Aheh. I've spent the last two years of my life participating in fandom for the 2009 movie, actually.
There are actually at least three African American men with speaking roles in it, though two don't have names. There's Admiral Barnett, the pilot of Winona's shuttle, and one of the officers in the Kobayashi Maru. I'm only mentioning them because someone else may as a reason to invalidate your analysis.
I do agree with your criticisms (not least of Enterprise, gah), and yet I also love the 2009 movie. It's weird, I know, but one of my ways of reconciling these is that I and others in the fandom, at communities like where_no_woman, have been thinking about and telling the stories of the female characters we can see around the edges and with only one or two lines. There should have been more (I would have loved if, like Battlestar Galactica, they had genderswapped and or chromaticised some of the characters) but these are things we've been thinking about.
Would you like if I posted a link to your blog post at my fannish journal?
I'll edit the post. I meant to check that fact before posting, but I forgot. Thank you, and definitely, yes. I'm trying to make a living at this blogging thing, if it's possible.
ETA: oh, and I completely understand loving a movie that fundamentally fails all feminist and/or anti-racist/classist analysis. But the movie has to be fun, and I found this movie just plain depressing and joyless and rah rah cowboy Jim. There were things I liked about it -- both Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldana were excellent -- but Uhura was an independent unattached woman in the series, and by golly, that's the way I liked her. I attached a feminist subtext to that (a woman doesn't need a man) vs. a race subtext (black women are 'undesireable), so your mileage may vary.
Concerning women in the movie: http://community.livejournal.com/where_no_woman/53958.html This isn't at all enough -- they should be front and center, and as a friend of mine put it, the movie should not have given itself points for merely approaching to 1960's liberalism (and not even fully living up to that) -- but I was glad those ladies were there.
Concerning the movie being fun... well, de gustibus non disputandum. One of the things I've been enjoying about the fandom are indeed these "What-ifs"; it's a place where I can write Captain [Female Character] or Admiral [non-Western Name] and know people will notice and be pleased.
They got stupidly hamfisted in the last season(s) and I stopped watching, but I loved two characters - the black kid who was born on a space ship, and the translator. Oh, I loved that translator fiercely. I was the first time *I* was on screen in the Trekverse - Asian female *language expert*. Please don't erase my Hoshi experience.
I did love both of those characters as well, but very early on, they were already being sidelined, and I couldn't bear to watch. I really hardly watched the series, and I had forgotten Hoshi's name.
I was no longer represented on the crew, and neither were any of my friends of color, except as offhand tokens.
Maureen, I get your larger point, and even agree with you, but I am actively *hurt* by your phrasing above.
Hoshi got featured early on in episodes that centered on her, and her abilities as a linguist were vital until they got sidetracked in that stupid, stupid thinly veiled terrorist storyline that ate the series.
If any of the other not-command-crew characters count as PoC representation rather than tokens...if *Uhura* in the original, or Guinan, or Harry Kim, counts, then so does Hoshi, even though *you* have forgotten her.
I updated the post to reflect your criticisms. You are right. That doesn't change the fact that where earlier Star Treks had long, involved story lines about the nature of class and race and gender, and featuring characters of various examples of each of these, the story lines in Enterprise were typically, nearly uniformly white male centric. When I said I only watched about three episodes, that was accurate. My husband watched, but I literally walked out of the room when I saw it playing.
Guinan and Uhura and Harry Kim all had story lines that genuinely featured them, and while I can remember them introducing Hoshi well ETA -- the early episodes you alluded to --, every time I saw an episode it seemed to be a shoot em up and someone half naked and female (either Hoshi or T'Pol) in the background needing to be rescued. It's one of the reasons I think the Bechtel test is necessary but not sufficient.
Why are all (or so many of) the stories we see about white men? I can think of only one current television show with prominent Asian characters who talk to each other (Hawaii 5-0) and the same is true for nearly every race, gender, and class category except white men. So yeah, the analysis wasn't a complete one, just a statement of what I disliked about the show and the movie, and some reasons why.
I look at the first two series' approach on this, and there's an awful lot of Afternoon Special for Adults tone to them that I find hamfisted and irritating.
I don't know which three eps you saw, and it's very true that a random sampling of the series is all-too-likely to result in finding one of the "Trip & the Captain go all cowboy and then they have to go decontaminate and do fanservice (with both male and female characters) cheesecake" episodes. (There were far more of those than of anything decent, worse as the series wore on.)
