I have mixed feelings about the new Star Trek movie. While I quite enjoyed it as an adventurous space romp, my nagging issues with the original series re-emerged in spades.
I grew up on the later series, so I’ve always found it difficult to enjoy the terrible special effects and campiness of Kirk’s bridge. I also hated the lack of women, except as girlfriends for Kirk, and the fact that female officers would wear miniskirts and go-go boots on the bridge. In what universe would that be practical?
I was much more invested in Captain Janeway, Major Kira, and my favourite female characters in the Star Trek Universe: the sexy warrior Klingon co-captains, the Duras Sisters.
Don’t mess with the best.
So let’s just say I was a bit peeved that J.J. Abrams’ new movie cut the female cast from two to one and that Uhura was once again wearing a miniskirt. I expect a bit more from the man who gave the world Felicity, Sydney Bristow, and Olivia Dunham. I was genuinely surprised that he could not do better than this new Uhura, a woman who spends the whole movie bickering or staring meaningfully at a not-very-logical Spock.
Ellen Lawrence, in her article for Playtime Magazine, perfectly summarizes - in the light of Roddenberry’s original vision - exactly why it was so illogical to make the future sexist. Although I may take slight issue with her positive reading of the “equality” in the later series (no one will ever be able to convince me that Troi, with her low-cut leotards and her “emotional” job description, was cool), I think her criticism of this new movie, which had a chance to create an entirely new Star Trek universe, is spot on.
What did you think of the new Star Trek? What would be your hopes for a sequel?
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11 comments
I was a Next Generation fan but no matter how many people I hear rave about this movie (and there are lots) I have zip interest in seeing it. The ads suggest Crank or The Fast and the Furious in space which makes me cringe. I'm interested in reading the article you linked to here, though, so will check that out.
Posted by C.K.
May 30, 2009, 12:42 PM
I too enjoyed the film as a fun "space romp" but it's still pretty sexist and that's just plain sad. I found this via @BitchMagazine and it really drove home a lot of the sexism in the film. Plus it's just damn cool. http://liviapenn.livejournal.com/5552...
Posted by Miss Kitty
May 30, 2009, 1:39 PM
Oh man, I love the new Star Trek movie like candy but, yeah, incredibly problematic especially in its stance of re-establishing the status quo, ie, white men to the front, minorities and women to the back.
Posted by M. Kidd
May 30, 2009, 3:54 PM
I'm sorry Michelle - but why can't women wear mini-skirts and be powerful, feminists?
And no talk about race from you either, right?
Posted by Jana
May 30, 2009, 11:24 PM
Wow, Miss Kitty, that is awesome re-casting. Grace Park as Sulu is brilliant. And Jennifer Connelly as Nero! I could totally see it. It's too bad, there's no reason Nero had to be a man, but alas, Evil Romulan Jennifer will only ever exist in my mind.
Jana, there's no reason why a woman can't wear a mini-skirt and be a feminist, but in the context of the sexism of the Sixties, when the network wouldn't even let women on the bridge if they weren't wearing skimpy clothes, as well as in the fictional context of serving on a ship going into battle, it doesn't really make much sense.
As for race, the scope of my post was the article by Ellen Lawrence, which dealt with sexism in the workplace. Race in Star Trek would be a whole other post. Maybe four or five other posts...
I would agree with M.Kidd above, that in this new movie, the gross behavior of Kirk and Spock's relationship with Uhura did steal some of Uhura's thunder. It was sad to see such a character, once revolutionary for being a black woman serving as a highly respected officer on the bridge, trivialized with boob grabs and strip scenes. I would argue that this treatment was the result of her being a woman, rather than because of her race, however, I would have definitely liked to have seen more diversity from J.J. for the new movie. More people of color, more women, and how about some queers? There has never once been a queer character on Star Trek. Apparently they don't exist in the universe of the future.
Posted by Michelle
May 31, 2009, 9:41 AM
The questions isn't 'why can't women wear mini-skirts and be powerful, feminists?' as much as 'why is a mini-skirt an acceptable uniform on a military BATTLESHIP?' or, more importantly since this is the 24th century we're talking about, if said mini-skirt *is* an acceptable uniform, why is it only an option for women?
Posted by M. Kidd
May 31, 2009, 4:04 PM
Yes, when we see Kirk's pretty pretty legs in a mini-skirt, I will quit my bitching! :-D
Posted by Michelle
May 31, 2009, 7:27 PM
Ugh, this blog is just as bad as Feministing, cause there you all go excusing away why you don't REALLY walk the talk about intersections of race and feminism yet again.
Sure Michelle, 4 or 5 posts about race that you probably won't do. But nice of you to name how many you think it might take and divert to sexuality - instead of intersecting it all. Or can't it all exist at the same time for you?
