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Kirk drift—misremembering a character…

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Holopat said:
NONSENSE. Trek WAS empowering THEN and NOW. I was a ten year old girl when TOS premiered and I grew up to run an IT department at two major national institutions when there were practically NO women in the field. Back then women couldn't be pilots. Now they get special preference. When I did graduate work in brain research, the neurology department was controlled by a few old men, and I STILL did graduate work in that department. How ridiculous it is for me today to hear people whining about sexism in 60s-70s, early 80s who never really experienced breaking into a new field as a women with practically no other women in the field. And then, for god's sake, to whine about miniskirts on Star Trek being sexist. What shallow petty criticism. Nichelle was groundbreaking in her position. It didn't matter if she was wearing a miniskirt or not. Nothing wrong with women being feminine and men being masculine. Trek inspired a horde of children, men and women, to go on to careers in science and technology. I'm so sick of babies whining about "micro aggressions" and perceived sexism in Star Trek TOS and other "period" productions, books, whatever, when they are just mouthing things someone TOLD them were sexist. Oh, those mini skirts. Oh, Uhura just said "hailing frequencies open". Oh, Kirk was a womanizer. Kirk was a classic hero character and a far better icon than the juvenile Mary Sues being written as leads by today's pathetic writers - characters that would have been laughed out of well produced FANZINES of the late sixties, seventies, edited by real women for the most part, for the very reason they had no character arc, the fatal flaw of a Mary Sue. Mary Sues would have been rejected by those editors or only included as a satire. And if a professional officer doing the equivalent of a Kaa-kaa poopie complaint about her fellow officers was written into some story submitted to that kind of fanzine, it would have been rejected as well, because good editors then were serious about what they produced. Zines were expensive to produce, postage was expensive too and people paid for quality that mirrored the original series, which was also quality. If all you have to say against TOS is that it was sexist compared to how wonderfully non sexist (read sarcasm) later series were, you have no idea what sexism really was, and probably would have folded into a toddler tantrum if you encountered real adversity in that situation or you wouldn't point to miniskirts as sexism. I for one was forever grateful for the opportunities I had, that I had a career I wanted to do, get a mortgage on my own as a single woman, and I never filed a sexist complaint in my life. And I wish writers would go back to classic character arcs because Mary Sue doesn't cut it.
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:techman:
 
Commander Troi said:
As for Kirk "whining" about his age, I found turning 50 to be a bit tough and his journey in TWoK was very realistic and inspirational to me.
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I thought it was clear that Kirk wasn't so much whining about his age, as not wanting to celebrate where he was in his life.

McCoy actually says, "You know this has nothing to do with age. This is about you flying a goddamn computer console when you wanna be out hopping Galaxies."

I will grant, it's a little about age, but more about how Kirk feels old because he's been tied to the Admiralty (as he'll later sum up by what he says to Picard in Generations). He even ends the movie by saying, he feels young to McCoy.

Spock also states this to Kirk, "Your mistake, if I may be so bold, was promotion. Commanding a Starship is your first best destiny. Anything else is a waste of material."

I will admit, I'm 5 1/2 years from 50, so my perspective might be a little off, but I am starting to understand this a bit. I'm a teacher, but 15 years ago, I entered a doctorate for educational leadership. Due to many reasons, I never completed that, but I now realize I never want to leave the classroom, as that's what I enjoy about this job. I imagine if I were given an administrator role, I'd feel like Kirk.

All of which goes back to my statement earlier in this thread that though there have been women, Kirk's one, true love is his ship and captaining it.
 
Holopat said:
NONSENSE. Trek WAS empowering THEN and NOW. I was a ten year old girl when TOS premiered and I grew up to run an IT department at two major national institutions when there were practically NO women in the field. Back then women couldn't be pilots. Now they get special preference. When I did graduate work in brain research, the neurology department was controlled by a few old men, and I STILL did graduate work in that department. How ridiculous it is for me today to hear people whining about sexism in 60s-70s, early 80s who never really experienced breaking into a new field as a women with practically no other women in the field. And then, for god's sake, to whine about miniskirts on Star Trek being sexist. What shallow petty criticism. Nichelle was groundbreaking in her position. It didn't matter if she was wearing a miniskirt or not. Nothing wrong with women being feminine and men being masculine. Trek inspired a horde of children, men and women, to go on to careers in science and technology. I'm so sick of babies whining about "micro aggressions" and perceived sexism in Star Trek TOS and other "period" productions, books, whatever, when they are just mouthing things someone TOLD them were sexist. Oh, those mini skirts. Oh, Uhura just said "hailing frequencies open". Oh, Kirk was a womanizer. Kirk was a classic hero character and a far better icon than the juvenile Mary Sues being written as leads by today's pathetic writers - characters that would have been laughed out of well produced FANZINES of the late sixties, seventies, edited by real women for the most part, for the very reason they had no character arc, the fatal flaw of a Mary Sue. Mary Sues would have been rejected by those editors or only included as a satire. And if a professional officer doing the equivalent of a Kaa-kaa poopie complaint about her fellow officers was written into some story submitted to that kind of fanzine, it would have been rejected as well, because good editors then were serious about what they produced. Zines were expensive to produce, postage was expensive too and people paid for quality that mirrored the original series, which was also quality. If all you have to say against TOS is that it was sexist compared to how wonderfully non sexist (read sarcasm) later series were, you have no idea what sexism really was, and probably would have folded into a toddler tantrum if you encountered real adversity in that situation or you wouldn't point to miniskirts as sexism. I for one was forever grateful for the opportunities I had, that I had a career I wanted to do, get a mortgage on my own as a single woman, and I never filed a sexist complaint in my life. And I wish writers would go back to classic character arcs because Mary Sue doesn't cut it.
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Excellent post but, seriously, whitespace is your friend...;)
 
