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Conspiracy Theory is the New Sci-Fi?
Growing up, I pretty much gorged myself in the realms of what they nowadays call somberly “speculative fiction.” They didn’t used to call it that though. It used to just be called sci-fi or fantasy. And in my lifetime, such things have not only increased in popularity, but in cultural acceptance. I just narrowly missed out on the good old days of sci-fi where it was virtually synomous with crap in the minds of upstanding citizens. Instead, we’ve come to a place where sci-fi (like so much of pop culture) has been so completely accepted that they even have analytical courses about it at universities.
In some ways I think this is really positive: mainly because it means that amazing works of imagination have entered a place of a certain reverence within our culture. Read in another light though, it means that sci-fi has been largely co-opted by mainstream culture, which makes for a lot of assy work being pushed on us. The trick to sci-fi though is that it’s always been closely connected to trash. Pulp novels were so called because they were printed on ultra-cheap stock and practically given away. In an important sense, I think this is actually where a lot of the power comes from with sci-fi. These are stories coming in from the edge. They may be crazy and unbelievable, but they’re supposed to be. They make us look at life in new ways.
Over the years, I’ve lost track of speculative fiction as a field. Just too much comes out to keep track of, and I’ve gotten involved in other things. For me, conspiracy theory has become the new sci-fi. And I think in some ways, this pattern is being replicated across culture. Back in the day, sci-fi stories used to act almost like prophecy. They would extrapolate modern situations into possible ends as warnings. With conspiracy theory though, it’s almost like we’ve finally caught up with the predictions. No longer are the extrapolations one or two generations in the future. They are happening right now, and they’ve been happening all along.
The conjoined twin of sci-fi, of course, is fantasy. And I’ll admit I was always a bit more into wizards and swords than space-men and ray guns. If I had to extend my analogy further, I’d say that while conspiracy theory is the new sci-fi, the occult is the new fantasy. While sci-fi and fantasy make up the academic label “speculative fiction,” conspiracy theory and the occult are the bastards who’ve banded together into what they now call “speculative non-fiction.”
Borders bookstore even has a section now labelled “speculation.” When did this change happen? When did sci-fi become spec-fi? When did it go from being trashy to being merely formulaic and imitative? When did conspiracy theory and the occult swoop in to fill the gap? Is there a danger in making conspiracy theory too “respectable” and accepted? Would it strip away some of its inherent value as a counter-cultural process? Anyway, I have to run, but I’ll try to write more on this later… any thoughts on this are certainly welcome. Specifically: If you were/are into sci-fi/fantasy - do you feel like this correlates somehow to your interest in conspiracy/occult stuff?
- A Definition of Conspiracy Theory
- Conspiracy Theory, Parapolitics, Whining
- The Cowardice of Conspiracy
- Conspiracy Eats Itself
- Conspiracy & Myth
- Prev: Conspiracy Theory As Reformation
- Next: The Templar Pope?
May 24th, 2005 at 6:52 pm
Sounds as though it may be the Hollywood-ization of the occult and conspiracy theory. Driving to work this morning, I was thinking about how mainstream media has monopolized on the close call, the hanging-by-a-thread action, the suspense driven encounters. Of course, this is an easy way to get people to gasp, and the example that first came to mind is that scene in Last Action Hero where Schwarzenegger’s character ducks down and the axe from that one-eyed guy beautifully floats through the air, missing Arnie’s face by a hair’s breadth.
The CIA and American military are other good examples. They’re portrayed by Hollywood as the stereotypical ass-kicking, we-can-do-no-wrong World Police. In fact, the CIA makes lots and lots of foibles that can be researched in any library, and the U.S. army is good at getting itself blown up (and just last year, “accidentally” blew up some Canadian troops and have never offered an apology).
Last example: kung fu movies.
I am not in the least afraid of the wider audience coming to the occult, I can only hope something good will come of it. On the other hand, this dumbing down of its content to such past references, such as The Exorcist and countless other much worse knock-offs, will definitely taint it’s already difficult media image. This results in censure and fear.
