From: "Neil Faulkner" N.Faulkner@tesco.net
To snip an absolutely magnificent post down to its conclusion:
So Sally's got a point - there is no universal canon, shared by all
viewers,
because we each individually extract different elements of focus *prior to* the construction of our individuated altercanons. Our attention is consciously or subconsciously pulled in particular directions. This was pointed out very clearly to me by Iain's performance workshop at
Redemption,
where he - as an amateur actor - could point to an instance of appallingly bad acting that I've never noticed before despite seeing it a dozen times
or
more. He could look up and see the stork, while my eyes were firmly glued to the pavement.
It's very true-- I'm reflecting too on what I said about the visual conventions of one culture's films being more or less lost on viewers in another culture. What *is* interesting, though, is that there do sometimes seem to be shared elements of perception with regard to a show, rather than simply individual experience. For instance, for a very long time B7 was regarded to have been totally masterminded by one Mr Nation-- he was solely responsible for the characters, the tone, the morally ambivalent "Che Guevara in Space" feel, etc. etc. Then, gradually, even before Nation died, the words "Chris Boucher" began to be heard more and more, and right now it seems to me (correct me if I've got this wrong) that most people regard him as being at least partially the one responsible for the directions the show took over the years. Now, these views have both been held by a large number of people, so it can't be just individuals' experiences, shaped only by their professional and personal interests, that are at issue here.
I keep mentally going back to that image from Bacon-Smith of the older fan talking a newbie through a show. I would very much doubt that it happens quite so blatantly for many (or even 9/10ths of us), but it's an interesting image. Our perceptions vis-a-vis B7, including what we see and what we miss, are also influenced by collective dialogue among ourselves and input from other fans. Another example: seeing "Project Avalon," as a non-fan, I quite liked it and thought it was a clever, well-paced story. When I first joined fandom, the people I hung about with, the mags I read, etc., all favoured the opinion that it was actually a naff, tired reiteration of *Star Wars.* Gradually, I began to focus less on the good bits and more on the naff bits, or the bits that resembled *Star Wars,* and the bits that I still saw as good I tended to keep fairly quiet about. More recently, rewatching it with people who didn't have an axe to grind vis-a-vis "Avalon", I've begun noticing the good bits again.
So I think it's worth noticing that while some of us may watch B7 in a vacuum vis-a-vis fandom :), just by being involved in the Lyst our perceptions of the show are being shaped and even changed daily. To some extent, at least, perception seems to be a learned activity.
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Recently rehabilitated at http://nyder.r67.net
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From: Fiona Moore nydersdyner@yahoo.co.uk
To snip an absolutely magnificent post down to its conclusion:
Aww, Fiona <blush>
It's very true-- I'm reflecting too on what I said about the visual conventions of one culture's films being more or less lost on viewers in another culture.
Which makes me wonder about the conventions (not just the visual ones) of TVSF, and to what extent their acceptance makes series like B7 palatable. A lot of mundanes, if you mention series like B7, will disparage them on the basis of such things as cheap sets, crap SFX, bad acting etc (bad acting? Shurely shome mishtake...), and are hard to convince on the merits of the series that counterbalance these shortcomings. As a fan, I'm not oblivious to these deficiencies, but I'm also hard pressed to pin down the counterbalancing merits. Deep characterisation? Hardly - most of the characters are cyphers, two-dimensional at best (and yes, I am talking about the likes of Blake and Avon here). Scientific accuracy? Don't make me laugh. Social or political realism? No, please, really, *don't* make me laugh. Taut, gripping plots? Credible visions of the future? What has something like B7 got to offer?
Something that struck me the other day while listening to some old punk stuff was the naivety of much of the lyrical content (echoed in what a friend has described as the 'musical naivety' of the music itself). But this was bashed out by streetwise kids who can hardly be said to have lived the lives of sheltered naifs - cheating the dole, whacked out on speed or junk, living lives of casual sex and equally casual violence. Take, say, Chron Gen's 'Mindless Few':
"Somewhere in this riot lies a man so quiet. He has been punched to the ground. They kicked him while he was down. And with one cold flash of an icy blade He has been put into darkness. His skin colour fades. The band stop playing, the fight dies down. A circle round the corpse. There's not a single sound. Goodbye tomorrow, ain't seen enough of today, Thanks to the mindless few. The big boys have struck again."
Poetry it ain't, I'd be the first to admit that. There is a clear - to me, at any rate - disconnection between the event described and genuine emotional experience. It reads - and sounds - like an imagined event, a potential happening. I wouldn't be surprised if no one ever got knifed at a Chron Gen gig (though I may of course be wrong). But the sentiment is clear enough, delivered in a clearly unambiguous manner with a pretence at poetry. Fumbling, stumbling, grasping at possibilities and implications - all the hallmarks of a naif.
