This is interesting, though I don't know if it's especially accurate to think of internet fiction as being a hallmark of the Clintonian era. That seems more like a coincidence--considering that internet sci-fi movies continued on well after Clinton was deposed, and there'd been a handful going on before he was in office.

So, all I mean is, I don't know that internets are a cultural reaction to Clinton's presidency, just a cultural reaction to the internet which coincidentally started in Clinton's presidency. Not like that Margaret Thatcher Dr. Who stuff we were talking about last week.

Armageddon was a real testosterone-fired stinker. I would have mentioned "Deep Impact" with decent science and a kid on a scrambler bike saving, if not the world, then at least his main squeeze..

And where does "Mars Attacks" fit in? If anywhere.

@braak: Yeah, what I'm saying is that early-internet scifi was a hallmark of the era -- not the presidency per se.

@wishnevsky: I thought about including Mars Attacks! Sort of like a liberal satire of conservative paranoia. I think Starship Troopers was in a similar vein, directly making fun of stuff like Armageddon.

meh, you're overanalyzing, its more, AMERICA SAVES THE WORLD, or "we've run out of enemies, lets go kill the aliens, go America!" We cant forget how in Independence Day, the Israelis and the Iraqis came together in Jordon and with the US President's order, fought the final battle.

Stargate was okay, but ID4 and Armageddon make me chuck. Utter crap.

What about SF TV?

@Lawn Guylander:
Originally mentioned in the atrocious V: The Series.

Gore never claimed he invented the Internet. I'm so tired of that old Republican lie ...

@Annalee: Well, okay then.

It was definitely a fertile era to breed the X-Files in.

If I were a real star wars freak I would point out that you mispelled Anakin Skywalkers name by giving him two Ns... but I'm not. So I wont.

@braak: True. But I guess bad movies about the internet never go out of style.

@Annalee: God, I hope not. I was about to kill myself before Die Hard: When Internets Explode came out and gave me reason to live again.

Couldn't these same concepts be applied to every period of post-WWII American sci fi? OK, not the internet part, but still...

@ManchuCandidate:
Sorry. X-Files. Does not compute.

Also note the shift from Independence Day to The Day After Tomorrow. Same filmmakers, different Whitehouse.

Am I the only one who believes that Independence Day had tongue firmly in cheek? Compare the humour with the earnestness of Day After Tomorrow, or Armageddon (okay, I confess, I wept at the end of Armageddon when Bruce sacrifices himself...still a shite movie though). ID4 was self-mocking, and crammed with references; they just built it around a multi-character, multiple-storyline epic a la Otto Premminger. You didn't see many films of that type in the 80s or 90s before ID4. Not saying it's a brilliant film, but like Starship Troopers, I believe it's essential straight-faced parody went over a lot of people's heads.

Did no one mention that the real reason people cheered when the White House blew up in ID4 was because that was the sole image shown in the teaser trailer for the movie? Audiences had been waiting to see it happen for over half a year (and mind you, this was before the Internet was capable of bombarding us with multimedia information about upcoming movies).

@Unamerican: I actually really liked the subtle ironies in both ID4 and the (much less) subtle ironies in Starship Troopers.

I believe I am the only person who enjoyed both of those movies.

This is the kind of thing that cultural historians do, but usually at a little bit more of an historical distance. I mean, now it's easy to see that Godzilla was about the fear of nuclear weapons and Planet of the Apes was about racial tensions. But those are the kinds of understandings that develop in retrospect. You may be right, but it's too soon to tell.

@Unamerican: I totally agree that its tongue was in cheek. But it could also be taken at face value too. That's why it brought both the liberals and the necons into the theaters to cheer.

@braak: I loved both movies! But then I'm a sucker for explosions and monsters, so that might not be saying much.

lol @ "space egyptians". Why didn't they just call them that in the movie?

@braak: You are not alone.

And after some of the comments on prior posts, I'm now convinced that the ironies in Starship Troopers were more deliciously subtle than I thought.

A Fire Upon the Deep is a great, great science fiction novel, but it was published during the first Bush administration. If it reflects a generation of the Internet, it's mid-period Usenet, with its slow-propagating galactic newsgroups and colorful Serdar Argic-like characters such as Twirlip of the Mists.

@Unamerican:
I can sort of see the Starship Troopers as satire based on Paul Verhoven's past work although I humorlessly viewed it through teh prism of reading the original novel. Judging on the increasing stupidity of Devlin and Emmerlich's later works, ID4 is satire by accident not purpose.

Cool article. I never thought about the 90s' movies like that.

Floyd Red Crow Westerman, RIP

# "The X Files" .... Albert Hosteen (5 episodes, 1995-1999)
... aka The X-Files (USA)
- The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati (1999) TV episode .... Albert Hosteen
- Biogenesis (1999) TV episode .... Albert Hosteen
- Paper Clip (1995) TV episode (as Floyd Red Crow Westerman) .... Albert Hosteen

[www.imdb.com]

Also a musician, he did the song "Custer Died for Your Sins."

- The Blessing Way (1995) TV episode (as Floyd Red Crow Westerman) .... Albert Hosteen
- Anasazi (1995) TV episode .... Albert Hosteen

@Annalee: And here i thought "starship trooper" was all about the bug guts.. But you are right, there are a few snarky bits. If you were too hung up on the Book, you might have missed it all. I loved the book when i was i high school, but i was a high school idiot.

My rule is the more progressive and permissive the administration, the less political content there is likely to be buried in art. Repressive bullcrap is the best fertilizer for progressive art. And Clinton was massively hated as soon as he got into office what with gays in the military and especially Health Care.

Falwell and them wrote a lot of science fiction about Vince Foster.

