Heroics for Liberals
Dana Stevens writes:
Star Trek’s vision of the future, as guided by creator Gene Roddenberry, was also a relic of its time, the age of NASA and the Cold War and Kruschev pounding his shoe on a podium at the United States. The show’s faith in diplomacy and technology as tools for not just global but universal peace might seem touchingly dated in our post-9/11 age of stateless jihad, loose nukes, and omnipresent danger. Yet in a weird way, Star Trek’s cheerfully square naiveté makes it the perfect film for our first summer of (slimly) renewed hope. It’s a blockbuster for the Obama age, when smarts and idealism are cool again. In fact, can’t you picture our president—levelheaded, biracial, implacably smart—on the bridge in a blue shirt and pointy ears?
I don’t think there’s anything particularly “weird” about it. In some ways, the original Star Trek is very much a product of the Cold War era. But in a more precise way, it’s very much a product of the high tide of American liberalism that was occurring in the 1960s. That era gave way to a more conservative era, but now, arguably, the pendulum is swinging back to liberalism.
46 Responses to “Heroics for Liberals”
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May 8th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Re Matthew’s comment:”can’t you picture our president—levelheaded, biracial, implacably smart—on the bridge in a blue shirt and pointy ears?”
——————
Nah.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Tuvok
May 8th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I agree that the cold war looms large in all first series trek, but to equate it with ‘the high tide of American liberalism’ strikes me as profoundly weird. It’s always seemed more libertarian than liberal to me. Yes, the show was progressive on issues like race. But at least every third episode followed this basic formula:
Kirk discovers a socialist utopia where all the needs of all the people are provided for.
Kirk beds a hot alien woman from said socialist utopia.
Kirk learns in the process that the utopia is actually the product of some combination of: giant supercomputer, false god who’s really an energy being, alien tyrant.
Kirk views this as unacceptable, and destroys the alien energy supercomputer, bringing the people ‘freedom’.
Kirk then leaves the residents of the former utopia to figure out some way to feed themselves.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I couldn’t imagine Dick Cheney in that role either.
Oh, wait…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dysonstarr/171777366/
May 8th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
On the other hand, Newsweek asks “Has Star Trek lost its moral relevance?
http://www.newsweek.com/id/196005/page/1
…Since the movie has more action than philosophy. (The piece also ponders whether overt social messages is a weakness rather than a strength).
There’s another piece on Slate that contrasts the movie’s one-note take on torture to the deeper exploration in TNG’s “Chain of Command” (while graciously ignoring the lame B-plot of that episode).
May 8th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
I think the only way to describe the avalance of ‘Worthless “Liberals” Screeding About The BHO/ST Convergence’ is that Soros owns a piece of the movie. If that’s right, then maybe for the next movie MattY can get a role as Neelix Jr.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Wacko, when I watch you try and work out how the world connects and works, I can’t figure out how you can find your way out of bed to go type your nutty bullshit. I’d think you would get lost on the way.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I agree that the cold war looms large in all first series trek, but to equate it with ‘the high tide of American liberalism’ strikes me as profoundly weird. It’s always seemed more libertarian than liberal to me. Yes, the show was progressive on issues like race. But at least every third episode followed this basic formula:
That’s simply not true. In the future, Earth has a peaceable communist society where all of humanity’s social ills are solved and there is no money as such. except an intergalactic reserve currency mechanism. So, humanity is free to explore the stars and bed green alien females.
Good to hear the movie is good or at least not bad. And I liked Steven’s review about how the movie meshes nicely with the zeitgeist of the Obama presidency.
“I’ll stir fry you in my wok. Your knees’ll start shaking and your fingers pop, like a pinch on the neck of Mr. Spock.”
May 8th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
In fact, can’t you picture our president—levelheaded, biracial, implacably smart—on the bridge in a blue shirt and pointy ears?
Great, more material for the Birthers.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
So if you’ve been paying attention to our political commentary for the last year or so, you’ve learned that unlike George W. Bush, who was Batman, Obama is Spock. Evidently the only way we can evaluate our leaders is by pop-culture references to escapist/fantastic cinema. If I ever run for office, I want to be one of the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal.
The American experiment really is doomed, isn’t it?
May 8th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
GWB was actually compared to ‘the world’s greatest detective’?
I always got the idea from Star Trek that it wasn’t so much that they’d figured out some new and improved economic/political system, it was that humanity itself had improved to the point where whatever system they used worked perfectly.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
“it’s very much a product of the high tide of American liberalism that was occurring in the 1960s.”
So, Next Gen would be the product of the American conservatism of the 1980s?
Mike
May 8th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Was that really the pattern of every third episode, as lackluster says?
#7 “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” has sexy android Andrea, but Kirk only pretends to seduce her, and he thwarted a plot to create a utopia.
