What about your e-mails Captain Georgiou?
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Are the new Klingons supposed to be White Republicans?
- Thread starter Tribble puncher
- Start date
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I don't think it's Star Trek imitating republicans as much as it is the GOP perfectly resembling a bunch of super villains nowadays.
Alt right?
That's how they seem to want to see them I think.
This whole thing is asinine.
Where did it say the Klingons were representative of Trump supporters or "white Republicans?"
Just because one of the producers said that they were inspired by the election in the United States doesn't mean these things. I would guess it simply means that their depiction of a divided the Klingon Empire is similar to the division politically in the United States at the current time.
Man, do some of you guys just try to create controversial $hit to argue about, or what?
Where did it say the Klingons were representative of Trump supporters or "white Republicans?"
Just because one of the producers said that they were inspired by the election in the United States doesn't mean these things. I would guess it simply means that their depiction of a divided the Klingon Empire is similar to the division politically in the United States at the current time.
Man, do some of you guys just try to create controversial $hit to argue about, or what?
^ Because the writer sounds like a self-righteous west coast liberal elitist? Probably a Judd Apatow type
Was that because he isn't racist or because they also don't like to turn on any lights on their ship and can't see anything.
Jason
So he isn’t a racist fanatic but a religious fanatic. Same thing.
Ok, I'm curious, really I am.
For best part of thirty years I've been hearing Klingons serve as a stand in for Russians with no clear idea as to where that came from, even in TOS. It seems to rely purely on a number of preconceptions and assumptions, without anyone ever really giving any kind of rationale.
I've also heard it stated verbatim in this thread by someone who expected that to fly as a statement with no rationale, yet went on to accuse others of lazy thinking when comparing the current crop of Klingons with the alt right.
This is despite the numerous references in the show to skin colour and a cultural group feeling their identity under threat by an essentially benign group of much more diverse "outsiders", all set against a background of the show's creative team having literally stated those themes are central to the show.
So, the question I am throwing out here, especially to you @RobertCardassian, is can anyone actually provide me with a well framed argument to support the assertion the Klingons are, or ever have been, a stand in for the USSR?
For best part of thirty years I've been hearing Klingons serve as a stand in for Russians with no clear idea as to where that came from, even in TOS. It seems to rely purely on a number of preconceptions and assumptions, without anyone ever really giving any kind of rationale.
I've also heard it stated verbatim in this thread by someone who expected that to fly as a statement with no rationale, yet went on to accuse others of lazy thinking when comparing the current crop of Klingons with the alt right.
This is despite the numerous references in the show to skin colour and a cultural group feeling their identity under threat by an essentially benign group of much more diverse "outsiders", all set against a background of the show's creative team having literally stated those themes are central to the show.
So, the question I am throwing out here, especially to you @RobertCardassian, is can anyone actually provide me with a well framed argument to support the assertion the Klingons are, or ever have been, a stand in for the USSR?
Cold War ideology used for a 1960s TV show? With two major superpowers standing off with the threat of a major war braking out if things go badly? The analogy for the Federation and Klingon Empire in those cases is basically limited to two powers...The United States and the Soviet Union. As it was an American show that has shown some respect for American ideology during its first season, and the Klingons were shown to have some serious secret police style overwatch of even their commanding officers in their first appearance....that basically leaves them as the Soviet Union stand in for the episode. The continued episodes show the curt diplomacy between Captain Kirk and Captain Koloth is also a very 1960s style setting between American and Russian military types in polite settings.
Add to think the Klingons arming a primitive planet with weapons to fight a war by proxy in an effort to eventually take it under its influence, and Kirk responding by arming other natives with similar weapons to maintain a balance of power is also a very Cold War thing between the Americans and Russians. Such a thing escalated into the Vietnam War.
Add to think the Klingons arming a primitive planet with weapons to fight a war by proxy in an effort to eventually take it under its influence, and Kirk responding by arming other natives with similar weapons to maintain a balance of power is also a very Cold War thing between the Americans and Russians. Such a thing escalated into the Vietnam War.
I think that the Klingons represented a lot of things:
religious fundamentalists (very obvious)
Trump isolationism - with T'kumva reuniting the divided houses, citing the cesspool of multiculturalism that threatens Klingon identity.
Their slogan, "Remain Klingon," reminds us of "Make America Great Again".
Actually, I found the Burnham character interesting. You could see her point about firing first on the Klingons. She was impulsive and reckless - traits that many associate with Trump. If you want an allegory, then here it is, Burnham advocates a first strike policy - something that some think should be used against North Korea. Her captain meanwhile is like the UN, urging caution and restraint.
As with TOS, there's the allegory that the writers wanted to talk about - and there's the inadvertent ones that the fans pick up on.
religious fundamentalists (very obvious)
Trump isolationism - with T'kumva reuniting the divided houses, citing the cesspool of multiculturalism that threatens Klingon identity.
