SCIENCE FICTION AND THE NON-PRINT MEDIA
Symposium on Alien
Participants: Jackie Byars (Moderator), Jeff Gould, Peter Fitting, Judith Newton, Tony
Safford, Clayton Lee
Abstract .--This symposium on Alien presents six different
scholars' viewpoints on the film. Jackie Byars, as moderator of the symposium, begins the
discussion with some ideological readings of Alien; Jeff Gould analyzes the
destruction of the social by the organic; Peter Fitting situates Alien in the
long tradition of Hollywood "monster'' cinema and discusses the social and psychological
function of such films; Judith Newton focuses on the portrayal of the film's heroine,
Ripley, as a locus of feminism and anxiety; Tony Safford investigates the science/humanism
dichotomy in Alien, especially as it relates to the depiction of the film's
fictional characters; Clayton Lee presents several cognitive approaches to Alien,
and identifies the film as an example of the postmodern baroque.
Andrew Gordon
The Empire Strikes Back: Monsters
from the Id
Abstract.-- Much like its predecessor Star Wars, The
Empire Strikes Back is a film which evokes what Joseph Campbell once called "the
monomyth," portraying the mythic hero's Departure, Initiation, and Return. In Empire,
however, George Lucas and his co-writers have deepened and darkened the Star Wars'
vision. Empire is a rousing adventure story, but it is also genuinely disturbing:
e.g., the heroes are in retreat from beginning to end, they accomplish only minor
victories and suffer major defeats, and Luke Skywalker's very identity and manhood have been shaken by the loss of his lightsaber and his right hand to Darth Vader and
the discovery that Vader is his long-lost father. Although both films deal with the primal
anxieties often portrayed in fairy-tales,
Empire
is not as reassuring as
Star
Wars because it brings those anxieties nearer to the surface without satisfactorily
resolving them.
Mark Siegel
Science-Fiction Characterization and TV's Battle for the
Stars
Abstract .--Hypothesis: SF novels often tend to portray their
fictional worlds through the the subjective perception of their characters, described in
realistic fashion; television SF, in contrast, tends to use more stereotypical, stylized
characters and to emphasize the action- oriented plot and its mythic, allegorical, or
symbolic overtones. The popular success of Star Trek and the corresponding lack
of success of Battlestar Gallactica, for example, serve to demonstrate the
validity of this hypothesis.
Mark Siegel
The Rocky Horror Picture Show: More
Than A Lip Service
Abstract .--The Rocky Horror Picture Show is discussed as a
unique social phenomenon which serves as a ``rite of intensification'' to restore social
equilibrium where the patterns and laws of social interaction are changing. Showings of The
Rocky Horror Picture Show have been adopted by a segment of the American society as a
ritual to act out the conflicts created by changes in sex roles occurring in the United
States.
Michael Stern
Making Culture Into Nature; or, Who Put the
"Special" into "Special Effects"?
Abstract.--This essay examines the ``special effects'' in SF. It
connects SF as a discourse featuring special effects to other forms of mass
communications, especially advertising and news, which have their own versions of special
effects. Each is analyzed in terms of its own specific brand of ``textuality'' and its
communicative dynamics.
Donald F. Theall
On Science Fiction as Symbolic Communication
Abstract.--The SF genre has, for several years now, elicited a growing
critical interest in the intellectual world. This essay discusses the unparalleled
popularity of Star Trek as a phenomenon of mass communication which reflects
certain fundamental value systems implicit in American society: e.g., the myth of the
frontier, the valorization of technology, the economics of free enterprise, and politics
of manifest destiny in the conquest of space.
This television series can be described in terms of the "poetic motive of symbolic
communication'' (K. Burke), i.e., an expression of humanity's intrinsic pleasure in
creating symbols. If the function of art is to transcend and reevaluate the lived moment, Star
Trek tends, on the contrary, to reiterate the ideological status quo. Without
attaining the level of catharsis of great works of art, Star Trek nevertheless
offers to its public a new form of communication where its symbolic action reflects in
part the complexity of contemporary structures of feeling.
In this context, Star Trek is compared with Kubrick's 2001, and with
Lem's Futurological Congress--each of which uses more sophisticated and
polyvalent SF structures to evoke the intellectual and emotional complexity of humans and
their universe.
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