The Outcast - works better now than when broadcast?

[Ryan F]

I've been doing a bit of a Trek marathon, rewatching every movie and episode in order, from the start. Whilst my opinions haven't really changed much over the years, I have to say, this is the first point in my rewatch where I've had to reevaluate an episode, big-time.

I always sided with the 'official' reading of the episode, that it was a gutless parable about homosexuality that copped out by having a woman play the 'deviant' who Riker beds.

But watching it now the episode takes on a completely new meaning. Whilst the writers didn't intend it, their ropey episode about homosexuality can now be watched in a completely new light.

It actually works as a parable about gender, and how for some people the gender they were born into is not the one they associate with. Soren is not a woman by birth (indeed was born gender-neutral), but she associates with being a woman - she's a trans female. Riker and the crew have no problem with this, but it is an issue for Soren's people, who so desperately want to 'cure' her.

Rather than a botched message episode about homosexuality (sanitised for a 1990s family audience), today it reads a lot better when viewed as a take on the trans community. It's still preachy as all hell, and Melinda Culea is as wooden as Noah's Ark, but it certainly feels a lot more comfortable watching Soren go on a personal journey as she begins to identify as a woman, than the 'traditional' take on the episode, in which Soren is basically a metaphor for a gay man.

Look at the problems trans people have to face - bullying and misunderstanding leads to high suicide rates; the life expectancy for a transsexual is depressingly low. Even in today's more enlightened times, there are still many societies where such people are hounded and mistreated. I read a throroughly depressing story in the news a couple of weeks ago where a trans woman was sent to a male prison and was repeatedly raped by her cellmates. Film director Lily Wachowski was forced to come out as transgender when a British tabloid threatened to 'out' her before she was ready to do so publicly. Absolutely sickening.

Forget the author's intent; in today's society when more and more people are eschewing the gender of their birth in the face of some hostility, I invite you all to re-watch The Outcast with a new perspective, and see Soren as a trans woman suffering abuse at the hands of her closed-minded peers.

Thanks.

 

[Christopher]

That's an intriguing take on it. However, when the episode first came out, I had no problem with its message but still found it tediously preachy. Since I already believed in the ideas it was trying to sell, the preaching did nothing for me, and the episode had nothing else interesting to offer. So even with your very interesting new interpretation, I think I'd still find it a dreadfully dull and clunky episode. TOS-era Roddenberry always stressed that if you wanted to write "message television," you still had to make it entertaining first and foremost, or else the audience wouldn't be interested enough to listen to your message. "The Outcast" is a classic example of an episode that didn't get that memo.

Still, it just goes to show how easy it is for an allegory about one kind of intolerance to apply to others. The X-Men were originally an allegory about the '60s civil rights movement, and perhaps partly about religious intolerance, considering that both creators were the sons of Jewish immigrants. But these days it's seen more as a gay-rights allegory, and it works just as well for that -- perhaps even better, since mutant abilities are often invisible on the surface and tend to manifest at puberty. It underlines that all forms of intolerance are equally screwed up, and that we can't banish it unless we stand up equally for every group victimized by it.

 

[borgboy]

As a gay man who was in the process of coming out around the time Outcast was first aired, I can tell you that clunky as the episode is, it still meant a lot to me at the time. It was still extremely rare to have a gay subtext story being told in sci fi, and as with any good subtext, it's open to interpretation, and I think there were always trans people who identified with that story.
The episode was a flawed attempt at addressing LGBT issues, and I don't think it was too bad for the time. Where Trek failed is that up until now TV and movie Trek hasn't really progressed any further than the Outcast. Whether Rejoined handled things any better is open to debate.

 

[Christopher]

Whether Rejoined handled things any better is open to debate.

Well, it offended a lot of bigots, and that can't be a bad thing.

But you're right -- Trek really dropped the ball on LGBT. Thank goodness the new show's in Bryan Fuller's hands, so that's probably finally going to change.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Whether Rejoined handled things any better is open to debate.

I'm sure it's in one of the special features, where Terry Farrell was being interviewed on the episode and she had said that Avery Brooks had consciously made the emphasis on the relationship (and it's "taboo" nature) was because of them both being Joined Trill not both female, which was something I liked hearing--which is really what the emphasis was on. If that makes sense.

 

[borgboy]

It does make sense in the context of the story. I think they needed to have made it clearer that the relationship between the two women was genuine and not just an echo of the previous hosts, but I can see where it was probably difficult to do.
One of my favorite parts of that episode is how enthusiastically supportive Kira was. It at least suggests that a same sex relationship wasn't something she saw as a problem.
Working in a mention that Trill and the Federation had no problems with them being a same sex couple might have helped, but I can see where it would be awkward to do, since the lack of homophobia should be taken for granted. The previous hosts being a same sex married couple might have worked. Or, you know, actually having other same sex couples in the series even in other episodes would've done the trick. But it was the 90s. I don't think they did a bad job really, it's just so important to me that I nitpick at the details.

