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."