Author: sfrarev

Nonfiction Reviews

Review of Girls on Fire: Transformative Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Literature

Kelly J. Drumright

Sarah Hentges. Girls on Fire: Transformative Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Literature. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018. Paperback, 290 pages, $39.95, ISBN 9780786499281.

With Girls on Fire: Transformative Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Literature, Sarah Hentges offers a panoramic view of the literary archetype (turned multi-media cultural phenomenon) exemplified by Katniss Everdeen, the “girl on fire” protagonist of Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy. Hentges challenges common critiques of YA dystopia as one-dimensional and escapist by emphasizing the complexity of the author’s worldbuilding and the protagonists’ struggles for social justice. Girls on Fire builds on some of the ideas articulated in the edited volume Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction (Routledge, 2016) as well as scholarship about the Hunger Games, with the important difference of centering the voices of more marginalized writers.

Despite the section’s name, those looking for a theoretical deep-dive into young adult dystopia as a genre will not find it in “Part I: Excavating Theories and Legacies,” but Girls on Fire has many other strengths. For one, Hentges commits to an interdisciplinary and intersectional critical framework that includes American Studies, Cultural Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Additionally, Hentges excels at taxonomizing the formidable corpus of 140+ primary texts, illustrating connections between series with diagrams she calls “dystopia trees” (249), which help readers visualize the influences of the Girl on Fire (roots), the core texts (trunk), and the proliferation of diverse examples (branches and leaves).

While a helpful chart in the introduction provides an overview of the Girl on Fire’s most salient characteristics, it is not until “Part II: Excavating Fiction, Imagination and Application,” that Hentges unpacks the titular archetype more fully in the textual analyses that form the volume’s core. With the exception of sections on the Hunger Games trilogy and Octavia Butler’s oeuvre as precursor to the Girl on Fire archetype, Hentges carries out the analysis point-by-point. This approach has its advantages— namely, illuminating trends and highlighting connections between a massive corpus of texts— but necessarily sacrifices in-depth explorations of a single character, text, or series. Standout sections such as the discussion of white supremacy’s pervasive influence on YA dystopia in Chapter 6, “Othered Girls Towards Intersectional Futures,” provide important reminders for other scholars and students to question “assumptions of whiteness” (8). Ultimately, Hentges has opted for the approach that most closely fits her final goal: to describe an archetype, mining the richness of its myriad iterations for insights into our present cultural moment.

One of the most refreshing aspects of Girls on Fire is Hentges’s candid self-identification as a fangirl: “Fangirling shapes my relationship to this literature as a teacher, a scholar, and a critic” (75). Readers yearning for the distant, antiseptic tone that often characterizes literary scholarship will be disappointed by Girls on Fire. Rather, Hentges’s dynamic voice, optimism, and transparent appreciation coupled with critique honor the characters she describes as “compelling and hopeful subjects” (3). In this way, form follows content, as Hentges argues that any textual analysis of YA dystopia is incomplete if it willfully ignores the affective dimension that makes these books so engrossing.

Hentges knowingly positions herself as a fan regardless of the possible pitfalls attendant in doing so, admitting that “Fangirls can be too close to our subject, but we can also provide insights that a reader without a passion for the texts might not” (75). Girls on Fire certainly benefits from Hentges’s enthusiasm; after all, successfully wrangling a massive corpus into an accessible volume of scholarly critique requires passion and tenacity. To my mind, however, Hentges’s proximity to the subject holds the book back in two ways. First, Hentges’s encyclopedic knowledge can manifest in the tendency to list examples as support for claims, resulting in a frenzied pace that can leave the reader feeling unmoored. Furthermore, because of the thematic structure of her analysis and the extensive corpus, these examples often require a brief plot synopsis that interrupts the argument’s rhythm. Secondly, Hentges sometimes revels in the exception— extensively analyzing outstanding books or characters that transgress the genre’s norms— while her critiques of certain thornier trends (e.g., the focus on romance, heteronormativity), which she rightly identifies as central to YA dystopia, remain relatively superficial. However, these elements are not enough to discount the important contributions of the ambitious project that is Girls on Fire.

Accessing this book’s content demands familiarity with the genre of YA dystopia, not expertise; even superficial knowledge gleaned from a casual viewing of the Hunger Games film adaptations will suffice. The volume is accessible to audiences inside and outside of academe, although readers less familiar with the genre may find themselves in one of two positions: either overwhelmed by the scope of the project’s primary corpus or invigorated by their growing TBR (to-be-read) lists. Fortunately for her readers, Hentges has included a rather unorthodox “Appendix 2: Something Like a Rating System,” in which she shares “brief sketches of [her] ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ of these books as well as some of the main elements” (249).

Most importantly, Girls on Fire is a goldmine for educators. With her literary analysis, Hentges models how to engage popular texts with intersectionality at the fore, and these sections would make accessible readings for undergraduate students. Readers will notice that the book is structured with pedagogy in mind, moving from theory and methodology to application via textual analysis, and finally, to the classroom and beyond. In Chapter 7, Hentges generously shares resources such as “action projects” that challenge students to apply their knowledge outside of the classroom (209-214). Although the “action projects” Hentges details are tailored to YA dystopia, they could easily transfer to other fields. As educators, we would do well to follow Hentges’s example when she states, “I have always encouraged my students to critique the thing they most love” (75). Girls on Fire certainly provides many tools and examples of how to do so.

Review of Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions

Nonfiction Reviews

Review of Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions

Aga J. Drenda

Christopher G. White. Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions. Harvard UP, 2018. Hardback. 384 pg. $35.00, ISBN 9780674984295.

In Other Worlds: Spirituality and the Search for Invisible Dimensions Christopher G. White explores the history and imaginative power of the idea that the universe has higher, invisible dimensions. To accomplish his goal, White assembles an unusual cast of characters: visionary mathematicians, fantasy writers like George MacDonald and C. S. Lewis, mystical physicists, spirit channelers, television producers, hippie scientists, New Age prophets, social reformers, indefatigable parapsychologists, and artists like Max Weber (3). White argues that the diversity of this group is dictated by the desire to make a larger point about science and religion, which are often seen as implacable enemies. He posits that scientific and religious ideas come braided together and influence each other to a degree that has gone unnoticed, and he strives to address it (13).

White treats the idea of the invisible dimensions historically and structures his book accordingly. He begins with the mid-nineteenth century mathematical discoveries of the idea of the fourth dimension and moves through the evolution of the idea across various disciplines until the modern day. This historical approach to the subject makes the structure of the book easy to navigate, especially as chapters are also thematically focused on areas of interest. For example, chapter one is focused on Edwin Abbott’s life and career, with special attention paid to Flatland (1884), a text that has become a classic for scholars of science fiction, students of mathematics, and spiritual seekers alike. Chapter two discusses the turbulent career and private life of Charles Howard Hinton, the inventor of the four-dimensional cube called “tesseract.” The ideas fleshed out in these two chapters are fundamental to the rest of the book, because White traces and refers to them consistently in every chapter that follows. Abbott’s allegory of the world existing only on a two-dimensional plane and Hinton’s conceptualisation of the “tesseract” serve as two points of reference throughout the history of invisible dimensions. These points create a referential springboard which White applies to move seamlessly between chapters, from one discipline to another, one time period to another. The example of the transition between chapter four and five illustrates it well. White devotes chapter four to a detailed analysis of the life and work of an architect Claude Bragdon, a man described by his contemporaries as fully as great an architect as Frank Lloyd Wright but lacking Wright’s talent for self-promotion (108). Bragdon incorporated higher-dimensional philosophy in architecture by designing hypercubes and other objects into otherworldly ornamentation. By showing the links between Abbott’s and Hinton’s ideas and Bragdon’s work in the early twentieth century, White sets up a transition to chapter five, in which the same ideas are highlighted throughout the art of the period. In chapter five the main area of interest is the evolution of impressionism into cubism and the life and work of Russian-born American painter Max Weber. The philosophy of invisible dimensions is a consistent lens through which White shows the last two centuries to his readers.

My only criticism of Other Worlds is that in his analysis of many famous literary works, such as C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956) and Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (1962), White rarely engages with the abundant literary scholarship produced on the works so far, but rather focuses on the bibliographies and philosophical views of the authors. In this, however, White remains true to his analytical lens of invisible dimensions. When discussing genre literature, White also remains true to his speciality. As a professor of religion, he is interested in how the mythopoeic nature of genre literature influences belief. He argues that “the lesson of modern Christian fantasy and sci-fi is not just that belief takes practice but that objects of belief have to be made believable again for new generations” (228).

