{"id":1741,"date":"2011-01-07T08:21:42","date_gmt":"2011-01-07T13:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=1741"},"modified":"2018-10-30T15:50:03","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T19:50:03","slug":"greatsocietys-cult-culture-section-ten-years-of-what-im-watching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=1741","title":{"rendered":"Greatsociety’s Cult Culture Section: Ten Years of What I’m Watching"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, 2011 is Greatsociety\u2019s tenth anniversary<\/a>. Which feels like an important milestone, but might actually be cause for horror and soul-searching because, really, what the fuck am I doing?
\n<\/p>\n

When thinking of how to celebrate the anniversary, I sat back and looked at what Greatsociety has done over the last ten years. It\u2019s destroyed friendships, and romantic relationships. It\u2019s mocked 9\/11 within 90 days of the event. It\u2019s followed me through pain, healing, recovery, catastrophe, and renewal\u2026<\/p>\n

But all that shit\u2019s stupid and depressing. What\u2019s the one aspect of the page that\u2019s closest to my heart? The \u201cCult-Culture\u201d section<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For me, my TV addiction began in 1980. A coming together of forces, really. I was a latchkey kid, so my mother and father, my siblings and best friends, were all wrapped up in the television. When my mom did come straggling home at 8pm, she\u2019d go right for the TV, as well\u2026 And she was a sci-fi geek.<\/p>\n

Whenever I escaped her, it was to stay over at my grandparent\u2019s house. The apple never falls far from the tree, as they were also both fairly serious sci-fi and fantasy geeks.<\/p>\n

So, at six years old, I was exposed to the greats of American sci-fi \u2013 Star Trek, Space: 1999, Battlestar Galactica<\/em>. The journeyman era of 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s sci-fi that held us, thanks to repeats, through something of a dry spell between 1980 and 1987. I was hooked immediately. I sought out all the rest of the shows that lived in syndication limbo, repeated at odd hours. From Planet of the Apes<\/em> to Salvage One<\/em>, from the Krofft Superstars to 60\u2019s stinkers like Planet of the Giants<\/em>, from Irwin Allen\u2019s flinchworthy comedy in It\u2019s About Time<\/em> to The Time Tunnel<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On my own, I found Doctor Who<\/em>. Mid-day on PBS during a rainy Sunday. The episode was Planet of Evil<\/em> \u2013 early Tom Baker at his best: greedy spacemen far from home on a hostile planet haunted by a nasty beast, and lovely Lis Sladen sliding around an appallingly fake jungle set in form-fitting reporter-chic fetishwear. The show became the cornerstone of my addiction, though suffered mightily on PBS. It vanished from our local station and landed on a Baltimore PBS station, which involved holding rabbit ears and watching entire episodes standing up. Then it moved to midnight on Saturdays, so that became my late night treat. Leading up to it, they\u2019d usually pack in the old guard of ultra-recycled British comedy \u2013 Are You Being Served, Keeping Up Appearances<\/em>, and so on. Another addiction was born thanks to those Britcoms nobody can avoid because our PBS stations over here used them as filler in those fine days before everyone had cable.<\/p>\n

Getting cable was a new era. No more fiddling with antennas, no more staring through static at rubber monsters, cardboard corridors, or Michael Praed in Sherwood Forest, or Hyacinth Bucket torturing her neighbors.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on regular TV, we had the Star Trek<\/em> and Stargate <\/em>franchises, and the late 90\u2019s ushered in a new wave of sci-fi, sparked by the unique Farscape <\/em>and rolling into a decade of gritty ship-bound sci-fi, of which the new Battlestar Galactica<\/em> is something of the flagship. The wave has crested with the cancellation of Stargate Universe<\/em> and, now, falls back. Perhaps another dry spell is on the horizon as we work through our need for Buffy <\/em>and Charmed <\/em>clones, or maybe we\u2019ll launch in a new direction. 2010\/2011 is, supposedly, the year of the alien invasion story. So far, the movies have been lackluster, and the upcoming Spielberg TV series effort looks weak before it\u2019s even left the gate.<\/p>\n

But sci-fi is a genre that\u2019s never been in danger of dying.<\/p>\n

Writing for Great Society has always been something of a challenge. It\u2019s a weird, little, personal meander that\u2019s often done without any concept of an audience. I tell myself that no one is reading\u2026 Or, if they are, they aren\u2019t reading everything. And, if they are reading everything, I shouldn\u2019t acknowledge them because they\u2019re crazier than I am.<\/p>\n

With that sort of mind-set, it\u2019s been tough to stick to any sort of routine, and impossible to focus on an ongoing series of articles. Despite that, there has been one section of the page that\u2019s always been revisited, in one way or another, since around 2002 \u2013 what was dubbed the \u201ccult-culture\u201d section in 2005. A term I read in a book discussing the evolution of cult cinema like Plan 9 from Outer Space<\/em>, Evil Dead<\/em> prior to the rise of Raimi\/Campbell, Rocky Horror Picture Show<\/em>, and countless others.<\/p>\n

My goal, as the age of DVD caught up with me and all these shows \u2013 good and bad \u2013 started to land on my shelf, was to review the shit I was watching and quietly worshipped. My central inspiration was Joe Bob Briggs back in those early days, even before Monstervision <\/em>and his TMC show. Back when he was making a living off of being a humorous crank in the Dallas Herald, and doing weird stand-up shows.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t stuck to it, but, leading up to our anniversary celebrations in April, I figured I\u2019d recycle some of the cult-culture articles, as well as write a few new ones. They\u2019ll be appearing each Friday in a general I-don\u2019t-know-what-I\u2019m-doing way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, 2011 is Greatsociety\u2019s tenth anniversary. Which feels like an important milestone, but might actually be cause for horror and soul-searching because, really, what the fuck am I doing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,273],"tags":[403,274],"class_list":["post-1741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cult-culture","category-gs-10th-anniversary-2001-2011","tag-cult-culture","tag-gs-10th-anniversary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1741"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1785,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1741\/revisions\/1785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}