Space Madness is a very real condition that affects dozens of movie characters every year. Symptoms of Space Madness include Forgetting About The Mission, saying things that sound like one thing to your crew members but have a secret double meaning if you plan on murdering them, planning on murdering your crew members, removing your own eyes from your face, hallucinating an entire episode of The Twilight Zone, jettisoning the fuel you need to return home, untethering one of your colleagues during a space walk, and Just Whose Side Are You On Anyway?
Common risk factors that may predict Space Madness include:
- You have been left alone in space for any period of time longer than a week.
- You have not been seen onscreen by the first half-hour of the movie
- Former colleagues describe you as “the best we had” or “our only hope”
- The mission has failed
- The mission is on the verge of success and only sabotage could stop it now
- Your ship disappeared during a routine expedition forty years ago and has suddenly reappeared in the path of the protagonist’s ship
- You are the ship’s commander, chief engineer, or doctor. Fly-boy pilots and mechanics almost never develop Space Madness.
- You are a white man. Women, for whatever reason, are far less susceptible to Space Madness than their male counterparts
- You’ve started identifying with whatever is killing the rest of your crew; this is generally observed in its earliest stages when you explain to your crew how the enemy kills/feeds/destroys other species, referring to it as “elegant” or “the highest form of evolution”
Medical professionals recommend that astronauts displaying the early signs of Space Madness either return to earth or commit a Noble Sacrifice for the good of the mission as soon as possible.
Tags: advice, space madness
That is actually a good point about how women rarely develop space madness, and I wonder if this is actually an implicit criticism of social patriarchy, in that it’s usually men who are by nature most susceptible to becoming sympathetic to the murdering space monster.
Similarly, pilots and mechanics, since they don’t occupy a position at the top of the social or military hierarchy.
Honestly, I think it’s because there are so few women in space movies, and most of them have to be the hero or the Love Interest, so they can’t be wasted on Space Madness.
Well this is also possible.
Clearly, all command space positions should be women, to prevent space madness from jeopardizing the mission.
I do not disagree. There’s a reason why the best Commander Shepherd is female Commander Shepherd.
And that reason is space madness.
It’s a genetic trait linked to the unique ability for white guys stranded in backwoods areas to become unkillable rednecks sustained by murdering co-eds with gardening implements, just a historical adaptation that’s lost its utility in the industrialized age.
I think reasonable people can agree that during Caveman Days the ability to become an unkillable murderous redneck armed with a garden hoe must have had some kind of evolutionary value.
That’s just the way it is, women evolved to gather berries and men evolved to torture campers
Also I kinda wanna see the hoe movie now that sounds brutal as fuck
Once I was surveying for plants along a logging road in the middle of nowhere – like, twenty miles from paved road, locked gate, five more miles down that road – and I bumped into an older man, generally backwoods in appearance: beard down to his belt buckle, leaves in his hair, ragged clothing, holding a pitchfork and a detached bike seat. Two rangy hounds trotted at his heals.
We nodded as we passed “Morning”, “Mornin'”, and then the hounds broke off, wheeled, and began to follow me. He said nothing.
I was pretty sure I was going to be murdered for the first mile that the dogs followed me, but by the second mile I was throwing sticks for them and had named them “Jake” and “Foofers”.
Anyway: this movie should have that exchange, and then the botanist should get murdered around three minutes into the carefree frolicking with dogs.
I want to know the backstor behind the bicycle seat.
I also want to know.
I figure he had a garden back there, and maybe his bike broke? And because he was eventually going back to the garden he didn’t need to worry about the dogs?
Women are already accustomed to dealing with the destructive impulses of monsters who don’t feel anything but the desire to control and harm, so they have an advantage, and are too savvy to fall victim to sympathy for the monster.
And, AND! The exception that proves the rule is Gravity. [Here Be Spoilers] Sandra Bullock’s character gets a touch of the space madness. Her specific symptoms are perhaps excessively handsome, but she does get it… AND OVERCOMES IT.
Space likes women better, Q.E.D.
You are inexplicably speaking latin. You have discovered your dead wife to be alive and miraculously present on the space station.
Why are white men so uniquely susceptable to Space Madness? You notice the African American scientist in Interstellar was left alone on the ship for 20 years and *he* didn’t even go a little space mad. What pathology in white culture lies at the root of this problem?