Their slogan, "Remain Klingon," reminds us of "Make America Great Again".
Actually, I found the Burnham character interesting. You could see her point about firing first on the Klingons. She was impulsive and reckless - traits that many associate with Trump. If you want an allegory, then here it is, Burnham advocates a first strike policy - something that some think should be used against North Korea. Her captain meanwhile is like the UN, urging caution and restraint.
As with TOS, there's the allegory that the writers wanted to talk about - and there's the inadvertent ones that the fans pick up on.
For me they've always been Space Mongols.
They remind me more of ISIS or Boko Haram, than the American right.
All of which is exactly the standard trope which people seem to take as a given, but simply falls down for me when it's actually deconstructed.
Throughout TOS the Klingons are not played as a communist state, in fact we know pretty much nothing about their culture until mid TNG, by which point we are presented with something approximating an amalgamation of Japanese and Medieval European feudalism.
TOS simply presents them as an opposing super power, a foil for Kirk and co without explicitly making them analogous to any existing state at the time. They are an "outsider" and a pretty ill defined one at that, almost a political Rorschach picture. To postulate their being the USSR to the Federation's USA then rests on two premises:
1) There exists an analogous relationship between the two fictional superpowers such that each represents one of those two real world superpowers
2) There is compelling reason to cast the Federation as being America in that relationship
As to the first premise of course there are parallels, there is a cold war analogy at play which is obvious, but drawing those parallels does not inherently require the relationship be so literal as being able to transpose the two fictional powers into the places of their real world counterparts. At many points throughout TOS the Klingons behaved as a superpower, but not necessarily in a way that could be directly taken as a metaphor for the communist USSR, whilst the Federation often (as in almost always) bears only the most superficial resemblance to 1960's USA, which brings me onto the second premise....
The Federation IS NOT the USA, nor is it portrayed as being the USA in space. On the contrary the similarities are by necessity surface deep, put there to make the show palatable to the mainly American audience. Throughout TOS and increasingly so in TNG the Federation is more often shown as something approaching a partially idealised quasi communist state itself and SF's guiding principle is non intervention. This is hard to square with the assumption they are the USA in space during a period when the real US was vociferously anti communist and had an aggressively interventionist foreign policy.
Yes Kirk is American, yes the ships are filled with American actors (obvious considering it was made in the US) and are called the USS....whatever....but the similarities largely end there or at least at that level.
The Federation is not the USA and the tendency to cast it in that role has stemmed from the fact it was broadcast to a mostly American audience. Human cognition tends to project the self onto fictional characters and organisations in the media and thus the origins of that perception, but here's the problem;
Had exactly the same show been made in Russia and broadcast to a Russian audience it would have worked just as well. Those people living in Soviet Russia a would have been equally (if not more) entitled to see themselves in the heroes and cast the Klingons in the role of decadent Western aggressors, precisely because the Klingons are so loosely defined. Examples such as showing Klingons arming combatants in proxy wars could just as easily cast them in either side of the cold war (America proactively did exactly the same thing, whereas the Federation are much more reluctant), or more realistically be a much more generic observation about the behaviour of major powers in just such a situation.
So where does this leave us?
The Federation are portrayed as a major, somewhat communist leaning power in a cold war, one which frequently behaves in ways which illustrate or question aspects of contemporary issues of the day, at times being a critique or mirror of both American AND Russian foreign and domestic policies, other times showing ideals which are totally at odds with any of those policies.
The Klingons on the other hand generally exist to serve as the opposing power, ill defined except as an antagonist until TNG when they are revealed to be absolutely nothing like the USSR, in fact being shown to be conservative in a way which barely exists in modern societies.
By that logic the premise of the Klingons being Russian pretty much relies on the Federation being America, a fallacy which only ever came into being because Americans were the first people to watch the show.
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"They". Bit binary isn't it? And that's the problem. No, I and many other non-conservatives are fully aware not all conservatives are "a bunch of Hitler youth" or somesuch. Just like we are the ones pointing out that not all Muslims are ISIS.
And I'll fully accept that many conservatives see the same nuances of reality we do. But the folk who DO engage in binary thinking give us bad names and cause problems for all. Worse are the ones who harness that blindness into whipping up one side against the other, like the Klingon fanatics here, ISIS trying to convince other Muslims there's a war on them (and our leaders often not doing much to convince them otherwise) or Trump with his "if you don't kneel for the anthem you're not a real American" BS which is pretty much just dogwhistling to his white supremacist base.
I think they are actually trying to hit a number of things at the same time, as they should. Deal with the concepts of racism and militarism etc without engaging in strict allegory.
But, yeah. "Remain Klingon." LOL. "You will not replace us," anyone?
This is good Star Trek.
But, yeah. "Remain Klingon." LOL. "You will not replace us," anyone?
This is good Star Trek.