Blog: Property of a Lady
Author: Deborah Lipp
Stan Lee and Gene Roddenberry. I should throw Jack Kirby in there too, since Lee took credit for a lot of Kirby’s work, so they say. What do they have in common?
Naked fantasy.
I first started sparking on this idea while reading the wonderful The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, a chronicle of many things—escape artistry, survivor guilt, the Golem, coming out—among which the birth of superhero comics figured prominently. And clearly these characters were fictionalized Kirbys and Lees, or, going back further, Siegels and Schusters and Kanes and Fingers. And there they were, these guys, these kids, really, a boys club of boy fantasies; hoping and dreaming and basically jerking off, unselfconsciously, unanalytically writing and drawing their nerdy fantasies and sharing them with the world.
That’s what makes them so great. These are raw fantasies, innocent, really. Newer comics are self-conscious, post-Modern, post-Freudian, either studiously artistic or cynically pornographic. Either carefully feminist or sadistically anti-feminist. Not these guys. From the 1930s through the mid-1960s, these guys wrote their dorky little dreams and sold them en masse. “I wanna be a boy sidekick,” “I wanna fly,” “I wanna smash the bad guys and get the girl.” Simple, innocent, fiercely, magnificently false-to-reality and true-to-heart.
In 1966, Roddenberry comes along and does the same thing on television. He’s just a big dork. He’s sexist but he doesn’t know it. He’s dreaming of a future better than the one he can actually envision. He wants to fly spaceships. He wants to get the girl. All the girls. Especially the green and blue ones. He wants the logic and the guns and the science and the sex. He wants it so he writes it without ever worrying that maybe showing your naked fantasies on TV is a bit like walking around with your fly open.
Fans eat it up. We love our naked fantasy on toast with mayo on the side. It’s The Yum. We take these stories and we write ourselves in. Fandom is born, and with it, fanfic, obsession over detail, and silly fucking costumes.
Then a funny thing happens. Times start changing. People are more cynical. Claremont and Byrne are more sophisticated than Lee and Kirby. Fans are more sophisticated as well, and when Roddenberry introduces a boy sidekick in 1987, fans hate him with a hot, hot, hate. We were now too grown-up for that silly dorky stuff. Â
I was there. I was a young Trekkie in the 70s (reruns, baby). I lapped up all that silliness like it was the finest of wines, and I was there in the 80s for the shock and horror that was Wesley Crusher, and by the Gods, did we hate him.
But y’know, we missed it. I did. You did. We wanted to be thrilled and amazed. We wanted to put aside our cynicism and get that feeling back; embrace the inner nerd and say “This is cool.” We wanted art that was true to the inner child, put that didn’t make the outer adult embarrassed to be seen with it. Who could provide that art?
Other fans.
The most interesting, sophisticated fun to be had nowadays is fun created by fan-nerds. Yes, gulls and buoys, I mean Joss Whedon and Peter Jackson. Why do fans love and adore Lord of the Rings and Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Okay, ‘cause they’re great. But really, because they’re created by fans. Because they come from a place that knows exactly what it’s like to want to be satisfied on those levels.
You can’t create fan-friendly material unself-consciously anymore. Too much water under the bridge. So how do you create it uncynically? The same way as Siegel & Schuster; you do it by creating it for yourself. The cynical creation knows there are fans out there and panders to them, or mocks them, or imitates them and hopes they won’t know the difference. Only a fan can create for a fan without hiding something humiliating in the mix. And were there ever two more stereotypical fans than Jackson and Whedon? Chubby, fuzzy, frumpy, barefoot, and oh yeah, brilliant.
See, I’m not just raving about Serenity again (that’s Tom’s job). I’m talking, really, about an emerging sensibility of art-for-fans. And only fan-artists can create it. I think that these guys in particular represent an emerging way of being with “genre” fiction, and I, for one, am excited about it.Â
49 Responses to “Nerd Art”
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I don’t recall ever giving a damn one way or the other about Wesley Crusher. I was always too busy watching Deep Space Nine and being gaga over Gul Dukat (still am). And, in later episodes, imagining painful deaths for the writers for making him evil.
But then, I don’t think I was around for the original airing of Next Generation—I got into Star Trek from watching Voyager, then watched reruns of Deep Space Nine, being lucky as hell to see the ending first so as to develop my crush on Dukat after I knew the ending and could sort of disengage from it.
