The Future Abhors Sensible Shoes

Obviously. I saw Tron Legacy a couple of days ago at an advance screening. Nice ambiance, standard plot. The costume, set, everything else designers did a fine job retaining the visual style of the original while making it fresh. I even liked the 3D - for once it wasn't gimmicky. The music went well with the whole thing too. Tell me though: Doesn't Daft Punk in Tron sound just a wee bit like Vangelis?


But this post is not about movies or music, it's about shoes. A plethora of Tron-themed merchandise is about to hit the stores, among them the shoes above. I actually like them. They look cool. Not that I would ever wear them, even if the price wasn't deterrent enough. I don't do heels. There are plenty of other, more creative ways to achieve pain and discomfort - if that's your thing. It doesn't have to be footwear. My shoes come from Sketchers.


That said, it's a little thing, but it bugs me to hell: Why do futuristic badass chicks keep running around in high heels? From Seven of Nine to Quorra. (And isn't that just a very L.A. way to spell Cora?) It makes no frakkin' sense! It's not practical!


That's another of many reasons why I love Serenity/Firefly so much: women kicking ass - in boots. Big ass-kicking boots. I can get behind that.

Snogging in Space

Time for another Brain Leak™. Let's see if I can nerd up sex.

I like science fiction, I have since I was a teenager. I have not shared this with others at the time, as I was afraid it would make me look nerdy and not fit in, and I was already nerdy and not fitting in. I also had a severe case of Bibliophilia at the time. Bibliophilia, the love of books for their content is not considered a clinical psychological disorder, unlike the obsessive compulsive collecting of books, Bibliomania. Well, nobody told that to my mother bursting into my bedroom at 3 am on a school night, catching me reading. She was very angry - something about my severely sagging grades, I think. I could not help myself. It's hard enough to be a teenager as it is, but being painfully shy, introverted, socially inept, but at the same time incredibly stubborn, and unable to show the obligatory respect to authority does not make things easier. So what do you do? You escape into the world of fiction.

Back then I read anything, good or bad. Fortunately both my parents had a quality collection of books and never tried to restrict what I read. I devoured A Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez at around age fourteen, which in my opinion is the perfect age for it. I would pick up a book from the shelf, open it in the middle, just to get a taste of it, and would be unable to put it down. I read books from middle to end, and immediately from beginning to end again, rushing through it as fast as I could. Then a couple of days, a week later I would read it again, this time slowly, savoring every nuance. Then probably read it again a few months later. I had favorite books I read at least once a year. For several years it was intensely obsessive. I bought a flash light and read under the covers. My grades were still pitiful, though I'm not convinced there is a connection.

If reading is escaping, science fiction is escaping even further. Back in those days the genre was even more disregarded as a literary form as it is now. I bought obscure SF anthologies and didn't talk about them to anyone. Years passed, many things happened, I was living on the other side of The Pond, going to college, and my grades were great, Dean's List and all. Probably because unlike high school, I loved college. I always crammed in as many classes into a semester as I possibly could, tried to sign up for all the interesting ones. It was like an all you can eat buffet. Aside from art, film and English Lit. classes were my favorites. One semester I took a class titled "Race, Class, and Gender in Science Fiction," and got introduced to a few interesting contemporary SF novels.

One of the biases against SF is that because of its speculative nature it lacks restriction, "anything can happen." The truth is however that plot devices are plot devices, and if a story has no internal logic it won't work, speculative or not. On the other hand, the abstractions of this type of fiction allows the examination of subjects too close to our lives, without the distractions of the concrete. For example, the New Caprica episodes of (the new) Battlestar Galactica were a study of the blurring lines between heroism and terrorism, the shifting lines of morality. Should it be a surprise that BSG crew discussed human rights at the United Nations?


There are a few preconceptions surrounding SF, one of them would associate the entire genre with its pulp roots. Another, closely related, is the assumption that it appeals mostly to teenage boys, and that women are not interest in SF. In reality SF literature as a whole is not only made up of an incredibly wide variety of subgenres, but some of the more inventive and thoughtful works have been written by women. Maureen F. McHugh's China Mountain Zhang follows several characters in fictional future, one of whom is gay. The novel centers around character development, relationships, society, all on a very human level. Octavia E. Butler - born and raised in Pasadena - was an African-American SF writer whose works explore aspects of race and gender. Ursula K. Le Guin's works are concerned with matters of sociology, anthropology, sexual identity - set in fictional worlds.

