> This show is post-racism, but still believes in “culture” with a Victorian faith in white mythologies
I'm fairly literate in Liberal Arts English, but I don't follow what this means, especially as the context around it seems to complain about portrayals of race. What does it mean to "believe in 'culture' with a Victorian faith in white mythologies"? What does that modifier mean about one's belief in culture (whatever that even means, all on its own—do the scare quotes mean we're not supposed to think culture's a thing anymore, or is this a hardcore we-can-never-judge-a-culture-as-inferior thing the writer's assuming we all buy?). How does that relate to the rest of the paragraph?
I just attributed it to standard SJW virtue signalling. It's meaningless aside to others who understand the same lingo, and agree with it.
Edit: Ah, the usual SJW refrain. Silence any criticism via flags, -1's and other tools available, instead of discussing why the quote is right/not and what it means.
A nod-ignore-and-keep-reading Lit Crit academese filler thing, then? I guess it stood out to me because the review doesn't have much of that, otherwise, and because the paragraph it's in seemed to be making some kind of point, though I couldn't decipher what it was in such a way that that sentence contributed anything.
Truthfully, these days if I see SJW buzzwords, I just skip over the rest of the text. It's not worth subjecting oneself in that sort of groupthink - lest you eat babies. Because if you don't agree with them, you must assuredly agree with rape, sex crimes, and eating babies. There is no middle ground. There is no discussion. Only fuming mouths.
Are there wrongs? Absolutely. But we can tackle those when we have clear evidence and direct corrective action. Striking out at anyone with a will to discuss and have legitimate concerns is not a way to bridge the communication gap.
7. Demonization if you are a "White male in tech" - regardless if you are for equality or not
8. Google Memo/"Anti-diversity Screed"
So you're right. I could stay quiet about this. But these problems aren't going to go away with silence. And they aren't going to go away by shaming people into submission or silence under threat of job loss. These things are affecting the whole industry, and it's about high time to confront these issues head-on, without fear of losing your house, your food, and your livelihood. (Why do you think I run under a pseudonym?)
I've not read Lit Crit. I have read history. The European colonial period was justified using logic very similar to the argument described in this article.
British colonialism specifically argued for Anglo-Saxon superiority, and the Kipling's "The White Man's Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands" used a similar logic to argue that the US should take over the Philippines.
I get what "a Victorian faith in white mythologies" means re: racist colonialism and cultural imperialism, I just don't get what it means for the show to "still [believe] in 'culture' with a Victorian faith in white mythologies". The scare-quoted (I think?) "culture", in the context of the rest of the sentence, is what's getting me. To believe in "culture" with a victorian faith in white mythologies. That's some badly criss-crossing modifiers and a really unclear use of quotes, as I see it, standing out in an otherwise fairly comprehensible paragraph.
I guess I'm also a little confused that the review complains in such strong language[1] about what looks to be the most interesting thing in the show, assuming the writers have lead with this material for the reason that they intend to return to it though the rest of the season and need, you know, somewhere to go with it, so they can't just start at the end. If it finds a way to retain aliens-as-projections-of-human-psyco/social-demons of traditional Trek (and much popular sci-fi) but also address the definitely-smells-of-racism problems that naturally come with doing that for as long as Trek's done it... god, that'll be among the most interesting things Trek's ever done, and if the writers are competent then they sure seem to be setting up for something along those lines. It's easily the most promising thematic direction the first part of the series has set up, judging from this review, so wow, should they ever not clean it up, please. Dig in, get dirty, and find a way out that's a little more novel and nuanced than "hur hur see it was racism all along and now our protagonist learned a lesson!" and this'll be one for the ages.
[1] "We shall see. But to get there—and I have to say this as clearly as possible—this show needs to clean up its fucking act with respect to the deeply racist portrayal of its Klingons."
I do not believe it is a scare quote. I think it's an actual quote. The more complete quote from the show follows immediately afterward: “It would be unwise to confuse race and culture.” I believe "culture" is used to pull out that one term for further discussion.
The review assumes that the reader has watched the show. I have not. I cannot comment further on this point, nor on the "deeply racist portrayal of its Klingons". I can point out that http://ew.com/tv/2017/09/07/star-trek-discovery-trump-politi... says:
> “The Klingons are going to help us really look at certain sides of ourselves and our country. Isolationism is a big theme. Racial purity is a big theme. The Klingons are not the enemy, but they do have a different view on things. It raises big questions: Should we let people in? Do we want to change? There’s also the question of just because you reach your hand out to someone, do they have to take it? Sometimes, they don’t want to take it. It’s been interesting to see how the times have become more of a mirror than we even thought they were going to be.”
and various people have asserted that the new Klingons are supposed to be like Trump supporters.
> I do not believe it is a scare quote. I think it's an actual quote. The more complete quote from the show follows immediately afterward: “It would be unwise to confuse race and culture.” I believe "culture" is used to pull out that one term for further discussion.
I guess I'm gonna have to watch for context for the quote. I think the paragraph's getting a little clearer to me now.
As for the rest: haha, wow. Now I've gotta watch, just so I can figure out whether the Klingons are racist (as in, the depiction is racist and the Federation's going all high-colonial Britain on 'em) or racist (as in, they're Trump supporter stand-ins), or somehow both at the same time. Should be... interesting, anyway.
> Now I've gotta watch, just so I can figure out whether the Klingons are racist (as in, the depiction is racist and the Federation's going all high-colonial Britain on 'em) or racist (as in, they're Trump supporter stand-ins)
Possibly both, actually, from the one-hour broadcast “pilot” (which seems more of a teaser than a pilot, but I'm not buying CBS All Access on the strength of that teaser, so I probably won't see the rest.)
That is, the focal Klingons are xenophobes looking for a war with the Federation to Make the Empire Great Again, but also there is strong indication of the other, as well. So, something for everyone on that department.
A far better way to describe this phenomenon is to generalise it to the behaviour of a conquering culture or nation instead of one specific 'race'. Whether it be Mohammedans invading the Byzantine empire, Genghis Khan setting off to conquer the known world, Khoikoi on the war path against the San, Aleuts battling Inuit or Yupik, nearly all of them feel themselves superior to their opponents in some way.
This is not a race thing, not is it a cultural thing. It is a human trait which is universal. It is not just related to physical attacks either, e.g. so-called 'social justice warriors' feel themselves morally superior over those who do not follow their specific strain of self-flagellation and -denial, sports teams, philosophers, investors, anywhere people choose themselves a niche they plant their flags and wave their banners.
I have lost the thread of what you are talking about. What is "this phenomenon"?
Is the Federation in the new series supposed to be a conquering culture or nation, trying to take over the quadrant? If so, that's a huge change.
"It is a human trait which is universal"
Universal? What does that mean? Swedes and Norwegians each feel themselves to be better than the other nationality. They have flags and banners too. So, what is the consequence of this universal trait? Will Swedish tanks be going over the border soon?
Does that mean those who believe in internationalism ("the people of the world should unite across national, political, cultural, racial, or class boundaries to advance their common interests") are not human?
Can you rephrase what you said? Whenever I see "SJW" or "virtue signaling" in a post, I immediately stop reading and move on. Those terms are meaningless to those who don't subscribe to the groupthink of a devout cult of sheltered sexists.
There is no other word to describe the groups behind the wave of petty but vicious activism in the last decade or so. The people calling for "safe spaces" and trigger warnings, literally shaking from micro-aggressions, trying to ruin people's careers for holding common opinions, and always claiming to be the victims of some -ism. What would you call them?
Calling for a safe spaces? "Trump demands safe space for Mike Pence after he was booed at Hamilton" - https://news.avclub.com/trump-demands-safe-space-for-mike-pe... ("The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!")
Trying to ruin someone's career? "Donald Trump Casually Threatens To ‘Destroy’ The Career Of State Lawmaker" who promoted asset forfeiture reform. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-destroy-state-lawm... . I believe most people are for forfeiture reform.
Or more recently, "Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a b---- off the field right now. Out," Trump said amid applause. "He's fired. He's fired!" - https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-protests-donald-trump... . This form of silent protest against discrimination is increasingly common.
Always claiming to be a victim (though not from some -ism)?
