In one of the greatest
episodes of Saturday Night Live which aired in the fall of 1987 the show
foreswore its opening monologue for a sketch that ranks among the greatest in
history. It also foresaw the future, however inadvertently.
William Shatner tells the
audience a story about the time he went to a Star Trek convention. The audience
is made up entirely of white males wearing glasses and taking the cliched form
of the sci-fi nerd. Phil Hartman, the moderator, introduces what would later be
called ‘red shirts’ to oohs and aahs. Then Shatner comes on stage. The audience
tries to ask him trivia questions he does seem to know. Then he takes on a
jovial tone: “You know I’ve been attended these conventions for nearly twenty
years and there’s something I’ve always wanted to say: Get a life, you
people!”
The laugh and applause
Shatner gets at the delivery is one of the great moments in the show’s history
and it continues at that level as he lays waste to their pretensions. “It’s
just a TV show,” he says. Then he degrades the fanbase. “You there, have you
ever kissed a woman?” The fan looks down. “Move out of your parents’ basements.
Get a real job. It’s just a TV show.”
A dubious fan – I don’t
know whether he’s portrayed by Jon Lovitz or Kevin Nealon gets the courage to
ask: “So, you’re saying we should pay more attention to the movies?”
Shatner shouts back: “No.” At this point, the moderator gets to a
dumbshow argument with Shatner while his assistant desperately tries to do
damage control. At some point, a man who is clearly supposed to be Shatner’s
agent comes on stage and whispers into his ear. It’s not clear what he’s saying
but Shatner then immediately goes to the microphone and says: “Of course, that was
just an imitation of the evil Captain Kirk.” His agent has to whisper in
his ear not only the episode title but where it is in canon and the fans
immediately relax and start laughing.
This sketch is a classic
by any standard even if went to every cliché not only of the Star Trek fans but
all sci-fi fans in general. However, when you look at so much of what discussion
of pop culture is on the internet these days, you realize that so much of the
world is in an eternal Star Trek Convention and no one will just speak truth.
Now let me be clear. I am
not mocking fandom in any form; I would be a hypocrite if I did. As someone who
spent so much of his teenage years obsessed with The X-Files, his
twenties – and beyond – with Lost, and these days makes his living
arguing for the series he is sometimes unabashedly a fanboy for, to bite the
hand that feeds him would be a bridge too far. The difference, however, between
a critic and a fan these days is crucial. A critic has to sometimes separate
their love for a show and face its reality when it comes to quality. The fan
will defend their show to the death. And in the age of the internet, these
battles have become nearly as toxic as everything else in our society.
Trying to figure out when
exactly this became an endless battle may be impossible to determine. However,
we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of one of the most famous remakes
in the history of television – a show considered by critics as one of the great
shows in recent history - and one where
it’s pretty clear the opening shots were fired.
Like so many of our pop
culture wars, it started with something truly terrible. I have seen a few
episodes of the ‘classic’ Battlestar Galactica and its truly
wretched. The special effects are
horrible, the costumes unrealistic, the acting and writing miserable. It’s kind
of amazing it lasted a full season. There are far better shows from that era
that would have deserved a remake – The Invaders, Kolchak: The Night Stalker
– and other syndicated series later on that did a better adaptation – Alien
Nation, War of the Worlds.
But fans did not let go of
it and it kept getting considered being brought back for more than two decades.
Finally what was then known as the Sci-Fi channel ordered a reimagining by producers
Roland D. Moore and David Eick. They made clear early on they had no intention
of doing that version.
While there were
references to the original characters -
William Adama, Apollo, Gaius Baltar, - Moore and Eick had every intention of making
their version of Battlestar Galactica different. The world that it took
place in would involve a realistic depiction of the War in Terror. They would
have a female president: Sharon Roslin (Mary McConnell). They would have robot Cylons
but there would also be human models. Most importantly – and unforgivably in
the minds of some fans – they would flip the gender of Starbuck, played by Dirk
Benedict in the first version; Katee Sackhoff in the second.
From the moment the series
began in 2003, there was always a base of fans who virulently protested it.
They would come up with the term “GINO” to refer to it (Galactica in Name
Only). Moore and Eick actually said some of their most frequent viewers were
those who chose to hate watch it and tell everybody how inferior it was.
As I have said in numerous
articles I have never been the sort to outright dismiss a work of television or
film simply because its origins are in a comic book or franchise that is
considered mainstream. That is my job as a critic, and to many of my ilk
outright condemn them without thinking. What has always been impossible for me
to get my mind around for more than twenty years is the ridiculously fan base
devotion to the idea that any variation to the theme of a show or a movie that
they grew up watching has ‘ruined it.’ I made this point very clear in my rave
about Andor two weeks back so I won’t go into the details again; you
know the arguments are they don’t.
