You know those weren't their real head lumps either?
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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I'll assume your ignorance about the sensitvity of white actors in blackface is just ignorance and not something else
I think that they are actors who are made up to look like aliens. Current actors of various colors playing Klingons have been made up to be much darker and much lighter than their natural skin color.
Nevermind TNG, what are we calling this then?
Yup. Klingons aren’t black. They are aliens. It’s like saying Andorians are wearing blueface.
I thought it was meant quite clearly that it was a derogatory term and leant into the impression of Andorians as being xenophobic/isolationist and that being part of their historical issues with Vulcans
Yes?
It's clearly meant in the same vein. Of course given that "pinkskin" would inherently include "redskin" and every other "skin" it's a bit of a problem for the writers. (What did he call Mayweather?)
Now when the bigoted Vulcan children hurl "Earther!" and "Your mother was a Terran!" at Spock it lets us show the Vulcan children as unaloyed racists without reflecting on the writer.
I think that they are actors who are made up to look like aliens. Current actors of various colors playing Klingons have been made up to be much darker and much lighter than their natural skin color.
Nevermind TNG, what are we calling this then?
There was no reason for the actor to have darker skin. The franchise managed to make white actors playing Vukcans to still look like a white actor playing a Vulcan. e.g Jolene Blalock, Mark Lenard, T'Pring, T'Pol.
If they wanted to imply that all Klingons have brown skin tones there are plenty of human actors that fit the bill. There was no need to darken a white actor to do it.
Well, until Tim Russ only white actors played Vulcans. (If there is some person of color as a Vulcan in a background scene in Sarek or The Voyage Home, apologies.) And there was a ridiculous amount of controversy over it 30 years ago.
Again, looking at modern Star Trek: In Disco there is still the need to darken a dark skinned man much darker to play a Klingon. And SNW is apparently giving white actors darker skin as recently as last year.
This is not some far away unenlightened time. This is now.
And shame on them for the modern productions to continue the trend.
They should have had a scene with him and Mayweather
I think an IRL white actor using in universe racist terms to another white actor, rightly or wrongly, gets a pass from the viewer, however one IRL white actor using in universe racist terms to a black actor would have been bad optics for the show.
TNG Code of honour was bad enough lol
The way I thought of it when I was a kid watching TNG is the Klingons had two races. There were the Klingons, played by white actors, who had swarthy skin, and the Klingons played by black actors. At worst, it was a form of brownface, not blackface.
Let's not forget that the makeup design not only darkened the skin of white actors, it also made the features of black actors less visibly black. The nose prosthetic built up the bridge considerably, and up until SNW, there wasn't a single Klingon with locs (they all had straight or wavy hair). Worf's hair even mysteriously changed to brown when he was on DS9.
What stood out to me though was in DS9's Apocalypse Rising, when Sisko/Odo/O'Brien were surgically altered to look Klingon. Even with darkened skin, O'Brien was the palest Klingon ever seen in the series, with blondish hair. Made me wonder what Klingon variants we hadn't seen up till that point.
Let's not forget that the makeup design not only darkened the skin of white actors, it also made the features of black actors less visibly black. The nose prosthetic built up the bridge considerably, and up until SNW, there wasn't a single Klingon with locs (they all had straight or wavy hair). Worf's hair even mysteriously changed to brown when he was on DS9.
What stood out to me though was in DS9's Apocalypse Rising, when Sisko/Odo/O'Brien were surgically altered to look Klingon. Even with darkened skin, O'Brien was the palest Klingon ever seen in the series, with blondish hair. Made me wonder what Klingon variants we hadn't seen up till that point.
Not really, aliens can be any colour, including the natural skin tone of the performer.
I do think there's something that's lost in terms of verisimilitude to just presume the variation in alien races maps completely onto human races, though I know this does allow for diverse casting, is easier on makeup, and fits with the massive convergent evolution within the Trekverse.
Like, if I were building Trek from the ground up, I'd have a no white Vulcans rule. It's a desert planet - pale skin isn't going to be advantageous!
Another nitpick is with modern Trek introducing black Trill, I'd just have flipped the spots to be pale rather than dark, so they worked better in terms of species design.
Though this stuff doesn't bother me as much as another Trek trope - the isolated colony planet settled by a few hundred people at most, who, after centuries with no contact with the outside world, somehow doesn't have everyone being multiracial.
I actually just played that in my head, and Jeffrey Combs would have actually made that hilarious. Because Jeffrey Combs is THAT awesome.
From what I remember of Enterprise, I always thought the Andorians came off as reactionary and aggressive, but perceived themselves to be the aggrieved/oppressed party, who were under threat from the Vulcan High Command.
This might be my blindness to liking Jeffrey Combs too much, but I never got a view of Andorian supremacy from Shran. I think he initially demeans Archer as a "pinkskin" because he thinks humans are just a puppet-client species of the Vulcans who will be their lapdogs.
I mean if we go down this road, what are McCoy's "green blooded, pointy-eared..." insults towards Spock?
I don't think McCoy is a bigot any more than Shran. Both Shran's "pinkskin" nickname for Archer and McCoy's ribbing of Spock is supposed to be seen as signs of good-natured respect between people who are close enough they can use cultural insults and it's not supposed to be offensive.
But if you apply modern standards about race and culture to species in Star Trek it can be viewed as problematic, since it fits the behavior and a line of defense used by people who say and do things that upset others and go "come on, they don't mean anything by it."
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