Trump is deliberately using the language and tactics of his political enemies against them in a kind of counter-trolling demagoguery.
This is ugly stuff. The discourse has descended to the level where the media is dominated by two different groups of extremist trolls taking potshots at each other using the language of outrage and grievance. The rest of us are caught in the middle and our society is becoming deranged as a result.
Indeed he is. Even more so, go download Tor Browser Bundle and read what the Daily Stormer has to say. Aside the obvious racism, it seems to match what and how Trump talks. Its one of their ways of conducting rallies as well, to cloak themselves in "normalcy" and use the weapons of the other side against them.
On the other side, they are willing to stop at nothing to destroy lives of people they see a threat as well. Ive seen it time and again. It turns into what amounts to a mob, exerting its will.
This is going to end very badly, for many. I see the underlying grievances as something neither side can amicably talk about, nor will either side give up.
How can you tell? Perhaps he's using the language because he really thinks it's meaningful?
How do you know there isn't only one group of extremist trolls?
If two groups disagree, they don't have to be balanced yin and yang.
If two groups disagree, the real answer doesn't have to lie in the middle.
In the 1850s US, there were pro-slavers and anti-slavers. Who was in the middle, and were they right?
But hey, I watch Democracy Now, 'cause I think the the real problems are corporate owned media and media centralization. At the very least, DN doesn't dominate the media.
was he right? he's one of the most historically examined leaders of all time and we still don't know. In the present we have the benefit of hindsight and can more easily see that war was inevitable and we might even think Lincoln was foolish to initially pursue a policy that sought to avoid war. Was that so obvious in his own time though?
Lincoln did change his mind but he seems to have changed it not because he had an epiphany about the evil of slavery, but because he became convinced during the war that it would be a total war and not a containable skirmish. once that logic was in play the Emancipation Proclamation made sense to issue. It also bolstered his support with abolitionists.
Today we have no ambiguity about the evil of slavery and view it as one of the greatest moral failings in our history and a legacy we are continuing to face down and one which has caused huge misery for millions of African-Americans. Even with this modern perspective, it's hard to view Lincoln as anything other than a conflicted man trying to weigh very heavy decisions indeed. So I dunno if he was right. I don't think Lincoln knew in his own time and I don't think we will ever be able to adequately judge. We know what happened but we don't know what else could have or should have happened instead.
Can you rephrase what you said? Whenever I see "devout cult of sheltered sexists" in a post, I immediately stop reading and move on. Those terms are meaningless to those who don't subscribe to the groupthink that you mentioned.
It means that the Victorian appeal of claiming oneself above the "savages" of wherever the British Empire was conquering. The writer is equating the story of Discovery with the story the British told themselves about colonialism. The reference is that The Federation is the British and the Klingons are the savages.
(Belief in) cultural superiority as racism, then? OK.
I'd be (genuinely) curious to see what form Klingon-hating in the show could have taken that would have been similar in form but different enough that the writer'd not have labeled it white and Victorian. I'd like to know what the diff looks like between the two. Is "they have always attacked us before, so better to start shooting if you see them and skip the trying-to-talk-then-being-fired-on-anyway bits" necessarily white and Victorian?
[EDIT] and if it's not necessarily so, then what about the show's actual depiction was?
Those are racist/culturalist jabs meant to signal ingroup status to other bigots.
There is no deeper meaning behind why white and Victorian as opposed to Arab and working to establish the Caliphate or numerous other examples we can draw.
It's simply safe to express that kind of bigotry (and even popular in some groups).
Good question. I'd say that the ties back to imperialist days on Earth are there because (1) it's a popular idea to hate this part of history, and (2) despite having lead characters who are asian and black, the show is still implied to be "white enough" for the comparison to be justified.
The claim is that Star Trek's premise is a problem because it makes the flawed assumption that one culture can be better than another, and by extension, that all cultures must be valued and respected equally. Without going into the cultures of humanity in Star Trek versus the Klingons, you can examine similar claims closer to home even where some cultures are deeply invested in medieval-level cruelty like stoning of homosexuals and adulterers, female genital mutilation, and inhumane punishment by knife and cane. But these realities don't fit the author's narrative, and therefore must be ignored for the purposes of the thesis. Like Klingons, they're a benign minority who are simply misunderstood by their would-be cultural oppressors.
The article's ostensibility about science-fiction, and managed to stay on point for the first couple paragraphs, but it quickly devolved into the author's pet theories on race and gender. I really had trouble with these sorts of broad and totally unfair generalizations:
> Uhuru was a service worker and Worf was a punching bag; when the show made a black captain, was it a coincidence that the show also became “darker” and less optimistic, when its characters started to be “flawed” and “ambiguous”? Voyager had a female captain, but it marooned her to the farthest reaches of the galaxy (and the less said about the garbage politics of the reboot movies, the better).
Yeah, I glossed over that part with an "uh, yeah, kinda, sure" for the Uhuru and Worf things (the put-upon not-terribly-competent "service worker" in TOS is clearly Nurse Chapel, if it's any named recurring character, and Worf gets punched a helluva lot less than one might think given his role and demeanor—Picard is more often both the physical and emotional punching bag, I'd think), an "I guess..." for the Sisko bits, and a "wait, what?" for the complaint about Janeway (they gave her arguable the toughest circumstances for any captain in episode 1 of their show in a Trek thusfar, but she did fine because it's Star Trek and the good guys may have ups and downs but they do basically fine in the end, and it's sexist somehow that she did really well? That show has some deep problems, even with Janeway's character, but sexism's nowhere near the top of the list) and an "I guess I missed something?" for the reboot movies bit.
That should have primed me for being confused later in the piece, I suppose.
[EDIT] the Sisko thing'd have had more weight if that show hadn't spent so much screen time openly dealing with humans (=the US, mostly, for production and character reasons) racist past (mind you, I like that aspect of DS9, even if it doesn't always make much in-universe sense)
The racism that the author sees probably comes from the fact that the Klingons are even darker skinned, not like the civilized and lighter skinned people of The Federation. This was a very common trope during much of Victorian history, leading to roles such as the "savage assistant", the "learned black apprentice", etc. While the civilized colored folks from the white civilization could be reasoned with and would even sacrifice for their master, those even darker dark folk would just attack sight as they were incapable of reason. I haven't seen the show so I'm going off of the article and what I've seen the depictions of the Klingons as, and can't really offer more insight than the translation I've given.
>The reference is that The Federation is the British and the Klingons are the savages
Originally, the Federation was the US and the Klingons were the Soviets - this was of course before the Klingons became blood-wine drinking Neanderthals and were just swarthy space villains with Fu-Manchu moustaches.
This is completely counter to the thesis in the article.
For example:
> Looking back from two decades later, Next Generation (1987–94), Deep Space Nine (1993–99), and Voyager (1995–2001) feel like a single continuous 1990’s moment, a moment that began in a renewed liberal optimism for multiculturalism and progress and the general advancement of humanity.
Where is the SJWism and PC culture which saddles the latest ST movies? How did all that SWJism result in Khan Noonien Singh becoming a white guy? Or Kirk switching from being "a stack of books with legs" in the Academy to the womanizer he's become now?
The essay continues:
> Alas, that moment had clearly run out of gas when September of 2001 happened, and when it brought with it the terrible, epoch-shaping tragedy of that year.
I believe your thesis is that the worldview post-9/11 had a less impact than on ST and optimism than the increased SJWism and PC culture you see, yes?
I never really agreed with this tacit assumption everyone makes that ST was this super-progressive show.
If you're really paying attention, and with the exception of DS-9, almost all of the heroes are white and educated (or their sidekicks) and all the villains are dark and barbaric. Seems straight up racist to me.
Points which are raised in the article, at least somewhat:
> yes, there was diversity on the bridge, but not that much of it, not really. Uhuru was a service worker and Worf was a punching bag; when the show made a black captain, was it a coincidence that the show also became “darker” and less optimistic, when its characters started to be “flawed” and “ambiguous”? Voyager had a female captain, but it marooned her to the farthest reaches of the galaxy (and the less said about the garbage politics of the reboot movies, the better). But the point is this: Star Trek has always wanted to be more progressive than it ever really managed to be, because it wanted its cake and also to eat it. The future was a human race that had perfected itself, but which also felt comfortable—for white men—because not so much had changed. We were still in charge.