Blame advertising-driven decisions for the predominance of shows for white men - it's that idiotic "coveted 18-35 white male" demographic. Reading through tvtropes.com reveals a lot of the rest of the reasoning behind that sort of storytelling. Basically, in the absence of race neutral casting, the existence of PoC characters (or anyone other than viewpoint white male + love interest) needs to be justified by a "why are they PoC" storyline. Which no one really wants to watch, because they're anvilicious.
I think a lot of Enterprise was designed as fanservice, and possibly influenced by the sort of things that show up in fanfic. There's very, very little exploration of race in Trekfic, and a whole lot of sexytimes. Unsurprising that an embattled production opts for the easy path. (I think it was also a lack of Gene Roddenberry at the helm, and the post 9/11 Bush-era attitudes. I imagine that an early Obama-era series might have reflected a different attitude.)
Just as an fyi, unlike most comments, I am not getting an email when you comment here. Is that my settings or yours? I've looked through mine and couldn't spot anything. I just happened to navigate back here to answer browngirl and saw your replies.
I'm missing comment notifications via e-mail...I don't know if this is a "LJ shafting unpaid users during yet another crisis" or what, but it's happening on both ends.
Ensign Travis Mayweather and Ensign Hoshi Sato (neither of whom got promoted, ever, thank you TPTB). I so, so wish that they had gotten the screentime they deserved. Heck, half of it would have been nice.
Star Trek has never been wholely and completely feminist and inclusive. Certainly Harry Kim was an Ensign much longer than he needed to be, and the first series was greatly bound by the standard of its times, but: what bothered me most about Enterprise and the new movie is that they didn't even seem to try.
They created interesting characters, and then abandoned them unexamined. They created a character who has a polyamorous relationship, which is standard for his species, and the only episode I saw that touched on it was more of a "point and giggle" episode than anything else. They created an interesting linguist, and spent most of the remaining episodes getting her half naked and playing up sexual tension. They did the same thing with the female Vulcan, who *should* have been a viewpoint character we could identify with and who changed up the way the world was perceived, but wasn't. You had a character raised in space in a world enough like our own that his differences from us should have been critical to plot, but weren't.
Instead, you had cowboy A, cowboy B, and comic relief C, with T&A 1 and 2. That is not to disparage the actors. They had lots of talent being underutilized there. But the writers and producers let us down.
And the movie was straight up cowboy crap that returned to the first series roots *without* having the excuse of the standards of the era.
On another show I've watched, NUMB3RS, I spent some years watching Alimi Ballard invest his character, David Sinclair, with personality while the writers were simply writing him as Generic Black Guy #3. When the writers finally joined him in working to make David a fully rounded person, the change was palpable and obvious.
Anyway, I piped something not to defend the movie but to say that there are a bunch of us contemplating these very issues and doing things with these thoughts -- the response to it isn't only uncritical acceptance or disappointed revulsion. There are people who did enjoy it, but not uncritically, and are considering feminism and people of color and other issues of social justice in our responses to it.
(Also, LJ has been having delays in comment notifications. I've only gotten one of yours so far.)
While I won't argue about the merits or lack thereof of the movie or any of the series (my opinion: TOS was great, but has unfortunately dated, all of the follow-ons ranged from passable to drek, a few of the movies were fun), I take issue with "they took it away from me".
No. No they didn't. In one sense, you never had it (Trek always belonged to Paramount, so if they wanted to cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Spock, no one else had a thing to say about it); in the other sense, you're the ONLY one who can "take that away". It's like the Star Wars fans who say that George Lucas "Ruined My Childhood". No, he didn't. I can still put in the original Star Wars and enjoy it just as I did before. The fact that Lucas' Neck made him do stupid things with the universe doesn't change what he did before, and he cannot erase my joy and love of it, no matter what he does. Only *I* can do that.
I ignore what the producers make if it's stupid or damaging to my perceptions, and I strongly recommend others to take that view; why cede control of YOUR enjoyment, YOUR fandom, to someone who neither knows nor cares about you?
Ryk, (she said gently and lovingly and other adverbingly) you're speaking from a place of privilege. Most of what is on TV and in the theaters is written for your demographic, by your demographic. It is different for those of us who are not in that demographic. The list of intelligent, interesting shows and movies which center on women's stories or the stories of people of color are far too few for those of us who need and crave them to simply shrug. We have to fight for them, constantly.
In fact, sometime in the next couple of weeks, I intend to write a similar post about why I abandoned reading SF on a regular basis. While there is *some* female centered SF, there is not nearly enough, and when I read a book, I want to read about someone *I* can identify with. Same issue.
