Flash Gordon is a wonderful fantasy about a football star saving the Earth with his derring-do action heroics, and his friend the scientist inventing extremely futuristic technology at the drop of a winged helmet to save whichever character(s) was currently threatened with grisly execution (or to put down a deadly panic-inspired violent rebellion from time-to-time in floating cloud cities and such). This is all wonderful science fiction stuff, but Flash Gordon is considered by many people to be a fantasy, rather than science fiction. Why is that? Let’s take a look.
When you consider Flash Gordon, and its narrative, it’s all very science fiction-y, with all these gadgets and gizmos doing technological stuff, like death rays, nuclear power, space ships, lasers, etc.: things that weren’t in use yet at the time the cartoon was created, but which were scientific possibilities, many of which science has accomplished today. The planet hurling through space directionally at will, destroying planets throughout the universe, was a bit on the unlikely fictional side, but the rest was at least conceivably possible. So the fantasy came from another element of the property.
Yes, the fantasy part of Flash Gordon was so vast in conception, it essentially obscures the science fiction part of the story, so that many people dismiss the science fiction aspects and ascribe the fantasy genre label to it. And what is that fantasy element, if it isn’t fighting gilled sharkmen, winged hawkmen, fire-breathing dragons that look like big lobsters, etc.? Well, it’s quite simply, or at least I believe it’s what people consider so fantastic about Flash Gordon, the fact that a football jock and a science nerd actually get along well enough to work together.
Seriously: consider the fact that the popular football star jock type is the natural enemy and predator of the nerdy renegade science geek. And this was back in the 1930s, before political correctness sought to stamp out bullying (aside from the politically correct bullying of anyone who does not agree with the politically correct agenda to stamp out the free speech and free expression of others, that is: that kind of bullying is not only acceptable, it’s actively encouraged!), so it would be even worse than we’ve known it to be in our lifetimes. Flash Gordon must have felt a compulsion to give Dr. Zarkov a wedgie, a swirly, a purple nurple, a nugie, etc., which surely even his level of heroism wouldn’t have been able to suppress, even for the future of the human race. And naturally, Dr. Zarkov would have experienced exactly this treatment by countless guys who looked and acted just like Flash Gordon back when he was in school on Earth; surely this must have festered in his mind and led to limitless animosity building up inside his genius’s cranium.
Not to mention Dale Arden, the hot popular girl in school no doubt, would have detested the very thought of merely being seen publicly with a greasy-haired nerd like Dr. Zarkov, not to mention having her picture with him smeared across the front page of every newspaper globally as a result of her alliance with him to save the Earth from Ming and Mongo. How can she ever even face her friends again after such a humiliation? (Again, this was the 1930s, generations before nerds became cool.)
But somehow these two guys managed to pull it together and form an unbreakable bond and partnership to save the Earth. I guess it was the fact that they were the only Earthlings on an alien planet full of unfamiliar foreign customs and aggressive brutality that held their bond firm. But I wonder what happened when they got back to Earth, and their respective social groups peer pressured them into unburying the hatchet? And I wonder why we never got to see a movie serial based on that action-packed story of brain vs. brawn?
