The prolific film career of Steven Spielberg has rarely, if ever, failed to achieve the status of fantastic. Whether it’s an unrelenting beast with “lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes” or with the power and size of a tanker truck that serves as an extraordinary antagonist, or alien encounters urging characters to embark on a marvel-fueled fantasy, Spielberg’s work has continuously been rich with the fantastical, aptly reflecting our own humanity. And while all of his Academy-Award wins and nominations over the last two decades have involved historical dramas or biopics, it’s unsurprising that the most-cherished films of his career are set in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy worlds he’s brought to life. Spielberg’s success from his big, personal films, regardless of genre, which all resonate in the same way that science fiction has with Americans in that they explore our place in the world or universe as we know them, posing fundamental questions about our realities and depict how society could possibly function differently.
Science fiction has always been a benchmark for modern society and typically step one towards progress, allowing us to imagine a future we want. Impossible technology in the distant future may serve or nurture plot devices, but the interstitial thread through all science fiction is that it reveals who we are and who we can become. It’s not hard to find the correlations in the quest for global domination through the first half of the 20th century through the works of Asimov or Heinlein’s starship battles. “Star Trek”’s following would not exist were it just an elaborate space opera and not consistently holding a mirror up to our own society. A favorite and often-referenced quote of mine has the Enterprise’s Captain Picard relaying this truth about being human to his sentient android Lieutenant Commander Data, “it is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” Decades earlier, when Nichelle Nichols who played Lieutenant Uhura considered leaving the original series, it was Martin Luther King, Jr. that convinced her to stay arguing that her inclusion as a black woman on “Star Trek” helped represent a future to which people can aspire, one where people were judged solely on the content of their character.
Recent box office toppers should be very indicative of the demand from audiences, which could either be a cause of rising number of emerging science fiction authors, or a result of a long running fandom that has grown exponentially since H.G. Wells. Or maybe Disney expanding the Star Wars universe has just reignited the underlying fantasies of 20-40 year olds that nearly died out with Episodes I-III. Spielberg is arguably the most commercial director in the history of the motion picture business, due in big part to his understanding and ability to elicit an emotional response from movies. With a filmography so heavy on marvel and wonder, it’s important to question and understand why.
Science Fiction reflects our anxieties – I defy you to claim that David Bowie’s cultural impact would be as compelling were he just able to create catchy melodies or quirky harmonics and not due to his affinity for space and unsettling science fiction that fueled his personas. Using the uncanny and extra-terrestrial has been essential framework to shedding light on the anxieties, fears and hypocrisies of humans for years. With a childhood fed on films like Battleground or Sands of Iwo Jima, Spielberg’s world was influenced by the peak of American virtue following World War II. A decade later, he was putting light to celluloid and honing the craft with which he’d rise off the heels of Vietnam and the Watergate years, continuing his personal filmmaking through the Reagan-era of American optimism and again through the cyclical downturns of society in recent years. His early science-fiction work featuring simple Americans in a small town, fused two strains of Cold War nostalgia from his impressionable years – combining alien fantasies with Norman Rockwell imagery.
In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Roy Neary’s obsession is superficially extreme at first by us and certainly by his wife, but we ultimately empathize with his longing for some cathartic answer that will hopefully be reached if he allows his imagination to lead him where he needs to be. Spielberg has explained that his initial intent for E.T. was to be a picture about filling the heart of a lonely child suffering from the traumatic effects of divorce. One example of something extraordinary needed to fill Elliot’s broken heart would, of course, be a visit from an extra-terrestrial, creating an otherworldly and impossible scenario set entirely in a Los Angeles suburb. This tall tale set in a small town sparks the recognition that if a young boy can bond with a life-form from a distant world, then there is absolutely hope for one to be at peace with his fellow man, sharing the same small planet. It’s through these touch-points of our own realities that shine through the fantasy flickered through darkened rooms and resonate so strongly with its captive audiences, rising above mere subtext and reaching across cultural boundaries. Even a character inspired serial treasure hunters from 1930s pulp comics by friend George Lucas became an atypical arch-type for an action film. Even with an advanced archaeological degree, Indiana Jones is a flawed and troubled human but we can still easily see ourselves in his shoes, fighting for what we all believe is virtuous and similarly saving the day. Regardless of the supernatural elements facing Jones, we side with his earnest desire to stop Nazis and preserve artifacts in a museum which propelled him to the top ranking within the pantheon of real American heroes (apologies to Hulk Hogan and Brian Dennehy).
Another of Harrison Ford’s holy trinity of hero characters has recently had a resurgence: Rick Deckard. In Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner, regarded as one of the most influential films of all-time, as well as the recent sequel Blade Runner: 2049, Deckard is at the forefront of questions asked in much of Philip K. Dick’s science fiction writing: what is human? What is real? PKD’s work continues to be adapted for the small and big screen by directors Richard Linklater, Paul Verhoeven, John Woo and even Spielberg with the 2002 film adaptation of the short story “The Minority Report,” 50 years after its original publication. PKD’s impact on the science fiction genre has been undeniable and with Amazon’s third season of “The Man in the High Castle” due out next year, it’s showing little signs of slowing.
