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I am a sucker for Falling Skies, the post-alien-invasion-show currently in its second season on TNT. I don’t know why I feel so compelled to watch this show, because it is full of problems. Butt loads. I guess it’s because I always feel compelled to investigate media and entertainment centering on dystopia, be it print, film, or, most rarely, television. And Falling Skies is certainly dystopic.

But it’s also incredibly problematic, beyond commonplace technical problems such as good writing. Too often dystopias look all too familiar to the world we’re already living in, just maybe throw in some alien overlords and nuclear waste. And when I say they “look” familiar, I’m not talking about physical landscapes, I’m talking about social constructs, or, the way the surviving society looks. Sometimes that means physically how society looks, not just the way it is constructed.

Falling Skies obviously has problems with race and gender. It’s a male-centric show focused on reinforcing current day definitions of masculinity. It appeals to a boarder audiences by focusing on plots that are family-oriented, or center around attempts to maintain and/or rebuild “normal” human families in the face of a catastrophic event. Come hell or high water, the American family will persevere, it will serve as something to protect and fight for, is the comforting message Falling Skies sends to its viewers. Even in the middle of the apocalypse, this will not change. Through the institution of the family, order lives on, as do the rest of us, even if we actually die.

It’s nationalism garbed in the robes of science fiction, but the producers make no secret of linking American exceptionalism and the myths of the American revolutionary spirit to the survivors’ attempts to outlive and destroy the superior firepower of the aliens. Survivors have organized themselves into militias and named themselves after the militias that fought in the revolutionary war. They are lead by real military commanders, bringing one of the most patriotic symbols, the army, to the forefront of the show. Though Tom is not military, he is a professor of  military history, a specialty that, when combined with his masculine bearing (stoicism, the ability to be an efficient killer, and a firm position as the physical protector of his family) automatically makes him the second ranking officer, according to the show’s logic. He is the civilian conscience of a militarized revolution, but his academic past works for him instead of against him because he studied a masculine, violent subject that echoes the gendered values Falling Skies upholds. The values the characters fight for are not only domestic values, they are American values, with the two being so inextricably intertwined that the link isn’t remarked upon often in the show, which is stunning considering how corny and awkward some of the dialog can be.

Noah Wyle’s character, Tom, is, as described, a military professor turned resistance leader. He’s wracked with guilt over the death of his wife, which he feels he could have prevented. Failure as a man number one. Now he’s left to be a father to his three sons, and really, to the hundreds of survivors he’s supposed to protect, help lead, and watch over. The show revolves around his relationships with his sons, who he must also raise to be proper men through modelling appropriate masculine behavior. In this show men are stoic, they are (very competently) violent (when necessary – because they are real, honorable men, they don’t act wantonly unless that trait are specifically written into their character bio), they are honorable, and they are also paternal, but mostly when it comes to instilling values of manhood. Their job is as protectors.

Interestingly, the role of the doctor is played by one of the show’s few female leads. You could say her occupation is a victory for feminism, but actually casting her as the doctor places her in a nurturing position. Constructed gender roles often dictate that women are inherently nurturers. The doctor here is not even a prestigious surgeon, but a pediatrician turned field medic. Her pre-attack job was to take care of children. Again, sexist logic: women are biologically childbarers and caregivers. And guess what, her son died in the invasion. Failure as a woman/mother number one. She is punished by her unending grief and this fact being her the only bit of backstory given to her character. She is defined by her motherhood, by her failure as a mother, and by her current job: to play mother to all the survivors, especially Tom (Noah Wyle) and the Second Mass’s leader, Weaver by mending their bodies and providing and emotional shoulder for them to lean on. She also becomes Tom’s sexual partner and emotional outlet. Tom can be soft around a woman. So she nurtures and has sex. That’s it.

The other female lead, Maggie, is a bad ass militia scout. Again, points for placing a woman in an aggressive role, right? Whoa there buddy. This position, by default, makes her a failure as a woman. She is given a complicated back story of sickness, rape, and crime, all punishments for her attempt to break out of the show – and society’s – dictated domesticated role. This form of punishment for bold, masculinized women is an old, old story in all kinds of media. And, another old story, Maggie is trying to find redemption through the love of Tom’s oldest son, Hal, who can validate her as a woman and therefore as moral by forgiving her for her past sins. Hal also acts as her protector, and when she tries to protect him, at least in one instance, she get’s beaten half to death. Oh, and did I mention it was during a catfight with Hal’s old girlfriend, another (blond) masculinized female who is also punished for stepping outside a domestic role by being abducted then physically and mentally altered by the aliens? Poor Maggie (and Karen). She deserves better.

