Star Trek or Star Wars?

Star Trek, of course–what kind of question is that?  Actually, if I’m going to write an essay, I should have more to say….

Star Trek, in its original incarnation (which I will henceforth refer to by the standard fan abbreviation TOS for “The Original Series”) began its prime-time network run on NBC in 1966, at which time I was three years old.  Its last season ended in 1969, at which time I was six, and about to begin the first grade.  I know Mom and Dad watched it, so I no doubt did, as well.  I’ve seen every episode multiple times since, and given that, it’s hard to sort out any genuine memories of the series’s original airing.

It doesn’t really matter, though.  Throughout my childhood and young adulthood, TOS was more or less constantly in syndication somewhere on one channel or another.  Every time it was available on any of the channels we got, I always watched it.  For reasons that are obscure, certain episodes (e.g. “The City on the Edge of Forever” and “A Piece of the Action”) were in very heavy rotation, whereas others (such as “Errand of Mercy” and the insanely elusive “The Mark of Gideon”) were rarely if ever aired.  I made it my goal to watch every one of the original seventy-nine episodes at least once.  I set this goal at the age of around twelve or thirteen, and it took into my mid-twenties to complete it, but complete it I did.  In the meantime, my involvement with Star Trek was expanding far beyond watching reruns.

MST3K: The Return

Awhile back, I wrote a series on Mystery Science Theater 3000.  My main focus was on what I saw as the archetypes of the Trickster and the Holy Fool that one could discern in the series.  However, I also talked a little bit about how I came to be a fan of the show, and my thoughts on the two hosts, Joel Hodgson and Mike Nelson.  The previous seasons have been around long enough that I assume everyone has seen them by now, and I won’t be discussing them, anyway.

As MST3K fans are doubtless aware, in April of 2017, the show, after many years off the air, returned with much fanfare and popular acclaim, as well as with new cast.  I watched the new season–the 11th–and enjoyed it.  It occurred to me that having written previously on MST3K, I should post something about its newest iteration.  However, alas, at that time, I had lapsed from regular blogging.  Of late, I have got back to at least periodic writing here at the Chequer-Board.  I decided, therefore, that it was high time that I should return to MST3K and to write about my thoughts on the revived show.

Spoiler Alert:  There will be mild spoilers for Season 11 below.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Index

Awhile back I wrote four posts on the series Mystery Science Theater 3000.  I’ve recently decided to writer another post, and more may follow in the future.  Therefore, I’ve decided to make an index page to get them all together in one place.  Enjoy!

Tricksters, Fools, and MST3K

Holy Fools

Pop Culture Tricksters

Joining MST3K Fandom and a Little About Joel and Mike

MST3K:  The Return

Joining MST3K Fandom and a Bit About Joel and Mike

This is a follow up to my posts here, here, and here.  This one will be much shorter, and will be talking more about the show itself, and not so much about its archetypal meaning.

I’m a likely and yet improbable fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  Having been born at the cusp of the Boomer Generation and Generation X, I’m in the target age group.  As a male and a science fiction fan, I’m certainly in the target demographic.  Despite this, it took me a long time to become an MST3K fan.

I remember running across it a few times in the early 90’s while looking for something to watch.  I couldn’t figure out what it even was at first.  After watching a few snatches of it, I originally thought it was something like What’s Up, Tiger Lily?  This was an early movie by Woody Allen in which he took a standard-issue Japanese spy drama, and dubbed it in English with totally new dialogue that turned it into a farcical spoof about the search for a secret egg salad recipe.  I had seen that as a kid and liked it; and when I first saw MST3K, I thought the voices of Joel and the bots were an overdub as in Tiger Lily.

Pop Culture Tricksters

L-r: Pee Wee Herman, Joel Hodgson, Mike Nelson, Weird Al Yankovic

I posed the question, “Could Joel or Mike on MST3K have been a chick?” (to be flip) over here, and answered, “No.”  On the way to justifying that answer I looked at the archetypes of the Trickster and the Holy Fool.  Now let’s bring it back to pop culture and apply it.

I think the host/captive on MST3K is really just a specific example of an archetype that occurs very commonly in pop culture.  Two other exemplars are Pee Wee Herman and Weird Al Yankovic.  There are others that spring to mind–for example, Rob Schneider, Chris Farley, and Ringo Starr have embodied aspects of the Trickster/Fool persona in movies and music–but the four I’m considering here are the best examples.  They are all about the same age and were at their peaks at approximately the same time.  More importantly, they all have embodied the archetypes more fully and consistently, and as a bigger part of their public persona, than the other actors and singers mentioned or for that matter than almost anyone else in pop culture.  There are also interesting parallels in their careers that I want to look at.

As one important proviso, I want to point out that when I speak of these worthies, I am speaking of their public personas, not their private lives, unless otherwise specified.  Thus, I’m not particularly interested in Paul Reubens or Joel Hodgson, but I’m very much interested in Pee Wee Herman and Joel Robinson, their on-screen characters.  Mike Nelson and Weird Al used their real names, but I am equally interested in their personas, not in them as individuals.