? I'm not sure how "privilege" comes into my comment one tiny bit. I can see how it comes into why you don't like the newer Treks, but not how it takes away the Trek that was before.
If what you mean is "The new Trek doesn't serve the purpose for me that it did before", that was not the meaning that I got out of "they took it away from me", because virtually everyone I've heard make similar comments meant "Now that they've done this, the old stuff sucks for me too".
My comment was purely about "if you like stuff, then like it. Don't let other people's add-ons ruin your enjoyment of what you liked".
(If by "took it away" you did mean "they stopped making it in a way that fits my needs/preferences", then yes, I agree they did. )
No, I meant that I went to the theater expecting to watch something and got a deeply inferior product, which did kind of spoil my afternoon. I wanted to like it, but I really, really didn't. I do not mean that the old stuff sucks for me, but that it has become apparent that Paramount has no interest in creating anything of that quality again, so the *hope* that something like it will be produced has dimmed.
The movie was an AU and I think they should have emphasised the Alternate. An Alternate to good story telling!
The only thing I did like was Zach's portrayalof Spock. And they had to distort that by getting him to do an "emotional outburst" and the Transporter scene with Uhura.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 05:40 pm (UTC)There are actually at least three African American men with speaking roles in it, though two don't have names. There's Admiral Barnett, the pilot of Winona's shuttle, and one of the officers in the Kobayashi Maru. I'm only mentioning them because someone else may as a reason to invalidate your analysis.
I do agree with your criticisms (not least of Enterprise, gah), and yet I also love the 2009 movie. It's weird, I know, but one of my ways of reconciling these is that I and others in the fandom, at communities like
Would you like if I posted a link to your blog post at my fannish journal?
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 06:29 pm (UTC)ETA: oh, and I completely understand loving a movie that fundamentally fails all feminist and/or anti-racist/classist analysis. But the movie has to be fun, and I found this movie just plain depressing and joyless and rah rah cowboy Jim. There were things I liked about it -- both Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldana were excellent -- but Uhura was an independent unattached woman in the series, and by golly, that's the way I liked her. I attached a feminist subtext to that (a woman doesn't need a man) vs. a race subtext (black women are 'undesireable), so your mileage may vary.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 07:30 pm (UTC)Concerning Uhura and Spock,
http://rawles.livejournal.com/340736.html
http://rawles.livejournal.com/330851.html
Concerning women in the movie:
http://community.livejournal.com/where_no_woman/53958.html
This isn't at all enough -- they should be front and center, and as a friend of mine put it, the movie should not have given itself points for merely approaching to 1960's liberalism (and not even fully living up to that) -- but I was glad those ladies were there.
Concerning the movie being fun... well, de gustibus non disputandum. One of the things I've been enjoying about the fandom are indeed these "What-ifs"; it's a place where I can write Captain [Female Character] or Admiral [non-Western Name] and know people will notice and be pleased.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 06:40 pm (UTC)They got stupidly hamfisted in the last season(s) and I stopped watching, but I loved two characters - the black kid who was born on a space ship, and the translator. Oh, I loved that translator fiercely. I was the first time *I* was on screen in the Trekverse - Asian female *language expert*. Please don't erase my Hoshi experience.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 06:57 pm (UTC)Maureen, I get your larger point, and even agree with you, but I am actively *hurt* by your phrasing above.
Hoshi got featured early on in episodes that centered on her, and her abilities as a linguist were vital until they got sidetracked in that stupid, stupid thinly veiled terrorist storyline that ate the series.
If any of the other not-command-crew characters count as PoC representation rather than tokens...if *Uhura* in the original, or Guinan, or Harry Kim, counts, then so does Hoshi, even though *you* have forgotten her.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 07:16 pm (UTC)Guinan and Uhura and Harry Kim all had story lines that genuinely featured them, and while I can remember them introducing Hoshi well ETA -- the early episodes you alluded to --, every time I saw an episode it seemed to be a shoot em up and someone half naked and female (either Hoshi or T'Pol) in the background needing to be rescued. It's one of the reasons I think the Bechtel test is necessary but not sufficient.
