Science fiction

no

xpost

Dom I don't understand quite what you're saying, any chance you could spell it out in broader brush strokes?

So far the most batshit fantasy world on this thread is the one where The Sopranos isn't getting enough critical attention.

Haha.

So far the most batshit fantasy world on this thread is the one where The Sopranos isn't getting enough critical attention.

-- Matt DC, Tuesday, 3 June 2008 16:44 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

I'm not talking about critical attention! I'm talking about academic study.

You people are so dismissive of what you don't understand, which is why I'm arguing _against_ a culturally hegmonic approach to what is taken from popular culture into the academic field. I'm trying to help you.

Helpful people are a nuisance.

Sci-fi is pabulum for 12 year old girls.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22the+sopranos%22&hl=en&lr=

I really can't believe there's a disproportionate amount of SF being studied in academia, unless you're talking about backwater US schools that offer majors in Klingon.

in "the tactful saboteur" by frank herbert, the foreign element is a species with five genders. this species' family unit is made up of a representative of each of these genders, and "head of the household" status passes around the circle every couple of years, effectively changing the gender of the person who has it, or gives it up. the intricacy and subtlety of this arrangement prompts the human protagonist of the story to finagle one of these family units into the head of a powerful government department on the basis that their knowledge and tact makes them a better candidate than any of the available humans. embarrassingly for this species, the only way he can do this is by revealing the secrets of their "ego transfer" in an open courtroom, which is apparently akin to describing each moment of a rimjob

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,920 for "the sopranos". (0.12 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 18,300 for "star trek". (0.08 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 26,800 for "star wars". (0.22 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 851 for goodfellas. (0.15 seconds)
xxp

you'd think this story would be, uh, "eaten up" by gender studies courses but no

xpost

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=%22elephant+shitting+on+the+floor+in+blue+peter%22&btnG=Search

Real critical underappreciation.

star trek: 1966
star wars: 1977

sopranos: 1999
goodfellas: 1990

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,210 for "buffy the vampire slayer". (0.20 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 744 for "the breakfast club". (0.18 seconds)

"Buffy" is pretty bad I must admit. Most/nearly all TV/film SF I don't like, personally.

If you're arguing that taking geekish/"cult" TV/film into "serious" academia is ridiculous, then you might have a point worth expanding on there. So it might be worth expanding on it, Dom.

nerds be goin into academia. so what?

the university of google!

"so what" is a perfectly valid response, I agree.

The ridiculous number of people emotionally-invested in making Buffy seem cleverer than it actually is always astounds me.

Results 1 - 10 of about 8,650 for "film noir". (0.09 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,870 for "professional wrestling". (0.13 seconds)

You people are so dismissive of what you don't understand, which is why I'm arguing _against_ a culturally hegmonic approach to what is taken from popular culture into the academic field. I'm trying to help you.

-- Dom Passantino,

But Captain Passantino! What is this human thing you call critcal discourse?

Jesus Dom.

I can't write an extended post at the moment, but I think this "Why professional wrestling makes for a more informed viewer than science fiction" thing needs expanding on. I will come back later.

Results 1 - 10 of about 79 for "stone cold steve austin".
Results 1 - 10 of about 64 for "ashlee simpson"

Stone Cold Steve Austin had America's biggest selling t-shirt of the 1990s. The fact that he is only mentioned in 79 academic texts is another example of the failings of modern universities.

uh, I would think that the fact that he's mentioned in as many as 79 academic texts is a stronger example of the failings of modern universities

Results 1 - 10 of about 417 for "hulk hogan"
Results 1 - 10 of about 316 for "daleks".

Check that out.

Why so?

Results 1 - 10 of about 948 for "barry bonds". (0.17 seconds)

And that's from a sportsman who plays a (in world terms) minority sport. Stone Cold Steve Austin was the second biggest grossing US performer in the history of one of the few sports (alongside football, boxing, and track athletics) that has a legitimate worldwide fanbase.

xp

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "jimmy bullard".

BINGO!

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,680 for giant haystacks. (0.37 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 13,900 for william riker. (0.19 seconds)

hmm

I think there's something more... honest about pro-wres than sci-fi.

Results 1 - 10 of about 18,800 for "jules verne". (0.12 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 6,640 for "isaac asimov". (0.38 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 8,930 for "william gibson". (0.19 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 37 for "rowdy roddy piper". (0.36 seconds)

if dramatically expunging evil is your bag then wrestling definitely gets er done

Y'see, now you're trying to tar wrestling off with the "only rednecks watch it" brush. That's not helpful.

Look, some people like sci-fi, some people like oiled up muscled men grappling around in their pants, can't we all just get along?

There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not a sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of Suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque [Barthes here refers to characters in neo-classic French plays by Molière and Racine]. Of course, there exists a false wrestling, in which the participants unnecessarily go to great lengths to make a show of a fair fight; this is of no interest. True wrestling, wrong called amateur wrestling, is performed in second-rate halls, where the public spontaneously attunes itself to the spectacular nature of the contest, like the audience at a suburban cinema. Then these same people wax indignant because wrestling is a stage-managed sport (which ought, by the way, to mitigate its ignominy). The public is completely uninterested in knowing whether the contest is rigged or not, and rightly so; it abandons itself to the primary virtue of the spectacle, which is to abolish all motives and all consequences: what matters is not what it thinks but what it sees.

you've got your abstract right there dude

wrestling is a closer relative of soaps and telenovela than anything else. uh xp

Wrestling _pre-dates_ both the soap opera and the telenovela.

this is the best simulation of an old ILX thread i've seen for ages, well done dom

is dom doing a tuomas?

more like a muomas

2007 numbers for WWE (taken from wikipedia):

Revenue ▲ $485.7 million USD
Operating income ▲ $68.4 million USD
Net income ▲ $52.1 million USD

2006 numbers for MLB (taken from Plunkett Research):

Revenue
5.2 Bil. US$

Overall Operating Income
360 Mil. US$

I couldn't find net income.

So, you want to know why a currently-active marquee player embroiled in controversy from a massively more successful sport has more Google hits than a retired marquee player from less successful sport? Does this really need to be explained? And what does this have to do with your science fiction thesis in the first place?

wrestling a dom thread is a closer relative of soaps and telenovela than anything else. uh xp

-- gff, Tuesday, June 3, 2008 11:29 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

(And to go back to my previous dismissive, unless you are specifically studying the psychology behind professional sports or the historical and cultural repercussions of an event in a professional sport, like say the integration of leagues, I think any university that spends time studying any professional sport is doing its students a massive disservice.)

I also think that if you like fiction in general, separating out the "science fiction" is a bit trickier than you might think.

This is a very good point. A lot of literary ficton creeps in the odd SF or fantasy device, tainting it with everything that Dom is against.

Any literary writer that does this usually spends the following year explaining how, even though their novel is set in the future and features imaginary technology it isn't SF because <insert any rant from upthread here>

some ilxors sure do think a lot of themselves lately.

Disappointed ilx

i don't really understand in what universe buffy the vampire slayer is 'science fiction' before it is three or four other things - 'horror', 'teen drama', whatever -

i actually think there's something worthwhile to be teased out of dom's hostility - which isn't all that ludicrous, really, given that there's at least four books on the philosophy of harry potter - which okay is also not fantasy - but, you know, fuckit