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Reged: Feb 16 2004
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This thread is for comments about The SciFi Superiority Complex: Elitism in SF/F/H, by Tee Morris.
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Anonymous
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I found this article to be incoherent, distasteful, and without basis. It simply beggars belief. I'm very surprised that Strange Horizons felt the desire to publish this drivel.
Sean
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Kinsley Castle
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I read this article with more than a little interest, because I have to confess, I am probably one of the "elitists". I can hardly deny the charge. I cite Mervyn Peake as my favorite fantasy writer, rather than Tolkien. I read more written SF than I watch SF movies or television. I've pointedly avoided every installment of Star Wars since Return of the Jedi. Guilty as charged, your honor. It's a fair cop.
I don't recoil from the accusation at all. As a guy who's trying to write SF and Fantasy, I actually believe a little bit of elitism is a good thing, providing it is the right sort of elitism. And there's the rub. It's easy to be an elitist, but there is nothing more useless to the world than intellectually lazy elitism.
Tee Morris is perfectly justified in calling out the kind of SF snob who habitually dismisses everything that isn't printed on paper. To hold that an entire medium is at fault -- that the medium {i]itself precludes good art -- is intellectually lazy. It's the same kind of error that mainstream literary critics fall into when they dismiss SF out of hand.
Still, I can't help but feel some of the bad reputation is justified. I do actually read fantasy (and write it), but I find it hard to defend the umpteenth cynical rehash of the old "boy with hidden powers goes on a quest for the magic macguffin" plot. Similarly, I don't feel compelled to recommend very many SF movies and television shows. It's not because there's anything inherently wrong with the medium; it's just that the quality hasn't always been there.
Quality is the thing for me. Maybe it's because I'm trying to write this stuff, and I am not entirely without ambition. Nonetheless, I firmly believe that to achieve any sort of progress, we must set ourselves certain standards. And we must be prepared to judge things by those standards -- by the technical skill displayed, by the richness of imaginative invention, by the depth and originality of ideas expressed, and by how compelling we find the characters and story.
And yes, that implies elitism. It requires that we admit all stories are not made equal -- and perhaps even to admit that SF on television perhaps hasn't lived up to the promise of written SF. It's one thing to proclaim, via some sort of feel-good relativistic litcrit theory, that all literature is equal, whether it be SF, fantasy, or literary fiction. But it's quite another thing to actually make it so, and to bring literary fiction's discipline and critical sophistication into our genre. Sure it's elitist, but I don't see how else we're going to deliver on the promise we rashly made -- that SF is the genre for the new millennium.
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The Parakeets of Doom
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Elisabeth Nelson
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I don't think Tee is arguing that all SF, no matter the media, is created equal or should be considered equal. In fact, he's saying that there's good and bad everywhere. Rather, dismissing fantasy or TV/movie SF/F/H just because it's fantasy or on television or doesn't spend a chapter explaining some not-yet existing technology, is the problem. Don't judge something inferior because of the genre or medium, but because it's not well written or well-acted or a stupid story.
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Kinsley Castle
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I agree.
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Anonymous
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I have to say, from a technical point of view, that writing an entire chapter to explain the workings of some SFnal technology is probably an example of something you shouldn't do. Or, at the very least, a writer ought to be aware that this is the kind of thing that makes a book a difficult read. The greatest challenge of hard SF lies in blending the technical information seamlessly into the story, in a way that doesn't interrupt the narrative.
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Kinsley Castle
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Sorry, that last one was me. I guess I'd have to register to avoid the dreaded anonymous.
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David Moles
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Reged: Jan 07 2004
Posts: 65
Loc: Basel, Switzerland
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I don't agree with it (that is, I think there's a lot less of it going around than Morris seems to think there is, though I might not have said so three or four years ago) but it sure has hell isn't "without basis". Perhaps you could be more specific?
What I will say is that Van Helsing is in no way in the same class as Big Trouble in Little China or Bubba Ho-Tep. :)
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-- David
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Dawn B
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Reged: Mar 31 2004
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I thought this was an interesting piece. When I read the title, I thought it would be about the elitism that is often shown by lit crits toward speculative Fiction. When I read it, I was surprised, a little, but the more I read, the more it made sense.
