Librarianon

Your local Librarianon

  • He/Him

Writer, TF Finatic, Recohoster, and Game dev. Wasnt able to post here as much as I liked, but I'll miss it and all of yall. Till we meet again, friends!


MrBehemo
@MrBehemo
  • Love it when mainstream speculative fiction packages up complex social and political ideas and stealth drops them into the thoughts of a wider audience.

  • Hate it when mainstream speculative fiction makes the payload too stealthy and accidentally(?) leaves it open to interpretation.

Folks have a kind of internal censor that beats us over the head with cognitive dissonance if an overt message is too contrary to our existing ideologies. But presenting that message in a highly fictionalised or figurative way can (often, sometimes) sneak it past the censor. It's a big part of why we appreciate sf, right? Especially more mainstream, or at least bigger budget stuff, because that's where leftie/inclusive/collectivist/radical metaphors are needed the most.

But then you get maintstream sf where there's a subtext that, to me at least, seems to be expressing some leftie/inclusive/collectivist/radical ideas, but it doesn't push them far enough, and leaves it open to interpretation, even contrary interpretations.


Especially in movies, TV and AAA games, where there a lot of hands in the writing. A generous assessment would be that the creators are themselves sneaking ideas past actual gatekeepers like network execs, or that they assume they're preaching to the choir and don't want to lay it on too thick. A less generous interpretation is that they have a goal or a mandate to stick to the middle ground, and appeal to "both sides" and let them interpret it as they like. Unlike books and/or smaller scale projects were things are allowed to be more niche.

OK, here's an example... I remember a tweet or something that did the rounds a while back where the OP gave their assessment of which Star Trek series were left-wing and which were right-wing, and people were either clowning, roasting or debating it. They thought DS9, (DS9!!!) was the most right-wing. Like... my brother in Kahless, were you even watching the same show? But then Star Trek can be a bit wishy-washy sometimes. I love it, but while it sometimes wears its FALC on its sleeve (ok, maybe more like FAL[AS] or something)... it also sometimes just does not engage with critical political thought at all and has characters do Very Bad Things without exploring why. I guess it depends a lot on the writers, directors and producers of specific series and episodes. Series 3 of Discovery came very close to the Big Bad just being actual mundane capitalism, represented by a leader who was just trying to govern a people within a system, but she ended up being an evil supervillain instead and the political situation was almost circumstantial.

Or the other example, the one that was in my head and made me write this, is that I just finished the game Jedi: Survivor, and I won't spoil it, but it left me feeling like I understood how the outcome of the story was positive, but I wished that it had done more to explain it to the audience, so that it felt more like a revolutionary manouvre against a system of oppression and the people warped by it (which Andor pulls off wonderfully), and less like a personal revenge fantasy. It felt like it could have said more, but just ...didn't.

I could mention some fantasy examples too, like how LotR, and Rings of Power, both of which I also love, go a little way to say "maybe the devine right of kings is not always good?" ...but not nearly far enough. Or "maybe systemic gender bias is bad sometimes?" ...but not nearly far enough. Or "maybe enemy combatants are people trapped inside systems of oppression and violence, and thinking of them as monsters is a bit of an issue?" ... but not even close! I really think that most the criticisms against Tolkien and various LotR versions and spin-offs are reasonable critique, but also the reason for a lot of it is not that Tolkien was too much of a conservative catholic to say anything radical, but rather that he did have some ideas that were a bit radical, but they were expressed as very, very weak sauce.

Anyway, I'd watch more Andor.


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in reply to @MrBehemo's post:

I've seen a lot of overtly and obviously leftist fiction but yeah. I think art has a property where you bring yourself to it as well as it bringing itself to you. To shout loudly about specificity in ideology and action often alienates the reader (even other leftist readers!) because they struggle to bring themself to it. There are no doubt many reasons for this (including the devaluing and dismissal of leftist ideology in a capitalist system of culture production). The encoding into subtlety allows questioning, making-real, and turning around of values without that shot of alienation. But it also allows a greater degree of projection from the reader to overwhelm what the story brings to it.

This isn't to say I defend fence-sitting, or that I think writers and other artists are powerless (though I think revolutionary art is more art made by revolutionaries than revolutions are made by revolutionary artists). I want to see more leftist realism (in the sense of leftist ideologies in the underpainting of the story, the same way that we see so much conservative and neoliberal ideology in the underpainting of other for-profit stories) but the production of art and the relationship people have to art complicate things greatly. Few want to finance "Union-building simulator (realistic)" and would rather finance something with a veneer that can be ignored.

No clue how someone could read Deep Space "Rom forms a union and reads out loud the communist manifesto on TV" "Violent decolonialism is often necessary and here's nuance in the aftermath and how that violence affects those involved" "repeated black-led stories explicitly about modern and historical racism in a way that builds discomfort in liberal white viewers instead of purely (though not getting away with avoiding) patting-oneself-on-the-back." 9 in a conservative way though. But again, I'm bringing myself to it. I can see how someone else could bring a certain kind of themself to it and just, view a lot of that as filler or warp it and see their own ideologies where they want it (i.e. "wow aren't the cardassians so cool :^)" ). Art can almost always be held up at an angle to cause it to be a mirror rather than to be challenged by it. In order for someone to be challenged by art, they need to be open to being challenged by art, and even then people get stuck opening themselves up to being vulnerable in a certain way and not others (something I have been guilty of and will be in the future, no doubt.)

Sorry for my own ramble there 😅

nono, it's good ramble!

I think there's a sweetspot between ideological specificity (too on the nose) and hedging (too subtle), and I think most people get alienated by terminology. If we show people a compassionate portrayal of systemic oppression they'll relate to it, however they vote.

I'm definitely also guilty of bringing my own lenses to stuff, so I can see how it happens both ways. It's a bit like r/accidentallyleftwing or similar, where the subjectivities are so different you sometimes wonder if they've just got the words backwards. 😅