No, he is just being realistic. I don't know about you, but the average kid spends more time in school with classmates and teachers than with his parents, his lifestyle is dictated more by the cultural mainstream than by his parents.
But Spock was constantly bullied and treated as an outcast by his peers. Speaking from personal experience, I can say that's not necessarily an incentive for trying to fit in with said peers. For me, it was an incentive to try to be as little like them as possible, because the last people I wanted to fit in with were mean-spirited, small-minded jerks like those. Instead, I gravitated more toward the people who showed me kindness. In Spock's case, Amanda would've been one of the few who fit that description.
Besides, that doesn't refute my more important point. The idea that Spock's "human half" is genetic is absurd for the reasons I explained. If a fully human child had been raised from birth by two Vulcan parents, that child would probably be entirely Vulcan in behavior, because innate human emotion is
less powerful than innate Vulcan emotion. Similarly, if a Vulcan child were raised by two human parents (or if a half-Vulcan child were raised by a single human parent, like T'Ryssa Chen), that child would act entirely human, probably even more emotional than most. Logic and control are not genetic traits of Vulcans but socially conditioned behaviors. So it's nothing more than illogical racism to assume that Spock's occasional lapses into human behavior were the result of his genetics. The only plausible explanation for the "human side" of his behavior is socialization by his human mother. Spock's entire portrayal throughout TOS only makes sense if his mother was a significant influence on his behavioral development.
This is essentially what I would've tried to say, I think. By Christopher's logic, I'd have to assume that Amanda was practically his only influence, since I perceived him as acting basically human.
And I disagree that's how he was acting. Look at the way Spock behaved in the pilots and the early first season of TOS. He was looser, less reserved than he eventually became. And keep in mind that the time frame of this film is only four years after "The Cage," seven years before "Where No Man," eight years before the first season of TOS. I think the movie's characterization of Spock at that stage of his life is very faithful.
What I see in the movie is the same Spock I've always seen: a man torn between Vulcan and human influences, trying to favor the Vulcan but unable to expunge the human and gradually learning to accept that side of himself. Yes, it was a younger, looser Spock, less successful at self-restraint, but that is entirely consistent with how Spock Prime was portrayed around that age. To me, the film's portrayal of Spock is the most authentic recreation of the original that it achieved.
That doesn't seem to fit with him growing up in a culture that, as demonstrated in the movie itself, has a fairly rigid cultural structure, and a fair amount of anti-human bias.
Again, I cite my own experience as a bullied child: being the victim of intolerance doesn't necessarily drive one to conform. It can have just the opposite effect. I came to take pride in being an outsider. And if there's one attribute Spock has always had, it's stubborn pride. Living among humans, he goes out of his way to play up his Vulcan side, to take pride in his alienness. So I would imagine that, living among Vulcans, he might be just as prideful about his human side, about the things that set him apart from other Vulcans.
Although there's a simpler way of looking at the way Spock behaved in the movie. Insults toward
his human nature didn't bother him. What set him off every time, in the schoolroom, in the Science Academy, and with Kirk on the bridge, was people trash-talking his mother. He could absorb anything else, but he wouldn't tolerate anyone insulting his mother or questioning her value to him. So is it really so hard to believe that his mother had a major formative influence on him?
I didn't like it in TAS and I don't like it now.
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