The Arts Fuse Newsletter, October 2
Coming Attractions, Paolo Giordano’s superb novel about denial, “Tasmania," an appreciation of Maggie Smith, The Best of Charlie Parker, praise for the film "A Different Man"
From The Editor's Desk:
The journalistic go-to is that Kamala Harris’ campaign is about an inclusive future while Donald Trump’s crusade, with its motto of “Make America Great Again,” is dedicated to a return to a white America. But that may not be exactly right. In his intriguing critical study Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right, Jordan S. Carroll suggests that, looked at from the extreme right’s vision of utopia, the past was (and is) prophetic of our country’s preordained future of whiteness. “The alt-right has imaginatively reconfigured science fiction,” Carroll argues, “by repositioning the genre’s reactionary impulse as the motive force driving its progressive elements forward. They believe that white supremacy is the source of science fiction’s utopian aspirations.”
Part of Speculative Whiteness explores how the alt-right perverts the progressive nature of sci-fi, at times drawing on the musings of neo-Nazi Richard B. Spencer, a fan of the genre who, in his podcasts, practices what Carroll memorably calls “the hermeneutics of obtuseness,” yanking “right-wing readings from ostensibly antifascist texts.” Spencer condemns Star Trek’s liberalism (aside from admiring Khan, the superman) and hails Dune Messiah as a model for white dictatorship — the novel’s protagonist, Paul Atreides, sacrifices sixty billion people as part of his plan to remake the galaxy — disregarding Frank Herbert’s subversive intentions. Carroll examines the alt-right myopia in mid-century novels, including A.E. Van Vogt’s Slan and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, before analyzing the full-blown “blood and soil” pathology that dominates contemporary white supremacist sci-fi, such as Faustian Futurist and The Turner Diaries.
So what does wading through this fetid fascist swamp with Carroll tell us? From its inception, alt-right sci-fi has been an exercise in political meta-drama: narratives have been as much about asserting the white privilege of the author than they have the moral of the story itself. And, since sci-fi is about posing possibilities, changing the status quo, that means any far-right utopia is an absurd paradox. Carroll succinctly sums up the intellectual implosion: “They say they want tomorrow to reveal that they have the infinite potential to be anything and everything, but they really want a future that merely confirms who they are as fixed and inevitable … a racist solipsism that prevents it from imagining anything outside or after itself.” The perfection of narcissistic paralysis.
—Bill Marx, Editor-in-Chief
Note: From the Editor's Desk -- By Popular Demand.
Readers have asked that I post these weekly opinion pieces in the magazine — request granted.
Coming Attractions: Through October 14 — What Will Light Your Fire
Compiled by Arts Fuse Editor
Our expert critics supply a guide to film, visual art, theater, author readings, and music. More offerings will be added as they come in.
Book Review: Paolo Giordano’s “Tasmania” — A Brilliant Novel about Being Blinded by Personal Catastrophes
By David Mehegan
An absorbing novel that builds steadily, not to a shattering or violent conclusion (all the violence is in the past or offstage) but to a quiet release that is humane and persuasive
Jazz Album Review: “The Best of Bird” — The Sheer Genius of Charlie Parker
By Michael Ullman
“Ornithology: The Best of Bird” might better be described as the best of Bird on Savoy.
Film Review: “A Different Man”– Odd Man Out
By Peter Keough
It is on the universal theme of identity that A Different Man resonates most eloquently, demonstrating how who we are is not fixed but chosen, a mask we don whether it fits or not.
Arts Remembrance: Maggie Smith
By Peg Aloi
The late Maggie Smith’s finest and most memorable roles drew on her genius for dramatizing the emotional complexity of outsiders.
Visual Arts Review: “Conjuring the Spirit World” — Can You Believe Your Eyes?
By Debra Cash
This simultaneously entertaining and provocative show contests the premise that people today are invariably more sophisticated than those who lived in spiritualism’s heyday.
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Editor-in-Chief
Bill Marx
wmarx103@gmail.com
