...is being challenged by Stargate Atlantis. My SO's mom let us borrow the DVDs of seasons 1 and 2, and Matt and I are about 2/3 of the way through the first season.
And while it's definitely plenty of fun to watch (I just happen to be one of those people for whom part of the "fun" in many things comes from nerdishly nit-picking them ad infinitum), for some reason I am finding it more...ridiculously hand-wavey of certain things than I would have cared about a few years back, even moreso than Stargate SG-1, which I have seen all 10 seasons of.
First and foremost: not only do the aliens all speak English, there is absolutely NO accounting for the fact that aliens ten thousand years in the past apparently also spoke modern English. I get that they don't want to have a show where every episode is "how do we communicate with THIS alien?", and I don't need it explained to me that "the show is made for entertainment". I know full well it's made for entertainment, and I'm quite entertained, but for crying out loud, even just the mention of a "universal translator" (or "translator microbes", a la Farscape) would set me a tiny bit more at ease.
I think Babylon 5 probably stands out in my mind as the best example of how to deal with alien language issues in televised sf...that is, in that universe, English is known as "the language of commerce", and many aliens on the station have hence had to explicitly learn it. And there are some aliens (such as my favorites, the Vorlons!) who, even when their linguistic utterances are "translated" to English, aren't immediately obvious in terms of what they mean.
Anyway, I was just sort of musing on that today, and on how so much of what I have read over the past few years has seriously raised my standards as far as what "adequately dealing with real-life complexity" means. Of course fiction is storytelling, and storytelling doesn't HAVE to conform to reality in every way (that would make it "reporting", or something), but I definitely find it adds to the story when certain things are at least accounted for rather than totally ignored or glossed over. I will continue to watch and enjoy Atlantis for what it does have, but I will also continue to be amazed at how totally not-even-remotely-believable it is. And I will hope at some point to find more intriguing sf viewing material where the writers put some more effort into creatively managing complexity!
9 comments:
I certainly understand and appreciate your argument. It's totally unbelievable that Teyla and her community would speak modern English--especially since they have their own language as well. Even more unbelievable is that all the Wraith that speak would be fluent in English as well (not sure when in the series that comes out--I've seen all of it).
It is enjoyable for what it does have. But...you're right, they leave out a great deal of complexity. That's typical of television in general, sci-fi television in particular. Some authors do a bit better, but there's usually short-cuts in fiction.
Yeah, I seriously do not mean to be a kill-joy or anything but there are some things (aliens speaking English with NO attempt to account for this whatsoever, not even allusions to "translator microbes" or something) that just seem like terribly lazy writing to me.
Though I guess on the fun side, it's kind of entertaining to sit there trying to come up with explanations or at least rationalizations for the situation at hand. E.g., when watching "Atlantis" I find myself coming up with notions like "Well, maybe the humans got some sort of translator technology from the Asgard" (who have an established history of providing Deus Ex Machinae to the earthlings per SG-1). Or something like "Well maybe they aren't REALLY speaking English, perhaps they're all communicating in some sort of pidgin dialect based on established commonalities between various common galactic languages."
But still. Considering how, in reality, humans who ostensibly are fluent in the SAME language still mange to consistently muck up their communications (via using different personal definitions for the same word, for instance), it seems more than a little preposterous that humans and aliens in certain sf series can communicate so readily right away.
On the other hand, though, I must admit that here on Earth I personally actually often find it *easier* to communicate with people who are not native English speakers. Like at my last job I often had to relay information to, for instance, manufacturing personnel who knew some English but who primarily spoke Vietnamese, or perhaps Tagalog.
And a lot of the time those interactions ended up being more straightforward than those I had with native English-speaking co-workers. Somewhat similarly, I have found that it is usually easier for me to communicate with people who are not my age-peers (there have been some exceptions to this but the trend is still in evidence) I have to wonder if all this has something to do with there being assumptions made when someone speaks "your" language, or hails from "your" supposed peer group, and these assumptions get in the way (rather than helping) when neuro-atypicality enters the equation.
Which means that (per this completely observational and not-even-pretending-at-scientific-veracity speculation of mine) in cross-linguistic/cross-cultural/cross-generational interactions, occasionally neuro-atypical folks get to bypass some of the barriers that the "usual" assumptions tend to comprise for us, because the assumptions just are not being made.
Plus, more atypical means of communication are "allowed" when it is understood that the individuals involved do not have the same primary language. I got to do a lot of diagram-drawing and note-writing when communicating with the aforementioned not-primarily-English-speaking co-workers and they never seemed to see this as strange or suboptimal.
Of course none of *that* excuses lazy sf writing but it is interesting to think about at any rate!
And as for how far along I am in the series, as of last night I am 2 episodes into Season 2. We have definitely met the Wraith, and they do indeed speak English, including the one guy who apparently spent 10,000 years marooned with a crashed ship!
