How to begin? Well, last week, Netflix dropped its bold adaptation of the first book of Liu Cixin’s trilogy, Three Body Problem. This version has eight episodes (the Chinese TV adaptation, which also covers the first book, has 30 episodes), and it has its pluses and minuses.

On the plus side, for example, the series accurately portrays the opening of the science fiction novel, which is set during the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s. On the minus side, this opening scene really excited, delighted, and validated the Musk-loving right.

They equated the “struggle session” that kills a Chinese physicist for believing spacetime composes the fabric of the universe with the “woke mind virus” that’s stunting, stifling, and castrating Western Civilization. Behold, with a content warning for ableism: 

And:

And best of all:

It goes on and on.

Never mind the fact that the right is banning books, attacking professors, and denying the science of climate change. Never mind the fact that the right would cut off Dr. Anthony Fauci’s head given the opportunity. And please don’t mention the right’s largest party, which is led by a shameless authoritarian.

Let’s instead forget those facts and get to the core of this scene. What is its significance? In the narrative, it offers us the source of protagonist and astrophysicist Ye Wenjie’s profound and ultimately apocalyptic misanthropy. Here, she turns her back on humans and embraces the extraterrestrials. That process begins with the Cultural Revolution, which attacked her class (intellectuals) and killed her father (a physicist who refused to denounce Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity).  

From Liu Cixin’s perspective, which is the perspective not only of a Chinese science fiction writer but also a Chinese computer programmer, it concerns the promotion of science, whose conatus (or motive force) is not the dreams of the Enlightenment but the realities of international competition.

Cixin is warning China not to abandon or challenge science ever again. The country’s status as a world power depends on increasing its command of the physical world: physics, chemistry, biology, hydrology, biogeography, cosmology, and so on.

How this directive jibes with the weltanschauung of America’s right is far from apparent. The left, for example, accepts climate science, and so does Cixin, who actually places Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring at the center of Wenjie’s intellectual development and final rejection of her species. The noise 3 Body Problem‘s showrunners (David Benioff, Dan Weiss, and Alexander Woo) make about the Cultural Revolution is matched by the noise they make about this book, which popularized the environmental movement and was denounced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as much as the theory of general relativity.

And so we have two movements in Cixin’s work. One that’s nationalistic, and one that is cosmopolitan. The nationalist movement says: China, place your faith in science. The international one says: Humans, place your faith in science. If the GOP was the party of science, if it really believed in these principles… Does more need to be said?

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

10 replies on “Netflix’s 3 Body Problem Turns Out to Be Porn for Conservatives ”

  2. @1 Charles just phones this stuff in. He put almost no effort into this, he’s just complaining about three random tweets he saw, all of which are from accounts with very few followers (the lead tweet has 16 likes and 3 reposts).

    Charles’ writing is formulaic, it usually boils down to:

    Here is a recent thing people are talking about on social media.

    Those people failed to consider some obscure economic or political issue Charles thinks is important.

    Conclude with a half-assed summary.

    It’s not worth critiquing this stuff, he’s just churning out poorly edited content to generate page views.

  4. @3

    “he’s just complaining about three random tweets he saw”

    I’m actually fascinated that you can’t see the connection between the tweets and the film he is talking about. The tweets all refer to the series, and two, in fact, specifically include clips from it. How is that random?

  5. @4 I see the connection between the tweets and the series. That’s not the problem.

    Charles contends “the Musk-loving right” has latched on to the opening sequence as an example of the risks of going “woke.” Although there is no shortage of right-wing weirdo commentators on social media, Charles is apparently unable to find a single example of anyone actually making such claims. Instead, he’s linked to some guy with less than 1000 followers who has an unsuccessful podcast and a half-assed Marxism substack.

    I’m actually fascinated you can’t see the LACK of connection between the tweets and Charles’ theory. If the right is so worked up about this series, why can’t Charles find a single social media post that actually says what he claims?

  7. So Mr Mudede, an unrepentant Marxist, condemns a show depicting the horrible excesses of an ideology he himself has an affinity for.

    Charles actually knows very well that people who see a connection between contemporary critical theory based activist movements and the mass Marxist/Maoist regimes are correct. He knows because he was a member of a Frankfurter School group here in Seattle. Frankfurters, who, among other things, thought critical theory might be used as a vehicle to push revolution via the cultural front.

    2021 – The racial affinity convos sprouting up in the corporate world and city departments across the country, where workers are divided by race and put into separate groups (oppressor/oppressed), one group being “re-educated” with the new gospel of Kendi, had an unmistakable “struggle session” vibe to anyone versed in history. It is inarguable, or at least understandable. Charles doesnt want you to have this thought.

    In fact he, like many aging leftists, rather you not know about any of the myraid 20th century horrors brought on by Marxist revolutions, and in doing so, he does a terrible service to the young.

    Any Gen Zer who is not equally fluent in Lenins Terror, Stalins gulag, Maos purges, or the horrific killing fields of the Khmer Rouge as they are in Mcarthyism or white nationalism is not only fully educated but is someone who now has the potential to fall prey to the same slogans and propaganda that led to said horrors.

    Adults (including yes, Leftists of an older generation such as our friend Charles) need to be open about those ugly chapters, regardless of a left/right origin, in the hope they never occur again. Despotism and totalitarianism are equal opportunity predators.

    By all means, watch 3 Body Problem, learn about Chinas Cultural Revolution, ignore moronic partisan banter, and dismiss Charles. He will come around.

  8. @2: I am convinced a chatbot/AI writes his articles now. Think about it – Charles has enough written work all he has to do is feed some past articles into the AI, then ask it to spit out a new one.

    I yearn for the day he explains how fallible human beings can come up with ANY economic system that other fallible human beings can’t manipulate to their own advantage. Marxism et al is so anti-religion, yet seems to require much faith to believe in.

  9. @7 No, he’s talking about members of America’s Fascist movement grabbing onto scenes from the TV adaptation and creating their own narrative, when they are the ones actively attacking science. Just today, we had oral arguments in the Supreme Court because some right wing nut-job Trump appointed to the Federal bench for life tried to use his power to over-rule the scientists at the FDA on an abortion drug.

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