Sorry but their post was a lot of nonsense. Women aren't getting special treatment nowadays. And feminine and masculine aren't real anyways. And progressive then isn't progressive now.

And I'm sick and tired of hearing about Mary Sues. They're hair overused sexist rhetoric. Honestly, despite my considerable issues wirh NuTrek, I wish the nostalgia addicted anti woke "they ruined it now" attitude of fandom would just die in a hole. I thought of all fandom Star Trek wouldn't fall into it.

Anyways, I'm done with this topic and arguing with those people. I'm sorry I derailed the thread. Rant over
 
MikHutch said:
Thanks. My own behavior didn't help though

Anyways, I definitely agree with the th r general sentiment of TOS Kirk not being remembered accurately. SNW Kirk seems to be straying closer to TOS Kirk IMO
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I tend to agree though I think that is more due to them playing him a bit more serious.
 
MikHutch said:
Yeah he's definitely more serious. Although in s2e3 he's a bit more jovial
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Agreed and there is potential there for something to come of it.

More reflection on this has led me to a curious question. Did people fall in love with Kirk the character, or Shatner the actor playing Kirk? Perhaps a distinction without a difference, but to me that is what creates some of the misrembering but also the dissatisfaction with other actors.

For me, Kirk is a character first and foremost, and not the actor playing him. He has charisma yes, but he also reminds me a bit of myself in the brooding, thoughtful, at times workaholic, type attitude he takes. He is loyal, to a fault, and introspective, sometimes to a fault.

Those are qualities that I see in other Kirk presentations but because they are not Shatner I wonder if they get lost?
 
fireproof78 said:
Agreed and there is potential there for something to come of it.

More reflection on this has led me to a curious question. Did people fall in love with Kirk the character, or Shatner the actor playing Kirk? Perhaps a distinction without a difference, but to me that is what creates some of the misrembering but also the dissatisfaction with other actors.

For me, Kirk is a character first and foremost, and not the actor playing him. He has charisma yes, but he also reminds me a bit of myself in the brooding, thoughtful, at times workaholic, type attitude he takes. He is loyal, to a fault, and introspective, sometimes to a fault.

Those are qualities that I see in other Kirk presentations but because they are not Shatner I wonder if they get lost?
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It might be that. I recall some antipathy towards Wesley's portrayal when A Quality of Mercy was released
 
fireproof78 said:
More reflection on this has led me to a curious question. Did people fall in love with Kirk the character, or Shatner the actor playing Kirk? Perhaps a distinction without a difference, but to me that is what creates some of the misremembering but also the dissatisfaction with other actors.
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For me, Kirk and Shatner are pretty linked, as it was Shatner's portrayal that made the Kirk character pop in the first place. Don't forget that in the first dozen or so (Roddenberry produced) episodes of TOS, Kirk was written as the same thoughtful, introspective, and conflicted man Pike was in "The Cage." It was Shatner's interpretation of the role that made Kirk and the entire show work in a way the unsold pilot version didn't. And Shatner's chemistry with Nimoy and Kelley was, as Nimoy put it when describing the original show, "Lightning in a Bottle."

After that first chunk of episodes, they began to tailor Kirk to Shatner a bit more and write towards the energy he was bringing to it in his performance. So the character evolved. And Gene Coon brought a lot to Kirk, too, I think. Coon's humor became a big part of the Kirk character, whereas Roddenberry always saw Trek as serious to the point of being sullen. (Witness how businesslike most everybody is in both "The Cage" and TMP, the two productions where, AFAIK, Roddenberry had the most control.)

