Star Trek in 1966: has a bridge crew containing a black female, Russian man, and faaaabulous Japanese man, each of whom holds the rank of full Lieutenant on their own abundant merits
In Nichelle Nichols' autobiography she talks about how the network insisted the scene be filmed both with and without the kiss, and of course, being good loyal actors, they complied. But, on takes without the kiss, something always seemed to go wrong… Shatner flubbed a line, the boom was in the shot, the cameras weren't quite set up correctly… eventually they ran out of time and were forced, "reluctantly", to submit only the takes with the kiss. I recommend Beyond Uhura. Also Kate Mulgrew's "autobiography" of Captain Janeway is a great read too. :)
culture wars are at an all time high due to right wing lies and attempts to push everyone not like them back into a culture of fear and hiding. So they are more sensitive to stuff they would not have batted an eye over before.
stories no longer have men controlling everything and having all the authority/adventures
Also what happened is that things that where highly political and controversial at the time are now "normal" and so conservatives don't see them as political anymore because the Overton window have shifted (for the most part), so now they attack the new "unthinkable" progressive "agendas".
Kind of like how TOS was almost flagrantly progressive at the time, with women not only being equals on the bridge, but being allowed to wear what they wanted, like miniskirts, without having to dress like the men, but today, it's seen as an artefact of the times, and as a sign of the comparatively regressive attitudes of the day, rather than the feminist icon it was when the show aired.
That's also the problem with any kind of forum that satirizes conservatives on the internet: sooner or later, it will get flooded with right wingers who completely fail to understand that they're being made fun of, and who will start posting the satirized content in all seriousness.
Eventually, the original people who started the venue leave, and what's left is just another right-wing echo chamber.
People with an inflexible point of view will always cherry pick from their social examples.
Be open my brothers, sisters and others. We are better than we know and more noble then we think. Do not allow your beautiful minds to be subverted by wars of ideological design. We are one!
Beginning in 1966, the plot of “Star Trek” closely followed Posadas’s propositions. After a nuclear third world war (which Posadas also believed would lead to socialist revolution), Vulcan aliens visit Earth, welcoming them into a galactic federation and delivering replicator technology that would abolish scarcity. Humans soon unify as a species, formally abolishing money and all hierarchies of race, gender and class.
Star Trek has been utopian space communism from the very beginning.
Science fiction has always been a vehicle for exploring woke ideas. Separating an issue from its current context allows the audience to set aside their biases and look with fresh eyes.
Woke started out being used in a positive manner by people of color to describe social awareness, then conservatives decided to use it as a mockery of those who dare to ask for a more caring and supportive society. The right didn't come up with that term.
Absolutely. Woke was a term exactly as @EatALime defined it, social awareness, but it quickly became “stuff I don’t like or agree with” for conservatives.
I'm not defending the straw man in this screenshot of a tweet, but this is a bad comparison. Roddenberry created a world in which the ideas of equality, freedom, diplomacy, and justice could be explored organically. He shifted the underlying economic motivations for the existence of political systems. He fought constantly with the studio system and his own writers to bring about a revolutionary vision of the future.
Since Roddenberry's death, Star Trek: The Franchise has been slowly oscillating downwards: away from a universe whose observation reveals the objective value of virtue into one in which virtue is paid lip service at the cost of strong "physics" -- that is, the sense of a coherent universe. Star Trek is now a product researched, marketed, designed, produced, tested, distributed, and defended by committee. Where once we had revolutionary subversions of what was allowed on television, we now find performative affirmations of popular lifestyle. If you have to compare yourself to 90's broadcast television in order to feel revolutionary, you're not.
The use of "woke" and "political" in this hypercontextualist style is so vague as to border on non-expression. Reacting to a reaction to a reaction to a reaction to a form of expression in which my reply wouldn't be allowed due to a character limit is not critical thinking. We can do better than this. Roddenberry already did.
You're completely missing the more useful point. The right says "woke and political," implicitly referencing the complex change I described above. The left quotes the right saying "woke and political" as an implicit dismissal of civil rights, diversity, representation, etc. Both of these lazy-ass anachronisms suck big huge elephant dicks and ruin the political discourse in the media.
I don't think the output of a media outlet is a useful handle on what individuals mean when they use politicized terms. To put it another way, if you're going to quote Fox you should also quote HuffPo.
You're misreading me and moving the goalposts. There is a media trend which can be (very poorly) described as "woke and political." One of the reasons why people who are bothered by this trend should refrain from using this code/shorthand is that it allows other people to project hate onto it, which is, in my view, equally shitty. Outlets like Fox deliberately court this behavior because it drives engagement. You shared their viral content for them. I wonder if you even viewed one of their ads on the way.
"To me, it means someone who believes that there are systemic injustices in the criminal justice system, and on that basis they can decline to fully enforce and uphold the law,"
There is nothing to do with the writing quality of any TV show in there.
