Science Fiction Films

I have information about Marxism below because it’s important for cultural studies. Again, it’s for information and not to start a Marxist revolution. Get through this first section, and move onto the Marxism discussion if you’re interested.

Let’s turn our attention to what this has to do with science fiction. The approach we’re taking in this course is more social science fiction, which focuses on society. It’s more concerned with what will happen to society if cultural conditions continue as there are in an author’s time period. This type of science fiction isn’t trying to predict what technology will be like in the future. Instead, the cultural work this (sub)genre does is expose social relations and how ideology mediates beliefs, practices, values, and attitudes.

Many science fiction texts are about what shapes reality. In order for an audience to believe in a story, that audience needs to have certain assumptions that allow it to suspend disbelief (thinks aliens and wormholes) and accept a story. The major, nearly universal assumption Americans have about technology is that it will advance. I know that sounds simple, but it’s a prevailing assumptions we share. It doesn’t mean we all think technology will make our lives better, but how often have you said (or heard) “one day they’ll create a pill to cure that,” or “someday there will be a new technology to do that work”? We assume technology will advance; that is a shared cultural assumption.

Science fiction films (and novels) often are driven by action: special effects, hi-tech weapons, spaceship chases, etc. As you watch science fiction films, consider how plots reflect American values. For instance, the advanced technologies in the projected future often allow the individual to do amazing things–save the galaxy, overcome adversity, win the girl, or be efficient. Those reflect the American value of individualism. American culture, which influences laws, respects the individual and believes the individual has the will to transform him or herself. There are countless narratives in American culture about the “self-made person” and “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps” and making it on their own.

How might the following American values be reflected in science fiction films:

• Capitalism (think efficiency and, well, making money)
• Hardwork
• Equality
• Adventure and conquering the unknown

Basically, when you watch these films of shows, be thinking about what American values they reflect.

Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)

We could devote an entire semester to Marxism and (neo)marxist interpretations of texts. Consider what’s below supplemental to the course, but don’t consider it an exhaustive exploration. There are volumes upon volumes of analysis devoted to Marxism and Marxist Theory. We will concern ourselves with a few broad factors or tenets of Marxism.

Charles E. Bressler offers the following as “core principles of Marxist thought” (p. 192):

• Reality itself can be defined and understood
• Society shapes our consciousness
• Social and economic conditions directly influence how and what we believe and value.
• Marxism details a plan for changing the world from a place of bigotry, hatred, and conflict because of class struggle to a classless society in which wealth, opportunity, and education are accessible for everyone.

…Of course, the above are the theories of marxism (just as capitalism has theories of salvation and prosperity). An ongoing philosophical question is “can we ever have a pure capitalist or marxist society, economy, government?”

The last point is important to focus on because American cultural bias against Marxism stems from issues about Marxism’s utopian perception. The following are often the immediate associations/responses to Marxism:

• Soviet Union (the Evil Empire): The Cold War enemy of America and the American way.
  • Communism was a Devil Term during the Cold War. Labeling something or (worse) someone “communist” was similar to the contemporary labeling of terrorist.
  • The Soviets under Stalin were seen as oppressive and anti-freedom. While Stalin’s atrocities are no secret and he was a communist, neither Stalin nor the Soviet Union (or other communist states for that matter) stand as the sole examples of the theoretical framework or cultural critique of Marxist Theory.
• Utopian economic system that cannot exist. People will not work harder unless they have incentives to do so.
• Massive government control and no private property/ownership…definitely a hard “sell” for capitalists and capitalist states.

Marxist Theory — Texts and Contexts are Social Constructions

As a literary theory, Marxism is a 20th-Century development influenced by the writings of the 19th-Century philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. At a basic level (again, we could go into more detail), Marxist analysis “focus[es] on the study of the relationship between a text and the society that reads it” (Bressler, p. 193). Another core Marxist principle is the idea of reality or consciousness: cultural analysis, our focus in this course, is intertwined with the idea that “[a] person’s consciousness is not shaped by any spiritual entity; through daily living and interacting with each other, humans define themselves” (Bressler, p. 193).

It’s important to understand the difficulty of critiquing a culture that one belongs to because there’s little chance for critical distance. We (humans in general) like to believe culture is absolute and not relative to the social conditions in which we interact or, in Marxist terms, the economic system in which we exist. For example, capitalism is pervasive in American culture and the “free” market is seen as the only appropriate way to organize or distribute resources. Therefore, the means of production and who owns those means influence the ways in which institutions form.

Other Marxist Theories (After Marx and Engels)

• Georg Lukacs, a prominent genre theorist, advocates “that a text directly reflects a society’s consciousness” (Bressler, p. 197).
  • What cultural work do the following genres do?
    Science Fiction, Romance, Detective Fiction, Mysteries, Self Help…
• Antonio Gramsci theorizes that the bourgeoisie, the ruling class, “establish and maintain what he calls hegemony, which is the assumptions, values, and meanings that shape meaning and define reality for the majority of people in a given culture” (Bressler, p. 198). This hegemonic relationship between the rulers and the ruled is “a kind of deception whereby the majority of people forget about or abandon their own interests and desires and accept the dominant values and beliefs as their own” (Bressler, p. 198).
  • For a contemporary analysis of Gramsci’s theory that the ruled allow themselves to be duped by the rulers, check out What’s the Matter with Kansas by Thomas Frank, who discusses why Kansans vote against their self interests. Frank does not invoke Gramsci in any way, but the analysis has a Gramsci-leaning aura.
• Pierre Macherey argues “what authors mean to say [in their writings] and what they actually write and say are different. The various meanings of their texts continuously escape writers because they themselves do not recognize the multiple ideologies at work in them and their text” (Bressler, p. 200).
• Joseph Schumpeter predicted a slow decline of capitalism as corporate interests (special interests) influenced government, and intellectuals (or elites) attempted to advocate for a working class from which they were disassociated. {The previous is a simplified paraphrasing of Schumpeter’s rich analysis of economics in the Western world.}
  • Curran, Fenton, and Freedman refer to his “Cycles and Long Wave Theory” in Ch. 1 of Misunderstanding the Internet (p. 3). More on this in a different semester–look for my “New Media” class.
• Raymond Williams is credited as a major contributor to what we today regard as cultural studies criticism, which is concerned with “the relationship between ideology and culture” (Bressler, p. 200).
• Terry Eagleton, more closely connected to the cultural studies lens through which we’re examining new media, “[b]eliv[es] that literature is neither a product of pure inspiration nor the product of the author’s feelings…literature is a product of an ideology that is itself a product of history” (Bressler, p. 201).
  • Any text–digital or print–is also a product of history and ideology.

What’s missing from the summaries above is the fact that those adhering to Marxism advocate revolution or changing the status quo structure that they claim has the capitalists rule and the workers oppressed. While using a Marxist lens does not necessarily mean one has to adhere to such an idea, it’s important to note that Marxist thought stems from the desire to make visible the conditions people find themselves in, and those conditions are not favorable to workers. The new media texts we examine are different from literary texts (to some extent), but they are still cultural products and reify the ideologies of the cultures from which they come.

Of course, technologies can be read just like texts.

• “Texts, like all elements of social life, cannot be analyzed in isolation because they do not exist as isolated entities; rather, they are part of a complex web of social forces and structures” (Bressler, p. 205).

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Works Cited

Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. (4th ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2007.

Curran, James, Natalie Fenton, & Des Freedman. Misunderstanding the Internet. 2nd Edition. Routledge, 2016. {eBook available through Atkins Library–must be signed into your account}