Other Worlds is a generous hardback, as it offers over 300 pages of material, along with bibliographical notes, credits, and a useful index at the end, all of which enhance the reading experience. It is a valuable resource for those interested in the intersection of science and religion. Scholars and students, fans and creators, specialists in science fiction, fantasy, popular culture and art will be able to find something of interest in this volume. Its historical structure offers the story of invisible dimensions and encourages the reader to treat the book as one would treat a work of fiction. However, the chapters are so diverse and holistic in their internal structure that they can easily stand up to selective reading. I can imagine chapters from this book being used selectively as reading material for a variety of teaching modules. A science fiction scholar might, in the words of L’Engle, “tesser with joy” through a selection of short stories analysed by White (242), such as Algernon Blackwood’s “Victim of Higher Space” (1914), Robert Heinlein’s “And He Built a Crooked House” (1941), William McGivern’s “Doorway of Vanishing Men” (1941), and Mark Clifton’s “Star, Bright” (1952), to name only a few. Other Worlds achieves its goal of delineating how the scientific idea of a higher dimension has spread across popular culture. More importantly, in an impressive feat of scholarship spanning across several disciplines, White manages to revise the conventional way of writing about the modern “conflict between science and religion” by showing how scientific insights were used sometimes not to attack spiritual beliefs but to buttress them in unexpected ways (3).

Review of None of This Is Normal: The Fiction of Jeff VanderMeer

Nonfiction Reviews

Review of None of This Is Normal: The Fiction of Jeff VanderMeer

Thomas Connolly

Benjamin Robertson. None of This Is Normal: The Fiction of Jeff VanderMeer. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. Paperback, 208 pages, $19.95, ISBN 9781517902933.

Despite his long-standing critical and (following the publication of the Southern Reach trilogy) commercial success, scholarly attention to Jeff VanderMeer has so far been rather scant on the ground. None of This Is Normal comprises the first book-length study of VanderMeer’s weird fiction—Robertson notes in his introduction that, at the time of publication, there were only two other scholarly articles on VanderMeer’s fiction, both published in the same issue of Paradoxa.

This relative paucity of scholarly publications on VanderMeer is surprising: anyone who has attended a recent conference on a theme related to SF or fantasy will be aware of the popularity of, and evident critical consideration given to, VanderMeer’s fiction. (Indeed, Robertson acknowledges this unusual imbalance.) This attention forms part of a wider scholarly interest in the political, literary, and philosophical ramifications of the “new weird,” a literary genre which has proved to be both nebulous and subversive in its literary aims. Whereas the original weird, à la Lovecraft and M.R. James, sought to dramatize the insufficiency of human reason in the face of an indifferent and incomprehensible universe, the new weird, according to Robertson, stresses not indifference but abdifference, the rejection of difference altogether as a viable category for grappling with the challenges of the Anthropocene.

Such is the political impetus of Robertson’s work, which comprises both a study of VanderMeer’s fiction and an impassioned call for new modes of thinking that move beyond the humanist tenets of liberalism, environmentalism, and representationalist literary criticism. The political urgency behind Robertson’s work is evident from the first page of the introduction, in which Robertson paints a grim picture of the spiralling political chaos—Brexit, Trump, the resurgence of right-wing xenophobic nationalism—of recent years. “None of this,” Robertson remarks, borrowing a phrase from VanderMeer, “is normal” (2). Even liberalism, he later argues, is not free from the taint of humanist preconceptions, since such ideological worldviews are underpinned by the assumption that all differences can be collapsed into a fundamental sameness, an “inside opposed to an outside” (140). Such an inside, Robertson remarks, is defined by arbitrary borders that delimit nothing so much as the incapacity of the human mind to exist without such comforting constructs.

The political value of weird and new weird fiction, then, lies in its ability to think outside such delimiting conceptions. Such works demonstrate “the possibility of other norms” (2) that may move us beyond the humanist tenets of western thought. This is achieved, Robertson argues, through the creation of what he repeatedly calls “fantastic materialities” (10 etc.), a key concept underpinning the study. One of the most profound insights of Robertson’s work is also perhaps the simplest: that all texts, and all narratives, rely on materiality, which conditions all “patterns and modes of thought” (8). The question that VanderMeer poses in his fictions, according to Robertson, is likewise a relatively simple one: “How does this entanglement of materiality, subjectivity, situation and norms operate when the first term in this list is wholly other—when it is a separate or secondary materiality, a fantastic materiality?” (8).

Robertson’s study here owes an intellectual debt to the recent “materialist turn” in critical theory, and in particular to the notion of “cultural geology” developed by Mark McGurl. Cultural geology aims at “crack[ing] open the carapace of human self-concern, exposing it to the idea, and maybe even the fact, of its external ontological preconditions, its ground” (McGurl 380). This “ground” can be understood, quite literally, as the ground, the fact of human material dependence on a planet that does not obey human laws. As Robertson puts it in a compelling passage, “[no] amount of power to declare borders will forestall the inert force of a nonliving geos” (142), and so there is an evident need to engage critically with the actually-existing fact of material conditions. This need informs the shape of Robertson’s study: following an initial chapter outlining these theoretical and material frameworks, each subsequent chapter examines one of VanderMeer’s fantastic materialities: the Veniss milieu, the Ambergris novels, and the Southern Reach trilogy. In each chapter, Robertson strives to demonstrate how VanderMeer’s works must be understood as offering “other norms” (2)—ways of thinking and being conditioned by materialities radically other to the familiar materialities of the world of author and reader.

Considering the Veniss stories, Robertson critically examines the concept of setting, and the manner in which this concept “makes meaning by drawing boundaries around heres and nows,” and thus reconstitutes space and time within the limited parameters of human meaning (56). The Veniss stories, in contrast, comprise not a setting but a “milieu,” an unbounded and discontinuous collection of spaces and times that do not cohere into a recognisable whole. For Robertson, this milieu invokes—without, importantly, allegorising—the experience of living in the Anthropocene, itself a material milieu that refuses to be collapsed down to human-centred frames of reference.

Regarding the Ambergris stories, Robertson turns to look at how the textuality of these novels, which deploy the self-referential techniques of postmodernist writing, invokes a materiality that such techniques often serve to deny or subvert. Robertson highlights how sections of City of Saints and Madmen, for example, require the reader to decode numerical sequences that refer to specific paragraphs and sentences earlier in the text. The textual meaning here depends on the physical materiality of the book itself—a “materiotextualisation” which, because it neither claims nor denies the possibility of representing the “real” world, avoids the pitfalls of both realist and postmodernist fiction (108). Ambergris is a secondary fantastic world whose material laws are created and conditioned by the very textuality of the Ambergris texts—impossibilities and contradictions occur in Ambergris, Robertson argues, precisely “because that can happen in books” (108). The novels thus confront the reader with a textuality not separate from, but fundamentally constitutive of, a fantastic materiality.

In the final section, Robertson turns to the Southern Reach trilogy, and to the question of borders mentioned above. The achievement of this trilogy, he argues, lies in its creation of a world without borders. Area X offers an example of a “weird planet,” a material geos whose relationship to humanity can never be known, since to know such a thing would require the very act of bordering (defining a limited time and space in which to examine causes and effects) that Area X resists. Area X is not indifferent to humanity, as are the “Great Old Ones” of older weird fiction, but abdifferent, that is, existing “outside” (to use an insufficient spatial metaphor) the limits of humanist thought demarcated by such notions as “same” and “different.” There is no “away” from Area X, Robertson argues, because it is already everywhere. To paraphrase Roger Luckhurst (quoted by Robertson), Area X does not “breach” the ordinary world—“It is (in) Breach” (114). The relevance of such fantastic materialities to the condition of humanity in the Anthropocene is clear: Area X is a “materiality ignorant of the rules by which humans measure themselves and their productions” (142).

Following a discussion of Borne in the conclusion, Robertson ends the volume with the following: “VanderMeer teaches us that even if the production of such fictions will not save us, they may show us the planet saving itself” (158). If this seems like a rather pessimistic note on which to end, it perhaps reflects a broader pessimism regarding the capacity for humanity to actually deal with the challenge of the Anthropocene—how does one confront a problem that transcends even the possibility of setting, or of bordering? This is not a question that Robertson answers, nor would it be fair to expect such an answer—the value of Robertson’s study is rather to be found in the manner in which it frames the issue. The “problem” of the Anthropocene, he notes in the conclusion, is only a problem within a humanist paradigm that recognises the relevance of such concepts as “problems” and “solutions.” It is likely that much of humanity (and Robertson is at pains to stress the particular vulnerability of certain human groups—and the culpability of others—in this regard) will very soon find themselves confronted with a much different paradigm, one that, like Area X, will remain ignorant of human attempts to understand or control it.

