Amen!
I like STID. Is that wrong?
- Thread starter AmbassadorPointyEars
- Start date
Amen!
Especially when you pick one clause out of a three-part statement and try to pass it off as the whole argument? Yes, my mileage certainly will vary, thanks though.
Not always. Actually, it's something that a lot of sociologists have taken note of over the years: people who grew up in poor families tend to think fresh vegetables taste strange; since they're used to canned veggies being "normal," some of the higher-quality ingredients used in fine dining hits their pallet the wrong way. There's a similar phenomenon in the enormous difference between what Americans call "Chinese food" and the food that is actually consumed by people who live in China. Most traditional Chinese dishes would hit your average American as barely edible; likewise, most people I've known who grew up in China find french fries absolutely disgusting.
It's not the effect I'm looking at. It's the fact that most normal people aren't AWARE of the ingredients when they evaluate the quality of the product. That's not information a typical consumer even has access to. There is, of course, a preference for some people to avoid certain ingredients (e.g. "gluten free" or "high fructose corn syrup" are things some people look for in making a buying choice).
Apart from its value as an advertising tool, it's the perceived quality of the finished product that matters most. Which means it doesn't matter if the pizza you've just ordered was made with the freshest and best ingredients in the entire country if the COMBINATION of those ingredients doesn't appeal to customers.
And of course, delivery matters too. Your pizza recipe may be a gift from the gods, but it's not going to be very impressive if the chef overcooks it.
I believe you have just concisely explained the fan reaction to Star Trek 2009.
Some fans (not all) were expecting "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot". Instead, they got "Tranya, on the rocks."
Like I said, it's not really expectations at work. People expect a work of art to have a certain effect on them, depending on the media. One thing they expect from science fiction is for it to be entertaining and exciting in an unusual/fanciful. They will, in fact, totally overlook poor-quality writing or special effects if the production itself delivers to their expectations.
And look at TOS in absolute terms (not in "well, for the '60s..." terms). Compared to modern TV shows, quality of the writing, the acting, the music, the special effects and set design are CLEARLY inferior, and yet most of us still manage to find the show entertaining. And that, more than anything, is my point: if the story you're watching captures your attention as well as your imagination and makes you want to know more, you're probably not going to notice how cheesy the antagonists' monster suit looks (well, up to a point
). And that, more than anything, is the reason TOS resonated more with children and young adults than it did with older viewers.
So was I.
Remember, the Millennium Falcon debuted in 1977; the Lego Millennium Falcon costs about $300 and is highly sought after by kids and adults alike.
Where's the $300 Lego Enterprise?
Because they wanted to make TNG movies.
They did it with TNG easily enough. Even managed to bring Worf back for all three sequels.
Um...
Ricky and Lucy were both white.
It's 1965. Ricky Ricardo walks into a building and decides to get a drink of water.
Which water fountain is he going to use?
As did William Shatner, three weeks later in "Elaan of Troyus." Which no one found the least bit controversial either time.
What the hell is going on in this thread?
Asian's weren't considered "colored." Nobody cared.
Seriously, guys?
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Okay. Watching you get entangled in the stringy cheese of a completely throwaway pizza metaphor was funny and harmless.
The sheer ignorance of this statement isn't. In a country that had racist laws in force against Asian immigration until 1965 you actually believe nobody cared? If that's really true, get thee to a library.
Incorrect. The 1920s quota system restricted EVERYONE who wasn't from Western Europe. They weren't specifically targeted at Asians at all.
Yes, considering most of the anti-miscegenation laws that specifically banned Asians had repealed by the late 1950s, with the last few holdouts either repealing or failing to enforce the law by 1962. Most of the states where those laws had previously existed had already stopped enforcing them long before that.
OTOH, Alabama didn't get around to repealing its anti-black miscegenation laws until 1999 (and then with only 60% voting to repeal). To be fair, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1967... about a year before Plato's Stepchildren.
Thus I repeat: nobody cared.
Unless you believe I'm going to find a list of "Asian only" bathrooms in 1960s Mississippi, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. It's clear that America's collective attitude towards Asian-Americans wasn't particularly enlightened in the 1960s, but that's a far, FAR different issue than the cultural stigma at which "Plato's Stepchildren" was deliberately thrown.
So "Asians were among the targets" is a meaningful distinction from their being "specifically targeted" to you?
