To Boldly Go...Backwards
I can't remember wanting to love a movie as much as I wanted to love the new Star Trek.
I grew up watching the original series in re-runs, entranced by the hard-charging, womanizing captain of the Enterprise, his coolly logical (but underneath the exterior, tormented and passionate!) first officer, and its egalitarian vision of the future.
I watched every episode. I went to all the movies. I devoured every paperback that detailed the further adventures of the Enterprise's crew. When I was thirteen, I even -- oh, this is painful -- convinced my parents to take me to a Star Trek convention in downtown Hartford. (My parents were not the most socially adroit people, but even they somehow realized that this was a severely nerdy undertaking. They dropped me off at the corner).
When the ads for the new film started running, I should have been suspicious. "Not your father's Star Trek?" What was wrong with my father's Star Trek? I liked my father's Star Trek! But still, there I was, on opening day, with a bucket of popcorn, surrounded by what looked like the entire staff of several area comic-book stores.
There was much to love about the movie. Kirk was hot, and Spock was cool, and their relationship felt just right, at once edgy and familiar. Unlike the earlier outings, where a shaken camera connoted a collision, danger, and/or black holes and time warps, the special effects were, indeed, special.
I'm not so much of a nerd that I couldn't handle the way the film chucked continuity and ignored some of the original show's rules of the road (although, note to J.J. Abrams: if a Vulcan is bonded and his spouse suddenly dies, he either dies, too, or ends up in mortal agony, and should not be depicted just calmly hanging out on a transporter pad. Okay, fine, maybe I am that much of a nerd).
I was even okay with the way the plot recycled Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (in "Khan," the villain deploys a Doomsday weapon because he believes Kirk was responsible for the death of his wife. In "Trek," the villain deploys a Doomsday weapon because he believes Spock was responsible for the death of his wife....and let me just add that, in the all-important categories of "pecs," and "scenery chewing," Eric Bana is no Ricardo Montalban.)
Honestly, I didn't have a problem until about midway through the film...at which point I realized that every single lady on screen was either a mother, a ho, or an intergalactic hood ornament.
We begin with mama Kirk. As the film opens, she screams and grunts her way through labor, pops out young James T., bids her doomed husband a weepy farewell, and is never seen or heard from again. How does she feel when her reckless son runs off to join Starfleet? We don't know. The movie doesn't ask.
Next up: the luscious Andorian Kirk beds at Starfleet Academy. She's green. That's about it...except somewhere, Eddie Murphy is smiling (I'd link to his bit about the dubious hygiene of green-faced girls, but it's filthy. Filthy!)
Even though Romulan war ships were, in the original series, frequently commanded by women, there's nary a chick aboard rogue Romulan Nero's vessel. This, perhaps, explains why he and his crew are in such a bad mood.
The film throws the ladies a few bones in the form of a couple of female members of the Vulcan High Council. There's a woefully underutilized Winona Ryder as Spock's human mother, and a tossed-off reference to Leonard McCoy's ex (the bitch took everything, don'tcha know, leaving him with just his...well, never mind).
Finally, there's Uhura...and what Abrams and company do with the Enterprise's communications officer will not be warming the cockles of any feminist hearts.
We first meet her at a bar, all ponytail, miniskirt, and long legs. Kirk hits on her. She brushes him off. He persists, prompting Uhura's fellow cadets to mop the floor with him (couldn't she have kicked his ass herself? Probably. So why didn't the movie let her?)
We are told, rather than shown, that Uhura is an extraordinarily capable linguist. We are told, rather than shown, that she's intercepted an important transmission, the plot device that jump-starts the film's action...as soon as Kirk tells Captain Pike about it. But Uhura's primary function isn't professional. Her job, in this brave new universe, is to look cute in a red dress, and to humanize (and by "humanize" I mean "mack on") her coolly logical, eminently reasonable mate.
In other words, she's Michelle Obama in outer space.