While literary works of SF have been on the forefront pushing issues of gender and sexuality, not much of it has filtered into television. In general, GLBT themes are thin on US television, outside of premium cable. While it's becoming somewhat "hip" to include gay and lesbian characters in tv shows, their portrayal has a lot to be desired. For most part they are still played for laughs, caricaturish, shown overly feminine (Sex in the City, Entourage, Will and Grace). Alternately, they are treated with so much political correctness that they end up totally bland and washed out. What is missing is the fully developed character with the same strength and faults as others who just happens to be gay/lesbian, and might even get a few satisfying romantic scenes. One notable exception being the ABC series Brothers & Sisters.


The Brits, on the other hand, have a head start on this field, and have managed to sex-up the field of science fiction too. Torchwood is a much more libidinous spin-off of the iconic Doctor Who series. The central character, Captain Jack Harkness is played by the irrepressible and openly gay John Barrowman. The basic premise of the show is that a time rift runs through Cardiff, Wales, being monitored by a small team of experts, led by the mysterious Cpt. Jack. The show has much of the same qualities as the one it originated from; a mix of action, humor, junk science, a bit of cheekiness - overall good entertainment, but not incredibly deep. What makes is different is its liberal attitude towards sexuality. There is a constant undercurrent of sexual innuendo, as if Jack's 51st century pheromones have permeate the set. It also ventures to portray same-sex pairings with the same matter-of-fact and earnest approach you'd expect if they were heterosexual ones. A time traveling episode from season 2 delivers romantic and sensuous with the best of them:



Jack is said to be "omnisexual" and in his Doctor Who appearances have flirted with male, female, alien. On Torchwood he has an ongoing relationship with another male character, Ianto Jones. The show enjoys quite a popularity, some viewers favor because they see it more adult than Doctor Who. Understandably it has a pull with the gay/lesbian audience. However an intriguing aspect of the show is that it has a sizeable heterosexual female following, who especially taken to the Jack/Ianto affair. This is not a new phenomenon either; Doctor Who and Torchwood creator Russel T. Davis' previous endeavor Queer as Folk, about a group of gay man, had the same viewer demographic oddity.

So why does a considerable section of the heterosexual female audience find the (male) same-sex romances so thrilling? Is it that the female audience is more open minded, and any romance will do as long as it's well written? Or is it just spill-over of the fag-hag phenomenon? Or maybe a flip side of the cliché male fantasy about lesbians? I have another theory. I might be completely off the rail here, but I think that it is - at least in part - a product of generations of conditioning. Let's face it, cinema, and the theater too, are extremely male centric. When we view a film we identify with the protagonist - or more precisely, we take up his point of view. (Which, by the way can get some intriguing results when the protagonist not an exactly likable character. See: Taxi Driver, American Psycho, etc.) The majority of movies center around male leads, with women in supporting roles or as eye-candy. If you are male and you watch a James Bond movie you have a studly Daniel Craig to identify with and a couple of curvaceous female supporting characters to ogle. If you are part of the female audience, it's unlikely that you'll switch your identification to the interchangeable bimbo, especially since the movie is not shot from her point of view anyway.

While women have gotten used to identifying with male figures onscreen, the opposite is not true. Movies centering around female characters, about women, appeal only to female, and maybe gay audience - and only of a fraction of that even. Even romantic movies, and romantic comedies, where the weight is evenly distributed, tend to fall into the "chick-flick" category, that straight men will see only to make their girlfriends happy. In the few films that center around a female protagonist, and enjoy a broad popularity among a heterosexual male audience, said woman display exaggerated male characteristics - Ripley from the Alien series, or Nikita, from the French film La Femme Nikita are prime examples.


Another key cinematic ingredient is the "object of desire" - which is generally the above mentioned curvaceous female character. Even movies about giant robots manage to find room for some T&A. However that will hardly do for the heterosexual female audience. So who do we get to lust after? The male lead of course. So we end up with a female viewing audience that have grown comfortable with the markedly peculiar situation of their object of identification and desire being one and the same. From this point it's only a hop and a skip to the effortless enjoyment of the view of two handsome men "snogging" onscreen - to use the popular British term. Of course there is a bit more to it, otherwise gay porn would be sexy too, which it isn't. The difference is in the writing and the production values - which makes all the difference. Let's be honest, the critically acclaimed Like Water for Chocolate is just a big budget soft porn. And there is nothing wrong with that.