Tricksters, Fools, and MST3K

Some decade and half ago or so, I was having a conversation with a friend about Mystery Science Theater 3000.  He was a big fan, and though I’d always avoided it in the past, he’d managed to get me into it, too (that’s a long story in itself, and for another time).  We were discussing one of the big topics of MST3K fandom, namely Joel vs. Mike, and who might make a good third host should Mike leave and the show continue.  This was in the Mary Jo Pehl days, when she had replaced Trace Beaulieu as the main nemesis, playing Pearl Forester, the ostensible mother of Beaulieu’s Clayton Forrester (I guess I should note here that parts of this post are going to be very much “inside baseball” and that non-fans may need to go Googling some of this stuff).  My friend suggested the possibility of a female lead, putting forth Pehl as an example of the type of comedienne who could do so.  I disagreed.  I need to emphasize that I am all for equality and am proud to call myself a feminist.  However, there are some differences, obvious (men don’t bear children) and subtle (women are better at verbal skills, on average, men at spacial perception).  I didn’t have anything so exalted in mind here, though, and though I was adamant that it had to be a male in the lead role for MST3K, I couldn’t quite say why.

I thought about it on and off, and came up with some tentative thoughts on the matter, but never pursued them.  I even saved the original template of this post, since I thought the subject would be interesting, but never could quite come up with a clear exposition.  Finally, a few years ago I encountered the fascinating and excellent book The Trickster and the Paranormal, which had been suggested to me by Chris Knowles at the Secret Sun blog.  The book revolutionized my views on several things.  One of the less important, but still interesting, such things was the question of who should host MST3K.  Specifically, I now could articulate clearly why I thought, against my feminist impulses, that the prisoner on the Satellite of Love would have to be a guy.  The short answer, the unpacking of which will encompass the rest of this post, is that a girl would not fit the necessary Jungian archetype for the role.

Time after Time (after time after time after time): Serials, Series, and Pop Culture (Index)

Back here, in one of my articles on the decline and fall of television, I had the following to say:

Of course, it may be that we live in an already coarse and unforgiving age, and we just get the television we deserve.  That is depressingly possible.  Still, the popularity of reality TV, in my mind, is just one more instance not only of the debased state of public entertainment and discourse in our society, but of the exhaustion of creativity in pop culture in general.  That’s a broader topic that I’ll be visiting soon.

Well, it’s not that soon, as it’s turned out; but I do want to revisit it.  It’s going to take a series of posts to do so, though, so I’m setting this as an index page.

My basic thesis, which I’ll be examining in posts to come is this:  Repetition, in the form of series, serials, remakes, and quotation of various tropes is at one and the same time the most characteristic feature of modern pop culture (all genres) and also the sign of its decadence and creative decline.  I first thought about this in relation to comics.  Later, though, reading Joss Whedon’s execrable comic book continuation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I managed to shake myself out of the stupor at how the mighty had fallen long enough to apply the same ideas I had to TV.  Still later I thought the same notions were applicable to literature, and probably all of pop culture.  I have thought about this for few years and am now firmly of the opinion that less is more, and more is–well, more, but also that more is less, artistically, aesthetically, and even morally.

I will be looking at the issue from different angles and in reference to different genres.  I’ll be putting posts up sporadically, and it will be a little while in getting to the core of what I’m after; but I hope to make some interesting points, at least.  Stay tuned!

Do It Again! Pop Culture Prologue

DAFOTV V: Reality TV

Updated

In the last installment, I discussed how excessive bandwidth leads to what I called “junk genres”; that is, genres of TV show that require as little overhead, planning, writing, etc. as possible.  This is necessary because the amount of quality TV—or quality anything—is relatively fixed, whereas the 24/7 structure of availability that is now the norm has increased the amount of time to be filled.   I enumerated some examples of these genres, to be expanded on later.  This is what I want to do now, regarding what I consider one of the worst TV-related phenomena of the last decade or so:  reality television.

Certainly, plenty has been said about this seemingly ubiquitous genre.  Some very recent articles of interest are here, here, and here.  I want to speak a little more generally.

To clarify what I mean in this discussion by the term “reality TV”, I refer (briefly) to my previous DAFOTV post:

I include things like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, The Biggest Loser, the recent shows Jamie Oliver has been doing, and the various shows about hoarders, home makeovers, bridesmaids, etc. on TLC, Discovery, and such under the rubric of “reality TV”. I even include Dick Clark’s old Bloopers shows and America’s Funniest Home Videos.  They may not all purport to be documentaries (as An American Family did) or have an explicit game-show aspect (as Survivor does), but the basic principle of just letting the camera roll before “real people” is essentially the same. Also, I realize that it’s not all “real”–there’s jimmying and manipulating—but it’s still easier and cheaper than writing an actual drama or researching a documentary.

So what’s the problem with reality TV?

DAFOTV IV: Junk Genres

Having established the series of posts on this topic, I’m shortening “Decline and Fall of Television” as shown above and going from Arabic to Roman numerals to give a better feel.  Just so you know.

In the last installment, I discussed the issue of bandwidth. The idea is that television programming has evolved from three major commercial networks with about twenty hours of broadcasting daily, and only about three of those dedicated to original programming to dozens of networks which broadcast 24/7. Any creative endeavor is going to produce more mediocrity or outright junk than quality product; thus today, with much more time to be filled and the amount of outstanding creativity being probably no more than it ever was (i.e., in short supply), TV is going to produce and air more junk than ever before. In this post I want to extend this notion, from junk as such to entire junk genres.