Robertson’s work provides us with a much-needed critical vocabulary for engaging with these and other challenges of the Anthropocene. For this reason, and for Robertson’s intelligent and thought-provoking readings of VanderMeer’s fiction, None of This Is Normal is required reading for those looking to better understand the new materialist paradigms with which we are—or are soon to be—confronted.

WORKS CITED

McGurl, Mark. “The New Cultural Geology.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 57, no. 3/4, Fall/Winter 2011, pp. 380-390.

Review of Posthuman Folklore

Nonfiction Reviews

Review of Posthuman Folklore

Peter Cullen Bryan

Tok Thompson. Posthuman Folklore. University Press of Mississippi, 2019. Paperback. 214 pg. $30. ISBN 9781496825094.

Tok Thompson’s Posthuman Folklore endeavors to locate the future of folklore within the realms of speculative fiction and animal studies, offering an overview of paths forward for the discipline. The book is divided into two major sections: one focused on animal studies and one discussing the larger trends of folklore, with an eye towards how folklore studies might evolve to better engage with new media. Posthuman Folklore functions more as a broad review of the current literature than deeply-focused monograph, and should be broadly accessible to anyone with an interest in the future of the humanities. Thompson avoids getting lost in the weeds of scholarly debate, creating a text that offers a useful primer of the current field, as well as potential paths forward.

The first portion of Posthuman Folklore focuses on the application of animal studies to the question of artificial intelligence. Speculative fiction and folklore can help to bridge this divide, in Thompson’s estimation, and Thompson makes the case for the humanities within the larger discussion: “postcolonial science opens itself up to the inclusion of considerations of other schools of thought, other epistemologies, and offers possible avenues of thought out of the dead-end of anthropocentrism” (55). By locating concepts within Native American approaches to human-animal relationships, for instance, Thompson views the solution to the problem as being more open to alternative modes of thought. He uses animal studies as a framework for deconstructing Western thought on sexuality: “sharing sexuality between humans and other species seems to similarly engage this same taboo of troubling human-animal binary division” (70). Thompson posits that the arrival of non-human relationships is likely inevitable with advances in artificial intelligence, and developing a framework for how to handle this will soon be necessary, a framework that can be found (in part, at least) within animal studies.

The second section of Posthuman Folklore explores the role of folklore in a digital (and perhaps post-digital) culture. In Thompson’s argument, Western philosophy is ill-equipped to respond to the arrival of non-human (artificial) intelligences, contending that there are approaches in folklore and transnational perspectives: “given that we have long studied ways that cultures perceive and predict future events, folklorists should not shy away from taking on the new role of futurists, bringing our insights to predict, plan for, and shape the swiftly oncoming future” (118). In this respect, this echoes the fears of figures like Francis Fukuyama (Our Posthuman Future) but offers an optimistic counterpoint and locates a place for humanities in a future of science and technology. Thompson echoes as well Marshall McLuhan, stating, “the digital realm is not only a place for communication, but is also, and increasingly, a contributor to the communication that takes place” (146). Thompson positions the humanities as especially well-equipped to respond to the needs of present-day citizens, arguing that the tools developed for comprehending the history of human civilization are just as applicable to new technology as rural folkways.

There is a lot of value in Posthuman Folklore, both as an overview of the current state of affairs in animal studies and folklore, as well as a potential roadmap for future research in those fields. Thompson’s approach is often theoretical, more concerned with possible directions of future research than fully engaging with specific concepts, but that does also make this a more accessible text. He further makes the case for a more muscular humanities taking a more proactive approach with the broader public. Thompson poses questions for this approach, such as, “will culture’s everyday artistic communication be increasingly free, or increasingly owned?” (108). In this respect, Thompson emphasizes the role of folkloric approaches in discussions of copyright or animal rights, for instance, locating a useful framework for engaging not only with future issues, but also with those faced in the modern digital world. Thompson does not offer specific remedies to the problems of the moment (the humanities in itself is not the solution to the effects of globalization and cultural hegemony), instead positing folklore as a piece of the solution that belongs within the deeper public conversation. Thompson concludes with a keen point about generational shifts: “[Alexa] is putting kids to bed with bedtime stories. Children very often believe she is a real person […] we are increasingly raising our children as natively cyborg” (151). There is an inevitability to this conversation: technology will continue to evolve just as surely as its users will. Better engagement with folkloric traditions and approaches (particular non-Western traditions) allow for the more flexible thinking required for this historic moment, and Thompson presents an entry point to a conversation that will continue beyond the foreseeable future.

Review of Publishing the Science Fiction Canon: The Case of Scientific Romance

Nonfiction Reviews

Review of Publishing the Science Fiction Canon: The Case of Scientific Romance

James Allard

Adam Roberts. Publishing the Science Fiction Canon: The Case of Scientific Romance. Cambridge Elements: Elements in Publishing and Book Culture Series, edited by Samantha Rayner and Rebecca Lyons. Cambridge University Press, 2018. Paperback, 82 pages, ISBN 9781108708890.

Adam Roberts delivers exactly what his title promises: he uses the genre of scientific romance to explore canon formation in general and the development of the SF canon in particular, claiming that this “one iteration of SF’s protean variety, known to critics as the ‘scientific romance’, is as much an artefact of a shift in the underlying logic of commercial publication at the very end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, as it is anything else” (8). His core claim is deceptively straightforward: “the material conditions of production of what is called ‘scientific romance’ determined key aspects of the form going forward, and therefore shaped important aspects of contemporary SF” (1). Roberts explores those conditions, from major changes in the production of texts to equally momentous changes in the contexts in which those texts were consumed, linking those conditions to the emergence and cultural impact of scientific romance, and then, ultimately, connecting that impact to the shape and scope of later SF, from the pulps to film. The result is a lucid, engaging, and provocative study of a crucial moment in the history of popular culture that manifestly, but never defensively, demonstrates the value of greater critical attention to the texts and contexts of popular cultures.

Roberts is at his best when interrogating the material conditions of canon formation. SF provides an important point of access to any consideration of canonicity: he notes that in “the case of science fiction there are distinct levels by which specifically SF texts fit into this larger critical narrative,” since “SF has developed its own canon, both in the top-down university syllabus sense [. . .] and in the bottom-up sense of an active and engaged fandom” (12). At the same time, the historical moment when scientific romance was dominant—“after the older dominance of circulating libraries had become obsolete but before the newer commercial restrictions of the Net Book Agreement had come into force” (8), or “the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first two of the twentieth” (14)—sees a collision of emerging modernism and its aesthetic, philosophical, and political concerns together with shifts in print culture and the business of publishing:

It is from the 1880s, and especially the 1890s, that we can date the expansion of SF, its shift from being a niche form of cultural production, with small print runs, limited readerships and a marginal place in publishing, through a rapid commercial expansion based around cheaper books, and (especially) magazines—“Pulps”—into cinema and TV and, finally, to our present state of affairs, in which SF and Fantasy, especially in “Young Adult” (YA) writing and superhero modes, has a greater cultural penetration, and flat outsell other forms of cultural production. The period under consideration here, in other words, figures as a hinge point in the larger narratives of genre.
2-3

But more than locating the conditions that led to the emergence of a canon, Roberts stresses that this “state of affairs is not a coincidence” and “that the form of this type of SF actually directly expresses that underlying cultural-economic substrate,” that “this window, shaped by a set of particular exigencies to do with the manufacture and sale of fiction, generated the ‘scientific romance’ as we now understand it” (8).

