Sure, I'll get right on with knocking off a discussion I'd clearly already stopped in a thread I hadn't looked at for 21 hours.
Unsurprisingly, I agree with Arpy. Masculinity is a rapidly decreasing trait amongst television characters.
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Sure, I'll get right on with knocking off a discussion I'd clearly already stopped in a thread I hadn't looked at for 21 hours.
Unsurprisingly, I agree with Arpy. Masculinity is a rapidly decreasing trait amongst television characters.
number6
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They were all gay!!
Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Uhura/Chapel
Sulu/Chekov
Scotty/Keenser
Wesley/Picard
Data/Geordi
Beverly/Troi
Kira/Dax
Sisko/Curzon
Garak/Bashir
Bashir/O'Brien
Jake/Nog
Janeway/Seven
Neelix (need I say more)
Icheb and Young Q
Q/Picard
Reed/Hayes
Mayweather
Phlox/Porthos
There is so much subtext in each of those relationships, there is no question about their orientation.
But it shouldn't matter. Professionals behave professionally. We don't need to see a whole bunch of mincing, smooching and fisting in entertainment, which is the only way Hollywood ever depicts gay people. I would rather have the subtext than something as stupidly unwatchable as that would be.
Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Uhura/Chapel
Sulu/Chekov
Scotty/Keenser
Wesley/Picard
Data/Geordi
Beverly/Troi
Kira/Dax
Sisko/Curzon
Garak/Bashir
Bashir/O'Brien
Jake/Nog
Janeway/Seven
Neelix (need I say more)
Icheb and Young Q
Q/Picard
Reed/Hayes
Mayweather
Phlox/Porthos
There is so much subtext in each of those relationships, there is no question about their orientation.
But it shouldn't matter. Professionals behave professionally. We don't need to see a whole bunch of mincing, smooching and fisting in entertainment, which is the only way Hollywood ever depicts gay people. I would rather have the subtext than something as stupidly unwatchable as that would be.
The depiction of men in the media is my "pet subject" (to put it lightly). Strong male characters are becoming harder and harder to find.
While there are exceptions to the rule, it is generally true that the lives of male characters are treated as being of lower importance than female characters - TOS is especially guilty of this with the grossly disproportionate number of male deaths in the show.
Male characters are assaulted (including sexual assault), insulted, humiliated, degraded, especially by women and this is considered acceptable. We are generally conditioned to believe that any such acts against men are a result of him "deserving it".
Men are portrayed as incompetent and lazy while women are shown to be smart and capable and always one step ahead of men. This is particularly true in children's programming and advertising.
But to bring this around to the topic at hand - gay men make up an important part of this. Gay male characters are hideously stereotyped on television. For the most part, being gay is their defining characteristic and all of their storylines will revolve around that fact regardless of whatever other character traits they might have.
At some point, I'd say as a writer: "Screw 'em, that's what we're gonna do."
What TV shows and movies need are a mix of characters. I think masculinity is 'decreasing' is because of a willingness to portray this mixture. Macho characters need to make way for other male less macho characters. That doesn't mean that macho characters aren't still the most common 'heroic' type. I would point out that this is why I'm often rooting for the serial killer when writers forget to give their bone-headed, arrogant victims some redeeming traits for the audience to care (thinking with your fists alone doesn't really cut it these days).
Women have ALWAYS been 'smart and capable and always one step ahead of men' in real life (albeit limited by social conventions and child-rearing duties). Female characters have all too often been marginalised in favour of male characters in television and movies that focused on action-driven, male-dominated professions. It isn't wrong to redress that balance for a more modern audience, particularly in sci fi and it has to be said that NuTrek DIDN'T redress that balance because its female focus was on mothers, girlfriends, and the caring (medical) professions. It may come as a shock to some but women are, on average, a bit more intelligent than men. The biggest bar to world domination is that they are so disloyal to their own sex!