The only thing worse than a lack of information is misinformation.
May 24th, 2005 at 9:31 pm
[…] conspiracy theory as light entertainment Tim Boucher has a post on the possibility of conspiracy theory being the new sci-fi. This […]
May 25th, 2005 at 12:13 am
With conspiracy theory though, it’s almost like we’ve finally caught up with the predictions.
I too have long wondered where the real and the fantasy intersect. It’s obvious that when taken in by a hemispherically brained subject the intersection happens within the physcial and mental body of the individual self. But what are we to make of an intersection of news/fact and sci-fi/fantasy that occurs outside of the synthsizing nature of the human psyche? What is left for a populous to synthesize on their own when it becomes spoonfed? Sci-Fi author Charlie Stross wrote a good blog post about this a week or two ago about a plot device known as a Chekov’s Gun. He concludes his post by asking this profound question:
How do you go about creating a believable human protagonist who is capable of destroying the universe?
Oh Jesus. I feel another Subhumans song coming on. Yes I do. Written in oh, 1981 or so and probably their most well known song ever.
Mickey Mouse Is Dead
Mickey Mouse is dead
Got kicked in the head
Cos people got too serious
They planned out what they said
They couldn’t take the fantasy
They tried to accept reality
Analyzed the laughs
Cos pleasure comes in halves
The purity of comedy
They had to take it seriously
Changed the words around
Tried to make it look profound
The comedian is on stage
Pisstaking for a wage
The critics think he’s great
But the laughter turns to hate
Mickey Mouse is on T.V.
And the kids stare at the screen
But the pictures are all black and white
And the words don’t mean a thing
Cos Mummy’s got no money
And Daddy is in jail
He couldn’t afford the license
She couldn’t afford the bail
The kids out in the road
Their minds have all gone cold
Cos Mickey Mouse is dead
They shot him through the head
With ignorance and scorn
They believed in something new
They read the papers watched the films
And they thought they new the truth
But reality deceives
Whatever you believe
There’s always another idea
And theirs is based on fear
The fear of being sussed
For what you really are
The fear of being laughed at
When you go too far
They call it paranoia
You can laugh it away
Until you come to realize
That everyone’s the same
People hide their problems
Under faces of contempt
They hide them ’til it kills them
And no one is exempt
Not even you
Look what you done to Mickey Mouse
May 25th, 2005 at 12:29 am
Sci-fi freak since age 12. Major influences: 2001, empire strikes back, and some pulp novel about a boy who discovers he’s a robot. Common theme: what if everything you knew was wrong? Sci-fi, and my intense distrust of religion and government, sent me off on the gnostic journey. Interestingly, the sci-fi I like best has a gnostic / occult element to it [pkd, matrix].
What if everything you knew was wrong? This question, practically my definition of the gnostic journey, underlies both conspiracy theory and occult genres, and is behind the best sci-fi. Because I question everything, I constantly suspect that I’m being bullshitted. Sci-fi, conspiracy and occult genres are outlets for that suspicion. They allow the exploration of alternative narratives to consensus reality.
Science fiction became speculation when science stopped speculating and started dictating, and people realized that the appeal of sci-fi all along was not the science and technology as much as the speculation itself, and the enormous sense of scale such speculation evokes. Maybe we no longer care about science but have a resurgent interest in power and spirituality [wonder why?], hence the current popularity of conspiracy and occult genres.
I still feel 12 in a way, perhaps due to having received no initiation rites [or perhaps because I can still not be certain that I’m not a robot]. Has my gnostic journey thru sci-fi, conspiracy theory and occult worlds been a subconscious attempt at self-initiation in the absence of such rites?
Sorry for the rant but you really got me thinking there.
Specifically, my answer to your question is yes.