White men just have it so tough!
He went into hypersleep a few times for years at a time while they were on the wave planet.
Then again, Matt Damon was in hypersleep and look what happened to him. You may be on to something there.
Read more at http://the-toast.net/2014/12/01/signs-youre-dange…
Well, as per Interstellar’s basic thesis, as a Cold Calculating Science Man Damon’s character lacked the Folksy Down-Home Wisdom to crack the Love Equation and Save The Quantum Time Earth, therefore going a bit pointlessly homocidal was inevitable. Black people are inherently disposed to a small degree of folksy wisdom that insulated him for a period, and even more strongly disposed to finding the quickest way to get murdered by the crazy guy in movies.
Hmm, what was Romilly’s folksy wisdom? Not denying the cliche, just wondering if it’s applicable to the movie.
I don’t know if this is a Thing or my family made it up, but we’ve always joked for years watching Star Trek that any time they include a random non-main character in a group going to an alien planet, he’s always gonna die and he’s usually named Washburn or something. Anyways, when I saw those two dudes who we had not yet been introduced to joining them on the launch, I turned to my mom and said “WASHBURN”. Boy was I right.
Do they even give the beardy guy any lines, like it wasn’t exactly a movie chock full of deep character studies but I don’t remember the beardy guy ever even talking or doing anything but kinda showing up in the background and then standing around gaping while everyone else flees the wave pool planet
At least the black dead-man-walking gets his little spiel about reversing the polarity on the black hole event horizon quantum relativity effect science before they hustle him off
Nope, he was basically only in the movie long enough to take a weird space-bath then die.
I have decided that they put both of those characters in solely to confuse me about who Anne Hathaway’s character was supposed to be interested in. First I thought it was beardy guy and then he died ASAP so then I figured it must be the other guy even though he’d already made it pretty clear that it wasn’t him. And then it turned out to be someone else entirely!
Basically all of tiny underground NASA must’ve been very good friends for me to be so confused, is all I’m saying.
Romantic love is icky and only allowed to happen offscreen when at least one half of the equation is dead; the only permissible love is that between a father and his kid (mom dead)
I’m about 95% positive that circa age 12 the Nolan boys watched 2001 and Armageddon back-to-back and wrote a screenplay based on what they thought would be a totally awesome sequel, and decades and no editing revisions later here we are.
Maybe that should have been a clue to everybody, from the pilot episode, that Wash was gonna die.
better ability to cope with isolation is actually one of several points in the argument for primarily women, if not all-women, space missions 😀 http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/… (but of course, the psych studies are limited so take with a grain of salt)
I hadn’t known about the better ability to cope with isolation until I read the comment section on the Spinster Classification Index.
Missed one:
“They want to take your ice cream bar. The one that you’ve had since you were a child.”
I think that folds right into the question of space madness as an implicit criticism of patriarchy; at it’s root, space madness is a reaction to the loss of control of the situation — either by eliminating available options (i.e., marooned for 20 years) or by encountering and adversary that doesn’t yield to traditional authority (i.e. guns; see aliens, existential hell created by the black holes, &c.). In that sense, space madness is really a dramatization of what happens when characters who expect to be able to control or affect a situation are robbed of the ability to do so — thus, it’s a reaction to the loss of entitlement, and in that respect we should expect it to affect primarily white men who are high up in an ordinary chain of command.
ETA: This is meant as a reply to jfruhlinger!
This is just reminding me of my favorite Ren and Stimpy episode, Space Madness.
“They think I’m crazy; but I know better. It is not I who am crazy; it is I who am MAD! Didn’t you hear ‘em?? Didn’t you see the crowds?!? Oh, my beloved ice cream bar, how I love to lick your creamy center! Aahoum..AAHoum…AAAAHoum!! And your oh-so-nutty chocolate covering! You’re not like the others; you like the same things I do: wax paper, boiled football leather, dog breath! We’re not hitchhiking any more; we’re ridin’!”
“Now listen cadet- I’ve got a job for you. See this button? DON’T TOUCH IT! It’s the history eraser button, you fool!”
“So…what’ll happen?’
“That’s just it- we don’t know. Maaaybe something bad, and maaaybe something good. I guess we’ll never know, ’cause you’re going to guard it. You won’t touch it will you?”
The bright red candy-like button!