I don't think I've experienced the prevlance, if anything I've found Cons more open and full of differing opinions of which elitism is not the mainstay. But I have experienced this to a slight degree and I started to worry for a long time that merely writing to entertain [and hey nifty if there's a cool idea underneath] was wrong. This helped me remember/realize that entertainment should not be looked down upon.
Dawn
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Mike Pederson
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I know Tee rather well - we are often scheduled on the same panels at conventions, I've reviewed two of his books, and we've spent many hours debating movies - so when he steered me towards this article I just had to put in my two cents worth.
As someone who is making a career out of documenting fandom in its many forms (I publish a semipro fanzine) I can easily see both sides of Tee's argument. It's true that fandom can be very elitist but I tend to view it as a defensive reaction. Fandom as we know it dates back to the 1920s when it was strictly about SF literature. Conventions started up in the 1940s, also strictly devoted to SF literature.
Fantasy, although having as long a history as SF, is really a new-comer to popularity. Fantasy began making progress in the mid-70s and continued growing until it recently surpassed SF in sales. It's Johnny-come-lately status and the preponderance of Tolkien ripoffs have been the resaon behind the snobbery towards fantasy. And I tend to agree there as well, it's too easy to write a fantasy novel without doing a bit of research. That's not to say that there isn't good, serious fantasy out there; it's just that the hack jobs have dominated the market for a long time. And now that SF book sales are being beaten by Fantasy (although I don't know if this would be the case if you subtracted Tolkien and Rowling from the sales totals) the SF writers and readers feel a bit abandoned and occassionally lash out at fantasy.
The media bias is a similar story. I attend roughly 20 cons a year (including media, anime and gaming cons) and have noticed some disturbing trends. I can go to a big media or gaming con and will move fewer magazines than I would at a SF con that is a third the size. I've heard the same comment from book dealers that work in the huckster rooms. This seems to indicate that there are fewer readers at media cons than at SF cons. And I doubt if anyone here would dispute the fact that readers are generally more intelligent than their non-reading counterparts. If anyone can be a media fan and only serious readers are SF fans then isn't this elitism a deserved one? I think so.
Back in the mid 80s when I started going to conventions I remember how everyone looked down at Trek cons. At that point Trek cons and SF cons were two very different entities. In the late 80s and early 90s Trek became more culturally pervasive and the cons started to intermingle more and more. It's not uncommon for me to be scheduled on 2-3 media related panels at major SF literary conventions now.
Another factor that leads to the elitism over media cons is profit. All of the major SF cons are organized by non-profit fan groups. Many media cons are thrown by business corporations that are just trying to separate the fan from his hard-earned dollar. How can you not look down on that exploitative behavior?
None of this elitism is a new phenomenon either. In the 1940s A.E. Van Vogt wrote a popular (now classic) SF novel called "Slan". Slan were a genetically engineered breed of humans that were telepathic, smarter, and just better than run-of-the-mill humans. It didn't take long for the cry to go up that "Fans are Slan!" Around the same time there was another movement to create a commune in the Ozarks that would be populated by fandom, this smarter society would be their Utopia on Earth. The elitism of fandom is not new and will probably always be around.
I think the biggest problem that Tee brings up is the bad attitudes that pop up on occassion. In my experience fandom is generally an open-minded intelligent organization that will welcome just about anyone. It's these occassional snobs that spoil the party for everyone. What we have to remember is that they are in the minority. They can be quite vocal at times but they aren't speaking for fandom in general.
Fandom is in a transitional phase right now. It's not our first (anyone remember the giant influx of gamers in the late-70s or the goths of the mid-90s?) and it won't be our last. First Fandom is getting smaller every year and we aren't getting a very large influx of replacements. If somebody starts grousing about the media kids or the fantasy fans just remember that they're probably missing the way fandom was when they joined it. That's natural and everyone does it. I'd bet money that in twenty years you'll be wondering what happened to the fandom of your youth as well.