Posted by Jana
June 1, 2009, 1:47 AM
I've always found it interesting that the women's roles on Star Trek have tilted toward very conservative gender roles: they always seem to be about communication, empathy and nurturing, when the men were engineers and security and tacticians. For the new movie, I have to say I liked Uhura, although I'm not sure that she's a strong character just because she doesn't sleep with Kirk, as some of the blogosphere seems to suggest.
I agree that there is a lot to say about racism, colonialism and militarism in the Star Trek universe -- and it would be great if these conversations could start in the comments, too. (Jana, I think that if you started a meaningful discussion here, you might find that others want to make these connections. Also, it would be more helpful than just attacking our bloggers, which is, by the way, against our comments policy.)
So I'll start off. I was surprised to learn that there are a lot of Trek supporters who feel that Trek broke some significant ground by having a really inclusive cast. Apparently, Nichelle Nichols (who plays Uhura in the original series) wanted to quit and was talked out of it by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She was also one of the first black women on a major TV series who wasn't playing a servant.
Personally, I've always found the UN ideal of the Federation quite unsettling and more than a little Eurocentric. The Federation always seemed to be presented as superior to other alien cultures, which were always "exotic." And Star Trek cultures are always homogenous -- the Klingons are violent, the Ferengi are greedy -- with very little variation. "All X people are like Y" is never going to go anywhere good.
Ultimately, I think the Federation is pretty paternalistic. And the fact that the it exists as a military model makes me cringe (and makes me love the rebel-loving anti-establishment Joss Whedon show Firefly even more).
Posted by Megan
June 1, 2009, 10:25 AM
Megan, I absolutely agree with you about the Eurocentric and paternalistic Federation. I always found Earth to be a terribly irritating place in the Star Trek universe, always bragging about how they had done away with war and money and pollution and all that bad stuff that other alien nations were still fighting over. How exactly this was so successfully accomplished is never fully explained.
While the show was always proud of its diverse casts, from Sulu and Uhura on the bridge in the Sixties, to Captain Sisko and Captain Janeway in the Ninetes, it created more problems than it solved with its simplistic analysis of race relations via aliens as metaphor for skin color or cultural differences. The Very Special Episodes were the crew of the Enterprise would learn a Very Special Lesson about how we are all different but can't we all just get along, were condescending and simplistic at best. I totally agree that the "All X people are like Y" portrayal of alien races was about as racist as the racism it was supposedly trying to critique.
Rewatching the earlier movies in preparation for this new entry into the series, I found myself shocked by the virulent racism spouted by the supposedly enlightened humans of the Federation. Never mind Bones' occasional jabs at Spock for being a "green-blooded bastard," Starfleet officers ranted and raved about the barbaric, lying, thieving Klingons. Here were the "heroes" of the show complaining that the Klingons were dirty and ate smelly food and didn't bathe and etc. etc. It was hard to watch! Although the fight with the Klingons was grudgingly resolved at the end of the movies, it was never with any real critique of the poisonous xenophobia that had just come tumbling out of the mouths of Federation members.
I felt the same way about the Ferengi. For me, the dismissive and superior treatment by humans of the money-grubbing, sneaky, big eared Ferengi got a little too close to traditional anti-Semitism, with its hatred of those money-grubbing, big nosed Jews. The problem is that in the case of Star Trek, the anti-Semites are the heroes of the story.
To me, it's never been clear how the Federation managed to eliminate racial hatred on earth so successfully, when all the earthlings find it so easy to resurrect their prejudices in space. I preferred shows like Babylon 5, where racism and hatred still existed, and it was fully admitted that the humans were still a bunch of corrupt jerks who were messing up space as much as they messed up their own planet.
And yeah, so, in conclusion, for a future Earth society that is supposedly so perfect and free, I have always found it surprising that women were still restricted in their gender roles, queerness was non-existent amongst humans and punished amongst aliens (when mentioned at all), and that these enlightened people had such an easy time stereotyping and mistreating other cultures.
Posted by Michelle
June 1, 2009, 11:33 AM
Ugh, McCoy's constant jokes about Spock the "green-blooded bastard" have made me cringe since the original series. When racism is made into an acceptable jibe because the characters involved are friends and because the racial slur refers to a race that doesn't actually exist in real life, it trivializes the real damage that those kinds of jokes and jibes inflict in real life.
Also, where the original Star Trek may have had a more diverse cast than other TV shows at the time, the current cast of this movie has moved no further in showing a future where Earth's races are integrated in some Utopian whole. Abrams had a real opportunity here to envision a future that takes Roddenberry's multi-racial, multi-ethnic mosaic and makes it even more inclusive. Instead he clung to the original recipe, and even further pushed the female characters and non-white human characters to the background. This cast of Star Trek barely even reflected the diverse cast of humans I encounter on a day-to-day basis in the present, much less a vision of the future in which humans have overcome oppression and hatred based on gender, race and sexuality.
Posted by Stark
June 1, 2009, 11:47 AM
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