News Discovery New Character Breakdowns
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Thank you personal belittling never furthers a discussion.
But it is acknowledging that person's experience in the real world. It's acknowledging that such limits happen, that such people do have struggles and are acknowledged as still contributing in the future.
I'm not the most sensitive guy, but honestly, it seems like the only point of contention here is the wheelchair. I mean, we have seen wheelchairs in Trek multiple times (On ENT, on TOS and DS9), we have seen the use of a cane, so I'm not sure why this is such a point of contention.
Geordi was, for all intents and purposes, not blind - at least not in the sense of today. Yes, his VISOR gave him different vision than normal signed humans, but in many ways it was superior (I'd consider swapping my eyes out for it if given the chance). He took it off, and was truly blind, when sleeping and at the doctor's office, and occasionally there were mishaps which left him truly unsighted as the plot required. But he basically led the same life as a sighted person. He had no issue navigating either the ship or new environments. He didn't use a cane or a seeing eye dog. He could read normal lettering, and didn't need braille. His experience was nothing like a blind person of today. This had very little to do with other people being accepting of his difference, and was almost entirely due to a whiz-bang technobabble invention. This is exactly analogous to an exoskeleton, which doesn't "cure" the disability, but provides for a lot more freedom - and in the future, might have some advantages over just having normal use of your legs.
As I have said upthread, I have met many deaf people who don't want to hear, but I have never met a mobility challenged person who doesn't want to walk. Hell, my grandmother has polio, and my father had MS before he died and was confined to a wheelchair. They both would have much rather not be confined/not have been disabled at all than just have the world around them more accepting of them the way they are.
But please, link to some essay with a paralyzed person who says they don't want to ever walk again. I'd love to read the perspective.
Dude, you know that exoskeletons for the paralyzed already exist right? They cost tens of thousands of dollars, and only a few hundred have been sold, but this is not some far-future technology. The costs are likely to come down quickly, and they very well may be more common than wheelchairs for the paralyzed in another 20 years or so. That's one of the reasons I think not including it is a mistake. Hopefully people will still be watching DIS 20 years hence like the other shows, and if they are, it will look like a silly call to have not included it.
I've read science-fiction stories before where changing sexuality (or gender, for that matter) is as easy as taking a pill or flipping a switch. Some were written by queer writers. IMHO (as I said elsewhere) representing a group and deconstructing a social category run somewhat cross current.
It also caused him a lot of pain too. Of course, it only came up if the plot demanded it but the VISOR was hardly a perfect system.
If Trek was completely representative, the whole setting would unwind.
Take class for example. Class is certainly a big contemporary issue - even moreso in your own country than mine. The Federation is basically a post-capitalist society, from what we can gather onscreen. There is no real "working class" unless you want to use NCOs like O'Brien as analogies. The only story I can think of offhand which actually dealt with class struggle was one of the Ferengi episodes of DS9 - Bar Association - which was a wonderful tribute to trade unionism. Regardless, the lack of any identifiable working class means there are not stories that those of us who grew up poor can relate to. Hence it's not fully representational.
Another example, as I said upthread, is religion, which seems mostly dead in Trek. I was corrected that there were a few more (nominal) Christians in Trek than I remembered, but there are no Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc.
People of different (human) races and genders are portrayed in Trek of course. But since it's a post racist/sexist world, all of the struggles they have to endure today are not touched upon at all. No woman in Trek ever has to worry about being harassed by her commanding officer. No person of color ever has to worry they have been passed over for a promotion due to the color of their skin. This is not representational of current struggles.
And not to be flip, but we don't really see that many overweight or unattractive people in Trek either.
Yes, wheelchairs are canon in the Trekverse, as I said, but there are a few issues here:
1. The last time we know for certain someone needed to use a wheelchair for paralysis was in the 22nd century. This involved Emory Erickson getting into a transporter accident, which might mean his insides were all kinds of effed up.
2. Pike had massive physical issues which went well beyond not being able to walk - he essentially was so damaged he was a case of "lock in" at that point.
