AmrikeeAkbar
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User ID: 1187
AmrikeeAkbar
9hr ago
Speaking as someone who used to watch Stargate with his parents and siblings every week as a teenager, I think it's probably there now. You just need clever enough writers who can work some references in without it feeling too forced. It is about a secret government program after all, albeit a benevolent one.
AmrikeeAkbar
20hr ago
Honestly Stargate still has a lot of fans. It's just not a critical darling and there's not a whole company built around endlessly reiterated spinoffs like some other franchises I could name.
But yeah, old enough to remember dial-up has become a generational marker
AmrikeeAkbar
23hr ago
Vampire was huge. I was too young for it but the fact I knew about is probably a good indicator of how popular it was. Vampire media in general were really popular up until I think the mid 2000s, about the time Underworld and the Twilight movies started coming out.
Funnily enough, I have seen multiple pen-and-paper RPGs which say something like "you can set your campaign in the modern world, but probably no later than the nineties or so" precisely because the premise becomes unworkable once everyone has smartphone.
AmrikeeAkbar
23hr ago
Your second paragraph raises a good point. Appearing right at the threshold of digitization has allowed a lot of 90s culture to persist as though trapped in amber. I would place the end of a common culture more in the 2010s but yeah, there's no doubt that media is much more fragmented and balkanized now than it used to be. Presumably that's why we keep rebooting stuff from the era; they're the only things with big enough draw for these huge corporations to perceive as a worthwhile investment.
AmrikeeAkbar
23hr ago
Babylon 5 is a core memory for me, X-Files and Buffy were both super popular, arguably some of the first SF media to hit mainstream recognition. I actually only watched Wallace and Gromit as an adult with my kids, and was shocked to realize how little of it there actually was, cuz you're right, it was everywhere for a while.
AmrikeeAkbar
2d ago
Finished the final season of Stranger Things this past week. I think I'm agreement with the general consensus that it was a step down from 4th season. The first two episodes were strong and had some cool ideas (a base in the upside-down, etc), but somewhere around the third episode they started to lose the plot and I decided I had to stop thinking too hard about things and just roll with it. That said, I loved the 40 minute "18 months later" epilogue that provided closure, more or less, for all our characters. Was this accomplished with transparent emotional manipulation backed up by an iconic soundtrack? Yes it was, what's your point? When the door to the Wheeler's basement closed for the last time and Bowie began playing over the end credits, I felt all the things I was supposed to feel. Judge me if you must.
But considering that Stranger Things started ten years ago, it occurred to me that we're due for the 90s nostalgia period pieces to start hitting any day now. So I started wondering, what would a 90s version of Stranger Things look like? By that, I mean a broadly sci-fi story that exploits the cultural memory of slightly-nerdy nineties kids the way Stranger Things exploits the cultural memory of slightly-nerdy 80s kids, building a plot around copious references to games, movies, common childhood experiences et cetera.
Off the top of my head, in no particular order:
a) Console/PC gaming and the internet were all coming into the mainstream in the nineties. I spent hours playing Civ 2 on the family computer.
b) I'm not a huge comic reader, but I do have the sense that comic books (as opposed to movies based on comics) were at peak popularity.
c)UFOs and government conspiracies were both pretty big, though I'm not necessarily sure they were or less popular fiction fodder than they were in the previous decade.
AmrikeeAkbar
3d ago
Undoubtedly people with influence manipulate the system to get their desired assignment. Some prefer to avoid danger as much as possible. But it's also not uncommon for ambitious young men to seek out roles with a degree of danger precisely because they want to be seen doing their part. Note that in the linked example, LBJ volunteered to fly as an observer on a bomber mission because he felt it was necessary to show his courage.
AmrikeeAkbar
11d ago
I still have to read that one! Is over-rated or as much a classic as people say?
AmrikeeAkbar
13d ago
Eh, it's definitely done in more of a thought experiment way than a give-me-sjw-points way. Part of the subtext is that people are constantly falling into gender roles whether consciously or not, and the narrator draws attention to this.
AmrikeeAkbar
13d ago
Honestly, audiobooks are great for those long 19th century novels. I just tune in for the interesting parts while driving/doing chores/whatever. Whether this counts as reading is of course a matter of perspective
AmrikeeAkbar
13d ago
Alternately bouncing between "The Making of The English Working Class", a very interesting history book, albeit colored somewhat by the authors Marxist sympathies and "Too Like The Lightning", a mid-to-near future science fiction mystery-thriller. Between the two of them, I think I prefer the history book. It's quite long but feels, for lack of a better term, very real in way the sf doesn't. Lest this sound like a dig, I should emphasize I give full credit to "Too Like The Lightning" for trying to envision a plausible near future that is different from our own world yet plausibly derived from it. The author is swinging for the fences; it's just that the price of trying to swing for the fences is sometimes you miss.
AmrikeeAkbar
17d ago
That's a fair point, and it caused me to do some thinking. I think in the case of Japan, we very deliberately went out of our way to embed the US occupation in the existing structure of the Japanese state, leaving the Emperor on the throne etc. In the Tokyo War Crimes trial, we went out of our way to only prosecute a relatively small handful of top-ranked leaders and a whole bunch of lower-ranking folks were allowed to return to political and government life after a short time. We also kept boots on the ground for a long time, both to contain any resurgent militarist tendencies, but also to shield Japan against enemies like Russia and Communist China. Nothing makes people over look old enmity like a new common enemy. So there was a carrot-and-stick arrangement in place which encouraged post-war reconciliation.
