Subject: "The Handmaid's Tale is needlessly dark and political"
Author:
Posted on: 2020-01-24 16:34:10 UTC
Honestly, really? It's based on a dystopian novel, that's kind of what they're about. Was 1984 "pointlessly grimdark"? No, it had a point to make, and it made it.
...maybe that was a bit dramatic for a title. Let me rephrase that:
Grimdark sci-fi is a overused subgenre within the genre.
Back in 2004, I was a much differentbperson. Well, of couse I was, since I was 14. At the time, I was much more into sci-fi novels than I was TV; and it wasn’t until ‘05 when Doctor Who was revived that I became a avid fan of sci-fi television.
However, I do remember that my Dad bought a family subscription to the Australian branch of the SciFy channel for my birthday that year. I remember watching the first episodes of BSG. I remember loving it.
BSG is in many ways the progenitor of today’s sci-fi “climate”. It was massively successful, and it inspired much of the grimdark era we find ourselves in. When compared to the sci-fi of my early childhood- Star Trek: Voyager, Quantum Leap, basically any 90’s genre television- it was a significantly different show.
Nowdays, with edgier sci-fi shows like STD, Picard, Lost in Space (2018), and more filling our streaming libraries, it can be easy to forget that sci-fi wasn’t so soul-crushingly depressing not so long ago. Firefly, Stargate: SG1, Stargate: Atlantis, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, Doctor Who...all of these were great shows that either started, ended, or picked themselves back up in the 90’s and 00’s; and (for the most part) they were optimistic about the future.
There are exceptions to the rash of edglordy sci-fi, sure. I absolutely adore Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville, for example. The Expanse is dark, but it also has hopeful airs to it. There’s talk of a Galaxy Quest TV show that’s been going on since 2017. There’s that new show, Avenue 5. But for every one of these gems, we have a needlessly political, edgy, and grimdark wankfest like That Show, That Newer Show, The Handmaid’s Tale (“sci fi is just talking squids and zap guns” my shiny metal ass!), Stargate Universe, or any number of other shows that claim to be “making light of our modern dystopia” or “exposing the treatment of [insert minority here] by [insert descriptor here]
There was a time where if a show wanted to intelligently discuss social or political issues, the writers would enploy thing called “allegory”. The Klingons as the Soviets and the Federation as the US, for example. The Browncoats as the South and the Alliance as the Union. The Dominion War as the Vietnam war.
But, apparently it’s too much work to write intelligent sci-fi. Sometimes it’s just easier to make the Klingons Trump Supporters and call it a day. Sometimes it’s just easier to make everything needlessly dark, and call it a frakking televisual Picasso.
Minh’s fun fact of the day!
Alex Kurtzman one stood in front of a camera, and said (albiet paraphrased here)
“There’s 50 years of Star Trek. It’s too much work to keep to established canon even though the last television show came out twelve years ago, and stuck to canon perfectly fine”
If you don’t believe that, then watch and weep:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=BqDkkLF-yxA
Isn't it possible that this is an unfortunate byproduct of being born when you were? I'm not saying there was never any tonal shift in science fiction en masse - there definitely has been over the course of 60-70 years - and I can kind of understand what you mean when you say you're wishing for things more in the tone of the older shows.
That said, I think that your view on older science fiction may be a little skewed. ^^; You weren't alive when the original Star Trek started airing I don't think, and you were probably a young kid when Voyager started airing. You weren't as old as you are now, with your social and political knowledge, when they were airing, and in the case of things like the original Star Trek, the height of the Cold War was something firmly in the past for you. The allegories aren't nearly as relevant to you, and because of that don't feel nearly as on-the-nose, as the shows making them now because you are conscious of the world around you and current events in a real sense that you weren't when you were younger. I guess the prevalence of mainstream media increasing people's awareness to the degree it does now is also a factor in that; I don't remember it being that way when I was a kid.
One more thing is that you have to remember that you're seeing a lot of these bad shows because you're around when they're first getting started or are currently airing. A lot of the really bad scifi shows, and I think even a lot of the mediocre ones, in original Star Trek era, and the ones from when you were a young kid, didn't last and aren't talked about now because they weren't preserved as well and simply don't have the staying power of Star Trek. I mean, as a person who reads and watches a lot of anime and manga, the same thing happens in those communities with a lot of people who idealize older anime because it was "better" back then, but they have 20, 30 years of hindsight and people living through all the bad and mediocre ones to fall back on to tell them what the real gems are. I think it's the same with any sort of media, really. Lord of the Rings wasn't the only high fantasy book written before 1955 but it's certainly the one everyone remembers, as a literature example! ^^
. . . the shift in attitude amongst U.S. (and other) citizens. Earlier generations in the U.S., especially around the mid-1900s, tended to be a lot more trusting of the government and authority in general. Their sci-fi future seemed comfortable and prosperous because it felt like the world's future would always remain prosperous, as it had since World War II ended. Nowadays, we're learning more and more not to take things at face value, and to question our authority figures. Economic disparity and climate shift are forefront and center in most folks' minds, and we know now that there are many trials ahead to secure a safe future for our species. Our sci-fi reflects that lack of guaranteed success, and is more grounded and pessimistic because of it. It's not just the sci-fi, either.
