That's what I am afraid of.
Do you think LGBT characters will feature more prominently?
- Thread starter Curios_Gelatin
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That's what I am afraid of.
Sad thing is, it almost was. Look at that cast for "The Cage". Roddenberry was never as progressive as his reputation would lead one to believe.
Yes, I've noticed that. I wonder who's idea it was to add Uhura And Sulu to the main characters.
I'd like to be optimistic and think they'll actually be progressive. But that's not good for the bottomline and this isn't art, it's a business. They'll make more money selling plastic phasers than trying to show the full spectrum of humanity.
It is part of the myth of Roddenberry. But he did do some good with TOS and the presentation on it did inspire people and improve the world in ways we'll never fully understand. Beyond it driving people to science and engineering or the actual technology that developed because someone saw it on Star Trek and wanted it to be real. It let people know that they were just as important and that they had just as much to contribute to what it means to be human as anyone else.
Trek could keep doing that, but they don't. So hopefully some other show will do what Trek is afraid to do.
Blunt Talk (Starz) with Patrick Stewart starring had a guest transgender character played by a transgender actress. It was an awesome episode and the character and story were done with style.
Off the top of my head, The Bold and the Beautiful has an African American trans woman major character (played by a cis woman). She's had romance, a big wedding and a baby by a surrogate and regularly is a main character in stories, married into the lead family of the series. This is no minor background character.
It does bug me though when a trans character is played by a cis actor of the same gender. It's just such a safe way to take things and it's awful that trans actors so rarely play trans characters. This happens so frequently that it's shocking when an actual trans actor plays trans.
It does bug me though when a trans character is played by a cis actor of the same gender. It's just such a safe way to take things and it's awful that trans actors so rarely play trans characters. This happens so frequently that it's shocking when an actual trans actor plays trans.
IIRC, it was the sponsors and the network. There's memo reproduced in the Justman & Solo book in which the producers are asked to include more people of color.
I wouldn't be so quick to be pessimistic. A lot of genre stuff--this has been very apparent in DC and Marvel Comics--has been trying to attract younger consumers by presenting a more diverse universe. They're going after people who want/expect to see more than just a bunch of white guys.
It's a decent start. Still I'd like Star Trek to be innovative.
i may steal this for my next argument
cheers
Huh?
TNG had Michael Dorn, LeVar Burton, and Whoopi Goldberg as main cast members who were not white, three major cast members who were female at any given time, featured interracial couples (IE Obrien and Keiko), had a host of guest stars who were of all kinds of ethnicity, and had explored topics that were controversial at the time, including homosexuality. This show debuted almost 30 years ago
DS9 had Avery Brooks, Michael Dorn, Cirroc Lofton, Alex Siddig, and depicted the first African American captain, and the first female first officer as primary characters (not counting the cage), and had an even more diverse main and guest cast members, included controversial topics including sexuality, and even tackled war and the effects it has on society, as well as how governments manipulate people.....something done BEFORE 9/11, but was especially poignant and relevant in the 2000s in a post 9/11 world. This show debuted 23 years ago.
Voyager had the first female captain and chief engineer, first African american as a Vulcan, two Latino cast members (one who portrayed a Native American, though clumsily, but well intentioned), an Asian cast member, and at any given time 3 female lead cast members. It may be fair to say Voyager played it safe compared the shows before it and was not all that ground breaking, but I think it still did tackle some controversial subjects, including sexuality, and its contribution was to promote positive role models through a diverse cast, main and guest. This show debuted 22 years ago.
What these shows had in common was that they pushed the boundaries the best they could. Criticizing them because they didn't have a main LGBT cast member is not a fair thing to do, because not many other shows were doing what where these Star Trek shows were doing, and the social climate in the US, while maybe more accepting than the 1960s, was different than today. I am sure if they were allowed by the producers, executives, and sponsors, Star Trek writers would have happily written in LGBT cast members.
It really irritates me when people bash these shows and hold them to standards of today, when in reality they were groundbreaking for the time in which they were originally shot. Don't blame the shows, blame the era in which the were created.
(EDIT: another thought here: this attitude to criticize Star Trek of the 1980s and 1990s for a lack of main LGBT characters reminds me of the RETROACTIVE criticism Bill Clinton received a few years ago when Obama lifted the ban on gays in the military. People criticized Clinton for not having the "courage" to do it, and instead went with Don't ask, Don't tell. Such revisionists didn't understand how truly progressive Clinton was for doing that, and poltiically speaking, it just was not possible to completely lift the gay ban back then. I know. I was in the military back then, and know how the military was back then! Not to mention, what Obama did would not have been possible had Clinton not taken that step in the first place. Rather than blame Clinton, such critics should have been criticizing the presidents before Clinton (IE Carter, Reagan, Bush), or after (Bush II), for not doing a single thing to help LGB people serve in the military.
::Sigh:: I am sure there will be people 20 years from now who will not praise Obama for allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military, but will criticize him for not opening it up to trans people instead.
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Chekov's accent is not real. I know how real Russian people speak (English) and it's nowhere near the way Chekov does. Besides, though very different from one another Chekov's and nu Chekov's accents are equally fantasist and unrealistic.
You are supporting Awesome Possum's point that those things were safe by the time of TNG and after. It was not as couragous and risky as it was to put a black person on the show in the 60s. Any "exploration" of homosexuality in TNG, DS9 or VOY was heavily disguised and diluted and not put out there as normal, everyday life such as Uhura on the bridge crew.
Plus on DS9 we only see lesbians in the Mirror Universe aka the evil Universe. I'll say that's underhanded as homophobic people can say: "Hey, the lesbians are evil! See?"
The antithesis of being courageous.
Re: Far Beyond the Stars: "If it's a dream, it's not real, and they don't care."
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I don't get it.
I edited it.
I fuck up a lot of my posts, and have to edit most of my stuff a few times before anything seems intelligble.
In far beyond the stars, the idea of a black star ship captain was heresy. Unthinkable! ...But if it was a black kid dreaming about being a star ship captain, then it was funny to the white overlords, because "Ahhhhh... They think they're people."
Benny Russel's "black kid having a dream" to side step white rules about uppity negr#s is the same as Behr using the Mirror Universe to side step Homophobic rules about uppity homosexuals.
Life imitates art.
It was still kinda almost immoral (the networks claimed) to have gay people on tv in the 1990s while children are watching, and it wasn't that long before earlier that it was completely illegal to have gays on tv or in out public, so progress is progress even if it's been a long road getting form there to here.
I fuck up a lot of my posts, and have to edit most of my stuff a few times before anything seems intelligble.
In far beyond the stars, the idea of a black star ship captain was heresy. Unthinkable! ...But if it was a black kid dreaming about being a star ship captain, then it was funny to the white overlords, because "Ahhhhh... They think they're people."
Benny Russel's "black kid having a dream" to side step white rules about uppity negr#s is the same as Behr using the Mirror Universe to side step Homophobic rules about uppity homosexuals.
Life imitates art.
It was still kinda almost immoral (the networks claimed) to have gay people on tv in the 1990s while children are watching, and it wasn't that long before earlier that it was completely illegal to have gays on tv or in out public, so progress is progress even if it's been a long road getting form there to here.
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You're quoting the wrong bit.
The other half of that very long conversation was about how blackface is fine if blonde hair dye is fine.
The other half of that very long conversation was about how blackface is fine if blonde hair dye is fine.
I need to know how my opinion that **how they currently do things** is fine was translated into support for blackface in another persons brain. I may need a flow chart.
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