 |
Ivan in the Infinity Room:
science fiction has taken over real life.
|
This
concept of mine was covered more in-depth last time, but in a nutshell,
there is a notion in film appreciation that hasn’t been identified, or at least
labeled and codified yet, what I call the
Stealth Science Fiction Film.
Some
flicks, the minute you eyeball ’em, you know they’re sci-fi.
Alien planets, or monsters, or intergalactic space federations. It’s obvious,
whether the flick is high-brow (Arrival) or low-brow (Galaxy of
Terror).
Others,
not so much… It has to be pointed out that they are science fiction…. Last
time, I noted how certain movies strongly avoided the SF label, as that was
considered by the “cognoscenti” to be juvenile or indicative of base frivolity,
and if you were making a serious dramatic film and wanted to be taken sincerely,
letting your movie get called sci-fi might not actually help.
Last time
we looked at these Stealth Sci-Fi Flicks:
—Earthquake
(1974)
—Dr. No
(1962)
—The
President’s Analyst (1967)
—The China
Syndrome (1979)
—Seconds
(1966)
Today, it
will be a much more eclectic group, dealing less with the technocratic status
quo and its disruptions—and how those disruptions are dealt with by agents
of/within those systems (as all of the last entry’s film dealt with to some
extent),  |
This is what Consensus Reality
is all about...
|
and more with lonely outsiders and how they must deal with the
pressures from The Normals and their damnable, vicious Consensus Reality….
Each of
this entry’s films is a stand-out, and all are quite political in their own
ways. They are all worth seeing if you still haven’t yet.
The movies
on today’s list haven’t avoided the SF label so much, as, if anything, they have
been mislabeled, or simply overlooked as to belonging to the genre.
In
alphabetical order:
—Carrie
(1976)
—The Man
in the White Suit (1951)
—Punishment
Park (1971)
—Repo Man
(1984)
*[Yeah, yeah,
yeah… SPOILERS, dude.]*