3. Admiral Mark Jameson was not paralyzed - he had a progressive muscular disorder.
4. The teacher Picard knew at Starfleet academy who used a wheelchair since birth might not have been paralyzed.
5. Melora was not disabled, she was just from a low-gravity world.
All of this suggests that while wheelchairs are not unknown, they tend to be used in only rare/special cases compared to today, when about 1 out of 50 people has some level of paralysis.
The "off show" reason is technology has advanced, as I noted, and it's pretty clear that better options than a wheelchair will exist in a generation or two, let alone a century. In my mind this sort of retcon is okay for exactly the same reason that computers have been progressively retconned to be smaller as the show has gone on.
Let me see if I can frame this in a way that makes sense. A lot of the above listed lack of representation are not physical issues but cultural ones. Religion, socioeconomic and attitudes towards women are all cultural issues that have largely been either resolved or unmentioned in the larger Trek universe.
However, physical limitations have been acknowledged several times over and certainly are not outside the scope of Star Trek's portrayal of humanity, Geordi being the most famous. And again, this is TOS era where the common cold has not been cured. So, as much as I want to see the advancement of technology portrayed in Trek, I see no reason to not have someone use a wheel chair, even briefly, to acknowledge a physical limitation.
But no one is going to be able to walk as a result of showing magical imaginary technology which does that to a fictional character. What we are talking about is showing someone onscreen as a positive example of inclusivity, about showing someone's experience of the real world in a way which opens people's eyes to the experience of being disabled. Technobabble which solves the problem with the flick of a switch just removes the purpose of that representation.
It's hard to understand why this point is so difficult to explain to people. You wouldn't suggest racial equality that consisted of having black people being given surgery to become white and avoid racism. You wouldn't suggest gay people can be shown avoiding homophobia by becoming straight with a tablet. You accept representation for those groups involves showing them onscreen as they are, as positive examples of human beings who are neither defined by a label nor using magical technology to change.
Why then insult disabled people by taking away their opportunity to be represented onscreen in a way which fosters understanding and tolerance? That is exactly what we are doing if we show magic quick fixes to disabilities, insulting people by taking away realistic and meaningful representation which is priceless to them.
Again, missing the point by a mile.
Yes they do, and I guarantee if any exoskeleton wearers are viewing trek they are outnumbered a thousand to one by wheelchair users who aren't so fortunate. I'd hate to think any of them would object to seeing someone in a wheelchair. Star Trek addresses issues NOW, not in twenty years, not in two hundred.
So?
Does that mean Trek should do the same?
Did any of those novels endorse changing sexuality to avoid stigma and fit in to a norm?
If the Culture novels are amongst those you mean they deal with the matter in a totally different way to Star Trek. They do show a genuine utopian society, which the Federation is not no matter how often people claim otherwise. Changing sexuality or gender is done there for pleasure and to promote understanding of other's experiences, it's recreational. Iain Banks was singularly careful to avoid attaching any value judgements to those transitions, he also made no claim to addressing social issues in the way Star Trek does.
There is a fundamental conflict between what Trek is, and the desire for human representation of contemporary issues. Yes, there are still issues in the future, but the whole conceit is that Humanity has made great strides, therefore our most pressing issues (war, poverty, disease, disability) have been fixed. That's where the allegory comes in. The alien who cant walk in regular gravity is a human in a wheelchair. Saru is a human with anxiety. If one of the little gold aliens from Journey to Babel was a crew member he'd be human with dwarfism (or whatever your preferred term is). That's the whole point of the show. Just because the person has latex on their face doesn't make them any less representative of your group of choice.
As James Kirk said "Spock, you want to know something? Everybody's human."
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I think the point he’s making is that while Star Trek May talk about NOW, it’s set in the future where Tech works and is shown working in a certain way.
The episode where B’Ellana is trying to genetically modify her unborn baby goes into some of the ethical debates we are talking about here, but ‘disability’ is being looked at through the lense of a medical condition that’s curable before birth, but also what she sees as a disability, I.e her Klingon heritage. It’s basically having an ethical discussion about this very topic, while also showing how some forms of actual disability might no longer be a thing in Treks version of the future. The same is true of the very first discussion around geordis eyes...his specific condition was not curable at the time of his birth, and he chooses to hang on to his visor as it works, for him, better than the alternatives.