Why are all (or so many of) the stories we see about white men? I can think of only one current television show with prominent Asian characters who talk to each other (Hawaii 5-0) and the same is true for nearly every race, gender, and class category except white men. So yeah, the analysis wasn't a complete one, just a statement of what I disliked about the show and the movie, and some reasons why.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 11:50 pm (UTC)I don't know which three eps you saw, and it's very true that a random sampling of the series is all-too-likely to result in finding one of the "Trip & the Captain go all cowboy and then they have to go decontaminate and do fanservice (with both male and female characters) cheesecake" episodes. (There were far more of those than of anything decent, worse as the series wore on.)
The (all too few) Hoshi eps are listed within this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoshi_Sato
Blame advertising-driven decisions for the predominance of shows for white men - it's that idiotic "coveted 18-35 white male" demographic. Reading through tvtropes.com reveals a lot of the rest of the reasoning behind that sort of storytelling. Basically, in the absence of race neutral casting, the existence of PoC characters (or anyone other than viewpoint white male + love interest) needs to be justified by a "why are they PoC" storyline. Which no one really wants to watch, because they're anvilicious.
I think a lot of Enterprise was designed as fanservice, and possibly influenced by the sort of things that show up in fanfic. There's very, very little exploration of race in Trekfic, and a whole lot of sexytimes. Unsurprising that an embattled production opts for the easy path. (I think it was also a lack of Gene Roddenberry at the helm, and the post 9/11 Bush-era attitudes. I imagine that an early Obama-era series might have reflected a different attitude.)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 08:05 pm (UTC)They created interesting characters, and then abandoned them unexamined. They created a character who has a polyamorous relationship, which is standard for his species, and the only episode I saw that touched on it was more of a "point and giggle" episode than anything else. They created an interesting linguist, and spent most of the remaining episodes getting her half naked and playing up sexual tension. They did the same thing with the female Vulcan, who *should* have been a viewpoint character we could identify with and who changed up the way the world was perceived, but wasn't. You had a character raised in space in a world enough like our own that his differences from us should have been critical to plot, but weren't.
Instead, you had cowboy A, cowboy B, and comic relief C, with T&A 1 and 2. That is not to disparage the actors. They had lots of talent being underutilized there. But the writers and producers let us down.
And the movie was straight up cowboy crap that returned to the first series roots *without* having the excuse of the standards of the era.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 08:18 pm (UTC)On another show I've watched, NUMB3RS, I spent some years watching Alimi Ballard invest his character, David Sinclair, with personality while the writers were simply writing him as Generic Black Guy #3. When the writers finally joined him in working to make David a fully rounded person, the change was palpable and obvious.
Anyway, I piped something not to defend the movie but to say that there are a bunch of us contemplating these very issues and doing things with these thoughts -- the response to it isn't only uncritical acceptance or disappointed revulsion. There are people who did enjoy it, but not uncritically, and are considering feminism and people of color and other issues of social justice in our responses to it.
(Also, LJ has been having delays in comment notifications. I've only gotten one of yours so far.)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 08:17 pm (UTC)No. No they didn't. In one sense, you never had it (Trek always belonged to Paramount, so if they wanted to cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Spock, no one else had a thing to say about it); in the other sense, you're the ONLY one who can "take that away". It's like the Star Wars fans who say that George Lucas "Ruined My Childhood". No, he didn't. I can still put in the original Star Wars and enjoy it just as I did before. The fact that Lucas' Neck made him do stupid things with the universe doesn't change what he did before, and he cannot erase my joy and love of it, no matter what he does. Only *I* can do that.
I ignore what the producers make if it's stupid or damaging to my perceptions, and I strongly recommend others to take that view; why cede control of YOUR enjoyment, YOUR fandom, to someone who neither knows nor cares about you?
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 08:33 pm (UTC)In fact, sometime in the next couple of weeks, I intend to write a similar post about why I abandoned reading SF on a regular basis. While there is *some* female centered SF, there is not nearly enough, and when I read a book, I want to read about someone *I* can identify with. Same issue.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 08:46 pm (UTC)If what you mean is "The new Trek doesn't serve the purpose for me that it did before", that was not the meaning that I got out of "they took it away from me", because virtually everyone I've heard make similar comments meant "Now that they've done this, the old stuff sucks for me too".
My comment was purely about "if you like stuff, then like it. Don't let other people's add-ons ruin your enjoyment of what you liked".
(If by "took it away" you did mean "they stopped making it in a way that fits my needs/preferences", then yes, I agree they did. )
no subject
Date: 2011-03-03 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-04 03:45 pm (UTC)The only thing I did like was Zach's portrayalof Spock. And they had to distort that by getting him to do an "emotional outburst" and the Transporter scene with Uhura.