The Sci-Fi List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

[therewillbeblus]

Less a Sci-Fi List review and more of an accidental litmus test, it turns out: I watched Lizzie Borden's phenomenal Born in Flames tonight, which I've been meaning to watch for years and finally did because I wanted something short and I'd seen it mentioned as sci-fi before... but this is just not sci-fi? It's set in a relative, atemporalized, dystopian-ish "future"—10 years after a very loosely defined "peaceful political revolution" in the US that leads to a Democratic Socialist government, but we're never given a year, and diegetically, it is entirely aesthetically of its production year. Looking at it from now, it could just as easily be a realistic alternative history past. My first reaction is that it should be mentioned in the same breath as Battle of Algiers as a pseudo-document of radical leftist activism; and in spite of its gruff punk/no-wave/lo-fi aesthetic, it's breathtakingly deft at delineating strains of leftism and instra-movement squabbles that feel so absurdly relevant to the events of this year, you almost want to laugh to keep from crying—I've seen versions of damn near every conversation and monologue in this movie published somewhere online in the past three months. But this "future's" differences are entirely sociopolitical, not technological. There is no attempt to imagine new technologies that aid one "side" or the other, nor any to augment contemporary fashions in some "futuristic" way, nor any unexplained phenomena of any kind other than a mass political movement that is, admittedly, even more unbelievable with the full effect of Reaganism in hindsight. Given the impending explosion of the AIDS crisis and more prevalent access to computers that were to follow it, it's honestly more surprising for what the movie excludes from its future. It doesn't even try to extrapolate or play fast and loose and get things spectacularly wrong. So while I think it's a fantastic movie, I'm not sure why I ever saw it mentioned as sci-fi. And maybe it feels especially less like sci-fi now that a Democratic Socialist has actually been within shouting distance of the Presidency twice? Do other folks consider this sci-fi?

After being underwhelmed by Working Girls, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this. Its experimental approach of incessantly pivoting across a wide range of issues, overwhelming the senses with psychosociopolitical blending, reminded me of Yvonne Rainer's work more than anything else. I find it interesting as a 'sci-fi' film because it kinda just presents an alternative reality - though I think it's pretty clearly set in a potential future, hypothesizing how things would inevitably not be all that different if counterculture collectives took more control. That's being disingenuous to a degree, since there are clear demonstrations of women banding together and accomplishing micro-level successes with resources available to us today, without some kind of 'sci-fi device' - but Borden is enough of a realist to detail how this might go in mezzo and macro terms, and specifically pitches her focus on the inescapable trappings of societal friction, without allowing such candidness to be conflated with hopelessness or a call to relinquish efforts. It's a wildly fascinating and deliciously convoluted soup of vitalizing optimism in the untapped potential of our agency and depleting surrender of the idealism necessary to drive these movements, but Borden remains primarily interested in how systems work and individuals and groups within them, adjusting circumstances and playing things out with radicalized enthusiasm. Borden's own conflict regurgitated on the screen mimics Rainer's, even if both artists land on their zealous feet, not just within their works but in creating these films at all, which make vacuumed statements about the urgency of having these conversations within ourselves, amongst others, and with the world through the medium.

[ntnon]

Watched the great and wrongly dismissed The Circle and it really has me wondering if the modern era makes science fiction in and of itself a redundant genre. Ponsoldt gives us a world not even five minutes into the future with it’s basically Facebook corporation. Yet it has all of the earmarks of the genre leaving me in a bit of a quandary.

Surprised that this appears to be almost the only mention of The Circle (maybe I'm searching wrong), but I was interested in others' thoughts - and frankly surprised by a positive, if brief, notice.

I found it to be interesting, thought-provoking and pointed... but more than that to be heavy-handed and confused. Emma Watson's character seemed to take several off-screen shifts in character, and the tortured reclusive genius who befriends her early on barely figures after he reveals his importance - neither to judge her harshly nor to come to the fore. The final reveal seems to undercut the entire thesis of the film (which appeared to be to unsubtlely condemn the erosion of privacy by putting on screen quite how all-encompassing and frought with problems it is) by suddenly taking a paradoxical sharp turn by... wholeheartedly embracing a complete loss of privacy.

As knives wrote, so much of what was onscreen is already "real" (including the worryingly cult-like embrace of these kinds of ideas and media) that is was genuinely interesting to speculate why the centrepiece Soul Search seems thus far not to have happened.

The ratings and "frowns" seemed again to teeter between being treated earnestly and as parody - it helped (or not) that such elements have already been parodied and mocked elsewhere, including on TV in Community. But then the earnestness - which, unless significant sections were removed showing Watson conspiring behind the scenes and presenting her ideas dishonestly as bait - undermined the hyperbole and parody and rendered the whole.. disconnected and bizarre.

[Mr Sausage]

Recently on the booktube side of youtube, a few users decided to list their top five science fiction adaptations, and that got me thinking. I don't have a youtube channel, but I do have this place. So here's my list:

1. Stalker
2. On the Silver Globe
3. Akira
4. Blade Runner
5. Hard to be a God

Immediately I see the list skews non-American (mostly Slavic). And clearly I have a taste for giant, ambitious, confounding messes, films that take enormous risks, have little interest in being audience friendly or commercial, and are often so stuffed they have difficulty telling a proper story. They're singular films, uncompromising--even mad!--visions. Despite some heavy conceptual material, they're also extremely tactile and atmospheric, films with a intense focus on the physical world and the emotional states generated by them. So I can ponder their ideas endlessly, but mostly what comes to mind when I think of them is the pools of detritus in Stalker, the people twisting and lurching through blue caves, beaches, and deserts in On the Silver Globe, the oppressive, towering neon buildings in Akira and Blade Runner, and all the muck, shit, and phlegm coating everything in Hard to be a God. They're despairing films, too, full of decay, regression, even apocalypse; and in one form or another, they touch on religion. Akira the least so, tho' it is the mostly heavily metaphysical. But their approach to religion is uninterested in orthodoxy. They are not expressions of any specific, accepted set of beliefs, they are their own weird set of beliefs or unbeliefs. They're questing films that I've never managed to get any answers from. And they are filled to bursting with beauty, even the ugliest of them. So, yeah, my favourite sci-fi adaptations.