anyone else APPRECIATE chakotay's ethnic bits?

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Voyager' started by WesleysDisciple, Mar 29, 2013.

  1. WesleysDisciple

    WesleysDisciple Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Anyone Else Appreciate Chakotay's ethnic/spiritual aspects.

    his vision quest's his legends, etc.

    have to ask as I found the scenes fun, but it seems everyone and their mother finds them cliche or offensive.
     
  2. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    If you are referring to what they did to the ethnic bits between his legs, I think that that is barbaric and I am amazed that the practice has continued into the 24th century.
     
  3. teya

    teya Vice Admiral Admiral

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    See my signature.

    No, I don't appreciate Chakotay's "ethnic bits."

    But if you find it "fun" to insinuate that of all the human groups on earth, only Native Americans needed alien DNA to figure out how to speak to each other, be my guest. Just don't expect me to laugh with you.
     
  4. WesleysDisciple

    WesleysDisciple Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Oh on the first reply, ... that particular practice, do you think the episode with Belonna wanting to Geneticly reengineer her baby so "She wont be treated as a monster" was based on that?
     
  5. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    what "ethnic bits?" They never even BOTHERED giving Chakotay a real ethnicity, instead making him a generic Indian with some New Age thrown in because they were too lazy to do research on a real tribe.
     
  6. free2131

    free2131 Ensign Red Shirt

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    I would assume that actual Native Americans feel the same way about that as African Americans would feel about showing Geordie replicating fried chicken and watermelon and then calling it the "food of his ancestors".

    Stereotypes of any kind are bad, but especially if they are not based in much fact.
     
  7. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    When Chakotay used some electronic gizmo to get into his meditative state, it was so much New Age bullshit it was impossible for me to try and suspend disbelief anymore. I can appreciate that they wanted to do something ethnic with the guy, but it was such a mishmash. The only thing they left out was having him say "Paleface speak with forked tongue."
     
  8. WesleysDisciple

    WesleysDisciple Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    one possiblety? in the last 300 years, the Various tribes could have absorbed traditions their ancestors didnt practice, or could have been influenced by Holo recordings, and media BS?

    not impossible?

    At least one tribe, I heard in the news got a special dispensation from the supreme court to use PEyote in their rituals, not sure which tribe it was.
     
  9. teya

    teya Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I've got no issue with saying that traditions would grow & change over time.

    But if you're going to posit a character as a Native American, from a tribe that left Earth to live a more traditional lifestyle, then the traditions have to start from something real--something recognizeable as Indian by Indians.
     
  10. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Peyotee was criminalized in the '40s, and then legalized in 1976 for religious purposes only. So, unless I'm reading my google search wrong which is backed up by a hazy memory from some stupid movie... It's all "tribes" who are allowed to start a prayer circle, and they can legally invite any non-first nation they want into the circle. From the movie I recall that some white guy was encouraged to make a donation to the church before the prayer circle started, which was a clever ruse to get around the DEA and the IRS.

    Teya, you might not want to watch the final episodes Battlestar Galactica... Or maybe you would? They level the playing field, affirming that no one on Earth from it's centre to fartherest corners could "speak" until Giaus Balter started swinging his dick around with the native aboriginal girls and Starbuck declared her poonanny open season for any caveman brave enough to by ticket.

    But then the legend/myth of astronauts gods is old.

    Hell, there's even a 70s episode of Scoobie doo were an ancient Astronaut is haunting an Incan Zigerat... But don't be afraid, becuase that turned out not to be a real Ghost.
     
  11. WesleysDisciple

    WesleysDisciple Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    What about Samurai in movies shwon practicing customs not invented till the Tokugawa shogunate (which was an uninterrupted Era of Peace) during a time of battle?

    is that bad?

    dont forget the infamous platemail only got developed in the height of Medieval technolagy less then a century, before being superceded by Crossbows, and Firearms


    But in general we wont be too angry at a little anachronism
     
  12. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Or that Tom should have been sent to the brig for turning over the engine on that Model T without even a learners permit to his credit. It doesn't matter if he's 400 years in the future and 70 thousand light years away, the DMV is going to track him down and award him a moderate fine.
     