However, there’s something
I find just as infuriating. It’s the counterreaction by the other side – yes,
those on the left – every time the ‘traditional fan bases’ starts reacting
badly to any new variation on the series. This was particularly clear with Rings
of Power and Wheel of Time but
I could give too many examples of this. They seemed determined to shout louder
than the trolls that they were upset because people of color were playing elves
or that their were female Ghostbusters then whether the series they were so busy
cheerleading actually had any artistic merit or indeed deserved to exist in the
first place. As someone who is exhausted – truly exhausted – from seeing so
many articles about the fact that one of the new crew members of the Enterprise
is gay or that if you don’t like Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, you’re
part of the patriarchy, I really wonder why
we keep having these fake battles when there are so many real ones. Not the
least of which is that eighty percent of every movie or TV show these days is a
remake of something and we can’t get anything genuinely original these days. Do
you think I really wanted to even look at The Mandalorian, let alone be forced
to compare it artistically to Better Call Saul or The Crown? But
apparently that’s what now has to be considered great TV because everybody in
the world wants these battles.
And I’m not alone in this.
Anthony Hopkins just told the New Yorker that he didn’t consider his work in
the Thor films acting. In the final season of Barry, Bill Hader sent
a very clear message to the world when he had Sian Herder – the director of CODA
– essentially directed a Marvel movie and really hating herself. In a subtler
joke, that film became a franchise. That’s the world we live in.
So this is me, playing
William Shatner. And I’m going to yell at both sides equally.
First, to those of you who
are devoted to canon. How does having an African-American storm trooper or a
female Jedi ‘ruin’ Star Wars? You’ve spent the last fifteen years
shouted that the prequels ruined the franchise but apparently the idea of Ewan
McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi is apparently now an improvement over the
final three episodes! Ghostbusters was not a classic comedy the way that
The Princess Bride was; it was a silly eighties movies that Bill Murray
managed to carry. (He was a jerk to everybody in that movie, by the way.) Captain
Marvel was just a lousy movie, but it’s
not like the MCU was ever at the level of Casablanca or Bridge on the
River Kwai.
And the source material is
not ruined. The holy trinity can be found on TV really anywhere without
having to look that hard. You can read your old comic books if you really are
that desperate to see the real Supergirl or Ant-Man if you really need
to. Watch the DVDs of the original Battlestar Galactica if you somehow
thought that trying to set in a world you might recognized ‘spoiled it.’ Honestly,
you should probably be doing that anyway. Considering that any change in the
world of fandom is apparently the equivalent of a desecration of The Mona
Lisa, best to stay in your bubble.
And as to all you ‘social
justice warriors’ who somehow seem to think that Wonder Woman or Shang-Chi
is some kind of victory, give me a break. The world is burning down around
us – something that your more political colleagues spend just as much
time reminding us every chance they get – and you really think that its
some breaking of the glass ceiling if we were to get a black James Bond or that
Starbuck is a woman? At best, they are either interesting creative decisions or
an example of marketing. Nothing more. I’d be more interesting in fighting for gender
equality in studios or networks, but a female Muslim superhero that’s a
triumph for equality the world should get behind?
I have spent so much time
in this blog arguing the difference between cosmetic change and systemic
change. Having an African-American ancestor of a lead from Game of Thrones in
its prequel isn’t even a cosmetic change. It’s a marketing ploy. What does that
prove? African-Americans are capable of being as manipulative or violent or as
sexually deviant as everyone else in Westeros? (Yes, I hate Game of Thrones but
its still a valid point.) David Simon has done more for African-American
representation in a single episode of The Wire than the entire world of the
Seven Kingdoms. It really bothers me that this is a line you’ve chosen
to fight on, the same way you do for non-binary Jedis. (Don’t correct me if I’m
getting the nature of the character wrong; I’ve never watched Obi-Wan
Kenobi; I have no intention of doing so now.)
I am a non-combatant in
the pop culture wars because I do not believe this is a battle that I care
about or want to spend time in. But every time you decide that a series has to
be a battle for social justice versus purity to fandom, it makes the jobs of
people like me that much harder. Because whether you like or hate anything in
franchises is increasingly no longer dependent on its actual quality but what
side of the culture war you’re on. One can’t simply love the new version of The
Wonder Years because it is one of the most brilliant shows of the decade;
no, the only people who like it our woke. And if you hate Rings of Power because
it’s a poorly made series that has no really reason to exist, well, you’re some
combination of racist, sexist, homophobic or some combination.
I’m not wild that
everything in our world has to be viewed by some version of your identity and
not by its own merits. I’m appalled that people like me can’t do their jobs and
not become subject of loathing by one side, the other or both. Especially when
it has to do with things I really don’t care much about like Game of Thrones,
Star Wars or Star Trek. I don’t like it that everything’s a
battleground; I especially don’t like it when we’re fighting battles that are,
by any standard you want to use, meaningless.
In short, to everybody on
both sides fighting this, seriously: Get a life.
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