Roberts points to two key factors that had the most profound effects on the creation and circulation of scientific romance, and thus on the SF canon more broadly: first, substantial changes in publishing that saw the marketplace flooded with cheap texts of all sorts, displacing the circulating library as the primary source for reading material, and, second, the advent of easy rail travel. In terms of the former, Roberts demonstrates that a “combination of reduction in unit costs, greatly increased literacy in the general population, and relaxation of government controls produced a boom in publishing that in turn fed a new literary culture in which [. . .] some SF writers enjoyed success on a scale that launched the genre as a popular cultural mode” (29-30). But it’s with the latter point that Roberts’s book is most likely to make its most significant impact, and where it may provoke controversy, as he seems well aware. He notes that more than just “facilitating [. . .] movement,” “railways were machines that generated new tranches of leisure” (37)—including, of course, leisure reading. But the real key is in recognizing how “iterations of the age-old science-fictional fascination with exploration” (43) that dominate scientific romance—from often luxurious “Verneian voyages extraordinaires” (43) to the Wellsian tendency that “keeps his protagonist in one place and moves the world around him, or makes the exotic commute into the protagonist’s world” (43)—“become increasingly figured [. . .] in terms of the sorts of convenience and comfort a commuter might expect” (43) from rail travel at the turn of the twentieth century. Roberts is, however, careful to state that “This is not to argue for a facile mapping of rail travel onto space travel, but it is to suggest that the determining logic of a new reading public, a public often literally in motion, and carried by the most advanced technology of the day, tended to revert back upon the material context out of which it was being disseminated” (39). Thus, if the railway both symbolizes and incarnates a new kind of mobility, demonstrating that “social mobility is not only about physical travel [. . .] [but also] about access to resources” (51), then scientific romance, in both form and content, as a set of generic conventions and a point of access into something bigger than itself, made it clear that “cultural resources” (51), like those supplied by the simple act of reading what many others were also reading, were as vital to survival as anything else.

Readers looking for a sustained treatment of the influences, themes, and politics of scientific romance may not find as much to chew on here as they might like—though those things are certainly discussed and in interesting and generative ways. But readers looking for a nuanced exploration of canons and canonization, especially the vexed relationship between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, ‘literary’ and ‘genre’ fiction, ‘academic’ and ‘popular’ cultures, will find this book immensely rewarding. It makes bigger claims than we might expect from a slim volume of just over eighty pages (standard, of course, for the Elements series), but it also has the potential to make a much bigger impact than we might expect from a slim book, maybe especially one on some aspect of SF, and deserves serious attention from a great many readers, and not just those interested in early SF.

Architectural Responses in Alternative Realities: the Politics of Space through Fiction in Architectural Education

Symposium: European SF and the Political

Architectural Responses in Alternative Realities: the Politics of Space through Fiction in Architectural Education

Phevos Kallitsis and Martin Andrews

INTRODUCTION

In a remark in “Exegesis,” Philip K. Dick writes “[t]he core of my writing is not art but truth” and that his fiction writing is the creative attempt to describe what he discerned as the true reality, and that his fiction is “a creative way of handling analysis” (506). Based on this idea, this paper explores how science fiction can function alongside the various applications of storytelling in architecture, such as scenario-building to communicate design ideas (Thompson) or to allow non-specialists to express their spatial experiences through content analysis (Ro and Bermudez). In fact, Frascari argues that narrative in architecture is “a crucial condition for making sense of both the individual experience of architecture and social interactions that take place in it” (224). Frascari’s approach on storytelling seems to respond to a fundamental quest of architectural education to include the individual, the social and the political in the design process and ensure that architecture is not limited to self-referential projects (Noschis; Brown and Moreau-Yates).

CJ Lim (19) combines architectural visions with speculative scenarios, seeing the prophetic nature of SF works in an effort to explore the climate emergency. However in this paper we base our exploration more on the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s claim that science fiction has foreseen “every possible and impossible variation of future urban society” (160-61), not because of the writer’s prophetic skills, but as a tool to understand their contemporary society and politics. The paper aims to discuss the introduction of SF narratives within post-graduate studies in architecture, aiming to stimulate students’ analytical tools and creativity, while fostering the exploration of alternative ways of representation. We present links created between the possible futures for a city that the students create as part of their work and SF narratives in comics, films and books. The paper presents the way the students created amalgams of otherworld images with familiar worries and disquietudes (Sobchack 109) and how this exercise enhanced their learning experience. By examining the work they produced from their initial explorations until the final resolution of their architectural proposals, the paper aims to contribute to a fruitful discourse of enriching analytical and creative tools, which support understanding but also help students to position themselves in the world and the political situation.

A LEARNING CHALLENGE

Today in the UK, the most common way to become an architect consists of five years of studies split in two parts, 3 years of undergraduate studies and two years of postgraduate studies. Between the two parts, students work in architectural practices, which creates a big challenge upon their return for their postgraduate studies: the students come with more knowledge, but also trapped in practice routines, struggling to balance technical requirements and creative approaches. The structure of the Portsmouth School of Architecture consists of different design studios (groups) and each studio sets their own agenda in order to meet the learning outcomes required both by the curriculum and the professional bodies (RIBA and ARB).

The learning outcomes of the first year design modules can be summarised into (1) research and analysis (manmade and natural environment, cultural, social and economic context), (2) exploration of different options in response to the research and observations, (3) technical, environmental and functional resolution in detail, and (4) representation of these ideas (communication). The technical nature of the requirements of the project, combined with the experience in architectural practice, was limiting the explorative nature of the students and we needed to introduce a process of re-learning and re-discovering of their own creativity. In addition, we have noticed that students needed to regain confidence in making independent decisions, experimenting and to be willing to take risks.

A SCENARIO-BASED SYLLABUS: THE ASSIGNMENT

Within this context, in order to stimulate an alternative approach to analysis and understanding a place and push the students to escape pragmatic constraints and be visionary we examined the possibility of science fiction narratives as tools that will allow them to imagine their alternative realities. Students are required to explore the possibilities of existing sites and create proposals that respond to current issues. Student projects are speculative and in a way, the computer-generated images that they produce represent alternative realities for that place. However, these ideas will never become, they remain a fictional piece of architecture and an alternative reality for the specific site. The question then is, if these are imaginary alternatives that attempt to resolve today’s problems, may should we ask future architects to reflect on probable or improbable future problems.

Borrowing from the Double Layered Asymmetrical model introduced by Goldschmidt (Salama 133-35), we divided the year in four interweaving parts. Part 1 consisted of group work on collecting and evaluating information about a given urban context (Liverpool, Newcastle, Belfast). The second part was a “What If…?” scenario where students had to take inspiration from SF texts (novels, films, comics) and apply these to the urban context they were working. Students were working on the first two parts in parallel, but the other two parts were revealed in stages. The third part required students to design a response to the scenario they have set-up on a city level, a strategy to survive the problems the scenario created and then to focus on a key building that they had to design in more detail. The final part, required from students to reflect on the probability of their scenario and reflect on what will be the function of the building in case the imaginative scenario does not work.

The fact the traditional stage of analysing the context was combined with the “What if…” scenario took the students outside of their usual routines. While there was a freedom in the scenario and their inspiration (natural disasters, scientific experiments that went wrong, zombies, animal attacks, asteroids, black holes, and dystopian post Brexit worlds), the students had to make the scenario site specific. The scenario had to be illustrated, enforcing students to situate their narratives within the specific city and to demonstrate their representation skills. This way their observation about the city was not a passive recording but an active process, as they had to incorporate these into their narratives. The last part of the story always led to a narrative about people surviving, showing their understanding of the nature of the problem and exploring the concept of architecture as a shelter (Ellin).

Once they had presented their disasters and dystopian visions, they would receive the third part of the assignment. Borrowing from Max Brooks’s World War Z, students had to work within a “tenth man scenario” (Brooks 34); in other words, a client (the council, an individual or a funding body) an architectural proposal which would ensure the safety of the citizens or some citizens in case of that unprecedented crisis. Once this part was completed, students had to explore the final stage of the project, which went back to reality and students had to rethink their designs to avoid a ‘White Elephant’ (Shariatmadari), a building that is costly to maintain but because the predicted attack is not occurring remains useless. Even in this case though, the building would need to be able to transform and retain its original function.

DRAWING ALTERNATIVE REALITIES

Students explored the imaginative through different mediums and a variety of representation techniques (hand drawings, physical and digital collages, sketch-up models), in order to present the experience of the destruction and survival of Liverpool-Birkenhead, Newcastle-Gateshead and East and West Belfast. The students adopted different points of view within these narratives, in some cases integrating themselves in these worlds and in others remaining a narrator. This type of narrative allowed students to “live” the dramatic implications of the disaster, but also to become part of the socio-political context of the different cities of investigation.

James Telotte (93) says that SF imagery becomes attractive to the spectator because it takes familiar elements and places them in an unfamiliar setting and students followed a similar strategy. Since the projects had to link to specific cities, the students went into depth to make sure that the imaginary alternative was linked to key elements of the city. to explore, identify and use the elements that constitute the image of the city according to Kevin Lynch landmarks, nodes, edges, districts, pathways in order to anchor the stories to the place. The Liverpool Guildhall, the Newcastle bridges, the river Lagan become elements of a wider narrative and are populated with activities. The analysis is not a collection of photos and statistics, but they become a vivid place where people run, gather, hide or try to define boundaries. In a similar way to SF films the students instinctively explored the macro scale of the city down to the microscale of the human factor and discovered the links of the two.

