Why We Fight

I've always prided myself on being a "genre filmmaker," and I don't use the term casually. Ever since taking a class called "Critical Concepts in Media," I've made a deep effort to understand how these films reflect the desires and attitudes of the movie-going public, and how genres shift and change to reflect society's views of itself. Studying genre is, in my opinion, nothing less than studying our modern myths. And being able to tell an invigorating and unique story in an established genre takes skill and commitment no less intense than a filmmaker of the avant-garde tradition.

So with that serious approach in mind, the thesis project I am attempting to undertake will be an attempt to work in what is essentially an extinct "micro-genre": television sci-fi of the 1950s (specifically, shows like Space Patrol, Tom Corbett, and Captain Video). Now in a face-to-face conversation, this is where I would usually brace for the laugh. Since this is text, however, I can gamely press ahead.

There are many reasons why attempting to tease this genre back to life would be fulfilling. First and foremost, sci-fi from this period was fun in a way that its mature descendent simply cannot match. What many people describe as the "B" or "schlock" quality of fifties sci-fi movies is to me a kind of manic enthusiasm towards technology and the future bubbling up from the subtext of the film. Modern "B" movies don't really have the same feel at all. While sci-fi has come a long way since the still excellent Forbidden Planet, that nebulous sense of fun has been all but lost.

Now I don't want to get too involved in the many underpinnings of these films, but a brief detour into this genre during the fifties may prove enlightening. Post World War II America was an amazingly unique time in our country's life. It's almost impossible for those who didn't live through it to understand the explosion in technology that occurred during that decade -- there's really no other word for it. In the span of just a few years our society fully embraced television, the automobile and dozens of other technological innovations at a rate that must have seemed dizzying. It's hard for us to realize how plausible it would be to someone in this environment that we'd be living on the moon by the 1970s, and that jetpacks and food-pills were "right around the corner." It was a decade of such rapid technological advancement (really the forging of our modern societal structure), that a kind of awe took hold of the masses over the wonders of science and technology. Ten years previous no one could have envisioned that radio would soon be toppled from its throne, much less that we'd soon have the capability to wipe ourselves off the map with the atom-bomb. But even when the products of scientific progress were terrifying, that sense of awe remained. Unlike its modern counter-part, most science fiction of this time wasn't really about science at all, but rather, about the possibilities of science. No one thought that slapping some ornate fins on a car was going to make it take off, but to many such decoration was a wonderfully inspiring sight. It was like the people of this time got so excited they developed a style (involving lots of slick ornamentation and chrome) in anticipation for a future that would never really arrive. To fully understand the mood I'm trying to recreate (that ephemeral sense of "fun"), one must first understand the unabashed enthusiasm for "progress" that helped to define this era. Bill Bryson does an excellent job covering a lot of these points in his recent book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir.

So now that we've got the broad style bracketed, we can discuss how the sci-fi of early television was distinct in its own right. First of all, it was generally cheap. Sometimes dirt cheap. One popular anecdote describes the early episodes of Captain Video (created by the cash-strapped Dumont Network) as being budgeted at $20 a piece! Now obviously this didn't help the quality of the work any (it takes quite a connoisseur to appreciate these "classics"), but there was an unintentional side-effect: by being so low-budgeted, each series often fell back on tried and true science-fiction aesthetics. In the fifties, that meant the serials, whose approaches to the genre had largely been cemented in the thirties.

Seeing as how you're already facing a daunting wall of text, I won't go off on another tangent, but suffice it to say, while the higher budgeted features were exploring new forms and styles (this is the era that brought us the infamous Flying Saucer, after all), the television series often had the fantastic "Rocket Ships and Rayguns" approach that had been pioneered with serials like Flash Gordon. The TV heroes even sounded like they could have leapt right off the lobby cards from this earlier era: Buzz Corry, Captain Video, Tom Corbett.

But these series were not just poorly funded imitations. As discussed above, a primary difference is that they possessed a viewpoint more closely aligned with the 1950s. This outlook, combined with the violence restrictions present even then in early TV made for a kinder, gentler fare than the serials. There was also a greater emphasis on technology to solve problems. That being said, it is interesting to note that traditional fisticuffs and even the occasional death still occurred, a fact that stands in stark contrast to modern programming (the only series that has any correlation to these shows would be Power Rangers, which chooses to depict violence as a kind of flashy dance between super-powered combatants with little to no consequences).

I would be remiss if I didn't mention one other factor that contributes to the unique feel of these shows: like all early television, they were filmed completely live, special effects and model shots included. Sometimes actors would be required to engage in an extended fist fight and then go right into promoting a sponsor’s product! This thesis film will of course use more traditional methods, but I wanted to mention this as a testament to those early actor's steady nerves and endurance.

The final reason why this project has a special place in my heart is my deep desire to make this film a lasting tribute to these largely forgotten -- and in some cases almost completely lost -- series. Captain Video stands as a particular tragedy. Filmed live five days a week (with an additional show on Saturday) for over three years, CV eventually racked up well over a thousand episodes! It was routinely watched by an audience of millions (the Honeymooners poked fun at the number of fans in an episode where we learn that Ed Norton is a devoted follower), and in 1951 its popularity spawned the first big-screen adaptation of a TV show when a serial of the same name was produced. Unfortunately, however, the vast majority of these episodes are now gone forever, their kinescopes destroyed by Dumont to salvage the silver in the prints. Of these hundreds of shows, a mere six remain in circulation, and the copies are uniformly bad. It fills me with great sadness to think of the sacrifices these hardworking men and women made to bring these stories to air, only to have their legacy almost completely wiped out today. If this thesis project can in some small way help keep their memory alive, I will count it a success on that alone.

I apologize for the length of all this, but when one is trying to define something so narrow, brevity is impossible (it doesn't help that I'm longwinded to begin with). After I've rested my fingers, I can hopefully go into more detail about my take on this genre: Spacemen.

For those not running for the door by now, check out "Roaring Rockets," a wonderful site that goes into a lot more detail about the specific shows I've mentioned (including where to get them).