HSU IT Department

I just discovered that in December, SyFy will be airing a tv miniseries version of Childhood's End, and I am sorely conflicted.

I love this book. It was one of the first science fiction novels I ever read. My mother introduced me to it when I was about twelve or so; it blew me away and set the bar for future reading very high indeed. I have re-read it many times since, always with great pleasure. It's a classic that turns up on every science fiction "best of" list: thought-provoking, complex, beautifully crafted, joyous and heartbreaking at the same time. The thought of seeing it brought to life fills me with unspeakable excitement.

But it's SyFy. Their record with adaptations fills me with equally unspeakable horror. If I watch the first episode and it's awful, I may never get it out of my head. Back when they were SciFi, they did a shamefully poor adaptatio of Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books. Fortunately I knew ahead of time that it stunk -- Le Guin herself disclaimed all connection with it -- so was able to avoid it, but it has left me highly distrustful of them. They're fine with Piranhaconda (after all, it isn't really possible to screw THAT up) and things of that ilk, but a Golden Age science fiction classic like this?

As I said, I'm on the horns of a dilemma :P

So yay, I finally have time to write about the Pop Culture Association conference, which as I said the other day was brilliant. I think I'll break it up and do one post for each day, since there's so much to say about it.

So first, the background: I've wanted to go to this conference for ages, ever since my brother told me about it when he first presented there six years ago (his field is horror movies) and I looked at the program. This year not only was my brother presenting again, my boss at work was also presenting, plus it was in Chicago (easily accessible via Amtrak, plus I could do a side trip to see my mom, stepdad and grandmother). So this seemed the ideal time. I was not disappointed!

On the spectrum that runs from rabid fans on the one end to Spock-like academics on the other, this conference is tilted about 15 degrees toward the rabid fan side. This is both good and bad: on the one hand it makes for a different tenor than other professional conferences I've been too, very lively and kaleidoscopic; on the other hand the number of presenter no-shows and "lightweight" presentations was higher. It's also by far the biggest conference I've ever been to in terms of number of presenters -- the full program is over four hundred pages! -- and every session involved two or three people. This also was both good and bad: the sheer number of interesting topics was fantastic, but I was left wanting more in-depth information on just about everything, since regardless of how scholarly the paper, there was only time for a very surface overview.

Wednesday we arrived around 3pm so I only was able to hit one session. I chose one on Monsters and the Supernatural, which had three papers: "Which 'Witch' Is A Witch?: Negative and Inaccurate Portrayals of So-Called 'Witches' In Horror" (Charmed, Buffy, etc.), "Rooting for the Monster: 21st Century Creature Features and the Devaluation of the Human" (about how we now cheer for the monster in the movies instead of the humans, e.g. King Kong, Godzilla), and "Monsters and Men: Guillermo Del Toro and the Subaltern" (Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Backbone, etc.). I was tempted by another session, "Star Trek as a Mirror of American Culture," but that one seemed relatively obvious so I opted for the other one. "Rooting for the Monster" was particularly interesting, proposing that increased awareness of environmental issues may be part of why we now root for the "monster" -- that is, we don't automatically see man as the hero because we acknowledge the damage that homo sapiens has done to the planet. Instead of seeing Godzilla's or King Kong's death as this great victory, we recognize the tragedy inherent in the death of a unique creature.

Wednesday night we had an awesome time at the "Welcome to Our Nightmare" movie sponsored by all the different horror focus areas: Trilogy of Terror (eeeeeeeek!!!) They had a trivia contest before the show and gave away all kinds of cool stuff: movies, books, t-shirts, etc. The questions were ridiculously detailed (Q: Who played Jonathan Harker in the 1931 version of Dracula? A: No one, the Harker character wasn't in that version!) and of course sooo many people knew the answers, because FANS. (I got a Lon Chaney question almost right but not quite, drat the luck.) The movie itself was hugely entertaining, three tales based on stories by Richard Matheson. The first one was seriously unnerving, though perhaps not for quite the reasons the filmmakers intended (sexual predators being so much more in the news these days). The second was predictable, and the last was just utterly silly: a creepy little African statue comes to life and hunts a woman through her apartment, gnashing its tiny little teeth and waving its tiny little spear, like some kind of humanoid gremlin. It survives stabbing, drowning and being stuffed into the oven. I won't spoil it by telling you the closing scene, you really need to see it for yourself XD All in all it was a prime example of cheesy 1970s horror and the audience shouted things at the screen and laughed and so on, but it was all done with great affection (because, again, FANS!).