Michael D. Pederson
Publisher/Editor
Nth Degree
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David Moles
Regular reader
Reged: Jan 07 2004
Posts: 65
Loc: Basel, Switzerland
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The media bias is a similar story. I attend roughly 20 cons a year (including media, anime and gaming cons) and have noticed some disturbing trends. I can go to a big media or gaming con and will move fewer magazines than I would at a SF con that is a third the size. I've heard the same comment from book dealers that work in the huckster rooms. This seems to indicate that there are fewer readers at media cons than at SF cons. And I doubt if anyone here would dispute the fact that readers are generally more intelligent than their non-reading counterparts. If anyone can be a media fan and only serious readers are SF fans then isn't this elitism a deserved one? I think so.
Wow. I hardly even know where to start with that.
First of all, selling fewer books and magazines at a media or gaming con doesn't indicate that the attendees read less. It just indicates that at those cons they're less interested in buying books and magazines, which doesn't surprise me at all, considering that books and magazines aren't what those cons are about. You might as well set up a book stall at Lollapallooza or COMDEX, sell nothing, and so deduce that music fans or people in the consmer electronics industry are non-readers.
Second, even if it were true that media fans and gamers read less, your assertion that readers are generally smarter than non-readers is at best meaningless and at worst pernicious. Sure, it's probably true in some narrowly-defined sense -- reading at an early age has been shown to cause permanent changes in the brain, and besides, the fact that reading requires a certain amount of intelligence to begin with lets you lop off the south end of the bell curve. But so what? That statistical argument isn't enough to justify assuming that any individual presumably-non-reading media fan is stupider than you are, which is the kind of behavior Morris seems to be complaining about.
Third, even if the average media non-fan is smarter than the average media fan -- how in hell does that justify elitism? Where is it written that smarter" is "better"? Where is it written that "better" is a license to have no manners?
I've given up on expecting Fans to realize that they Are Not Slans. But that doesn't mean I have to tolerate "slannish" bad behavior. Luckily, there's a lot less of it out there than there seems to be on first glance. Greg Bear and Walter Jon Williams have written Star Wars novels. Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden are working their way through the Buffy DVDs. Harlan Ellison was a consultant on Babylon 5. In a world like that, how bad can the book/media divide really be?
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-- David
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Anonymous
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Yes, lots of people look down on Fantasy, when Fantasy means tired retreads of tired Tolkein retreads. No, that category of Fantasy does not include Shakespeare.
Yes, lots of people look down on Horror when it means tired retreads of slasher retreads. No, that category of Horror does not include Shelley.
Van Helsing looked like the sorriest sort of profit-driven heartless-clever action popcorn fodder. Not my idea of fun, sorry. And yes, I am jaded.
I am sorry Tee was treated rudely by some people. But making up a category of Elitists and then preceding to knock down their imaginary arguments isn't the way to go.
For example, Tee has the elitists say: "All media SF is unintelligent and damages the credibility of our genre. . . ."
Does Tee have a source for that quote?
J
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Anonymous
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I think people are often much more complex than they want to be seen. You can read "deep" books one day, and watch RETURN OF THE KILLER TOMATOES the next. (I do. ;-)) Not even the "elitist" is really elitist all the time.
That being said, it's very hard not to react negatively when a lack of standards becomes overly apparent. Case in point: there is this new movie titled I, ROBOT. It has very little to do with Isaac Asimov's stories. It is derivate and clichéd. It is a series of car chases and fight sequences.
And yet, many SF fans will pay to see it. Why? Because they have no standards. If the marketing machine tells them "go and buy this product", they will do so. And when other SF fans DO object, saying "We should not endorse this movie, it is an insult to the original work, we should demand better things", they will be called snobs.
That is an example of what happens when you have no standards. It IS possible -- and probably healthy -- to both have standards and to enjoy "light entertainment". But if you refuse to even accept that there is a qualitative difference between "I, ROBOT" the movie and I, ROBOT the book... then you will become a rudderless person, and cynical marketing people will be able to manipulate you.
