science fiction

I thought it might have been the writer Colson Whitehead, author of the wonderful Intuitionist who likened the black experience in America to science fiction.  A "race" of people with dark skin, live side by side with a dominant race of whites.  Even though their only physical difference is skin color, they are treated completely differently, horribly, with fear and hatred. Sci-fi deals with race inequality all the time, either metaphorically or literally, from the old Star Trek episode where a race war is raging between people (painted) half black and half white depending on which side was which color; to Octavia Butler's meditations on degrees of "alienness," to Whitehead.  In the Intuitionist Whitehead creates a surreal world where race certainly is an issue, and the oddness of living as an "other" is played out in metaphors of faith vs. data, hope and belief.  Its not hardcore sci-fi, but it creates a weird, believable alternate world, part retro, part future. When the hero, a black woman who is struggling in a white man's career discovers that her amazing talents (for sensing the problems in elevators, rather than using tools, elevators being enormously important in this world) is based entirely on fiction, i.e., doesn't really exist, she continues on anyway, realizing the "truth" has no bearing on the world she lives in.  Belief is more important and shapes reality.

I think of all this today of course after, thank god, the godz, the stars, heavens, Pennsylvania (who'd a thought?), Ohio (redemption...), and the hard work of so many, that Obama is our president elect.  I am as emotional as you. I can barely look at the man without welling up with tears. No shit, me, skirblog, the very definition of macho swagger, nearly crying with sweet inspiration over what a politician is saying.  I mean I cried all the time with Bush, but out of incredulity and frustration. I assumed I had no tears left.  I imagine that's how a lot of people felt when Kennedy was elected: just crazy, outrageous hope and happiness, and here we are living through it. Like watching the first moon landing, is it real? Are we seeing what we're seeing?

We woke up.  The graffiti scrawled on the wall in the sci-fi film They Live reads, "They Live, We Sleep!"
"They" being the aliens who have taken over our country without our even knowing, playing to our greed, our shallowness, making us their slaves. Sound familiar?  I guess we had to hit rock bottom before we could up. (And having Rowdy Ronnie Piper helps as well).

We finally did it, awaken. On Wednesday morning, Nov. 5, I was groggy and needed coffee and saw the headlines and had the slightly uneasy feeling of suddenly existing in an alternate time line, one where a black man becomes president of the US in the year 2008, in a country that kept saying "we weren't ready," where racism is very much alive and unwell, yet it happened and it seems completely natural and right.  I've read enough Philip K. Dick to be a little wary of such good fortune. To be worried that its really real. He's a simulacrum, a hologram, a drug induced fantasy. There's got to be a catch? But unlike the moon landing which happened so far away, this happened here. Didn't it?

Or did we cause this with the force of our need? I don't really buy "The Secret" but we seemed to have manifested Obama.  We needed somebody strong and charismatic and brilliant to cut through the non-speak, the double speak, the EVIL of Bush.  I mean folks, did you ever visit Washington DC? Ever go over to the Lincoln Memorial and read what is chiseled into the walls there? Apparently America expected our presidents to be brilliant, philosophical, strong, to have words you would want to carve into marble.  But how very far we strayed, how fucking low we sank. Less than Zero.  We allowed the very worst president in the history of our country, a mean spirited, anti-intellectual, dangerous hayseed to sit a second term and further feather his crony's nests.  We slept. Not a good restful sleep either, a nightmare, the eye of Sauron on us all.

There was an excellent marquee up on my friend, Alan Michaan's Grand Lake Theater a month ago which, to paraphrase read: you basically have two choices in this election: McCain and the Republicans and a future that will resemble Blade Runner; or Obama and the Democrats and the future of Star Trek. For geekdom everywhere, is there no better comparison?

Junot Diaz touches on all this as well in his genius work, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; a must read, one who's language and attitude I already miss (along with my Spanglish) where a sci fi loving Dominican likens, rightly so, the metaphors of Dune, ("Sleeper Awake") and Lord of the Rings, to his country's endless struggles, and his own otherness as an alien walking among us.

I have been a cynical man for basically my entire life and was never inspired by any politician of my generation, or my country for that matter. But I feel that changing. No we don't yet have flying cars, or teleportation, or even good wireless Internet, but we do have Obama, as futuristic as we have ever possibly been. 

 

Comments

[juju pongo]

beautifully put, amigo Lee.

bravo.

[ROCKET MAN]

glad barak gives you a hard on. now i tink i weel an obama. grokly yers.

[DJ]

Your cynicism is more admirable. Before you get too high on B.O., take a deep breath and consider if - despite the lovely speeches - we've really only switched from Coke to Pepsi. One can get tired of Coke, and Pepsi is a nice change. But neither is very good for you. Standing in the shadows behind our new president are the same old deceitful wags, now wearing smiles instead of scowls of Bushhate, and not to be trusted any more than, oh, Donald Rumsfeld.

[skirb]

-Thanks, JP, also for all the lynx these days. I am reading 'em.

- Uh, Rocket man... wha?

- And my old friend DJ: Long time! And dig it. Always be on alert, you are correct. Although no Coke? No Pepsi? Don't tell me you're one of those Dr. Pepper boys? My cynicism did suffer a major blow. Will certainly recover.

[Mike LaVella]

Hear Hear!

[Term papers]

Its interesting to see this kind of article really good..!