Should NuSulu be gay?
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ha! that's too funny!Lightinspire
Lieutenant Commander
Small minority? Try it and see what happens you will see just how a majority it is. They had to do a reboot because the franchise was suffering enough and since it is a success, why go further. If you want to go by Gene's vision, he himself stated it doesn't need to go there...Star Trek is about family entertainment, gay is not for the entire family but only for those who want to see that sort of thing. Like I said, if you want to see 2 men kissing see Blood and Fire by New Voyages...or go to a porn page and watch it, that does not belong in Star Trek.
It really does sound like he says he's gay -- amazing and disturbing simultaneously.
Rii
Rear Admiral
In that case, nuTrek is in need of a major rewrite to eliminate Spock/Uhura and about half of Kirk's scenes.
So blatant portrayals of heterosexuality constitute "family entertainment" whereas those of homosexuality don't?
For those who say it would somehow be too great a deviation from canon, I would argue that Spock/Uhura is already a greater break with canon than virtually anything Sulu could do would ever be, and seemed to be accepted by the majority of old fans and virtually all new fans.
And for those who say sexuality shouldn't be acknowledged or touched upon at all, I would say thats fine, except that thats an argument that virtually never comes up when characters engage in heterosexual relationships, as they did both in this movie and often on the original series.
And for those who say that somehow acknowledging the existence of gay people in a movie would make it inappropriate for the eyes of decent folk, I would say kindly go to hell.
It wouldn't have to be overstated or a dominant plot point or anything. But if at some point the writers are thinking, as Hollywood writers often do, of giving a side character like Sulu a love interest, there's no reason why it should have to be a woman.
I mean, it certainly wouldn't have to be Sulu. Another character, or a new character, might work. But I think Sulu is a good choice, even beyond the Takei thing, because he's so fundamentally decent, and a true professional, and a fairly big badass--he'd run totally counter to the common stereotype of gay men. If they did go that route, they definitely shouldn't try to alter his personality at all to somehow "fit" his sexuality. He should never become "that gay crewmember". Just make it clear that he's a brave, competent, heroic guy who'se an ace pilot and an excellent swordsman who just happens to be gay. Nobody should ever bat an eye over it.
And for those who say sexuality shouldn't be acknowledged or touched upon at all, I would say thats fine, except that thats an argument that virtually never comes up when characters engage in heterosexual relationships, as they did both in this movie and often on the original series.
And for those who say that somehow acknowledging the existence of gay people in a movie would make it inappropriate for the eyes of decent folk, I would say kindly go to hell.
It wouldn't have to be overstated or a dominant plot point or anything. But if at some point the writers are thinking, as Hollywood writers often do, of giving a side character like Sulu a love interest, there's no reason why it should have to be a woman.
I mean, it certainly wouldn't have to be Sulu. Another character, or a new character, might work. But I think Sulu is a good choice, even beyond the Takei thing, because he's so fundamentally decent, and a true professional, and a fairly big badass--he'd run totally counter to the common stereotype of gay men. If they did go that route, they definitely shouldn't try to alter his personality at all to somehow "fit" his sexuality. He should never become "that gay crewmember". Just make it clear that he's a brave, competent, heroic guy who'se an ace pilot and an excellent swordsman who just happens to be gay. Nobody should ever bat an eye over it.
I'm going to re-open this thread now, because we did have some pretty good discussion, this time around. What I'd like to see avoided are judgmental statements such as seen here:
I'd also like it if we could avoid telling anyone or any group of people to go to hell...
...kindly or otherwise. If discussion can be carried on in a civil fashion, then we're good. If it can't, then that will be all for this thread.
I'd also like it if we could avoid telling anyone or any group of people to go to hell...
...kindly or otherwise. If discussion can be carried on in a civil fashion, then we're good. If it can't, then that will be all for this thread.
In that case, nuTrek is in need of a major rewrite to eliminate Spock/Uhura and about half of Kirk's scenes.
So blatant portrayals of heterosexuality constitute "family entertainment" whereas those of homosexuality don't?
You beat me to the punch. What exactly was that scene with Kirk and the scantily-clad Orion girl if not a brazen display of sexual orientation?
Or Kirk trying to pick up Uhura in a bar? And spying on her when she undresses?
Or Uhura kissing Spock?
Or Sarek confessing that he loved Amanda?
Just to be clear, I don't think anyone is asking for R-rated, slash-style gay sex scenes. But let's not pretend that there's no sex or romance in STAR TREK . . . .
To be honest it wouldn't bother me. *shrugs* I mean it would add depth but I think just because George is, that doesn't necessarily mean nuSUlu should be. Kinda sterotyping a character just because the actor is of that orientation.
If the story calls for it, sure why not, I don't care if Kirk is straight why should it bother me that Sulu is not. Just don't do it for any reason beyond that of a good story.
