Swimming Up Mainstream
A few weeks ago I was channel surfing and came across a showing of Braveheart. This is not all that surprising; the movie’s been on cable for a while now. What was more than a little surprising was that the movie was playing on the Sci Fi Channel. Now, I’ve heard that Braveheart plays fast and loose with historical fact, but that alone doesn’t qualify something as science fiction, does it?
As it turns out, the Braveheart showing was just part of a general strategy by Sci Fi to try to broaden its programming. Alleged psychics, dream interpreters, and scary hoax-meisters have all been added to the network’s schedule over the last few years, and network head Bonnie Hammer has given numerous quotes in interviews that suggest the network wants to be less oriented to spaceships, technology and other things that people might think of as science fiction. That change in direction has probably contributed to the cancellation of (what used to be) Sci Fi’s flagship series Farscape, along with Sci Fi’s decision to pass on two possible series by Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski. Needless to say, there are quite a few disgruntled fans out there who wonder why a network called the Sci Fi Channel would abandon science fiction in order to pursue the mainstream.
Me, I have another question: how did we ever get to the point where science fiction isn’t considered the mainstream?
Take a look at the top box office grosses of all time. Of the top 25, 11 are science fiction movies. (I count superhero movies Spider-Man and Batman as SF, but feel free to quibble.) If we add fantasy and horror, two genres that are usually linked with science fiction, we get up to 20 out of 25, and I’m not even counting The Lion King in there. Before Will Smith became Will Smith, he looked at that list and realized that if he wanted to break through to the widest possible audience, he’d better get himself into a movie with some creatures in it. Independence Day and Men in Black later, I’d say that was a pretty good call.
In other genres the matter’s not quite so lopsided, but speculative fiction still makes a strong showing. In the book world, Michael Crichton routinely hits the bestseller list, as do a number of the Star Wars and Star Trek spinoff novels. And of course, there’s no need to talk about the literary exploits of a certain hobbit or a bespectacled teenage wizard.
In television, The X-Files managed to garner Emmy nominations and some of Fox’s best ratings. The Star Trek franchise kick started both the syndicated first-run market in the 80s and UPN in the 90s. Buffy the Vampire Slayer helped make the WB’s reputation, and now its top-ranked series is Smallville, a reinterpretation of the Superman story. Ironically, one of 2002’s top-rated cable series was USA’s The Dead Zone, based on a Stephen King novel and developed by Trek vet Michael Piller. I say ironic because USA is a sister network to Sci Fi – so the Universal television group had one of its biggest successes with a science fiction series that didn’t run on the Sci Fi Channel (or at best, ran in reruns). This certainly does suggest that the problem here is one of perception, not one of content. The mainstream is so full of science fiction that it’s quite possible people pass right over it, or that they just don’t think of it as science fiction.
I admit I am puzzled by how this is possible, but then I’m always puzzled by prominent examples of cognitive dissonance. I suppose that some of the aversion to recognizing science fiction as part of the mainstream comes from the stereotypes of SF favorites as reaching a ‘cult’ audience, but I’m not sure the facts bear that idea out. Attack of the Clones grossed around $300 million dollars last year. The average ticket price was somewhere around 6 bucks, so that’s around 50 million people buying tickets to go see a science fiction film. If a professional baseball team is really lucky, it’ll get somewhere around 3 million people to buy tickets over the course of a season. (Granted, somewhere around 130 million people watch the Super Bowl, but that’s on free TV.)
The images we see of the more dedicated fans with their costumes and mastery of minutiae probably doesn’t help SF’s appeal, and might lead some folks to downplay their appreciation of the genre. On the other hand, I can’t recall the last time I saw a Star Wars fan paint himself green and go shirtless in the middle of January, but it happens every year around here during football season. And we won’t even talk about sports fans and their love of statistics, because that’s been done to death.
I almost think part of the problem is that science fiction is too popular. I mean, you take just about any phenomenon, you can find people who are dedicated fans of it. They may not be noticeable because there aren’t many of them, but they’re there. I had a teacher in high school who collected telephones and telephone paraphernalia. He went to telephone conventions and everything. Heck, eBay started as a community of Pez collectors. But you don’t see people saying that people who like candy or use telephones aren’t part of the mainstream. Science fiction has such a wide appeal, I think, that its diehard fans reach a critical mass and garner attention. People react to that image more than the actual content of what they see and enjoy in the media. That’s just silly, but sadly, it’s also typical.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.