Romulans are emphatically not dark and barbaric, they're "evil" Vulcans, and aesthetically modeled on various European Imperial iconographies with lots of Eagle/raptor symbolism. Ancient Roman (it's in the name already) or even 20th century Fascist seems like the reference points.
The Cardashians seem to be based on Totalitarian Communist regimes. They have grey skin, which isn't dark, but is also not a human skintone anyway, but they seem to map most closely to Russian/Stalinist. Not dark or barbaric by any means.
The Borg seem to be a comment on Western technocracy run-amok. I have trouble seeing the Borg as anything besides a cautionary warning against tech singularity ideology. If you submit your culture to the logic of machines don't be surprised when it becomes mechanical and inhumane.
There are dark and barbaric trek villains too, of course. The Jem'Hadar shock troopers seem like a particularly charged take on the trope, being essentially militarized slaves. Interesting, though, that the Jem'Hadar were controlled by a very white technocratic Vorta. Maybe a reference to historical practices like the Ottoman Jannisaries. What should we make of the non-humanoid shapeshifter "founders" though? Pure scifi or allegory for the formless, faceless, secretive domination of neoliberal capitalist interests acting in the shadows?
The Ferengi are dark skinned and despicable, with more than a hint of "Shylock" flavored bigotry incorporated into the trope. Kinda unfortunate. They did significantly redeem this trope in later DS9 episodes when they focused more on Quark and showed some of the more nuanced and interesting aspects of Ferengi culture.
And then there's the Klingons. This one is hard to put a finger on. They were originally introduced as space barbarians with a swarthy (but not black) complexion. I think the original model there was intended to be something like Barbary Corsairs, which is kind of a racist trope I guess. The Klingons were updated a lot though. The more mature portrayals of Klingons had them as an honor society that resembles Samurai culture in a lot of ways, while also incorporating a kind of hedonistic body culture that is very un-Japanese. It's not so simple really. What about now? Klingons made less human-seeming and more cartoon villain seeming? Not sure where they're going with this.
I am guilty of the original sin. I have made my provocative comment before reading the article - I assumed it's about SF in general, primarily written SF based on the domain name.
That totally makes sense. The original Star Trek, of course, was completely unconcerned with issues like race relations, social justice, equality, multiculturalism, and all that other socialist garbage. If only we could go back to those long-ago days of the 1960s when nobody ever talked about these terrible newfangled hippie-dippie ideals!
That some people perceive a distinction to between "race relations, social justice, equality, multiculturalism, and all that other socialist garbage," and SJWism and PC culture.
Oh, I see. The temptingly glib response would be to say that those people are wrong, and leave it at that.
Instead I guess I'll say that those people should try to be clearer about whatever distinction it is that they do see between those things, because just using "SJW" as a pejorative without explanation tends to look like a rejection of those ideals.
You're not wrong there. I deleted it so I could take the time to expand on it beyond that glib knee-jerk reaction, which I regret posting even for the very brief period it was online.
Go to your profile, put a number into the "Delay" field. This is how I (usually) deal with my urge to post glib knee-jerk reactions. I have two minutes to edit and/or delete them before anyone else can see them.
I set it up after making a regrettable post that was replied to before I could delete it. It wasn't the worst thing I could've posted, but as I recall it wasn't a fair reply to whoever it was. I strongly dislike people doing that to me because it completely disrupts the conversation flow. So to resolve the conflict, I give myself two minutes to be able to freely delete things, which is still short enough that the conversation won't be unduly delayed.
The original Star Trek I think did it with reason.
I think 2017 is not the 1960's - and the problem is 'populist social leftism' is still using the 1960's playbook.
It's tired, it lacks nuance. The new Star Trek's remind me of the Canadian government's 'soft propaganda' in 'Degrassi Street' - which is lampooned spectacularly well on 'Kroll Show'. And I don't use the term 'propaganda' lightly - it's state sponsored 'youth education' - again, which can be positive, but it's always going to be a hint 'North Korea' no matter how you cut it.
I think motives are not so bad ... but we live in a new world. It's not so easy as 'putting a traditionally marginalized person in a leading role' anymore. That's all fine, but it's not thoughtful. It's Disney. And lazy.
As evidence of this culture - here you have a show that puts extraordinary attention on putting 'marginalized people into leading roles' - and yet the storyline is 'still racist'. This is getting ridiculous.
How about 'it's just not good'. Because it's not?
Coen Brothers said it right - while 'diversity might be important' - the most important thing is the story'. Start with the story, focus on the story. If you start with a social objective, it's just going to come out all wrong, and be 'bad'. Like the new Star Trek. Sadly.
"If only we could go back to those long-ago days of the 1960s when nobody ever talked about these terrible newfangled hippie-dippie ideals!"
It's not a 'hippie dippy idea' in 2017 to have a 'Black Woman' in charge of something. It's not common, but nobody will bat an eye, and I really don't think the vast, vast majority of people care one way or another. It's not the 1960's.
There are a lot of interesting stories to tell, that may very well involve 'non classical' views, so let's tell them.
> It's not a 'hippie dippy idea' in 2017 to have a 'Black Woman' in charge of something.
I completely agree! But neither is it "saddling the show with SJWism and PC culture." It's just... a normal, unremarkable thing, which as you say the vast majority of people won't care about one way or the other.
From a review: "T'Kuvma, the Klingon leader, has a rallying cry of “Remain Klingon .... loathes the Federation ideals of equality, diversity, and peace. "
Those are nice ideals, and the work in a nation like America, which is 'an idea'.
But consider for a moment that 95% of people outside America live in 'ethnic groups' - and who's ethnic identities are existentially challenged by an American led corporate-globalism.
I live in Quebec, where the issue is real. The decline of the 'Francophone' culture - which is very different than the 'rest of North America' - can be measured. It's not doing so badly, but it's an issue: new immigrants want to speak English, and be 'Anglo' (i.e. not just language), meaning at one point in the future 'there is no Quebec'. I'm not hyperbolic, I think it will be ok - but my point is the issue is fully legit. Literally two hours ago I had a convo in a cafe with a French girl studying finance 'in English' to move to 'New York' 'where the money is' (literally her words).
I agree with the commenter (maybe for different reasons) because I feel that many outside America will simply see 'The Federation' as a metaphor for 'Americanisation'.
"We are morally superior"
"Your culture is barbaric"
"Give up your stupid cultures and norms, and become like us, speak English, and put a Starbucks on every street corner"
Even though that might not be the intent - often, it really is pragmatically that.
'Free Trade' with America, which is 10x bigger than any partner really means: "once we have even trade, our companies will devour yours". Imagine if Canada-US had 'free trade' on ownership of Telecoms. Do you think Bell Canada would buy Verizon? No. Sprint, Verizon and AT&T would instantly buy Telus, Rogers and Bell (their Canadian counteroparts). 100% of the 'good jobs' would go to the US, in Canada, only 'tech support' and 'local marketing' would remain. But because the 'balance sheet' would look better, economists like it (and have convinced even left-of-center politicians of this).
Yes - ideas such as 'equal pay for equal work' are fairly universal ... but cultural context is relevant.
You know what would be more 'authentically Star Trek'? ----> the 'Prime Directive' !!! "Don't mess with other cultures!"
If they stuck to the 'Prime Directive' maybe they'd be more appreciative/understanding of the Klingon's views instead of just starting a war (!) with them :)
FYI - the original Klingon's I don't think were politicized in this context, of course I think Rodenberry may have used them as a stand-in for the Soviets or whatever. (Soviets were hard-core egalitarians though, at least on paper. More female Engineers than males in Soviet Russia).
Anyhow: "Disney Social Politics" does not fit very well in the rest of the world. Even though Americans think they might be 'doing good' by promoting specific values, like so many things, we know the parable about 'good intentions'. Let's try the 'Prime Directive' (except when it comes to stopping things like genocide etc..) I like that one :).
I'm having a really difficult time connecting the points you're making about corporate globalism -- much of which I agree with! -- with the comment we're responding to.
