Our daughter, the oldest of our three kids, was born in 1993. Who says I can't talk it up with the hip younger crowd!
Your daughter?
They'd have to roll the clock back to 1994 to be at the point where TNG was at the height of it's popularity.
I mean, arguably the entire cast of DS9 was made up of women and minorities if you exclude the two who were buried under alien makeup.
You just gonna erase Colm Meaney like that?!
IrishYou just gonna erase Colm Meaney like that?!
I would question how that's a minority but then I remembered Marina Sirtis' anecdote about how the studio were worried about having 'too many Brits on the bridge' if more than one character had an English accent.
You might get some push back calling Meany's accent "English."
The treatment of the Irish in England and America was often very oppressive and based on prejudice and bigotry,
I never called his accent English.
There's been loads of bigotry against the Irish. Meaney even had to fight against Irish stereotypes with the Trek writers.You just gonna erase Colm Meaney like that?!
*insert Blazing Saddles joke here*
Okay, but you were the one who forgot about him this time.
I know you're probably teasing, but to be clear I did not forget him. I was consciously including him when I mentioned "minorities."Okay, but you were the one who forgot about him this time.
I am teasing in general, but the idea of dropping the whitest guy on the crew into the minorities bracket seems a bit weird to me.
If we're only counting "Caucasian, male, born in America, and wearing no special effects make-up" it seems a little bit like stacking the deck.
If we're only counting "Caucasian, male, born in America, and wearing no special effects make-up" it seems a little bit like stacking the deck.
Just gonna leave this here...
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Miles is canonically something of an Anglophile - singling ‘Jerusalem’ and cosplaying Battle of Britain with a cod-English accent. Or possibly he’s simply willing to indulge Julian. Very likely is that cultural markers have shifted, and there’s nothing weird about an Irish person being happy to embrace English culture. I think Americans perhaps forget that there are 2 million people in Northern Ireland who are Irish and British, as well as half a million Irish living in Britain. And millions of British people have Irish relatives and ancestry.
The most offensive Irish stereotypes are reserved for Up The Long Ladder and Voyager’s Fair Haven episodes. Really embarrassing stuff. And obviously the Scottish planet in Sub Rosa is an adjacent example.
Basically nineties Trek was pretty awful at representing any cultures that weren’t American, which makes sense for a show with predominantly American writers.
One they get right is Bashir’s family, which reveals a pretty nuanced view of the British class system. Julian is always presented as a privileged, middle class guy. His academic achievements and playing tennis are typical signifiers. But then we find his father, Richard, was clearly more working class - something of a Del Boy, a self-made man with assorted schemes to varying degrees of success. His mother, Amsha, is more middle class coded to me , but we know less about her. But they are both determined that their son will achieve more and access the higher social strata. They clearly send him to good schools and seek to give him advantages - culminating in the genetic enhancement. The equivalent today would be sending him to private school, paying for additional coaching etc to get him into Oxbridge.
So I think that’s a really good example of nuanced writing and excellent casting and performances revealing so much more than the words on the page.
The most offensive Irish stereotypes are reserved for Up The Long Ladder and Voyager’s Fair Haven episodes. Really embarrassing stuff. And obviously the Scottish planet in Sub Rosa is an adjacent example.
Basically nineties Trek was pretty awful at representing any cultures that weren’t American, which makes sense for a show with predominantly American writers.
One they get right is Bashir’s family, which reveals a pretty nuanced view of the British class system. Julian is always presented as a privileged, middle class guy. His academic achievements and playing tennis are typical signifiers. But then we find his father, Richard, was clearly more working class - something of a Del Boy, a self-made man with assorted schemes to varying degrees of success. His mother, Amsha, is more middle class coded to me , but we know less about her. But they are both determined that their son will achieve more and access the higher social strata. They clearly send him to good schools and seek to give him advantages - culminating in the genetic enhancement. The equivalent today would be sending him to private school, paying for additional coaching etc to get him into Oxbridge.
So I think that’s a really good example of nuanced writing and excellent casting and performances revealing so much more than the words on the page.
Colm Meaney counts as a minority and Armin Shimerman doesn't?
In any case, my main point was "Isn't it neat how diverse DS9 was back in 1994?", intentionally using the same baseline complainers seem to use with Discovery now (ignoring Doug Jones presumably because he's under heavy makeup).
I hope that point hasn't been lost in trying to figure out precisely how diverse it is.
I hope that point hasn't been lost in trying to figure out precisely how diverse it is.
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And ignores Irish history in the United States.