If the story calls for it, sure why not, I don't care if Kirk is straight why should it bother me that Sulu is not. Just don't do it for any reason beyond that of a good story.
Please, can't we cut this thing finally? There's way too much gays in TV and movies already, do we really need more of them? Western popculture is drastically overgayed. There's more gays in TV and movies than there is in real life. 
Gays are so 90s, so un-hip, so yesterday news. Pretty please, let's come up with some other token minority to show off.
Gays are so 90s, so un-hip, so yesterday news. Pretty please, let's come up with some other token minority to show off.
I am gay and I agreed with this statement.... until I read this...
You both make a convincing argument. I have always been in favor of creating a new character who happens to be gay, but you both make very good points about the secondary of The Seven. Chekov is a young, smart geek who might make a good gay representative in the new movies. Because he's only 17 in the first movie, there is room for his character to grow as an adult.
Family entertainment means there can't be a gay character?
So it's ok for 'family entertainment' to show Kirk and an Orion girl nearly naked getting it on... but not to show a gay character.
Please, can't we cut this thing finally? There's way too much gays in TV and movies already, do we really need more of them? Western popculture is drastically overgayed. There's more gays in TV and movies than there is in real life.
Gays are so 90s, so un-hip, so yesterday news. Pretty please, let's come up with some other token minority to show off.
So you're saying there won't be gay people in the future? And we can have Klingons and Betazeds and Vulcans on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, but homosexuality is just a 21st century fad that is going to die out?
As Spock would say, that's hardly logical.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'it', exactly. Homosexuality? He'd never have been able to do so in the 60's, and when TNG launched in the 80's it wasn't much better. You could be the camp 'confirmed bachelor' or the person tragically dying of AIDs or something in a movie of the week, but you couldn't be a respected character and serving officer who just happened to be a homosexual. Gene would never have had the chance to address it. And besides, Rodenberry was a product of his time; should we interpret his wishes with regards to the biases he held, or the philosophy he espoused? Star Trek was created to be a progressive story; a black woman in a position of at least some authority, a Russian at the helm during the Cold War, an asian man who didn't know karate and speak 'rike dis'. If Rodenberry himself was too much a product of his time to embrace homosexuality as an equally valid lifestyle, does that mean that we must never introduce homosexuality into the Star Trek universe? I don't believe it does.
Of course, if by 'it' you're referring to sexuality in general, which some people seem to be doing, I'd say you're just as wrong and hypocritical as they are. Sexuality was always a recurring element of Star Trek.
I get that everyone would like to see a version of themselves on screen in a franchise they enjoy, but what about the people that already have their representatives?
The Sulu character is a straight Japanese man in a respected position of authority. He gets lines, he gets to do things, he's allowed both humor and drama. He's a skilled pilot as opposed to yet another modern ninja, Yakuza, samurai or stiff businessman. He even saves the leads on multiple occassions in both ground and space combat. He, of course, also appears to know a hand-to-hand martial art in addition to his fencing ability (which looked more like Kendo than rapier work, but whatever), so the "all Asians must know Kung-fu/Karate/insert mystical martial art here" meme still refuses to die, but at least he wasn't wire-fuing all over the drill assembly.
Arbitrarily changing his character's sexual orientation makes him the gay Asian guy who also does all of the above. Gays rejoice, I guess, but make no mistake, the fact that he is suddenly a gay man will become his defining characteristic, just as being straight is one of Kirk's defining characteristics. Do the straight Asian viewers just have to deal, then? Gays need a gay main seven character but straight Asian men don't? Should they make do once again with one of the white male leads? Or is it OK to require they rely on a gay man for their inspiration when it apparently isn't OK that gay men rely on a straight man for theirs?
That doesn't seem right to me. Introduce some homosexual characters in the next film, go to town, but don't take already established characters away from one viewership and hand them over to another.
We saw Nurse Chapel briefly at one point, I think, so she can't suddenly be a man, but there's no real reason she couldn't be gay. If she was younger than Kirk, perhaps the temporal incursion affected her birth and she's not the same person she was in TOS. Yeoman Rand is another option: make her a him and him gay. Again, younger than Kirk, more likely to be different due to the butterfly effect of the Narada's incursion into the timeline. Give them important things to do beyond handing the captain a datapad to sign or the doctor a hypospray to use.
There are better ways to go about accomplishing this without causing schisms in the fanbase. Unless, of course, the Rand or Chapel groupies are super-hardcore.
The Sulu character is a straight Japanese man in a respected position of authority. He gets lines, he gets to do things, he's allowed both humor and drama. He's a skilled pilot as opposed to yet another modern ninja, Yakuza, samurai or stiff businessman. He even saves the leads on multiple occassions in both ground and space combat. He, of course, also appears to know a hand-to-hand martial art in addition to his fencing ability (which looked more like Kendo than rapier work, but whatever), so the "all Asians must know Kung-fu/Karate/insert mystical martial art here" meme still refuses to die, but at least he wasn't wire-fuing all over the drill assembly.