My sole point was that Star Trek has literally always been explicitly about idealized, utopian social justice -- so complaining that it's in decline because of SJWism is ridiculous. Star Trek was 100% PC SJW from day one.
Was putting a Russian guy and a black woman on the bridge of the Enterprise a nuanced thing? It strikes me that the original Star Trek was fairly blatant in this respect. It may seem nuanced looking back because we see nothing special about something like a white man and a black woman kissing on TV, but at the time it was about as subtle as a stick of dynamite.
I agree that a solid story is key, but I don't see the connection. Maybe for a setting where diversity is fundamentally part of it (the Discovery cast might not work well in a production of Macbeth, say) but for something like Star Trek it seems completely separate. You need a good story with a diverse cast, and you need a good story without a diverse cast.
My point is the lines were easier drawn then - but not in 2017.
1950 was less nuanced. Black people were not allowed on TV, it was 'shocking' to have them there. An easy choice, in retrospect.
In 2017 - real social progress is complicated, it's not black and white. No pun intended :). I do not think that 'social progress' - in the populist sense, defined by the slightly-left-of-centre popular social voices - will have history fully behind them. Surely in many ways, but think it's much more complicated now.
Dear Sir, thank you for your valuable snarkasm. You have proven me wrong on all accounts. The neoreligion of SJWism and PC culture that you subscribe to cannot be wrong in any way, and is always 100% right. I have seen the error of my ways and humbly accept my punishment.
Yes, I can definitely tell you're interested in having a serious and thoughtful discussion about these issues, and can see that it would really be worth my time to engage with your nuanced opinions on the matter.
The title used here comes from a line in the article, which has the title "Star Trek: Discovery". The essay starts "This week on Dear Television".
It does not look at the broader question of "why did science fiction stop moving forward", but mostly Star Trek, with a few references to Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse.
I write this because when I saw "L.A. Review of Books" I thought it would include SF in books, and touch on things like Stephenson's Hieroglyph Project (See http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dear-science-fi... - "Dear Science Fiction Writers: Stop Being So Pessimistic!".)
(Sadly he did not narrate Revenger, which is part of why I haven't experienced it yet. Thanks for the tip though and I'll add it to my list. John Lee did do all of the Revelation Space universe however, including the short stories.)
Based on the website address, I thought the article would be about written science fiction, which continues to move forward if you ignore recommendations from people who don't actually like science fiction. I think "The Martian" counts as moving forward, but I'm much less happy with most of the books Amazon recommends for me.
But the article is about television. I really am not qualified to say much about television other than until very recently, it was very hard to have a hit TV show that only appealed to a niche audience. A series faithfully based on "The Martian" isn't likely to get a slot in prime time. The closest you'll get is so-called soft science fiction, which presents stories that happen to be set in unfamiliar locations (usually space), but where science has no influence on the story.
Maybe there's a chance now, with a very different distribution model, but even if hard science fiction fans can be perfectly targeted through Netflix or Amazon, special effects will keep production costs high.
> I think "The Martian" counts as moving forward, but I'm much less happy with most of the books Amazon recommends for me
I'd believe that more if there would have been any wider followup of similar works. But alas, there hasn't been (or at least I haven't heard of them), so I'm more likely to categorize The Martian as an outlier rather than a herald of new era.
I'm sad that a lot of the progress looks like outliers, but I think it's a mistake to claim there hasn't been any progress (note, I'm not accusing you or the original article of making that claim; I would have liked more progress but I have to admit there's been some).
> even if hard science fiction fans can be perfectly targeted through Netflix or Amazon, special effects will keep production costs high
It's a thing I've been wondering about - what makes special effects cost so much, compared to previous decades? I mean, everything is done with CG now, that's supposed to be orders of magnitude cheaper than what people did in the XX century.
I would think that practical effects would cost even more due to inflation.
Also you may miss how much of the shows are CGI if you aren't looking hard. Watch a few shows from the 70s and 80s, ones with high production values, then watch the average show today and you'll see that audiences demand much more realistic sets and scenery. Just about everything in the background of a sci-fi show is CGI.
Yet in a way it looks shittier. For example, take the two first sets of Star Wars trilogies.
In the originals, the battle for the Death Star holds up.
In the prequels, you can see Jedi wildly waving their lightsabers at nothing because the CGI team forgot to animate in certain places.
In the originals, Yoda was a puppet, and his skin and clothing reflected light realistically. So what if his mouth movements had all of the nuance and subtlety of a novelty nutcracker? Imagination bridged the gap between what we saw and what we experienced.
In the prequels, Yoda was CGI, so he didn't have physical depth in the way the other actors did, and didn't reflect light in the same way as the physical cast, and it gave him an eerie, Photoshopped look.
CGI can make special effects look more realistic, but they also have a way of preventing things from actually looking real.
Good point. I didn't realize that many things in movies are CG now!
It now seems the high costs are more plausible, but then again - shouldn't the diminished need for sets offset that? Or is renting (or building) e.g. a prison yard so much cheaper than doing it in CG?
>> that's supposed to be orders of magnitude cheaper than what people did in the XX century.
I think it's the opposite. In 1970s you would just create plastic models of spaceships and film them with normal camera. That's as cheap as creating plastic models can get. Of course end result wasn't that great, but it was enough to get by.
Now you can create pretty much anything you can imagine, and generate it as CG so it looks perfect on the screen, but you need expensive equipment and even more expensive people to operate it.
The point I'm trying to make is that 40 years ago we did simple effects with simple (and cheap) tools. Now we use advanced effects created with the expensive tools. Increased cost is justified by increased quality.
> The first large-scale application of motion control was in Star Wars (1977), where a digitally controlled camera known as the Dykstraflex performed complex and repeatable motions around stationary spaceship models. This enabled a greater complexity in the spaceship-battle sequences, as separately filmed elements (spaceships, backgrounds, etc.) could be better coordinated with one another with greatly reduced error.
That doesn't sound like a normal camera.
The text immediately before that quote is:
> The 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey pioneered motion control in two respects. The film's model photography was conducted with large mechanical rigs that enabled precise and repeatable camera and model motion. The film's finale was created with mechanically controlled slit-scan photography, which required precise camera motion control during the exposure of single frames.
And in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the mothership was made of wood, plastic and metal, and wasn't cheap.
Now, to be sure these are high budget movies, but your broad description makes it sound like it was true for all movies in the 1970s.
I think a better comparison would be to look at the model-based special effects in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with the CGI effects in Babylon 5; both produced at about the same time. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine :
> DS9 was the first TV show in the Star Trek franchise to use computer-generated imagery (CGI) for exterior space shots. Although a few other television series, like Babylon 5, were using CGI exclusively to avoid the high expense of model photography, the Star Trek franchise had continued to use primarily physical models for exterior space shots because producers felt models provided more realism.
Babylon 5 was unfortunately made at the very point where CG was still pretty bad, and because of that it didn't age well. If only it was shot a few years later...
On the other hand, B5 had an absolutely amazing storyline. I wish someone would remaster it, replacing the exterior CG shots with new renders, and release it in full HD. It would beat the crap out of most of the things that are on TV today.
You only notice the bad CGI - most TV shows, even a normal sitcom, have a ton of CG that you would never realize unless you saw the raw shots. It's what the audience expects and demands today. Things are getting more efficient but quality level has risen even faster.
Given how much special effects exist in B-level shows like The Flash, I think CG has made it much much cheaper. It also removes a lot of the need for expensive practical effects -- almost all fire/explosions on television is CG now.
> special effects will keep production costs high.
The vast majority of written science fiction doesn't need a lot of special effects.
There are almost uncountably many stories that could be transferred to television or film at no more cost than any other drama. Take Clifford Simak's Way Station for instance, most of Ray Bradbury's stories, J. G. Ballard, and dozens or hundreds more. Even stories with a grand idea and scope like Clarke and Baxter's Light of Other Days hardly need much in the way of complex sets or difficult special effects.
Why is it that science fiction in video form always has to be space opera, alien invasions and so on?
If we are going to go for special effects let's not waste them on more space cowboys. Let's have Charlie Stross's Accelerando and Saturn's Children or Ken McLeod's Sky Road, etc.
I would be happy to see those kinds of works get made. Perhaps the notorious faddishness of Hollywood and TV means that nobody says "let's do science fiction" without meaning "let's do a lot of special effects." It would be great to see that change.