He was more space sad than anything.
His “I waited for you” or whatever the exact line was broke me.
Signs you may be at risk for “Pigs In Space”:
• Your spaceship is named the Swinetrek
• If feminine-identified, you may develop a heavy-lidded gaze, higher-pitched voice, blonde hair, and amazing eyelashes; if masculine-identified, you are stricken with Cleft Chin Of Doom; if non-binary, you acquire Strangepork Syndrome, and begin developing a fake German accent and inventing things
• You start hearing a cheesy voice narrating your adventures and predicting that unfinished plot points will be resolved next time on… Pigs… In… Space!!
I had a big scare a few years back when I was sure I had SMAD. At first it was just flu-like blah-ness, but then I found myself luring our xenopsychologist into an airlock, so I went on WebMD, and it was, like, check check check, down through all these symptoms. Scared the hell out of me.
So I bundled myself into the last escape pod and went straight to the emergency room. There will all these tests, I’m still paying for them, and in the end it turned out I was only possessed by the angry spirit of a cosmonaut. Rare, but really treatable these days.
Maybe the reason most ghosts don’t stick around is because, being incorporeal, the Earth spins away from them and they are lost in the depths of space. They’re stuck trying frantically to crawl back towards home or floating off through nothingness, staring at the stars with their dead eyes.
After reading “Packing for Mars”, I’m going to guess that treatment for “possession by angry cosmonaut spirit” is spreading black bread with butter, and then putting sliced fresh onions with salt onto the bread, and then eating said open-faced sandwich until the spirit is appeased. Or possibly a small gift of tasty food, with a note: “Please undertake the experiment of leaving this person’s body”.
(Because Russian space rations were so bad, cosmonauts sometimes ate plant experiments, and a small food or alcohol-based bribe was the best way to encourage careful attention towards your experiment.)
Listen to yourselves. It’s as though space didn’t have a say in the matter, any choice. The only agents involved in your explanations are humans. You are treating space like some implacable force whose different effects are brought about by human differences, human politics, human psyches. That’s spacist.
Well, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect EVERY instance of space madness to have the same semiotic content.
Though, I mean, I got to admit it’s a little weird to see someone from an ethnic group that is stereotypically derided as being “primitive” get space madness from what is essentially ersatz elemental worship.
One of the most well-known stories from this particular ethnic group involves a response to the sun roughly summarised as “let’s beat the hell out of it until it stops moving so goddamn fast.”
I…. I would like more information on how to find this story?
Google “Maui tames the sun” or “How Maui slowed down the sun” for various versions (caveats for standard “Pakeha colonisers misrepresenting/editing Maori narratives” on a lot of the stories)
Or read this handy, NZ Curriculum-approved version! http://eng.mataurangamaori.tki.org.nz/Support-mat…
Holy crap, this is AMAZING, and a fascinating contrast to the current Christian teaching that the seven days God took to create the Earth were not necessarily the same length as days are now. Thank you!
I’ve noticed this “our hero orders several huts to be built” thing in a lot of world mythologies. Everybody must have built things very fast in time long ago.
WHERE WE’RE GOING, WE DON’T NEED EYES TO SEE.
(hey crystal, i’m putting this here in case you read all the comments)
You are very welcome! My teaching on Thursday is going to be tangentially connected to this story, so it was at the top of my mind.
Betty Skelton, the "First Lady of Firsts" was tested first and basically rejected because she was a woman.
There were higher ups at NASA who wanted to be damn sure it was a man on the moon.
SAME. And she like, weirdly clutches the other guy’s face when she comes back from the wave planet while whats-his-name looks on jealously, but apparently isn’t into him after all? I feel like she does a lot of suggestive face-clutching that is difficult to interpret.
Yes, the face clutching! That’s what threw me. Awfully intimate for just friends, I thought.
“Space Madness is a very real condition that affects dozens of movie characters every year. Symptoms of Space Madness include Forgetting About The Mission, saying things that sound like one thing to your crew members but have a secret double meaning if you plan on murdering them, planning on murdering your crew members, removing your own eyes from your face, hallucinating an entire episode of The Twilight Zone, jettisoning the fuel you need to return home, untethering one of your colleagues during a space walk, and Just Whose Side Are You On Anyway?”
Space Madness sounds uncannily like my third year of grad school