Code of Honor - Racist?

[NigellaDeanna20]

Season 1, Episode 3 of TNG has been deemed racist by the Mission Log podcast. According to them, many of TNG cast have disowned the episode.

Is this true?
I've never viewed this episode as being racist myself.
I live in the UK and racism has never been a thing in my life. It is something I have heard about but never witnessed first hand.

On the other hand I know that the US continues to suffer with racism and that this episode my hit more sensitive nerves.
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Is Code of Honor truly racist? Have I been missing something all these years? Yes, it's a planet of black people. Yes, they have a backward societal view compared to Humans of the 24th century. So what? We've been to planets with white people with backwards views in the past. Are they racist to white people? If the show had been cast with white actors painted blue would it have been OK? If it were so racist why was it made? Why did the cast, Gene Roddenberry, and guest actors commit to the show?

I suppose it completely depends on your own point of view. For me, I personally have never seen this episode as racist although I can also see why a lot of people would see this episode as such.

 

[cgervasi]

In our own history men owned the land and women often married for financial security. I saw this episode as a reverse of that.

It seemed, though, like this was a technicality. It seemed like the men ran things and women came with wealth like a dowery. I wonder if they had intended to make the women be in charge in an early conception.

 

[stardream]

In our own history men owned the land and women often married for financial security. I saw this episode as a reverse of that.

In the culture of my dad's people it was the women who owned the land and had the rights to the children. They belonged to her Clan. She also decided when the marriage ended. There was always at least one woman who sat on the tribal council.

Then the Europeans came and spoiled all that although things are starting to come back around.

 

[Mojochi]

I wouldn't go so far as to call it racist. It was culturally insensitive. It's not like it was done intentionally. A series of bad decisions ended up producing a rather negatively stereotyped presentation. Hell, it wasn't until those actors started hamming up the cliche "African" voices that it all started reeking of racist stereotypes. It was like watching outtakes from Coming To America.

Until then, it was just your garden variety Star Trek backwards planet shtick. Dimwitted casting & bad acting choices, coupled with that kind of story was just the right mix of wrongs to make it disastrous

 

[JoeZhang]

I live in the UK and racism has never been a thing in my life.

Say what now? The UK is a socialist utopia with no racism?

 

[T'Girl]

^ As opposed to a racist utopia with no socialism.

 

[t_smitts]

Seems like this thread went off on a rather long tangent, but I'm not sure if anyone's pointed out that the decision to depcit the Ligonians all black was a decision of the director, not the writers. Apparently, that and some racist remarks on set caused Roddenberry to sack him.

And, yes, the stereotypically tribal look and attitudes are really embarrassing.

In retrospect it's surprising that probably the most racially insensitive episode of Star Trek ever wasn't on the series that was made in the 60's.

 

[T'Girl]

It's often the director who selects the actors for a role, the script left the majority of the parts undefined in terms of race. And as far as the "look," it was middle eastern, not tribal.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I wonder if Lutan ever got his Groove back?

In Game of Thrones, or Reign, after the mastermind gets trounced, a month later they've wormed their way to the top again but now they're super pissed as well.

 

[Granola Gwen]

Yeah I'd say it mostly is, but I'm sure people might find it less racist if it was based off a white country.

 

[velour]

I wonder if Lutan ever got his Groove back?

Perhaps what also may have been perceived as racist was the stereotype of the oversexed black man out to steal the white man's women.

That aspect of the story reminded me of the scene in Blazing Saddles, where Cleavon Little's character asks "where are the white women at?"

 

[T'Girl]

Perhaps what also may have been perceived as racist was the stereotype of the oversexed black man out to steal the white man's women

Thing is, Lutan didn't grab Tasha because he found her sexually attractive, he saw her fighting skills and wanted to arrange events so that Tasha would kill his wife, thereby giving Lutan power and wealth. Nothing in the episode suggests that Lutan was a "oversexed Black man," or that his selection of Tasha was because she was White.

This next might in itself seem to be racist, but I've noticed through the years that people who would defend this episode (as I'm basically doing) tend to be people of color, while those to who find it racist for the most part are White. There are exceptions, and this is a observation from face to face discussions.

Has anyone else picked up on this?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Even at the time, and I was a child mind you, I found it off how they insisted on using their own transporter, and then crowing about how smart they are for inventing the transporter themselves, when what they had was at least 200 years less advanced than what the Enterprise was using, that Picard could probably go into detail explaining the science cancer that first generation transporters smear across their users bodies, that his transporter wouldn't.

It's like the writer was overcompensating to make the story less racist, but it backfired terribly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharyn_Powers

 

[inflatabledalek]

Seems like this thread went off on a rather long tangent, but I'm not sure if anyone's pointed out that the decision to depcit the Ligonians all black was a decision of the director, not the writers. Apparently, that and some racist remarks on set caused Roddenberry to sack him.