McCaffrey's Pern stories would need some pretty good special effects for the dragons, wouldn't they? Cheesy dragons really distract from the story in a movie.
I think we've got sufficient effects technology to do a good dragon nowadays. Examples would be the dragons in Avatar and the dragons in How to Train Your Dragon (especially Toothless from the second movie).
If you're a fan of classic Trek check out The Orville. There's just 3 episodes out but so far it's shaping up to be a true spiritual sequel to 90s Trek in ways the JJ Abrahams-esque Discovery show won't be, judging from the first two episodes.
Umm, isn't The Orville a parody of (primarily) Star Trek? (I have not watched it.) I can't reconcile "parody" with "spiritual sequel". One would possibly make me laugh, the other is often a metaphor for more serious issues IRL.
It's advertised as a comedy show and with Seth MacFarlane (of Family Guy) headlining it I also assumed it was some cheap Galaxy Quest-esque jab at Star Trek. There's some of that, in particular taking some jabs at Star Trek tropes (e.g. one situation being neatly resolved by the crew using seatbelts)[1].
But it's not just some cheap comedy. Yes there's campy humor that's basically the equivalent of TOS not taking itself quite seriously, but it's in every other way a proper modern day sequel to TNG, and the humor doesn't get in the way of that.
I'm not going to spoil the 3rd episode of it that just came out, but it's a "moral conundrum" episode of the likes TNG was famous for, except it's IMNSHO executed better than any such TNG episode. Those tended to get resolved with some Deus Ex Machina or something resembling a stereotypically happy American ending, but The Orville took the hard way out. I was very impressed.
1. For those unfamiliar with Star Trek: Approximately half of on-screen fatalities could be prevented by some combination of seatbelt usage, and the computer consoles not being powered by 100,000 volts of electricity with no fuses or circuit breakers[2].
2. The other half being prevented by not bringing no-name red shirts along on the away mission.
I've been very pleased with the show as well and don't understand much of the criticism it's received. It's obviously still working out its footing but I've found it far better written than the first season of TNG.
Less a parody, more a comedy version of Star Trek. A parody implies they're making fun of Star Trek. So far the episodes have been a combination of humor [1] and a more played-straight sci-fi universe and story modeled after TNG.
[0] See Galaxy Quest, which makes fun of the culture around ST as much as ST itself.
[1] Sometimes too much taking me out of it, first episode was the worst for this, it's improving.
More homage than parody. Virtually all the humor is due to the dialogue, but is driven by the sensibilities of the characters involved... so much so that one of my friends said The Orville was "so, basically Star Trek, but with realistic lines". When characters say funny things, they're mostly doing so intentionally, and the range of reactions to it is weirdly realistic.
For a geek who spent some formative years viewing ST:TNG, this show seems like it's about and for my people. :)
I read an article that I cannot find now that quoted its creators as saying that current incarnations of Star Trek have moved to darker and grim settings. They wanted to make a show that had the bright optimism toward the future that the original Star Trek had.
It's also a comedy, but the comedy is not parodying Star Trek. It's more like what Star Trek might have been if Star Trek had been meant as a comedy-drama instead of just a drama.
The first three episodes had some good jokes, and have took on a couple serious issues. They were OK, but not great, but that's fine. The first episodes of a show are more about building up background and establishing characters.
There were enough good elements in these episodes to hint that given time it can develop into a great show. But its on Fox, which is notorious for not giving science fiction shows enough time (see Firefly and Terra Nova).
>feel like a single continuous 1990’s moment, a moment that began in a renewed liberal optimism for multiculturalism and progress and the general advancement of humanity.
and
>Why did science fiction stop moving forward.
Maybe because lots of sci-fi was optimistically wrong about the future of humanity? Or should I say that sci-fi covers both the good and bad things that could potentially happen. Some people don't realize the federation in Star Trek story was born from the ashes of a world war 3. If they made a show that covered that point of ST history it would still be science fiction, it would just be rather dark.
Also on the points of multiculturalism. When Star Trek was originally airing, there was little else on the air broadcasting a similar message. Now a large portion of TV is very multicultural, some of it to the point it forgets to have a story about anything else.
I have a theory that budget for (SF+Fantasy) at any given studio is limited. And Game of Thrones has gotten other studios to invest heavily in Fantasy, leaving very little for SF. (Might dig into "running count" of shows with genre filters on IMDB datasets for verification)
The only good TV content I've seen recently is Expanse, which is quite well done. As others have mentioned, this is only limited to TV. SF Books/Movies are still popular enough .
Completely agree about The Expanse. It's hard SF, and every episode is as good or better than the best SF movies. I think this certainly counts as moving forward.
This struck me as strange. The Klingons started off as the violent bad guys in TOS. Then in TNG and DS9 there was an attempt to make them more admirable. In Discovery, I got the impression that the Klingons will be made more sympathetic in that we will be given more of a picture of their perception of the Federation, and why they perceive the Federation as a threat. Yes, Burnham is prejudiced against the Klingon race (or culture), but I don't think the message of the show will be anti-Klingon.
Let's hope not. The first two episodes have indeed portrayed Klingons in a pretty sympathetic light. That they're a race of warriors bound by honor and tradition is a well-established thing in Star Trek canon. But if you look beyond that, the show establishes a pretty clear reason for them to feel threatened by the Federation
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 231 ms ] threadDa Shi joins Miles Teg as one of my fav scifi characters.
I'm fairly literate in Liberal Arts English, but I don't follow what this means, especially as the context around it seems to complain about portrayals of race. What does it mean to "believe in 'culture' with a Victorian faith in white mythologies"? What does that modifier mean about one's belief in culture (whatever that even means, all on its own—do the scare quotes mean we're not supposed to think culture's a thing anymore, or is this a hardcore we-can-never-judge-a-culture-as-inferior thing the writer's assuming we all buy?). How does that relate to the rest of the paragraph?
Edit: Ah, the usual SJW refrain. Silence any criticism via flags, -1's and other tools available, instead of discussing why the quote is right/not and what it means.
Are there wrongs? Absolutely. But we can tackle those when we have clear evidence and direct corrective action. Striking out at anyone with a will to discuss and have legitimate concerns is not a way to bridge the communication gap.
Off topic. Well known argument. Tone seems angry.
Just a guess
You could also skip over the step of posting in comment threads.
1. Donglegate. Told a dongle joke, got fired.
2. Meritocracy Rug, Github.
3. "CodeOfConduct.md"
4. GamerGate
5. Throwing fits about pronouns: https://www.dailydot.com/news/github-gendered-pronoun-debate...
6. NodeJS leadership splitting at the seams https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/72dff4/nodejs_...
7. Demonization if you are a "White male in tech" - regardless if you are for equality or not
8. Google Memo/"Anti-diversity Screed"
So you're right. I could stay quiet about this. But these problems aren't going to go away with silence. And they aren't going to go away by shaming people into submission or silence under threat of job loss. These things are affecting the whole industry, and it's about high time to confront these issues head-on, without fear of losing your house, your food, and your livelihood. (Why do you think I run under a pseudonym?)
British colonialism specifically argued for Anglo-Saxon superiority, and the Kipling's "The White Man's Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands" used a similar logic to argue that the US should take over the Philippines.
I guess I'm also a little confused that the review complains in such strong language[1] about what looks to be the most interesting thing in the show, assuming the writers have lead with this material for the reason that they intend to return to it though the rest of the season and need, you know, somewhere to go with it, so they can't just start at the end. If it finds a way to retain aliens-as-projections-of-human-psyco/social-demons of traditional Trek (and much popular sci-fi) but also address the definitely-smells-of-racism problems that naturally come with doing that for as long as Trek's done it... god, that'll be among the most interesting things Trek's ever done, and if the writers are competent then they sure seem to be setting up for something along those lines. It's easily the most promising thematic direction the first part of the series has set up, judging from this review, so wow, should they ever not clean it up, please. Dig in, get dirty, and find a way out that's a little more novel and nuanced than "hur hur see it was racism all along and now our protagonist learned a lesson!" and this'll be one for the ages.