I never got into the original series in the slightest. Maybe it was revolutionary when it first aired, but I for one was very unimpressed with the idea that 200-odd years in the future there’d still be one token female and she’d still be the secretary.
Granted, there’s that one episode where she slaps Kirk, but other than that . . . give me DS9 and Voyager.
Kyra, I suspect you’re much younger than me. When I was a small child in the sixties, women in the workplace, even in their token little jobettes, were a breakthrough. I dug those women growing up.
J Michael Stranzinsky– what’s your take on him?
And I liked Chris Claremont’s I’m-dating-a-Wiccan-feminist-so-I’ll-create-stories-she’ll-like-phase. Storm and Margali of the Winding Way and Kitty Pryde? They were dreams on paper, too, a joyful amazement at the power of women that he admired.
Yes, I know they were. I meant that I had somewhat higher expectations for the 23rd century. In the sixties, women in the workplace was a breakthrough; now it’s supposed to be the standard; 300 years from now, I expect nothing less than the captain’s seat. At least half the time.
Of course, Voyager would’ve been too radical to be accepted in the sixties, but my beef with the original Star Trek is that it was too constrained by sixties racial and sexual politics to accurately portray the 23rd century. “Radicalism is the conservativism of tomorrow injected into the politics of today,” and in 20 years Trekkies will be decrying DS9 for the fact that Jadzia Dax didn’t get back together with her former self’s wife, but I avoid the original series for the same reason I avoid other sixties-era shows—tokenism is no longer good enough, and it kind of grates.
Hmm. It is perhaps not so much the tokenism, on second thought, but the behind-the-scenes stuff—the show was created by people with a sixties mindset, for people with a sixties mindset, and it shows.
And, yes, I am much younger than you. I thought Worf was the captain of the Enterprise, first episode I saw.
Samantha—re Chris Claremont, have you read his Shadow War trilogy? It is a collaboration with George Lucas, quite good as far as story goes and very good in terms of strong female characters.
DS9 GEEK:
Also a big fan of Dukat. Also a big disappointment when they took an iron to his character and made him “totally evil.” Bah to that.
Fortunately for us, complex, multi-faceted Garek didn’t go through a similar steam-press of motives. Love him always and forever!
/DS9 GEEK
Oh man what a great thread to start just when I have to wrap up my work for the night and go home!
I think the thing about Roddenberry was, he was a True Believer Nerd who _grew up_ but did not _grow out of it_; he matured his fandom. He came to be a more sensitive, inclusive, thoughtful nerd with some sophistication and some deeper awareness of the dark side of things, but he _didn’t get sour and cynical_. Same sort of thing with Tolkein.
And Star Trek attracts that kind of true believer optimist who still suspects that despite all the lies and deceptions and the silliness of their younger days fantasies, the dream can be real on a higher, more adult level. We just have to work at it.
I loved the concept of Next Gen’s cast, most especially because there were lots of women in what should have been key roles. I got disappointed in the first season early on, and got madder when I learned they killed off Tasha Yar, and replaced Beverley Crusher (with another woman at least) and still were not using the fantastic potential of their Betazoid telepathic Counselor babe, Troi. So I didn’t resume watching until well into the third season when they finally seemed to be pulling their act together.
Kyra, You also have to realize that Star Trek’s original run was not a runaway hit. It did not take off until the 70’s in reruns so it was ahead of its time.
Also remember that Lt. Uhura (as an example) was, as a back story, a black woman who had attended what was in effect a military academy. She was an elite in a group of elites that explored space. She was communciations officer on a warship. Heady stuff for that sixities mentality that you mentioned.
In Roddeberry’s defense, it should be pointed out that he wanted to make NUmber One (a woman) the First Mate in the original series, rather than Spock. (no obscene puns from the peanut gallery, please) You can see the original concept in The Menagerie. The network execs wouldn’t allow it; they didn’t think anyone would watch a show where a woman held that high a position. (and wore trousers too!)
In the end, Uhura ended up being the token woman (sort of like the Invisible Girl in the Fantastic Four, Jean Grey in the original X-men, Wonder Woman in the Justice League, etc.)
Even this was considered revolutionary at the time; Nichelle Nichols says she remembers one fan telling her that as a little girl, she saw Nichols onscreen and shouted “Mommy! Mommy! There’s a black lady on TV and she’s not a maid!”
