“You’ve got a car bomb.”

This entry is going to discuss trust, representation, science fiction, erotic thrillers… and Mark Leyner. Reader discretion is advised.

Three things have mingled in my brain as I listen to my in-laws play games on the kitchen table:

• (1) “Car Trouble” from Mark Leyner’s novel My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist.
• (2) A documentary We Kill For Love, about the rise and fall of erotic thrillers in the late 80’s and 90’s.
• (3) A comment made about a reading group asking, “Who are you really talking about when you’re describing these aliens?”

How did I get to this place? I’ll start in reverse order. At Capclave I heard a story from an author about a reading group asking who the aliens in her story represented. What minority? Who was she trying t cast in a bad light? The author lamented everyone searching for an allegory in the aliens – a direct representation/critique of a real world group in some way.

Couldn’t these aliens just be aliens? If they did have a metaphoric level, why was it assumed they’d be offensive? And speaking of…

We Kill for Love is available on Tubi and Shudder. While the wrap-around conceit of the Archivist can get pretentious (and is, honestly, there for a very deep David Cronenberg reference) the filmmaker did an excellent job digging into the roots of the erotic thriller film genre.

And, I cannot lie, A.J. Harris has a long history with these films. Between USA Up All Night’s sanitized versions to finally being able to rent the uncut versions at Blockbuster and Metro Video, they made a distinct impression on my alter egotist. Neo-noir styling and plot lines? Eroticism? The danger of a conservative family realizing that Red Shoe Diaries existed and somehow, an impressionable writer/would-be filmmaker could access them?

When the end (of the documentary and the ‘classic’ era of the genre) came about, the fundamentals were covered. Market saturation. Demands for ‘do more for less’ from producers looking at quantity over quality (of any kind!). The home video crash. (No one discussed post 9/11 trauma and the rise of the NeoCons). But, inevitably, they came to ‘consent culture’ and ‘political correctness’ as the last nail in the coffin.

(Fair is fair, there was pushback. I’ll touch on that in a bit)

The original writer of Fatal Attraction said, “People were just looking for a reason to be offended!” over a shot of a very tone-deaf shot of Japanese business men from said film. That was the general tone.

Which took me to Mark Leyner’s “Car Trouble.” I suggest you read it but, it’s a surreal joke about a driver getting into his car, turning the engine over, and a car bomb exploding. He gets out, checks under the hood, tries again, and the car bomb goes off. Eventually, after several repetitions, he gets to an Exxon station.

The mechanic starts the car, and it explodes.

“You’ve got a car bomb,” said the mechanic.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” thought the driver.

A car bomb going off should be a shock. It shouldn’t be treated like a battery dying. It’s deadly and explosive. But, if it happens enough, it becomes expected. Oh, look. Another car bomb. Again. We expect the bomb. Not the car starting normally.

Anyone who is counted as a foreigner, an outsider, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ or just ‘outside the mainstream’ has been hit with the bomb so many times, it’s become expected now. I mentioned to the author that, if people keep putting razors in your apple pie, you stop trusting apple pie you haven’t baked yourself. How many “Oh, they’re civilized because they think like we (American men named BIG MCLARGEHUGE) think” alien stories out there?

In the “Alien Immigrants” panel at Capclave I mentioned both sides of my family (Serbian & Venezuelan) have been the bad guy of the week in many CBS and BBC procedurals/spy thrillers. Ceclia Tan, in her talks about queer representation in erotica, points out all the stereotypes of crazy gays/bisexuals ending up as psycho killers. When it becomes a quick/lazy way to signify otherness and wrongness, you approach anything with suspicion.

Consent culture didn’t kill the erotic thriller. Economics did. But, because the people who were not usually making money/in charge of these films said, “Hey, I’d like to not have the gays/kink community be the bad guys this time around?” or “You know, we shouldn’t be using studio power to force actresses to choose between feeding their kids and doing a sex scene for the boss?” they had a convenient scapegoat.

In the documentary, one of the commentators pointed out that the Lifetime channel has taken over the erotic thriller genre. Less nudity, but it’s just as potent as the USA Network Up! All Night cuts to the right folks. And now, folks who grew up with these late night shows are starting to make their own versions of these narratives. And the same holds true for SFF. The people who got tired as being cast as the ‘alien who learns that humans are superior’ have started to write their own.

But it’s an uphill battle. And we’ve been wounded/disappointed so often. Thus, I ask: Please excuse us if we’re a bit untrusting. If we question. If we wonder, ‘What’s really in that pie?’ Because, when you keep getting smart ass mechanics telling you, “Yep, that’s a car bomb there” after you’ve been blown up every time you turn the key, you have a hard time trusting a car you haven’t inspected yourself…