So if the shows are Federation propaganda, just how much worse were the actual events of "In the Pale Moonlight" on DS9?
Are we victims of Federation propaganda?
- Thread starter Melakon
- Start date
Sisko was making Jambalaya out of Romulan orphans.
Well, it could be that TOS was the propaganda of an earlier era, and DS9 the fiction of a later era that tried to be more forthright about its society's mistakes -- like the difference between old movies that portray American Indians as primitive savages to be fought by noble cowboys and cavalrymen and more modern ones that acknowledge the crimes committed against them in the colonization of the US.
I agree completely. I appreciate the cleverness of the propaganda interpretation but it undermines the hopeful future aspect of the show. For me, Star Trek has always been a hopeful escape, an inspiration to be more thoughtful and open-minded. The propaganda interpretation takes us right back to the depressing present.
I have to say that I really dislike this. Especially in the light that TOS was the one that presented humans as not being perfect and us getting to see them out in the universe actually making and admitting when they made mistakes.
It still does not work for me at all. If this has all been 'propaganda' aimed at praising the Federation and discrediting its enemies, then why is the Federation presented as being so flawed? Why are there so many stories about the goodness of its enemies? Why are there so many stories entirely devoted to Quark's mother, who has nothing whatsoever to do with the Federation or its enemies? Why do stories like the Mirror Universe exist, which only serve to cast our propaganda heroes in a bad light?
Most of all, if this is 'propaganda' then who is supposed to be the target? And don't say we are, because if you're going to drag real world viewers into the equation then this entire exercise of redefining the series based on itself is completely pointless. I mean, really, as propaganda goes, ST is pretty terrible. It certainly wouldn't convince anyone outside the Federation who was also hearing news stories about oppression or starvation or whatever in the Federation. People inside the Federation would mostly know it was a lie (if it was a lie). Even if they happened to live in a nicer part of the Federation, there'd definitely be some undercurrent of suspicion in that type of society, and there's way too much that's clearly made up in the stories for anyone in that situation to believe them.
Ultimately - maybe with a little stretching, you could make this theory sound moderately applicable to TOS. But all of Star Trek? No. It just does not work.
but isn't that somewhat true even today, where a persons accomplishments can be played up a bit because it can be good for things i.e morale.
I suspect Starfleet PR could painted a positive spin on Kirk's demotion in TVH. something like
"In light of Geneis and following his success in resolving the whale probe incident, former Admiral James T. Kirk will once more resume the role as Captain of the latest ship to bear the name Enterprise. We wish Captain Kirk and his crew well."
Here are some anti-Federation rants from other cultures. Some of it is exaggeration, but some of them make you think:
Actually there are a lot more of these, this is just a small sample.
Most of the time, the rants are ignored, but with certain ones, the human being talked to is left speechless, suggesting the alien had a point.
Actually there are a lot more of these, this is just a small sample.
Most of the time, the rants are ignored, but with certain ones, the human being talked to is left speechless, suggesting the alien had a point.
Another dupe!
So Captain Sulu happens to be involved with the illegal construction of a Weapon of mass destruction and then a few years later, he's on a mission "cataloging gaseous planetary anomalies" and Praxus blows up... jeez that is an amazing coincidence.
You'll be telling me next you believe that the borg are a real threat to the Federation rather than a rather useful way to increase the military budget.
So when Picard says 20th century humans are savages it's smug, but when Quark says it it's insightful? 
Let's bear in mind that Quark comes from a civilization that enslaves the entire female half of its population, which is equally 'savage' as the human history he rants about.
If you're going to hold individuals responsible for the barbaric actions of their ancestors from centuries ago, everybody is evil.
DS9's always poking the flaws beneath the surface of the utopian Federation and particularly with regards to section 31 portrays a 'See no evil' attitude, which could also describe the TNG interpretation of the prime directive.
As for the 'homo sapiens only' remark, ever think that perhaps if the show is an edited version of Kirk's logs, it was edited to increase the concentration of humans (For production/cost saving reasons) and the actual Enterprise was a far smaller percentage human?
