We've been watching Stranger Things, the 80's nostalgia sci fi series, and enjoying it even though I feel it signals another milestone in the ongoing contraction of Western civilization. I could not have enjoyed it in the actual 1980s when the movie themes so lovingly restored in Stranger Things regularly enraged and disturbed me whenever I found them, i.e., the repetitive telekinesis trope which I've always disliked, especially in "science fiction". I originally disliked it because I felt it didn't belong in science fiction because I had a young man's idealistic and naive view that there was something intrinsically valuable about maintaining some pure platonic version of a genre, but now I realize I just found telekinesis boring. I find the electrodes on the heads boring and the dumb experiments the phony scientists performed in all the movies on the telekinetic "mutant" person bored me. I mis-attributed my own anger and frustration to a more flattering cause: Righteous concern for scientific truth. I was just bored. I know it was boredom, because I love another 1980s trope in Stranger Things: Alternate Dimensional Reality, especially an Alternate Reality with spooky resonance to our own, blinking lights, ectoplasmic portals, shadow worlds, I adore that stuff and want more of it, and as a younger man I never made a fuss about how completely nonsensical the science behind the Alternate Reality was. A physicist might groan when they see the Alternate Reality Part of the show, especially when the characters in the show talk about "Alternate Dimension" as a synonym for "Alternate Reality", but I didn't care in the 80s and I don't care now, because it entertains me.
As a young man in the 80s, I spent more time than I should have trying to fix the telekinesis trope in my mind, by thinking up scientific explanations and rules for the telekinesis. But I think these explanations would not have worked for popular movies; too cerebral and time consuming. So I've come up with an explanation that utilizes my favorite Alternate Reality trope: All humans have an alternate monster self in the alternate reality, some of us have plant-like, relatively motionless monster selves, some have moving monster selves, but everyone's monster self corresponds with their psychic power; mind readers have monster selves with antenna, telekinetic people have monster selves with long tentacles, maybe there are monster selves with the ability to fly, granting the human the power to teleport.
This would be a very cool movie, and it would certainly spice up the monotonous lab scenes with electrodes and nosebleeds and crushed product placement
No comments:
Post a Comment