Nichols herself thought her role was too limited, and she was about to quit the series, but she talked to Martin Luther King Jr., who told her she was being a good role model where she was, and she should keep on being Uhura.
Fun fact; the original Star Trek broadcast the first interracial kiss. Granted, Captain Kirk and Uhura were both under the mind control of the aliens in Children of Plato, but a kiss it was. The script called for Uhura to kiss Spock, but Shatner swaggered up and said “If anybody’s going to kiss Lt. Uhura, it’s gonna be me!” That generated the most mail in the series, including one from a segregationist who said “I have ways been against any mixing of the races. But when Captain Kirk has a gorgeous gal like Lt. Uhura in his arms, he ain’t gonna hold back!’
On a sidenote, this episode led to one of Futurama’s best lines; “Hey, we’ve done heroic things too! In the third season, I kissed Shatner!”
Serenity’s out on DVD in the UK next week. Woo hoo! Anyone know how the region 2 DVD compares to the region 1? And I hear there’s a special edition Aussie version. Is it any good?
Kyra, you’re so right that Original Trek envisioned the series from a sixties point of view. That’s what I meant when I wrote that Roddenberry was “dreaming of a future better than the one he can actually envision.” Maybe poorly explicated, but what I meant was, his stuck-in-the-sixties brain envisioned women as just beginning to climb up and out, yet he was dreaming of true equality. (I think the Turnabout Intruder episode actually said there were no women captains in Star Fleet at the time.)
Samantha, I pretty much dropped comics in the Apocalype, alternate-timeline X-mess. It was too convoluted and after Dark Phoenix, my heart was never in it. I was married to a comic fan, so I read the best stuff when he brought it home, but only ever committed to Sandman. In other words, I don’t know no Stranzinsky.
Interestingly, Claremont was living in Inwood in those days, which was a Wiccan ghetto for a while; something like 4 covens in a 2 block radius, and Claremont was in the same building with two of them.
Oh, and I should have mentioned that it’s no coincidence that the best comic right now is being written by…Joss Whedon. Who is the first writer since about 1990 to really get why we (I) loved the X-Men for all those years.
Kyra — The original Star Trek started in 1966. For its time it was amazingly different. Although there had been Twilight Zone, which had commentary on society, TZ was an anthology and didn’t present the same characters each week or story. Other science fiction was “monster of the week” or super hero stories. ST, on the other hand, was a continuing story that was building a philosophy of what the future could be. It wasn’t a monster a week type thing, although it had monsterish characters at times. Aliens weren’t always evil. People were of different types and cultures. There was optimism and hope for the future. It was astounding at the time. I remember waiting for the premier after I read about it in the TV Guide Preview issue for that season. I actually had fights with my father about who could watch what because I wanted Star Trek and he wanted something else and thought science fiction was junk. (Sorry if I’m rambling.) And when NBC did kill the show in 1969, no one would have guessed that ultimately there would be sibling series, movies, and books continuing for 30-plus years. (I discovered science fiction fandom and then Trek fandom in college in the early 1970s.)
In other words, I don’t know no Stranzinsky.
Actually, he’s not a comic artist/writer. He wrote/created “Babylon 5″.
Actually, I wonder if that’s the “Star Wars” syndrome; George Lucas never gave up that boy-fantasy world, and the new three suffered for it, especially when the dialog and characterizations are compared to modern geek series.
Kyra:
in 20 years Trekkies will be decrying DS9 for the fact that Jadzia Dax didn’t get back together with her former self’s wife,
Already happening. You obviously don’t move in the right Trekkie circles
Straczynski actually does write comic books as well (Rising Stars, Midnight Nation). But yes, he’s best known for Babylon 5, a series in which Susan Ivanova was strong, bitchy, bi, second in command of B5, and well, a darn good female role model. Lyta Alexander, the psychic nuke who went crazy in what I think would be a crazy role for a male. She was certainly no shrinking violet. And Delenn, who is…well, jeez, I don’t think there was as pivotal and strong a female on TV until Buffy came along. Yes, Sinclair and then Sheridan were the stars, but can anyone really imagine B5 without the awesomeness of the women on that show?
From Susan Ivanova:
“And just one more thing. On your trip back I’d like you to take the time to learn the Babylon 5 mantra: ‘Ivanova is always right. I will listen to Ivanova. I will not ignore Ivanova’s recommendations. Ivanova is God. And if this ever happens again, Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out.’ Babylon Control out. .. Civilians! [Looks up] I was just kidding about the God part — no offense.”
