Posted by Steph in writing process | 3 comments

Alternagenres

Several years ago, I had the odd experience of having a story of mine described by another writer to a group of listeners as being of the New Weird genre. At the time, I had no idea what the term meant – in fact, ask me now, and I’d probably struggle – but the experience itself was more puzzling. How strange it was, I thought, to have someone put a story of mine in a genre I’d never grasped, and how strange of him to do it in a public forum.

I’m not the only SF writer (or, probably more accurately, writer of SF) who has a problem with genre as a concept. When a friend of mine recently proposed sponsoring a science fiction short story contest, my first question was immediately: what’s your definition of science fiction? To which he responded (rightly), “What’s yours?”, in turn begetting my rather long-winded, rather well-practiced speech about where to draw the line between, for instance, science fiction and fantasy. If such a line can indeed be drawn – and, more pertinently perhaps, whether or not it’s useful to attempt to do so. Star Wars, to me, is fantasy dressed up as science fiction, but to my friend, is science fiction (“But where’s the science, Alex?” “They use lasers! And star ships! And the Death Star!”). A recent-ish list of the Top 50 Science Fiction Movies Of All Time put  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at number 1, momentarily confusing me because I’d only ever thought of it as of being in that nebulous realm of “drama” film – the cinematic equivalent, you might say, of literary or even realist fiction. But there is science in it – the tiniest, most mundane device that happens to trigger the whole story, even though the story is never ostensibly about the science or the technology.

I’ve been trying to deal with my inconsistency by deconstructing existing genres and casually reinstating my own ridiculous ways of categorising stories (films, mostly).

eg.

The genre of films set in boxes: Cube. Also, any number of poorly-financed student films.

Films that go backwards: Eternal Sunshine. Memento, obviously. I’m tempted to put (500) Days of Summer in this category, even though it doesn’t technically go backward, but it only works because it is backward in parts. Trust me on this one.

Films that are half an hour too long for their own good: Avatar (cut all the vine swinging stuff). Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (cut all the island natives’ stuff). Empire, that wacky Andy Warhol experimental film that everyone references but nobody has actually watched. Koyaanisqatsi. Dancer In the Dark doesn’t fit in this category, because it’s about three hours too long for its own good.This could also easily be books that are 300 pages too long for their own good, of which there are far too many.

Films where the tagline is the best part: sadly, too many. How about that new Dwayne Johnson film?

Films in which Michelle Rodriguez plays a motor vehicle enthusiast with attitude.

Films where nobody understood the ending of the script, so they just put another fight scene in. Doug Liman is the serial offender here, although I think John Woo could give him a run for his money sometimes.

The list goes on. Hopefully it’ll include some of yours.

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