And then there’s race. It seems that the white people on Earth did an exponentially better job of surviving the alien invasion than any of the other minority races. This racial superiority is doubtless an outgrowth of the discriminatory casting of current day Hollywood and the inherent white superiority complex in our dominant cultural narrative. Our society is not post-racial, and though Falling Skies makes tries to take a stab at it, it does not depict a post-racial dystopia. African, Asian American, and Latino characters play supporting roles and tend to end up dead. Another familiar trope. Oops.

I have spent a lot of time studying the history of civil defense engineering in our country. For those not familiar with the term, civil defense most often refers to things like bomb and fallout shelters or protection systems set up during the Cold War meant to help American citizens survive catastrophic nuclear attacks. Officials also developed plans to rebuild society afterward. Historian David Monteyne recently published Fallout Shelter, an excellent book that explores the racial dimension of civil defense planning (many other works explore the thoroughly gendered dimension of civil defense, as does Monteyne).

After studying an amazing array of primary sources detailing how civil defense was planned and imagined by civilian and government experts, he found that these officials created plans that turned out to be inherently racist and sexist. In the future envisioned by these white men, those who survived nuclear attacks would be suburban, middle-class whites, and these men and women of the domestic ideal would work to recreate the domestic ideal of the 1950s and 60s in order to rebuild society following nuclear catastrophe. Sitting through just a few of the civil defense PSAs the government in the 1950s and 60s is enough to convince you of Monteyne’s point. This projecting of a present ideal onto the future is exactly what the survivors in Falling Skies are doing – upholding families as the key to human survival and attempting to recreate traditional looking families by reforming old ones or creating new ones in the ideal’s image. To make matters more complicated, the aliens are stealing human children, therefore undermining family structure even more. This is supposed to be the most horrifying aspect of the invasion, and drives the desire to reconstruct and rebuild families. The show is obsessed with this idea, from the macro level of the Second Mass (an army) being a family, down to Tom and his sons (one of whom was taken by the aliens).

But back to Fallout Shelter and race. Most interestingly, Montenye points out that civil defense officials assumed Americans living in the suburbs would survive any attacks, because they assumed city centers would no doubt be targets of any nuclear attacks, such as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This assumption made civil defense plans inherently racist – most suburban populations are white, and the targeted inner cities are defined by the large population of poor minorities forced by discriminatory policies to live where there was/is affordable housing. Russian bombs would do the job of whitewashing America.

So maybe something similar is happening in Falling Skies, this assumption that those who die will be those in the cities, and that the (often invisible) residents of these cities will be minorities. The survivors in the Second Mass are all suburbanites, after all. Maybe this subconscious but easy assumption explains the lack of minorities among the survivors. If you asked the show’s creators they would most likely say that is absolutely not the case. They would defend casting choices. The would point to the doctor, Moon Bloodgold’s, half-Korean ethnicity, which creates a interracial romance worth Tom that is worth remarking upon; I’m sure the producers would cite her as one example to counter my argument. Still, the future remains predominantly white. And that’s the thing about cultural norms and subtext – we are raised by society to think and act in a certain way, conditioned to receive certain messages, whether outright or subconsciously, that tell us how we should act based on how we look, what set of genitalia we have, etc. These ideas and beliefs are encoded within us, so often without our knowledge, and we embed them in all the things we create, that we do, say, and think, intentionally or not, because they are a part of us. And it takes work to break them down and strip them away. If the producers of this show are imaging the future as white, it is most likely because 1) the system of casting in Hollywood is racist and 2) we have all been fed images like this for so long that it takes conscious effort to realize the blinders we are wearing, and then we must make the effort to correct our mistakes.

Because these culture values are so firmly and often subconsciously embedded, we must ask, especially of those who are envisioning the future: why are our cultural creators still assuming that it’s only whites who will survive catastrophic events? Why do we believe these “visionaries” when they depict minorities as returning to savagery or gang rule, or don’t even give them a place in the future at all? Why don’t we question these current day racialized and sexualized images of ourselves  that are constantly projected into the future?

Perhaps that’s what is so compelling about dystopia, at least for some: the reassurance that even after annihilation, gender and racial norms will survive, institutions like the idealized traditional family, which has never actually existed, will survive, will be renewed, and so will one unfortunate definition of society and stability.