  13. CorporalClegg

    CorporalClegg Admiral Admiral

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    Apples/Oranges.

    What you describe fits well within acceptable historical artistic license.

    Chakotay was conceptual blackface.
     
  14. teya

    teya Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I did. Actually, the end result was that we humans are all descended from Athena & Helo's daughter--that Hera was mitochondrial Eve.

    The difference is, of course, that BSG posits that *all* humans are descended from this Cylon-Human hybrid & a human on our Earth.

    Voyager posits that other humans were smart enough to figure out how to speak on their own, it's just the Indians who were such dolts they needed the alien DNA.

    In BSG-land, you and I can trace our ancestry back to Hera.

    In Voyager-land, you come from smart humans, I come from idiots.

    See the difference?

    And BTW, Starbuck was dead by then...
     
  15. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I was giving you a bone(, in a respectful way, well "leaning" towards respect.).

    It's been a while since I saw the episode, becuase it was awful, but I thought that the aliens taught this imaginary tribe NOT to talk, because they inherited some sort of ant-telepathy or real telepathy from interbreeding with these Aliens.

    Then from an evolutionary standpoint because they had a significant tactical advantage over their entire environment, they didn't have to evolve genetically or technologically from that point because they had run into a dead end that some how let them ignore the Eugenics War and World War III.

    Besides the rest of the planet has to Thank that immortal hybrid(?) Flint (Leonardo-Da-fricking-Vinchi!)for inventing almost everything, and the Aegis for stopping World War III from starting too early, and probably a host of other guiding hands.

    You are not alone.

    (Ranting about "The Alien" have a very Lex Luthor lean to it.)

    What's your view on the Preservers?

    They thought Earth was doomed and then decided that the only people worth saving were the Native Americans? Every other country except Australia and parts of Africa at that point were studded with hopless alcoholics threaded with siphilis, so then who really should they have taken (also/instead)?

    The Dutch?

    Don't be frakking ridiculous!

    OH.

    TNG Masterpiece Society!

    Poor stagnating backward Supermen bastards.

    Although, the Fauxrish from Up the long ladder The-Villaged themselves on purpose because they didn't trust their children not to be idiots, overindustrialize and destroy the biosphere on their new Home world like how what Earth had was rotten at the time.

    ...

    Miss Thrace was dead, but she had a loud, so very loud, louder than she was attractive somehow, Doppleganger rambling around demanding someone invent/build a damn Brewry when the final curtain fell on BSG. I aspologise for not distinguishing between the two chracters.
     
  16. R. Star

    R. Star Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    It would be the same if I threw my European heritage in everyone's face at every moment by playing the bagpipes, running with the bulls and drinking vodka until I threw up.

    That's the same cliche nonsense they did with Chakotay's "Indian" heritage.
     
  17. teya

    teya Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Well, to be fair, they did stay away from the Drunken Indian stereotype.

    However, in Pathways, Jeri Taylor had Chakotay as a teetotaler from a dry planet. Because, you know, those Indians can't be trusted with their liquor, so they gave it up completely.
     
  18. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Yeah, firewater and fireboxes don't mix. :beer:
     
  19. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Synthol isn't alcohol. No one really knows what that means, but technically every one who uses a replicator from a replimat or controlled by an authority probably can't replicate Alcohol. I'm assume that in a house on Earth that the parents will tell their kids to crack the programming and turn off the parentinglimitaions on thier "private" replicators so that family can enjoy chocolate and cocaine.

    Seriously, you need command rank permission to replicate REAL Chocolate.

    How I remember events is far more colourful than whatever really actually happened.

    Although, when the Fuxrish were trying to build a stil in their cargobay of a home, the Fire suppression forcefields tackled it quickly and saved the ship from certain disaster.

    I wonder what the jail time is for changing the permissions on a (state owned, they're all communists remember) replicator is?

    Chakotay says that he is a vegetarian.

    Of course Riker doesn't think of himself as anything but technically a vegetarian, as all his meat is resequenced biomass that he knows was never alive... Although it might have once been human poop?

    Maybe a vegetarian in the 24th century is someone who doesn't eat the illusion of meat out of a replicator as well as actual meat?
     
  20. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    That explains his shit-eating grin.