Comments | lucilla_1789: longer take on the "Children of Men" movie and cultural sensitivities

lucilla_1789

longer take on the "Children of Men" movie and cultural sensitivities

Jan 27, 2010 19:08

I used to be able to enjoy movies without seeing any sort of ideology behind it, but years of dabbling in academic humanism and, well, growing up, must have made me sensitive to allegories, subtexts and preachy plots. These days I get frustrated about any sort of political message immediately - not only about these hippie films, which I tend to ( Read more... )

Comments 3

_dai_ January 28 2010, 23:35:10 UTC

I was just in a seminar where I was told that SF as a genre is metaphoric - the whole idea of it is to relate to the real world. So I suppose that explains the weed and clumsy political references... I don't agree with that theory though. There's some SF that's allegorical on purpose, but it doesn't apply to all SF. Of course all literature relates to the real world in some way, otherwise it would be impossible to understand, but it kind of bugs me that what I think of as speculative fiction should be just one great big metaphor...

The Brits still haven't realized that they aren't an empire any more and didn't beat the Nazis all alone. It's quite fascinating, actually. That national pride comes so naturally to them that they don't even think about it. A bit different from the self-deprecating Finns...

lucilla_1789 January 29 2010, 00:27:42 UTC

At the same time they seem to think that they were the most horrible empire ever and the only ones who have taken over other people's land. No country is that unique of a snowflake, if the right size ( ... )

_dai_ January 29 2010, 02:21:47 UTC

I guess it makes sense to make the story an allegory, and a pretty transparent one at that, if you want to attract a wide audience. People want to feel clever and that's what happens when the reader gets the allegory. But I hate it that every story HAS to be interpreted as allegorical... To me, universal questions are a lot more interesting. I don't mind the political allegory if it's done in a clever, subtle way and if it's not the only point of the story.

No questions about translation this late in the night! That's a real gem, I can't think of an equivalent...