#8 “Miri” gives the title character a crush on Kirk (amidst the ruins of a failed utopia), which is creepy because she appears to be underage.
#15 “Shore Leave” has the image of Kirk’s former love brought to life on an amusement park planet — which is not wrecked.
#21 “Return of the Archons” has Kirk destroy a flawed utopia, but he doesn’t bed any local lassies.
#23 “A Taste of Armageddon” has Kirk destroy another flawed utopia, but again gets no nookie.
#24 “This Side of Paradise” has Kirk destroy yet another flawed utopia, but Spock gets the nookie.
#31 “Who Mourns for Adonais?” has Kirk refuse to bow to an alien god, and the alien god gets the nookie.
#34 “The Apple” has Kirk destroy yet another flawed utopia, and Chekov gets the nookie.
#37 “I, Mudd” has Kirk outsmart a computer and thwart a plan to create utopia.
#45 “The Gamesters of Triskelion” has Kirk enthralled by green-haired Shanna and leaves her society in ruins.
#48 “A Private Little War” has Kirk seduced by a witch and then commit a peaceful alien society to a proxy war with the Klingons. The witch does not survive.
#51 “By Any Other Name” has Kirk seduce a hot babe, but only because she hijacked the Enterprise.
#63 “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” gives McCoy the nookie, and the society that’s changed would have been destroyed anyway.
#66 “Wink of an Eye” has Kirk seduced by an alien hottie. And it works.
#68 “Elaan of Troyius” ditto. But Kirk has to resist so as to not disrupt her society.
#71 “The Mark of Gideon” has Kirk seduced by an alien hottie in order to bring disease to her overcrowded society.
#74 “Requiem for Methuselah” has Kirk seduce an android. For a while, it’s “Romeo & Juliet,” except it ends in tragedy.
#76 “The Cloud Minders” has Kirk topple another flawed utopia, but while he’s stuck with a grungey rebel chick, Spock gets the nookie.
Those are the episodes that established the pattern.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
“I always got the idea from Star Trek that it wasn’t so much that they’d figured out some new and improved economic/political system, it was that humanity itself had improved to the point where whatever system they used worked perfectly.”
*DING* We have a winner!
That’s also how we ended up with the “everyone is perfect so there’s never any personal conflict” first few couple of Next Gen seasons.
Mike
May 8th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Here is a picture of little Barack on his grandfather’s shoulder at the beach that was in the Sun-Times last year:
link
Doesn’t the grandfather look like Spock/Nimoy?
May 8th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Screw diplomacy and technology, obviously Star Trek’s main theme is actually hot alien nookie.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
In retrospect, the pattern that lackluster describes in #2 seems to be a combination of the first season’s overuse of utopia-toppling (”Archons”/”Armageddon”/”Paradise”) with the third season’s habit of throwing alien hotties at Kirk, plus the undeniable idiocy of “The Apple” where Kirk ruins a society he doesn’t like. (There ought to be a Prime Directive against such things!)
“Gamesters of Triskelion” probably fits the whole pattern closest.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
In Star Trek, the planet Earth and much of the inhabited universe have been unified under a mysterious, omnipotent, but benevolent “Federation,” and there seem to be no wars, no political or social conflicts, and no wants in this warp-speed utopia unified by Global Democratic Capitalism gone galactic. Indeed, what else does the human race in the Star Trek cosmos have to do but stick its nose into the affairs of other species? They can zip about the galaxy at velocities faster than light and “beam” themselves from one place to another instantaneously, and there never seems to be any question of food, clothing, money, disease, aging, or even of career advancement in this placid paradise. Having resolved all conceivable material problems of the human race, the only woes that remain to it in the world of Star Trek are those perenially invented by the cultural elite, of which the Enterprise’s crew is an equally transparent representation, and, of course, armed with energy weapons and beamer-uppers, the elite always solves these problems as quickly and as happily as it discovers them.
Star Trek represents what the cultural elite thinks America and the world should and would be like if only the Philistines would get out of the way and let the Federation (i.e., the Leviathan) spend their money as the elite wants, and the enduring popularity of the series suggests that no small number of viewers at least unconsciously share this vision or have absorbed its premises.
May 8th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
[...] a Matt Y post that quotes the Dana Stevens [...]
May 8th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
I’ll bet the good folks at the Corner are cooking up a post right now on how the new Star Trek movie is actually a conservative movie. It will be an inane post, just like this one.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
You’re missing one picture here – there already IS an Obama-like Volkan in the Star Trek world – Tuvak!
May 8th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Re daveNYC at 15: “Screw diplomacy and technology, obviously Star Trek’s main theme is actually hot alien nookie.”