OK, enough for today. Tomorrow: Stephen King, "You've got more problems than lesbians in your sauna!", crossover fics, Star Wars and the monomyth, and who called the fandom police??

A recent post on io9.com alerted me to the fact that Hilobrow has posted a series of 25 short essays by 25 different authors on the many faces of Star Trek's James T. Kirk. It's called, fittingly enough, Kirk Your Enthusiasm :) Some are meditative, some funny, some thought-provoking, some just plain Kirk-boosterism, but they're all well-crafted and all written from a place of respect and genuine affection for the series.

Each essay focuses on a single memorable Kirk-centric scene. Most of the writers chose a scene from the original series but there are also a few from the movies. They include Kirk's first self-destruct bluff (Let That Be Your Last Battlefield); Kirk recites the U.S. Constitution (The Omega Glory) which includes some perceptive comments on Shatner's acting style; "the canonical TOS episode of great slashiness" (Amok Time); Kirk's letting Edith Keeler die (Return to Tomorrow) which draws parallels between Kirk and John F. Kennedy; and lots more. The final essay is particularly interesting: it examines the scene in ST the Reboot where Kirk taunts Spock into losing control so that Kirk can take command of the Enterprise, and argues that Spock is the real hero of the scene since by stepping down he recognizes that being captain requires calmness and rationality, neither of which the rebooted Kirk exhibits.

The essays are a great chance to wallow in an excess of Trekkiness (yay!!) in the company of a bunch of writers who love it too. The index to the essays is here. Go. Read. Wallow :)

I knew it!!!!

Q: How many hours of LoTR can one television station show in one weekend?

A: All 72 of them, apparently.

Excellent book, two thumbs up.  In Living Without the Screen Krcmar goes beyond the usual knee-jerk positions ("tv is bad, it rots your brain, do you want to be a drone?" vs "tv is educational and part of American culture, do you want to socially handicap your children?") to look at the phenomenon of television viewing from a systems perspective.  A family is a system -- each member affects the others, they are more than the sum of their parts because their interactions change the system itself in a kind of closed feedback look.  So TV isn't just a box in the corner, it's a part of the whole system, and occupies a very peculiar position.  It's far more of a presence than, say, a dishwasher, but yet it's not as interactive as another human being (she calls this "contested space").  People use it to meet social needs, educational needs, informational needs, etc.  If you don't have a television, those needs don't go away, they simply are met differently.  

So television is only one component in this family system.  So for example, take the statement, "My kids are so much more able to entertain themselves than kids who watch TV."  Krcmar points out that while this may be true, it may not simply be due to the absence of television, but rather because that family system values independent entertainment skills, fosters them, encourages them, and helps them grow.  In other words, what's important is the whole web of values, choices, beliefs, behaviors, etc., not just the presence or absence of the Box.

She also does a good analysis of why non-viewing families choose not to watch, finding three general categories which correspond to how television is perceived.  1) TV is the content -- this is families who choose not to watch because they object to sex, violence, excessive materialism, etc., or because they think the general quality of news etc is so poor; for the sex/violence crowd they often also don't watch movies or video games or allow their kids computer access.  2) TV is the medium -- this is families who feel that TV is an addiction, that it steals time away from other things they'd rather be doing; for them, control is the issue and these folks are OK with renting movies, recording shows they watch later, etc.  3) TV is the industry -- these families believe that the television industry sees people as stupid, gullible targets, and their purpose is to suck you into buying, believing, becoming drones.  These folks also are OK with renting movies because they see themselves as able to avoid being sucked into the trip since they perceive it.

I'm kind of all three: it's mostly dreck, I have SO many other things that I'll never have time to do them all even without sitting on my butt for three hours a night, and my first reaction to anything that gets popular/critical acclaim is to say, "Well, THERE'S something I won't be interested in."  Although I admit to the guilty pleasure of Iron Chef America and season 1 of Beauty and the Geek (::hangs head in shame::)

What all three groups have in common are, first, strongly held opinions about television (as opposed to regular tv viewers, who don't see what the big deal is, it's just a TV); second, a strong desire to be involved in their children's lives and development (not necessarily controlling, just involved); third, a perception of themselves as iconoclasts, different, rebels, fighting the mainstream culture.  These characteristics apply equally to the fundamentalist Christians that homeschool without television and to the left-wing liberals who believe that American culture caters to the lowest common denominator and mercilessly eradicates original thought.

Overall a very well-thought-out book, logical and convincing.  Her hope, I think, is not necessarily that people will give up television, but that they will realize that viewing in general, as well as each viewing episode, is a choice, and that it should be a conscious choice, not simply an automatic habitual response.