Kirk: You mean the profanity? That's simply the way they talk here. Nobody pays attention to you unless you swear every other word. You'll find it in all the literature of the period. Spock: For example? Kirk: Oh the neglected works of Jacqueline Susan. The novels of Harold Robbins... Spock: Ah, the "Giants".
Well, again, "Roddenberry's future" wasn't one cohesive culture that extended all through the Federation . . . and beyond. I'm sure the Andorians and the Tellarites and the Deltans and the Betazoids and the Argellians all had very different approaches to economics and journalism and art and entertainment, which would translate into different varieties of pop culture. STAR TREK is about "strange new worlds" and civilizations, not one enlightened universal society . . . .
[ .[/QUOTE] STAR TREK is about "strange new worlds" and civilizations, not one enlightened universal society . . . .[/QUOTE] Roddenberry mentioned many times that a large part of Trek's appeal is that it shows a very positive vision of humanity's future, which was a very profound message during the tumult of the sixties and seventies and even during the Reagan era with Cold War tensions, environmental and hostage crises at the forefront. "Everything is said about this society except what it really is: a society dominated by commodities and spectacles." -- On the poverty of Student Life. I still say Roddenberry was imagining a society beyond this. Also, Gramsci was on to something when he described "cultural hegemony" and how it used popular culture to mould public consciousness.
Also, we can start by looking at the root of the problem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsHtSPub3w8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN26E410Euk "The Spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image." Guy Debord - The Society of the Spectacle.
But, again, Star Trek wasn't really about the society the Enterprise supposedly came from. We never even saw future Earth on the original series. And the individual episodes themselves were hardly dramatizations of the enlightened politics and policies back on Earth; nine times out of ten, they were about beaming down to Gamma Hydroxi VI where strange and unearthly encounters awaited . . . including exotic forms of art and entertainment. Star Trek was a theatrical production, not a political symposium. Let's not confuse the backdrop with the stories on center stage.
Okay, but even TOS sometimes used the central story and characters of Star Trek to explore important topics. E.g. "Who mourns for Adonis?" dealt with religion and ancient superstitions. Kirk's parting line to Apollo was pretty forward for 1960's TV. "Let that be your last battlefield" obviously dealt with racial tensions during the Civil Rights struggle. "Bread and Circuses" was a send up of media culture. "A piece of the action", well that dealt with, hmm, I'm not sure what it dealt with beyond the old gangster dramas of the 1930s. And I don't even want to get into "Spock's Brain." I think Roddenberry used TNG to go even further. "Okay, you've rationalized your economy to the point where you have no unemployment, poverty or depressions. But that means you don't understand those who do." Ralph Offenhouse to Capt. Picard -- Debtor's Planet (a ST:TNG novella).
People will always want to be entertained, and therefore, there will always be SOME form of popular culture. Otherwise life would be very boring, I should think.
Maybe life wouldn't be so "boring" if consumer society actually offered people something more meaningful than the endless rut of work-consumption, work-consumption. That's why it's called "alienation." Otherwise, people wouldn't need to rely on passive entertainments (which are just commodities), but on self-actualization of their true potentials in place of dispossession and passive consumption. "The SPECTATOR'S ALIENATION from and submission to the contemplated object (which is the outcome of his unthinking activity) works like this: the more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more readily he recognizes his own needs in the images of need proposed by the dominant system, the less he understands his own existence and his own desires. The spectacle's externality with respect to the acting subject is demonstrated by the fact that the individual's own gestures are no longer his own, but rather those of someone else who represents them to him. The spectator feels at home nowhere, for the spectacle is everywhere." The Society of the Spectacle, Thesis 30.
We can assume that "Beyond Antares" was a hit in the 23rd century. That's another item from The Conscience of the King.
Kinda wish I could be alienated from this "society of the spectacle" diatribe, to be brutally honest with ya.
That sounds like way too much hard work. I passively consumed that bit of pop culture yousirname and I'm still laughing over the tribbling line, I've just about actualized myself!
[/QUOTE] I passively consumed that bit of pop culture yousirname and I'm still laughing over the tribbling line, I've just about actualized myself![/QUOTE] Hey, you've achieved synthesis! Hegel was right. This dialectics stuff works.