They don't need to display any overt gay sexuality. In a two hour movie, pandering to that for a supporting character will just slow down the plot. But a 'macho' security guard be seen bidding farewell to his same sex partner before a mission, a hunky engineer can lament the loss of a partner after an attack on the ship akin to Peter Preston in TWoK, or a couple of civilian scientists can engage in a bit of banter like Marcus and Stephen in B5.
I do agree that violence against men is treated as more acceptable than violence against women. That may be because on an unconscious level we are aware of the imbalance of the relative strengths of the sexes so it seems more unfair to us. NuBSG overcame this reasonably well and pretty much massacred anybody regardless of sex.
Masculinity is not the same as "thinking with your fists" unless you're trying to reduce everything male down to a negative.
Women have ALWAYS been 'smart and capable and always one step ahead of men' in real life (albeit limited by social conventions and child-rearing duties). Female characters have all too often been marginalised in favour of male characters in television and movies that focused on action-driven, male-dominated professions. It isn't wrong to redress that balance for a more modern audience, particularly in sci fi and it has to be said that NuTrek DIDN'T redress that balance because its female focus was on mothers, girlfriends, and the caring (medical) professions. It may come as a shock to some but women are, on average, a bit more intelligent than men. The biggest bar to world domination is that they are so disloyal to their own sex!
I don't even know where to start with this. Do not confuse "better educated" with "more intelligent". There's a vast array of societal reasons why male students are suffering in education that have nothing to do with them being less intelligent.
Women aren't "disloyal" to their own sex, either - if anything it's men who let themselves down in this department. You're doing it yourself with your comments above.
This quote says it all for me.
Caprica does this better than any other show I can think of. One of the main characters is gay and he has a husband. He's also tough, a criminal and member of the show's equivalent of the Mafia. Nobody questions this, the subject isn't even raised. It just is.
Well, as long as we ignore "Unfinished Business", eh ?
Women have ALWAYS been 'smart and capable and always one step ahead of men' in real life (albeit limited by social conventions and child-rearing duties). Female characters have all too often been marginalised in favour of male characters in television and movies that focused on action-driven, male-dominated professions. It isn't wrong to redress that balance for a more modern audience, particularly in sci fi and it has to be said that NuTrek DIDN'T redress that balance because its female focus was on mothers, girlfriends, and the caring (medical) professions. It may come as a shock to some but women are, on average, a bit more intelligent than men. The biggest bar to world domination is that they are so disloyal to their own sex!
I don't even know where to start with this. Do not confuse "better educated" with "more intelligent". There's a vast array of societal reasons why male students are suffering in education that have nothing to do with them being less intelligent.
Women aren't "disloyal" to their own sex, either - if anything it's men who let themselves down in this department. You're doing it yourself with your comments above.
Obviously, I'm talking averages here but male and female brains are geared differently due to hormones in the womb and I think it has generally been shown that the increased communication between both sides of the brain means that women are, on average, slightly more intelligent than men. Interestingly, gay male brains tend to be more 'female' in the way thay operate.
Wierdly, this means that map-reading geniuses are in order: str8 male, gay male, gay female, str8 female. Strange but scientifically demonstrated!
I've worked in many female-dominated workplaces (supermarkets, legal offices, admin offices) and a few male-dominated ones (repairing garages). Believe me, women are VERY disloyal to their own sex - they gossip, back-bite, fall out, and tell tales all the time! Men - far, far less so in my experience. We just bomb the crap out of each other if we have a disagreement.
Yeah, explainable due to differences in our brains - but wierd because there is a demonstrable gay/str8 divide.
Another good example of a decent gay character is in the UK series of State of Play (a slick MI6 agent) who unfortunately got cut from the movie version leaving us only with the reprehensible, hedonistic bi-sexual Dominic Foy.
There are no Trek series on TV, nor are there plans for one.