May 25th, 2005 at 12:36 am
Oh shit, I forgot about this post Stross wrote in April. It’s even better and more explicative of the conspiracy/sci-fi phenomenon. As he says:
For some reason, the USA didn’t produce any nominees this year. As a large chunk of the nominations were received from American voters, and British voters are happy to vote for American nominees, it’s clearly not a case of nationalist sour grapes. So what went wrong? Why did the smaller country, whose SF/fantasy output is dwarfed by that of the USA (much as its population is — by a 1:5 ratio) sweep the shortlist?
Here’s my speculation: American SF is going through a gloom-laden period induced by external social conditions, much as British SF did in the 1947-79 period (and differently, in the 1980-92 period). Extrapolative SF is often used by writers as a mirror for reflecting our concerns about the present on the silver screen of the future. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and “The Puppet Masters” were artefacts of the late 1940’s/early 1950’s paranoia about communist infiltration. “Fugue for a Darkening Island” was a dismal if-this-goes-on dirge played to the tune of Enoch Powell. “Neuromancer” was 1980’s corporate deracination hooked up to an overdose of MTV, mainlining on hidden assumptions of monetarism. When SF is at its most overtly predictive — especially when it speaks of the impending future — it is talking about the present, capturing the zeitgeist and projecting it forward. (It takes a very special kind of imagination to capture tomorrow’s zeitgeist, and all too often it goes unnoticed because it’s just too damn weird to understand.)
He then goes on to earnestly speculate about what’s going here in America from the standpoint of having first hand experience with Thatcherism and the bonafide end of the British Empire. Interesting.
May 25th, 2005 at 1:22 am
Check this out.
C-level unveils Waco Resurrection, its first chapter of Endgames, a new 3D multiplayer computer game series based on alternative utopias and apocalyptic moments.
Via this metafilter thread.
May 25th, 2005 at 1:49 am
Personally, I believe Sci-Fi to be the resurrection of acceptable mythology, and I emphasize acceptable. Mythology has never left us, but it was nearly wiped out, as Joseph Campbell pointed out in an essay from the late 60s. It was nearly wiped out by science and monotheism (Campbell specifically pointed out Christianity).
To illuminate, what made up the old mythology of tribalistic, Occidental, and Oriental belief structures? A heavy sense of the metaphysical. Spirits, demons, gods and demi-gods, etc. All of these, though, were connected to nature, connected to this world. They controlled and could be controlled (magick, etc). If they weren’t found in natural objects like the trees, the sky, the ocean, they were found in the stars.
And the base myth of mythology, the myth that allows a belief structure to hold any amount of power, is the hero myth. Metaphysical gods are essential to the occult belief structures because a mortal human hero could not pass into the realm of the divine unless the divine was somehow connected to the natural realm (thus why the Greek gods are on Mt. Olympus). If you kill the hero myth, the occult, or anything structured around a mythos, falls to shreds.
Thus when science showed that the other planets were just like earth, just another planet, and showed that this solar system is just like everything else, the metaphysical gods of the cosmos were destroyed. Science later expelled the metaphysical nature from everything else in this world. Everything had been “explained” by our reason and intellect.
Monotheism, and specifically the rise of Christianity, further drives this point home. With a supernatural god, there is no connection between man and the divine. God is above the natural realm, god is above man, and man is petty and worthless. Furthermore, instead of the hero myth being used as a metaphor for man’s ability to rise above, the hero myth of Christianity, Christ himself, kills the hero myth. They call him “the one, true myth”, the saviour. Man supposedly can’t rise above, but must instead rely on something else to be saved. This notion, added with science and reason kills the hero, and turns the occult into an “evil” pawn of “Satan”. This is the basis for the story of Don Quixote; the death of the hero.