So I think anyone who follows Shatner in the role of Kirk needs to bring some of that zest, energy, and humor that Shatner brought to it. Otherwise, he just doesn't feel like Kirk to me. Pine did a good job of that, even though his Kirk was written as a frat bro douche half of the time. I haven't seen enough of Paul Wesley's Kirk to properly judge him in the role yet. (I haven't started S2 of SNW yet.)
 
JonnyQuest037 said:
For me, Kirk and Shatner are pretty linked, as it was Shatner's portrayal that made the Kirk character pop in the first place. Don't forget that in the first dozen or so (Roddenberry produced) episodes of TOS, Kirk was written as the same thoughtful, introspective, and conflicted man Pike was in "The Cage." It was Shatner's interpretation of the role that made Kirk and the entire show work in a way the unsold pilot version didn't. And Shatner's chemistry with Nimoy and Kelley was, as Nimoy put it when describing the original show, "Lightning in a Bottle."

After that first chunk of episodes, they began to tailor Kirk to Shatner a bit more and write towards the energy he was bringing to it in his performance. So the character evolved. And Gene Coon brought a lot to Kirk, too, I think. Coon's humor became a big part of the Kirk character, whereas Roddenberry always saw Trek as serious to the point of being sullen. (Witness how businesslike most everybody is in both "The Cage" and TMP, the two productions where, AFAIK, Roddenberry had the most control.)

So I think anyone who follows Shatner in the role of Kirk needs to bring some of that zest, energy, and humor that Shatner brought to it. Otherwise, he just doesn't feel like Kirk to me. Pine did a good job of that, even though his Kirk was written as a frat bro douche half of the time. I haven't seen enough of Paul Wesley's Kirk to properly judge him in the role yet. (I haven't started S2 of SNW yet.)
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And that's completely fair. I think it takes that awareness to recognize what makes Kirk work for each individual. For me, I try separate the actor and character a bit just to appreciate the character more in the world. So I read Trek books that are typically about Kirk or Spock because I want to see the character, not the actor.

Mileage will vary but I find it informative for how individuals react to another actor.
 
Warped9 said:
Interesting if you cannot see it. It’s right in front of you. Or do you think sexism can run only one way.


Miniskirts were not considered sexist in the 1960s. They were considered a symbol of female empowerment. They were championed by Nichelle Nichols and Grace Lee Whitney who disliked the trousers and tunics women wore in the first two pilots. Your charge miniskirts are sexist is based solely on a contemporary perspective and ignores the context of when TOS was produced.

And TOS never said women could not be starship captains. A delusional and bitter woman, Janice Lester, rejected by Kirk years earlier because he chose his career over her makes the accusation that his “world of starship captains has no room for women.” She is bitter and angry Kirk’s life had no room for her.

And later in the episode Kirk even says she did not have the temperament to be a starship captain. Starfleet, as well, as Kirk, rejected her because she was unstable, not because she was a women. And yet she conflated that to mean she couldn’t be a starship captain simply because she was a woman.

And Lester’s thinking certainly runs counter to Number One’s position in “The Cage” as well what Kirk tells Lenore Karidian in “The Conscience Of The King” that men and women are essentially the same aboard ship and in extent in Starfleet.

Nowhere in TOS does it explicitly say a woman cannot command.
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1) I just asked an honest question. I'm not disagreeing with you or arguing with you. You've identified sexism in new Trek shows, and I'm curious what you've noticed. Would you like to actually share what you've seen?

2) I've said it before and I'll say it again that I take Janice's statement at face value that there were no female starship captains at that time given that in Pike's day women were only just getting starship bridge assignments, given that in Kirk's day, women were apt to quit Starfleet when they got married, and given that Kirk doesn't disagree with Janice.

In S02E02 of SNW we learn...

...that Starfleet is extremely discriminatory against Illyrians.

And in ST:TNG's "The Measure of a Man", we see that Starfleet is discriminatory against artificial life forms.

Given this, is it hard for me to think Starfleet may have had a glass ceiling in Kirk's day when it came to women being assigned Starship commands? Not really. What I'm not sure of is why people have this need to see Starfleet as some kind of bastion of perfection, equality, and justice. When has Starfleet ever been that? How many douchebag Admirals, Commodores, Commissioners have we seen in the various Starfleet shows? Starfleet isn't always right.
 
Modern Trek, like a lot of other contemporary work, likes to make men look bumbling, incompetent and stupid.

You don’t raise up one side just by making the other side look dumb. It’s wrong when done to women and it’s just as wrong doing it to men.

Just what was sexist about TOS? Gasp!—the women wore miniskirts! But meanwhile women were shown as professionals whose opinions mattered and they weren’t talked down to, patronized or dismissed.
 
fireproof78 said:
Yeah, I must be watching different shows.
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Must be.

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