Beyond their understanding of the place, the change of scales shows how the SF narratives were an excellent tool for students to immerse themselves into the problem before imagining a solution. This was an alternative way of applying role playing in architecture, which, according to Anthony Jackson and Chris Vine, places the learners “within the dramatic fiction” and requires them to interact with the various issues and “make decisions in the midst of ‘crisis’” (6). This immersion supports a thorough understanding of the problems they ‘experienced’ and helps define solutions that focus on the people that will use the buildings.

Another important outcome in the exercise is the way the SF narratives provided a safer environment to explore difficult political topics. For example, when working in Belfast, the speculative nature of the scenarios allowed students to approach the religious division of the city and explore the visible and invisible segregations. Furthermore, the scenarios questioned utopian architectural visions and generated discussions on authoritarianism, and architecture’s role of serving the ones in power. The speculative scenarios and the consideration of different characters in the narrative expanded the students’ perception of the way architecture affects everyday life. Close to JG Ballard’s position on science fiction, students were looking at their present, from Brexit and the social divisions because of the referendum, the tendency for fortification of cities, to the climate emergency and the need for alternative social structures, projecting their emotions into the future.

The visualisation of the crisis also becomes a medium of synthesising the brief for the architectural solution. The students understand that they are not just responding to a building typology—for example, a house, a hospital or a school—and that they need to escape the preconceptions linked to space and its use. They understand that they need to find solutions that not only protect people and communities from zombies and natural disasters. They create structures where people have to co-exist and they need to think of the possible tensions of enclosure, limited food supplies, and reduced energy sources. The understanding and the evaluation of the problems supports students in articulating a critical narrative for a given location and at the same time initiates a briefing process and determines functions.

The playful set-up of the scenario allowed many students to escape their preconception of what is a proper architectural drawing and project. The SF set up also initiated an exploration of new ways of representation, as they needed to escape traditional drawing techniques and create a spectacular, even if dystopian, new world, taking references from comics and movies. Furthermore, it provided the students with an opportunity to add to their final images the drama of the initial crisis.

An important challenge and limitation in the process has been that students were not always open to the idea of stepping out of their routines, “squeezing the scenarios” within more traditional architectural means of representation. Despite the expected reluctance, even the weaker students produced their visually strongest work during this process. This was also evident at their comments for the evaluation of the module. This exercise has also been an opportunity for the tutors to discover an alternative way of approaching the topic, beyond our original conceptualisation. While in the beginning we saw this exercise as a warm-up, to help students to ease into the challenging years of operating in a post-graduate architectural environment, the realisation of the possibilities soon transformed the exercise as the spine of the project in our studio. In the second year, we expanded the part of the creation of the visual scenarios, requiring students to explore in detail their SF ideas.

CONCLUSION

SF narratives proved to be a valuable educational method to reintroduce students to exploration, speculation, discovery, and to them to explore their potential. Despite initially conceived as a warm-up tool and a confidence building operation, the narratives supported students in gaining a deeper understanding of the design process and the urban context that they were called to analyse and respond to. The students’ evaluation provided evidence that students enjoyed the “what if…?” scenarios and working within these playful approaches.

This exercise had a dual effect. On one hand it looked relaxed and a warming up, on the other hand it was a step out of the comfort zone of students of architecture, who after three years in university and a year in practice realised that they could not go back to their usual working routines. Furthermore, the immersion into the narrative and the setup of these alternative worlds required from them the exploration of different scales at the same time. This also led to the use of alternative representation language early in the project and a greater attention to detail.

There are always limitations in these exercises, especially in the cases of weaker students who cannot see the value of the medium and they do not try to understand the process. While many of them found a way to create a narrative based on the resources provided, some remained reluctant to push the narrative to its limits and went back to default positions regarding architectural projects. However, looking back to the work of the past three years provides us with confidence that the students who engaged with the process, regardless of their representational skills, managed to infuse new ideas into their projects.

We are still investigating the idea of requesting a graphic novel as the final submission instead of an architectural portfolio, in order to release students from the anxiety of typical drawings. This educational activity shows that SF narratives and architecture can work together to communicate ideas about a place and trigger the imagination about the future of our urban society. SF alternatives of existing cities becomes a transformative tool that stimulates exploration and enhances the learning process, because it becomes a tool to understand the complex process of the production of space, the spatial inequalities and the exclusions created by architectural interventions, while re-discovering skills and re-learning the creative processes of architecture. Strong visuals combined with a contextualised narrative lead to a deeper understanding of the city and the human experience, demonstrating that cross-medial learning can lead in many cases to an architectural educational happy end, despite the dystopian futures that initiate these ideas every year.

WORKS CITED

Ballard, J.G. “Science Fiction Cannot Be Immune from Change.” 1969, http://www.jgballard.ca/non_fiction/jgb_new_metaphor_future1973.html.

Brooks, Max. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Duckworth, 2006.

Brown, Robert, and Denitza Moreau-Yates. “Seeing the World through Another Person’s Eyes.” Changing Architectural Education: Towards a New Professionalism, edited by David Nicol and Simon Pilling, Spoon Press, 2000, pp. 49-57.

Dick, Philip K. The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick. Edited by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.

Ellin, Nan. “Shelter from the Storm or Form Follows Fear and Vice Versa.” Architecture of Fear, edited by Nan Ellin, Architectural Press, 1997, pp. 13-47.

Frascari, Marco. “An Architectural Good-Life Can Be Built, Explained and Taught Only through Storytelling.” Reading Architecture and Culture. Researching Buildings, Spaces and Documents, edited by Adam Sharr, Routledge, 2012, pp. 224-33.

Jackson, Anthony, and Chris Vine. “Introduction.”, Learning through Theatre: The Changing Face of Theatre in Education, edited by Anthony Jackson and Chris Vine, Routledge, 2013.

Lefebvre, Henri. “The Right to the City.” Writings on Cities, edited by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, Blackwell, 1996, pp. 63-184.

Lim, C.J. Inhabitable Infrastructures : Science Fiction or Urban Future? Taylor & Francis, 2017.

Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. The MIT Press, 1960.

Noschis, Kaj. “Let’s Not Forget the User.” Architecture and Teaching: Epistemological Foundation, edited by Halina Dunin-Woyseth and Kaj Noschis, Comportements, 1997, pp. 103-10.

Ro, Brandon, and Julio Bermudez. “Understanding Extraordinary Architectural Experiences through Content Analysis of Written Narratives.” Enquiry, vol. 12, no. 1, 2015, pp. 17-34.

Salama, Ashraf M. Spatial Design Education: New Directions for Pedagogy in Architecture and Beyond. Taylor & Francis, 2016.

Shariatmadari, David. “The Greatest White Elephants.” The Guardian, 18 July 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/18/white-elephants-10-greatest-in-tempo.

Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film. Rutgers UP, 2004.

Telotte, J.P. “Human Artifice and the Science Fiction Film.” Film Quarterly, vol. 36, 1983, pp. 44-51.

Thompson, James. Narratives of Architectural Education: From Student to Architect. Routledge, 2019.

Black Mirror Prosumers and the Contemporary Domain

Symposium: European SF and the Political

Black Mirror Prosumers and the Contemporary Domain

Ashumi Shah

By virtue of its name alone, “speculative fiction” is fiction that invites speculation. Authors such as Vonnegut, Le Guin and Atwood among others have vocally expressed their discontent with their works being labelled as “science fiction,” which suggests genre-based limitations to the reading of the texts (Thomas 1-15). The term “speculative” is also the preferred choice for a significant number of individuals who engage with different media texts so as to emphasize their imaginative focus on current affairs. Speculative fiction involves a displacement of one’s assumptions about the world one lives in. This displacement, however, relies on an “anchor”: “Readers of any piece of fiction must find a touchstone, a place, person or emotion, where they can connect and engage in the story. . . . Fiction becomes a safer place for exploration and helps us resolve dissonance” (Thomas 39). The “anchor,” I propose, is the link between the reader’s reality and the speculative text that allows for cognitive estrangement, thereby enabling the reader to speculate about contemporary society. Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones’s techno-dystopian Netflix series Black Mirror invites speculation regarding the relationship between technology and society as each episode of the anthology series extrapolates familiar examples from current technological developments and presents the viewer with a society that shares aspects which the viewer may already be familiar with. For example, the episode “Hang the DJ” (Season 4 Episode 4) opens with one of the two protagonists getting information from “Coach,” a virtual assistant not unlike Apple’s Siri. As the episode progresses, the audience learns how the two protagonists attempt to rebel against the “dating program” that dictates the initiation and expiration of their relationship with each other. In this case, virtual assistants and online dating apps such as “Tinder” serve as the anchor, while it is the unexpectedness of how these technologies assume control in the episode that invite speculation concerning those very technologies. This invitation to speculate on how technological and scientific progress informs our view of society is characteristic of Black Mirror. The show tends to challenge preconceived notions about technology and society and serve as a mirror, as the title suggests, to illustrate the darker undertones of the relationship between the two. Black Mirror, therefore, can be identified as an exercise in speculative fiction, with those involved in the storytelling processes of the text presenting an idea that challenges the viewer’s reality or expectations and in turn forces speculation about the world around them.

