What Is Dead May Never Die

If you’re a fan of drama television there inevitably comes a moment that we all dread. The creators of a show decide to kill off a popular main character. But if you’re a fan of supernatural dramas like I am, you know that even if a character is killed off, there is always a chance they may come back. Not as a ghost or a flashback, but as a regular returning character in the show. And that is why I can never really grieve for some of my favorite characters because I know they’ll probably be back.

In a fantasy TV show, pretty much the only thing keeping a character from returning are legal constraints by the actor.  The writers are free to write the characters coming back whenever they want. Not just whenever they want but however they want as well. Alternate reality, clone, raised from the dead, robot, there is no limit to the options to bring a character back in a fantasy/sci-fi show. As long as the method used is not outside the logic of the show.  A heavy sci-fi show should probably avoid bringing a character back using magical means, and vice versa.

One of my favorite shows for reviving dead characters is Supernatural. This show not only brings back dead characters but does so on a fairly regular basis. The showrunners will even base an entire episode around killing and resurrecting the main characters multiple times in a single hour-long story. And it doesn’t get old. The worst thing to do to ruin the idea of resurrecting characters in a TV show is to make it seem boring or routine. Then the show loses any sense of suspense. The characters are no longer ever in any peril because they can simply always come back.

A show that was very bad about what characters it killed and resurrected was Smallville. Since the entire concept of the show was that of a prequel there really was no sense of doom when are a character was put in mortal nature. Since the show is the origin story of Superman, all the major players are going to survive. Otherwise the show is going against its entire premise. So even though <SPOILERS> they kill off Jimmy Olsen, they reveal he has a younger brother (coincidentally also named Jimmy, not much creativity in that family) who grows up to be  the camera man and Superman’s pal of the series. Lois can’t ever be killed because she needs to fall in love with Clark and the two characters need to get a married (a storyline since rendered undone by the New 52).

Part of me feels I have nothing but fandom to blame for this. As I wrote about in a previous entry (see here) comic books pretty much destroyed the concept of death in serial fiction. Comics made it okay to kill a main character and then bring him back without backlash from the fans.  Death became meaningless in the world of fiction. Many characters have been killed off and brought back so many times it almost becomes a running joke as to when they will come back or be killed again. 

I want to worry about the fate of characters in the fiction I enjoy. I want to watch a TV show, or a movie, or read a book and not be one hundred percent sure that all the characters I am introduced to might not make it to the end. If there is no mystery to whether a character will live or die, then my investment in if they succeed in their goals will be lessened.

The Near Future is Never Clear

"Who's James Franco?"

Science fiction is full of stories about the future. Every technological achievement is a possibility given enough time. But there is a problem with depicting the future. What happens when the time portrayed in the story finally comes around? Time is constantly moving and while a story may be depicting a story in the distant future, that distant future eventually becomes the recent past. There comes a point when all science fiction will become dated.

"Remind me to invest in Apple."

Now there is a reason why most writers do not set their stories in the far distant future. The simple reason is that such a world is hard to imagine. Getting the timeline as close as possible to the present guarantees that the characters being written are not all that different from people living in the now. Thus the entire society depicted is not far removed from our own. When one looks at a show like Star Trek, you can see that the world depicted is vastly different than present society. As it should be since it is several centuries removed from the present. It will be many, many years until Star Trek is outdated.

"HAL is code for IBM."

But several science fiction properties have already been debunked with their portrayal of the future. 2001 has come and gone and yet we do not have the level of space travel as portrayed in the film of the same name. No space odysseys for us just yet. Now at the time of the film’s release, 2001 was a good ways off. 1968 was a buzz with thoughts about space travel and it was not out of the realm of possibility to imagine such an event as space travel becoming commonplace, like air travel is now. But in all honesty this deadline was not imposed upon the film because of any prediction of the future, but because 2001 sounds like a cool sci-fi type year that would be an excellent title for a book/film.

"Just wipe away Gigli and Jersey Girl"

A better example of a miss prediction of the future is the movie Paycheck. This 2003 film release only jumped four years ahead into the future. While their certainly is precedent for major technological advances occurring in only a four year period. However this film depicted holographic computer screens and computers capable of depicting the future, not to mention the rather simple and recurring erasing of large chunks of a person’s memory. Sadly none of these things came to pass in 2007. In fact now in 2013 we still have trouble perfecting the 3D TV so perhaps this film should have given itself several more years before it became completely outdated.

"Run! Before the Evangelion fans get here!"

For some reason a lot of writers think 2015 will be a year where a lot of technological advances will happen. According to several films (The Sixth Day and the Island) we will have perfected human cloning, created cyborgs (Robocop) and we will also get flying cars (Back to the Future II). Of course according to Transformers: The Animated Movie, we got hover boards ten years sooner, aka eight years ago. 2050 should see even more technological achievements with the ability to predict violent crime (Minority Report), time travel (Looper), Giant Monster Killing Robobts (Pacific Rim), and interstellar space travel (Lost in Space, the movie). Of course other films have depicted us getting those technologies much sooner or much later.

In truth, science fiction is where we dream of a better world. Or at the very least, a world more advanced than we are currently. A world where we have solved scientific questions that plague us today and the bulk of the human race is just a little bit smarter than it is now. So while many of these predictions about the future turned out to be completely wrong, that should not stop anyone from envisioning what the world will one day be like. 

