reading one - key points

(in correspondence with Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader edited and compiled by Sean Redmond)

one, Preface by Sean Redmond

• "It is an example that points to the way the borders of science fiction and science fact actually merge and ultimately collapse in the postmodern world - where the real is as much (science) fiction as the fiction itself, and where the (science) fiction is - or becomes - as credible or authentic as fact," (Redmond, pg. ix). 
• "So the argument runs, science fiction film fills the movie world with too many special effects and set-piece moments at the expense of narrative development or meaningful characterization," (Redmond, pg. x).
• "...there is the idea that science fiction films relate to the social order through the mediation of ideologies, society's representation of itself in and for itself - that films speak, enact, even produce certain ideologies, which cannot always be read directly off films' surface contents," (Kuhn, pg. x).

two, The Wonder of Science Fiction introduction by Sean Redmond

• "...special effects involve audiences in a self-conscious process: while audiences may stare in wonder at a city suddenly, supposedly, crafted out of thin air; they may at the same time utter 'what an amazing special effect', acknowledging the magic hand of the special effects department and filmmaking in the very moment that it was witnessed," (Redmond, pg. 3). 
• "Buckland also acknowledges the centrality of special effects to science fiction cinema, arguing that they are not just conduits of spectacle and display but representational devices ...  Buckland argues that 'The interactions created between the digital dinosaurs and live action/real backgrounds within a single shot help to create a new realism in the digital image, for the effects create the illusion of spatial and diegetic unity,' (Redmond, pg. 3).

three, Images of Wonder: The Look of Science Fiction by Vivian Sobchack

• Iconography
• "As a result of mass production, the accretions of time, and the dialectics of history and archetype, characters, situations and actions can have an emblematic power," (Kitses, pg. 4). 
• Recurrent Patterns of Imagery
1. physical presence and aesthetics
2. eminated characters
3. a characters control of another by the use of technology
• "This linkage of situation and character, objects, settings and costumes to a specific past creates visual boundaries to what can be photographed and in what context," (Sobchack, pg. 5).
• "The spaceship of the SF film, then, is in no way comparable to the railroad of the western in the latter's ability to communicate by its standard physical presence a constant and specific clusters of meanings through an entire genre," (Sobchack, pg. 7).
• "It is the  very plasticity of objects and settings in SF films which help define them as science fiction, and not their consistency. And it is this same plasticity of objects and settings that deny the kind of iconographic interpretation which critically illuminates the essentially static worlds of genres..." (Sobchack, pg. 10).