We know from a production standpoint that the reason a majority of the people we see are human is that it's simply cheaper, but particularly in DS9, offscreen characters are usually aliens.
The whole point of Star Trek is that all the awful things you hear about on the news and feel powerless to do anything about don't happen anymore because humans finally decided to stop murdering each other over petty bullshit. I tend to think Roddenberry's comments about Kirk's logs was meant to say that the events were dramatized to focus on Kirk and the central action, not that they were actually covering up some kind of horrible truth that the Enterprise were on a propagandistic cultural hegemony campaign.
Just because the best TV shows on right now are depressing and reveal the evil of human nature doesn't mean we have to reinterpret all television shows to be that way.
Let's bear in mind that Quark comes from a civilization that enslaves the entire female half of its population, which is equally 'savage' as the human history he rants about. If you're going to hold individuals responsible for the barbaric actions of their ancestors from centuries ago, everybody is evil.
DS9's always poking the flaws beneath the surface of the utopian Federation and particularly with regards to section 31 portrays a 'See no evil' attitude, which could also describe the TNG interpretation of the prime directive.
As for the 'homo sapiens only' remark, ever think that perhaps if the show is an edited version of Kirk's logs, it was edited to increase the concentration of humans (For production/cost saving reasons) and the actual Enterprise was a far smaller percentage human?
We know from a production standpoint that the reason a majority of the people we see are human is that it's simply cheaper, but particularly in DS9, offscreen characters are usually aliens.
The whole point of Star Trek is that all the awful things you hear about on the news and feel powerless to do anything about don't happen anymore because humans finally decided to stop murdering each other over petty bullshit. I tend to think Roddenberry's comments about Kirk's logs was meant to say that the events were dramatized to focus on Kirk and the central action, not that they were actually covering up some kind of horrible truth that the Enterprise were on a propagandistic cultural hegemony campaign.
Just because the best TV shows on right now are depressing and reveal the evil of human nature doesn't mean we have to reinterpret all television shows to be that way.
I don't think anyone's suggesting that we should interpret Trek that way. It's just a fun hypothetical: What if it were the case? Roddenberry established the conceit that ST was a dramatization of "actual" events, so that leads the imaginative mind to examine what the ramifications might be if that were so. And one of those is that its presentation of things might be distorted for propaganda. It's just a thought experiment as an intellectual exercise, not a serious proposal for how ST ought to be interpreted. It's no more serious than the more common kinds of thought experiment like "Who would win, the Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon?" But it is a fresher "what if" question, and an interesting one to play around with, because it lets us explore the nature of propaganda as a social phenomenon.
As I already suggested, maybe TOS was from a more propagandistic era and DS9 was the media of a later, postmodern era where the entertainment industry was freer to be more honest and critical of society. Much like the difference between 1940s American movies and 1970s American movies, say.
Do they really, though? If anything, I'd think that showing an "evil opposite" universe just serves to cast the real universe as more intrinsically "good."
Hey, there's a thought. Jerome Bixby's original proposal for the episode wasn't about an evil alternate universe at all, just one where history had gone slightly differently. What if the "true story" was that version of events, and the makers of the fictional account decided to punch things up and make the alternate universe more lurid?
On the contrary, propaganda is very good at convincing people of lies about their own society. People who watch FOX News are less informed about the truth of current events in the world than people who watch no news at all. They don't know that what they're being sold as news about the state of their nation is a pack of lies constructed to serve the agendas of the rich and the bigoted, because they don't get exposed to enough alternative sources of information, or aren't inclined to believe what those other sources say because they find the propaganda more persuasive. The same goes for the propaganda engines in plenty of other nations. Propaganda is very much about controlling and manipulating the information that your own population is exposed to, so that you can make them believe what you want them to believe about their own nation and their own government. Convincing people in other nations is secondary. It's harder to do because those people have their own governments and their own information sources that are harder for you to control.
And of course there are things that are made up, but that doesn't matter. Fiction is a powerful propaganda tool. It's not about convincing people that the specific characters and events they're being shown are real -- it's about convincing them that the ideas and values being expressed are real.