So, you believe that because there weren't anti-miscegenation laws in force, that's the actual equivalent of nobody caring?
Wait, no you don't:
No kidding. There's an understatement.
And on that grounds, nor do I believe that you believe Asians not living under the strict equivalent of Jim Crow means they weren't subject to racial prejudice, which would have to be the case for your "nobody cared" statement to really mean anything. This is you shifting goalposts again to avoid admitting error, only this time on an issue of actual social substance.
It's just silly, man. Don't do it. That's the kind of thing that damages credibility.
I guess I should have been clearer: I'm not talking about relatively minor changes here. Solely for the sake of making a point, I mean a complete reversal in every important way, particularly moral values and the like.
Fortunately that isn't possible.
My objections to ST09 are the exact opposite of nitpicking or over-analyzing. I'm not talking about the colour of the nacelles or the size of the ship. I am talking about a core aspect of TOS's ethos. Why would anyone have a major problem with minor issues?
Yes, because "social bias" is the main reason people thought Star Trek was childish....
Yep. It HAS to be social bias.
Well, you've convinced me. By the way, circumstantial evidence suggests that scene is from a Mudd episode. If so, no wonder I barely remember it.
I knew you would say that
As mentioned above that sort of change is not the situation I was suggesting. I just assumed SF fans would grasp the magnitude and immediacy of change I had in mind.
Anyway lets not go overboard here and assume I regard ST as some sort of religion. I have not, for example, launched a Jihad against anyone (recently).
On the other hand, the convenient cliché that TOS is just a TV show (as Dennis suggests), is of course not actually true, any more than the Bible is just a book. I'm not going to get bent out of shape if anyone thinks it is, but I will protest any contention that everyone should. There are themes in TOS that are legitimately important and worthwhile. No-one should be embarrassed about acknowledging that. Or made to feel embarrassed, for that matter.
Well my point is that there is probably more than one reason it doesn't remind you of that world.
Perhaps, but that's an issue I am not addressing. I was just pointing out that it not always possible to separate the fun side of something (Anything actually. A spouse was just an example. Don't read too much into it.) from its more serious considerations. Particularly not where they are in conflict.
Interesting. It would seem that JJ and the writers disagree with you because while STiD may not really be my favorite Trek, it didn't have the problem the first one did. In fact in some ways it did go back to the kind of values TOS was known for and with no bad side effects you seem to be worried about.
It already did.
Already that's starting to sound as though such people are not saying "Star Trek was NEVER about action/adventure". My guess is it is equally possible they wouldn't claim all episodes were overflowing with social relevance either, but without any links ... .
Oh come on - whenever there's any talk of 'Star Trek' in the media, they always bring up how 'socially relevant' ; and usually talk about 'the first inter-racial kiss' (from "Plato's Stepchildren") although they always take the kiss out of context in that it really wasn't a plot point for the actual story being told; and in context, Kirk and Uhura are FORCED to kiss by the Platonians.Well, in my experience, there seem to have been far more frequent attempts to down play or even ignore the ethical side of TOS than there have been attempts to over emphasis it. On the other hand I can't recall ever having seen anyone claim it has no action adventure elements. That would indeed be laughable.
I was thinking of forums like this one but its nice to hear the balance is redressed a little in the general media.
Since I get the feeling you are more of the action adventure persuasion, I can understand why you feel like that. But since I also value the message of hope for the future (etc) implicit in much of TOS, I would regard ST09 as "anti-Trek" (despite the healing hands of time). STiD however is, relatively speaking, a massive improvement in that department, in my view
What? Just because I mention that Star Trek was as much 'action/adventure' as it was 'social commentary' I'm watching it just for the 'action/adventure'? Wow.
If you had actually said that in the post I replied to (my apologies if you said it elsewhere), I would have agreed with you. but you wrote: "... both films DID do a good job of incorporating everything that made the original TOS enjoyable for me over the years."
Lets just say I don't share that opinion, at least concerning the first one.
I'm not really getting as sense of what you're trying to say here.
Ricky Ricardo is Cuban, that makes him Hispanic, not White.
It's funny, you'll see people complain about Cumberbatch playing Khan, because Ricardo Montalbon (A mexican Citizen with Castillian Spaniard Ancestry) wasn't White, but, then you'll see people turn around and Defend the "First Interracial Kiss", because Ricky Ricardo was White? Desi Arnaz was darker complected then Ricardo Montalbon.
