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| The usual suspects dominated the screen this summer. |
Another summer of screen blockbusters is
nearly over and once again the multiplex has been dominated by comic book
heroes, post-apocalyptic survivors and teen warriors of the future. Though romance
has been generally lacking in these action-packed thrill rides, science fiction
has certainly been featured, even in the speculative nature of disaster movies
like SAN ANDREAS.
The small screen, too, is full of SF—from the
SYFY Channel’s more traditional space opera KILLJOYS to ABC’s Earth-based THE
WHISPERS. There’s even a soap opera about
space (ABC’s THE ASTRONAUT’S WIVES CLUB, about the women behind the men of the
Mercury space program).
Obviously Hollywood thinks SF sells. What’s
so appealing about the genre for film and television?
--SF is visual. Spaceships! Monsters!
Disasters! The end of the world! Superheroes and arch villains battling it out
in the middle of cities, destroying everything! Cool tech and even cooler
special effects and makeup. The guys (and, make no mistake, they are
overwhelmingly male) on the technical side of filmmaking love this stuff and
delight in one-upping each other. No other genre gives them the same
opportunities.
--SF lends itself to simple plots. Good guys
vs. bad guys. Monsters/aliens vs. humans. Superhero vs. super villain. Etc. The exceptions
to this rule in the last few years can be numbered on maybe two hands—GRAVITY,
INTERSTELLAR, HER, LUCY, a few others. They get lost in the avalanche of
mindless fare at the multiplex and, with the exception of the first two titles,
are seen by only a handful of dedicated SF film fans. Simple is best,
especially on the big screen. More room for explosions. (Television fares
better in this regard, since paying for big effects is a problem for TV
networks. A show like DEFIANCE or PERSON OF INTEREST can focus on relationships
and ideas and find a faithful audience on the small screen.)
--SF skews young. The majority of the
movie-going audience today consists of teenagers and young adults. (People like
me, who can remember when comic books were not an art form, but something you
could buy for a dime at the corner drug store, tend to watch movies at home.) This
audience is most likely to be drawn to stories and heroes taken from the media
it is already familiar with—comics and graphic novels, television, retro
movies, young adult science fiction bestsellers like The Hunger Games and its clones.
--SF skews male. Yes, I know, dear reader,
many of you are female and love SF, too, but Hollywood doesn’t much care about
that. The powers that be have convinced themselves that men drive the
entertainment decisions—including what gets seen on date night and what
is watched on TV or computer or tablet. Hollywood has decided (presumably by
market research, but who knows?) that, with some exceptions, “audiences” don’t want to see women in
lead roles, they don’t want films by or about
women, and they damn sure don’t want films in which women play the heroes. Science fiction, in which, traditionally, the men dominate, gives Hollywood what they think they
want—and lots of it. The percentage of women starring in, directing, producing
and writing movies and television has actually dropped since the 1990’s. We can only hope the success of films
like MAD MAX:FURY ROAD (starring the mesmerizing Charlize Theron) will change
some minds.
In the SFR community we have long hoped that
the trending love for SF on the screen will open a door for us with both readers
and the not-so-Invisible-Hand of the market. But that has not happened so far,
and I fear it will never happen. The problem is that the science fiction we see
onscreen--certainly the SF we see on the big screen, though to a lesser extent
the SF we see on TV--has little similarity to the kind of SF we are writing. In
general, our stories are much more diverse, female-centered, character-driven
and complex than the majority of stories we see in the multiplex. Then, of
course, there’s the romance, which is most often only hinted at in the theater.
We have assumed all along that the audience
for SF on the screen is the same as the audience for SFR in readable form, or
at least that there is a great deal of crossover. That’s based on the anecdotal
evidence that lots of us like SF movies and read SFR, too. We need to determine
whether the majority of the movie-going audience is really open to what we’re selling,
and, if so, how do we reach that audience? If our basic assumption is not true
about this film/SFR connection, then who are we really writing for? The answer
has to be greater than “people like us,” lest we continue to sell books to only
each other.
I don’t have the answer to
these questions. If I did, I’d be Number One on Amazon. But if any of you has
some insight, I beg you to share.
Cheers, Donna