For instance, I'm currently listening to the old Adventures of Superman radio serial on the Internet Archive, and the 1946 episodes I've been hearing in recent weeks are a good illustration of how propaganda can be used positively. There's a major ongoing thread in that phase of the series about Superman fighting racial and religious intolerance. At first it was just opening narration touting Superman as a "courageous fighter against hate and bigotry" without much connection to the stories, but then they started making nearly every other storyline about Superman and his allies taking on racists and hate groups, one of which was closely modeled on the Ku Klux Klan (with the storyline written by a journalist who'd infiltrated the Klan and used the serial to demystify them and expose their secret rituals -- though the amount of exposure has been exaggerated in historical reports to include "secret codes" that weren't actually part of the stories). It was very propagandistic, with characters constantly making speeches about how racial and religious bigotry were un-American, how the country was founded by people of foreign origin, how stupid it was to hate people for going to a different church, etc. -- and it painted most of the villains running these hate groups as frauds who were deliberately propagating their racist ideology as lies to manipulate the ignorant and gain power, the way Hitler had done in Germany. The show certainly wasn't trying to convince people that Superman and the Daily Planet actually existed, but it was very emphatically trying to convince people that hate groups were bad and tolerance was good -- as well as doing stories tackling other important issues of the day like government corruption and juvenile delinquency. It's really startling how socially activist the show became after the war. Probably it's an outgrowth of how all American media became propaganda engines in support of WWII while it was going on. Broadcasters and studios got so good at using fiction to mobilize the hearts and minds of the American people to action for a cause that they just kept on doing it for other causes.
So when Picard says 20th century humans are savages it's smug, but when Quark says it it's insightful?
If you're going to hold individuals responsible for the barbaric actions of their ancestors from centuries ago, everybody is evil.
But that's the point-- Quark and others probably said it because they think humans are smug. They think human characters like Picard, Sisko and others are self righteous and think some aliens are morally beneath them.
Out of universe, maybe, but inside it leaves a lot of questions. Especially things that take place outside the log recorder's knowledge that we see happening.
Aztebur's criticism was about terminology and narrow minded thinking--24th century humans automatically assume that the universe revolves around the "human" way.
Even the comments of Kirk's crew and Starfleet were disturbing. The Klingons were called the "alien trash of the galaxy"--if she heard all of that, that would of convinced her entirely.
Obrien once referred to an alien girl as "that" to her face. What was that all about?
Agreed on that. Today's shows are raunchy and even the 'good' characters at best have shades of grey.
But ironically, that may be the reason why they're so popular --it's different.
I think the reasoning behind that is, why show the unrealistic, '100% moral all the time' type of characters, when get characters that curse, make dumb mistakes, indulge and whatever?
Game of thrones is hot property now, because it's interesting.
You have to wonder if a future trek show is going to try imitate this formula. I don't see a new series with a TNG style formula working anymore.
Eddington's rants are plainly self-serving non-sense. This is a man who seriously compares the Federation to the Borg Collective. I mean, if the feds are as bad as the borg then there is no way that they could continue to coexist with the klingons and the romulans for more than a century. Either one side or the other would be dead and gone long before the TNG timeline.
He also conveniently ignores that the Maquis routinely steal from the Federation and their entire reason for existence is to start a war between the Federation and the Cardassians.
Azetbur never really appears to have any actual insight into the Federation at all. Has she ever even met a human before? We don't really know, but I certainly didn't get that impression. The claim that the Federation is a homo sapiens only club is false on the face of it - aside from the many different member worlds, you only have to look at the Diplomatic corps, the Fed. Council and the known federation presidents to see lots of alien faces. Starfleet does appear to a disturbingly large extent to be a homo sapiens only club. Probably it is less worse than it looks, since there are several species in the federation that look just like humans but are unrelated. But it is still strange that so few more obvious aliens enlist.
