To clarify: I'm not saying that under-representation of minorities or women in movies and television is not a legitimate issue, of course it is. I was just observing that it seems from this and other reviews on that site, that this reviewer seems to view actors and actresses just as stand-ins for whatever, race, ethnicity, gender, etc. that they are.
Movies That Hate You: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
- Thread starter Dusty Ayres
- Start date
Very often that is the case. There are some actors and actresses who have enough clout to play characters of 'generic' race or sex - Angelina Jolie got to make Salt a woman for example, and Will Smith has a similar amount of clout. Some actors also have roles written with them in mind. However, it's difficult to know what casting people can do short of having an ethnicity tick box when they are casting supporting characters to make sure that at least one of everything gets a role.
In Merlin, I was initially scratching my head that Guinevere and her father appeared to be of mixed African descent in England during Arthurian times (I've since found out that Africans did come to England quite far back, even to the point where Queen Liz I commented over concerns about the number of immigrants during her reign).
Even though Angel Coulby is one of the best things in the show, I found myself wondering why she had been cast. As time has gone on I've accepted that credibility isn't the show's strong point and she is so great in the role as the commoner with more nobility than all the nobles combined, so you go girl. Nevertheless, I wonder if they cast her due to her ethnicity because they wanted some variation, because of her talent, or both?
Dusty Ayres
Commodore
Why waste time on characters that don't mean a hill of beans in this movie plot-wise, especially if said movie is a reboot of a franchise to begin with, and especially if they take the focus away from the main female character that's a major part of the original show the movie's based on? Perhaps T'Pau was one of the elders that was saved by Spock, but what difference does it make, and why should the audience care, especially if they're the ones that are trying to experience Star Trek without all of the excess baggage?
How many people really cared about Pike before this movie made him really cool? It's not excess baggage if it's an enjoyable part of the plot is it?
Plus, part of the excess baggage to which you refer is the principle of equality upon which the ethos of Star Trek was founded! I'm not one to bleat on about them sexually assaulting my childhood; I enjoyed the new movie. However, if reinvigorating this franchise means turning it into a racist, sexist, explosive white boy-fest then it will lose my approval. If that attitude had prevailed in the sixties (relatively speaking) we wouldn't have Star Trek in any of its current forms. They can and should do better but the attitude is so indemic in Hollywood, I doubt they will even get close to true equality on screen. There was even somebody on another thread complaining that the actress playing Kirk's mum looked a few years older than his the actor playing his dad and how that was ludicrous (notwithstanding the reverse was true of Ben Kingsley and Winona Rider)...
It's not quite excess baggage if it's part of the overall message, though. We like to think of what's there rather than what's not there. I'd use TOS and TNG as examples: TOS had mostly white males in the roles of background personnel, from red shirts to substitute bridge crew to scientists. And we know TOS didn't purposely go down that route, that's just what the talent pool and atmosphere was back then. However, twenty years later though, those same roles were much more diverse racially and in gender; seeing a female helping out department heads like Worf and LaForge was quite common. Even though most of those characters had no lines, it was quite clear that Trek not just really represented a larger pool of humanity, but that it was so prominent that it wasn't even worth mentioning in the first place (nobody said, "Whoa, how weird is it to see an Asian there?"). Even subtle hints like that can have an impact on a general audience.
Kim Cattrall had an unusual amount of input into her character's "look". IIRC, she wasn't impressed that her costume had to be cannibalized from existing costume pieces, but there simply wasn't the time, budget or matching fabrics to suddenly whip her up some brand new Starfleet uniforms. She favoured the red-collared undershirt and the jacket (that already had a grey shoulder strap), even though it was later realised they didn't match with previous combinations. (I remember in "The Making of Star Trek II", there was panic because the unusual, old sewing machine that made all the unique "trapunto" Starfleet collars - using a hollow needle that quilted two layers of fabric with soft wadding as it sewed - only had one replacement needle, and the machine dated back decades. So movies III-VI tried not to have to make new Starfleet uniforms from scratch and, when they did, we saw new variations, such as ST V's combat fatigues.)
