I think it’s actually the opposite in some ways because of the setting. Bashir is the perfect example. A bit stereotyped (everyone written as being from outside California was...even Alaskan Riker when it cropped up.) but fundamentally Bashir was Anglo of middle eastern/Asian descent. That his dad was basically a cockney wide boy, while he was more ‘posh’ because of his parents pressures was spot on. And he was drinking mates with a non officer Irishman! Yes, shades of old war films, that they played up on, but what it said was ‘people are people’ and just get on with things. Which is basically how real diverse cultures work. If nationality, ethnicity, and gender, of human beings no longer leads to any discrimination in the future, why would it be in the foreground all the time? It really wouldn’t be. It’s just important to have them there doing their thing for audiences now.
Even DSC does that. I did not see any markers of Burnhams ethnicity, or Ash, or frankly anyone else (two brits in the cast had to yankwash their accents though...) they are just there, doing their thing.
That’s why it works different for Trek. There’s an argument everyone becomes generically American, that’s certainly harder to ignore these days. And goodness knows the trend for lionised stereotypical Irish was flowing in the nineties. Look at Voyagers holodeck episodes. But generally, these things are not a big deal in Trek. Which is good. Because in Trek, those things don’t matter anymore, because of the setting. The idea that ethnicity comes with some great built in cultural program is a nonsense, and anyone growing up in an actually diverse place can tell you that. My best mate goes to folk music concerts, practices broadsword and medieval fighting, drinks real ale etc. He’s of black Caribbean extraction. It’s extremely likely there’s more MOBO in my music collection than his. Another acquaintance is so stereotypically Cockney it borders on the offensive...Pie and Mash, West Ham, Chas and Dave, Rhyming slang. He’s in his twenties and his parents are both from Portugal. Granted, in his case, there’s a feeling of someone trying too hard to make themselves an image, but he’s young. We do that when we’re young.
If they were characters in a modern TV drama, they would be criticised for not having their cultures represented. Which misses the point. The folk music, or the pie and mash...it is their culture. They grew up here in London, England, what sane person gives two figs about their genetics or skin colour? Sod that. This is their culture, and while I am sure someone can see the parallels with the daft idea of ‘cultural appropriation’ (as it has become, not as it was...there’s a difference between being nasty about a culture and just adopting it as part of your own identity) somewhere, it’s disgusting anyone would want to force people into some little walled flowerbed where they can only embrace a culture they have never experienced from hundreds of miles away just because of the melanin percentage in their skin, or who their ancestors were.
Harry Kim plays classical music and is a bit soppy. Should we have do some martial arts instead? We all saw how well poor Chakotay worked out trying to be generic Native American guy. Apparently every white male is represented by any other white male on screen. Which also a nonsense.
Nah.
Trek does it right by not making an issue out of the issue, and by simply getting on with stuff. As it should be in its optimistic future.