"I object to all this sex on the television. I mean, I keep falling off." (Graham Chapman, Monty Python)

I personally would rather see more sex on television, provided there are also well written stories to go with it. It seems ABC is tinkering with all this sex and drama in space concept with their new series Defying Gravity. I missed the pilot, downloading it on iTunes. Shall see if it's any good.

One of these days...

There are days that are... well, just irregular. I went to the movies yesterday to see Moon. As I took my seat, some self-important type was extolling his own virtues in the row behind me, but thankfully turned quiet before the trailers were over. The Scarecrow to the left of me couldn't sit still. Fatty, two seats to my right walked out 5 minutes into the movie, then back and started talking to his companion. He made no effort to whisper, nor was he bothered by the shushing sounds from behind. He finally shut up, but then his phone rang. Not only that, but he answered it! At which point I audibly remarked: "For goodness sake!" He hang up. Twenty minutes into the movie Young Punk - apparently friend of Fatty - walked in and sat down in the one empty seat to my right. He proceeded to unwrap a sandwich of some sort, douse it with some stinky dressing from a plastic cup. He munched, slurped his soda and laughed at the movie at all the wrong places. I felt like an extra in a bad sitcom, minus the laugh track (not counting Young Punk).


Fortunately I was sitting in row 3, with the walkway in front of me and could just stand up, and pick an unoccupied seat at the far end of the row, and finally enjoy the movie. Moon is a small, but thoughtfully crafted movie directed by Duncan Jones - formerly Zowie Bowie, son of David Bowie. The main character(s) in the movie is played by Sam Rockwell, and the voice of the computer, Gerty, is Kevin Spacey. It is a science fiction of sorts. At the beginning there are flavors of Silent Running and Solaris, but it ends up being a more conventional story, and I don't mean that in a bad way. There is a touch of mystery, suspense, drama. It's a fine film, I'm glad I went to see it despite all the bedlam.

Visions of the Future

Sometimes I need to let my inner nerd out for a romp. Recently I have been musing - in my head - about science fiction movie archetypes - visual and thematic. So I wrote it down. It's a little messy, but that's ok. Here it goes...

Cowboys and Indians, Starfleet and Romulans, Light and Dark, Logic and Emotion, Man and Nature

There are two distinct and contrasting visual styles of the future; one bright, technological, modern, optimistic, another dark, decaying, organic, ominous. Simply put: Bright and shiny vs dark and grimy. Blade Runner and Star Trek are probably the most iconic examples of each. Another, more crucial distinction between the two is where they take place: One in densely populated city, another in the vast frontiers of space. Frontier stories more likely to feature a group of heroes facing off with fearsome foes, while the in the city it is all about the lone hero searching for answers.


Ridley Scott's 1982 masterpiece Blade Runner stands as one of the cornerstones of modern science fiction movies. It has defined a visual and narrative style that has became a major part of the science fiction cinema language. However Blade Runner did not invent this language, but translated it directly from the Film Noir style of the the 40's and 50's. These films were shot in moody black and white, full of grit, grime, and moral ambiguity. These films themselves were influenced by the hardboiled detective novels of their time, works of Dashiell Hammet, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler. Not only the most iconic ones were directly based on their novels, like The Postman Always Rings Twice (Cain), The Big Sleep (Chandler), but Chandler also worked as scrip writer for many of these now classic movies (Double Indemnity, Strangers on a Train).

One very intriguing aspect of these films is that while most of them take place in perpetually sunny California, their visual style is defined by their darkness - most of the action happens in dark alleys, dive bars, seedy motel rooms. As if they were nature documentaries of the ground level of a thick urban jungle where the sunlight doesn't penetrate any more, and the denizens mostly come out at night.

