Random: It's not SF, its SRS BSNS.

[nebroadwe]

The Sci-FiSyFy Network's newswire page contains mostly press releases, self-promoting interviews, and the odd review. Which is to say that rarely, rarely do you hear anything less than glowing about any project covered. Today, however, somebody on staff finally hit his/her limit with the anti-genre pretensions of the publicity machines of genre projects. Following an interview with director Park Chan-wook headlined Don't Think of Thirst as a Vampire Movie and one with directors Albert and Allen Hughes titled Don't call Eli a Post-Apocalyptic Thriller, somebody snapped at last and gave us the following gem regarding director Robert Schwentke's view of his latest project:

God forbid you call Time Traveler's Wife a Sci-Fi Film
The movie's about a guy who travels through time.

But director Robert Schwentke wants to make one thing perfectly clear: His upcoming big-screen adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger's best-selling novel The Time Traveler's Wife is not a sci-fi movie. Rather, it's an "epic love story" with "no butterfly effect," and the time-travel aspect is just "a very good metaphor."

Let's ignore the fact that time travel is ALWAYS a metaphor in sci-fi stories. Schwentke's argument is like saying Pirates of the Caribbean isn't really a pirate movie, but whatever ...

Hee. The rest of the article, which returns to SyFy's usual puffery-reportage, can be read here. But thank goodness for the tiny bit of journalistic integrity seeping through (ironically enough, after the SciFi => SyFy change, over which we pass in silence). David Langford's been calling people on this ridiculous stuff in Ansible for years -- time enough to dump the genre chauvinism that Kingsley Amis (or perhaps Robert Conquest; Brian Aldiss isn't quite sure which to credit) trenchantly spoofed in this immortal couplet:

"SF's no good!" they bellow till we're deaf.
"But this looks good." -- "Well, then, it's not SF."

Bah, humbug. SF FTW!

Comments

[haleysings.livejournal.com]

LOL, I bet i'd be kicked out of a job like that really quickly because I'd constantly be tempted to slip stuff like that in. It's frustrating enough getting the odd looks when I admit that I want to write fantasy. ("What? But Fantasy is all kids stuff. I used to like that sort of thing but you can't do anything deep with it!" My usual reaction is something along the lines of "then you were reading sucky fantasy".)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember my senior year h.s. English teacher, otherwise an excellent man, insisting that no one could write serious scholarship about SF. I showed him -- I wrote my senior college thesis on Tolkien and dedicated it to him. Heh. It always galls me in particular when fans of other kinds of genre fiction, like mystery or romance, get all snooty about SF. C'mon, guys, we're all in the same boat here. Any genre can produce great literature in the hands of a great writer: cf. Wuthering Heights and Crime and Punishment and 1984 ...

[haleysings.livejournal.com]

My Creative Writing teacher last semester (who I'm taking Fiction Writing from in the coming semester) is pretty cool about genre fiction--he's not a big fan of Fantasy, but he likes Mystery quite a bit and doesn't mind my interest in other genres. But he did recommend I keep my interest in fanfiction quiet as a "guilty pleasure"...I'm not totally sure if I agree with him on that or not, although I guess it's different from liking published novels.

I'd like to think most people these days can at least recognize the impact TOLKIEN had, though. Hopefully.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

But he did recommend I keep my interest in fanfiction quiet as a "guilty pleasure"...I'm not totally sure if I agree with him on that or not, although I guess it's different from liking published novels.

I think you have to be "in fandom" to understand the attraction of fanfiction -- it's partly a creative activity (pace Robin McKinley and George R.R. Martin) but just as importantly a social one, an extension of a bunch of people getting together to ooh! and ahh! over the latest development in whatever they're watching/reading. People who've never done that, or done it much, see the lack of gatekeeping on the endeavor and the echo-chambers of praise and the resultant piles of awful stuff and puffed-up writer-wannabes and get disturbed. What they miss is the fact that most people are doing it for the fun of it and the social interaction. (They're also likely to miss the informal gatekeeping fan communities run on themselves: concrit forums and anti-plagiarism efforts and juried archives and such.) I'm wondering how much this will change in future, as more people who came up through fanfiction (because it's such an easy point of entry for the writer-wannabe now, thanks to the Internet) make the jump to original stuff and succeed (cf. Lois McMaster Bujold, Naomi Novik, Sarah Rees Brennan ...).

I'd like to think most people these days can at least recognize the impact TOLKIEN had, though. Hopefully.

Recognize, sure. Value?

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

I think you might appreciate this commentary from Pajiba? (http://www.pajiba.com/trade_news/the-time-travelers-wife-ending-changed.php) Spoiler alert for the Time Traveler's Wife, in case you're watching out/or haven't read.

(Favorite quote: "The only things that should have happy endings in Hollywood are massages and Disney films, and even Walt killed Bambi’s mom.")

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read the press release on that one too: production team blames test-screening audience for change of ending. Mind you, I enjoy a good happy ending (I don't see the problem with the alternate ending to Great Expectations that everyone else does, frex -- although that's arguably not altogether happy: two damaged people meeting again, perhaps to try again, but since when was Pip a completely reliable narrator? anyway ...), but Pajiba's right on the money with this one. Want a happy ending? Write your own original time-travel script, you.