Of course, lowbrow entertainment has probably never looked as good as it does now. Production values are impressive. But really... aren't you kind of sick of slick computer-graphics? Don't you sometimes feel your brain is starved of challenges? Shouldn't SF stimulate the imagination instead of stifling it? One can only watch so many car chases and not get bored.
And... I double-dare you to admit you've had one of these "elitist" moments: You visit a convention in a large American city. A grown man dressed up as an alien speaks Klingon to you, when you ask him for directions. Everywehere you turn, you see badly dressed, obese people with bad haircuts. People line up to get autographs from a guy who had a non-speaking part in REVENGE OF THE ATTACK OF THE CLONES, SPECIAL EDITION.
Suddenly you panic, and start hallucinating that you're visiting the late Roman Empire, just before the Visigoths storm the gates of the city. "Damn it," you think, "this isn't a place to stagger the imagination! It's a cocoon where people go to escape the War on Terror! Where are the exits?"
You rush outside for fresh air, and see the same obese people outside the convention, wearing the same VAN HELSING t-shirts... and you realize there is no escape. Al-Qaeda is going to win. It's the end times.
But these moments pass, and civilization abides for another day... ;-)
-Anonymous
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David Moles
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Reged: Jan 07 2004
Posts: 65
Loc: Basel, Switzerland
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And yet, many SF fans will pay to see it. Why? Because they have no standards. If the marketing machine tells them "go and buy this product", they will do so.
No, they'll pay to see it because they have eight bucks in their pockets and nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon. I'm sure it makes you feel warm and fuzzy to think that your opinions are the reasoned conclusions of an autonomous individual and the opinions of those you disagree with are the programmed responses of teleoperated puppets, but the real world doesn't work that way. People do things for a lot of reasons, and none of those reasons are as simple as "the marketing machine told me to".
And when other SF fans DO object, saying "We should not endorse this movie, it is an insult to the original work, we should demand better things", they will be called snobs.
No, they'll be called fools. Not only is it none of your business or mine what total strangers do with their spare time, your argument is predicated on the assumption that the movie industry gives a damn what SF fans think. Who cares what SF fans "endorse"? (As if seeing a film meant "endorsing" it, which it doesn't.) SF fans are way too small and fractious a demographic to have any significant impact on Hollywood, which is why we shouldn't be surprised (let alone indignant) to find that Hollywood's made no more than half a dozen really good SF movies in 90 years. We can "demand" till our faces turn blue, but that's not going to get Hollywood to stop making vaguely SFnal summer blockbusters.
Suddenly you panic, and start hallucinating that you're visiting the late Roman Empire, just before the Visigoths storm the gates of the city. "Damn it," you think, "this isn't a place to stagger the imagination! It's a cocoon where people go to escape the War on Terror! Where are the exits?"
And Asimov isn't an escape? Don't kid yourself. You want to be fully engaged with current events while having your imagination staggered, read Sven Lindqvist's A History of Bombing.
Meanwhile, let the Klingon-speakers and the people who like car chases do their own thing. They will anyway.
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-- David
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Anonymous
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"Around the same time there was another movement to create a commune in the Ozarks that would be populated by fandom, this smarter society would be their Utopia on Earth."
I'd love to own a Jenny Craig franchise in the Ozarks.
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Scortch
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Strangely, this is a topic much discussed within my circle of friends the past few weeks. In fact, it was part of a greater argument just last evening.
There can be no question that there is such elitism. Certainly part of it comes from the origins of fandom, the Reader class, so to speak. Where were the tenets of the genre developed? The printed page. And so, like an actor's reverence for Shakespeare's text, they cling to the notion that it can all be gotten from the page...
A certain other aspect of this elitism must surely come from an us/them feeling. Reading the genre(s) is something a true fan does. Movies, etc. are for the masses - the mundanes. Y'know, those people who make "Spock-ear" jokes about us. The accessibility of the form and story make it "pop" and something to automatically be held in contempt. This is not a new concept; in fact is all too much like the Classical/Top 40 rift in music appreciation. The simple fact that is crap at both ends of the spectrum. Strings and tympani do not make great art as much as strong science is not sufficient cover for a lack of storytelling or character building skills.