[1] "We shall see. But to get there—and I have to say this as clearly as possible—this show needs to clean up its fucking act with respect to the deeply racist portrayal of its Klingons."
The review assumes that the reader has watched the show. I have not. I cannot comment further on this point, nor on the "deeply racist portrayal of its Klingons". I can point out that http://ew.com/tv/2017/09/07/star-trek-discovery-trump-politi... says:
> “The Klingons are going to help us really look at certain sides of ourselves and our country. Isolationism is a big theme. Racial purity is a big theme. The Klingons are not the enemy, but they do have a different view on things. It raises big questions: Should we let people in? Do we want to change? There’s also the question of just because you reach your hand out to someone, do they have to take it? Sometimes, they don’t want to take it. It’s been interesting to see how the times have become more of a mirror than we even thought they were going to be.”
and various people have asserted that the new Klingons are supposed to be like Trump supporters.
I guess I'm gonna have to watch for context for the quote. I think the paragraph's getting a little clearer to me now.
As for the rest: haha, wow. Now I've gotta watch, just so I can figure out whether the Klingons are racist (as in, the depiction is racist and the Federation's going all high-colonial Britain on 'em) or racist (as in, they're Trump supporter stand-ins), or somehow both at the same time. Should be... interesting, anyway.
Possibly both, actually, from the one-hour broadcast “pilot” (which seems more of a teaser than a pilot, but I'm not buying CBS All Access on the strength of that teaser, so I probably won't see the rest.)
That is, the focal Klingons are xenophobes looking for a war with the Federation to Make the Empire Great Again, but also there is strong indication of the other, as well. So, something for everyone on that department.
This is not a race thing, not is it a cultural thing. It is a human trait which is universal. It is not just related to physical attacks either, e.g. so-called 'social justice warriors' feel themselves morally superior over those who do not follow their specific strain of self-flagellation and -denial, sports teams, philosophers, investors, anywhere people choose themselves a niche they plant their flags and wave their banners.
Is the Federation in the new series supposed to be a conquering culture or nation, trying to take over the quadrant? If so, that's a huge change.
"It is a human trait which is universal"
Universal? What does that mean? Swedes and Norwegians each feel themselves to be better than the other nationality. They have flags and banners too. So, what is the consequence of this universal trait? Will Swedish tanks be going over the border soon?
Does that mean those who believe in internationalism ("the people of the world should unite across national, political, cultural, racial, or class boundaries to advance their common interests") are not human?
Trying to ruin someone's career? "Donald Trump Casually Threatens To ‘Destroy’ The Career Of State Lawmaker" who promoted asset forfeiture reform. - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-destroy-state-lawm... . I believe most people are for forfeiture reform.
Or more recently, "Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a b---- off the field right now. Out," Trump said amid applause. "He's fired. He's fired!" - https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-protests-donald-trump... . This form of silent protest against discrimination is increasingly common.
Always claiming to be a victim (though not from some -ism)?
"Trump claims to be victim of ‘witch hunt’ following appointment of special counsel in Russia case" - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05...
"Trump on sex assault allegations: 'I am a victim'" - http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/14/politics/donald-trump-sexu... ("As you have seen, I am a victim of one of the great political smear campaigns in the history of our country")
"Trump paints himself as the real victim of Charlottesville in angry speech" - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/23/donald-trump...
"Trump: IRS audits me because I’m a “strong Christian”" - https://hotair.com/archives/2016/02/26/trump-irs-audits-me-b...
Is Trump an SJW?
This is ugly stuff. The discourse has descended to the level where the media is dominated by two different groups of extremist trolls taking potshots at each other using the language of outrage and grievance. The rest of us are caught in the middle and our society is becoming deranged as a result.
On the other side, they are willing to stop at nothing to destroy lives of people they see a threat as well. Ive seen it time and again. It turns into what amounts to a mob, exerting its will.
This is going to end very badly, for many. I see the underlying grievances as something neither side can amicably talk about, nor will either side give up.
How do you know there isn't only one group of extremist trolls?
If two groups disagree, they don't have to be balanced yin and yang.
If two groups disagree, the real answer doesn't have to lie in the middle.
In the 1850s US, there were pro-slavers and anti-slavers. Who was in the middle, and were they right?
But hey, I watch Democracy Now, 'cause I think the the real problems are corporate owned media and media centralization. At the very least, DN doesn't dominate the media.
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln did change his mind but he seems to have changed it not because he had an epiphany about the evil of slavery, but because he became convinced during the war that it would be a total war and not a containable skirmish. once that logic was in play the Emancipation Proclamation made sense to issue. It also bolstered his support with abolitionists.
Today we have no ambiguity about the evil of slavery and view it as one of the greatest moral failings in our history and a legacy we are continuing to face down and one which has caused huge misery for millions of African-Americans. Even with this modern perspective, it's hard to view Lincoln as anything other than a conflicted man trying to weigh very heavy decisions indeed. So I dunno if he was right. I don't think Lincoln knew in his own time and I don't think we will ever be able to adequately judge. We know what happened but we don't know what else could have or should have happened instead.
I'd be (genuinely) curious to see what form Klingon-hating in the show could have taken that would have been similar in form but different enough that the writer'd not have labeled it white and Victorian. I'd like to know what the diff looks like between the two. Is "they have always attacked us before, so better to start shooting if you see them and skip the trying-to-talk-then-being-fired-on-anyway bits" necessarily white and Victorian?
[EDIT] and if it's not necessarily so, then what about the show's actual depiction was?
Those are racist/culturalist jabs meant to signal ingroup status to other bigots.
There is no deeper meaning behind why white and Victorian as opposed to Arab and working to establish the Caliphate or numerous other examples we can draw.
It's simply safe to express that kind of bigotry (and even popular in some groups).
The claim is that Star Trek's premise is a problem because it makes the flawed assumption that one culture can be better than another, and by extension, that all cultures must be valued and respected equally. Without going into the cultures of humanity in Star Trek versus the Klingons, you can examine similar claims closer to home even where some cultures are deeply invested in medieval-level cruelty like stoning of homosexuals and adulterers, female genital mutilation, and inhumane punishment by knife and cane. But these realities don't fit the author's narrative, and therefore must be ignored for the purposes of the thesis. Like Klingons, they're a benign minority who are simply misunderstood by their would-be cultural oppressors.
The article's ostensibility about science-fiction, and managed to stay on point for the first couple paragraphs, but it quickly devolved into the author's pet theories on race and gender. I really had trouble with these sorts of broad and totally unfair generalizations:
> Uhuru was a service worker and Worf was a punching bag; when the show made a black captain, was it a coincidence that the show also became “darker” and less optimistic, when its characters started to be “flawed” and “ambiguous”? Voyager had a female captain, but it marooned her to the farthest reaches of the galaxy (and the less said about the garbage politics of the reboot movies, the better).
That should have primed me for being confused later in the piece, I suppose.
[EDIT] the Sisko thing'd have had more weight if that show hadn't spent so much screen time openly dealing with humans (=the US, mostly, for production and character reasons) racist past (mind you, I like that aspect of DS9, even if it doesn't always make much in-universe sense)
Surely, Yeoman Rand...
Originally, the Federation was the US and the Klingons were the Soviets - this was of course before the Klingons became blood-wine drinking Neanderthals and were just swarthy space villains with Fu-Manchu moustaches.
For example:
> Looking back from two decades later, Next Generation (1987–94), Deep Space Nine (1993–99), and Voyager (1995–2001) feel like a single continuous 1990’s moment, a moment that began in a renewed liberal optimism for multiculturalism and progress and the general advancement of humanity.
Where is the SJWism and PC culture which saddles the latest ST movies? How did all that SWJism result in Khan Noonien Singh becoming a white guy? Or Kirk switching from being "a stack of books with legs" in the Academy to the womanizer he's become now?
The essay continues:
> Alas, that moment had clearly run out of gas when September of 2001 happened, and when it brought with it the terrible, epoch-shaping tragedy of that year.
I believe your thesis is that the worldview post-9/11 had a less impact than on ST and optimism than the increased SJWism and PC culture you see, yes?
Seems rather far-fetched to me.
If you're really paying attention, and with the exception of DS-9, almost all of the heroes are white and educated (or their sidekicks) and all the villains are dark and barbaric. Seems straight up racist to me.