It gets even more overt when punk gets political:
"We're all conditioned to think ten tellies are better than one. And to blow the world up ten times is better than to blow it up once. Billions spent on destroying the world while millions starve in the third world. Where did we go wrong? We as one are saying: Feed starving people, fuck your bombs." (Flux of Pink Indians, 'Some Of Us Scream/Some Of Us Shout')
As an analysis of Cold War politics, of the ideological connections between capitalist-driven consumerism and western militarism, and of the workings of an emerging global economy, this is an abject failure. And yet it points to a stark reality, of western affluence and Third World poverty (both exagerrated) and - however naively - asks, Why?
I've previously drawn a comparison between punk and fandom (I think it's on Judith's website), but this is one I overlooked. Not only fandom but the source series itself adopts a position of 'mature naivety', recreating the state of the empty child-mind waiting to be filled with knowledge of the world, *whilst simultaneously* preserving a prior but knowingly incomplete experience of that world. I cite punk sources because punk, like science fiction, measures reality up against potentiality and frequently finds the former lacking. The rejection of reality necessitates the construction of an alter-reality which clearly cannot be directly experienced, only imagined. It is an alter-reality in which the deficiencies of real life are either rectified (through idealism) or exposed (through cynicism), but either way requires the adoption of an essentially childlike mind that asks the fundamental questions: How, Why, Who, What if? And 'what if?' underlies an awful lot of science fiction.
The same questions and the same mindset are also very pertinent to the radical visionary, or the active revolutionary, who can only imagine the kind of world s/he is trying to create (and maybe learn a few hard lessons about realpolitik along the way). Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why Blake in fanfic is often depicted as politically naive when he is in fact - or at least should be - the most politically aware member of the crew. Ironic, in a way, that fans should favour Avon, the character who in terms of the context of the series is actually more of a real life mundane.
The boundary between the childlike and the childish can be a narrow one, which might account for why something like B7, both canon and fanfic, can often veer towards the juvenile if not the infantile. If we ask a simple question like 'Why?' we might find ourselves answering with an equally simple answer, like: 'The Jews'. And end up heading down an essentially childish path of uniforms, banners, parades and rallies, assured in the knowledge that no one will laugh at us because no one will dare. But if we can retain our pre-knowledge of the world as it is whilst simultaneously re-envisaging the world afresh, we might not fall into that trap.
Fandom, like SF, like punk, like radical politics, strips reality down to its bare essentials and asks fundamental questions. That, I think, is the root of its appeal. That the answers are not always adequate underlies much of the deficiencies of all four.
Neil
--- Neil Faulkner N.Faulkner@tesco.net wrote:
.... It is an alter-reality in which the deficiencies of real life are either rectified (through idealism) or exposed (through cynicism), but either way requires the adoption of an essentially childlike mind that asks the fundamental questions: How, Why, Who, What if? And 'what if?' underlies an awful lot of science fiction.
The same questions and the same mindset are also very pertinent to the radical visionary, or the active revolutionary, who can only imagine the kind of world s/he is trying to create (and maybe learn a few hard lessons about realpolitik along the way). Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why Blake in fanfic is often depicted as politically naive when he is in fact - or at least should be - the most politically aware member of the crew. Ironic, in a way, that fans should favour Avon, the character who in terms of the context of the series is actually more of a real life mundane.
As you point out realising that the status quo is corrupt can lead to two responses - cynicism or idealism, which is what Avon and Blake represent. Their respective positions are spelt out neatly in the computer room on the London. Blake believes the system is corrupt and wants to destroy it. Avon believes that the system is corrupt and wants to rip it off.
To put matters in the context of our society, we are saddled with our own system with all the various injustices that it entails. It's major competitor died out in 1989, and signs of it's mortality were apparent long before that. As people, increasingly, feel they cannot change the status quo they retreat into cynicism, which is why people are more likely (IMO) to identify with Avon than Blake. (The Victorians who believed in progress would, I think, have found Blake more sympathetic.) We're stuck, for the forseeable with our Federation and cannot solve all our problems by blowing up Star One. It's been tried and failed. So next time you see a post banging on about how great Avon is, remember, it's not infatuation, it's post-Marxist guilt.
Fandom, like SF, like punk, like radical politics, strips reality down to its bare essentials and asks fundamental questions. That, I think, is the root of its appeal. That the answers are not always adequate underlies much of the deficiencies of all four.
Hmm. The same could probably be said of religion.
Stephen.
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Neil said:
This was
pointed out very clearly to me by Iain's performance workshop at
Redemption,
where he - as an amateur actor - could point to an instance of
appallingly
bad acting that I've never noticed before despite seeing it a dozen times
or
more.
Becoming aware of instances of bad acting in B7 is not like observing a stork overhead. It is like detecting the presence of buildings in London.
-(Y)
From: Dana Shilling dshilling@worldnet.att.net
Becoming aware of instances of bad acting in B7 is not like observing a stork overhead. It is like detecting the presence of buildings in
London.
Which I might see, but largely fail to notice.
Neil
-
Dana Shilling -
Fiona Moore -
Neil Faulkner -
Stephen Date