In June 2020, metro.co.uk published an article about an advertisement that had been put up in Madrid, Spain (Kelly). The ad features the Netflix logo as well as the title of the show Black Mirror in its original font along with the slogan, “6th Season. Live Now, everywhere” (Kelly). This advertisement arguably can be seen as a product of prosumption and meme culture along with the characteristic feature of speculative fiction to engage in a dialogue with the contemporary social and technological climate. In early 2020, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world experienced a global shutdown. Governments all over the world urged people to stay indoors and maintain distance from friends and family members as well as wear masks in case they venture out. Businesses were also compelled to close shops to contain the spread of the virus and restrictions were enforced on restaurants, cafes, places of worship among other places where people could gather in large numbers. Concerts and events such as Coachella and the San Diego Comic Con were cancelled, too. One could certainly argue that most of the world’s population was affected by the pandemic. The incredible spreading of the virus, which led to such drastic measures and restricted free movement among the masses, invited numerous analogies to the dystopian, if not outright apocalyptic scenarios that frequently feature as central themes in numerous works of speculative fiction.

The curtailment of freedom prompted by the pandemic had been mirrored in many earlier episodes of Black Mirror. For example, in the episode “Nosedive” (Season 3 Episode 1), a “social credit system” serves as a gatekeeper concerning an individual’s socioeconomic status, barring them from certain events, opportunities or luxuries. The episode “San Junipero” (Season 3 Episode 4) also explores the theme of liberties being cut due to paralysis and death, as the episode details the simulation called San Junipero that is populated by the deceased who are “uploaded” to the simulation in the bodies of their younger selves, and who can be “visited” by the elderly. The episode “USS Callister” (Season 4 Episode 1) explores the theme of the clones of people being trapped in a simulation and their attempts to “escape” by breaching into the “real” world. Further episodes of the series also highlight limitations on one’s freedom and will as a result of technology, which constitutes an underlying theme in Black Mirror. It comes as no surprise, then, that some viewers of the show consider the impact of Covid-19 which resulted in a similar curtailment of liberties as a Black Mirror episode “gone meta.” The ad acknowledges this by claiming that Black Mirror is “live” all over the world. This sentiment is also resonated by Charlie Brooker, one of the executive producers and writers of the show, who claimed that the global scenario was too bleak for another season of Black Mirror and that he chose to focus on other projects because, “At the moment, I don’t know what stomach there would be for stories about societies falling apart” (Pearce). A shared meaning-making and interpretation process between the producers and consumers of media texts as reflected in how the two parties view the pandemic situation within the framework of Black Mirror thus constitutes a manifestation of the practice of prosumption.

In The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects, Gajjala et al. claim that prosumption is a result of activity on the part of media consumers who actively engage with media content and allow for the “disappearance” of the “distinction between making and using media” (1). Prosumption is reflected in participatory culture that involves co-creation and co-production “whereby people make their own media content, as engaged amateurs instead of paid professionals” (Gajjala et al. 1). It is these “DIY” (do-it-yourself) activities that distinguish prosumption because of their ability to disrupt “the usual power relations between makers and consumers, often conflating and democratizing them so that lines are blurred and domination is usurped . . . making more obvious the productive power of people who create while also consuming” (Gajjala et. al 1). Since the advent of Web 2.0, software and hardware tools enabled the appropriation and (re-)circulation of media content. Technology, especially Web 2.0 applications such as social networking platforms became embedded in our everyday lives, including through digital native celebrities and influencers as well as politics. Applications such as Twitter and Tumblr allowed the everyday person to engage with media celebrities that would otherwise be geographically, socially and economically removed from the viewer. Web 2.0 applications led to successful and failed political campaigning, exposure of scandals and scams, and are often used by powerful figures to communicate directly with their audiences.

The Madrid Black Mirror poster employs the official Netflix logo and Black Mirror font to lend authenticity to this piece of fan art, leading to the question whether it was actually created by Netflix, which the company denied. Authenticity, however, was not only achieved through the design of the poster, but also by the theme of the show being reflected in daily life. It enabled the reading of both, the show and the fan art, and its interpretation as mirroring “real life.” As is evident in nearly every Black Mirror episode, technology took up a significant place in global society at large as well as specific aspects of particular societies, cultures and subcultures. The reliance on technology for day-to-day functions, especially during the pandemic, which involved work-from-home, online classes for schools, universities and other institutions as well as a surge in online media consumption, highlight the relationship between society and technology that is at the heart of Black Mirror. Therefore, it indeed seemed like Black Mirror had gone live, everywhere. The “ad” also reflects the prosumption practice in that it asserts dominance over the media text by exercising creativity and engaging in a labour of love to create the poster. Furthermore, this appropriation involves a certain degree of deciphering the themes and the overall tone of the show to be able to express an interpretation of not only the show itself, but how it relates to real-life events.

The Web 2.0 applications that enabled media engagement, appropriation and community formation also served as breeding grounds for online meme culture. Tracing the origins of the term “meme” in Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene (1976), Shifman identifies the meme in the digital age as “the rapid propagation of images, videos, and catchphrases on the internet” (199). Shifman further highlights that “a meme succeeds when certain social, cultural, psychological, and technological conditions expedite its uptake” (199). While Black Mirror as a media text was popular enough to be appropriated in memes—whether in the form of GIFs, screenshots from the show with text, dialogue from the show transposed onto images that may be deemed humorous or relevant—its propagation as a meme when combined with current events, specifically in relation to the dystopian nature of the spread of the Covid-19 virus in early 2020 led to an explosion of memes circulating over the Internet, which constitutes a comment on or interpretation of both the media text and the state of society. A significant portion of memes concerning the Covid-19 pandemic parodied the seemingly “apocalyptic” circumstances, often lending them a sardonic tone. As a steadily growing number of memes synonymised the pandemic with an apocalypse or a dystopian future, the underlying meaning enabled the making of the abovementioned Black Mirror ad created by a fan. Fig. 1, for example, employs stills from an episode of Black Mirror and serves as the poster for an article titled “5 Signs That We Might Be Living In An Episode of Black Mirror” (Matthews). The article details the effects of the spread of the pandemic on daily life and how that is reflected as an episode of Black Mirror. The 5 titular signs include not being allowed to leave one’s home or having a limitation on the places one may visit; socialising is possible only online; politicians engaging in unconventional actions; disinfectants and toilet paper have become extremely desirable goods; and people are being reported for “not following public health protocol.” All of these signs from “real life” are mirrored in Black Mirror, and this kind of an interpretation of the contemporary situation enables viewers to make the comparison to the show.

5 Signs That We Might Living In An Episode of Black Mirror | by ... — Fig. 1. A meme related to the Covid-19 crisis with images from the *Black Mirror* episode “Nosedive” (Matthews)