Half the United States White Population today still fears "the watering down of the White Race due to all The Mexicans and Cubans immigrating"
And Oriental Asians aren't even in the Racial Class of Caucasian, so, they are most definitely defined as a separate race
It's funny, you'll see people complain about Cumberbatch playing Khan, because Ricardo Montalbon (A mexican Citizen with Castillian Spaniard Ancestry) wasn't White, but, then you'll see people turn around and Defend the "First Interracial Kiss", because Ricky Ricardo was White? Desi Arnaz was darker complected then Ricardo Montalbon.
Half the United States White Population today still fears "the watering down of the White Race due to all The Mexicans and Cubans immigrating"
And Oriental Asians aren't even in the Racial Class of Caucasian, so, they are most definitely defined as a separate race
Correction: Ricky Ricardo was a WHITE Cuban. That is a substantive difference even today; it was an ENORMOUS difference in the 1950s.
Because that's not what "interracial" actually means. You don't point at an Irish man with a Norwegian woman and say "Look at that interracial couple." That's not what that means.
And again, we're talking about the 1950s and 60s, a time when "Hispanic" wasn't even a known category.
You honestly can't tell the difference between "laws in force against Asian immigration" and "laws in force against immigration from everyone except Western Europeans"?
You opened the door for that by quoting immigration law as an example of anti-Asian racism. Trouble is we're talking about interracial romance, not immigration.
As a matter of history, it has always been much easier to pass laws than repeal them. Relationships between whites and so-called "Orientals" had become socially acceptable by the 1950s to the point that lifting the ban made political sense, plus those states were able to do so VOLUNTARILY by ordinary legislative action (IOW, the people in those states collectively decided there was nothing wrong with marrying orientals).
Compare with Mississippi, which didn't lift the ban on black-white marriages until 1984, fifteen years after the Supreme Court had already struck the law down as unconstitutional. Incidentally, it took them three tries to get it repealed; two attempts in the 1970s, a majority voted NOT to repeal it.
It isn't, really. Many Americans -- particularly in the south -- had never SEEN an Asian and knew next to nothing about them other than what they saw on TV (the depiction of which was equally unenlightened, this being TV and all).
Of course they were. So were Jews, Italians, Irish and Poles.
There's racial prejudice, and then there's Jim Crow. Unless you're trying to tell me that Asians men could be beaten and lynched for dating white women, do not pretend they are the same thing.
So yes, a white man kissing a hot black woman would be a big fucking deal in the 1960s. White man kissing a hot Asian woman? Not so much.
There's no goalpost to shift. Jim Crow isn't even on the same FIELD as the one you're aiming at, and it is THAT degree of racial prejudice that Kirk+Uhura slammed into.
You might as well be comparing the Boy Scouts to the Waffen SS just because they both don't allow gay members.
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Yeah, that's exactly what I thought you meant.
Because "TOS's ethos" were not so well developed OR consistent -- or even so important -- for them to be considered "major."
By your own analogy: it's like your wife suddenly deciding that there's nothing wrong with violent video games after all (and therefore is finally interested in playing Grand Theft Auto V). To the same extent that most marriages probably aren't based on mutual hatred of videogame violence, most fans appreciation of Star Trek isn't based on its "ethos."
Well, you've convinced me. By the way, circumstantial evidence suggests that scene is from a Mudd episode. If so, no wonder I barely remember it.
^ That's an exact quote, by the way.
Also, for someone who "claims" to be a "true fan" of Star Trek I'm amazed you don't remember this one!
The Liar's Paradox is such a famous logic problem that my college textbooks actually cited this episode as the archetypical example:"I'm a liar! Everything I say is a lie!"
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So, called out for pretending anti-Asian racial prejudice was a non-issue by trying to shift the argument to Jim Crow, you... double down on shifting the argument to Jim Crow, all the while protesting that you totally aren't shifting goalposts.
If you actually believe that tracks as any kind of honest or sensible argument, there's nothing left to say.
Racial prejudice against asians in the 1960s (or for that matter, against non-western Europeans) was NOT so intense or so socially ingrained for anyone but the most fringe white supremacists to be bothered by a white man kissing an Asian woman.
