I saw Star Trek this afternoon.
Okay, SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!!
And SPOILERS.
I left the theatre wiping off the excess testosterone that the screen had spat at me. Talk about action! Talk about fun! Talk about sexism!
Okay, the plot had a few holes to it. Someone who wrote it doesn't know the scope of galactic distances. And this episode, even before the parallel universe thing, left a few TOS (and animated) episodes lying dead in a gutter.
I was wondering how the folks in Riverside, Iowa were taking it.
Wish I'd paid more attention to the "parallel universe" deal. I was waiting for the time loop to close and heal. The movie didn't give me a chance to think that a new franchise would want open ends. Well, that was logical enough.
But what in the world happened to Star Trek's feminism? Out of a zillion actors, there were five non-extra female roles in the movie. Two of those were there just to give birth so that their men could either rescue them or feel bad for not doing so. One was in the role of mother (and a teeny-tiny bit as wife) who could die so her son could feel sad/angry. Two were in the roles of sex kittens, just there for the guys to find some release.
WTF???? Uhura--the groundbreaking UHURA!!!!--reduced to Spock's (SPOCK'S) chick?
FOR SHAME!!!!!!!
Star Trek is better than that, or it should be. What century is it again? What century are THEY supposed to be in again?
Just the other day on our writers' loop my group was commenting on the older SF movies and how the times they went out of their way to include one -- just one -- female role was so appreciated, especially since the majority of those roles (various people listed the original Andromeda Strain, Outland, and Alien) were written for men but cast for women.
What the HECK is up with Star Trek in this area????????? What a HUGE downer for an otherwise TERRIFIC movie!
PS: Obi's at the emergency vet tonight. After a year of being constipation free (he had three bouts of it early last year practically on top of each other) (at $500 a pop), he decided that after I'd been home a while this afternoon he was going to clog up. Let's hope he feels better fast. Last time after about five enemas in one night, the assistant said he was "pooping like a pro." We don't want him to have to have an operation to tighten up (or maybe it's loosen) a valve in his intestine so he can go easier. Bran-Bran already is missing him, even though I'm telling him that Obi will be back tomorrow afternoon.
PPS: I have TWO CONTESTS on my website concerning my book. Come on by to check them out! http://www.carolastrickland.com/fiction/index.html
5 comments:
I've seen a couple of other folks mention that about the female roles. And like most Star Trek since The Wrath of Khan, the story is about foiling the scheme of an evil space villain -- i.e., Ming the Merciless. Basically, they've kept the names and costumes and stripped away anything that made the original difficult or awkward or worthwhile. They've taken out all the Roddenberry. But clearly, regressive gender roles and shoot-em-ups with the bad guys is what the mass audience wants. Just look at how many positive reviews start with "I was never into Star Trek, but this is different!" It sure is.
It comes down to shaking the shiny keys in front of the babies. From Star Trek I want depth. I want more than "feel your emotions"; I want "think about it instead of punching first." And I want something to think about other than yet another solo villain with little sensible motivation and a familiar Terran name. Nero? NERO???
But it all was VERY shiny, and the keys did make a very entertaining sound as they clinked.
(I also wished that they'd consulted SOMEONE about astronomy anything and paid attention to TOS travel times. Vulcan in a couple minutes? Give me a break.)
It would only have taken a few seconds to explain that the Romulans, after destroying their moon (and primary planet) due to utter stupidity, continued to blunder and created a VERY sloooooo-mo supernova (that didn't give ANY warning signs) that would have impacted a few star systems around in a few years or decades. And they could have given us at least a sentence or two of doubletalk about what the heck "red matter" was, besides a big ball of red floating in Spock's ship.
I was waiting for the time warp to close through the whole movie, too, and I think it's totally cheating that they didn't close it. Yeah, let's just WIPE OUT decades of Star Trek and start over. Erg. It seems to me that now the only thing they have left is the characters, and they were never that compelling to me anyway. I know, sacrilege, but really. Kirk the ladies' man, Spock the brainiac, Bones the grouch, Uhura... well, she never got enough screen time to really be a character. So, meh. Shiny, yes. Great, no.
Sacrilege! Sacrilege!
And yes, Uhura did get enough screen time to define her character. She's the type who sleeps her way to the top. First she seduces her instructor (who outranks her -- isn't there a rule against that on both university and military levels? Or is her being a junior officer get around that at least at the military level?) and then continues the affair when he's her first officer/captain. (After she neatly maneuvers him through their relationship into making her a crew member.)
How perfectly AWFUL!!!!! Through the decades Uhura has been an inspiration for both people of color and for women. I want my REAL Uhura back!!!
(throws uninspiring tantrum on office floor...)
I feel guilty for leaving out the sixth woman in the film. Yes, there was one, the doctor attending Mrs. Kirk's needs, but she was gone before the opening title appeared.
With just a few tweaks this could have been a STUNNINGLY MEMORABLE movie. As it was it was mere shiny fluff that brought in a few kabillion bucks to the studio. Sigh.
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