But that’s not for me, and that’s why I’m so disappointed with Falling Skies. I prefer my dystopia much more foreign and challenging.

 

Edit to Add: I just realized that I forgot to do any analysis of sexuality on the show. As far as I can tell, everyone is thoroughly straight, further supporting that the show’s narrative attempts to depict and uphold the heterosexual component of the 1950s/60s domestic ideal.

The idea that the disappearance or removal of all technology and nuclear weapons might be the only way to save the human race is not new to science fiction. Clifford D. Simak made exploring the pros and cons of this scenario the center of many of his works, including the great City. Vernor Vinge, another decorated author, is more known for his far future Hugo winning space operas than post-Cold War dystopias. In The Peace War, however, written in 1984, a time when President Regan built up the US army as the USSR began to collapse under the strain of rot from within, Vinge’s near-future exploration of technology, morals, and war proved compelling enough to garner him a Hugo nomination.

The Peace War is the first in a string of nominees that I will be reading in place of the actual Hugo winners from their year. Why I’m skipping certain books varies on a case by case basis, and that doesn’t mean they won’t pop up later in the project. In this case I’m choosing to ignore William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Skip down to the end of the review for my explanation of why.

I’ll be forthright when I say that I love Vinge’s Hugo winners, A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, and I look forward to reading Vinge’s other near-future winner, Rainbows End. At his best, Vinge is a modern master, blending hard sci-fi and far future plots to create incredible universes that leave the reader both convinced and in awe. His books are also quite riveting page turners, and I generally tend to dislike books overly driven by plot. But no, in Vinge’s universes the reader is treated to vivid and surprising characters that are just as alive and captivating as his harrowing plots.

The Peace War is interesting, but it is certainly not Vinge at his best. It is mired in Cold War not-so-sub-text, set in a world in which the Peacers have disabled every nuclear and military complex and weapon on earth, bringing “peace” to a world teetering on the brink of catastrophic, violent collapse. The Peacers, are not a governmental body but a private corporation who created a technique called bobbling. Using this technique the Peacers surrounded all military weapons and installations in impenetrable silver spheres – referred to as bobbles – therefore incapacitating all world governments by rendering their armies useless.

But in this new, demilitarized world, the Peacers are the enemies. Disallowing not only military but other forms of advanced technology that might lead to military development, the Peacers have plunged the world back into what Vinge repeatedly refers to as a feudal society, though Vinge only gives us glimpses of a ravaged Southern California ruled by what might be some sort of feudal government. Mostly the world seems to be populated with gangs, tribes, traders, and our heroes, the Tinkers: men and women who continue to develop advanced technology. Hiding from the Peacers, they hope to one day overthrow the authoritarian entity and let the United States flourish again.

There are a lot of things going on in The Peace War, most of them very thinly fleshed out in favor of advancing action, a weakness that Vinge put aside in later works. One reason dystopias are so captivating is because of the world building that occurs in such familiar places. The disaster has already happened – what does like look like for the surivors? Literally, what does it looks like? These questions, and Vinge’s world invites many of them, go largely unanswered.

On the micro level, Vinge is obviously trying to explore the way race and social status would be constructed following such a catastrophe. The main character, Wili, is black, something that Vinge reminds us of over and over again, especially every time he is introduced to new characters. But the meaning of this blackness is unclear; several times Vinge alludes or states that other characters might be surprised to take orders from Wili or to learn that he is a genius, but why this characterization in relation to Wili’s blackness is so important is made unclear. No racial tension is ever actively demonstrated. Interestingly, Vinge again alludes that Southern California is no longer angelo, but boosts a majority Spanish population, though in the caste system is still seems English speakers are on top. Confusion abounds. Does this mean whites are still in control here? Is there a difference between language and race? Wili grew up in Southern California but is fluidly bilingual, further compounding this problem. Then there are groups of people that are only referred to by made-up tribal names. Wili is always black in relation to them while their own racial identities remain unclear.

This issue of Wili’s blackness is worth bringing up because Vinge makes it such a glaring point of description but refuses or overlooks explaining to the reader how race works in this dystopic society. His oversight is really a shame, as dystopias provide an interesting setting to explore social constructs like race. Though Vinge seemed to sense these possibilities, his novel is much more interested in exploring the technological marvels he creates in the form of the bobbles and cerebrally interactive computer networks than how humans might interact following a devastating event.

