Back in elementary school, we didn’t like science fiction so girls would shun us; that was just a side benefit.
Stumbling into junior high, though, we found our affinity for “Star Wars,” “Star Trek” and Ray Bradbury a liability for the same reason. It branded us as geeks, ensuring that if we ever did gather the courage to chat up a girl, we would have nothing to say to her.
Men who continue to exalt sci-fi must choose, in effect, between the light and dark sides of the Force. On one side, Obi-Wan Kenobi implores us not to care what women think; on the other, Darth Vader intones, “Chicks reject dweebs who collect ‘Star Wars’ action figures.”
The iconic villain and Halloween costume has a point. But you have to admire a man who risks ridicule and isolation to love what he loves.
Guys devoted to sci-fi are the Marlboro Men of the mundane. They read “Dune” or watch “Battlestar Galactica” for its own sake, not because it makes them look capable, prosperous or tough.
Men who rock climb, flaunt Armani or lease Porsches can expect extra helpings of female attention. Not so the little Darth Vader who twirled a red lightsaber before the recent “Star Wars” premiere at the Pavilions; the cheers of fellow fans melted into murmurs of embarrassment when he wouldn’t stop.
The movie, incidentally, compelled me to visit the guy galaxy he occupies to see how the stars are twinkling.
The “Star Wars” franchise nearly extinguished them in my teens. The series felt like a comic book itching to be an epic: special effects obliterating feeble story lines, cartoonish good and evil, plot holes explained away by the
kiddie-mysticism of the Force.
In “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith,” George Lucas spent some of his $115 million budget on an actual script with character motivation, smart lines and a Greek-style tragedy that nearly redeems the other installments.
That’s the sort of catharsis you usually don’t get in sci-fi, a more sophisticated path to the hope the genre embodies.
Sci-fi nurtures optimism because it happens in the future – if not an actual one (“Star Wars” uses the fairy-tale conceit of the past), a place in which advanced technology can both threaten evil and promise bliss.
What better vehicle for a kid’s hopes, especially if his present isn’t particularly bright? In the future, he won’t be teased or bullied, and girls will see the heroism cocooning in his heart.
Or not – aficionados don’t love sci-fi so that the opposite sex will love them. In fact, sexism stripes much of the genre’s universe; even “Star Wars” proto-feminist Leia finds herself chained to the lascivious Jabba the Hutt. Otherwise, sci-fi fans can often seem too naive or afraid of females to truly objectify them.
Women don’t have much to do in “Revenge of the Sith.” A female Jedi is mowed down in an ambush, and Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) dotes on a pre-evil Anakin before later moaning something like, “I thought I knew you.”
Exiting the theater, a group of guys said they normally liked Portman’s work but ridiculed her “Sith” role. The comments seemed unfair; why slam a concert cellist told to play “Three Blind Mice”?
Or maybe they didn’t like Portman, lovely as she is, invading their galaxy.
Me, I don’t like the idea of a cosmos without the star of “Garden State” and “Closer.” And if Portman ever told me sci-fi was the silly refuge of arrested adolescents, I’d probably agree with her. Just so maybe she’d like me.
Staff writer Vic Vogler can be reached at 303-820-1749 or vvogler@denverpost.com.