The comments around class representation in Trek are also very interesting, and I suppose a question must be asked over how granular we want representation to be in Trek, and where does that start getting in the way of the story or the production. I cheered the Portuguese officer on the Aventine in the books, but we can’t have a show where every lead is something totally different and somehow fit everyone in. Trek is largely through the Hollywood lense to start off with, and that’s why anyone outside of LA and New York usually ends up dunked in stereotype varnish. Sometimes the wrong stereotype, if your name is Picard.
Geordi was very much there to represent every disability at his inception (hence him being named for a disabled Star Trek fan.) so in some ways, the Trek approach to this has been seen. Is that a reason not to do it again? Nope, not at all. But it is going to inform how it’s approached I guess.
Yes and no.
In so far as we are talking about allegory around issues I totally agree, but we aren't talking about "issues" and we aren't talking about a society which is portrayed as having made anywhere near the strides that are commonly supposed. On the contrary much of the Federation is a disease and crime ridden dump suffering civil wars, terrorism and famines whilst suffering under petty bureaucrats, power mad planetary governors and ambitious, corrupt officials. Anyone who claims otherwise really should review the show as seen onscreen and not the mythology which has built up around it.
Equally TOS was far more important culturally for showing women, black people, asian people, russian people in positions of respect and influence than it was was parodying US foreign policy or the cold war.
We aren't talking about issues or moral questions being addressed on screen here, we are talking about showing disabled people as being active and valued members of the society which solves those issues.
The technology argument is ridiculous on a level which mirrors questioning how many decks the Enterprise has or how fast a Bird of Prey is. Trek isn't about the technology (it portrays it inconsistently anyway), nor is it really about the worldbuilding. It does both patchily precisely because they have always played second fiddle to the social conscience of the show. Being seen onscreen in a positive way is radically important to many disabled people and that is what matters here, not if the technology fits with "canon".
I think the growing-pains federation you describe, as sort of implied by some episodes of TOS is an interesting thing. It brings to mind thinking of the age of empires, and their various exploratory rumblings out across the ocean. The problem is, sooner or later that’s going to turn the federation into an explicitly colonialist narrative...though maybe with the mirror universe there, showing what an actual colonialist (in the current more negative sense, as opposed to the PJs an solid reclaimators of TNG) federation would look like, maybe they could dodge it. I suspect not, and that slightly grimmer aspect of the Trek universe will be slowly retconned...the overall narrative is the one of legend, and even the TOS movies retcon the grimier aspects. No money etc.
Again, I don't see how this criticism doesn't also work for Geordi. Geordi was basically a sighted person except when he took off his VISOR at night. He had some difficulties due to it, but his "mainstreaming" was because of the tech, not because of the existence of 24th century workarounds.
If you believe Geordi wasn't the right way to do inclusiveness, that's fine. I know someone else said this in the thread. But you can't argue that Geordi was a good way to depict this, and then argue against having tech "take the disability away."
Because disabled people are...well...disabled. That's not to devalue them as people - I pushed my father around in a wheelchair for the better part of a decade. But the problems they face are not 100% due to society being close minded and intolerant.
Let's say you strand a gay person, or a black person, on a desert island. They will be just as likely to be able to survive as a straight person, or a white person. In contrast, if someone who is blind, or paralyzed washes up onshore, they will have a much harder time of it. This isn't because of society - this is because their physical abilities are more limited, and impact their ability to get food and fresh water and find shelter. Disabled people can only live lives that are as full as they are today because of technological innovations, from the wheelchair and ramps to braille and seeing eye dogs. Innovations in technology and cultural practices - whether helping the individual or modifying the environment around them - is the primary way that the lives for disabled people have gotten better in the past.
Could you please explain to me why depicting an actor who uses a system of robotic braces to assist in walking takes away from the disabled status, while a wheelchair does not?
