Referential Tethers

Historical fiction and sci-fi have huge amounts in common, not least of which is world-building.  The basic point of putting a reader into an alien setting is to take them OUT of the world they're sitting in while reading, watching, listening.  So I am always confounded when an author insists upon pointing out the present day.

I've been sitting here watching "Children of Men" - and this film involves some of the most intense staging I've seen in a long time.  This setting is so finely conceived, calibrated, and realized it is almost a luxury to give over to the film.  Even as harrowing as it is as a place, as a plot - it is so complete you find yourself immersed.  So it is disappointing (for *me*) to find the voyage anchored; to be jerked back to the couch, when the work successfully has me somewhere new, teaching me a place I din't previously know.

The point of sci-fi in particular tends to be to reflect upon our existence - to posit hope, or fear, or question, or maybe even answer.  I know that the point of what I feel is a tether is intended to be a mirror.  It's not that I fail to understand.  But so often, it ends up feeling like name-dropping - or, simply, like something which ideally shouldn't have to be explicit.  I'm distracted when a plot shouts its own point in constant, or heavy-handed symbolism (CoM is doing this a bit), but I can put up with it.  But the present-tether goes even a step beyond this.

To anchor a story in themes of oppression is one thing; to write about the specific oppression - detention of particular people in a particular place and time - quantifies it.  It becomes reportage, and can serve extremely lofty purposes.  "The Crucible" is perhaps the most famous example of this - Salem Witch Trials as McCarthy Hearings.  But "The Crucible" NEVER speaks of the era in which it was written.  And "The Crucible", half a century later, hasn't dated itself.

Children of Men makes a point of mentioning "2003 - that magic time when we didn't know the future was about to happen" or some highly similar statement I'm not going to bother scene-searching to replay to quote accurately.  So watching this flick in 2011, it has already committed to dating itself.

I don't mind this as such, but (a) it does have the effect of destroying my WSD, and of course (b) it makes the DVD market pretty finite for such a film.  Why do studios insist on such self-referentiality, when it actually forces a film into obsolescence?

And why do authors want to date a story a screenplay, a novel?  Or shout at a reader, "YOU ARE **NOT** HERE"?


I know.  I know why.

I just personally don't like it.  So expect from me:  untethered stories.  No anchors for me.  Nor for you.

The tether obligates a story.  Dropping an anchor doesn't just stop me from experiencing a story and its world:  It pins the point very finely.