SF Should Make Us Think, Not Drool
Our thanks to Morjana for this article from SciFiWeekly:LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
SF Should Make Us Think, Not Drool
I was encouraged in reading Ms. Catanzaro's note "Parents Must Be the
Ultimate Judge." I agree that we, as parents, must decide what is
appropriate for our children. After watching Revenge of the Sith, my
wife and I concluded that we would not even consider purchasing the
first three episodes on DVD. Unfortunately, my children did see the
movie. On the positive side, though, they were both disturbed by
several of the scenes and felt that the movie would have been better
without them.
One point to Mr. Olenick's note "We Must Make Our Own Choices": Do
explicit sex and foul writing make a show more interesting? There are
shows that are quite popular without going there.
Which brings me to the comments of Mr. Vogel's post "Sex Is Part of a
Profitable Formula." Sex may sell, but it's not the only thing that
sells. Stargate SG-1 does little more than suggest at intimacy.
Farscape, Star Trek: TNG and Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 are some
other popular SF series that didn't need to be explicit in sex or use
colorful metaphors as part of regular conversation to get their
ratings. Other non-SF shows have success without these hooks as well,
Monk, Law & Order, Nero Wolf Mysteries and many others. The shows
that are successful for a very long time hold an audience based on
quality writing of interesting stories. Though there are some shows
that use explicit behavior as a major plot feature do achieve
notoriety, they are few. My concern is not necessarily that BSG uses
them, which I think they really don't need to, but that the use may
be to the detriment of the series. The focus should be on telling a
good and interesting story that people will debate the issues that
the characters confront, not on how to fit another sex scene in each
week's episode. SF should make us think, not just drool.
Matt Seibert
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