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Assuming "romantic comedy" was just an arbitrary dichotomy to serve as linkbait, I think you can find other genres that penetrate just as deeply as sci-fi that might make the point more clear. If you look at jane austin, I think you'll find her influence on the generic female psyche is at least on par, but probably far stronger than the impact of lucas on the generic geek psyche. The difference is the geeks make it visible so that they can share in the "mythology of exploration" together, whereas the femmes just make it implicit as a more natural "understanding of how the world should be". (I acknowledge i'm making some grand assumptions here, this is a sunday morning thought experiment) Now, obviously its far easier to believe that "you'll find a perfect man who'll do everything for you" than it is to believe that "you'll run around in spaceships blowing up deathstars", simply as a consequence of the latter being a very explicit detachment from reality (and while the former is much more implicit, at the same time, I might add, it may quite possibly be just as detached and with its own set of moral consequences, but I digress). But I think that's where the real difference is: science-fiction is an explicitly unrealistic escape from the way things are, whereas most other genres are intended to blend in with out existing perceptions of the world around us to convince us of the realistic possibilities of an achievable fantasy. Space in particular is coded very deeply in our cultural sense of the unknown and journey, and its often frightening to make journeys alone. So we bring companions: we build subcultures. |
There is, of course, one genre that inspires the same sort of crazed-geek fandom as science fiction, and that's "fantasy". Both genres, of course, are based in worlds very different from our own, though not too different (there are always humans or human-analogues, at least in popular examples of the genre). What's more, what these worlds have in common is that they allow people whom the reader considers analogous to themselves to become ridiculously powerful and important in a way that they just don't in the real world. An entire universe is provided for readers to escape into, and this becomes particularly addictive for those who aren't finding much success in the real world.
Now I guess Jane Austen is interesting in that it wasn't originally set in a world all that different from Jane Austen's own, but with the passage of time the world of Regency England has become almost as foreign as Middle Earth. I can see how someone tired of a world where wooing is conducted by misspelled text message might prefer to escape into a world where every girl seems to wind up with a handsome millionaire without trying too hard.
Maybe in two hundred years, American Pie will be escapist fantasy as well. "Man, I wish I lived back in the days where you could have sex (or eat a pie) without having to get a license from the government..."