His strange half-exploration of post-apocalyptic social constructs extends to women as well. The antagonist of the novel, Della Lu, is an Asian woman. Her race is mentioned as constantly as Wili’s, with just as little exploration of what that racial identity means to Lu, and to the other characters she reacts with. A bit more fleshed out is her characterization as a woman. Like with Wili, Lu is constantly aware that all the men around her are surprised and resentful that they must take orders for a woman, even though she is more competent than they are. Unlike Wili, Lu at times even has to listen to men denigrate her femaleness, whereas Wili’s blackness if never openly addressed.

Lu isn’t very sympathetic, she’s through and through a killer, bent on destroying the Tinkers because, well, who knows why, really. It seems every story needs and enemy. At one point she has sex with Mike Rosas, a Tinker turned turncoat turned Tinker again, only for the reason that she is trying to shut him up. The sexual encounter sticks out like a sore thumb in the context of the novel, as if Vinge threw it in there simply to spice up the narrative. Women in this book are always sexual objects, including Jill, a computer program created to resemble lead Tinker Paul Hohler’s lost love. Vinge also assumes that a return to the “feudal” structure (a word I’m not sure he even understands) automatically means a return to extremely restricted gender roles – all the peripheral female characters are expected to be domestic and silent. This is a post-feminist novel written during the rise of the New Right, perhaps grasping at the disintegrated domestic ideal. Women can have agency, but in the case of Lu, if they step outside the domestic norm they are heartless bitches who use their bodies to manipulate men and are punished for their sins by death. A familiar trope. Vinge does allow one female character, Allison, to have agency, even though she takes on a non-masculine role in the storyline. Allison, however, has literally been objectified by Paul Hohler, who created the computer program Jill in her image.

Overall The Peace War’s most interesting contribution to the field is its examination of Cold War tensions through a dystopic lens. On a geopolitical level, the three remaining powers in the novel are France, China, and America (all under control of the Peacers), with nary a mention of the USSR. This trio of powers is a wonderful imagining of what might have grown from the alliance made between the French and the Chinese. In 1984 the Soviet Union was collapsing, and in The Peace War there’s nothing left of it. Instead, the unstoppable behemoth, China; France, the rebel of Europe; and the USA have taken over control of most of the world. Interestingly, Africa, always a problem for the first world, remains largely uncontrolled, though it lacks the technological resources of Tinkers elsewhere in the world and is therefore not as much of a threat of Peacer technology. Vinge created a fascinating reading of contemporary geopolitical structures in his dystopic future, and this is yet another point of interest that it would have enriched the novel if only it had been fleshed out.

A product of the 1980s, in The Peace War, Vinge explores a lot of familiar technology, like sophisticated spy satellites and computer networks that looks suspiciously like the internet. The book also reveals that fears of nuclear war and the escalating development of technology didn’t die with détente – they continued to suffuse people’s lives and minds, driving their actions and influencing their fears. The Peace War doesn’t find peace in removing technology. As the title of the novel suggests, the attempt to remove technology simply led to a war to bring it back, almost leading us again to the conclusion that violence is inherent to Man. Vinge’s characters believe that peace is possible, but only if technology is used correctly, and is put in the right hands. What “correct” use is and whose hands should be in control remains unexplained, along with most of the dystopic world Vinge created.

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During the course of this project I will skipping at least a few of the actual award winners, each for varying reasons. In the interests of fair play, I’ll try to explain why I’m skipping each one. This year’s winner that I’ve chosen to exclude was Neuromancer, by William Gibson. I know that Neuromancer is considered one of the game changers of modern science fiction, that it is much, if not obsessively beloved. The thing is I don’t like it. I’ve tried to get through it many times and never once have I been able to finish it. I find it to be dense, boring, and unreadable. To be fair, I am not a fan of cyberpunk in general. Also, I have actually read quite a lot of William Gibson’s work. I didn’t like any of those books either. While less dense than Neuromancer, I found his plots to be repetitive and all of his endings to be terribly anti-climactic, so much so that they ruined the premise of each book that I read – and some of them had really good premises! Those disappointments combined with my inability to make it through Neuromancer even once left me feeling rather disinclined to try reading it again, especially since I’m doing this project for fun. I’m sure there are many really wonderful places both online and in print that you can go to read about how great or shitty Neuromancer is. For now this won’t be one of them.