Cattrall also turned up on set one day to show off her severe "no sideburns" hairstyle, and she supposedly also commandeered one of the props people to make her the unique metal headband.
She also posed naked on the bridge set, supposedly.
Maybe she just wanted to show them that she'd shaved more than just her sideburns?
This is incredible, "aside from the occasional Asian female actress" because they, as a group, don't fit nicely into this theory, Asian actresses just don't count? Grace Parks had a prominent science fiction role in nuBSG as Boomer. Linda Parks's role as Hoshi was hardly a token minority background character, she was featured in a number of episodes, she became Empress of the Empire!
Worf, LaForge, Sisko, Tuvok ...
Based on what I’ve seen of ENT so far, it appears to me that the asian woman and the black man get less to do than the other bipedal regulars. I don’t think this necessarily reflects attitudes about race. It’s more likely coincidence. But it is consistent with they hypothesis that race plays the suggested role.
You're lying. There was no black man character on Enterprise.
Lol - on the one hand I love Rand's line as it underscores the fact that she is as dumb as hay - a tribute to her TOS roots. However, I think it should have read, "Shall I report this, sir?" asking for confirmation that she should report it straight away rather than whether collectively they should report it at all. In changing it slightly they make her sound like a total tit.
I like that the Enterprise had several, dusty, leather-bound Klingon-to-English translation books laying around and readily available.
That scene was just plain dumb, they should've just made Uhura more competent had her just speak the transmission in perfect Klingonese. Would anyone have really have even fallen for the stilited, halting, way she spoke? She sounded like she didn't know what she was doing!
It's also interesting that the Experimental BoP's sensors were able to detect the look and type of ship but the outpost's sensors only detected "a ship." If outpost sensors can be fooled by simply tampering with transponder codes then the border isn't very secure at all.
That scene was just plain dumb, they should've just made Uhura more competent had her just speak the transmission in perfect Klingonese. Would anyone have really have even fallen for the stilited, halting, way she spoke? She sounded like she didn't know what she was doing!
It's also interesting that the Experimental BoP's sensors were able to detect the look and type of ship but the outpost's sensors only detected "a ship." If outpost sensors can be fooled by simply tampering with transponder codes then the border isn't very secure at all.
Yep, and it's sit-com like and unworthy of Star Trek.
Because there is no evidence that she is a linguist or capable of speaking anything other than English and Swahili?
Uhura wears Engineering red, and when she is shown working on the electronics of her station, Spock states that she is the most qualified person to work on the communications systems.
Uhura is a communication systems specialist, not a linguist.
That comes from the old series Writers' Guide which says she's a linguist. I think both the TOS and Phase 2 guides say this, and that she can do impersonations at the drop of a hat. Pity that we never saw this in TOS, TUC, but we did see her linguistics skill in nuTrek.
Yeah in TOS, Spock did the linguistic stuff. Uhura's fortes were stated to be mathematics and electronics and she was shown to be an expert at computer use, so she's an engineer. Still, a large part of linguistics is applying mathematic principles and the translater is essentially a computer applying those principles so I do think they should have allowed her more linguistic capabilities.
Even so, this isn't as bad as former security chief Chekov's shambolic attempt at a murder investigation.
This is incredible, "aside from the occasional Asian female actress" because they, as a group, don't fit nicely into this theory, Asian actresses just don't count? Grace Parks had a prominent science fiction role in nuBSG as Boomer. Linda Parks's role as Hoshi was hardly a token minority background character, she was featured in a number of episodes, she became Empress of the Empire!
Worf, LaForge, Sisko, Tuvok ...
Uhhh, you caught my attention when you started at LaForge on...
To call Worf a black man, is to call Martok, Duras, Gowron, and those sisters who showed cleavage (I forget their names) 'white.'
Granted Banana Torres was obviously a Latin chick who was half-Klingon...that would be different.
I agree. I recall 3 white males, 1 white female...and 1 Asian female.