I can understand not liking it, though. I prefer a more adventurous feel to my fiction, although sometimes fiction can swing too far into the realm of the lighthearted and lose too much seriousness and character to feel like it's anchored in reality any more. I didn't like Guardians of the Galaxy for that reason; too many of the characters didn't feel like they were taking the plot seriously, so I would should I?
I am confused by a point you've made about allegory. Since you approve of using Klingons as an allegory for Soviets, why do you not like them as an allegory for Trump supporters? Isn't that essentially the same thing? Or did the two ST series handle the allegory differently?
—doctorlit, adventure seeker
If I was to choose a race to be Trumpists in space, I wouldn’t choose the Klingons. For one, Klingons are actually honorable warriors, not fanatically racist rhetoricalists. I would have picked the Romulans, but even that’s a stretch.
They would have done a better job if they just came up with a new alien species
I love QL! I discovered it as reruns on Sci Fi Channel back when that was still spelled "Sci Fi." I think it's the first proper "grown-up" TV series that ever really hooked me. It's just such a unique and interesting premise! I've got the entire series on DVD; need to binge re-wacth the whole thing someday and maybe do some missions into it!
—doctorlit, always hoping that the next leap will be the leap home
I used to watch it with my parents; I distinctly remember the test pilot one (was that the first episode?) and the lab monkey one. Very fun.
... come to think of it, didn't I parody it once? Yep, there it is, over in the TCDA.
Theorising that a Constable could travel within her own transfictionally-algorithmised vitallic field, Feamintë Fioncarnë stepped into the Phantasmic Leap Accelerator... and vanished. She awoke to find herself trapped in the Fictional Realms, facing mirror images that were not her own, and driven by an unknown force to change the plot for the better. And so Feamintë finds herself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that her next leap will be the leap... home.
hS
I caught a handfull of episodes on SBS (a Australian F2A broadcasting station) a few years back. I think. I definately remember watching a couple of episodes with my parents at some point in my childhood, but I could be misremembering.
The shows I do remember from my childhood are the reruns of Tom Baker’s stint as the Doctor; Red Dwarf, Voyager, and pretty much anything by Gerry Anderson. In fact, I practically was raised on Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Space 1999, and U.F.O.
Now that I think about it, I think I have a DVD boxset of Thunderbirds sitting in a box somewhere. Maybe it’s about time I gave it a rewatch...
Honestly, really? It's based on a dystopian novel, that's kind of what they're about. Was 1984 "pointlessly grimdark"? No, it had a point to make, and it made it.
I just have a problem with the author being snotty about sci-fi
You put the Handmaid's Tale in the category of "needlessly political, edgy, and grimdark wankfest" and when you said that you don't really have a problem with it, that's just going to confuse people.
... always (often?) seem needlessly dark to the people who aren't being oppressed.
Which, to make it clear, includes every single person in this community, to greater or lesser extent. Some of us (eg, myself) sit right on the summit of the pile of oppression, prejudice, and general nastiness that makes up our world, but all of us are high enough up the heap to have, for instance, reliable internet access, and time to spend worrying about affronts to fictional characters in fanfic.
We're not meant to be comfortable with Major Kira's status as an unrepentant former terrorist (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 1993), to name just one example, because we're not the ones whose country is (viewed as being) occupied by a foreign power. The purpose of including those characters - of telling their stories, not ours - is to let the people who aren't on top of the heap have their voices heard - and, hopefully, to get us to empathise with them, understand them, and make our society a better place for them and, ultimately, ourselves.
hS
puts a lock on her own mouth and throws away the key to avoid saying something even more pointed
I'm just curious because I'm losing count of how many discussions you've tried to start here with "[insert title of modern media, usually sci-fi] sucks because it's not like in the Good Old Days".
Are there any other topics you'd like to bring up sometime?
...this is complaining?
Going by the definition of a complaint, it's "to express grief, pain, or discontent", so yeah.
Whether or not that was the impression you got, better make sure your posts don't have complaints in the future!
Because Minh, you've started this exact same "discussion"* with this exact same tone over and over and over. It's getting real old.
*And I'd call it an actual discussion if you had offered something constructive instead of, or at least to go with, "[x] sucks because [y]" for once.