"You're next!"
Posted on 01/11/2010 5:52:50 AM PST by Slyscribe
“Avatar” is wowing audiences with its groundbreaking 3-D technology (too bad the characters are one-dimensional). But in another way it’s ordinary: a science-fiction film that plays to leftist fantasies about capitalism and the military.
Yet many sci-fi fans are on the political right. So why are sci-fi films and TV shows typically liberal?
Hollywood films tend to be liberal, sure. But science fiction in particular lends itself to utopian visions that the world’s problems can be solved once and for all.
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Might take a while to replicate the components and I'm sure that there would be other rules to prevent such a thing (after all, I'm sure they would have gotten away with primitive concepts like the Second Amendment), but I would imagine that material scarcity would not be the limiting factor.
I didn't perceive it that way: I perceived it more like an actualized form of the UN, taken interstellar.
Again, context is important. it was obvious that the Romulans were the Eastern Bloc and the Klingons were the Red Chinese.
I could go with the Romulans being the Eastern Bloc, but the Klingons as Red Chinese? I equated them to Nazis.
I do, too. At least TOS, TNG and some of the films. As a conservative, I can actually enjoy some things that have a different world-view than my own. However, I have a lib friend who cannot divorce the world-view of the art he likes from himself. He likes some things so much he alters his own views to remain in line with his favorite playwrights, films, TV shows, etc. He will never be religious because Star Trek TNG says man evolved from primordial soup, and he would not want to contradict TNG.
Exactly. What you see in the film Starship Troopers is Heinlein perverted through the lens of cynical euro-liberal pinheaded sarcasm. Which is ironic, because Heinlein was decidedly more liberal and tolerant than the typical would-be euro-weenie liberal of today.
I suspect the film inspired a number of people to read the original novel, thus somewhat counter-acting the director's ( Verhoeven ) intent. Starship Troopers was intended for a market including adolescents. Much of Heinlein's writing appealed to the reader's sense of honor, duty, and consequence, as well as appealing to wonder and enthusiasm. Heinlein is often cited as inspiration to recent generations of scientists, engineers, and military officers.
Your comment reminds me of a short satire by Larry Niven, "The Return of William Proxmire". Proxmire was Congressman from Wisconsin, infamous for invention of the "Golden Fleece" awards. The fictional Proxmire goes back in time and cures Heinlein's tuberculosis, thinking it will save Heinlein's naval career and prevent Heinlein from turning to writing science fiction. Generations un-inspired by Heinlein will help put an end to wasteful gov't spending on space travel and allow Proxmire to achieve his aims without resistance.
When Proxmire returns to the future, he finds that Outer Space is the exclusive domain of the United States. Admiral Heinlein and the navy are on the Moon, preparing to go to Mars with nuclear fusion powered spacecraft. Proxmire is a disgrace, failing re-election thanks to boycott of Wisconsin cheese organized by angry science-fiction fans.
Verhoeven, attempting to sabotage the message of Heinlein, instead invoked the ironic consequence of Niven's Proxmire. The real Proxmire ultimately took a lesson from Niven's satire (and others), later apologizing for his attacks on space technology and the colonization of space.
The original Star Trek wasn’t liberal. The other ones—the ones that all sucked—TNG, DS9, Voyager..etc...but has anyone noticed that these on shows, Starfleet starts to become more militaristic? That’s because they were losing viewers. Like MASH when Alan Alda took over...
Sci-fi filmmakers seem to have the same relationship vis-a-vis their viewers as the Republican Party has to conservatives.
"We do not discuss it with outsiders."
Liberalism changed since then. In fact it was changing when the series was on the air.
You could make a good case that Kirk was a JFK New Frontiersman. But liberalism turned away from that kind of benevolent expansionism when Vietnam heated up.
That's why the next Star Trek series were so different. They reflected what liberalism became after Kennedy and Johnson.
I suppose so.
A lot of SF fans are libertarians and welcome the idea of a world without government.
But if you're going for that kind of frontier purity and solitude you probably don't have a McDonald's or a Walmart in every space station.
Space is a much sparser, emptier environment. It's where you go when you want to get away from everything earthbound: commercialism, overpopulation, and overdevelopment as well as from red-tape and bureaucracy.
So what begins as a world without government ends up as a militarized, regulated world where trade takes a back seat to provision by centralized command.
What the article says -- that if you like shoot 'em ups, you'll put up with an anti-government message -- applies with a vengeance: if you want the loneliness and cleanliness of space you put up with the high command keeping the rest of humanity at a distance.
Is the "/s/" for sarcasm or are you sincere? They had a strong libertarian or anarchist streak. But why did the world become watery? Was Waterworld a global-warming or climate change story? And why is Costner's character in the Postman so determined to restore the United States, rather than to enjoy the anarchy?
I won't say that these were liberal stories, but they were ambiguous. The kind of westerns they were based on had the same ambiguity. The marshal who comes to town to enforce the law marks the end of primitive lawlessness, but also the beginning of the road to centralized authority. You could say that they were conservative stories, but liberals might also try to claim them.
Maybe they don't break down easily into liberal or conservative categories, but anything with Mr. Dances With Wolves in it is going to look liberal to a lot of people.
/s/
I didnt think about your take on it. I automatically consider a movie with Kevin Costner potentially extremely liberal. I dont know where all the water came from either in waterworld. I dont think the ice caps have that much.
I’d argue that the Starship Troopers movie failed as satire. I found it brutally inspirational.
Films, Hollywood not hard to figure that one out. I can’t wait to see how they turn Atlas Shrugged into a leftist epic.
I dunno. The very first episode of TNG had them shopping at Farpoint, spending credits. Then there was always the Gold-pressed latinum.
Why not?
Nobody is talking about complete anarchy. There will be businesses and people doing busines. As a matter of fact it might be like the British East India Company where millions of people buy stock to fund colonizations of worlds.
Heinlein must have turned over in his grave when that movie came out....although I enjoyed it...it was not the book that Heinlein wrote by a long stretch
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