SH Comments
Reged: Feb 16 2004
Posts: 1056
|
|
This thread is for comments about The SciFi Superiority Complex: Elitism in SF/F/H, by Tee Morris.
|
Anonymous
Unregistered
|
|
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
|
Kinsley Castle
Unregistered
|
|
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.
--------------------
The Parakeets of Doom
|
Elisabeth Nelson
Unregistered
|
|
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.
|
Kinsley Castle
Unregistered
|
|
I agree.
|
Anonymous
Unregistered
|
|
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.
|
Kinsley Castle
Unregistered
|
|
Sorry, that last one was me. I guess I'd have to register to avoid the dreaded anonymous.
|
David Moles
Regular reader
Reged: Jan 07 2004
Posts: 65
Loc: Basel, Switzerland
|
|
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. :)
--------------------
-- David
|
Dawn B
Regular reader
Reged: Mar 31 2004
Posts: 32
Loc: Bay Area, California
|
|
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
|
Mike Pederson
Unregistered
|
|
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
|
Previous
Index
Next
Threaded
Edit
Reply
Quote