 

[Ryan F]

With Rejoined, it seems to me that the studios could frame it as somehow titillating in the trailers "Two hot women make out!!!" is a promise that would probably ensure a lot of heterosexual guys were watching. It would have so much better had the used the same plot and had two men kissing, so the focus was firmly on the message and not on getting certain sections of the audience all hot under the collar.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

One of my favorite parts of that episode is how enthusiastically supportive Kira was. It at least suggests that a same sex relationship wasn't something she saw as a problem.

Mine too. Yet more evidence that Kira is an awesome character

 

[Christopher]

One of my favorite parts of that episode is how enthusiastically supportive Kira was. It at least suggests that a same sex relationship wasn't something she saw as a problem.

Yeah, I loved that. Kira literally couldn't see any reason why they shouldn't renew their relationship. The gender swap didn't even occur to her as an issue.

Although they missed an opportunity with Kira. It always bugged me that Intendant Kira was portrayed as bisexual (or omnisexual) while Major Kira was strictly hetero. It played into the stereotype of "evil lesbians" too much. It would've helped a lot if they'd at least found a way to hint that "our" Kira was bi too.

With Rejoined, it seems to me that the studios could frame it as somehow titillating in the trailers "Two hot women make out!!!" is a promise that would probably ensure a lot of heterosexual guys were watching. It would have so much better had the used the same plot and had two men kissing, so the focus was firmly on the message and not on getting certain sections of the audience all hot under the collar.

Well, you have to consider the time when this happened. I think you're getting a few years ahead of the curve. Later on, it came to be seen as acceptable to show "hot lesbian" scenes in a way that gay male scenes wouldn't be, but at the time of "Rejoined," it was still extremely daring and controversial to do either. It was only something like the fifth US television episode ever to show a lesbian kiss, and most of the earlier ones had been less up-front about it. It provoked a lot of outrage and condemnation from the so-called moral watchdogs. At least one station refused to show the kiss, doing a hard cut to commercial instead. And the episode's ratings were actually lower than those of the surrounding episodes, even though the promo did play up the same-sex love affair (although without actually showing the kiss -- so it was quite a delightful surprise on first viewing when the episode actually had such a hot and heavy makeout scene shown so clearly).

So it would still be a number of years before TV producers would be able to see a lesbian kiss as something whose titillation factor outweighed its controversy factor. Portrayal of same-sex relationships had to start somewhere, and because of social biases, it would've inevitably started with women instead of men. Not just because of the titillation factor, but because our society is pathologically protective of its image of masculinity, and a display of intimacy between women is less threatening to that image than one between men. So trying to convince a network or studio to show two men kissing would've been an unwinnable battle in 1995. Showing two women kissing was also an uphill battle, but it could occasionally be won at the time, and episodes like "Rejoined" helped pave the way for more acceptance later.

It's easy to look back and say that people in the past should've had the same enlightened attitudes we have, but the only way we got to this point was by fighting a series of incremental battles against the forces of intolerance, gradually chipping away and gaining ground one tiny step at a time. Trying to push for the whole ball game at once would've just provoked a backlash and gotten nowhere. So we shouldn't denounce the small victories of the past. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, and all that. "Rejoined" was one of the first tentative steps, and a pretty big step compared to the ones around it.

 

[Ryan F]

^^^^^^
Well in the UK it was less of a big deal, as we'd had a man/man kiss on a soap opera here, EastEnders, back in '89 (and many more UK TV programmes soon followed suit).

It didn't really cross my mind that it would have been an issue as late as 95, especially considering the core demographic of Trek watchers (intelligent, generally enlightened folk), and the show's general philosophy of tolerance and peace.

 

[hux]

I always saw the outcast as being about gender anyway. For the homosexual angle to work, it really did need to be a man playing the role of Soren. She's so immediately recognisably as a woman that it quickly becomes a standard love story with a gender sub plot.

But it's still a weak effort. They did not show the courage of their (supposed) convictions and that lack of confidence continued to permeate right through DS9, Voyager and Enterprise.

 

[Ryan F]

Sorry for the double post - I'm still a newbie so can't edit stuff. If a mod is watching, please delete one of the above dupes! Cheers!

 

[Christopher]

It didn't really cross my mind that it would have been an issue as late as 95, especially considering the core demographic of Trek watchers (intelligent, generally enlightened folk), and the show's general philosophy of tolerance and peace.

You'd think so, but there are surprisingly many Trek fans who don't get that, and of course there's the more general, casual TV-viewing audience outside the core fanbase.