There's no "shift." Nichelle Nichols is a black woman; if she and Shatner had been at a bus station in Mississippi instead of the set of a TV show, they'd have run a substantial risk of being dragged away and shot. People had been brutally murdered for doing what Nichelle Nichols did in "Plato's Stepchildren"; prejudice against Asian immigrants was never EVER that intense, and had already started to decline more than a decade earlier.
It's not "moving the goalposts." They are not the same thing.
Interracial has absolutely nothing to do with Controversy or how upset someone would be. France and Shatner or France and any other White Man kissing, is an Interracial Kiss, regardless of how you try to parse it and say no one cared.
And again, Montalban is of White European Heritage, he is much more of a White Man then Desi Arnaz.
Yes, Kirk/Uhura was the first Black/White kiss on Scripted American Television, but, not the first Interracial Kiss.
And, truth be told, I personally don't like the fact, that we use the word Race to segregate White, Black, Oriental Asian, etc )But, that's the way the word is used and what it means, so, there really isn't any choice). We're all the same Race, The Human Race, and we should reserve "Separating People by Race", for when we have a Race other than The Human Race to consider.
I'm sure you are not.
I was reading at the end of this thread and saw that it had gone off topic quite a bit so I'll chime in with my thoughts about STID.
I was ready to put it in the top 3 with FC and TWOK until the ending. That's how much I enjoyed it.
But me personally, just couldn't get past the incredible-spock tiraid and the rip-off reversal in the engine core.
Glad you enjoyed it. Star Trek has endured worse.
So why DID anyone care about the Kirk+Uhura scene, if it's all the same anyway?
And yet if Ricardo Montalban had been kissing Desi Arnaz, I have to think that would be a rather groundbreaking moment in television history for reasons that have nothing to do with their race.
No we're not. Any more than we're all the same height. Race is only socially relevant when a large and influential social movement decides that certain races in particular should be singled out for special treatment or special punishment, and it is entirely because of the existence and continued widespread political influence of such people that race is anything more than a phenotypical descriptor.
Pasi Nurminen
Lieutenant Commander
Race does not have anything to do with "phenotypical descriptors."
That's almost the ONLY thing it has to do with.
Especially since most of the time you cannot specifically tell someone's ETHNICITY just by looking at them, which is why the racial groupings are as arbitrary as they are.
So if I wanted to describe Jean Luc Picard, I would call him "the tallish bald white guy in the red uniform." If I wanted to describe Geordi, I'd call him "the short black guy with a visor across his eyes and the yellow uniform." If I wanted to describe Chief O'Brien, I'd call him "The heavy-set red headed guy in the yellow shirt, looks Irish maybe." And somebody who'd never seen any of these people would be able to turn on Star Trek and immediately know who I was talking about.
On the other hand, if you set down to watch Star Trek Into Darkness and I told you "Wow that Puerto Rican girl is cute!" would you immediately realize I was talking about Uhura?
I didn't say I have an issue with tracking/monitoring and preventing advantages/disadvantages based upon Skin Color. What I said is that I am not in favor of using the same word "Race" to describe the entire Population (Human Race) and also to describe Skin Color (Black Race, White Race). It gives Racists, IMHO, more power to influence their young to continue in their Racist mindsets. It makes it easier to convince someone naive, that there is an actual difference between a White Man and a Black Man. I would prefer it if the sub-categories based upon Skin Color used a different word than the word used to Describe the entire Population (For Example, The Human Race is made of Black Ethnicity, White Ethnicity, Oriental Asian Ethnicity... rather than The Human Race is made up of The Black Race, The White Race...)
I've know some White people who are so Ethnocentric, that they relate Human with being White (sometimes without even meaning anything by it) and I've heard things like 'Humans, and Blacks, and Asians"
And again, Kirk/Uhura was a big deal because it was a big deal to see a White/Black kiss on TV. But, just because it wasn't as big a deal to see France Nuyen kissing a White Man, doesn't mean it wasn't an Interracial Kiss. Though, I think you're overstating how little a deal it was. WWII ended barely more than 20 years earlierthen these kisses we're talking about, it's been double that time since Black Civil Rights were granted, and we've still got a ways to go. I don't think you say people got over their "hatred/Bigotry of Asians in such a short time when after 50 years there's still work to be done with regards to bigotry of Blacks(A racist isn't going to care if an Asian is Japanese or Chinese, or any other Nationality
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