Arbitrarily changing his character's sexual orientation makes him the gay Asian guy who also does all of the above. Gays rejoice, I guess, but make no mistake, the fact that he is suddenly a gay man will become his defining characteristic, just as being straight is one of Kirk's defining characteristics. Do the straight Asian viewers just have to deal, then? Gays need a gay main seven character but straight Asian men don't? Should they make do once again with one of the white male leads? Or is it OK to require they rely on a gay man for their inspiration when it apparently isn't OK that gay men rely on a straight man for theirs?
That doesn't seem right to me. Introduce some homosexual characters in the next film, go to town, but don't take already established characters away from one viewership and hand them over to another.
We saw Nurse Chapel briefly at one point, I think, so she can't suddenly be a man, but there's no real reason she couldn't be gay. If she was younger than Kirk, perhaps the temporal incursion affected her birth and she's not the same person she was in TOS. Yeoman Rand is another option: make her a him and him gay. Again, younger than Kirk, more likely to be different due to the butterfly effect of the Narada's incursion into the timeline. Give them important things to do beyond handing the captain a datapad to sign or the doctor a hypospray to use.
There are better ways to go about accomplishing this without causing schisms in the fanbase. Unless, of course, the Rand or Chapel groupies are super-hardcore.
Lightinspire
Lieutenant Commander
Family entertainment means there can't be a gay character?
So it's ok for 'family entertainment' to show Kirk and an Orion girl nearly naked getting it on... but not to show a gay character.
Maybe because a man and woman is natural? Let's see 2 men have a family without adopting, have their kids naturally..can't be done because it is not natural. They were NEARLY naked, a big difference between all the way naked and a big difference in natural sex (attraction between men and women). Men with men is just grose. If you want to see it then go to the nearest porn website. Gay is not family entertainment. Paramount does not want to risk losing their loyal fanbase..they go the gay route then only gays or those who see nothing wrong with it will watch it. Keep the gay issue out and the gays will still watch it....almost 200 million in $$ is proving it..gays will watch non gay movies but gays and only those who like them will only see gay movies.
Rii
Rear Admiral
I'm not gay and support this idea, and there are at least two gay men in this thread who don't. It's not as simple as wanting to see oneself on the screen.
Besides, I already have Robau for that.
Not necessarily. As Greg Cox argued earlier, Kirk's aggressive heterosexuality is one of his defining qualities, the same can't be said of Sulu's sexuality. Having Sulu as a gay character doesn't translate to the next film being Star Trek: The Gay Adventures of Gay Sulu Being Gay.
That you see it as inevitable that Sulu's hypothetical homosexuality would become his defining characteristic is not unreasonable in the present social climate, but it's reflective of the same subtle heteronormative prejudice I mentioned earlier and indeed works to perpetuate it: heterosexuality is "normal" and homosexuality "abnormal".
Are you suggesting that heterosexuals are unable to identify with homosexual characters? That caucasians are unable to identify with asian characters? We're in even more trouble than I thought.
Family entertainment means there can't be a gay character?
So it's ok for 'family entertainment' to show Kirk and an Orion girl nearly naked getting it on... but not to show a gay character.
Maybe because a man and woman is natural? Let's see 2 men have a family without adopting, have their kids naturally..can't be done because it is not natural. They were NEARLY naked, a big difference between all the way naked and a big difference in natural sex (attraction between men and women). Men with men is just grose. If you want to see it then go to the nearest porn website. Gay is not family entertainment. Paramount does not want to risk losing their loyal fanbase..they go the gay route then only gays or those who see nothing wrong with it will watch it. Keep the gay issue out and the gays will still watch it....almost 200 million in $$ is proving it..gays will watch non gay movies but gays and only those who like them will only see gay movies.
Well, that was a short ride, wasn't it?
Lightinspire, I specifically asked here, when re-opening the thread, that judgmental and accusatory language be avoided. I even quoted a couple of your previous posts to show examples of what I didn't want to see, and not even ten posts later, you come back with more.
Now, you could conceivably have proposed that the makers of Trek should be forced to cater to your tastes and beliefs alone, so that you could be guaranteed content which you would (presumably) enjoy and not have to be confronted with the possibility of seeing content you didn't want to see. I'd imagine that a lot of people might not think much of the idea, but you could have said that. That's not what you did, though.
What you did do was make flat statements like the ones I've bolded above, along with more than one implication that being gay is unnatural and wrong. Now, you're within your rights to hold such beliefs -- it's not my place or this BBS's to tell you you can't -- but the manner in which you've presented them here indicate that you're not particularly interested in discussing the stated topic, and that you primarily wanted to deliver a moral pronouncement and perhaps also to disrupt the discussion.
Well, you've done it. Congratulations. You broke the thread for everyone.
You also have a warning for trolling.
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