Summary
It's hardly a Strange New World ... based on that clip it's the exact same world we live in now ... with the same lack of education and understanding and racism.
#FirstCoffeeThoughts
I woke up this morning thinking about Jekyll and Hyde and also Star Trek Strange New Worlds …
There was something kind of rubbing me the wrong way and connecting them but I was having trouble articulating it … and I probably will do a shit job of it now as well but I want to at least put it out there and see if I can communicate my thoughts and feelings.
The Strange New Worlds clip where everyone “becomes” Vulcan was, frankly, really kind of fucking racist.
Vulcans are a race. They are also a culture. Some things are racial, some things are cultural. Taking a serum to “become” Vulcan isn’t going to just automatically result in certain things that are more cultural.
There are humans who are raised by Vulcans … there are humans who have married Vulcans … there are those who have embraced Vulcan ways, but they are not made Vulcan by the choice to enter Vulcan society.
The changes in the crew upon taking the serum are … racial stereotypes.
It’s like if someone took a serum to “become” African American … and suddenly starting using AAVE and picking on people who were of a lighter shade .
Vulcan stoicism is training, cultural upbringing … not entirely genetic. The way they speak and see the world is part of that culture, again, not entirely about their genetic makeup. What struck me most about that clip is how they all became INSTANTLY racist towards Spock for not being 100% Vulcan.
I laughed and thought it was hella shady at first … but then once I finished my podcast, I was really thinking about Jekyll and Hyde and the shifting of ones perspective via “serum” etc. Once I finished all my work and video editing yesterday and I was thinking about my primary point which was … where are the people who see these classic books as they are and are willing to take a chance to bring them to screen as written?
I wonder if people hate the classics because they cannot help but inject their modern perspective into them and their current levels of bias and anger and insecurities into them … that’s why all men who do Dracula films hate Mina Harker.
All the men who have worked on Jekyll and Hyde adaptation and that have been all men except for a woman who co-wrote Mary Reilly … and all the men who have worked on Dracula … all kind of come at the adaptations and interpretations in the same ways. The same male insecurities and male focal points leak out.
If a woman made Dracula it would probably be a heavily feminist piece .. if a woman made Jekyll and Hyde it probably would be role reversed and a feminist piece …
The people working on Star Trek are 90% white men … there are a few women sprinkled throughout in producing and writing areas but they are also 90% white. The original Star Trek was also white male focused … and even though there are guest directors who are female … the overall focus of the show from a writing perspective especially Strange New Worlds is gonna be white male.
How do you expect white people to see and understand race? They don’t … except in the form of racial stereotypes.
Star Trek has always had a bit of a “race problem” and I don’t mean with the cast … I mean with all the stereotyped races that are used to inspire their made up ones. But it’s not something people want to dive into all the time because it somehow “ruins” Trek if you start talking about how problematic it is because it’s “science fiction” and not real.
But the people who write it are very real and very biased, probably racist, and human and flawed … therefore the show will be also.
It’s like if someone took a serum to “become” African American … and suddenly starting using AAVE and picking on people who were of a lighter shade or judging other Black people for being “too white” … etc. That doesn’t happen automatically. That is not a thing that designates someone as “being Black”. These are individual, cultural, environmental realities that shape each person differently.
Dr Jekyll’s serum would not effect every person the exact same way either.
Vulcans are “this way” and Klingons are “this way” and Ferengi are “this way” … and if you “become” any of these then you act “this way” and “that way” … No matter how much “science fantasy” you claim it to be, Star Trek – like Babylon 5 – is still going to be based on a white man’s perspective of existing “races” and “groups of people” via the incredibly limited white lens of what “race” is in the world.
Some tropes are so embedded in society that they’re basically invisible even in a considered process like moviemaking.
Star Trek just trades real world racism for “fantasy” racism.
I doubt I am making any sense here and I don’t think I’m able to articulate this very well.
The Jekyll and Hyde adaptation limitations got me thinking about how creative people are limited to their own realities and what it means to create INSIDE of that reality instead of OUTSIDE of it.
My 2BlackGeeks partner and I would constantly talk about how writers seem to write in these weird vacuums and it results in television shows mirroring the same nonsense, same plots, same conflicts etc.
Star Trek has always had a bit of a “race problem” and I don’t mean with the cast … I mean with all the stereotyped races that are used to inspire their made up ones.
I don’t think American television is getting dumber … it was always dumb … it was always just noise to fill in the between spaces of commercials and that will never change.
What I do think is that the 90% white male perspective is incapable of changing and, if anything, has become more solidified and more emboldened in the world we live in now.
Just because the cast is diverse, doesn’t mean that the writing is … or that the perspectives in that writing reflect the inclusive cast.
Racist people make racist media. People with no concept of race cannot write about race outside of their reality of limited understanding and ignorance.
A good majority of western science fiction is just an examination of existing prejudices and racist tropes wearing creative makeup. Strange New Worlds is no different in it’s limitations.
It’s hardly a Strange New World … based on that clip it’s the exact same world we live in now … with the same lack of education and understanding.
