The racist legacy of Star Trek

Just goes to show the double standard.

 

Jonathan Swift he ain't.

 

So...seven pages in, and cadet "Afrika Bambataa" has yet to chime in with his thoughts other than his first ever post at the TrekBBS.

So either he is just a troll, or he has some serious racial issues himself that really have nothing to do with Star Trek, and he just found some random thing to vent about.

 

It means that the real prejudice of TOS was against red people.

 

I'm sure if someone pulled random examples from the long running series Good Times, they could build a complaint that there weren't enough white people on the show.

 

That wasn't the OP, that was me. Star Wars is full of allusions and analogies to films and series of the 1930's.

Like I said in this earlier post of mine the droids are sold like slaves to new masters to work on a [moisture] farm. Yes, they are just robots, but then George Lucas made Anthony Daniels act like Mantan Moreland ("Moreland's characters were nervous and jumpy, and ready to leap out of his skin at the slightest noise. He could pop his bulging eyes and had a way of making his entire body quake with teeth-chattering tremors"), to whom I was introduced to in a Bill Cosby program about black stereotypes and also watched him perform in a couple of Charlie Chan films as Chan's driver (interestingly, the debates revolving around the Charlie Chan character being an offensive stereotype obfuscate the other issue whether his driver is an offensive stereotype, too).

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but after that I no longer felt Threepio just to be a "fussy English butler" (haven't seen one like him elsewhere, yet) as his roots looked somewhat differently. YMMV.

Bob

 

Pfft. Threepio and Artoo are more likely inspired by the bickering characters of Tahei and Matashichi from Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress than anything.

Article on that film's influences on Star Wars > LINK

 

3PO and R2 were also compared to Laurel and Hardy for a while.

Arthur Treacher (some people might only know of him for a fish & chips chain) was famous for playing butlers in the 30s, and served as a sidekick ala Ed McMahon on one of Merv Griffin's talk shows.

 

But Threepio wasn't intended to be butlerish as scripted. Lucas had a "used car salesman" type in mind, planned to overdub Daniels, but apparently came to realize Daniels' delivery was the way to go. Lucas has pointed to The Hidden Fortress as one of his inspirations for Star Wars, and when you watch the film you immediately see it.

 

Actually it basically does. TV shows, stage plays and movies are presentations, until something is shown or mentioned it doesn't exist.

Poor fashion choice, they deserve to die.

 

There were plenty of examples of minorities in TOS besides Uhura, like Lt. Boma (who was high-ranking enough to question Spock's authority) or the flawed genius of Richard Daystrom in an era where many whites still saw blacks as sub-human. Within the cultural backdrop of the 60s, it was extremely progressive. And sometimes it dealt with prejudice head-on, like the questioning of Spock's loyalty in Balance of Terror because he was from a similar race as the Romulans, or how the Horta were thought to be monsters because they are so anatomically different in Devil in the Dark.

 

Also Doctor M'Benga, not only a Starfleet physician, but also a specialist on Vulcan physiology.

 

I have "The Hidden Fortress" and I can attest to Maurice's claim. The movie starts with the two aforementioned characters scrambling through the desert hurling insults at each other, which was clearly where Lucas got the idea for the droids scrambling across Tatooine.

 

Not only that, but the story is largely told from the POV of these two "peasants".

 

MLK's niece tells the same story. That doesn't make it any more or less true, but it does corroborate it.

 

I agree. Star Trek was one of the few shows at that time that gave people of different races a chance to work together, productively. The best Captain in the series, IMO, is Captain Sisko, who became a Prophet of the Bajorans.

My stepdad complains that some shows make fun of old people. But, I say, comedies make fun of everyone, not limiting their humor to one group or another.

I think Star Trek drama was similar, in presenting people of all races with all types of personalities. Lt. Uhuru has been one of the most-popular of the TOS crew, and Dr. Richard Daystrom was considered to be one of the most-intelligent humans ever.

 

In particular, Star Trek has a ton of black characters. If anything they're shy a bit on other ethnicities such as asian, south asian, middle-eastern, and maybe gingers.

I recall with hilarity when my nan (who WAS racist) anounced that she disliked shows that featured too many black people while watching an episode of TNG. The show featured a black engineer, a black helmsman, a black dude playing a Klingon, and a black transporter chief. And I love Star Trek because I hadn't even noticed. It really is what it is - a diverse group of actors doing their jobs.

Now if you want to start a new thread saying Star Trek is sexist, I'm with you on that.

 

I'm familiar with the history of Star Wars using The Hidden Fortress as source material, but I've not seen the film. I've not seen any of Kurosawa's films I think, only American adaptations. In my fictional sci-fi universe, some of my control consoles and small vehicles like jetbikes are marked Kurosawa as a manufacturer's nameplate.

I should look for that and Seven Samurai at the used video store right up the street.

Hopefully I can find something on dvd that is undubbed and with subtitles, or has an optional dubbed version.

 

And the Children Shall Lead is pretty offensive: They tried to depict an old green ghost as an evil being despite the fact he was clearly manipulated by this ginger boy. GINGERS ARE EVIL!

 

You're forgetting the way McGyvers ruthlessly manipulated Khan and then betrayed him just so she could get him onto that planet and away from all those other mini-skirted hussies.