Menagerie, re-mastered on the Big Screen

[RAMA]

22 Stars said:
It was not written to be sexist and I'm sure in 1964, it wasn't sexist. And it obviously wasn't an intended laugh line. But it is dated and and a laugh line intoday's society.

Look at it like this. Substitute "the women" with any one of these:
"the negroes!"
"the Asians!"
"the Mexicans!"
"the cripple!"
"the retard!"

This is really incorrect, since calling a group of women "women" is not deragatory....nor is calling "Mexicans": "Mexicans". This would seem logical. Now until people from Mexico call themselves Aztecians, this would remain the case. Some of the other words have fallen out of favor, and I doubt anyone here would classify them as that, but the alternative words might still apply. There are many times when TOS was sexist, this just isn't one of them.

If there were 6 members of a landing crew, and two of them were Mexcicans and they were they only ones taken, would you possibly yell that in surprise? And the FACT they took Mexicans might mean something (as the case with the TAS episode: "How Sharper than a Serpents Tooth") in the context of kidnapping. In the Cage, it was for breeding stock, so it is useful to the audience..

RAMA

[Electric Coleslaw]

RAMA said:

I would ONLY agree, if they had a launch a rescue the two helpless women and stated that as such or Pike felt he had to get the women back to the ship because they are weak...however, when the two women land, they are very efficient and in control, and hardly helpless. Number One eventually is the one who forces the Talosians hand, not Pike. So any kind of knee jerk reaction to Spock's surprise is really silly.

RAMA

I think having all that done would be silly. People find it funny because they have used their imagination and implied all of that without it needing to be actually shown on screen.

Some found it funny. You obviously don't. It's no big deal. Sometimes explaining why you found something funny is quite impossible. There are times when something is funny just because it is.

[Therin of Andor]

RAMA said:
This is really incorrect, since calling a group of women "women" is not deragatory.

But you are not a woman, and neither am I. We cannot presume what they do or may find derogatory.

But to some women, who may have a view that the females of the world in the 60s constantly fought against ingrained societal oppression by men, may find the line very insulting, or at least anachronistic, today. Some may have realized it had potential to be insulting in the early 70s. Ask someone like Germaine Greer.

Writers are generally more sensitive about such things these days, probably knowing that what they write might be dissected by future scholars. But writing will always carry a style that makes it genuine to its times. Somebody writing "The women!" in a TV script today is making a more conscious choice to go against contemporary sensitivities.

And thus, in 2007, the line gets a guffaw. Especially in a show that is supposedly projecting forward to the 23rd century.

[Electric Coleslaw]

^But you know, for me the appeal of TOS was that humanity was not perfect. Vulcans had emotions, they merely suppressed them. Humanity still had the old tendencies of bigotry and oppression, they were merely suppressed. Some were more successful than others at doing so.

[Cyrus]

If it was the men that got beamed down and if Number one had shouted "The Men!", I doubt if anyone would look at it as some kind of slight toward the male gender (though it would still be a little funny). I like the explanation that Spock, being very logical, quickly figured out that the aliens had specifically targeted the female crew members.

[rgb1701]

Re: captain Pike's speech issue and Dr. McCoy's misplaced brain interface comment-

http://science.slashdot.org/science/...6/178248.shtml

Told you so...

[Electric Coleslaw]

Yeah, you have to kinda ignore that in 300 years they can't do better than a blinking light. Even a computer voice saying "Yes" or "No" would have been a step up.

[sturmde]

I've assumed for 40 years that Pike also had rather severe brain damage from the delta rays (cold electrons will do that to you... too many free radicals.)

Perhaps the blinking light was all that they'd been able to achieve so far. If you'd only come back next week, they'd have been installing the voice synthesizer unit, but no, Spock had to kidnap him....

[Electric Coleslaw]

The blinking light is more dramatic though.

Kirk: He keeps blinking 'no'.

[Phantassm]

Saw it last night in a theater with about 20 people. I really enjoyed it. It was really nice to see the original series on the big screen. It was a really fun experience.

[T'Bonz]

RAMA, you've been around long enough to know not to triple post.

Use the quote function next time, please.

[22 Stars]

^TBonz, he also 'quoted' me but put someone else's post under my name... not cool. The line gets a laugh, it's up to him to figure out why.

Why does a rainbow get an 'oohh ahhh'...after all, it's not trying to impress. It's not logical, but it is often true. Just like Spock yelling 'THE WOMEN' gets a laugh.

[TY1975]

I just wanted to point out that, for me, the funniest thing about "The women!" has nothing to do with sexism or even Spock's usually stoic demeanor.

The funniest thing about the line is the seemingly long delay between the women's transport and Spock (and the others) noticing that they are gone.

This is mostly due to how it was filmed, with the transporter effects added in later of course. After all, no one had ever filmed Star Trek transporter scenes before "The Cage," so the timing is a bit off and makes the line seem like a funny statement of the obvious.

[Mallory]

Welcome to the board TY1975. It's good to have you here.

[Kryton]

And TY makes a valid point. Timing is ... ... ... ... ...


everything.