In the case of Vietnam, you again have a case of common adversary in the form of China, which fought a war with Vietnam within a few years of US departure. I will note that even so, it took twenty years for the US and Vietnam to normalize diplomatic relations. And crucially, the North Vietnamese won; its a lot easier to be generous in victory than defeat.
So I won't say its impossible for us to be friends with the Iranians in a decade or two. If an ISIS-like entity were to re-emerge, say, I could see us making common cause. But I do think that kind of reconciliation would require a major fat-tail event that is hard to see from here.
AmrikeeAkbar
22d ago
We did the first two episodes of S5 last night. So far I quite like it; I'll try to maintain momentum and finish strong. I definitely know what you mean about the actors. It's not so bad with the older kids, but it can be hard to suspend disbelief when you're watching someone whose in their twenties notionally playing a high school sophomore
AmrikeeAkbar
22d ago
I guess it is basically a steel man if your argument. To be fair, they're not the only nation whose leadership committed them to decades of misadventure in the region based off of conspiracy theories
AmrikeeAkbar
22d ago
Just finished Stranger Things Season 4, after taking a long hiatus following season 3. I had assumed the law of diminishing returns would apply but was presently surprised that 4, imo, was the strongest season since the first. Taking things in a more horror inspired direction seemed to be just the right move to reinvigorate things while still developing in an organic way from the original premise. I've heard season 5 isn't great; should I end on a high note?
AmrikeeAkbar
25d ago
To the extent I can give you a neat answer, I think it comes down to the principal-agent problem, a ruling class which legitimizes itself on the basis of a particular revolutionary ideology, and of course, blind luck and historical contingency.
As you indicate, prior to the Revolution, Iran was basically an Israeli ally. Then you have the revolution, in which counter-elites overthrew the Shah's regime in the name of an ideology which fused left-wing anti-colonialism with religion. As is usually the case, there was a range of opinion amongst the revolutionaries about what shape the post-revolutionary world would take, but the more hardline elements won out. The Iranian Hostage Crisis was a kind of bleeding ulcer that would have prevented normalization of relations between the US and Iran even if the US had been inclined to recognize the new regime - which we weren't. The Shah had been perceived as a key ally against Communism and the whole US security complex had been humiliated by their failure to anticipate or prevent the revolution, so negotiation was always gonna be a heavy lift.
Then comes the Iran-Iraq war, an absolutely brutal conflict in which all sorts of atrocities are committed and in which the US (who mostly still sees Iran as their main problem in the Middle East) backs Iraq. During the war, Iran doubles down on its revolutionary hard-line attitudes. Remember, a lot of the military was considered unreliable because they were associated with the Shah, so Iran lacks a corp of professional, capable officers. They compensate by invoking sheer fanaticism. When the war ends, you have a generation of leaders whose formative experiences have been fighting the US and it's proxies in the name of Revolutionary Shiism, burying their friends and family along the way. Additionally, various things happen which contribute to Iran being an international pariah and make normal relations difficult to impossible with the rest of the world.
Combine this history with geopolitical opportunism. There's lots of Shia throughout the middle-east, mostly in a politically subordinate position. As you pointed out, Iranians are not Arabs, and are the wrong kind of Muslim as far as most of the middle eastern regimes are concerned. So there's already a lot of tension there, not helped by the fact that Iranians aren't shy about considering themselves the successor of the Persian empire. Iran doesn't have the conventional military power to be a regional hegemon, but of course just as the revolution happens we're entering a golden age of unconventional warfare. So, lets assume you're at odds with all your neighbors, and you don't have the guns, tanks and airplanes to threaten them, but you do have a whole bunch of dedicated Shia operatives with paramilitary experience. And you have a bunch of not-particularly-happy Shia looking to put pressure on their own governments. What do you do?.
Thats more or less how we got to where we are. You have a generation of leaders invested in a particular view of the world, who have embedded themselves in the government and security apparatus of the state. You have a hostile but stable equilibrium in which Iran doesn't get along with the US or its Arab neighbors but nobody wants to risk a full-on military conflict (until recently). Personally, everything I took from own study of Iran in grad school was that I'm glad it wasn't my problem to deal with. Cuz it really is a thorny problem. If you're a based conservative, you can point out that Iran is constantly starting shit at every opportunity, and you're absolutely right. If you're a bleeding-heart liberal, you can point out that all the stick-shaking and sanctions and tough-talk haven't actually effected a change in regime attitudes, and you're also absolutely right. Personally, I'm not optimistic about the latest developments. Sure, we can smash their conventional forces, and their economy, and kill all their leaders. But in another twenty years there will be a fresh crop of military age males. And what will their formative experiences have been?
AmrikeeAkbar
25d ago
Seconding Axeworthy's book. Additionally I'd recommend "The Eagle and The Lion" by James A Bill, which is about US-Iranian relations specifically.
AmrikeeAkbar
25d ago
Listen to that podcast all the time, just put together that Tom Holland is one of the hosts. No idea he used to write fiction, I'll have to check him out.
Im not sure what we should call the phenomenon you're describing but its basically the male equivalent of the Madonna-whore complex. Definitely a thing.
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