> yes, there was diversity on the bridge, but not that much of it, not really. Uhuru was a service worker and Worf was a punching bag; when the show made a black captain, was it a coincidence that the show also became “darker” and less optimistic, when its characters started to be “flawed” and “ambiguous”? Voyager had a female captain, but it marooned her to the farthest reaches of the galaxy (and the less said about the garbage politics of the reboot movies, the better). But the point is this: Star Trek has always wanted to be more progressive than it ever really managed to be, because it wanted its cake and also to eat it. The future was a human race that had perfected itself, but which also felt comfortable—for white men—because not so much had changed. We were still in charge.
The Cardashians seem to be based on Totalitarian Communist regimes. They have grey skin, which isn't dark, but is also not a human skintone anyway, but they seem to map most closely to Russian/Stalinist. Not dark or barbaric by any means.
The Borg seem to be a comment on Western technocracy run-amok. I have trouble seeing the Borg as anything besides a cautionary warning against tech singularity ideology. If you submit your culture to the logic of machines don't be surprised when it becomes mechanical and inhumane.
There are dark and barbaric trek villains too, of course. The Jem'Hadar shock troopers seem like a particularly charged take on the trope, being essentially militarized slaves. Interesting, though, that the Jem'Hadar were controlled by a very white technocratic Vorta. Maybe a reference to historical practices like the Ottoman Jannisaries. What should we make of the non-humanoid shapeshifter "founders" though? Pure scifi or allegory for the formless, faceless, secretive domination of neoliberal capitalist interests acting in the shadows?
The Ferengi are dark skinned and despicable, with more than a hint of "Shylock" flavored bigotry incorporated into the trope. Kinda unfortunate. They did significantly redeem this trope in later DS9 episodes when they focused more on Quark and showed some of the more nuanced and interesting aspects of Ferengi culture.
And then there's the Klingons. This one is hard to put a finger on. They were originally introduced as space barbarians with a swarthy (but not black) complexion. I think the original model there was intended to be something like Barbary Corsairs, which is kind of a racist trope I guess. The Klingons were updated a lot though. The more mature portrayals of Klingons had them as an honor society that resembles Samurai culture in a lot of ways, while also incorporating a kind of hedonistic body culture that is very un-Japanese. It's not so simple really. What about now? Klingons made less human-seeming and more cartoon villain seeming? Not sure where they're going with this.
Forest. Trees.
ST is the most racist show ever.
But "most racist"? More than, Amos ‘n Andy, Tom and Jerry, or the Looney Tunes cartoons - three shows which often top the lists of most racist shows?
I disagree.
Instead I guess I'll say that those people should try to be clearer about whatever distinction it is that they do see between those things, because just using "SJW" as a pejorative without explanation tends to look like a rejection of those ideals.
I think 2017 is not the 1960's - and the problem is 'populist social leftism' is still using the 1960's playbook.
It's tired, it lacks nuance. The new Star Trek's remind me of the Canadian government's 'soft propaganda' in 'Degrassi Street' - which is lampooned spectacularly well on 'Kroll Show'. And I don't use the term 'propaganda' lightly - it's state sponsored 'youth education' - again, which can be positive, but it's always going to be a hint 'North Korea' no matter how you cut it.
I think motives are not so bad ... but we live in a new world. It's not so easy as 'putting a traditionally marginalized person in a leading role' anymore. That's all fine, but it's not thoughtful. It's Disney. And lazy.
As evidence of this culture - here you have a show that puts extraordinary attention on putting 'marginalized people into leading roles' - and yet the storyline is 'still racist'. This is getting ridiculous.
How about 'it's just not good'. Because it's not?
Coen Brothers said it right - while 'diversity might be important' - the most important thing is the story'. Start with the story, focus on the story. If you start with a social objective, it's just going to come out all wrong, and be 'bad'. Like the new Star Trek. Sadly.
"If only we could go back to those long-ago days of the 1960s when nobody ever talked about these terrible newfangled hippie-dippie ideals!"
It's not a 'hippie dippy idea' in 2017 to have a 'Black Woman' in charge of something. It's not common, but nobody will bat an eye, and I really don't think the vast, vast majority of people care one way or another. It's not the 1960's.
There are a lot of interesting stories to tell, that may very well involve 'non classical' views, so let's tell them.
I completely agree! But neither is it "saddling the show with SJWism and PC culture." It's just... a normal, unremarkable thing, which as you say the vast majority of people won't care about one way or the other.
From a review: "T'Kuvma, the Klingon leader, has a rallying cry of “Remain Klingon .... loathes the Federation ideals of equality, diversity, and peace. "
Those are nice ideals, and the work in a nation like America, which is 'an idea'.
But consider for a moment that 95% of people outside America live in 'ethnic groups' - and who's ethnic identities are existentially challenged by an American led corporate-globalism.
I live in Quebec, where the issue is real. The decline of the 'Francophone' culture - which is very different than the 'rest of North America' - can be measured. It's not doing so badly, but it's an issue: new immigrants want to speak English, and be 'Anglo' (i.e. not just language), meaning at one point in the future 'there is no Quebec'. I'm not hyperbolic, I think it will be ok - but my point is the issue is fully legit. Literally two hours ago I had a convo in a cafe with a French girl studying finance 'in English' to move to 'New York' 'where the money is' (literally her words).
I agree with the commenter (maybe for different reasons) because I feel that many outside America will simply see 'The Federation' as a metaphor for 'Americanisation'.
"We are morally superior"
"Your culture is barbaric"
"Give up your stupid cultures and norms, and become like us, speak English, and put a Starbucks on every street corner"
Even though that might not be the intent - often, it really is pragmatically that.
'Free Trade' with America, which is 10x bigger than any partner really means: "once we have even trade, our companies will devour yours". Imagine if Canada-US had 'free trade' on ownership of Telecoms. Do you think Bell Canada would buy Verizon? No. Sprint, Verizon and AT&T would instantly buy Telus, Rogers and Bell (their Canadian counteroparts). 100% of the 'good jobs' would go to the US, in Canada, only 'tech support' and 'local marketing' would remain. But because the 'balance sheet' would look better, economists like it (and have convinced even left-of-center politicians of this).
Yes - ideas such as 'equal pay for equal work' are fairly universal ... but cultural context is relevant.
You know what would be more 'authentically Star Trek'? ----> the 'Prime Directive' !!! "Don't mess with other cultures!"
If they stuck to the 'Prime Directive' maybe they'd be more appreciative/understanding of the Klingon's views instead of just starting a war (!) with them :)
FYI - the original Klingon's I don't think were politicized in this context, of course I think Rodenberry may have used them as a stand-in for the Soviets or whatever. (Soviets were hard-core egalitarians though, at least on paper. More female Engineers than males in Soviet Russia).
Anyhow: "Disney Social Politics" does not fit very well in the rest of the world. Even though Americans think they might be 'doing good' by promoting specific values, like so many things, we know the parable about 'good intentions'. Let's try the 'Prime Directive' (except when it comes to stopping things like genocide etc..) I like that one :).
My sole point was that Star Trek has literally always been explicitly about idealized, utopian social justice -- so complaining that it's in decline because of SJWism is ridiculous. Star Trek was 100% PC SJW from day one.
My point is the lines were easier drawn then - but not in 2017.
1950 was less nuanced. Black people were not allowed on TV, it was 'shocking' to have them there. An easy choice, in retrospect.
In 2017 - real social progress is complicated, it's not black and white. No pun intended :). I do not think that 'social progress' - in the populist sense, defined by the slightly-left-of-centre popular social voices - will have history fully behind them. Surely in many ways, but think it's much more complicated now.
It does not look at the broader question of "why did science fiction stop moving forward", but mostly Star Trek, with a few references to Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse.
I write this because when I saw "L.A. Review of Books" I thought it would include SF in books, and touch on things like Stephenson's Hieroglyph Project (See http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dear-science-fi... - "Dear Science Fiction Writers: Stop Being So Pessimistic!".)
Books are where it's at.
https://tantor.com/narrator/john-lee.html
(Sadly he did not narrate Revenger, which is part of why I haven't experienced it yet. Thanks for the tip though and I'll add it to my list. John Lee did do all of the Revelation Space universe however, including the short stories.)
