessimistic than most of today's big summer blockbusters are ever allowed to get. Downbeat, despairing endings were the norm--which would probably never get past test audiences today.
I mean, look at the original PLANET OF THE APES movies, which were probably the biggest scifi franchise prior to STAR WARS and the return of TREK. Every one of those movies ends on a bitter note--the closest thing to a happy ending is in the fourth movie, when the apes rise up to enslave mankind!
And then there were the Road Warrior movies, Escape from New York, etc.
We all have our own formative influences, depending on when we were born. For example, I got exposed to Dark Shadows at an impressionable age (thank you, Aunt Margaret) and have been obsessed with vampires ever since . . . .
Was there some halcyon TNG era after the Cold War? Possibly, but, from my perspective, that was just a temporary blip. Pre-STAR WARS, sf was, arguably, bleaker and more pessimistic than most of today's big summer blockbusters are ever allowed to get. Downbeat, despairing endings were the norm--which would probably never get past test audiences today.
I mean, look at the original PLANET OF THE APES movies, which were probably the biggest scifi franchise prior to STAR WARS and the return of TREK. Every one of those movies ends on a bitter note--the closest thing to a happy ending is in the fourth movie, when the apes rise up to enslave mankind!
And then there were the Road Warrior movies, Escape from New York, etc.
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My apologies for the way you read my response, it wasn't meant to be phrased in a manner such as "What are you 12 years old", but, rather, I was trying to understand your experiences with Social "Mood" such as if you were born after Cold War, and only really know 911 as a horrifying event, or if you might be old enough to remember the Cold War, or WWII or other wars if living in other countries (For example a resident of Israel would experience the same Social "Mood" regardless when they were born after WWII)
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