Appeal of Cosplay

If you’ve ever been to a convention of some kind of genre subject, be it sci-fi, fantasy, comic books, or steampunk, you are probably already familiar with the concept of Cosplay. Cosplay stands for Costumed Play and it is where a fan or a group of fans (group costumes are quite common) decide to dress up like a particular character from any number of different fictional properties. And while some people just slap something together to have a good time, there is a deeply committed cosplay community that have elevated what might just be considered a hobby to a true art form.

Alessandra Torressani

First thing that struck me about cosplayers when I attended my first convention is that they are rock stars. There are fans who seem to treat these individuals in costume with as much reverence as they would for the character being portrayed. They’ll pose for pictures, act out little skits and even sign autographs, all in the name of the character they are dressed up as. There is a sense of responsibility felt by those who dress up as a character, to represent that character to the best of their ability.

Adrianne Curry

There is also a social responsibility shown by cosplayers that I respect. Many cosplayers, such as the 501^st Legion, will dress up in their costumes and visit sick children. There is no special agreement people have to sign in order to put on a stromtrooper uniform. They have no obligation to do this. Fandom just means you have to love the object of your fan focus. But these people put on their costumes and bring smiles to little kids faces, who for all intents and purpose assume these characters are real and have come out of the films and shows they love.

Andrew Garfield

As a fanboy myself, one thing I truly respect about so many cosplayers is their attention to detail. It’s a bit of a negative trait about the geek community but we can be rather nitpicky at times and tend to overly dissect the things we love. That is why most cosplayers deserve a special award because knowing how nitpicky fans can be they venture forth and manage to present such excellent reproductions as to calm the fan community. And they do. They create works of art that may have only existed previously on a comic book page or in a video game. In effect they bring into reality what has only ever existed in fantasy.

Sara Jean Underwood

Another appeal to cosplay, and why so many people engage in it, is that cosplay has no limits. People dress as any character from any fictional property. So regardless of the particular intellectual property a person is interested in, they can express their love by dressing as that character. And there is no animosity towards them. It is not like going to a sports arena wearing the jersey of the rival team. Star Trek and Star Wars fans can be photographed side by side. DC and Marvel characters share tips on prop reproductions. It doesn’t matter what you love, just merely that you love it.

In many ways, cosplayers represent what it truly means to be a geek. Being a geek is about having passion for something and what could be more passionate than dressing up as a character. To put in the time and effort to not only craft a costume, but then to wear that costume throughout a convention, truly shows devotion and love for a character.  Most geeks wear t-shirts or some article of clothing that has an emblem of some kind on it. Cosplayer just takes it one step further and wear the whole costume.

Violence Is In Right Now

If you study television as long as I have (which is a nice way of saying you watch hours and hours of TV and make a nice deep indent in your couch) you can see certain trends every year among the popular new shows. Some years it will be a nostalgia kick, others it will be an emphasis on sex. This past year however its been all about violence. And not just violence, but gory violence.

Three popular shows to come on the air in this recent television season were The Following, Bates Motel and Hannibal. All three of these shows revolve around serial killers and grizzly murders. Now there have been violent shows on TV before. Dexter has enjoyed critical fame by dispatching criminals regularly. One of my favorite shows, Game of Thrones, regularly decapitates characters. Violence in TV is nothing new. What makes the violence in the three listed shows so interesting is that these shows are on basic cable. Two of them are on networks! Dexter and Game of Thrones both are on pay cable, which means there really are no rules. They can have as much sex and violence as they like so there is no surprise there.

If you know anything about network TV, the TV networks are notorious for not enjoying controversial programming. So much of network programming is formulaic and safe. Mostly because networks are not broadcast the same everywhere. Cable networks are broadcast the same throughout the United States. But the networks broadcast their programming through local affiliates. Each affiliate represents a different community and can often receive pressure to reflect the community standards of the market they broadcast in. Also broadcast networks are still under the watchful eye of the FCC while cable networks are not.

So why is this violent trend so popular right now? Since networks are so careful about what they put on their air, why would any channel want to risk broadcasting programs that are regularly offensive and grotesque. Part of it could be viewer demand for something outside the mainstream but that more accounts for the reception of these programs. It does not explain why the networks wanted to take a risk on these programs to begin with.

Part of the hypocrisy of broadcast TV can be seen with these shows. Many shows have been taken of the air in certain markets but when you look at shows like the ones mentioned above, they rarely seem to be banned. Because they deal with violence. Most of the shows that get taken off the air usually deal with sex. The same trend can be seen when films are being rated. A horribly violent film can easily get away with a horribly bloody violence. But one sex scene with nudity? Automatic R rating. NC-17 if that scene involves members of the same sex. Despite any other content in the film. It seems a terrible double standard, but it is practically common practice in our culture. Sex is more offensive than violence. But why? Why should sex be more offensive than violence and death? Certainly this can be traced to puritan attitudes in place since the founding of America. But that only explains our aversion to sexual contact. It still doesn’t explain why we are so accepting of violence. Certainly there is no benefit to encouraging the viewing of violent content, in any medium.

Perhaps the truth is that violence fascinates us, while sex titillates us. It is easier to control ones adrenaline than it is to control ones arousal, so we are not as worried about being exposed to violence. We believe that any feelings of rage or aggression that such imagery inspires in us, we can control it. However society has taught us it is not socially acceptable to be aroused in public and we have little to no control of those feelings. In any case, sex and violence are not going anywhere. As long as they are a part of our culture they will be a part of our entertainment, the only question being which is more dominant at the time.