But even that arbitrary definition doesn't seem to encapsulate other things commonly described as woke that are not systemic injustices, like the existence of trans people or climate change.
How does creating a product through research and committee equate to being "woke?" Countless products have been and are created to appeal to specific audiences. If you just define any product that is designed by committee, researched, focus tested, and made to appeal to a certain lifestyle or segment of the population, then everything is woke.
Country music is woke because it's made to appeal to rural audiences who believe in rugged individualism. The Fast and Furious movies are woke because they're made to appeal to people who are part of the car culture and like racing and modding their cars. Sennheiser headphones are woke because they're designed for audiophiles who are willing to spend thousands of dollars for the best audio quality.
And blaming bad writing on some vague undefined notion as "woke" makes no sense. I don't like Discovery. My criticisms are based on plots not making sense, characters doing dumb things, characters and plots not being inconsistent, episodes ignoring previously established plot points or lore, etc. It's the same kinds of criticisms I have towards any bad movie/show/book. For example, the Michael Bay Transformers movies were bad. Why were they bad? Plots not making sense, characters doing dumb things, people ignoring previously established plot points or lore, etc. The quality of those movies have nothing to do with the presence or lack of "wokeness." Saying that Discovery is bad because it's "woke" is like saying Michael Bay's Transformers movies are bad because they have explosions.
TNG, DS9, and Voyager had great writers. They deftly wove in contentious issues designed to invoke introspection and consideration of one's own positions, prejudices, and biases. They appealed to people of all political persuasions because they didn't cast judgement. "Oh that's what you believe? Well here's a whole planet built on those hypothetical principles. Here are some cool things, and some terrible things. Make up your own mind."
Star Trek writers today have all the tact and nuance of an angry baboon flinging faeces at the viewer while screaming "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!" Without exploration of the plentiful and beautiful nuance in life, what's left is a sermon. A preachy, dire, boring sermon. And who better to lead the ceremony each week than the Maryest of Sues, Michael Burnham.
Comparing TNG with whatever the fuck we have today is an insult to Star Trek, and Trekkie Bill knows it.
and tolerance of the intolerant was never a theme.
I'm sorry but this is bullshit. I cite episode 1-2, season 1. Q places Picard and the Enterprise on trial for the misdeeds of the human race. This character and plot re-emerges many times throughout this show and others. As recently as Picard season 3. Q's accusation is that the human race is guilty of crimes. He calls humanity a "dangerous, savage child-race." He's right, of course, which is what gives the theme gravitas. Picard's ongoing game with Q is a form of atonement rather than a test. The theme is that us humans are clearly fallible, and guilty of much, but also capable of heroism and feats of bravery and altruism.
Star Trek isn't Star Wars, with a baddie and a goodie. The three shows I cited explore the grey area between what you think is right, and what someone else thinks is right. They are powerful and thought-provoking precisely because they don't treat the audience like children, or parishioners in their pews. "Tolerance of intolerance" was one of the central themes in Star Trek, because the writers demanded we explore the nature of our morality ourselves. As a Star Trek fan I'm surprised to be explaining this to you.
That’s fair. I think the writing in the original is rather ham-fisted. I suppose there’s no one way to describe Star Trek. With such wildly different writing quality between shows we each have enough ammunition to prove any thesis we like.
I had made a reference to Battlefield some time ago, to my viewing partner for the new shows, and she didn't remember the episode, so we watched it. The takeaway that I got from watching it now, is that mostly Kirk spent the episode yelling at the others about how humans are far superior to the aliens, with very little room to debate that.
I hate this reaction to removal they want, I'm a big fan of the placement card at the start of these things that say "What you are about to see is wrong and shouldn't have been done," but not that removal of the content. I think it's way more powerful to put that content warning placard before a show from the '90s as proof there are still things that need to be done and it's not a "distant" past thing.
Frakes recently renewed his call for the episode "Code of Honor" from season 1 to be completely removed from reruns, home video, and steaming platforms. He made the call in the past. So while they might not ever remove it, some people would like it to be removed.
"But I was told or I was under the impression that it had rubbed so many people the wrong way that it was pulled. I think they should take it out of the rotation. I think it is a great time to make that kind of -- as small as it is -- to make that kind of a statement would be fabulous."
Also, I just realized I posted this on the completely wrong article that I thought I was, I thought I was posting to a different topic about Frakes' request to remove the episode after finding out it was on Paramount's streaming service.
which episode was that? pulling it is a dumb decision. just put the damn thing in context. i'm not going to pretend I didn't do something stupid decades ago just to try to look good now. people (and franchises) grow and change.
A.k.a “Dark men from Space Africa steal our white women”
In fairness, apparently when the episode was first pitched, they wanted the alien race to be reptiles, but it was subsequently changed to just be black people wearing tribal African clothing.
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