Interesting article about Enterprise (1 Viewer)

[Steve Enemark]

Check it out:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i...25&s=minkowitz
Racism and sexism running rampant in Star Trek? The author makes some good points.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Sorry, I thought it was silly. The first half of the last paragraph summed it all up the way I see it. It takes time for different 'aliens' to get used to and be more tolerant of each other.

TOS partly showed that as a whole, Vulcans weren't too keen on us, which falls back to 'Enterprise' exactly the way I figured it would. Look at Worf too. The Klingons were the bad guys in TOS, but times change.

What is interesting too is that in TOS, they never mentioned Archer. Ok, I know there is a 35 year spread here, but I can't remember Kirk ever mentioning much of anything in the past. I just see this as a sign that Archer's crew ended up doing a lot of things wrong, and so in the future, they were not mentioned.

I'm sure too that T'Pol didn't want her assignment on the Enterprise when it was given to her. The Vulcans just seem to 'reek' of hatred towards humans in this show. Why? Well, who knows. This was one huge factor that was omitted from the pilot of Enterprise. What exactly happened during those 150 years?

Glenn

 

[Jack Briggs]

I think Donna is getting a bit carried away. Too, as much as I love TNG, its moralism got a bit unctious at times--really, heavy-handed. Which is why I've been enjoying screening all my TOS discs.

Enterprise is not promoting close-mindedness; it's, in fact, fleshing out some of the groundwork upon which the Earth/Vulcan relationship has been based.

 

[Alan Benson]

I agree slightly more than I disagree, although the article is clearly off base at times, and reaches waaay too far for many of its examples... The sad combination of UPN-and-Braga pretty much guarantees a show that panders rather than provokes...

Citing Voyager as a progressive influence simply because of its female lead characters shows how shallow the author's analysis really is... The Star Trek "philosophy" breathed its last gasp somewhere midway thru that series, if not before...

 

[Jack Briggs]

Excellent post, Alan.

Too, bringing the Jewish/Nazism allusions into the story was going just a tad overboard.

 

[DaveF]

There were a few good points buried in that misguided diatribe. To the author's credit, she is accurate stating that Star Trek is a white male-dominated culture. It often draws on the Western romance of adventure, discovery, and sometimes imperialism. Its depictions of other races and cultures can be simplistic. But that's about it.

Now, this is allegedly set 150 years in the future, but somehow Hoshi hasn't been trained in self-defense, even though Starfleet is partly a military operation.

And this article was clearly written by someone who doesn't actually watch the show: Hoshi is a language teacher, hurriedly made part of Enterprise's crew. She's not military, and obviously hasn't had military training.

This is a pretty silly essay. Was this actually published?

 

[Craig S]

I can't be as kind as the rest of you. The bulk of this article is unmitigated crap. It's obvious that the writer has only seen the first couple of episodes of the series (for example, the whole bit on mind-melding was explained in a recent episode). Plus, she's taking throwaway scenes (the alien dancing girls) and drawing conclusions on the philosophy of the series from them. Just silly.
Her misinterpretation of the title sequence is so ridiculous, I'd swear it was intentional parody if I didn't know better. Calling the pop song "Faith of the Heart" a "hymn"??? She says it contains

boasts about resisting alien domination

As if submitting to alien domination is a good thing?? And then she interprets the visuals, which are clearly intended to show and salute humanity's history of exploration, as somehow being about the racism of European colonial powers???
This is lazy thinking and bad writing.

 

[Everlasting Gobstopper]

Hear hear, Craig.

 

[John Bonar]

Typical PC stuff taken to an extreme. Eventually no one will be able to do or say anything.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

That's the one thing I've always hated about TNG era. It seems that Rock n Roll is banned (tom paris excepted), and everyone is cultured and doesn't do anything naughty in the least. At least Kirk screwed around and got into fistfights, but it seems that along with cutting out war and unnecessary conflict they also cut out what makes life FUN.

That's why I liked DS9 so much, it was raw, it had..BALLS. The people were real, they were believeable.

I do agree that this person is going way overboard in their PCness. The show has made very clear that the human race is NOT ready, and that the Vulcans are right, but that we're doing it anyway because we were still a brat race

 

[Mike Broadman]

It's nonsense like this that gives feminism a bad name. Taking minor visuals and twisting around things to try to make herself sound important is not valid social criticism. It is stupidity masked with a graduate degree.

 

[Thomas D]

I think neither B&B nor UPN is clever enough to instill all of the racial and sexual domineering the author thinks are integral to the series.

 

[Will_B]

PC? That wasn't a PC article, that was a paranoid article. A PC person would recognize Trek as a leader in addressing issues such as race.

