Skip to main content

What if Philip K. Dick had directed LOTR?

Why did LOTR drop off the critical radar at decade's end? Methinks it's due to that perennial, fundamental disrespect of the fantasy and science fiction genre, the same reason "sci-fi" literature was/is ghettoized and consigned to the bring-your-own-blacklight section of your local bookstore. See Ellison, Harlan, or King, Stephen. Or better, Dick, Philip, K. (while he was alive). "Fantasy" is just not as critic- or award-friendly as, say, our annual dose of Clint Eastwood directed melodramatic "relevant" Oscar fodder.

[. . .]

There are a lot of "fantasy" films that fully deserve critical scorn, and audience disdain. As the great fantasist Theodore Sturgeon opined, "90% of everything is crap."

But that 10 percent that isn't should be allowed to keep winning the race against "Seabiscuit." (Erik Nelson, “Fantasy still can’t get no respect,” Salon, 6 Jan. 2010)

What if Philip K. Dick had directed Lord of the Rings?

Harlan Ellison? Theodore Sturgeon? Philip K. Dick? If we mixed all these authors into a brew, are we sure we wouldn't be more likely to end up serving out some Synecdoche New York than Jackson's LOTR? How are hobbitans supposed to get respect, when their defenders seem near as much to have escaped the shire for the civitas as any urbane who complains of their smelly feet and rank stupidity?

Closer to Jackson's LOTR is David Eddings and Piers Anthony. It is the friendliness, the family, in LOTR, that matters, not its passed-over erudition, its overlooked sophistication.

(Care to say anything nice about these two authors, about those who like these authors, Eric? You won't look as cool to film "snobs" who can appreciate a return to the warmth of the ring, with their cool Blade Runner guard well up, or with some reference to the likes of Fredric Jameson and commercial culture -- as Matt Zoller Seitz made sure to do, to adjudicate / circumscribe his applause of Michael Bay. You'd very quickly find yourself outside the "fantasist" section, the imaginative and cerebral -- and near Marquez, and well redeemable -- and back munching bags of chippies with all the dorks in fantasy / sci fi. How prepared are you to jump up and down on couches, and scream out the love of your life?)


Link: Fantasy still can’t get no respect (Salon)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Discussion over the fate of Jolenta, at the Gene Wolfe facebook appreciation site

Patrick McEvoy-Halston November 28 at 10:36 AM Why does Severian make almost no effort to develop sustained empathy for Jolenta -- no interest in her roots, what made her who she was -- even as she features so much in the first part of the narrative? Her fate at the end is one sustained gross happenstance after another... Severian has repeated sex with her while she lay half drugged, an act he argues later he imagines she wanted -- even as he admits it could appear to some, bald "rape" -- but which certainly followed his  discussion of her as someone whom he could hate so much it invited his desire to destroy her; Severian abandons her to Dr. Talus, who had threatened to kill her if she insisted on clinging to him; Baldanders robs her of her money; she's sucked at by blood bats, and, finally, left at death revealed discombobulated of all beauty... a hunk of junk, like that the Saltus citizens keep heaped away from their village for it ruining their preferred sense
Post a Comment
Read more

Salon discussion of "Almost Famous" gang-rape scene

Patrick McEvoy-Halston: The "Almost Famous'" gang-rape scene? Isn't this the film that features the deflowering of a virgin -- out of boredom -- by a pack of predator-vixons, who otherwise thought so little of him they were quite willing to pee in his near vicinity? Maybe we'll come to conclude that "[t]he scene only works because people were stupid about [boy by girl] [. . .] rape at the time" (Amy Benfer). Sawmonkey: Lucky boy Pull that stick a few more inches out of your chute, Patrick. This was one of the best flicks of the decade. (sawmonkey, response to post, “Films of the decade: ‘Amost Famous’, R.J. Culter, Salon, 13 Dec. 2009) Patrick McEvoy-Halston: @sawmonkey It made an impression on me too. Great charm. Great friends. But it is one of the things you (or at least I) notice on the review, there is the SUGGESTION, with him being so (rightly) upset with the girls feeling so free to pee right before him, that sex with him is just further presump
3 comments
Read more

Too late -- WE SAW your boobs

I think we're mostly familiar with ceremonies where we do anointing. Certainly, if we can imagine a context where humiliation would prove most devastating it'd probably be at a ceremony where someone thought themselves due an honor -- "Carrie," "Good Fellas." "We labored long to adore you, only so to prime your hope, your exposure … and then rather than a ladder up we descended the slops, and hoped, being smitten, you'd judged yourself worthless protoplasm -- a nothing, for letting yourselves hope you might actually be something -- due to be chuted into Hades or Hell." Ostensibly, nothing of the sort occurred during Oscars 2013, where the host, Seth Macfarlane, did a number featuring all the gorgeous Oscar-winning actresses in attendance who sometime in their careers went topless, and pointed this out to them. And it didn't -- not quite. Macarlane would claim that all obscenity would be directed back at him, for being the geek so pathe
Post a Comment
Read more