I'm willing to be patient here. I understand that, to attract an audience glutted on testosterone-heavy summer flicks, you need a certain amount of the old ultraviolence to get butts in seats, and that the lofty, utopian ideals of the original have to make way for a few brute shoot 'em ups. I understand the value of simply showing audiences an (allegedly) strong black woman, even if most of what she does is stand around looking worried; the same way I know that Michelle Obama has to tread carefully as she makes the role of First Lady her own. And hey, maybe organic gardening and pairing J. Crew twin sets with kicky belts and cute pins aren't bad places to start. Baby steps.
In spite of my disappointment, I've still got high hopes for the new Trek franchise. In a few years, my daughters will be old enough to watch TV and movies the way I watched them: for entertainment, yes, but for inspiration, too, for a vision, or a series of competing and overlapping visions, of how their future could look.
Plus, if the guy who gave us Sydney Bristow and Kate Austin can't serve up any kick-ass, take-charge ladies, then who can? It's only logical.
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I submit that these things are written by mortal people that have a hard enough time puking out something watchable, let alone something that conforms to correctness standards. If you want strong daughters then teach them. When you watch the movie together let them know you think its crap. Ridicule it. Then go out and set a good example in real life.
I also take exception to the thought that Uhura should have beaten up Kirk. She wouldn't do that because she's not an idiot. In my eyes she was the only adult in a room full of kids. Although she did get a nice shot in when Kirk grabbed her.
We didn't get to see her take that Klingon transmission early on but we did get to see her take over for a male lieutenant on the bridge of the enterprise. A spot she fought like hell for because she deserved it.
There were some older stereotypes there and some female parts that didn't get enough screen time. Hell I wanted to see more Winnona Ryder simply so I could satisfy my curiosity, was it makeup or has time been cruel? The green student that Kirk was with was honestly just a reference to the original. Kirk bedding the green women. Its funny. I guess.
At the end? This is just a movie.
"You're so analytical. Sometimes you just have to let art flow over you." William Hurt as Nick Carlton, The Big Chill (1983)
I like that quote
Let's look at this the other way around, by seeing if we can view Star Trek as an anti-masculine by dissecting the male roles.
Kirk is an empty headed, heavy fisted pretty boy. He jumps into fights on the slightest provocation, acts like a fratboy toward every woman he meets, and generally bumbles his way through every situation.
Spock is a genius, but because of it he doesn't fit into Federation society. It is only when he acknowledges his base, male dominant, possessive role - starting a fight over a woman - when he becomes "good" in the eyes of the main character.
The point is that you are operating under a confirmation bias; you believe this must be anti-feminist and so you see anti-feminism in it.
Well put!
Falsification for the win, eh?
NICE!
The writer has missed the point of the film, which I loved. Spock faces the destruction of his entire world, his people, his civilisation, and somehow manages to continue, suffering all the while. Sound familiar to anyone here? And Kirk has been through a Herculean struggle a.k.a. adolescence, absent a father, and seeing him here explains fully why he became that particular type of adult. Uhura, in my opinion, is a major character -- much more than the secondary male cast e.g. Scotty -- and unifies the crew in consensus.
Let's be honest about Star Trek: it pioneered both professional women and interracial couples way back when it wasn't acceptable to the majority of the public. What I criticize the myth for, is utterly ignoring same-sex couples both then and now. It is heterosexist but not what the writer claims, sending women back into private life.
Professional women in tight outfits.
I thought that the green girl was an Orion, not an Andorian. Didn't Andorian's have horns?
Also, while Joanne Linville had a nice turn as a female Romulan warship commander in an episdoe of Star Trek: TOS, wasn't Eric Banas' ship a *mining* ship?
The beauty of the orginal Star Trek, IMHO, is that it is very egalitarian, yet the men are still "real men" and the women are smart and attractive w/o being (overly) strident.
Star Trek fans who are more "PC" should stick to The Next Generation.
Yes, Andorians not only have horns, but they are blue, not green. And the author calls herself a Star Trek fan!
Excellent points!
Andorians are also blue, not green.
Excellent point!
I've been to Andoria, and in the light of the Andorian sun, Andorians are sort of a turquoise color.
Yeah, that point about the Rom ship is something people keep missing. Some one (I don't recall who) review the film liked it, but complained about the 'doomsday device' Nero employed to destroy planets. Here's the thing: I don't know how things work in the future, but I'd be surprised if legislation went through approving uses for doomsday devices on mining projects.