"T'Pol represents a castrating woman as well as a scheming racial inferior," she wrote. On the contrary, T'Pol is the strong female who demonstrates that women can be every bit the leader that men have been. And that she transcends the "white human" bit is yet more the writer conveniently ignores - that the crew of the Enterprise is overcoming their racism towards Vulcans. Yes indeed, it seems she only saw the first couple episodes and didn't see the scope of the morality play that is being written.

Anyway, I recall when the writer was on the trek newsgroup a few months ago looking for examples of racism in Trek. Everyone pointed out how Trek was pretty much exactly the opposite of that, or at least, addressed the issues better than most.

I agree, her comments about the opening theme being religious was somewhere beyond stupid... deep stupid 9, perhaps. Doesn't anyone "get" the idea of a post-religous spirit of the heart? Does this really fly over people's heads? Yeech.

 

[Will_B]

"The show actually has its mouthpiece characters say outright that Americans are better than other people"

Was this the dialogue just before Trip put on a white hood and Archer gave the Nazi salute?

I'm not 100% sure, but does America even _exist_ in the 21st century setting of the show? I didn't notice if it did. I sort of assumed that after the World War III that was described in First Contact, the remaining peoples of the world sort of united.

 

[Mike Broadman]

Will, the US, or some form of it, does exist in the Trek universe. Star Fleet Academy is in San Francisco and Kirk and Janeway were American.

 

[Hugh Jackes]

the first Christian references ever heard on Star Trek

I also disagree. Uhura was deeply Christian, but, professionally, rarely made an issue of it.

Remember the orignal series episode where they encountered a 20th century planet that had followed the theory of parallel planet development, only the Roman Empire had never fallen? They had televised gladiatorial contests, Caesar, the works? Well the pacifist rebels that Kirk helped, in direct violation of the Prime Directive, were sun worshippers. Nobody could understand how that fit in with the parallel planent development theory, considering that on Earth, all of the sun worshipping sects were violent.

Once the episode was nearly over, and they were warping away from the planet, Kirk, McCoy, and Spock began their typical argument about the mission. Somebody brought up the disconnect between the sun worshippers and the pacifism of the rebels. Uhura piped up that the others had had it all wrong; she had been monitoring the planet's radio communications and the "sun" worshippers were actually "son" worshippers, as in the son of God. As she said it, she had a beautific peaceful look on her face. One of the Kirk/McCoy/Spock trio commented that they had had it all, Rome, gladiators, and Jesus, but that the word was late getting around. Everyone on the bridge (except for Spock) then got the same beautific peaceful looks on their faces.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

and the "sun" worshippers were actually "son" worshippers, as in the son of God. As she said it, she had a beautific peaceful look on her face. One of the Kirk/McCoy/Spock trio commented that they had had it all, Rome, gladiators, and Jesus, but that the word was late getting around. Everyone on the bridge (except for Spock) then got the same beautific peaceful looks on their faces.

I hate to tell you, but Roddenberry was a devout atheist. This was only done to illustrate the latest step in the cultural evolution of the planet.

Even in DS9 with the Bajorans, they proved in the very first episode that the Prophets were real beings.

 

[Jack Briggs]

"That's the one thing I've always hated about TNG era. It seems that Rock n Roll is banned (tom paris excepted), and everyone is cultured and doesn't do anything naughty in the least. At least Kirk screwed around and got into fistfights, but it seems that along with cutting out war and unnecessary conflict they also cut out what makes life FUN."

Jeff, as much as I absolutely love TNG, I agree with you a hundred percent. Well said! I prefer serious music, too, but, man, sometimes I just have to rock. So, the oppressively Utopian world of TNG gets awfully thick at times. Just once, it would have been cool to see Riker and Picard eyeballing a new female engineer leeringly. Or for anyone to indulge in some good, old-fashioned vices (well, Picard did hand over some contraband non-synthehol to Scotty in "Relics"). Then, in "The Game," the crew gets "high" off of an endorphin-stimulating video-game headset--all of it ending up as a cautionary tale against drug use.

I mean, come on. Give me some Kirk. That's why Archer appeals to me.

(But, then, when my TNG Season One boxset arrives next week, I might become indoctrinated into its faux Utopianism again. Picard: "Hold off on the phasers and photon torpodoes. Let me talk our enemy to death!")

 

[Hugh Jackes]

Roddenberry was a devout atheist

I know. But some of his characters clearly were not.

 

[Steve Enemark]

Come on Jack, there are two big reasons why they didn't have rock and roll on the show: 1) Somebody has to be paid for the song rights, and 2) Why would people in the 24th century listen to popular music from 400 years earlier?