Hi readers! Co-editor Gail here! We are just getting started here at Crow Name and one of our staples is going to be weekly blog posts from either myself or Meagan. This week I want to talk about a particular genre of media I have been watching during this virus crisis: Science Fiction (aka Sci-Fi)
Specifically, I have dove into the works of Alex Garland (Devs, Ex Machina, Annihilation) and Team Starkid’s Hatchetfield Series (The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals, Black Friday). All of which I highly recommend.
Aside from the obvious things I get out of entertainment I enjoy such as escape, laughter, endless theorizing, and critical analysis, I find that these shows and films and the sci-fi genre in general, are distinctly appropriate for the mindset of the times we are living in. In fact, I feel that these pieces are helping me process what I am mentally and emotionally going through here in quarantine.
For starters, all of the pieces I mentioned take place in a world that is in danger of or at least being threatened by something equally horrible and terrifying as the virus but on a more fantastical level. Whether it’s tech, something extra terrestrial or even interdimensional, we get to view characters that are feeling the same intensity of fear, panic, dread and grief that we have been feeling since all this began. For all of us here in reality, unsure of what the future is going to hold for us, it’s cathartic to if only briefly, to imagine their crisis as our own, see them navigate their place in the situation and reach an end, even if it is a tragic one.
Another cathartic thing sci-fi does, is that it calls out and punishes those at fault for the crisis and or its escalation. Sci-fi pieces are often cautionary tales featuring mad scientists whose hubris ultimately leads to their downfall. In modern science fiction pieces, these mad scientists are often substituted by CEO’s, Tech Titans, Politicians and even the concept of Capitalism itself. Exactly the kinds of high-status folks and systems that are currently failing us. In sci-fi, these people and societal structures are held accountable for their flaws and wrong doings. We are craving this kind of justice right now, but it is slow to come if it ever comes at all. At least with Sci-Fi media, we can get some instant gratification.
Finally, something I learned in a Proto-Sci-Fi class in college, is that one of the powers of the genre is that it turns the grotesque familiar and the familiar grotesque. What do I mean by this? Let’s use Starkid’s The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals as an example. The premise of the show is that a meteor crash lands in the fictional town of Hatchetfield whose inhabitants one by one get infected by an alien event called “the apotheosis” that is turning the world into a musical. For our main characters Paul and Emma, the monotony of everyday working-class life that was once grotesque, is made into something familiar to pine for. Meanwhile the familiar and seemingly fun sounding idea of the world becoming a musical quickly becomes grotesque when we the viewers, as Paul asks of Emma, “think about the implications”.
Now apply this line of thought to what we all are going through. Two months ago, the idea of all but essential businesses shutting down, everyone quarantining themselves and wearing gloves and masks everywhere we go seemed impossible, grotesque, but now it is all too familiar. Going out into the world uncovered, in crowds, less than six feet apart, touching surfaces, shaking hands and washing said hands less regularly and less vigorously was once familiar, but now the idea of going back to that so soon if at all, is grotesque.
In summation, in the age of the CoronaVirus, Sci-Fi has brought me some solace by allowing me to project and air my frustrations at our present world onto a fictitious one. I am able to sort out my feelings through new but eerily similar stories and get the answers and closure that I cannot yet achieve in real life.I wish all of you well during this difficult time and hope you are all finding your own moments of escape in whatever you like to do. I’d like to leave you with some hopeful lyrics from Team Starkid’s other Hatchetfield musical Black Friday from the song “Califor-M.I.A”. written by Jeff Blim.
“And when the sun shines down upon us
we’ll know we’re righteous, babe
we survived the crisis, babe”
Gail Bello is a poet and playwright from Waltham, Massachusetts. She graduated in 2019 with a BFA in Creative Writing and a minor in Theatre from The University of Maine at Farmington. Find her previous publications at https://thaumaturgedramaturge.wordpress.com and follow her on Twitter @AquajadeGail