Out of the Basement: Sci-fi and Fantasy in the Mainstream

There was a time when admitting that you watched science fiction, fantasy, or even horror programs revealed at least three things about you: you live in the orange shag carpeted basement in your parent’s house, your body odor was immensely overpowering and that your mother’s women magazines got you through a many a lonely night all huddled in your bed with the crumbs bouncing off of your amorphous blob while you pathetically masturbate. Alright, so maybe that characterization went a little too far, but the point stands that in the not so distance past this was what you were admitting to by saying you caught the latest Star Trek episode. Or at least what eighties movies have lead me to believe anyway. However today there is a wider acceptance of the science fiction and fantasy genres as more and more television programs about spaceships and vampires (although very few with both) are put on the air and the fan base is now less inclined to just be thirty year old men in their basements, but people of all social standings and hand-eye coordination.

In the past few years science fiction and fantasy as genres have become more mainstream and less reserved for the man with the chest hair still nursing his new Pokémon cards at his parents’ house. I say this mostly because of the sheer amount of science fiction and fantasy that are now on shown across the wide and varied television networks. Trueblood, Grimm, Lost, Once Upon A Time, Eureka, Fringe, Merlin, Legend of the Seeker, Being Human, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, even ABC Family network to the after school special had Kyle XY and Has The Nine Lives of Chloe King- they all are being  aired or have aired recently and they are popular across a wide range of audience- college students, middle class husbands and wives, upper class husbands and wives, even to quote my grandmother “While we can’t do much, we still like to look and Trueblood gives us plenty”. There is now less of a stigma attached to these programs as being reserved for those creepy little stereotypes that grow pale in the light from their laptops and television and now include attractive men and women, of all ages.

 

Part of the reason for this larger viewership is how the writing style for television in general has significantly changed since these genres first erupted. In particular television and the characters within these shows are no longer predefined as jobs and the people who perform them, but a deeper development of character and these characters as people rather than tasks that have to be done. As well, the plots that these characters now find themselves in are extremely more naturalistic and less, almost monster of the week and forced to show that this person is the captain, that person is the mechanic, they are the pilot, etc. This opens up the melding of the science fiction and fantasy genres from being less about the new alien species threatening humans and death rays pointed at the earth. A person is going to have a much more difficult time not finding a bit of humor or horror, or family dynamic in most serials in this age. Eureka, while yes science fiction also presents a lighthearted comedy. Trueblood is not inherently just about vampires and werewolves but the inter humanoid-species banging that goes on and how stupid Sookie is that week.  The focus of these shows and the interest for them is no longer just because there are spaceships and vampires and fairies and aliens, but people reacting to them and to other people and a stronger character element.

 

 

All in all the large influx of fantasy and sci-fi- in television isn’t such a bad thing. And with their popularity and sometimes misuse, the way in which internet memes are now used in everything from advertising to getting people to stop shitting in the urinals at work partnered with this influx in fantasy and sci-fi TV suggests that maybe the twenty-first century is the point in time where those of a nerdlier disposition will finally come out of the basement and from the light on their Firefly forums to feel the sun.

At least for a minute or so, and then it is back to debating whether or not Shepherd Book was an Operative for the Alliance for the next seven hours in the basement.

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