Nero was using what he had at hand, including his crew. Having a military commander in charge wouldn't make a lot of sense.
The whole concept of the film is going backwards. I think a feminist critique is a worthwhile endeavor, just consider that the film fits into a fictional timeline which does (did?) progress all the way to a KA, middle-aged, brilliant scientist female captain as the star and hero of a whole series.
Which eventually added 7 of 9, shattering any kind of "smart, professional female" integrity the show had.
Star Trek had a successful female captain with Kate Mulgrew so it would seem that the franchise has more than paid it's dues to feminism. As an author, Ms. Weiner should understand that creating a story about the origins of Kirk and Spock could not be a story with a major female character. In fact, if the Romulan Nero had been cast as a woman, it would probably have looked like a sop to political correctness. After seeing the film, one of the elements that impressed me the most was the character of Uhuru, as portrayed by Zoe Saldana. Uhuru is extremely intelligent and resourceful human being with even more depth of character than the original Uhuru. (Remember that the original role of a woman as an important crew member of a battleship was a groundbreaking casting choice in 1966 - and being a black woman was doubly groundbreaking). Given the choice of the hunky jock Kirk, or the cerebral geek with pointed ears, she chooses the geek because she prefers the innate depth of Spock to the superficial lustiness of young Kirk. Ms. Weiner's review doesn't seem to be much more than an opportunity to gain stature by grinding the feminist axe (which I believe should be ground whenever it's appropriate - which, in the case of this Star Trek movie, it's not).
Bravo! GREAT post!
I don't like having the left hijack my summer movie fun any more than I like seeing the right hijack a beauty pageant.
A pox on both their houses!!!
had to make it about left and right...
Good post! I do think it's fine to grind the feminist axe, though, since the movie is about The Way We Were. I remember how thrilled I was the first time I heard Patrick Stewart intone "Where no ONE has gone before!" In recent years there have been news stories about young women denying feminism, and some of that is probably due to the paradox that the less sense of restriction they were born into contributes to them losing touch with why feminism was needed in the first place. Let them have proto-Trek to mull over.
Wow. So the franchise had one female captain in one series, and now feminists should have been appeased and never dare to speak up again. Oops, sorry for getting uppity. I hope you manly men will forgive me; I'm just a girl.
There've only been four (five, if you count Enterprise) Star Trek series. Two American men, one Frenchman, one black American, one female American. And all with a badass supporting cast. (Though I'd grind my feminist axe at Troi, Seven of Nine, and T'Pol. Ugh.) Besides, there was Rachel Garrett, captain of the Enterprise-C, and Silva La Forge (Geordi's mom), who's also a starship captain.
If people are telling you never to speak up again, then they are wrong, but I don't see that happening...
My overall take on the movie is that it was neither excessively feminist (by that I mean putting the ideal of feminism ahead of the quality of the plot) or anti feminist. It simply told the story as it's written (more or less). Spock's mom, though not having many scenes in the movie, played an obvious critical role in his and his father's development as life forms. I don't want to kill the movie for anyone, but there is a pivotal scene in the movie in which Spock's father opens up to Spock about his relationship with Spock's mother, and how important she was in his life. The ability to feel emotion, and the importance of that, is more than touched on in this movie, and it's the female characters who channel that sentiment.
I just don't know what else someone wants out of this movie, I mean, it's Star Trek, based on the story that has already been written. The movie was long! It was never going to be a feminist manifesto!
I'm curious as to what people with complaints about this think should have happened.
Well, I too have to say bravo to this post. Ms. Weiner's essay is the second feminist critique on HuffPo that dismissed the Uhura role in the movie. Yet that character, and Zoe Saldana's performance, had the largest range and most emotional depth of any other character in the movie. And, compared with recent action movies (Borne Ultimatum, Live Free Die Hard, etc.) and non action movies (There Might be Blood, No Country for Old Men, etc.), the Uhura role is an oasis in an androphilic wasteland.
Choose your battles, Ms. Weiner. Why go femi-postal on Star Trek when there is so much worse?