————
Actually, Star Trek were merely trying to exploit the intense interest in hot alien nookie that had already been discovered by others.
Hot alien LIBERAL nookie, actually. Anyone remember Jane Fonda as Barbarella?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/heilemann/27277634/
Even Charleton Heston go in on the fad, with Planet of the Apes. Although his hot nookie couldn’t speak –which better suited the conservative mindset re desirable women.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
19 posts so far and nobody mentions that original Trek was a product of the high tide of 60s liberalism because Gene Roddenberry was deeply emotionally invested in the Great Society (those people were his closest buddies) and all the rest? It’s not an accident he put the first interracial kiss onscreen (though the space-babe thing is clearly related to his other notorious interest in life: womanizing).
And furthermore, remember that intense liberalism was seen by many at that time as the moderate choice compared to Communism. At that time, a large number of people saw liberalism, even full-on Great Society liberalism, as _the other end of the spectrum_ from the USSR.
It’s only since the Reagan era that it gets difficult to see that.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
though the space-babe thing is clearly related to his other notorious interest in life: womanizing
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that maybe this had more to do with the fact that sex sells.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
There’s another piece on Slate that contrasts the movie’s one-note take on torture to the deeper exploration in TNG’s “Chain of Command”
There was no deeper exploration of torture in that TNG episode. It was just a different one-note take. The “torture doesn’t work and harms everyone involved” one-note take.
As one of the commenters to the Slate piece mentioned, a more interesting depiction of torture was featured in one of episodes of Enterprise.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
“Screed” is a noun, not a verb.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
You’re saying that ’screeding’ isn’t cromulent?
May 8th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Except they didn’t actually kiss. The network send a suit down to watch the scene as it was filmed, in order to guarantee that Kirk and Uhura never touched lips.
OTOH, there is virtually no actress in TOS that Roddenberry didn’t bed before she got onscreen.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
No, I’m saying that 24AheadDotCom is cromulent.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Gene Roddenberry *freaked* at the idea of there ever being any interpersonal conflicts among the crew. The first few seasons of Voyager were mostly mediocre, but for the writers and producers of the Star Trek franchise, they were engaging in a huge radical departure than anything they thought was previously possible because the crew *might possibly have a disagreement and some kind of tension.*
Meanwhile, on the perfect-harmony-of-the-federation, I had a friend speculate that this was basically just a lot of galactic propaganda, and if you looked more closely, you had people like Harvey Mudd engaging in smuggling and thriving black markets for Romulan Ale and the like. So basically you could look at the star trek episodes as mostly a Potemkin Village showcase of the “Federation Paradise” when in fact what was going on all over the galaxy was as messed up as the rest of society.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Thanks for the analysis, Grumpy. I feel like the facts basically support my point – there is an awful lot of destroying utopias (and an awful lot of alien nookie) going on in the first series. I think this implies a deep distrust of utopianism, and there’s a lot of emphasis on individualism too. This isn’t incompatible with liberalism, but it has a very libertarian flavor.
I feel like the second series (which I prefer, not to start a war or anything) emphasizes the whole ‘humanity has developed beyond war, conflict and scarcity’ thing a great deal more than the first series.
May 8th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Uh, Harcourt Mudd, not Harvey Mudd. Apologies to any Harvey Mudd alumni I have offended.
May 8th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
So, Next Gen would be the product of the American conservatism of the 1980s?
That would be odd, since if we’re putting a political label on these shows, then TNG would be the Star Trek that’s furthest left on the political spectrum. I vaguely recall that when it was on the air it was criticized for being overly PC.
And STF, you’re completely wrong about Star Trek’s ideology. The Federation isn’t just some unseen force, it’s clearly a democracy with established legislature (the Federation Council) and elected president who, as Star Trek VI and DS9’s “Homefront/Paradise Lost” episodes show, doesn’t have to be human. And from Star Trek IV, at least, the universe is explicitly anti-capitalist – Kirk informs the whale biologist from the 1980s that money doesn’t exist in the 23rd Century, and this theme is brought out even more strongly when the TNG crew defrosts some late 20th century dudes in the final episode of the 1st season. If anything, it’s a representation of democratic socialism or, as another commenter pointed out, communism. And the Prime Directive forbids interference in other societies – though it’s observed in the breach more often than not.
May 8th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
To understand the economy of Star Trek you need to extrapolate what would happen to the economy, over time, if the cost of energy and manufactured goods fell, essentialy, to zero.
May 8th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
blockquoteFAIL
May 8th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
[...] the soundtrack. Thoreau makes joke predictions about the plot. Jason Kottke lives Trek food. Matt Yglesias wants to know what’s so “weird” about Gene Roddenberry’s utopian [...]