The complaint about 'inalienable human rights' is insanely idiotic. Language is quirky and does not lend itself to constantly being reformulated just because some people outside the language area don't like it. I would bet the entire federation that Klingonese has its own fair share of rote phrases that are wildly ethnocentric, just like the english language does.
Quark is really the only one in this list that actually has a point, but it's a point that stops far short of the Federation being some kind of monolithic conspiracy to absorb all life against its will.
Finn's attack on human 'civilization' is also idiotic. The comfort of the Federation is very clearly not a product of ancient human wars. Ancient human wars nearly destroyed the earth before the Federation even existed. It was only when humans turned away from constant warfare (and turned their neighbours away from it as well) that the Federation became possible.
I especially like the part about 'good and noble societies' bombing civilians in war. It's very clearly aimed at us - the modern american audience - because we do prefer to think of ourselves as good and noble. Yet as a comment towards the Federation it seems completely misplaced. I imagine the Federation would consider EVERY society which condones bombing civilians - including us - to be barbaric.
TOS shows the Federation failing in a number of ways. Starvation, disease - not to mention the blatantly insane commanding officers. It's less confrontational than DS9, but it's still pretty terrible propaganda.
Yes, they do. That is captain Kirk, our hero, randomly killing people with his magic mirror. If they were intended as evil opposite to make our heroes look better, then they should not have been alternative versions of our heroes.
It's possible when a) the state of your nation is still normal enough for most people not to notice major problems first hand (the posts in this thread seem to suggest that the 'real' Federation should be far beyond this point) and b) the propaganda is coming from a supposedly respectable *news* source. Dramatized propaganda will have a far different set of requirements to be effective, since it is automatically conceding the fact that it isn't real. Generally speaking, it will work best to stiffen the resolve of people that already believe you, not to convince anyone else that you're right.
Which brings up the strange circumstances of Lt. Galloway's death in "The Omega Glory" (written by Gene Roddenberry).
Captain Tracey was in desperate need of phasers to fight off the Yangs. Lt. Galloway had been severely wounded, but when he slowly went for his phaser and Tracey noted that, Tracey immediately vaporized Galloway - and along with him the phaser he needed so badly.
This just doesn't make sense. Neither does Tracey's attempt to suggest Spock is the devil (and Kirk and McCoy are his friends). The Yangs would have killed all of them, and especially Tracey for the Yang massacres with his phaser outside the Kohm village.
Kirk and company including Tracey should have beamed up as soon as possible, but Kirk had to deliver a speech pushing the Yangs in the right direction. A violation of the Prime Directive with Tracey as the scapegoat to justify Kirk's violation?
The portrayal of Tracey in this episode begs for many explanations. Fact remains that his crew was dead, so nobody remained who could vouch for him or say a good word. Timo?
Bob
The stories seem far too even-handed and varied to be propaganda. Some things that did strike me as unrealistic, though, was that Kirk (especially in Season 1) was so self-sacrificing toward his ship and that in TNG Wesley was such a boy genius and, after Season 1, the crew treated him more and more like a co-professional; those were deliberate creative choices to be dramatic if not a little sensationalistic to entertain and, especially in the latter case, inspire the viewers.
OTOH, it's interesting that even on the spin-offs the writers seem to admit or emphasize that Starfleet, if not the Federation, is pretty human-dominated (such as Troi's line "My mother was a Betazed, my father was a Starfleet officer," the latter being a human to be taken as a given), you would think that by the 24th century Starfleet would not be comfortable with it having such an imbalance in its members.
OTOH, it's interesting that even on the spin-offs the writers seem to admit or emphasize that Starfleet, if not the Federation, is pretty human-dominated (such as Troi's line "My mother was a Betazed, my father was a Starfleet officer," the latter being a human to be taken as a given), you would think that by the 24th century Starfleet would not be comfortable with it having such an imbalance in its members.
On the contrary -- propaganda is as much about illustrating the bad behaviors you want to condemn as it is about touting the values you want to endorse. I've talked about the 1946 Superman radio series was using propagandistic methods in a positive way to promote tolerance and equality, and its villains in this era were Americans who threatened the decent values of American society with their racism and hypocrisy, as well as corrupt politicians and officials. The propaganda lay in showing the good, tolerant, honest Americans like Clark Kent and Perry White standing up against the bigoted, corrupt, un-American Americans like the Clan of the Fiery Cross and the corrupt political boss of their state.