Because they wouldn't get as much publicity attacking anything else.
They DID choose their battle, believe me.
But, they did not choose it wisely. Trek Heads are so far better informed on their franchise than these PC nutcases are. They'll get slammed every time they try to exploit it for their agenda.
This is the second ridiculous blog that I've seen on this subject.
First, I now have to challenge the premise. Since when did it become ST's responsibility to be a voice for women's roles in our society?
I can just imagine a pre-production meeting taking place at Paramount wherein all the ground is covered that this movie has to go through to tell a great, exciting, well-plotted story to revive this moribund franchise that had been given last rites on its deathbed by critics and fans alike re its last two movies. And then someone pipes up, "And hey, don't forget this movie has to be a voice for women's roles in society." How ABSURD!
In the meantime, please educate yourself about "Star Trek". Look at it's rich history of promoting a positive image of women in our society from Nichelle Nichols' portrayal of Uhura to Kate Mulgrew's beautiful work as Captain Janeway. People, "Voyager" just aired its last episode in 2001. We're not talking about archival footage from the 1930s!
If you want to see more fleshed out female characters in a future ST flick, GREAT! They'll have more time to develop them now that they have the premise going. I've posted myself advocating Bryce Dallas Howard for the role of Christine Chapel. But, to ignore 40+ years of great work by so many actresses playing so many challenging, rewarding roles on so many ST episodes.
That's an abomination.
My fave: Lee Meriwether!
I've been thinking of Lee Meriwether a lot lately myself.
A beauty queen with a ton of class and smarts.
She played one smart character after another from Catwoman in the "Batman" movie to Dr. Anne McGregor on "Time Tunnel" to the Losira role you referred to on ST to Tracey Summers on "Mission: Impossible" finally culminating in her great work on "Barnaby Jones".
To this day, I still don't know Ms. Meriwether's politics, just that she played tough, smart, beautiful characters in an era where good women's roles were very scarce.
She shames the beauty queens of today.
Starship Troopers has spoiled me for any other sci-fi outer space flick. The special effects, the good looking cast contrasted with some real gory stuff, humor and strangely, a sense of realism, of an everyday quality to the future.
What's never mentioned about the original Star Trek TV series is the delightfully bad acting. William Shatner's odd pauses and always looking like he was sucking in his stomach. Dr. McCoy looking a 100 years old and the stereotyped accents of Chekhov, Scotty, and Sulu. I recently saw the episode where Spock had to fight Kirk to win his bride. The costumes looked disposable like kid's Halloween costumes. What a hoot. I recall a reviewer of one of the early ST movies with the original cast on watching McCoy and Spock fuss over Kirk looking like 2 hatcheck girls competing for the attention of a big tipper.
As for the new movie. I'll wait till it's on TV. I wondered if they would go for the standard cliché of making it 'darker' like they do with so many sequels and remakes. I'm not a big fan of stuffing a lot of meaning and significance into what should be an entertaining film. Ironically, Starship Troopers had a much deeper meaning in the DVD commentary by the director but it was subtle.
You must've been a freshman at Norwich when you saw it, for STARSHIP TROOPERS was the first time I wanted humanity to lose to the aliens. And not just any aliens, a whole bunch of bug aliens the size of elephants who need to be shot in a very specific place in the ten seconds you have before it eats you and who come in packs of 1000. And they send people up against these things without tanks or air support, only automatic rifles mated to pump-action shotguns and the occasional nuclear RPG. And they don't seem to understand why they're losing!
"Starship Troopers" as the best SF movie ever? Oooookay. However, until you've actually seen the movie, you really have no right to criticize.
Agreed. Best action movie ever? Why, Charlie's Angels 2, of course!
Oy. I've read the book Starship Troopers (twice), and the movie made my blood boil. What an insult to the memory of one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century, Robert Heinlein.
Please, I beg you all, if you saw Starship Troopers, go read the book by Robert Heinlein. The book is brilliant, if a bit dated. The movie does not do it justice.
The movie didn't do my 7 bucks justice! It was gob-smackingly bad! I agree with the above poster - I'm putting my money on the bugs!