One explanation I've heard for this major coincidence is that the Earth was seeded from this galaxy and that, perhaps English is the biologically default langauge.
Of course, that's both ethnocentric (though, real linguists have proposed similar theories) and doesn't explain how modern English has evolved over time.
In studying global business, I learned a lot about the gaffes caused by cultural assumptions. So, it still happens in cross-cultural communications and supposedly more frequently. But, when a lack of fluency is involved and a strong need exists, the right two people can be so intent on finding a way to communicate that there's no room in the interchange for getting stuck on misinterpretations.
Regarding communicating with different ages, I've found most older adults have experienced a great degree of diversity than youth, and thus are more inclined to work with someone to "listen." Plus, depending on the age and culture, they may have grown up with listening being a higher value than it is often regarded in your age-group. I know that in my age-group the importance of listening seemed a bit lost on the majority.
My point is that the quality of communication depends a great deal on the investment people put into the process. For a lot of young people, communicating is something they take for granted. If they haven't been taught to listen or how to listen, they may not even realize how often they fail to communicate within their peer group and may not be willing to invest the energy to communicate with those they recognize as communicating differently.
I remember in high school overhearing a conversation in which two popular girls were ganging up on another girl. The two popular girls were in total agreement. They were saying two different things, but they weren't listening to each other, so they didn't realize it. The other girl, who was listening, tried to call them on it, but of course they just mocked her. Later, though, after the other girl was gone the two girls realized they really were saying different things, that they'd made fools of themselves in front of the other girl, and started fighting with each other. Of course, they still weren't listening to each other, so the whole thing ended in a huff.
Perhaps I'm just jaded, but this seems far too typical of my own generation. Too often people seem to think they're communicating when all they're really doing is making noise. When obvious communication differences are involved, though, it's harder to pretend communication is happening, and since the people really don't know how to communicate they simply exclude those who communicate differently.
Science fiction franchises popular in the U.S. leave the impression that almost everyone in "the future," or at least in a contemporary science fictional situation, speaks with an accent from the UK or from a British Commonwealth country, including Canada. (William Shatner and James Doohan both grew up in Canada, so that tradition started in the 1960's.)
With Stargate SG1 and Atlantis, part of the reason there is a strong leaning towards Canadian actors is because the shows are filmed in Canada. A lot of SyFy channel shows are filmed in Canada from what I understand.
And why not? These shows aren't just U.S. shows. People in Canada, Britain, and Australia watch them, too, so why shouldn't their actors be in them as well?
Meh, I don't have any issue with where the actors come from, I am sure that when you have a show produced in any particular country you are going to have most of your actors being from that country, just because they're conveniently located. Farscape is another series I like, and that one had a lot of Australian actors, IIRC, as it was filmed in Australia.
That said, I have definitely noticed some bizarritude related to how some sf series represent non-Earth cultures. Again, I realize this is probably related to convenience and it taking a long time and potentially lots of money to create a more complex representation of an alien world, but it has always sort of weirded me out how on Earth you have all these different languages, but on other planets, if the aliens have their own language it will almost always be some sort of "planetary" language.
Yes, that is a short-cut. With SG1 it was justifiable, because they were usually dealing with seed populations that hadn't reached sufficient technological development to spread much farther than where they were seeded. But still, for a show that had a character that was an anthropologist, they didn't devote too much time to the complexity of multiple cultures in an area.
US SF/F is incredibly parochial, particularly film/TV which really speaks to issues of... Southern Californians. Most of today's speculative fiction writers have never ventured past their cubicles into other segments of their society, let alone other societies. Then you have Chomsky, who built an entire theory of language while being monolingual. More takes on parochial mindsets:
Being Part of Everyone’s Furniture; Or: Appropriate Away!
Jade Masks, Lead Balloons and Tin Ears
The Andreadis Unibrow Theory of Art
Athena Andreadis:
Ah, yes, "parochial" is *exactly* the right term for (what I've seen of) a lot of US-based sf. Well, that and "lazily written" -- seeing Avatar *really* threw that particular issue into sharp relief. I am definitely on the lookout for less-parocial, less-lazy sf, and am pretty much just watching "Atlantis" right now as a sort of stop-gap until I can find something more toothsome.
That said, I have to admit that in some ways it's even more interesting to watch this sort of thing than it used to be for me, thanks to having now read and processed Dale C's superlativity critiques, some of your essays, and a few other pieces by folks who similarly manage to appreciate and enjoy sf without thinking that means one can never critique it.
E.g., now it just sticks out to me like a gigantic sore thumb when some huge problem comes up in the context of an sf storyline, and it ends up being fixed almost instantaneously by the Deus Ex Machina of the Week. Or when some really complicated issue gets reduced to something very much resembling the "Transhumanists Versus Bioconservatives" Roleplaying Game that some folks don't seem to want to acknowledge is a roleplaying game. And so on.
Oh, and of course, thanks for the links!
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