Media and technology play a crucial role in the rapid spread of information. Through the website of newspapers, news blogs and analytical organizations, one could track the swift spread of the Covid-19 virus all over the world, and how governments and the populace reacted to the crisis in different places. There were numerous reports of people stocking up their homes or garages with “emergency supplies” and buying “essentials” such as canned food and toilet paper in bulk as if they were indeed preparing for an apocalypse. As Web 2.0 applications facilitated the spread of both the pandemic and the “preppers,” there was a gradual rise in circulation of memes concerning both. Fans of Black Mirror also made the connection between technology’s hand in the panic caused by the pandemic and the underlying theme of the anthology series. Numerous episodes of the series—including “The National Anthem” (Season 1 Episode 1), “Be Right Back” (Season 2 Episode 1), “White Bear” (Season 2 Episode 2), “Nosedive” (Season 3 Episode 1), “Hated in the Nation” (Season 3 Episode 6) and “Smithereens” (Season 5 Episode 2) among others—highlight the role of social media in influencing public thought and set off a series of events that irrevocably change the lives of those involved. Owing to the importance of social media in these episodes, and its affordances that enable transmission of information and engagement in self-presentation that allows individuals to transform their social media presence into various forms of Bourdieusian capitals (such as earning fame, money, education, technical skills, etc.), the similarity between this underlying theme in the show and the “reality” of its viewers becomes apparent. Social media plays a crucial role in how a significant portion of the global population reacted to this pandemic, from hosting watch-parties and meetups on social media to sending memes and weblinks containing information to friends and family, to simply engaging in the process of physical social distancing while using the virtual platform to cope with these measures. In this context, social media can be identified as a reverse anchor, serving as a link that makes the real-life situation comparable to the fictional one in the show. By interpreting the relationship between the show and reality, fans engage in meaning-making processes of textual appropriation. Such appropriations of a text by fans can occur due to a number of reasons: as an assertion of their place in the fandom that highlights their affiliation to, for example, the fan fiction authors’ community or the fan artists’ community; as a collector of “special editions” or “Easter eggs” of a show; to showcase their ability to work with Web 2.0 applications and other software; or simply as a creative outlet for which they employ a media text of their choice. This appropriation, in turn, leads to a “bricolaged” project such as the fan-made ad in the sense of “the joining of separate media elements to form a different whole, a newly put together piece of media that orchestrates different meanings from those of the alleged original. It thus involves a notion of media users and audiences who actively make new meanings out of the different sources at hand” (Schmidt and De Kloet 1). The addition of the Netflix logo as well as the typography of the show added a certain “authenticity” to the ad, leading Metro to believe that it may have been created by Netflix. Apart from lending authenticity, however, it allowed for an understanding of the contemporary situation in relation to the text, illustrating the meaning-making process of presumption and bricolage.

The interpretive process, which leads to a particular expression on part of the media prosumer, along with the information that the audience retains not only from the text itself but also from its creators and producers—such as Charlie Brooker admitting to “reality” being too dystopian to create a new season of Black Mirror—contributes to the overall understanding that an individual may have of a text, i.e. a blend of not only the contents of the text and the message as conveyed by the producers, but also its “popular” interpretation among audiences. The involvement of all these various parties—the producer, the consumer, and the prosumer—lean into the various subcultures associated with media texts and the politics surrounding them, all of which invite further examination to theorize the cycle of media give-and-take between these parties.

WORKS CITED

Brooker, Charlie and Annabel Jones, showrunners. Black Mirror. Netflix, 2011–present.

Gajjala, Radhika, et al. “Prosumption.” The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects, Aug. 2017, pp. 1–8, doi:10.1002/9781118783764.wbieme0178.

Kelly, Emma. “Black Mirror Season 6 Reminds Us That We Are Basically Living in an Episode.” Metro, 6 June, 2020, https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/06/black-mirror-season-six-ad-reminds-us-basically-living-episode-12814529/.

Matthews, Melissa A. “5 Signs That We Might Be Living in an Episode of Black Mirror.” life’s funny, 1 Apr. 2020, https://medium.com/lifes-funny/5-signs-that-we-might-living-in-an-episode-of-black-mirror-8f7e3dc207d2.

Menadue, Christopher Benjamin, and Karen Diane Cheer. “Human Culture and Science Fiction: A Review of the Literature, 1980-2016.” SAGE Open, vol. 7, no. 3, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017723690.

Pearce, Tilly, “Black Mirror Season 6 Future Looks Bleak as Charlie Brooker Says World Doesn’t Need Another Story on a Dystopia.” Metro, 4 May 2020, https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/04/black-mirror-season-6-future-looks-bleak-charlie-brooker-says-world-doesnt-need-story-dystopia-12654474/.

Schmidt, Leonie and Jeroen De Kloet. “Bricolage: Role of Media.” The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects, Aug. 2017, pp. 1–9, doi:10.1002/9781118783764.wbieme0116.

Shifman, Limor. “Meme.” Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture, July 2016, pp. 197–206, doi: 10.2307/j.ctvct0023.22.

Thomas, P. L. Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction: Challenging Genres. Sense Publishers, 2013.

“Just as Orwell said”: The Emergence of a “Dystopian Framing” in French Conservative Media in the 2010s

Symposium: European SF and the Political

“Just as Orwell said”: The Emergence of a “Dystopian Framing” in French Conservative Media in the 2010s

Olivesi Aurélie and Zoé Kergomard

INTRODUCTION: UNEXPECTED ORWELLIAN APPARITIONS

In France, science fiction has long struggled to be recognized as a “serious” form of literature, and not just as a form of “paraliterature” (Langlet). Yet in recent years, we noticed a growing number of references to dystopian fiction in the French public sphere. Our aim in this paper is to understand the meanings and political implications of these increasingly frequent references to dystopian literature.

First, a search of the keywords “dystopi*,” “Orwell*,” “novlangue” (the most common translation of Orwell’s “Newspeak”), “Big Brother” (generally used in English in French media), “Winston Smith,” and “Le meilleur des mondes” (the title of the French translation of Brave New World) in major French newspapers and news magazines confirmed our impression: the overall number of occurrences nearly doubled between 1999 and 2019, with a first peak in 2007, and a steady growth since 2012 (albeit with a slight decrease since 2019). These patterns correspond to political milestones (such as the 2007 and 2012 presidential elections) so that we wondered about the potential political significance of dystopian references in the French public sphere. Surely, the growing popularity of dystopia as a fictional genre in literature, television series and movies since the 2000s could in itself account for this growth. But the use of the words based on the root “dystopi*” (principally the noun “dystopie” [dystopia] and the adjective “dystopique”) has only increased very recently (since 2010 and more rapidly since 2016). Moreover, among the references to specific well-known dystopias, while those alluding to Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) have remained relatively stable, references to Orwell’s 1984 (1949) have increased the most (from 214 in 1999 to a peak of 504 in 2018, and 396 in 2019). No republication or film adaptation explains this surge in the popularity of 1984 over this time period. In addition, in comparison to Brave New World, allusions to 1984 involve a more varied network of references: the characters of Big Brother and Winston Smith are regularly mentioned in their own right. Above all, the concept of “Newspeak” has become central (with occurrences increasing by 665% between 1999 and 2017).

“NEWSPEAK” AS A FRAMING DEVICE

In order to better understand the meaning of these recurring references to Orwell, we began by exploring references to “Newspeak” in major French newspapers of different political orientations. While references to “Newspeak” remained relatively stable in left-wing media (L’Humanité, Libération), the growth from 2012-2013 onwards was driven by newspapers at the centre and towards the right side of the French political spectrum (L’Express, Le Figaro, Marianne, Le Point, Valeurs Actuelles). Moreover, an examination of the concrete uses of the word highlighted significant differences between left- and right-wing media. Left-wing media typically refers to “Newspeak” as part of a critique of capitalism (“Financial capitalism, as it is called in Newspeak, is only a stage of capitalism delivered to its own savagery, adapted to our time” [Anon.]) or corporate language (“the Newspeak of business schools feeds the abstraction of managerial discourse” [Giret]). As in other countries, left-wing political activists in France have also drawn on Orwell to condemn surveillance practices and infringements of privacy rights in the digital age (Krieg-Planque). Meanwhile, references to “Newspeak” in right-wing newspapers and news magazines are generally used as a synonym for “political correctness” (“And then, who knows why, but probably under the influence of a certain puritanism, Big Brother’s Newspeak, imagined by George Orwell in 1949, insidiously appeared not in 1984, but in 2014 [political correctness was perhaps only an ersatz version]” [Chiflet]), “the current” (Fonton) or “dominant Newspeak” (“How could we not regularize illegal immigrants, who, by the magic of the dominant Newspeak, have become ‘sans-papiers [undocumented people]’ or, better still, ‘migrants’?” [Anon 2003]), a general “modern Newspeak” (“It’s entertaining to watch modern Newspeak being enriched with new concepts, day after day”) or “socialist Newspeak” when the socialist François Hollande was president.

In these uses, the world depicted in 1984 does not only serve as a metaphor or a comparison. References to this well-known novel also act as a sort of lens, suggesting a perspective on the present as a dystopia, or a dystopia to come (using the “slippery slope” argument). In this sense, references to 1984, particularly through the neologism “Newspeak,” serve as powerful “framing devices” aimed at promoting a particular problem definition and formulating grievances (Entman; D’Angelo). We thus refer to their use in this way as an “Orwellian framing.” In this context, news articles condemned even small changes in the language of the French administration in the wake of same-sex marriage as “Newspeak.” In this Orwellian framing, the replacement of “father” and “mother” with “parent 1” and “parent 2” on administrative forms meant that the former categories would simply disappear not only from official language, but from “reality” (Vaquin. et al.).