What is an issue, and where I have a problem with films like Van Helsing, is when the "popcorn fun" becomes the benchmark. When the flash is looked at as the quality offering. There is quality fun. Though I have not seen Van Helsing, I have seen the Mummy films from the same filmmakers. I expect I would have much the same problem with this new offering. I enjoy a good simply fun movie as much as the average guy. However, I want to see some effort at creating quality entertainment expended by the makers. The Mummy, its sequels, and I suspect Van Helsing, are made by marketing teams who create by commitee and then hire some creative individuals to make it look pretty and blow up real good. There is a vast difference between this and the other films named, all of which have a solid knowledge of the genres (and their enduring appeal) they pay homage to. The Mummy has much more in common with the last quarter of The Blues Brothers than it does with any Karloff film.
We need to stop worrying about form and start making sure that our buying dollar goes towards that which at least aspires to have an aspect of quality and care to it.
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David Moles
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Reged: Jan 07 2004
Posts: 65
Loc: Basel, Switzerland
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What is an issue, and where I have a problem with films like Van Helsing, is when the "popcorn fun" becomes the benchmark. When the flash is looked at as the quality offering.
"Popcorn fun" should be the benchmark -- for popcorn fun. The problem with "Van Helsing" is not that it's popcorn fun, it's that it isn't. It isn't fun of any kind, apart from a couple of bits which serve largely to throw their un-fun surroundings into sharp relief. (Unless you think watching somebody else play Tomb Raider or Prince of Persia is fun. If you do, that's your business.)
If you want to savage Morris' lack of judgment, feel free. Do it well, and I may even applaud. (Although you'll be wasting your time, since Nick Mamatas already did it.) But it's one thing to say that this particular flick fails on its own terms, and another to say that even a success on those terms would be a categorical failure.
I want to see some effort at creating quality entertainment expended by the makers. The Mummy, its sequels, and I suspect Van Helsing, are made by marketing teams who create by commitee and then hire some creative individuals to make it look pretty and blow up real good.
I'd like to know what exactly makes you sure that the makers of Van Helsing didn't expend that effort. Maybe they just blew it -- did you think of that? (Paging George Lucas.) What's interesting is that of the films you're talking about, the first Mummy (which is head-and-shoulders the least bad of the four) is in fact the one written by the largest committee, at least according to IMDB. The Mummy Returns and Van Helsing were both apparently written by Sommers all on his lonesome. And, y'know, he just doesn't strike me as the type who gets up in the middle of the afternoon, knocks back a couple of cheap scotches and says to the empty air: "To hell with quality -- those glassy-eyed popcorn-chewing sonsofbitches in the so-called 'viewing public' are too stupid to know the difference. I'm gonna feed 'em [censored], and they'll eat it and like it." When you're that cynical you don't do your own work, you hire someone to do it for you.
We need to ... start making sure that our buying dollar goes towards that which at least aspires to have an aspect of quality and care to it.
Do we? I don't remember taking whatever oath we were supposed to take when we signed up for that particular crusade. If you do, then go nuts, I won't stop you. What you spend your money on is your business -- but what everyone else spends theirs on is theirs.
Even if it means that they get popcorn stuck in their teeth.
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-- David
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Anonymous
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Not to point to anyone in specific here, but I've been following the various dissections of this poor article all over the place, and frankly am getting sick of it.
This whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. The article which caused the hooplah is not that great, but neither is it all that shocking, and Tee Morris has made some rather valid points. People who riffed off it, like Nick Mamatas, I think, enjoyed an excuse to rant and fill journal space more than actually having anything substantially controversial to talk about.
Not sure where all the passion here is coming from. But, as Willow Rosenberg would say, "Bored now." :-)
And that's about all I have on this unwarranted subject. Enough already, good people of the online world.
:-)
Vera Nazarian
http://www.veranazarian.com/
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Kinsley Castle
New user
Reged: Jul 20 2004
Posts: 2
Loc: Australia
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Tempest? Hooplah?