Again, the conceit we're playing with is that TOS was a fictionalized version of actual events. So we can assume that captains like Merik and Tracey and people like John Gill actually existed and actually did bad things -- in which case the propaganda goal would be to show the more good, honest, noble Starfleet heroes defeating them, to portray them as rogues who did not represent the values of Starfleet or the Federation as a whole, and possibly even to exaggerate their sins in order that history would remember them as villains.
I'm sorry, but I don't follow your reasoning at all. What else would an evil opposite be? Audiences don't have any trouble telling a hero from his evil twin, because the evil twin clearly behaves in an evil way. So the actions of the evil twin aren't held against the hero in any way. I can't think of anyone who would ever do that.
I just think you're underestimating how effective fictional propaganda has always been in real life. And I think you're oversimplifying it to a question of what is "real." It's not as simple as that. Propaganda is about shaping how people think and feel about things. They may be aware that what they're being shown is fictional or exaggerated, but may not recognize just how it's shaping their emotional responses to certain ideas or groups. Expose people to an idea often enough and it will influence their thinking whether they realize it or not. That's the whole idea behind propaganda.
And a society doesn't have to be an actual dictatorship to have problems it's inclined to cover up with propaganda. I've been using the United States as an example; in many ways we've been the most moral and progressive society in the world, with our championing of democracy and liberty and rights and so forth, but at the same time we've embraced deeply immoral or flawed practices like slavery and genocide and an abusive penal system and one of the worst health-care systems on Earth (though it's getting better in recent years). And those are things our media and fiction have often glossed over in order to paint us in a rosier light. So in my hypothetical, the Federation isn't actually an evil society, it's just a more normal and flawed one than the idealistic version presented in the show.
That's what I get for being too speculative with Captain Tracey here.
But Merrik redeemed himself at the end of "Bread and Circuses" and Professor John Gill admitted to his mistakes.
If one wanted these to be remembered as villains, their good actions would not be mentioned.
Bob
That's what I get for being too speculative with Captain Tracey here.
But Merrik redeemed himself at the end of "Bread and Circuses" and Professor John Gill admitted to his mistakes.
If one wanted these to be remembered as villains, their good actions would not be mentioned.
Bob
Unless your society highly values redemption.
Bad guys finding redemption is part of the process of conveying a moral message. In those Superman radio stories I've talked about, there are instances of people starting out on the wrong side and then recognizing the error of their ways and taking action to repent -- for instance, a member of a lynch mob has second thoughts when he's reminded that the Jewish man they're about to lynch is a veteran who defended his country in WWII, so he turns on the mob and helps the veteran escape. And the weak-willed governor who's been a puppet of the racist political boss gets sick of all the moral compromises and works with Clark Kent to expose the boss, and a sleazebag reporter who'd worked as an accomplice for the boss reaches a point where he's no longer willing to be a party to murder, defies the boss's orders, and ends up murdered himself. And they all get to deliver speeches that reinforce the moral message of the story.
Then of course there's perhaps the most acclaimed piece of wartime propaganda to come out of Hollywood, Casablanca. Rick starts out as an isolationist American wanting to mind his own business and let the rest of the world deal with its own problems, but ends up convinced that he (read: America) has to take a moral stand and commit to the fight against tyranny. And Captain Renault starts out as an amoral collaborator but finally grows a conscience and turns on the Nazis.
Then of course there's perhaps the most acclaimed piece of wartime propaganda to come out of Hollywood, Casablanca. Rick starts out as an isolationist American wanting to mind his own business and let the rest of the world deal with its own problems, but ends up convinced that he (read: America) has to take a moral stand and commit to the fight against tyranny. And Captain Renault starts out as an amoral collaborator but finally grows a conscience and turns on the Nazis.
"Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects."
