Star Trek by the Minute 019: Ladies’ Night
Previous: Vulcan Racism
As Spock finishes his interview with the council, we cut to a car driving down a lonely Iowa cornfield with the last flames of dusk dying on the horizon. Without stopping (or slowing) at the crossroads, the car pulls up to a what we discover is a futuristic roadhouse bar. The driver appears to be the Uhura, and we follow her swishing red turtleneck mini dress through the club as she approaches the bar and orders a Clavian Fire Tea, 3 Budweiser® Classics (another shameful product placement), 2 Cardassian Sunrises, and what sounds like a "Slushle Mix" at the bartender's suggestion. Now we see there are women everywhere, but at least they're just functioning as scenery, and ordering drinks. At GirlBar in Hollywood one might see 5 to 1 ratios like this…but in Iowa? OK, it's the future in an alternate universe. The bartender goes to work on her order.
"That's a lot of drinks for one woman" comes from our tipsy future hero James T. Kirk, slumping forward to reveal himself from behind another patron who looks like Michael Dorn with a long face. Uhura looks at him and decides she's going to need "a shot of Jack, straight up." Kirk slurs: "Make that 2, her shot's on me." "Her shot's on her; Thanks but no thanks."
A short scene, but in it we've learned Uhura is in Iowa where Kirk was supposed to have been born in the original timeline, and Earth is aware of not only klingons and vulcans, but also cardassians. Also, we've learned that Kirk has survived a delinquent, destructive adolescence to become a young man who goes to bars alone and drinks too much. While there is no real logical problem with such characterization, the question of the writers' values and dedication to producing good work seems inevitable. This screen time could have been used to portray the triumph of hard work over adversity – which is usually more impressive than apathetic depravity. Perhaps the writer's schedule does not allow for the kind of careful thought a substantial and valuable story requires, and only had time to write the kind of bar fights and chase scenes that Roddenberry so detested as profit-maximizing pandering. Yet, to gain the approval of TV production gatekeepers for making Star Trek, he had to include them. They would not tolerate the intelligent portrayal of a wise hero who avoided violence.
From a larger perspective, this kind of decision makes perfect sense for a country like the United States that was started as a colony for exploitation and profit maximization by the English crown, founded on war against the indigenous population and dedicated to exploitation of the resources for increasing the wealth of the rich. As the inventor of the free market model Adam Smith observed and described: merchants and manufacturers support wars during which they work to ensure "their own interests are most particularly looked after." Media corporations are today's equivalent, and are driven by profit goals to support conflict where velocity of the aggregate money supply is increased. Avoiding violence and war by establishing peace and democratic management reduces profit – so television shows that portray avoiding war and establishing democracy in markets is like kryptonite to US style state-socialized capitalism. Roddenberry had a beautiful dream of something better than those who boast they are "not fans of Star Trek" (e.g.: JJ Abrams), understand.
Next: Animal Lovers
Comments
I've been a trekker since '71, and I'm glad I didn't share your pain the three times I went to see the new movie. But, I share your love for the original material!
"vulcan" and "klingon" should be capitalized.
"kryptonite" probably should be too, but it may have become institutionalized into American slang well enough to drop the original capitalization.
I really agonized over this and started with caps but it seems incorrect not to capitalize Human along with the rest.
I decided to only use caps for planet names Earth, Vulcan, Krypton, whatever, and keep species names with traditional punctuation (like the difference between English and english), but I'd love to find a good reference online if you can point me to it.
Roddenberry's visions was $$$$, plain and simple. He was a bastard to work for, a backstabbing bastard to work with, and money motivated manipulator that would have made the Ferengie proud - he deliberately wrote and copywrited "lyrics" for Alexander Courage's original Star Trek theme, so that Roddenberry would get royalties every time it played. Alexander Courage was not ammused. Roddenberry cheated on his wife by having an affair with Nichelle Nichols, and at the same time, cheated on Nicholas by having a second affair with Majel Barret. Roddenberry was a first class drug abuser as well. Prescription amphetamines to wake up during the day, rrescription sleeping pills at night, plus healthy doses of alcohol during the day.
Roddenberry's vision? It was "blowing in the wind", whatever fit with the politics of the moment. Any hero worship of Roddenberry and his vision is left-wing, uber liberal touchy-feely delusional thinking. "BurntSynapse"? Sounds like you burnt one or two.
Actually, I loved both TOS Cold War allegories, and preachy morality of TNG for which science fiction is such a good vehicle.
Whether I am completely ego driven depends on the definitions and philosophy of motivation one is using to assess me, I’d guess.
Roddenberry’s visions did include funding, perhaps even a desire to get rich – but I don’t think his personal problems of addiction and unethical behavior are very interesting when compared to the influence of his work. Also, I tend to think of people who focus on such things as more misguided even than those who fawn in hero worship. Both extremes share unreasonable bias that filters perceptions unacceptably, IMO.
We agree GR did whatever he thought politics of the moment required, especially to finance TOS within a corporate capitalist system, although based on the Ferengi, we would almost have to both agree that he was not the world’s biggest fan of profit maximizing.
I have killed a few neurons, but as they say: only the weak ones!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
I'm not certain we gain much by painting self-described "conservatives" so generally as to say they constantly accuse X of Y, but there is evidence to support that this group does prefer simple, clear categories like good/evil which, in social situations, generally sacrifices accuracy and precision in exchange for greater efficiency.
Good, careful thinking tends to appear slow and inefficient from such views.
Depressing, but beautifully expressed.
I hope you won't mind if I quote that in the future?
The last couple of things I said that got really popular was "Living the Dream" adapted from Ralph Emerson, and "Faith is only required in two situations: lies and mistakes. The truth is strong enough to stand on its own." which I adapted from Sagan in Demon Haunted World.
We all have the same mental toolbox and our conceptualizations are really so remarkably similar, the trivial differences are what we tend notice and focus on.
I believe that if people want to understand anything, including each others' opposing views, tools exist enabling such growth.
BTW - I appreciate all the feedback you're posting.
As for capitalization, I think the convention you describe here is better rationalized than anything I've seen. You'll note that in an earlier response, I even capped "Kohlinar" as well as Vulcan, despite not doing so in the actual post, but I think toward the end of the film the writing got more consistently formatted.
Nice to feel appreciated. :D And I know what it's like to gradually make one's writing more consistent, and it's a bugger to go back and fix everything that came before!