Re: [Marxism] Star Trek

[John <johnedmundson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 2009-05-10 at 15:10 -0400, Waistline2@xxxxxxx wrote:

> A feminist rendering of Kirk would be interesting. 
>  
> That is to say, there was not enough sex or nudity in the movie, although  
> our new Kirk rises to the task as much as could be expected. The new 
> rendering  of adult Kirk is good.  Nevertheless, I am very serious about both 
> sex 
> and  nudity and the need for more. In the second decade of the 22 nd century 
> society  is living the impact and new norms of human sexuality and love 
> riveted to,  merged with and revolving around female sexuality as the 
> feminine 
> understands  itself in relationship to male sexuality.  Letâs face it, in a 
> world where  one can go on line and view Beyonceâs vagina, the vagina 
> monologue dominants the  dialogue. 

I can't say I knew I could see Beyonce's vagina on the internet and I'm
in no hurry to test Waistline's claim ...

But I think the issue of gender/race and class in Sci-fi is interesting.
There are certainly occasional examples of sci-fi imagined futures where
class has been in some way addressed. But in general, it's still the
hard one.

It is routine now for sci-fi to be race-blind in the sense that there
will be black and white people fighting shoulder to shoulder to save
Earth from the aliens. Often there's a Latin American in there too,
often a sexy female Latin American ...

Of course there's an element of tokenism about this. I don't deny that
for a moment. But the point is that the producers, directors and
bank-rollers of movies have no problem assuming that the humans of the
future will live in a world free of racism.

The same is true of gender. Think of a movie like Starship Troopers (not
high art I know but much more appealing than the novel in my opinion.)
Essentially it's about a bunch of beautiful people going to war against
the bugs in the context of a fascist planet Earth. But a fascist planet
Earth that has no problem with male and female soldiers fighting
alongside each other in a world where equality is assumed. They even
shower together. Now I realise that scene was primarily there as an
excuse for a bit of cheap titillation, but they could have incorporated
a bit of gratuitous nudity in any number of other ways. Instead, they
chose to include a scene that assumed 1) a future where the protagonists
are more relaxed with nudity (unlike the movie's audience of course),
and 2) a future where gender politics has shifted hugely from where it
has been for us.

Class relations however remain stuck in a timewarp. Things are almost
always depicted as either worse - dystopic fascist future - or the same.
In the fascist near future the freedom movement often has a curious
adoration for mid 20th century cars and engines - products of the
capitalism of a lost "golden age". In other words liberation equals
capitalist prosperity. It appears that class is still the big taboo. I'm
sure there are exceptions but I can't think of too many mainstream
sci-fi movies where there's even a suggestion of a progressive change in
class relations.
Cheers,
John



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