What issues does Trek address NOW in a literal fashion? Seriously. When addressing contemporary issues in the past, it's almost always been through allegory, not an on-the-nose depiction. Look at The Outcast, Let that Be Your Last Battlefield, etc.
I was actually thinking about some of the work of Greg Egan, one of my favorite hard sci-fi writers, and almost assuredly queer (although he's very private, so it's hard to know) given how much the issues of gender and sexuality permeate his work.
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Picard's teacher could have been a slug creature with no legs, for all we know. The chair would enable her to move faster than a slug oozes. Not a disability for her species, but a (sometimes) disadvantage for her job and keeping up with others.
To be frank, most of them are. If you can't see that the stigma attached to disability is commonly way more intrusive, isolating and debilitating, causing way more inequalities than the actual disability itself I don't really know what to tell you. Try spending a few weeks in the shoes of someone with paranoid schizophrenia, autism or multiple sclerosis and tell me their exclusion doesn't primarily come down to people being closed minded.
Because if it does what is stated on the tin and the character can act just like everyone else it takes away everything meaningful about the portrayal of the disability, the label is all that is left. If it doesn't, why not just stay with the wheelchair and give a more realistic portrayal that actual reflects people's experiences?
And if we were talking about developing real technology in the real world this argument would make sense. We aren't.
Showing someone magically transformed by fictional technology doesn't help one person in the real world, the technology isn't somehow going to jump off the screen and help real people walk. It just takes away their chance to be meaningfully represented. Aren't the disabled alienated from society enough without you taking this from them too? Do you have any idea how cruel that is?
Geordie did not have normal vision, far from it, he was numerous times shown to be incapable of appreciating beauty, of comprehending the visual world in the way other characters could, it was a recurring theme throughout TNG and the movies. He was important as an example of representation because he was valued in spite of that, of being an example of how disabilities can become strengths. Yes it did it with technology but it didn't just take the disability away and frankly as @cultcross points out, there's no reason to rest on our laurels there and assume we can't go on to improve on that portrayal.
This is almost totally wrong.
I wonder how many times am I going to repeat to you representation isn't about "issues"? That you keep using that word is really offensive. It must be six or seven times in the past few days. Star Trek blazed the trail for onscreen inclusiveness, it's exactly what it is famous for.
We are talking about showing characters onscreen in a positive way. It does it with race, it does it with gender, it's finally and belatedly started doing it with sexuality. Those things have come about because of people within those groups repeating ad infinitum treating them as "issues" is missing the point until finally someone got the message. They spent years beating their heads against metaphorical brick walls much like I'm doing now with you until it started to sink in.
Members of minority groups aren't "issues", they are people and deserve to be treated equally, not reduced to ethical conundrum of the week.
This is a fundamental disagreement of opinion that I don't think we are going to settle here.
Trek tech has inspired real world breakthroughs. Someone sees this "magical" tech as says "I can use that idea in the real world". Besides, isn't the alternative saying "there's no hope for improvement, we can't even cure you in the 24th century".
If I'm reading this right, you'd be OK with, say, a paralyzed person in Iron Man style armor because it makes them stronger than average, but still doesn't let them feel anything, so they still "count" as disabled.
You could basically do all the same things with a exoskeleton/brace system as Geordi's VISOR. You could have the character take it off at night. You could have it have side effects like pain if worn too long. You could have it fail to function at mission-critical times. And you could have it give certain powers beyond normally able people (maybe the character could kick with superhuman force, or lift large weight with their legs?). There's no reason why it would have to be portrayed as identical to normal mobility. There's a middle ground between "absolutely no progress - nay, regression - from today" and "every single medical problem is solved"
See, part of what makes me really uncomfortable here is we are having this conversation largely in a vacuum. I have had many friends and family who are or have been disabled, but barring being nearsighted and mostly deaf in my left ear, I'm not a physically disabled person. Neither are you, from what I can gather. I feel very uncomfortable in general speaking for people in the absence of knowledge about their opinions. I will say that my dad was a huge Trekkie before getting MS. He'd much rather have seen a future where no one had to use a walker or a wheelchair than see a character who was physically constrained like himself on Trek. Trek was how he daydreamed about a future world which was better than our own crapsack one. But I can't of course generalize from his experience. Similarly, unless you have interviews onhand with paralyzed persons saying they'd find the use of an exoskeleton over a wheelchair insulting, I don't know how you can reach this general conclusion.
