Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[el-ahrairah]

science fiction is a window into the soul of what a society wishes it could be

 

[sihhi]

STOP TALKING ABOUT STAR TREK

In case it's not clear: I find Star Trek pretty shabby and with sharp slices of US anticommunism. But you're right, I don't want to have to watch it, to properly investigate its "problems" and relationship to society. It's laughably bad - phasers, stun, warp factor

 

[Idris2002]

In case it's not clear: I find Star Trek pretty shabby and with sharp slices of US anticommunism. But you're right, I don't want to have to watch it, to properly investigate its "problems" and relationship to society. It's laughably bad - phasers, stun, warp factor

Yes, sihhi. You watch Star Trek ironically. I believe you. Yes.

 

[The Pale King]

Let us not forget the tragic fate of Mycah the butcher's boy.

Poor Mycah. They ran him down.

 

[sihhi]

Yes, sihhi. You watch Star Trek ironically. I believe you. Yes.

Is this a Star Trek witch-hunt? I don't watch it anymore it hasn't been on the BBC for 20 years. I do find the masses of documentation endearing though.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Portal:Main

The Star Trek wikipedia above has more articles than all genuine wikipedia articles about eg Bolivia

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Fucking hell, what does that say about the Draka?

(not that I've read the Draka series)

Me neither, but I've read enough comments about it to seriously avoid anyone who tells me they're a fan

 

[sihhi]

This is the episode I mentioned earlier, its plot is pretty lame as well - stuff happening that makes no sense.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Past_Tense,_Part_I_(episode)

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Past_Tense,_Part_II_(episode)

It stood out for these (in retrospect naff) 'deep' conversations:

"By the early 2020s, there was a place like this in every major city in the United States."
"Why are these people in here? Are they criminals?"
"No, people with criminal records weren't allowed in the Sanctuary Districts."
"Then what did they do to deserve this?"
"Nothing. They're just people without jobs or places to live."
"So they get put in here?"
"Welcome to the 21st century, doctor."

As soon as anyone says science fiction X is bad on the basis of having seen a few they are labelled as secret X addicts. This is I believe is geek privilege.

 

[ViolentPanda]

You could say the same for capitalism, imperialism, Islamophobia etc

Some help needed here on science fiction, Zoe Stavri posted this

http://www.socialjusticeleague.net/2011/09/how-to-be-a-fan-of-problematic-things






I'd never heard of Dune, but I don't get where the homophobia is even after googling.



In fact I don't know any of these things, but I don't get exactly what's being said.

The Scott Pilgrim critique is just plain daft. The whole impetus of the story is that young people are invariably shallow and fixated on self-gratification, and that's how almost all the characters act in the film. there's nothing racist, homophobic or sexist about it unless you fixate on minor issues of character that are entirely related to the shallowness of said characters, and which you couldn't convey the plot without.


Christ. I've just admitted watching "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World"!

 

[el-ahrairah]

Christ. I've just admitted watching "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World"!

my girlfriend spent about twenty minutes explaining why this film was massively sexist. i can't remember but the gist of it is something to do with fedoras.

 

[ViolentPanda]

considered to be o, I always took it as nameless frontierism in spaaaaace


never got on with it really. Hated the swashing of buckles. It's like the 90s never happened

Some of the derring-do was derring-overdone, certainly. Great characterisation, and anyone who says the Jaynetown episode isn't the funniest example of unintended consequences on TV is a damn fool!

 

[sihhi]

Sorry, my mistake, it's oppression of geeks and non-geek privilege, which capitalists expoit to turn geeks into allies of capitalism.

And the geek shall inherit the earth

There is a certain type of nerd entitlement that is all too easily co-opted into a modern mythology of ruthless capitalist exploitation, in which the acquisition of wealth and status at all costs is phrased as a cheeky way of getting one's own back on those kids who were mean to you at school. As somebody whose only schoolfriends were my Dungeons & Dragons team, I understand all too well how every socialist and egalitarian principle can pale into insignificance compared to the overwhelming urge to show that unattainable girl or boy who spurned your dorky sixth-form advances just what they were missing.

The narrative whereby the nerdy loner makes a sack of cash and gets all the hot pussy he can handle is becoming a fundamental part of free-market folklore. It crops up in films from Transformers to Scott Pilgrim; it's the story of Bill Gates, of Steve Jobs, and now of Mark Zuckerberg. It's a story about power and about how alienation and obsessive persistence are rewarded with social, sexual and financial power.

The protagonist is invariably white and rich and always male -- Hollywood cannot countenance female nerds, other than as minor characters who transform into pliant sexbots as soon as they remove their glasses -- but these privileges are as naught compared to the injustice life has served him by making him shy, spotty and interested in Star Trek. He has been wronged, and he has every right to use his l33t skills to bend the engine of humanity to his purpose.

This logic is painful to me, as an out-and-proud nerd. For a person with a comics collection, an in-depth knowledge of the niceties of online fan fiction and a tendency to social awkwardness, it is distressing to see geekdom being annexed by the mythology of neoliberal self-actualisation.

There's far more to being a geek than maladaptive strategies that objectify other human beings as hostile obstacles who deserve to be used to serve the purpose of one's own ambition, but watching The Social Network, you wouldn't know it. For me, being a geek is about community, energy and celebration of difference -- but in the sterile fairytale of contemporary capitalism, successful geekery is about the rewards of power and the usefulness of commodifying other humans as a sum of likes, interests and saleable personal data.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

The Scott Pilgrim critique is just plain daft. The whole impetus of the story is that young people are invariably shallow and fixated on self-gratification, and that's how almost all the characters act in the film. there's nothing racist, homophobic or sexist about it unless you fixate on minor issues of character that are entirely related to the shallowness of said characters, and which you couldn't convey the plot without.