Claremont’s view of women had its drawbacks. Jean Grey, after all, went nuts from wielding power on a cosmic scale and had to be euthanized. Once Claremont did that, everyone got to jump on the “Powerful-babe-gets-killed-or-lobotomized” bandwagon.
I’d still like to strangle John Byrne for doing that to the Scarlet Witch. >:
Man, I feel like a nerd for saying it, but J. Michael Straczynski *does* write comics, as well as being the guy behind Babylon 5. He’s been writing Amazing Spider-Man since 2000 or 2001, and he’s done a bunch of other, shorter comics projects, including a series called Supreme Power that takes a really dark but also incredibly well-thought-out look at the big DC heroes.
I basically agree in spirit with your post, but the more I think about it, the more I don’t know if you can divide it up between “innocent” and “calculated” quite as easily as that.
Comics wise, I came of age post-Byrne X-Men when Paul Smith was doing the art, and discovered the Los Bros Hernandez, Watchmen, and Swamp Thing at exactly the right age for them to explode my views on what comics are capable of.
I’m pretty sure I know what you think of Frank Miller, whose work aside from the Dark Knight doesn’t really stand the test of time (and even that’s questionable), but what’s your take on Alan Moore? Because he’s nothing if not calculated and self conscious–but I challenge you to find another comics writer that distinctive, innovative, and yes, fun, at the same time. In the ’80’s, it was a new, refreshing thing to deconstruct superheroes the way he and Miller did. His Swamp Thing stories are the real thing, pure gonzo art. And he comes full circle with Tom Strong and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, returning to the pleasures of simple, exciting stories wrapped in layers of literary references that don’t drag the narrative into pretentious Tom Delillo territory.
Today’s comics are being invaded by fine art students–I’m not a huge fan of the gallery mentality of the Jimmy Corrigans of the world, as beautiful as they are, mostly because I get a distinct impression that they’re “slumming” it, keeping their noses far from the stinky nerdisms of the geek world, kind of like “literary” writers who dabble in science fiction but claim that they’re not writing sci-fi.
Oops, made a literati mistake. I mean Don DeLillo, not Tom Delillo, whoever the hell he is, but I’m sure Tom’s written a better book than “White Noise”.
I’d still like to strangle John Byrne for doing that to the Scarlet Witch. >:
Amen to that, alais. I’d like to do the same thing to Brad Meltzer, for trashing 30 years of a reasonably egalitarian storyline for the sake of the misogynistic, badly written Identity Crisis.
Of course, Jean Grey wasn’t really dead; just in a coma under the ocean. They brought her back for X-Gen, only to kill her again. (All comic book characters named Jean seem to suffer early, violent deaths, like in The Killing Joke, X-Men, Sgt. Rock… I’m not sure why.)
The exception was Jean Loring, who was the Atom’s (Ray Palmer’s) main squeeze back in the 60’s. She was beautiful, smart, and brave, and she was one of the few female characters who wasn’t out to unmask her superhero boyfriend (unlike Lois Lane) and/or desparate to marry somebody-anybody! In fact, the Atom kept asking her to marry him, and she always refused, saying she wanted to establish her career as a lawyer first. They finally did get married toward the end of the series, but only because she had a breakdown and needed Ray’s help. When they divorced, it was because Jean left Ray for another man; she still kept her highly sucessful law career.
Then of course, IC came along, and threw all that out the window. Meltzer made Loring a violent, man hungry idiot (because we all know that sucessful career women need a man in their lives at all costs) who steals Ray’s shrink suit, deceives the entire Justice League (which looks pretty easy to do) kills her best friend and helps murder two men, all to get back together with Ray. (Of course, if she wanted Ray back, she could have just thrown on something black and lacy and asked him over to fix the plumbing, but that would be too easy.) She ends up in Arkham, where Eclipso turns her into a new supervillain before she’s killed again. (So remember that, girls, when you decide to get a law degree instead of marrying the first man who asks you; you too could become a murderous lunatic.)
OK, rant over. Just suffice to say that Whedon got on my bad side for writing an intro to that bit of misogny. It could be that the real Jean Loring’s in a coma somewhere, just as the real Jean Grey was, but until then, Whedon’s on my “no fly” list.
I thought Gul Dukat was pretty much always evil, although he was previously bureaucratically, selfishly, self-rationalizingly evil, whereas at the end he went into a far less interesting demonic, maniacal evil.