Sulu's accent? George Takei didn't employ an accent. That's his natural speaking voice.
I soooo don't get the reference to Michelle Obama. I think this First Lady does a lot more than look cute and keep the President cool.
I was thinking the same thing.
I wholeheartedly agree.
I nodded to most of the post, until I reached that reference and realized how skewed it was. I'm not suggesting that Uhura was supposed to be Marie Curie for Star Trek. But to reduce the First Lady to an "National Hood Ornament" is where I stopped listening to the logic (as it is evidently flawed).
I didn't see any prostitutes in this flick, no money changed hands -- so who was da "ho"?
Miniskirts were standard Federation uniform issue for women in the original 1960s television series. As were the three MEN who formed the main character trilogy in that show. Everyone else was a secondary role, male or female.
THIS movie was, basically, about THAT television series.
Let's not try to make it about anything else.
well put..the orginal Star Trek was never an ensemble piece to begin with
"Next up: the luscious Andorian Kirk beds at Starfleet Academy. She's green. That's about it...except somewhere, Eddie Murphy is smiling (I'd link to his bit about the dubious hygiene of green-faced girls, but it's filthy. Filthy!)"
Kirk likes green women. It's an old joke, and I thought it was clever how Abrams tossed it in for those fans who got it.
I do think that Sydney Bristow is probably the best, strongest female character I've seen. But I didnt have a problem with Uhura... She refused Kirk - which I like, and a few times, she kinda put him in his place. She didnt automatically swoon over him, like most of the women in the Star Trek uni. And I just dig the "swirl" of her and Spock. Also, Spock overshadowed Kirk in the "Fine-ness" department.
This post is similar to complaining about the lack of strong male roles in Sex and the City. This song ain't about you, baby, it's about Kirk and Spock, as it always has been.
In any case, this movie did far more with the Uhura character than anything the series ever did on t.v. I think this is an invalid argument for a flawed position.
A nice comparison. I thought that Uhura was great. She had the brains and she had the beauty, showed the complexities of a woman well through her choices.
sagcat has the correct blog entry. I mean if you want to call me a Republican (which I am really), then I think you need to wise up that I did not see anyone that was mean spirited like Sarah Palin in that film. I think the feminist movement has accomplished so much, yet I don't think some women realize that they have more power and have gone where have never gone before. Just because I say that I am Republican and from the South, doesn't mean I have less respect for women. In fact I believe the old Southern hospitality suggests that men have the upmost respect for women and sometimes it is women who abuse that respect. Think about that prospect.
Opening doors and being a "gentleman" isn't the kind of respect we want. We want equality, not to be treated like porcelain dolls. Although the southern gentleman attitude is done with good intentions, being treated like we're fragile is is ultimately another form of sexism.
Speak for yourself.
The old-style feminists did all of us women a huge disservice by being against men opening doors and offering seats.
The reason? All the men I have known, including those in my family, who have behaved in these courteous ways towards women,
ALSO,
AS PART OF THAT MINDSET,
treated them with the utmost intellectual and professional respect as well.
The ONLY men who have disrespected me have been men who didn't bother with that kind of courtesy and consideration.
As for us being fragile - no, we're not. But face facts:
- We don't have the physical strength that they have.
- Many women feel faint if they have to stand for long, myself included even when quite young. I've asked men and none of them seem to suffer this.
- And what about pregnancy? My mother regularly fainted when she was carrying me.
Have a thought!
I want equal pay and I want intellectual respect.
I want to be respected AS A WOMAN, not on the basis I pretend to be a man.
And politically I'm of a socialist persuasion.
What feminism taught me about opening doors for women: It's a courtesy that should be afforded to both sexes, I started opening doors for men way back when, and I still do it today, now that I'm a senior citizen. You'd be suprised how many men are absolutely delighted to have a woman open a door for them.
As for the movie, Ms. Weiner I think you're picking nits. Give them a chance in future movies to give equal time to all. ST:TOS,( which I saw as they originally aired, not in reruns) it was one of the things that helped me make up my mind to join the Air Force. In its way it was very pro-feminism. That's my two cents.
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