Christ. I've just admitted watching "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World"!

It's OK not only have I watched it, I have all the graphic novels

 

[ViolentPanda]

my girlfriend spent about twenty minutes explaining why this film was massively sexist. i can't remember but the gist of it is something to do with fedoras.

The whole film is based on these late teen-early 20s stereotypical (and I mean baldly stereotypical) whiny angsty characters. There's sexism, sure, but it runs both ways, as do the other -isms.
It has a good line on vegans, though.

 

[sihhi]

my girlfriend spent about twenty minutes explaining why this film was massively sexist. i can't remember but the gist of it is something to do with fedoras.

Are you sure you didn't watch by accident with a mate of hers?

Why would someone tell you something you aren't watching was sexist?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Its theme might be libertarian (though you could just as easily say its anarchist), but I fail to see how Firefly could ever be said to have a right-wing theme to it.

Well, The Alliance are certainly what we'd call "right-wing authoritarian", in that you're free to do what you want as long as you do it The Alliance way, and the contradictions between how The Alliance do things, and how the outer planets do things very much points that up.
Also, to be fair, you could say it's about the ultimate in libertarianism too - The Reavers.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Was Heinlein's weird and creepy obsession with incest in some way connected to his right-libertarian politics?

Yes, probably.

H Bruce Franklin, the US literary critic and entertaining Maoist nutter, wrote a book about Heinlein that was I think the first academic literary criticism monograph about a science fiction writer. Heinlein fans hated it.

Heinlein's politics weren't consistent. He started out quite far to the left before moving early in his career hard to the right. Then he moved from a kind of authoritarian right wing attitude (Starship Troopers etc) to a kind of self-indulgent creepy old man right libertarianism, while still of course keeping his reverence for the military. As he's crudely didactic quite a lot of the time, you can quite easily trace the shifts in his views through his work.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I think its the extreme end of libertarian thinking- not only are gov rules invalid but basic familial and social assumptions are to be disregarded for the brave new man

Also the extreme end of socio-biological thinking of the time.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

my girlfriend spent about twenty minutes explaining why this film was massively sexist. i can't remember but the gist of it is something to do with fedoras.

Apparently, the guy who does the original comics changed the ending after seeing the film because he though it was sexist. The film came out before the final comic and had an ending based on a planned outline of the last comic.

 

[weepiper]

I've given up on Alex Andreou after he tweeted this patronising sexist claptrap then said I should basically shut up about it being sexist because he was only talking about his own mum and he finds it adorable and he loves her

 

[YouSir]

I've given up on Alex Andreou after he tweeted this patronising sexist claptrap then said I should basically shut up about it being sexist because he was only talking about his own mum and he finds it adorable and he loves her

Looks more like ageism than sexism. Old meme, old folks fail at technology.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

a banal truth, taken completely out of context. Tolkein was a total white academia bod of a bygone age. There was no agency to his talk of 'races' and characteristics attributed to them. Indeed its more to do with the drawing on older myths like the edda and so on that lends him to so. Not innate racism, he's a reactionry but not a bigot

The issue is not whether Tolkein was a "bigot" on a personal level. It's about the racism in his work. And there's a lot of it. While women essentially don't exist at all, except for the very rare appearance of an ultra-idealised semi-divine being or two. These truths are only "banal" if you regard race and gender as irrelevant beside the really important things in life like making up elvish languages, which is essentially what a lot of fantasy fan special pleading amounts to.

It's interesting though, and telling, that the intersectionalists pick up on the "problematic" politics of race and gender in Tolkein but don't ever mention the reactionary politics of class, which are if anything more up front and which were prominent in earlier left wing critiques going back to Moorcock.

 

[butchersapron]

I don't feel safe on this thread anymore.

 

[weepiper]

Looks more like ageism than sexism. Old meme, old folks fail at technology.

It's both really, but it's based on attitudes that make it very difficult for middle-aged women to find work outside of care work, office admin or retail, all of which have shit wages and shit job security. It's not funny.

 

[SpineyNorman]

I'd be a lot happier if we could drop the sci fi weirdness and get back to talking about toilet habits

 

[DotCommunist]

The issue is not whether Tolkein was a "bigot" on a personal level. It's about the racism in his work. And there's a lot of it. While women essentially don't exist at all, except for the very rare appearance of an ultra-idealised semi-divine being or two. These truths are only "banal" if you regard race and gender as irrelevant beside the really important things in life like making up elvish languages, which is essentially what a lot of fantasy fan special pleading amounts to.

It's interesting though, and telling, that the intersectionalists pick up on the "problematic" politics of race and gender in Tolkein but don't ever mention the reactionary politics of class, which are if anything more up front and which were prominent in earlier left wing critiques going back to Moorcock.

name it. I can, I just want to see if you can. Disregarding the easterlings and umbar folks.

 

[J Ed]

I don't feel safe on this thread anymore.

Is feeling uncomfortable about sci fi a privilege or an oppression?

 

[SpineyNorman]

I don't feel safe on this thread anymore.

We need a safe space where the sci fi fans can't use their geek privilege to silence and oppress us

 

[DotCommunist]

as for the classism, well yes thats pretty naked througout. So is most fiction of its age

 

[DotCommunist]

oh and its elven not elvish. He was very particular about that

 

[Nigel Irritable]

name it. I can, I just want to see if you can. Disregarding the easterlings and umbar folks.

Give examples... apart from the most obvious examples? Aside from the swarthy hordes of the South and East, there are the Orcs, and on a reverse note the Dunedain.