Julian: He wasn’t pure evil. He self-rationalized because he had trouble accepting the horrible things he’d done. He was paternalistic: He saw the Bajorans as simple-minded children who needed his guidance, but even beneath all of that there was a man who loved his family, loved his people, and didn’t want to be the bad guy.
I’m pretty sure I know what you think of Frank Miller, whose work aside from the Dark Knight doesn’t really stand the test of time (and even that’s questionable), but what’s your take on Alan Moore? Because he’s nothing if not calculated and self conscious–but I challenge you to find another comics writer that distinctive, innovative, and yes, fun, at the same time. In the ’80’s, it was a new, refreshing thing to deconstruct superheroes the way he and Miller did.
That is, as a matter of fact, exactly how I feel about Miller and Moore. I was a teenager when Miller wrote Daredevil and reinvented him as a dark character. Daredevil, whom I’d been reading literally since I learned how to read, when it was Matt and Foggy and Ann in their little walk-up law office and all their brooding angst. And Miller came along and said, ‘Y’know, it can be dark. It can be a comic AND dark.’ And then he invented Elektra and the tops of our heads blew off. I worshipped Miller back then.
(I actually missed early Swamp-thing and the reinvention of Batman because, in those days, there were many fans who were either DC or Marvel and didn’t cross the line. I was a Marvel girl entirely. I’ve caught up with some of those stories since, but reading them when they’re new is something else entirely.)
With the Watchmen, again, while Miller is saying ‘Y’know, it can be dark,’ Moore is saying ‘Y’know, it can be deconstructed.’ Was anything as fun as the first time you read those characters with their seamy pasts and their nasty politics and their homophobia? It wasn’t deconstruction for its own sake, to be clever, it was interesting, it was fresh. All the deconstructionists since that time have already read Moore. It’s less honest.
Write for yourself is what it comes down to. Even Sin City, which can easily be thrown in the trash for its sexism and violence and balls-to-the-wall craziness; it’s Miller writing what Miller feels like. Not serving the audience really. Just jerking off for his own sake. So it’s bold and interesting to me. Much more honest than whoever was writing the X-Men in around 1992…can’t remember his name. Or all these artists who think that muscles & breasts come with little floatation devices.
Kyra, Pony, I’m taking issue with the both of you. Dukat was one of the least interesting characters on the show. hell. he wasn’t even the best Cardassian (that honor, of course, goes to Elim Garak.) Gul Dukat was a preening egotist and a fool. The Dominion offered him unchallenged rule of the alpha quadrant and all he could think of was his daughter.
Still, DS9 was easily the best of the 90s trek shows. hell, “In the Pale Moonlight” might be the best single episode of any show in the decade.
I keep telling my friends, if they want to restart the franchise, make a series all about Section 31. Just don’t let the Paramount execs get too involved, or they’ll try to make it “24 with Vulcans.”
now, to the comics. yes, women get shortchanged. alot. Alsis, you mentioned the “Heroine is killed or depowered or coma-ed” thing. there’s a term for that. “Woman in Freezer syndrome.” named, sort of, for Kyle Rainer (Green Lantern III)’s girlfriend, who was killed and stuffed in a freezer shortly after being introduced. it’s typically done to establish a villian as EEEVIL. and to make the fight personal for the main hero of the story.
and since someone brought it up Jean, remember, NO ONE stays dead in comics.
that guy’s stuff is hilarious. well.. if you know the source material. makes much less sense if you don’t.
You know, I submitted my own comic book geekery post to the bonanza. or would have, if my web email service didn’t eat it. I started by citing Moveon.org’s call for a special prosecutor appointment. I suggested one better: Green Arrow. I then presented an extended metaphor, presenting winger evil as supervillainy. even if we win, it’s only until next month, then they break out of arkham again.
anyway, at this point I’m rambling.
Oy! I used a dirty word or something in responding to you (y’all) and I’m awaiting moderation. So please be patient.
Hmm, I guess this thread doesn’t need a lot more nerd mode from me right now. Let me just state for the record–Voyager is my fave Star Trek series, and it’s the women in it that do it for me–Janeway, B’Elanna, Seven of Nine, and I love the way they use Naomi Wildman in relationship to Seven too.