But the article is about television. I really am not qualified to say much about television other than until very recently, it was very hard to have a hit TV show that only appealed to a niche audience. A series faithfully based on "The Martian" isn't likely to get a slot in prime time. The closest you'll get is so-called soft science fiction, which presents stories that happen to be set in unfamiliar locations (usually space), but where science has no influence on the story.
Maybe there's a chance now, with a very different distribution model, but even if hard science fiction fans can be perfectly targeted through Netflix or Amazon, special effects will keep production costs high.
I'd believe that more if there would have been any wider followup of similar works. But alas, there hasn't been (or at least I haven't heard of them), so I'm more likely to categorize The Martian as an outlier rather than a herald of new era.
It's a thing I've been wondering about - what makes special effects cost so much, compared to previous decades? I mean, everything is done with CG now, that's supposed to be orders of magnitude cheaper than what people did in the XX century.
Also you may miss how much of the shows are CGI if you aren't looking hard. Watch a few shows from the 70s and 80s, ones with high production values, then watch the average show today and you'll see that audiences demand much more realistic sets and scenery. Just about everything in the background of a sci-fi show is CGI.
In the originals, the battle for the Death Star holds up.
In the prequels, you can see Jedi wildly waving their lightsabers at nothing because the CGI team forgot to animate in certain places.
In the originals, Yoda was a puppet, and his skin and clothing reflected light realistically. So what if his mouth movements had all of the nuance and subtlety of a novelty nutcracker? Imagination bridged the gap between what we saw and what we experienced.
In the prequels, Yoda was CGI, so he didn't have physical depth in the way the other actors did, and didn't reflect light in the same way as the physical cast, and it gave him an eerie, Photoshopped look.
CGI can make special effects look more realistic, but they also have a way of preventing things from actually looking real.
Didn't realize how much this is true until I saw the video 'lfowles posted. That's a good point.
See the Wolf of Wall Street VFX highlights: https://vimeo.com/83523133
It now seems the high costs are more plausible, but then again - shouldn't the diminished need for sets offset that? Or is renting (or building) e.g. a prison yard so much cheaper than doing it in CG?
I think it's the opposite. In 1970s you would just create plastic models of spaceships and film them with normal camera. That's as cheap as creating plastic models can get. Of course end result wasn't that great, but it was enough to get by.
Now you can create pretty much anything you can imagine, and generate it as CG so it looks perfect on the screen, but you need expensive equipment and even more expensive people to operate it.
The point I'm trying to make is that 40 years ago we did simple effects with simple (and cheap) tools. Now we use advanced effects created with the expensive tools. Increased cost is justified by increased quality.
Are you sure? For example, from the ILM history at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Light_%26_Magic we see:
1975: Resurrected the use of VistaVision; first use of a motion control camera (Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope)
Following the link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_control_photography gives us:
> The first large-scale application of motion control was in Star Wars (1977), where a digitally controlled camera known as the Dykstraflex performed complex and repeatable motions around stationary spaceship models. This enabled a greater complexity in the spaceship-battle sequences, as separately filmed elements (spaceships, backgrounds, etc.) could be better coordinated with one another with greatly reduced error.
That doesn't sound like a normal camera.
The text immediately before that quote is:
> The 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey pioneered motion control in two respects. The film's model photography was conducted with large mechanical rigs that enabled precise and repeatable camera and model motion. The film's finale was created with mechanically controlled slit-scan photography, which required precise camera motion control during the exposure of single frames.
And in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the mothership was made of wood, plastic and metal, and wasn't cheap.
Now, to be sure these are high budget movies, but your broad description makes it sound like it was true for all movies in the 1970s.
I think a better comparison would be to look at the model-based special effects in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with the CGI effects in Babylon 5; both produced at about the same time. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine :
> DS9 was the first TV show in the Star Trek franchise to use computer-generated imagery (CGI) for exterior space shots. Although a few other television series, like Babylon 5, were using CGI exclusively to avoid the high expense of model photography, the Star Trek franchise had continued to use primarily physical models for exterior space shots because producers felt models provided more realism.
On the other hand, B5 had an absolutely amazing storyline. I wish someone would remaster it, replacing the exterior CG shots with new renders, and release it in full HD. It would beat the crap out of most of the things that are on TV today.
The quality wasn't quite as good, but within a few years it was both cheaper and better than plastic models.
mamon's argument is that with plastic models the "end result wasn't that great, but it was enough to get by". The same argument applies to Bab5.
That's why I disagree with mamon's argument.
Here's a good video, from 2009: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k
And 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhN1STep_zk
The vast majority of written science fiction doesn't need a lot of special effects.
There are almost uncountably many stories that could be transferred to television or film at no more cost than any other drama. Take Clifford Simak's Way Station for instance, most of Ray Bradbury's stories, J. G. Ballard, and dozens or hundreds more. Even stories with a grand idea and scope like Clarke and Baxter's Light of Other Days hardly need much in the way of complex sets or difficult special effects.
Why is it that science fiction in video form always has to be space opera, alien invasions and so on?
If we are going to go for special effects let's not waste them on more space cowboys. Let's have Charlie Stross's Accelerando and Saturn's Children or Ken McLeod's Sky Road, etc.
IMHO the best science fiction only needs good actors, the props could be '70s Dr Who quality and we would still love the series.
I think we've got sufficient effects technology to do a good dragon nowadays. Examples would be the dragons in Avatar and the dragons in How to Train Your Dragon (especially Toothless from the second movie).
snerk
But it's not just some cheap comedy. Yes there's campy humor that's basically the equivalent of TOS not taking itself quite seriously, but it's in every other way a proper modern day sequel to TNG, and the humor doesn't get in the way of that.
I'm not going to spoil the 3rd episode of it that just came out, but it's a "moral conundrum" episode of the likes TNG was famous for, except it's IMNSHO executed better than any such TNG episode. Those tended to get resolved with some Deus Ex Machina or something resembling a stereotypically happy American ending, but The Orville took the hard way out. I was very impressed.
1. For those unfamiliar with Star Trek: Approximately half of on-screen fatalities could be prevented by some combination of seatbelt usage, and the computer consoles not being powered by 100,000 volts of electricity with no fuses or circuit breakers[2].
2. The other half being prevented by not bringing no-name red shirts along on the away mission.
[0] See Galaxy Quest, which makes fun of the culture around ST as much as ST itself.
[1] Sometimes too much taking me out of it, first episode was the worst for this, it's improving.
For a geek who spent some formative years viewing ST:TNG, this show seems like it's about and for my people. :)
It's also a comedy, but the comedy is not parodying Star Trek. It's more like what Star Trek might have been if Star Trek had been meant as a comedy-drama instead of just a drama.
The first three episodes had some good jokes, and have took on a couple serious issues. They were OK, but not great, but that's fine. The first episodes of a show are more about building up background and establishing characters.
There were enough good elements in these episodes to hint that given time it can develop into a great show. But its on Fox, which is notorious for not giving science fiction shows enough time (see Firefly and Terra Nova).
and
>Why did science fiction stop moving forward.
Maybe because lots of sci-fi was optimistically wrong about the future of humanity? Or should I say that sci-fi covers both the good and bad things that could potentially happen. Some people don't realize the federation in Star Trek story was born from the ashes of a world war 3. If they made a show that covered that point of ST history it would still be science fiction, it would just be rather dark.
Also on the points of multiculturalism. When Star Trek was originally airing, there was little else on the air broadcasting a similar message. Now a large portion of TV is very multicultural, some of it to the point it forgets to have a story about anything else.
The only good TV content I've seen recently is Expanse, which is quite well done. As others have mentioned, this is only limited to TV. SF Books/Movies are still popular enough .
This struck me as strange. The Klingons started off as the violent bad guys in TOS. Then in TNG and DS9 there was an attempt to make them more admirable. In Discovery, I got the impression that the Klingons will be made more sympathetic in that we will be given more of a picture of their perception of the Federation, and why they perceive the Federation as a threat. Yes, Burnham is prejudiced against the Klingon race (or culture), but I don't think the message of the show will be anti-Klingon.