@Princess Sparkle Pony: well that's the whole awesomeness behind science fiction and horror movies. That they always represent some aspect of society. Like Night of the Living Dead was dealing with race and the other, the original Dawn of the Dead was about commercialism and materialism, etc.

@El Ojo: I don't think it's too soon to tell. Since 2000 American culture has been more retrospective than it has in years (see all the tv to movie remakes and fashion).

I think this is spot on. Great job. I say next year, with a new president in the house, you get started on the post 911 science fiction. Like Signs and Land of the Dead, even Lord of the Rings has some amazing subtext.

X files doesn't work as conservative paranoia at all. If anything, it's the opposite: I mean, a government employee fights an industrial syndicate that's selling us out to the aliens. You could maybe say that the side of the show that is about fighting beauracracy smacks of a libertarian ethos. However, it's never about beauracracy for it's own sake, which would hurt that hypothetical arguement.

I will say, I think the virus freak out films would have happened regardless of Clinton being elected. Society was just removed enough to finally put it to use in films.

One favorite SF book in my collection is Vinge's Across Realtime. When I read his A Deepness In The Sky, I thought it was the best new SF I'd come across in a long time. A Fire Upon The Deep also didn't disappoint.

I've had great fun in the last few years introducing my teenage daughters to many of these books and films. We have to raise a new generation of discriminating fans of good SF.

Love this new blog! It's become a place I visit everyday.

@Filthygorgeous:

"Great job. I say next year, with a new president in the house, you get started on the post 911 science fiction. Like Signs and Land of the Dead, even Lord of the Rings has some amazing subtext."

Battlestar Galactica? I'm just saying...

[www.slate.com]

Nice, except I have to point out that 12 Monkeys had its origins pretty far from Clintonian America: it was based on a French short film made in the 60s, La Jetée.

Also, aren't we almost always trying to keep the aliens at bay/in line? Not taking that tack was one reason Contact stood out (not to mention ET and Close Encounters earlier).

@Princess Sparkle Pony: i dunno... some of them, sure, but contrast the dark futuristic/post-apocalyptic movies of the 80's: the mad max movies, escape from new york, blade runner, total recall (well, 1990), etc. so i think the trends that the OP describes do reflect not only post-wwii society in america, but specifically the 90's.
well done annalee! i like.

Starship Troopers looks a lot different to me now than in the 90's, when it seemed more like parody than satire. I saw a National Guard recruitment trailer at the movies a few months ago that was no less over the top than the "kill the bugs" PSA's that showed up in ST. Also, have to add a plug for one of my favorite bad movies about a killer virus, "Outbreak." Dustin Hoffman saying "I hate this bug" will never leave me, never.

@SuperUnison:
I agree with Superunison, X-Files was not conservative paranoia at all... It is about the individual underdog (one person against an army - so to speak).
Being a Libertarian, I would also agree it is more Libertarian than standard conservatism.

@craigdawson: But is it libertarian paranoia?

@Annalee: Is Libertarian Paranoia paranoia of libertarians, or the paranoia that libertarians have about everyone else?

@braak: The latter, at least in the case of my question.

Where would Strange Days fit into all of this?

The X-Files isn't based on paranoia of either band of the political divide. The X-Files is based on the deep-seated fear that the government really doesn't know what it's doing, and screws up because it's made of people who, like most people, aren't narrow-minded and short-sighted.

Something like The X-Files allows the illusion that the government isn't bumbling, but only looks that way, is only acting like a parade of fools as part of a Grand Master Plan.

@slatz_Grobnik: It helped that the Clinton administration was competent. But 9/11 killed that suspension of disbelief.

"What? You mean that the Pentagon doesn't have matter-vaporizing lasers? Or even missiles that can shoot enemy planes into the Potomac?"

I've always felt that there was something infinitely WRONG about Stargate. And really, it is the other side of the X-Files. It postulates that tired old saw of the Out of Context Problem: That is, that humanity will take one look at another species that is more advanced and drop into a fetal position because it disrupts our view of the universe. Of course it's wrong as the Cherokee and the Japanese prove. The only reason the Native Americans didn't succeed was because of systematic racial abuse. Stargate plays to this and make the idiot claim that they are protecting humanity from the terrible secret of Space. So they send only covert special forces against a numerically and technologically superior opponent. And the secret isn't from other Governments as SG Atlantis shows, but only against the common man. Sigh. It makes me sad.

X-files was a dig at the New Deal in that it reflects the paranoia about "creeping socialism" the right began pushing into the media space in the 1930s and on. There is a general feeling that America was at its peak with the WWII generation, especially now that they are passing on and leaving pampered Baby Boomers and ahistorical generation letter people behind. There is a perception that something went wrong during and after the war, tied into the secrecy, the paranoia about reds, the civil rights movement and the overthrow of the then-"natural" order, and the rapid pace of technological advancement. Check out the sci-fi of the 50s, especially Serling's Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond, and The Outer Limits.
Everything seemed sinister and out of control except for the calm, watchful guiding hand of J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. The twist is that the government and the greatest generation lied about everything and sold us out to the boogey man. The things the Reagan-Bush administration did with straight faces and the things attributed to Clinton fed into the general notion that we had been sold out again, had, swindled, big time.

@swami_binkinanda: So, wait, is it a dig at the New Deal, or is it a dig at Reagan?

This is kind of like that weird discussion we were into on the Dr. Who thread. Is the fact that the government is a bunch of alien collaborators a dig against government (and therefore the Left), because it's saying that government is inherently evil and unstrustworthy, or is it a dig against private enterprise (and therefore the Right), because it's positing the idea that we could have a good government if there weren't a bunch of evil industrialists in charge of it?

Armageddon peaked as a movie when you see Michael Duncan Clarke standing in Bruce Willis' way with a giant freakin' wrench on his shoulder. It went downhill from there.