Shelley S. Rees - Reading Mystery Science Theater 3000: Critical Approaches

Reading Mystery Science Theater 3000

Critical Approaches

Edited by Shelley S. Rees

THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

Lanham Toronto Plymouth, UK

2012

Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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Copyright 2013 by SCARECROW PRESS

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reading Mystery science theater 3000 : critical approaches / edited by Shelley S. Rees.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8108-9140-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8108-9141-8 (electronic)

1. Mystery science theater 3000. I. Rees, Shelley S., editor of compilation.

PN1992.77.M97R43 2013

791.45'72dc23

2013003539

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

for Vaughn, who is always ready to watch
Mystery Science Theater 3000 with me

My special thanks to Dr. Michael Nealeigh and the USAO Foundation for generous financial support of this project, and to USAO students Haley Hughes and Amanda Cagle for their careful editing assistance. I am also grateful to my dear friend Tom Connelly, who sponsored the professional indexing of this volume and, more importantly, bolstered the project with advice and encouragement. And, as always, I thank Mike, my husband and partner, and Vaughn, my treasured son, for their patience and love.

Shelley S. Rees

All of the contributors to this volume are fans of MysteryScienceTheater3000 (MST3K). I suspect that few others would be willing to spend this much time with the show, as it is a puzzling text that resists easy classification. Among viewers for whom the conceit makes sense, MST3K is hilarious, but others will find it impenetrable. When I screen episodes in my classes, many students howl with laughter, but at least one, invariably, will ask, But what is this?

MST3K was humbly formed in a series of meetings and bad lunches at a tiny, last-rated independent TV station in Minneapolis,

The shows opening theme a nod and a wink to the shows futuristic science fiction context that also allows the writers to avoid locating the action within a specific time period. If the show always occurs next Sunday, it remains ever a week ahead of the observer, coyly glancing back, inviting us to keep following though we will never catch up. MST3Ks resistance to temporal positioning creates a sense of constant movement, of leaping from one next Sunday to anotherbut that movement remains confined to a satellite, conflating diachronic trajectory with synchronic orbit and comprising yet another layer of semiotic dissonance for viewers to process.

The shows writers are notorious for withholding science facts. In one issue of the fan publication SatelliteNews, writer and producer Trace Beaulieu (who also operated and voiced the puppet Crow T. Robot and played mad scientist Dr. Forrester) responds to questions in a column ironically titled Fun Facts to Know and Tell, in which he dispenses no facts, fun or otherwise. a playful rebuke of those of us inclined to query the text for meaning. But is disoriented and passive truly the optimal state of mind in which to view MST3K? Further, what message does a show so adept at deflecting interrogation transmit, and to whom?

One category in which critics often place MST3K is the elusive cult television; in fact, EntertainmentWeekly online ranks the show at number four in its list of 26 Best Cult TV Shows Ever. Cult television fans tend to identify strongly with their chosen text, viewing episodes multiple times and embracing their chosen show as a vehicle for resisting the conformity implied by mainstream programming. As Le Guern further argues,

It helps to think of cult practice as a specific type of constitution of a cultural heritage (to which the arrival of the video recorder contributed a great deal), as the distinctive assertion of tastes that are too often summarily labeled as kitsch or immature, and as the valorization of new forms of cultural expression and mediation (in particular television) that call into question the oppositions between popular and high culture and between minor and major arts and genres, as well as the passivity attributed to popular audiences.

In effect, then, the cult television phenomenon exemplifies the ideal popular culture audience, resisting hegemonic culture and empowering viewers to participate in that resistance. According to Dean, fans of MST3K in particular are emblematic of the late-20th-century celebration of individual agency and the powers of the audience

As a model of irreverence toward authority, MysteryScienceTheater3000 offers several levels of resistance that may attract such a cult following. Joel and Mike are described in the opening theme as not too different from you or me and a regular Joe, respectively. This information is characteristically unspecific, but the effect is to situate the kidnapped blue-collar worker as an Everyman who has been manipulated by institutional forces larger than himself. in short, MST3K refashions everything it touches as comedy and, most important, ennobles the altered result as a superior-quality text.

Ideal viewers of MST3K must navigate its deliberate ambiguity, be erudite enough to appreciate gags such as an extended skit about Ingmar Bergmans cinematic oeuvre, and have the humility and patience to accept that they will never understand every joke shouted by the riffers. (I have in fact watched the show with people who find the latter unpalatable, lamenting that they dont understand half of what they are hearing.) The staggering breadth and depth of the references encompassed by the MST3K text precludes any one viewers having ready access to more than a fraction of them. TheMysteryScienceTheater3000AmazingColossalEpisodeGuide includes an appendix of The Fifty Most Obscure References, which includes everything from local jokes about Midwestern vacation spots and radio hosts to number 12, Isnt that how Aeschylus died?; number 28, Im gonna get me a piece of bottom land (from TheGrapesofWrath); number 35, There goes a narwhal (from Rock Lobster by the B-52s); and number 34, Whod have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?

Clearly Mystery