Cornea, Christine. Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality.

Wilson, D. Harlan

Cornea, Christine. Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007. 308 pp. Paperback. ISBN 9780-8135- 4173-0. $23.95.

The blurb on the back of Christine Cornea's Science Fiction Cinema calls it "the most important overview of SF since Vivian Sobchack's Screening Space," a Pilgrim Award-winning book originally published in 1980 under the title The Limits of Infinity that covers American sf film from its origins to the mid- 1970s. In 1987, Screening Space added a fourth chapter dedicated to the 1980s. While now somewhat dated, Sobchack's pioneering critical analysis problematizes the slippery origins and definitions of sf as it reads a wide range of texts by way of formalist and theoretical methods. When I first discovered Cornea's book, I wondered how (and why) she would contend with Sobchack. Inevitably there is some overlap. But for the most part Cornea has produced an intuitive, expansive, and innovative work that extends and develops her forerunner's ideas through the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. She also broadens her scope to global sf cinema. "In understanding the genre as existing beyond the American limits imposed by earlier academics," she writes, "my own book offers analysis of this kind of [transnational] interplay by looking at British, Australian, French, Russian, and Japanese cinema's engagement with science fiction as part of an overall aim to place films within the cultural context from which they emerged" (x). Given the great scale of Cornea's project, it is a remarkable achievement.

Following an introduction that addresses formations of the sf genre along with key figures and films, Science Fiction Cinema unfolds in chronological order with attention paid to specific topics (e.g., cold war politics, psychedelics, the family, masculinity, and patriarchy). Chapters 2, 3, and 4 respectively deal with sf films of the "Golden Years" (1950s), the experimental "spaced out" years (1960s and 1970s), and the socio-Reaganomic blockbuster years (1980s), providing historical contexts, summaries of, and commentaries on representative films. The second half of the book, in contrast, foregrounds theme and theory. Chapters 5 and 6 turn to concerns regarding gender and femininity and race and aliens/others, and the seventh and conclusive eighth chapters focus on performativity and special effects technologies. Jumping back and forth in time, Cornea examines more recent films in the second half, among them big budgeters like Starship Troopers (1997), The Fifth Element (1997), and the Matrix trilogy (1999-2003) as well as the lower budget Eve of Destruction (1991), Nemesis 2: Nebula (1995), and Virtual Combat (1996). Complementing astute interpretations of these and many other films are interviews at the end of every chapter, conducted by Cornea herself, with sf writ ers, directors, actors, and a special effects technician. Any well-(mis)behaved postmodern thinker is suspicious of our fervent desire for definition and categorization. There is a long history of label-making in the sf genre, however, and any comprehensive study would be remiss without attending to how the genre's practitioners and critics have attempted to identify it, even as sf ideas continue to manifest in the real world and increasingly obstruct label-making efforts.

As the authors of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction write, "There is really no good reason to expect that a workable definition of sf will ever be established. None has been, so far" (314). And the encyclopedia was published over ten years ago. At any rate, Cornea thankfully doesn't formulate her own definition of sf but rather discusses the longstanding problems of such a formulation, beginning with her first sentence: "There are almost as many definitions of science fiction as there are critics who have attempted to define it as a genre" (2). Her point in this short opening section is to draw a distinction between written and cinematic sf, the latter of which "stress[es] the sovereignty of the image [...] as opposed to the idea in science fiction literature" (5). For Cornea, in order to effectively read sf film, there must be a reasoned, historically- attentive interplay between sf in its written and cinematic forms since these forms so deeply influence one another, especially in the postmodern era. The introduction features interviews with famed authors Brian Aldiss and William Gibson, who respond to questions that mainly involve how their work has been or might be translated into film. Subsequent interviewees include actor Billy Gray from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951); Altered States (1980) director Ken Russell; Total Recall (1990) and Starship Troopers (1997) director Paul Verhoeven (in two parts); actor Joe Morton from The Brother from Another Planet (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991); actor Dean Norris from multiple sf films and television shows; veteran special effects/makeup technician Stan Winston; and finally Roland Emmerich, director of Stargate (1994) and Independence Day (1996). As with Aldiss and Gibson, Cornea orients questions toward each interviewee's respective experiences in the sf film industry. These interviews enhance Science Fiction Cinema by juxtaposing more personal, informal conversations with technical descriptions and philosophical deliberations.

Particularly appealing is the interview with Verhoeven. Not only does he discuss issues of stylization and world-creation in his films, he explains how American imperialism affected him as a transatlantic filmmaker. On the subject of violence in Starship Troopers, for instance, he says: "The violence is not very different from what you see on CNN. The world is filled with violence. The United States is politically promoting violence left, right and centre. After going for Iraq, we're now preparing for Iran, aren't we? I would say, what idiot doesn't want to use violence in his movies? [...] That's the person that doesn't want to look at our world as it is. That's the person who is not looking at the violence that is visible in the universe" (139). Verhoeven's sf films have often been misperceived as too graphic, hedonistic, over-the-top, depthless, etc. Timely statements of this nature, however, aptly portray Verhoeven not as a filmmaker who depicts future worlds of fancy and brutality, but one who represents and critiques the present world through the extrapolated lens of imagined futures.

Cornea's pointed questions elicit revealing and interesting responses from all of her interviewees. Equally strong are her multi-methodological readings of sf cinema, which in some cases reference and build upon the interviews. Furthering Verhoeven's comments in an examination of gender blending in Starship Troopers, she writes: "Verhoeven's starkly comic-book approach renders this science fiction film as a kind of perverse black comedy that comments upon Heinlein's known anti-communist and militaristic views as well as the contemporary state of affairs in America following the gulf war" (168). Thus, the film does not endorse Heinlein's masculinized ethic, as many critics, to my continued surprise, have stupidly argued over the years. On the contrary, the film satirizes Heinlein--with extreme prejudice.

While gender issues constitute the bulk of her theoretical inquiry, Cornea devotes a full chapter to race relations, primarily the ways in which African Americans, Afro-Caribbean-Americans, and the "oriental" figure are portrayed in sf films such as Planet of the Apes (1968-73), Enemy Mine (1985), Virtuosity (1995), and Strange Days (1995). And while American sf cinema constitutes the bulk of her textual base, she does attend to non-US cinema. For instance, in a subsection of chapter 4 called "Science Fiction and the Global Film Market," she looks at the role of sf film in British, French, Australian, and Japanese cultures. Specifically, she explains how the "reach of the American blockbuster and the correspondingly high-budget aesthetic that became almost indelibly associated with science fiction cinema at this time [the 1980s] might have made it difficult for less well-funded national cinemas to engage with the genre" (130), which accounts for the marginalization of non-US cinema in her book.

All told, Science Fiction Cinema is a mammoth undertaking that, at times, tries to bite off more than it can chew. Some readers may not like the brevity of Cornea's analyses and commentaries. In light of her scope, this didn't disturb me, although I do have two quibbles: First, mechanical errors run rampant, so much so that sometimes it felt like I was reading an uncorrected proof--shame on Rutgers University Press! Second, I was also initially disconcerted by the long-winded summaries of the films. These concerns aside, Science Fiction Cinema is a dynamic overview and reevaluation of sf in which Cornea writes with clarity and insight. The book will appeal to a wide audience, although it is perhaps most suitable for sf veterans in search of a refresher course or sf neophytes who want to broaden their knowledge of the genre.