INVOKING ORWELL TO FIGHT THE “GENDER WAR”

Orwell would have been puzzled to see how often his book was invoked in the context of tense debates over marriage equality legislation in France in 2012-2013, as we found out in the course of our attempts to reconstruct the genealogy of Orwellian references in the French public sphere. At the time, a social movement coalesced against this bill around the organization “La Manif pour Tous” (“Protest for all,” a reference to “Mariage pour Tous,” the slogan associated to the legalization of same-sex marriage), crystallizing both conservative opposition on issues of biopolitics (Béraud and Portier) and anti-elite and anti-media resentment. Within this heterogeneous movement, activists and intellectuals from conservative Catholic circles disseminated and thus helped to popularize dystopian references. Major conservative Catholic publishers such as TerraMare and websites such Le salon beige linked the reform to 1984—a book that had in their opinion become a “frightening reality” (Boucher). A part of the movement expressed intellectual ambitions, notably through the practice of reading texts at night-time “vigils,” including Orwell’s 1984 (Bourabaa), and frequently quoting figures from Aristotle to—again—Orwell (Tudy). Often, “Newspeak” acted as an autonomous reference in its own right, requiring no elaboration or explanation of 1984 to be understood. But the movement also used more precise and varied dystopian references, particularly Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In 2015, “Manif pour Tous” activists Eric Letty and Guillaume de Prémare published an account of the social movement entitled Resistance to the Best of Worlds (Résistance aux meilleurs des mondes), referring to the title of Brave New World’s French translation, Le meilleur des mondes. With the legalization of same-sex marriage the movement dwindled, but references to 1984 continued to serve to crystallize multiple forms of opposition to the Socialist government, particularly around the politics of language. References now came not only from established intellectuals from the Catholic right, but also from broader political circles. In 2015, the philosophers François-Xavier Bellamy (who self-identifies as a Catholic conservative) and Michel Onfray (originally from the Left but now self-defining as a “popular sovereignist”) converged on a similar critique couched in terms of the “thought police,” a direct reference to Orwell (de Villers and Deveccio). Soon after, “sovereignist” essayist Natacha Polony founded an “Orwell committee” which vowed to combat “language manipulation,” which she presented as a present-day “soft totalitarianism.” In this instance, Orwell’s rights holders protested, and the committee was forced to change its name to “the Orwellians” (Durupt and Guiton).

A TOOL FOR A GRAMSCIAN COUNTER-CULTURAL REVOLUTION?

The wide range of established actors actively promoting an “Orwellian framing” helps to understand its emergence in mainstream media throughout the 2010s. Not incidentally, many of the press outlets disseminating this Orwellian framing underwent a shift to the right at the same time, in line with structural changes in the French press under the pressure of digitalization. This is the case with the new editorial policy of the weekly Valeurs Actuelles since 2012, but also of Le Figaro which launched the polemical website FigaroVox in 2014. Both shared writers with the (originally centre-left but now) sovereigntist weekly Marianne, directed by Natacha Polony since 2018, as well as with the online-only right-wing outlet Atlantico (launched in 2011) and the magazine Causeur (launched online in 2007, and in a monthly paper version since 2008).

These recognized, professional, but increasingly right-leaning press titles were also frequently quoted by a series of conservative and radical right-wing news websites that had emerged since the 2000s, helping share this “Orwellian framing” across an ideological network that self-identified with the notion of “reinformation,” a keyword for a collective cultural struggle against mainstream media (Stephan and Vauchez). As in other countries, radical-right movements and parties had engaged in online activism from early on, beginning with the founding of Novopress.info by the Bloc Identitaire in 2005. The Front national (FN) was the first French political party to invest heavily in the use of online communication tools (Dézé), as it attempted to maintain its core political identity while pursuing its strategy of normalization (Hobeika and Villeneuve). Other websites were launched by activists who did not share this constraint, as they claimed independence from political parties. This was the case of Le salon beige (“The beige lounge/salon,” evoking a neutral space for discussion), which came to play a prominent role in the opposition to same-sex marriage. Founded in 2004 by Catholic activists in their thirties and forties, often from traditionalist circles, it became the forerunner of a network of Catholic blogs and webpages (Blanc). It has since been bought by the activist Guillaume Jourdain de Thieulloy, who owns a number of other websites that take a similar conservative Catholic, economically liberal line, e.g. Nouvelle de France and Riposte catholique. Outside the conservative Catholic milieu, there was also the well-known blog and, later, news website Fdesouche (short for “François Desouche”). Its title is based on a play on words with the older phrase “Français de souche,” an expression referring to having many generations of French ancestors, used by Jean-Marie Le Pen in particular to refer to an ethnically, a.k.a. white, French population. It was founded in 2006 by Pierre Sautarel, who worked closely with the Front national on communication in the late 2000s (Albertini and Doucet). Beyond their ideological differences (on economics and State secularism in particular), these websites are connected through their media practice: they relay articles from all kinds of media as well as opinion pieces and quickly began to relay articles from each other as well. Studies analysing their links to one another have shown how they merge around nodal points, each aggregating a sub-family of the radical right (Blanc; Froio).

This online activism among radical right-wing political activists is, of course, not unique to France. But French activists have explicitly referred to the “metapolitical” strategy of “counter-cultural Gramscianism” developed by the Nouvelle Droite (New Right) at the end of the 1970s as a way to turn the left’s own weapons against it (Griffin; McCulloch). In fact, while many websites were launched by young activists and/or linked to new movements such as the Bloc identitaire (Identity Block), it was, in part, older actors who unified and connected them to one another around a common goal, by transmitting the strategies of the New Right and adapting them to the Internet age. In 2008, a key actor on the Nouvelle Droite, Jean-Yves Le Gallou, a senior civil servant and former executive of the Front national, launched a manifesto for a “technological Gramscianism,” which was widely distributed at the time on these emerging right-wing websites. In it, he urged readers to make use of new technologies to produce “re-information” that is “just,” “non-conformist,” and “pluralist,” in order to win “the battle of ideas” (Le Gallou). A foundation launched by Le Gallou and other activists in 2002, the Polemia Foundation, also played a pivotal role in the emerging radical right-wing online sphere, with a ceremony ironically celebrating mainstream media lies (Bobards d’Or, “Golden Fibs”) and the publication of pamphlets such as the Dictionary of Newspeak in 2009. All of these writings link the “counter-cultural” ambition to references to Orwell and particularly to “Newspeak.”

Activists such as Le Gallou who made their political debuts in the 1960s and 1970s had read 1984 first as an anti-communist pamphlet and redirected it against the French socialist actors and governments of the late 20th century. But these references quickly spread more widely in the so-called “reinfosphere,” extending beyond this initial reading in the process. Since its beginnings, the website Fdesouche has presented ironic thematic pages on language, including a page listing “Newspeak among us” with sourced examples “taken from the press or the media”: the comparison of these media terms with more common and stigmatizing expressions is intended to reveal a violent reality marked by inter-ethnic conflicts that the media seek to describe euphemistically, e.g., “Don’t say ‘average Frenchman attached to his culture,’ but ‘racist’ instead” (Fdesouche). The Dictionary of Newspeak, republished in 2015, also focused on words supposedly subverted by the Left: again in the context of same-sex marriage (“actors involved in the conception and education of children”), or when debunking what the authors saw as euphemisms for racialised groups: e.g., “Adverse events: Euphemism used by the RATP [Parisian Transport Authority] when supporters of the Algerian soccer team block bus traffic” (Le Gallou and Geoffroy).

Right-wing Orwellian references can thus be traced back to an older Nouvelle droite strategy of debunking “political correctness” through language. The 2012-2013 social movement against same-sex marriage was key in spreading this framing of gender politics beyond Catholic and/or radical-right circles, from fringe radical-right websites to newspapers of the mainstream right and the centre.

The use of this “Orwellian framing” in the context of new “cultural wars” served, explicitly and implicitly, as a unifying device for various movements opposing the socialist government in power until 2017, but also beyond. In the right-wing online media and the traditional conservative print press alike, references to “Orwell,” “1984,” or “Newspeak” are still used on the one hand to oppose any societal reforms shifting the balance of power between majority and minority groups, particularly along gender and race lines, and on the other hand, without reference to current news, as a kind of an ideological anchoring point, in a long term perspective. In the end, progressive movements are not the only ones able to recognize the disruptive power of dystopia to reframe the present (Harrison); right-wing movements can do the same, in order to hinder different kinds of social transformation.

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