The Culture Wars re-visited
May. 22nd, 2011 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dormouse1953I listened to the broadcast of Wagner's Parsifal on Radio 3 last night, a recording of a production put on by English National Opera in March. I attended the opening night of this revival and saw the production when it was originally staged in London back in 1999. This was the first time I saw Wagner's last opera, at the end of a decade or so which turned me from a Wagner hater to a dedicated Wagnerphile.
There was a panel at Illustrious this Easter called Has Science Fiction won the Culture Wars, about the pervasiveness of SF tropes in modern culture. I was reminded of this panel during the introductions to the acts last night. The setting is a post-apocalyptic landscape, said the announcer and then mentioned the influences of the films The Matrix and Terminator 2. The Flower Maidens were likened to triffids. He also described Klingsor, the self-castrated magician who has stolen the spear that wounded Christ, as looking like a Kabuki performer, but when you first see him, sitting behind a metallic circle, I immediately thought of Ming the Merciless sitting at a visiscreen.
The knights of the Grail in the final act are dressed in military greatcoats that make them look like the Thals in the Doctor Who episode The Genesis of the Daleks.
Then there's the Grail itself. In the first act at the stage floor curves upwards so that a chair in the distance appears to be standing at ninety degrees to the vertical. You also see a large rock spiralling around in the air. The Grail must be a black hole. Actually, there is some indication of this in Wagner's libretto. As they approach the Grail chamber, Gurnemanz explains to Parsifal "Du siehst, mein Sohn, zum Raum wird hier die Zeit." "You see, my son, time here becomes space." This written about thirty years before Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
So, it must be true. Science Fiction has won the Culture Wars.
There was a panel at Illustrious this Easter called Has Science Fiction won the Culture Wars, about the pervasiveness of SF tropes in modern culture. I was reminded of this panel during the introductions to the acts last night. The setting is a post-apocalyptic landscape, said the announcer and then mentioned the influences of the films The Matrix and Terminator 2. The Flower Maidens were likened to triffids. He also described Klingsor, the self-castrated magician who has stolen the spear that wounded Christ, as looking like a Kabuki performer, but when you first see him, sitting behind a metallic circle, I immediately thought of Ming the Merciless sitting at a visiscreen.
The knights of the Grail in the final act are dressed in military greatcoats that make them look like the Thals in the Doctor Who episode The Genesis of the Daleks.
Then there's the Grail itself. In the first act at the stage floor curves upwards so that a chair in the distance appears to be standing at ninety degrees to the vertical. You also see a large rock spiralling around in the air. The Grail must be a black hole. Actually, there is some indication of this in Wagner's libretto. As they approach the Grail chamber, Gurnemanz explains to Parsifal "Du siehst, mein Sohn, zum Raum wird hier die Zeit." "You see, my son, time here becomes space." This written about thirty years before Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
So, it must be true. Science Fiction has won the Culture Wars.