I haven't read what Nick Mamatas has said. But it must have been something provocative (I can well imagine), because I don't see anything in the discussion here to provoke such a powerfully negative reaction. I thought I was simply responding to the article, in a place that was, after all, provided for that very purpose.
I find your post rather astonishing. I've had much more heated debates than this, over much more humble and esoteric subjects (adverbs, for example).
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^V^
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Dot Imm
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Quote:
Not sure where all the passion here is coming from. But, as Willow Rosenberg would say, "Bored now." :-)
Vera Nazarian
http://www.veranazarian.com/
Actually Vera, I think you mean Vamp!Willow. ;)
And Buffy is one of the things that rekindled my long dormant interest in reading spec fic, both books and short fiction.
Ironic, huh?
--Dot
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mfitz
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I'm jumping into this late and I almost don't know where to start.
Most of this discussion reminds me of the endless debate about the difference between ART/everything else. I think the weak point of that argument, that only ART has any value, is the same weak point to the written/media argument in SF.
Sure there is lots of crap media SF/Fantasy out there. But there is even more crappy, cop, drama, sitcoms, western media out there, not to mention the whole horror of "reality television" (sorry that's an awkward sentence but I'm too tired to re-write just now)
Bad low quality entertainment is bad low quality entertainment no matter what genre. Stupid people are stupid no matter how they spend their time.
Just being a movie, or TV show, does not make something bad. Just being a fan of a movie, or TV show, does not make you stupid. That's like saying that apples are stupid because they are not grapes.
I love a good SF novel that makes me really re-think my ideas about the universe and my place in it, but I also look forward to ending my week curled up on the couch with my hubbie and watching Stargate on Friday night. Both experiences are important to me living a balanced happy life.
VanHelsing was a muddled movie because it was a muddled movie. It would have been just as bad if it was a novel, and whether we admit it or not there are plenty of novels out there that have hashed up mix-mastered plots way worst than VanHelsing. They just don't have the advantage of Hugh Jackson prettying up the scenery. Sometimes after a bad week at work it's worth eight bucks just to look at a pretty face for a while, which is why people like movies to begin with.
I grew up in a family of actors and have been seeing movies and live theater with their comments all my life, I know this gives me a slightly different viewpoint on entertainment media, but I think a good well made summer movie is just as important to the good of society as a well written book. Take the movie Independence Day, sure it's not great SF, in fact the whole bug-eyed monsters invade the planet is my least favorite SF sub genre, but ID is a great summer blockbuster movie. It does everything you want a fun summer movie to do. It's the best B-Movie ever in my opinion. It's not going to change anyone's view on the world, but that's not what it's supposed to do.
The problem comes when you have a society that has been taught not to think outside the box, and thinks "Who wants to marry a millionaire" is entertainment because they don't know what real entertainment is any more. Saying that makes me and "Elitist Snob" but I don't care, that's the problem, not people who spend their spare time learning Klingon, watching Buffy, or playing RPG's.
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Kinsley Castle
New user
Reged: Jul 20 2004
Posts: 2
Loc: Australia
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Quote:
"Who wants to marry a millionaire" is entertainment because they don't know what real entertainment is any more. Saying that makes me and "Elitist Snob" but I don't care, that's the problem, not people who spend their spare time learning Klingon, watching Buffy, or playing RPG's.
Yes. I think, to some extent, people get the media they deserve. We get reality television because people watch it. If they didn't watch it, television execs wouldn't buy it. It's a commercial business -- they'll run with whatever gets bums on seats, because that's how they make their money. There's no point blaming them for the public's poor taste.
If there's any blame due to television/movie people or publishers, it would be for the many and varied ways they find to shoot themselves in the foot. Exhibit A would probably be the assumption that since Survivor worked in the ratings, people want to watch a bijillion rip-offs of it. Exhibit B would probably be this assumption that movies , television, and book publishing are safe businesses where you can gaurantee profits through making safe decisions. Waterworld is the ultimate disproof of that idea.
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^V^
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