I've always wondered how fair it was that it's the director of this episode that gets all the blame for what went wrong, after all, there were people higher up the food chain than him who signed off on everything during pre-production even even if the choices were originally his.

I was interested to learn last year that there's an early episode of Stargate from the one of the writers of Code of Honor that's basically exactly the same script with all the same problems and equally derided by fans of that show. The main difference being that it's racist against Asians rather than black people.

I don't know how fair an assessment that is (though I guess we have SG1 fans here who can clarify it), but it sounds like the director's main contribution was to take an already horribly racist script and just make it racist against a different ethnic group from that intended through his casting.

Though I suppose the end result does end up slightly more racist than it might otherwise as the dialogue treating the planet as a generic Asian culture is still in there even though that's not what was on screen.

Either way it sounds like a clusterfuck that started first and foremost with the scrip, poor direction choices just didn't help.

 

[t_smitts]

Seems like this thread went off on a rather long tangent, but I'm not sure if anyone's pointed out that the decision to depcit the Ligonians all black was a decision of the director, not the writers. Apparently, that and some racist remarks on set caused Roddenberry to sack him.

I've always wondered how fair it was that it's the director of this episode that gets all the blame for what went wrong, after all, there were people higher up the food chain than him who signed off on everything during pre-production even even if the choices were originally his.

I was interested to learn last year that there's an early episode of Stargate from the one of the writers of Code of Honor that's basically exactly the same script with all the same problems and equally derided by fans of that show. The main difference being that it's racist against Asians rather than black people.

I don't know how fair an assessment that is (though I guess we have SG1 fans here who can clarify it), but it sounds like the director's main contribution was to take an already horribly racist script and just make it racist against a different ethnic group from that intended through his casting.

Though I suppose the end result does end up slightly more racist than it might otherwise as the dialogue treating the planet as a generic Asian culture is still in there even though that's not what was on screen.

Either way it sounds like a clusterfuck that started first and foremost with the scrip, poor direction choices just didn't help.

I didn't know about the Stargate thing. (According to Memory Alpha, the episode was "Emancipation"). It also says the main guy's guards in the TNG episode were specifically written as "African", though it provides no link to back this up, so I don't know if it's true.

I haven't really seen SG1 and I can't really speak to that episode, so I don't know.

I will say that, having written a few things myself, I do notice some themes appearing repeatedly in various things I've written, without really meaning to.

 

[Amaraen]

I would think "misguided" more than "racist". The producers may have been trying to show something different than the usual purely Caucasian galaxy we normally are privy too. It just did not seem to work out that way. If the planet had been everyone as criminals and degenerates, then that would definitely have been very racist. In this episode it seemed that they were trying to show the world as having a more refined culture, but it did not really work.

 

[cgervasi]

Perhaps what also may have been perceived as racist was the stereotype of the oversexed black man out to steal the white man's women

Thing is, Lutan didn't grab Tasha because he found her sexually attractive, he saw her fighting skills and wanted to arrange events so that Tasha would kill his wife, thereby giving Lutan power and wealth. Nothing in the episode suggests that Lutan was a "oversexed Black man," or that his selection of Tasha was because she was White.

Has anyone else picked up on this?

This is an interesting comment. Maybe the view of racism says something about our racist notions.

It makes me wish those people who make fan fic videos of Star Trek would make one where they act out this script but with the races and maybe even the sexes changed. Imagine Lutan being a light-skinned young queen who fancies Yar, a foreign dark-skinned woman. She goads the men into a fight to the death. It could be the same story but take a on a different meaning, just because of our notions of race and sex.

 

[Maurice]

The Teaser for "Code of Honor" says:

"There are four extremely tall, elegant Black Guards who form a square."

Why specify this for the guards (non-speaking roles) and not the rest of the characters? I suspect the intention of the shooting script was that the Ligonian people be black. It really makes no sense to specify the race in this context otherwise.

 

[Melakon]

It really makes no sense to specify the race in this context otherwise.

Often in those television days, unless a script specifically mentioned a character's race, roles were usually cast white. If Lutan and the other guest supports had been white, those black guards might have looked like just another kind of subservient role only available to minorities in earlier times.

 

[Maurice]

It really makes no sense to specify the race in this context otherwise.

Often in those television days, unless a script specifically mentioned a character's race, roles were usually cast white. If Lutan and the other guest supports had been white, those black guards might have looked like just another kind of subservient role only available to minorities in earlier times.

I don't know what point you're trying to make here. Are you suggesting that "Black Guards" meant the guards were specified as black and the assumption would be that everyone else cast would be white?