Sci-Fi offers, in this day and age, a way for the occult, for the mythos to work its way back into the human consciousness (it was always there in the unconscious mind, waiting to be set free). By working in the field of science fiction (as well as fantasy), one does not have to utilize the singular, absolute, and tyrannical views of a monotheistic setting. Religion doesn’t have to play a role, and if it does (as in the case of the Jedi/Force in Star Wars), it doesn’t have to conform to a specific earthly religion. In Sci-Fi, almost anything is acceptable, nowadays, because we are slowly discovering that, as you said, sci-fi is almost prophetic. Perhaps it is merely the creative and intuitive right brain reaching out to the logical and narrow-minded left brain. Through science, the creativity of the human mind, the mythos, has found a way to relate to the reason-based left. Thus mythology has returned in an acceptable venue. The gods are no longer necessarily “gods”, but perhaps aliens who have set themselves up as “gods” (Stargate, Babylon 5, etc). Thus the sci-fi hero pushes into the realm of the alien, the advanced (the machines in the Matrix Revolutions) to save humanity. To save humanity we must move beyond just Earth, we must move into the realm we do not currently understand (psychadelics and the circuits of the right brain?).
I said acceptable because Sci-Fi has become acceptable through authors like Orson Welles and Jules Verne, authors who stretched our imaginations and led the frontier of science. Fantasy has never become fully accepted because it doesn’t quite relate to “reality”. It’s also too easy for people negatively stigmatize those connected to fantasy because of the term fantasy (whereas sci-fi has the concrete and reasonable term science attached to it). Likewise, conspiracy theory has a negative stigma attached to it, as well as a few psychological “disorders”, so it isn’t necessarily accepted.
Personally I believe that conspiracy theory won’t, or at least, shouldn’t replace Sci-Fi. I believe that we need sci-fi, fantasy, the occult, and conspiracy theory to push the boundaries of our potential. We have to use ALL OF THEM. To rely on just one would, IMO, result in failure, failure to rise above, to fulfill the hero’s journey/quest (which is a part of all 4).
I’ll end with this. What if humanity’s potential is actually infinity, so would call it reunification with the World Soul, SELF, Tao, etc, while others would call it godhood. Same thing. What if that was humanity potential? What if the Gnostics were right? What if Christ came to show us HOW to become like gods (or reunite with the indescribable self)? What if myth is just a way of expanding our horizons and identifying the Archons, the Demi-urge, the “evil”, etc? What if through gradually expanding, say, sci-fi (and then the old parts become reality), we reach the point where instead of becoming very powerful Jedi, we become ALL-Powerful entities, infinite entities? If the mind can dream it, can we reach it?
May 25th, 2005 at 3:02 am
[…] I was just speaking with my friend John (who writes New World Border) about this whole sci-fi/conspiracy thing I started in on. We came up with a pret […]
May 25th, 2005 at 4:08 pm
Has my gnostic journey thru sci-fi, conspiracy theory and occult worlds been a subconscious attempt at self-initiation in the absence of such rites?
I now see much of my fantasy-inspired playing as a clumsy form of ‘magick’ (braodly defined).
May 26th, 2005 at 2:06 pm
I think Jon Headlee hit the nail on the head there. The beauty of the self-aware Hero’s Journey is that as one becomes aware of the mythic structures prevalent in all aspects of hir life — on the three levels of introspection, interpersonal, and social interactions — then one can fully explore the potential and strength that comes from understanding myth.
The difficult part is actually using one’s will to push on in the face of hardship, to fully embrace and endure those “Dark Nights of the Soul” and be selfless enough to embrace the inevitable change that will be brought with the succession of such so-called Journeys.
Sci-fi and fantasy, among other fictions (e.g. Fight Club, Jacob’s Ladder) give back to us what monotheism has taken: a symbolic map to the ontological game. Joseph Campbell is probably closer to a saint than most ordained in that he laid out a path for all of us to explore our potentiality, to continue pushing, changing, growing, etc.
What I have found, being 26 and decently aware of my involvement with the myths that surround me in my community, job, culture, etc, is that every time I embrace a new angle to my Hero’s Journey, I become more a) selfless and less discerning between what many consider black & white situations, b) curious as to the outcome, both in manifest reality and as character shifts within myself, and c) I do, in fact, bring back the “elixir” and share my inspirations with others in my circle that care to listen. My confidence increases with the advent of more experience with life situations, and that combines with knowledge of my constant pursuits to grant me that ultimate gift: wisdom.
May 26th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
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