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| Credit: Pixabay.com |
We’re already a little more than a month into the new year. Even
though a new year is supposed to be a time of hope and improvement in
our lives and society, many people would say the near future does not
look as such especially during this time of increasing climate
change, racial injustice, a ruler in our nation who can hardly be
called a president in the true sense, and reoccurring massive
violence. I mean, since Sandy Hook, if not before, there’s been a
mass shooting almost as frequently as movies are changed in theatres!
And it’s no joke. This year sadly began with a sniper randomly
shooting in public in Davis CA, not much more than ten miles from
where I live. Still, it doesn’t matter. Since in order to solve
these problems we need to hope for the future, both near and distant,
even in the face of despair. In fact, it’s because of those causes
of a dark future is why we have to look toward hope. So if there’s
anytime we should promote hope for a better society it’s now while
the year has barely begun which Chinese New Year, which occurred a
few days ago, should be a reminder of that for us here in the West.
The pessimism of our
culture today includes much of the fiction and entertainment we
engage in and that, unfortunately, includes sci fi and fantasy.
Examples of this are the many post apocalyptic stories that we read
and watch, such as The Walking Dead,
and even space opera like The Expanse (although this one has
been debatable as an example). But it’s not all bleak futures for
or in fantasy and science fiction. There is hope for speculative
storytelling, and that hope is hopepunk.
Yes, this is another
punk of sci fi and fantasy. However
it may be better to call hopepunk a movement than a subgenre
in fiction since it doesn’t necessarily refer to entire stories but
can also refer to an individual character of optimistic attitude
within a story that may not be one of optimistic values. So what
exactly is hopepunk? To put it in a nutshell, it’s a form of
storytelling in sci fi and fantasy that deliberately chooses to send
a positive message to audiences, a message that defies the atmosphere
of despair caused by the injustices of our times and found in the
speculative fiction that reflects them. That fiction is namely, what
has been termed as, “grimdark”. Hopepunk, a movement of optimism
likened to that of the hippie movement of the 1960s and early ‘70s,
was sparked by fantasy author Alexandra Rowland’s post on Tumbler a
couple of years ago and is said to have gone mainstream. However, I would have to say that, realistically,
it’s gone only relatively mainstream. If it was completely
mainstream we’d already be living it’s message as a society and
it would no longer really be a movement. But it is safe to say that
hopepunk has gone relatively mainstream. To see in what way it has
done this, all you have to do is google the term and you’ll get a
full page of results on the topic.
For a more in-depth
explanation of this new subgenre of sci fiction and fantasy, I
strongly suggest you read the Vox article, “Hopepunk, the latest storytelling trend, is all about weaponized optimism”. I know, the title sounds contradicting but if you
read the article you’ll know why it’s written in that way. I have
to admit, however, the article tends to be a bit biased for the
fantasy side of the subgenre. It uses examples of Lord of the
Rings and Harry Potter, but says little about science
fiction TV shows and movies. Even though Star Trek is
mentioned in the list of hopepunk TV shows and movies at the end of
the article, Star Wars is not mentioned at all. The Star
Wars films have largely conveyed a sense of hope in their
storytelling. In fact, the subtitle to the first movie contains the
word “hope”.
So if hopepunk
permeates the fiction markets like the predominantly darker steampunk
has, 2019 may prove to be a year of “a new hope”: hopepunk! After
you read the above article, would you think hopepunk is an
unrealistic manner of storytelling or is it conveying an achievable
reality?
Until next time . .
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