The Wild Blue Yonder

Follow the link at the end of this post to read my Cinematheque Annotation on Werner Herzog's The Wild Blue Yonder (2004). This annotation is published in Senses of Cinema as part of the Cinematheque Annotations on Film Series. The Wild Blue Yonder has been described as a science fiction film; indeed, in the film's opening credit sequence there is a superimposed title that reads: ‘A science fiction fantasy’. Herzog has said that by 'science fiction fantasy' he means that the science fiction genre always involves imagination and fantasy: "science fiction, of course, goes into fiction...it has to be fantasy". (1)

This observation of Herzog's is interesting because science fiction stories often draw on empirical facts as well as speculative propositions that stem out of scientific research. Nonetheless, as a number of writers have pointed out, however much a depicted state of affairs draws on actual reality, the science fiction genre operates in the realm of imagination. (2) Steve Neale, for example, has suggested that from 'a general cultural point of view', science fiction deals with the unlikely and/or the unbelievable; objects like extra-terrestrial space ships and entities such as alien monsters are not things that are considered probable or likely to exist based on our current understanding of the natural world. (3) Vivian Sobchack has argued that in American science fiction films elements of magic and religion often indirectly interact with scientific ideas and methods. (4) In other words, however much 'science' there is in science fiction , the genre is also about imagination, fantasy and the supernatural (supernatural in the sense that a depicted event is not able to be explained in terms of the commonly accepted rules and principles of reality). (5)

In The Wild Blue Yonder not only does Herzog explore what the science fiction genre is, he also contextualises the work of living mathematicians and scientists in terms of science fiction themes and imagery. For example, one of the interviewees in the film is Dr. Martin Lo, a research scientist whose main area of investigation is the Interplanetary Transport Network. As Lo explains in the film, the Interplanetary Transport Network designates a chaotic model of space-time travel. According to this model there are invisible highway lanes in space that crisscross and dynamically interrelate. These highway lanes wind between planets and moons. The proposition is that these pathways will provide low-energy transport for space craft undertaking long-term travel and will dramatically decrease the amount of time it takes to reach distant points in space. (6) The implication is that human beings will be able to colonise other parts of the Milky Way galaxy and perhaps also explore other solar systems. Martin Lo imagines that human beings will be able to build shopping malls in space and that the Earth will become a national park that people can visit on vacation; one of Lo's charms is the fact he is an un-reconstituted modernist utopian who believes that human 'freedom' and 'progress' will come about through science and technology.

Lo's work is presented in a way that suggests his ideas operate in a realm of pure fantasy. For example, through the story that The Alien (Brad Dourif) narrates in the film, Herzog is able to express his belief that the distance between Earth and any potentially hospitable location in space (if indeed any such location exists) is too great; in an interview Herzog has said of Lo's Interplanetary Transport Network that "it only occurs in science fiction movies". (7) In The Wild Blue Yonder Lo's theories are also integrated into the film's fictional narrative. This narrative has to do with alien space missions and human time travel. In other words, the scientist's ideas are situated in terms of the improbable and fantastic story world presented in the film.

To read more about The Wild Blue Yonder please follow this link:

http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/the-wild-blue-yonder/

Endnotes 

(1) "Exploring with Werner". The Wild Blue Yonder. 2006. DVD. Subversive Cinema

(2) Warren Buckland (1999) has made a distinction between science fiction films that take scientific ideas to there logical or illogical conclusion as opposed to those science fiction movies which are based purely on fantasy and imagination. He suggests that films such as Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) and The Lost World (Steven Spielberg 1997) 'articulate a possible world because they show one possibility that can emerge from a state of affairs in the actual world' (177). Such films employ modal logic; that is to say, they explore 'non-actual possibilities', possibilities that 'correspond to an abstract, hypothetical state of affairs, which has an ontological status, but one different to the actual world' (180). While such a distinction is important to recognise, and can be used to qualify Herzog's suggestion that the science fiction genre "has to be fantasy", it does not detract from the overall point that the science fiction genre shows imagined and hypothetical worlds as opposed to worlds that only reference what is actual and scientifically factual. For more information on Buckland's argument see 'Between Science Fact and Science Fiction: Spielberg's Digital Dinosaurs, Possible Worlds, and the New Aesthetic Realism'.

(3) Steve Neale (1990) '"You've Got to be Fucking Kidding!" Knowledge, Belief and Judgement in Science Fiction' in Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema, pg. 163. Obviously, alien life may exist - a proposition that cosmologists and planetary scientists have investigated for some time (for an overview of the equation that Frank Drake developed in the 1960s to try to work out the probability of whether extra-terrestrial civilisations exist in the Milky Way see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB_v99FSTYc ; for a summary of Sarah Seagher's 'revised Drake equation' see http://io9.com/what-a-brand-new-equation-reveals-about-our-odds-of-fin-531575395 ). Neale's point is that while extrapolative or speculative science may research the possibility of alien life, most individuals in society do not believe they have ever encountered extra-terrestrial space crafts or alien organisms. It is also a convention in Western culture to treat the question of whether alien life exists in the Milky Way galaxy as a question that cannot be adequately answered at this time. For such reasons, when science fiction films (and television shows and books) represent strange and other-worldly figures, or pictorialise wondrous and imagined examples of technology, they show what is unfamiliar and/or non-existent to audiences in their normal, everyday lives. In other words, they give expression to the unknowable.

(4) Vivian Sobchack (1987) Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film.

(5) By commonly accepted rules and principles of reality it is meant those rules and principles that are part of social cognition. Social cognition refers to the structures of knowledge represented in civil and bureaucratic institutions, and in established disciplines like science and philosophical logic, that arguably create a set of default mental conditions in individuals. These mental conditions are part of the basis of organised, cultural life in Western society. The question of how film genres relate to, and indeed shape, wider structures of knowledge is a huge and complex question; suffice it to note that the aesthetic and narrative conventions of a given film genre interact in different ways with the knowledge that is produced by institutions and disciplines in the outside world. These interactions between filmic representation and the default mental conditions that spectators have contribute to social perceptions of what is actual and factual. For more information on genre see Steve Neale (1990) 'Questions of Genre' and Tom Ryall (1998) 'Genre and Hollywood'.

(6) For more information on the Interplanetary Transport Network see Shane D. Ross' 'The Interplanetary Transport Network' http://www2.esm.vt.edu/~sdross/papers/AmericanScientist2006.pdf

(7) "Exploring with Werner". The Wild Blue Yonder. 2006. DVD. Subversive Cinema.