The Abrams movie series made sure to develop hints of Spock/Uhura. You don't have to be cynical to know they wanted no hint of Kirk/Spock in an origin movie about their friendship. (Yes, I know making them friends because Leonard Nimoy told Zachary Quinto to is as soulless and phony a way as could possibly be imagined, but there we are.)
There will be no gay characters in Trek. The deep thinkers in Hollywood who've cast off all that Sixties BS about peace and love and antiwar and procivil rights (or even worse, delusions about socialism,) know the future will be like the past, except more so. We will see contemporary politics done up like the WWII movie In Harm's Way, or the Mad Men, or a hotrodding hero from a Fifties B movie, but we won't see things genuinely different from the way J.J. Abrams et al. thought they should be when they were children.
Save your pixels, people.
The Abrams movie series made sure to develop hints of Spock/Uhura. You don't have to be cynical to know they wanted no hint of Kirk/Spock in an origin movie about their friendship. (Yes, I know making them friends because Leonard Nimoy told Zachary Quinto to is as soulless and phony a way as could possibly be imagined, but there we are.)
There will be no gay characters in Trek. The deep thinkers in Hollywood who've cast off all that Sixties BS about peace and love and antiwar and procivil rights (or even worse, delusions about socialism,) know the future will be like the past, except more so. We will see contemporary politics done up like the WWII movie In Harm's Way, or the Mad Men, or a hotrodding hero from a Fifties B movie, but we won't see things genuinely different from the way J.J. Abrams et al. thought they should be when they were children.
Save your pixels, people.
Unless these tests were performed on newborn babies before their exposure to any kind of education, which would be extremely difficult, it's very difficult to see how they could be accurate.
As long as you have a large enough sample to average out other factors you can stil draw conclusions from the results as long as they show a consistent trend. Some of the issues that are cropping up are based on tests on monozygotal twins as a way to weed out other possible factors (obviusly that doesn't work on male v female tests). It's a very interesting area of research though.
The solution is to reprogram the audience so it’s possible to satisfy everyone.
I am not a "shipper" or "slasher" and I do not believe that Kirk and Spock are gay. But this picture just strikes me as funny so I had to post it.
"Thanks, Jim, it's good to have a friend like you."
"Strange, that's how I feel about you too. My dear friend Spock."
This is from the TAS episode "Mudd's Passion." Ironically, the love potion crystals that Mudd has are specifically stated to cause deep friendship between members of the same sex, and love between members of the opposite sex. I guess since Kirk and Spock are already friends, it just made their friendship a little stronger...
"Thanks, Jim, it's good to have a friend like you."
"Strange, that's how I feel about you too. My dear friend Spock."
This is from the TAS episode "Mudd's Passion." Ironically, the love potion crystals that Mudd has are specifically stated to cause deep friendship between members of the same sex, and love between members of the opposite sex. I guess since Kirk and Spock are already friends, it just made their friendship a little stronger...
Ask Captain Jack Harkness.
It was a thoughtful post and I tried to respect that as I responded. While I obviously disagree with some of it, I also agree with some. If more member of TrekBBS would respond as you and I, then I would probably participate in debates more often.I guess not even we're perfect. Plus is it wrong to attempt to find threads that run through populations? Isn't that what sociologists do?
Thank you for your reply. I was so glad to read someone thoughtfully comment on what I thoughtfully wrote.
I still don't get the part about Worf being handicapped by being a Klingon. Trek made famous the use of "alien as outsider observing/commenting on humanity". Worf (and more blatantly Data) was just the next reiteration of that theme.
I think this will be my next avatar!
You missed one possibility. Providing that we can get Leonard Nimoy to appear in the next Abrams movie too.
There will be an opportunity for some hot Spock on Spock action.
I think that would be autosexual rather than homosexual.
Spock Prime: This has been my lifelong ambition.
NuSpock: For what reason?
Spock Prime: Side effect of the mind-meld with Kirk. Note to alternate self: try to avoid that if you can.
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