May 8th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Feel free to substitute Global Democratic Capitalism with Global Democratic Socialism. Both are offshoots of modernism, liberalism, and the managerial elite.
May 8th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
“there seem to be no wars, no political or social conflicts, ”
Except that the Federation has had at least one war of enormous proportions (against the Dominion), been attacked by the Borg, had a cold war for roughly 70 years with the Klingon empire, had a war with Cardassians, had a rebel guerilla movemont in its hinterlands…..
May 8th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
I asked my 14 year old son if he’d like to see ST this weekend and he laughed at me. Perhaps this is the way a franchise ends — not with a bang but a giggle.
On the economics of ST and the cost of energy — costs of energy (or infrastructure) must matter to some extent or they would just beam from room to room, rather than from ship to unknown planet. Anyway, TV shows never allude to economic constraints, they just surf on top of them.
May 8th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
I just saw this movie and loved it. It definitely has several nods to current political issues.
The Federation of Planets, which as other commentators have said is a clear metaphor for the UN, is spoken of as something “important” that needs to be protected as an ideal. I’d say that this is both a liberal and conservative argument: we need the UN, but we’ll have to go to war to protect it.
There is torture, but performed by the bad guys, so not much of a political statement there.
Oh, and racism is presented as bad.
Other than that, it’s really just a fun action movie. As a long-time Star Trek fan who has seen little of Abrams’ work, I was pleasantly surprised and would pay to see it again.
May 8th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Perhaps the people tallying flawed socialist Uptopias might considered that 1969s liberalism wasn’t particularly socialist? That’s more conservative spin. “Liberal” Hollywood from the 30s to the 70s always pushed traditional virtuous individualism, not socialism. Before college kids learned to talk socialist/Marxist slogans in the mid to late 60s, individualism and liberal virtue were usually assumed to be equivalent.
May 8th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Before you critique Starfleet, remember that they are the military arm of the Federation. So don’t hate our troops.
May 8th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Excellent point, Tyro. No reason to think that the Federation actually is as great as its press releases would have us think. Several DS9 episodes show this; we actually saw elements of Starfleet attempt a coup against the democratic government in one ep, not to mention the whole Maquis element.
May 8th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Excellent point, Tyro. No reason to think that the Federation actually is as great as its press releases would have us think. Several DS9 episodes show this; we actually saw elements of Starfleet attempt a coup against the democratic government in one ep, not to mention the whole Maquis element.
An important point in dealing with any hard science fiction future, let alone a TV series future, is that no one really has a clue as to what a society with access to effectively infinite supplies of energy and resources would be like. Nor would most writers of conventional fiction want to discuss anything that alien. You need to have characters, conflict and stories that your audience can relate to.
At best, a Star Trek plot is going to be the extrapolation of some personal conflict or issue from our culture cleverly patched onto some small part of Federation culture. At worst, it is going to be the same thing, but done so clumsily that suspension of disbelief is lost.
May 9th, 2009 at 7:44 am
jmo wrote:
To understand the economy of Star Trek you need to extrapolate what would happen to the economy, over time, if the cost of energy and manufactured goods fell, essentialy, to zero.
Exactly. The Federation isn’t a communist society, it’s a post-scarcity society where machines do all the boring work and people can spend all their time doing whatever they find interesting and/or “bettering themselves” as they said on TNG (in a real post-scarcity society I suspect a lot of people would just devote their lives to entertainment and hedonism, so that’s where Roddenberry’s optimistic view of human nature comes in…of course we don’t know much about what life is like for people who haven’t signed up to be officers in the Federation, maybe they’re all sitting around playing the 23rd century version of World of Warcraft).
May 9th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
IMHO, ‘bettering oneself’ is so obviously preferable to playing WoW all day that I’ve always felt that one aspect of a post-scarcity society is that a lot of time gets spent developing ways to address the human tendency towards sloth, so that our brains aren’t colonized by ‘games’, make-work that satisfies our drive to achieve better than ‘real’ achievement does. It’s an authentic problem, and I believe there are solutions.
May 11th, 2009 at 6:44 am
The way Dana Stevens describes the era of Star Trek (the original series) is more appropriate to the late 50’s and early 60’s, what some call the turn of the 60’s. That was the high tide of liberalism in the years since WWII. And by 1966 Khrushchev (Dana Stevens seems to be as bad a speller as Matt) was old news, having been deposed in 1964. Leonid Brezhnev was running the USSR. And the Vietnam War had emerged as a fresh example of the Cold War run amok; many liberals felt that President Johnson had betrayed their trust as the liberal alternative to Goldwater.
Still, liberalism was still very strong, and radicalism (of both left and right) had yet to push it aside. I don’t think that made the age naive. Rather, the age had a wisdom that would soon be forgotten as the 60’s heated up, and that is just beginning to be remembered.