New Weird is real weird

The new weird is a genre we covered in class. It's a horror/ science fiction hybrid with surreal qualities that really just expects you to go along with the story it's telling. Doesn't seem to hold your hand in any way or include unnecessary amounts of exposition, at least in the example I read.  It's been a couple weeks and after some time I still have no idea what to make of it. For that week I ended up reading Perdido Street Station, a book with bug romance, exiled bird people, and giant moths that are wanted by the criminal underworld. I have no other way to describe it and honestly don't know if I would recommend it to anyone. Wasn't a bad book by any means, just a weird one. Which is why it's in this genre to begin with. Like I stated before, I don't know what to make of it, and I suppose maybe that was the purpose. Not the book itself, but the genre as a whole. Maybe its aim is to distort what we usually would consider horror, science fiction, or even fantasy and find some real weird sweet spot. Then take you out of your comfort zone, throw you a curve square, and expect you to hit it with a cricket bat for the winning touchdown.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Fiction of Ideas

Upon hearing we’d be cover this subgenre of science fiction, fiction of ideas, I immodestly jumped into an old favorite of mine, Slaughter House Five.   This subgenre seems to avoid certain characteristics of other forms of syfy that tend to make them cornier. It instead directly tackles real world issues and imbeds them in key parts of the story. Slaughter House Five is an incoherent tale that conveys long-term effects of war. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is forever psychologically damaged by ww2 and his imprisonment in German camps. The book itself goes in depth on how he was abducted by aliens and taken to their space zoo where he experiences time travel as a result. Billy seems to be devoid of all emotion for the entire book and I interpret these events that happen to him as his way of coping with his uninteresting life/ marriage and the horrors he experienced during the war. He gets a movie star wife while he was abducted and lives out the fantasies of
Read more

Science Fiction Parody

To cap off the semester I watched Idiocracy for syfy parody. My thoughts on the movie have changed greatly over the years. I watched this when it first came out on comedy central. At the time, I thought it was really funny and had a weird/goofy outlook on the future. In a nutshell, a man wakes up in the future and everyone is really dumb, a pro wrestler runs the country, and all crops are watered with a drink that closely resembles Gatorade. At the time it seemed not very plausible, then I watched it about a year ago and for this class. The comparisons to today’s current political climate are kind of scary. Decreases in intelligence, overreliance on technology, and outlandish people running the country are only a few similarities that are starting to show up today. While things in the movie are blown out of proportion, and it’s kind of scary to see.
Read more

Blood Child

1) Firstly, I really enjoy this story as a whole; it feels refreshingly original and has an interesting gender reversal you don’t see to often.   Secondly, my skin was crawling the entire time I was reading this. I get a real face-hugger vive and, we especially discussed in class, a mental violation kind of takes place; the character’s homes and bodies are invaded by this alien that talks and threatens them into doing what it wants. 2) I kind of touched on this in my earlier response, I immediately thought of every scene in the entire Alien franchise that had to do with the face-huggers. Both the story and the Alien movies have themes of sexual assault. What’s interesting is that the gender roles reversal. 3) I think this would make for a cool syfy horror film. It would be very relevant politically to what’s happening currently and has a unique take in that genre. Of course that film would have to be lengthened to average movie times. Other changes li
Read more