[Scalzi] Is Science Fiction this generation's Western?

http://www.filmcritic.com/features/2010/12/is-science-fiction-this-eras-western/

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John Scalzi<http://comments.blogs.amctv.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=270&id=3013>
John Scalzi is an award-winning science fiction writer.
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Hey, folks. The e-mail I'm going to answer this week features an epiphany.
How often does that happen? Here's the e-mail:

I was watching the trailer for next year's *Cowboys & Aliens* movie when I
had an epiphany: Science fiction and Westerns are really a lot alike,
separated by several decades. Both are mainly action-oriented, both are
meant to appeal to young men. The difference is now westerns are dead. Do
you think science fiction will also go the way of westerns, and what will
replace it if it does?


With all due apologies to my correspondent, I don't know that the idea that
science fiction is the new Western is all that groundbreaking -- if nothing
else, the first *Toy Story* made it explicit that the frontier of space was
replacing the Wild West as the locus of the imagination when it had Buzz
Lightyear eclipse Woody as the cool toy. And while Westerns aren't 100
percent dead -- a couple a year still pop out -- they've gone to a kind of
meta, kind of arty, kind of self-referential place and have been there at
least since *Unforgiven*, in 1992. When the big Western film of the year is
a remake of *True Grit* by the Coen brothers, and the most financially
successful Western of the last decade is the one about two gay cowboys, it's
pretty clear this isn't your grandfather's Western genre anymore.
 Meanwhile science fiction and its overlapping brethren genres of fantasy
and comic-book films have become the places where Hollywood goes to draw
young men to the theaters (although not *just* young men). Science fiction
has had a good run of it -- it's been a consistent draw for that demographic
for more than three decades -- and it doesn't look like it's going to run
out of steam anytime soon.

But could it go the way of the Western? Sure. Tastes change, and even during
science fiction's reign since *Star Wars* came out, in 1977, there have been
times when it took a backseat to other genres, from fantasy to cop films to
comedies. That said, there are a few things science fiction has going for it
that Westerns don't, which can help contribute to its longevity.

*1. It's infinite.* The general era in which the classic Westerns took place
is between 1850 and 1900, with the 1880s (the era of the gunfight at the
O.K. Corral) being ground zero for Western mythology, and it's all -- by
definition -- taking place in the U.S. West. Science fiction, on the other
hand, can take place today or in a time close enough to it not to matter
(see *Iron Man*, *Inception*, *District 9*, *Transformers*), in the far
future (*Avatar*, *Star Trek*, *Wall-E*), or even the past (the
aforementioned *Cowboys & Aliens*, *Back to the Future Part III*, and even,
technically speaking, all of the *Star Wars* films). Nor is it tied to any
one location; it can and does happen anywhere in the universe it wants to.
This gives filmmakers quite a lot of ways to at least superficially keep
their films novel.

*2. It doesn't have to deal with uncomfortable facts about our nation's
history.* Hey, remember how the Native Americans were always the bad guys in
those Westerns? Yeah, that's kind of awkward now. Not to mention all the
other racial stereotyping in the Western genre or the really sort of
horrible things about the actual U.S. West back in the day. If you're a
filmmaker, you can spend your time tiptoeing around those various land
mines, or you can put everything in the future, where the bad guys can be
aliens, or robots, or alien robots -- not humans of any sort at all (unless
they're zombies). Which really takes the pressure off. This is not to say
filmmakers today can't and don't make fools of themselves -- hello, Jar Jar!
-- but it does mean that science fiction as a genre doesn't have to deal
with the real-world baggage that Westerns do.

*3. It's supported in the culture.* Science fiction isn't just popular at
the movies. It's a huge segment of the video-game industry, as anyone who
has lost hundreds of hours this year playing StarCraft II or Halo: Reach
will tell you. It's perennially popular on television, with its own cable
network as well as shows on major networks. Rumor has it that people even
write books and comic books in the genre. Westerns? Not so much at the
moment: they're hanging on in books, but Western-themed video games and
television shows are few and far between. This matters because every medium
feeds others. Now, science fiction can decline in these other mediums as
well -- Western-themed writing and television once thrived -- but its health
in these other fields is a positive sign for its films.

So, no, I don't expect science fiction to go the way of Westerns anytime
soon. On the other hand, if *Cowboys & Aliens* is the hit its filmmakers
hope it is, it might breathe a little more life into the Western genre.
Wouldn't that be interesting?

Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |

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