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Big budget movies sort of struggle against telling stories about justice for people whom we discriminate against contemporaneously. You could never make a movi

Big budget movies sort of struggle against telling stories about justice for people whom we discriminate against contemporaneously. You could never make a movie that even loosely portrays the plight of Uighers, who suffer under a notoriously technology-heavy form of surveillance and oppression (what we are calling predictive policing). Not because of censorship but because no one is going to fund your film. So while I love Philip K Dick and Syd Mead and whatever, it was still a movie that gave more screen time to an Audi than to a black person. Your fiction needs to engage with the real somewhere, and people are realizing that the fiction of predictive crime is really about the reality of arresting black people for crimes that white people do not get arrested for more efficiently.

godelski 6y ago
I think the purpose of movies and stories is to make these events relatable. You're supposed to draw parallels. You don't have to show a black person to convince white people that minorities are being repressed. In fact, it is probably more convincing if on screen you are showing white people being oppressed because then they are going to more identify with that character. Of course, we are supposed to analyze these stories and find what they are trying to tell us. They aren't always so much "here's the entire problem, why you should care, and every little nuance" but rather "this is a problem." It often serves as a stepping stone for people to learn and start to care. To see things that they didn't see before because a story can give you a glimpse into what it is like living in someone's shoes. I wouldn't bash a story for not being able to compact what requires dozens of hours of research into an entertain-able bite size chunk. Stories serve different purposes from documentaries which serve different purposes from literature and news.
- wongarsu 6y ago
  In fact I would argue this is one of the great strengths of SciFi as a genre: you can transport present day problems into a foreign setting, allowing the viewer to engage with the core problem without getting distracted by race or nationality
  - godelski 6y ago
    Exactly! This is why The Orville is a better Star Trek than the official reboot. Sci-Fi was always about exploring ethical dilemmas in current society. Just portraying them as either a different species (representing a some subgroup in our society) or potential outcomes of policies if they were to be abused. I mean, if you think Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (and Altered Carbon) is just a gritty Sci-Fi Film Noir, then you missed half of the movie which was about socio-economic status and struggles (specifically Blade Runner is critical of Reganomics).

godelski 6y ago

I think the purpose of movies and stories is to make these events relatable. You're supposed to draw parallels. You don't have to show a black person to convince white people that minorities are being repressed. In fact, it is probably more convincing if on screen you are showing white people being oppressed because then they are going to more identify with that character. Of course, we are supposed to analyze these stories and find what they are trying to tell us. They aren't always so much "here's the entire problem, why you should care, and every little nuance" but rather "this is a problem." It often serves as a stepping stone for people to learn and start to care. To see things that they didn't see before because a story can give you a glimpse into what it is like living in someone's shoes. I wouldn't bash a story for not being able to compact what requires dozens of hours of research into an entertain-able bite size chunk. Stories serve different purposes from documentaries which serve different purposes from literature and news.

wongarsu 6y ago
In fact I would argue this is one of the great strengths of SciFi as a genre: you can transport present day problems into a foreign setting, allowing the viewer to engage with the core problem without getting distracted by race or nationality
- godelski 6y ago
  Exactly! This is why The Orville is a better Star Trek than the official reboot. Sci-Fi was always about exploring ethical dilemmas in current society. Just portraying them as either a different species (representing a some subgroup in our society) or potential outcomes of policies if they were to be abused. I mean, if you think Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (and Altered Carbon) is just a gritty Sci-Fi Film Noir, then you missed half of the movie which was about socio-economic status and struggles (specifically Blade Runner is critical of Reganomics).