PKD is best known for his alternate or dystopian futures depicting an American gone wrong or crazy. William Carlos Williams wrote that “pure products of America go crazy,” which makes PKD’s fascination of pure American 1950s culture an obvious impetus for his writing. Balancing the structured (or mundane) life of the suburbs and consumerism with the crushing dominance of capitalism driving the country, his characters were never really heroes but depicted as “the little guy”. Fellow sci-fi writer Ursula Le Guin, whom The New York Post called “America’s greatest living science fiction writer,” once wrote that “there are no heroes in Dick’s books, but there are heroics.” His characters are often simple folk who after grueling workdays through bureaucratic offices, return home to fractured marriages and long for an escape through achieving a new social class with newfound luxuries, such as an organic, non-electric pet, or a better paycheck and leave their life behind and get away – even when they’ve already emigrated a colony on Mars. They’re everymen who are heroes through simple acts of heroism.
Dick said, “I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards.” It’s no surprise that Dick emerged among the beat generation, even hanging around with San Francisco poets, but it’s remarkable that he ever broke through at having his early work written during a time when Sci-Fi was looked so down upon from the literary world. Now there is really no shortage of praise for science fiction writing in the modern age of media. There are decades of work into which you can dive – works of Philip K. Dick, works of Steven Spielberg, or getting lost in their respective influences. Spielberg has cited Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as a major impact on his understanding of what film could be. Science fiction by Jules Verne and Robert A. Heinlein had directly influenced real scientific endeavors of Edwin Hubble and Carl Sagan, respectively. Even theoretical physicist Michio Kaku stated that watching Flash Gordon as a child helped him realize that his “understanding of physics informed his understanding of what was possible just beyond the horizon.” While its influence on actual scientific discovery has validity, the most lauded trait of science fiction work continues to be its reflection on current western culture. Often directly playing into the traditional spirit of the American frontiersmen, early fantasy and sci-fi tapped into that hopeful desire of visiting exotic and undiscovered lands or embarking on new opportunities to solve their troubles or save humanity through an unexpected journey. While these are not exclusively American attributes, our culture has long been flooded with stories featuring doe-eyed farm girls with ruby slippers, American core drillers enlisted to stop an asteroid’s deadly impact with Earth, or global crop blights and dust bowls that push NASA to interstellar travel in search of mankind’s new home. These American identifiers are innately human; they even serve an easy entry to life in the works of David Lynch, which often begin with vanilla towns to immediately attach its ordinary world to our familiar perception of Americana before leaping into the surreal or absurd.
Still, despite the fantasy lands of impossible technologies, science fiction remains a prism, rather than a mirror, through which we view ourselves. The boundless adventures and possibilities that exist in a fictional world allow a reader or viewer to more freely examine themes within the material without feeling threatened or too self-aware of a more truthful reflection. This slightly distorted but familiar introspection provides just enough escapism and flexibility to hold whatever shape you decide fits and continues to push the bounds of not only storytelling but also technology and special effects. And while many of the dystopian worlds that are often portrayed as the backdrop to so many stories, they typically serve as a very overt cautionary tale of our own actions or, quite simply, serve to pose questions to us and cause reflection of how our own present day values would hold up in a futuristic or alternate reality.
During the early 20th century, the future was often portrayed in a positive image marveling how scientific progress had enriched society. However, one could argue that after several wars and a very interconnected society that has witnessed countless unrest and revolution, our views of the future gave rise to the dystopian worlds we’ve created, validating our own fear. Fears of Bertrand Russell are well-founded in that our futures have been drawing closer to those with “questionable authority figures and the de-education of the populace” that brings us closer to the kind of social gaps seen in The Hunger Games series or riding the Snowpiercer. Now in 2017, the U.S. is saturated with dystopian fiction and as the world wakes up to incoherent tirades from a president’s twitter feed exclaiming alternative facts, they continue to gravitate towards narratives that validate their own worldview. One verifiable result would be the 9,500 percent sales increase and resurgence of Orwell’s 1984 since Trump’s inauguration.
With Blade Runner: 2049 soon coming to SVOD/EST and Spielberg’s return to science fiction/fantasy in his adaptation of Ernest Cline’s virtual reality/1980’s pop culture love fest Ready Player One just a few months away, it’s a perfect time to introduce a whole new world of ideas to your shelves, or revisit some titles that demand repeat consumption. These thoughts on the magical worlds of Spielberg and the bottomless creations of the science fiction genre don’t even scratch the surface of its importance to our culture and modern thought. With Apple and Spielberg rebooting the 1980s sci-fi drama Amazing Stories, you’re likely to be rewarded with at least 10 episodes that will fill the withdrawal period in between seasons of Black Mirror. As these escapes and rich fantasies continue to provide touchpoints to the human condition, reflecting our own driving ambition through frustration, wonderment, curiosity and awe, we will continue to amaze ourselves and continue to reach new heights that we never would’ve dreamed were possible… unless we saw them in a Spielberg picture set 30 years in the future.
For more on Philip K. Dick, I whole heartedly recommend the writings of Pamela Jackson, Rasmus Lerdorf, and Jonathan Lethem who praises PKD as American literature’s Lenny Bruce.