Thursday, April 30, 2015

Week Fourteen Science Fiction Parody and Satire

Week Fourteen Science Fiction Parody and Satire
I listened to the beginning of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio version, and I watched the film. I found the film pretty hilarious; it seemed almost like a cross between star wars and Monty Python. The way the characters are written feels extremely English. Arthur lost in space in his pajamas with his planet flattened and a complete sense of helplessness feels like it could be a postcolonial metaphor.
As good sci-fi does this story reflects upon the time in which it was written, and the story definitely has some undercurrents of the anti-Thatcher sentiment of 80’s Britain. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was broadcast on BBC, and through the 80’s thatcher had the BBC in her sights, with documents surfacing later showing that she wanted to incorporate advertising into BBC radio shows.
I really enjoyed Sam Rockwell’s performance as Zaphod Beeblebrox in the film. I definitely feel a George bush quality in the performance, and while the humor of the character is really very entertaining there are definitely some undertones of cynical ironic truth about leadership in the writing of this character. After all anybody who has the ability to be elected president should not be trusted to do the job.

Arthur’s character is very relatable, he has that underlying sense of unease with himself, as if he is the only one who is not in on what’s going down around him. After all Arthur has the line: "All through my life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was."

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