Nice try chief...the man is in fact associated with that subcontinent of southern Asia south of the Himalaya Mountains and occupied by India, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and the newscast does in fact look like they produced it in his basement...absolutely nothing racist, but then again, America has become such a litigious and paranoid nation, you could be accused of being racist, sexist, or lord knows what else in the blink of an eye...got one for ya...I have always thought that Star Trek was ALWAYS a very sexist AND racist series...don't believe me, read the following...and Yogi, there are some animal rights folks at my door from the PETA org who are highly offended by your alias of Yogi and indicate that bears across the nation are in an uproar over this:
Is Star Trek Still Sexist?
Dateline: 2/21/98
Star Trek is quite proud -- and deservedly so -- of Uhura. In an age when black or African-American people were being treated rather horribly by their neighbors, the show presented a black female bridge officer in a mini-skirt (an article of clothing, we need to remember, which at the time was a statement of sexual and personal independence).
Sure, she was pretty much a telephone operator and only got to take center stage when she was being threatened and or having her memory erased. But remember the cool scene with the evil Sulu in "Mirror, Mirror?" And, of course, she was one half of the first inter-racial TV kiss (though the camera angle cheats a bit).
And in many ways it's simply unfair to ask TOS to have done much more than Uhura. Besides, asking questions about gender equality always presents a huge problem: what exactly makes something "sexist," anyway? I mean, there are a million different issues.
For me personally (and this is my site!), Virginia Woolf came up with the best test of whether a work of literature is interested in women as women, or only as things to support the male characters. In her essay, A Room of One's Own, Woolf notes that fiction which shows women as more than simply props and trophies for the men has one key component: friendships between women.
It's a wonderfully simple and telling question, and the "friendship" part is important, as there's a long tradition of showing women as jealous rivals, bitchily competing for male attention. So let's ask Star Trek: are the women, on their own, allowed to talk to each other as likable people with their own concerns?
In TOS's three seasons and six films, I'm not sure Uhura ever actually gets to talk to another woman about anything at all.
Which is okay. America in the sixties really wasn't interested in watching a show where a grown woman talked to another grown woman. If she weren't a mother or a genie or a maid, forget it.
But we don't live in the sixties anymore.
TNG has promised a lot in terms of positive female roles, and sometimes fulfills that promise, and sometimes doesn't. But if we apply Woolf's question, I'm afraid that in the entire seven-year run on TV and the two movies, Troi and Crusher have exactly one conversation that isn't about men.
It's a glowing moment. In "Thine Own Self," Troi asks Crusher why she got her commander's rank. Not only was the conversation career-oriented, it actually began one of the episode's two story arcs.
Thanks to Whoopie Goldberg, Guinan helped, having non-male-oriented conversations with Crusher in "Suspicions," and with Troi in "The Loss." The friendship Guinan had with Ro was the best-developed f/f friendship Trek has ever managed...except for the one I'm going to discuss in a minute.
Moving on to DS9, I had very great hopes for the Dax/Kira friendship, but while they do sometimes talk about stuff other than men -- rarely -- they almost never do anything together. Sometimes they play in the holodeck, and they're sometimes on missions together, but that's about it. Their best moments happened when they talked about pulaku and flew around in a ship used by the Bajoran Resistance. That was in Season Two, however, and it hasn't been matched since.
Trying to find any other women on DS9 who haven't been brought in specifically to be some guy's romantic interest is quite hard. I used to look forward to nicely tense scenes between Kira and Winn, but since Sisko has started to make Winn less evil, that tension has dwindled.
Okay, okay. Let's get to the biggie.
Voyager has a woman captain and she takes no crap. Hooray. She also has no female friends. She talks to Torres -- and talked to Kes -- about other things than men, but it's as their captain and surrogate mother. She works well with Torres in engineering matters, and tells her to straighten up. She did all but adopt Kes. The women on the ship strive to please her, but the only times she drops her Captain's Mask and stops mothering people are in conversations with men: Tuvok and Chakotay and sometimes even Neelix.
And then came Seven of Nine.
While many Trekkers have been busy celebrating Seven's...er...physical attributes, right from the beginning I had my fingers and toes crossed that now, with a strong, intelligent woman who needs a guide more than a mother, someone outside the formal command structure, and someone who also takes no crap, finally we could have someone female that Janeway could interact with as an equal. At last, I hoped, we could have two women doing things on the screen without worrying about men, and without finding ourselves in the middle of a "woman's moment."
And even though Janeway has been nurturing Seven whenever she could, lately I've been getting my wish.
Some people are complaining that Janeway's authority is being challenged in a way the male captains have never had to put up with. I myself have disliked Chakotay for disobeying her orders.
But I'm beginning to have faith in Janeway's ability to be right in the end no matter who in the crew has a problem with her. Whatever challenge Seven presents, Janeway's up to it, and in the meantime...oh, such great scenes between the two of them!
Seven admires Janeway and wants to please her, but she doesn't respect the captain's rank -- why should she? -- and thinks in true Borg fashion that she knows what's best for everyone else. Janeway admires Seven too, and has tried to give her leeway and understanding while exploiting her Borg knowledge. But a captain can't have someone running around with the powers of an officer who won't obey orders. For both of them, the needs of the ship outweigh personal feelings.
In fact, they're alike in many ways: smart, strong, stubborn, independent, well-meaning but possessed of tempers and unafraid of a fight. In other words, their animosity comes believably from their personalities, and presents real, not convenient, friction.
But best of all, their relationship is important to the ship and the show. This isn't some side-bar, Plot-B concern, but the impetus for plot lines and thematic commentary in a way we've only seen on Trek before in male friendships.
And what friendships they are! Kirk and Spock and McCoy. Picard and Data. Picard and Riker. Picard and Q. Data and LaForge. Odo and Quark. Bashir and O'Brien. Bashir and Garak. Paris and Kim. Paris and Tuvok. Even Tuvok and Neelix.
And now, at last, Janeway and Seven.
Of course, this may not last. Seven may suddenly burst into tears and receive absolution from Mama Janeway. Or they could retreat to cold formality. Or Voyager could get canceled because it turns out that even in 1998 America isn't interested in watching a show where a grown woman talks to another grown woman.
But while it lasts, I'm in heaven! |