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness." (Raymond Chandler)

Double Indemnity and Blade Runner

The heroes of these stories are usually private eyes, who have problems with authority, they walk more or less on the right side of law, but have an antagonistic, distrustful relationship with the cops. Decard in Blade Runner is full embodiment of this character. He is as likely to be squaring off with a dubious dame as licking his wounds with a glass of scotch in hand as Philip Marlow is. He walks the streets of a Los Angeles that is wrapped in a perpetual night. Maybe the smog has gotten so bad that the sunlight can't penetrate it any more. It's also always raining, and even indoors there is water drizzling from above. This inexplicable wetness has come to represent danger in science fiction movies - a dark cave of our subconscious, with unimaginable horrors lurking in its moist recesses. A perfect example of it is the scene from Alien when we first encounter the fully grown creature: It's a large dark room, with chains hanging from the ceiling, and water dripping everywhere. What is all that excess moisture doing dripping inside a space ship is anyone's guess.

Wet interior from Blade Runner

The wet ship from the alien's point of view

The hero of the Noir style does not necessary have to be an actual detective, it's the element of mystery, a search for answers what's relevant. Dark City is a good example.

The private dick is close relation to the lone gunman of the westerns - another genre that scifi has heavily borrowed from. The most enduring theme that scifi appropriated from westerns is the idea of entering dangerous uncharted territories, "To boldly go where no man has gone before." Many scifi films and shows are westerns in space. Joss Whedon very consciously referenced this theme in his sadly short lived tv series Firefly, and the following movie Serenity. Beyond classic westerns, Whedon's creations have roots in the less idealized, more sweat and dust covered, morally ambiguous world of spaghetti westerns. A not so deliberate, and far more optimistically Utopian iteration of the space western was the original Star Trek and its many follow-ups. Its heroes are the law, their ship is clean, brightly lit, full of crisp uniforms. It's also uplifting, optimistic, a world where law and order prevails. Firefly and Star Trek not only have different visual styles, but represent contrary point of views of basically the same societal structures. Both worlds are tightly controlled alliance/federation of planets, outwardly represented by a strong military, but in one the heroes are the military, in the other they are the outlaws, barely getting by at the edge of known space.

Space Cowboys of Firefly and the original Star Trek tv series

If Captain Kirk and crew are John Wayne and the cavalry marching into the wild vastness of space, Captain Malcolm Reynolds and crew are the cowboys and misfits. The "Indians," i.e. the "other" that they both have to fight and beat are however very similar. In Serenity it is the "reavers," a band of humans driven to extreme madness by a chemical compound. In the immensely enjoyable 2009 Star Trek movie it is a rogue band of Romulans, driven mad by grief and anger. Both are propelled by raw emotion, can't be reasoned with, inaccessible to logic, and bent on destruction. Simply put they are pure manifestations of the Id. The creature from Alien and Aliens can be put in the same category. While we don't really know much of its "emotions," its single-minded drive to breed and kill make it the same type of primal force.

The primal foes and their environments share the same visual language. It's all dark, jagged, wet, sinisterly organic. Not surprisingly, the Romulan ship, the Narada and the reaver armada all resemble deep sea monsters. The dark deepness of space and the ocean are very similar; they both fascinate and frighten at the same time. "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence." (Leonard 'Bones' McCoy).

Narada on the left, reaver ship on the right and an angler fish in the middle.

Star Trek XI contains within it both the bright and the dark visual styles, but they are firmly devided between the two opposing forces of the narrative. In sharp contrast to the brightly lit, ordered corridors of the Enterprise, the Narada's interiors are dark, tangled. In one scene we can see pipes sneaking on the floor, in several baffling inches of water. The Enterprise is shiny plastic and chrome, with a crew in dressed in bright primary colors. The Narada is jaggy, corroding metal, subdued dark greenish grays and browns, it's tattooed crew dressed in worn leather. Similar tones, but even more organic are many interiors where the creatures of the Alien franchise dwell. By nature they take over spaces that are not their own, yet dark and cavernous, obscuring their angular shapes with their own creations. Water here is replaced with sticky goo.

The Narada

The Enterprise

Like Native Americans did in classic westerns, Romulans, acid-blooded aliens, even reavers, come to represent the primal force that you can fight or run from, but can't reason with. Ultimately, they are mother nature in many disguises. Our plucky heroes triumph over their much stronger foe, using cunning and bravado - brains and balls against brute force. And that's what conquering frontiers is all about. Despite of their ideological differences Serenity and Star Trek have this in common. Not Blade Runner however; Deckard hunts down and kills all the replicants, but there is no triumph. Perhaps because he is not on the frontier, but in the city jungle where there are no good guys and bad guys, just different rungs on the food chain.

The lines between the hunter and hunted blur