You were the one who said:
I understand there is a difference between representation and an "issue episode" but you referred to issues, which is why I brought it up.
I am not opposed to a disabled person being onboard Discovery, as should be very clear from this discussion. Our only difference is you seem to think that showing any significant onscreen advance in technology to make the life of a disabled person easier invalidates their existence. I do not.
You don't feel this argument is just a little bit of a stretch? We should portray disabilities magically disappearing in the hope it will inspire reality to match up, regardless that by doing so we are taking away yet another opportunity for disabled people to have their experiences understood by the rest of the world? Is that really the way we should prioritise this?
People are suffering immense social inequalities right now, today, they are suffering prejudice and ignorance today. The media is an immensely powerful tool for good but not if we start arguing about accurate portrayals of future technology or consistency within the canon as being of even remote relevance as people have been doing.
If trek is to demonstrate anything like the social conscience it is renowned for it should do so by doing exactly what it has done in the past, what other shows have taken the lead on in recent years. It should show the world what it means to experience disability, present those people as more than a label, more than a "problem" to be solved.
The problem doesn't lie with disabled people, it lies with everyone else
And no, we aren't making predictions about the 24th century, that isn't what Star Trek is about. The 24th century as portrayed is there for one reason and one reason alone, to act as a lens through which we view this one, the one we live in. It has consistently done so since it's inception by including as wide a variety of minorities as the times would allow and not just by allegory. This isn't about hope for a better world in centuries to come, it's about understanding the world we live in now.
Not sure I follow you but no. I'm saying Geordie's VISOR wasn't a magic bullet, it didn't take away the disability in the way people here are describing and thus isn't analogous to an exoskeleton that would leave someone disabled in name only.
The simple fact is though we have moved on, we should build on the work done in TNG. Geordie was a massively important step, but a step is all he was. There's a long journey ahead and we should have the courage to follow that road to the end, not settle down because we took that one step thirty years ago and feel we can clap ourselves on the back.
What does this even mean? Presumably "what it means to experience disability" won't include the sort of social isolation you talk about - the Federation is nothing if not tolerant of difference. I'm also guessing you don't mean struggling with the issues of physical disability, because you seem to (oddly) think they are entirely socially constructed. So does it just mean a disabled person going to work like everyone else and being totally unremarked upon? This is of course a great thing, but it's not really what it means to experience disability in the 21st century. It's just as aspiraional as showing people being "cured" only in a different way.
Disability is - literally by the name - defined by what you can't do. This is different from race, gender, or sexual orientation. In all of those cases, you can take away the discrimination by the hegemonic culture and something remains. It might not be the most salient identity of course. We have no idea, for example, if Stamets strongly identifies as being gay, we just know that he is in a same-sex relationship.
Regardless, disability is not like this. If you engineer both a culture and a built environment to make any of the difficulties that go with having the disability vanish, then anything which distinguishes the disabled from the normally abled vanishes. The "disabled" no longer experience any disability, thus there is nothing for the currently disabled to relate to.
Ok, but again that isn't representing the experiences of disabled people, the stigma, the social exclusion, the necessity to adapt in a world which is slow to reciprocate on that adaptation. Why is the idea of a person in a wheelchair so offensive that people (and I'm not pointing the finger at you here) will jump through such ridiculous hoops to avoid having them on television? What is so wrong with the idea we could do so much good with this portrayal?
The issue I'm referring to is exactly the sort of ignorance that devalues representation, that minority groups have had to fight against throughout history, the sort of ignorance which is permeating this very thread and leads people to feel excluded in society. Try putting yourself in the shoes of someone reading this thread in a wheelchair (there are at least a couple doing so) and how it must feel to see people so determined to prevent them being seen on tv.
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