I’ve recently started participating in message boards at StarTrek.com, and I’m in a mudslinging war with this creepy homophobe. Someone started a thread asking about homosexual characters, and this toad comes out of the woodwork with “studies” that “prove objectively” that all gay men are supposed to be pederasts who seek to prey on young boys and transform the world into a self-destructive pederastic society. Only he refuses to take any responsibility for his implications, and refuses to admit he’s a homophobe, though just about all his references go straight to Focus on the Family type sources.
http://boards.startrek.com/community/messages.html?act=ST;f=13;t=33238344;st=135#entry35328962
I feel like I have to take time to read his damned “Study” by Abel, even though I’m sure it will just be a disgusting waste of time, and there is no way I’m going to reach this dude. If I had that intention I would not have been so mean and sarcastic with him.
But you see, I just don’t understand why reactionaries bother with Trek at all. Mind, they’ve got the militaristic stuff, the uniforms, the technicolor space guns, etc. But even when I was a kid watching the original series in syndication in Florida (and now I know those episodes were probably censored, both for content and for time, to allow for more commercials) I used to writhe–my dad was in the military, and these Starfleet types were _not_ proper military. Even then, it was a softer, more humane and sympathetic view than “normal” for America. Back in Panama City, FL in the 70s, Star Trek came on right after “The PTL Club” so I had staring right in my eager trekfan face the severe contrast between where Rodenberry’s head was at in the 60s and where we were, God help us, headed as a country.
The Trek “franchise,” as they call it at Paramount, has always steered a course between the progressive yearnings of its deepest fans and creators, and the screaming meemie taboos of the nation they market the thing to. If you bear in mind that this stuff gets out to people in the most reactionary depths of the nation, it is damned effective progressive propaganda. And it works because it is sincere.
So, did anyone see the last Battlestar Galactica?
The episode revolved around the question of whether to throw out pro-choice ideals when humanity is at a base propagation level — something a feminist blog discussing science fiction may find interesting.
karpad — you’re allowed, since In the Pale Moonlight was pretty much the reason I bought the entire series on DVD. :p (okay, it was still a kickass show once they brought in the Dominion, but that ep. Kicked. Ass.) I still feel that the middle-seasons Dukat showed a lot of depth to his character, which was wiped away in Waltz. Feh.
Ask me about my idea to restart the series sometime
I mean in regards to the fact that she didn’t do much. Story-wise, they never really portrayed her as a strong character the way they did Kirk and Spock and so forth. Granted, I didn’t see too many episodes, but it seems to me as if the fact that she was there, sitting at her station on the bridge, was enough
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it wasn’t a groundbreaking series in its time, or that now that we’ve gone foreward it’s dragging us back, I’m just saying I don’t like it. It doesn’t hold my interest like the others do because the writers didn’t make her a presence on the show the way they made Kirk and Spock and McCoy, or like they made Lt. Torres and Captain Janeway and Major Kira in the later series. She’s there but she’s not there; the sixties mentality prevented her from being a James T. Kirk or a Jean-Luc Picard or a Benjamin Sisko or a Kathryn Janeway because she was female and black in the sixties, and that overruled the fact that she was female and black in the 23rd century.
It was this amazing, class-free future in which neither sex nor skin color nor species mattered, and yet it was the sixties, so you couldn’t put a black woman in the captain’s seat, you couldn’t have Uhura and Kirk kiss without mind-control aliens as an excuse—and as the decades pass here on Earth, the future shoots ahead by leaps and bounds but is still held back in some ways. A generation passes, and you can have a black chief of engineering and a female chief medical officer and a female security chief, but you can’t have that female chief medical officer stay with her love interest after he is given a female body. A few years later, you have a black man in the captain’s office (well . . . prefect’s office, technically) and a female second-in-command who used to be a resistance fighter, and you can even have a white alien marry a black alien, but you still can’t turn the doctor’s friendship with the tailor into something more, and in the next series a female attains the captain’s seat, but she’s still not Lt. Uhura, and so on it goes.
I don’t watch TV to see sexism, whether it’s the obvious, obnoxious kind or the subtle she-doesn’t-really-matter kind. Kirk and Spock and retro spacecraft don’t do it for me, but Uhura would if she channeled Kira or Torres. Plus, TOS’s Klingons absolutely suck. And there are no Cardassians.
Actually, I did hear it. I meant (I’m good at being ambiguous today) that overwhelming percentages of them would, almost as a consensus, which I’m not sure is quite the case just yet.
Left_Wing_Fox
Feb 20th, 2006 at 11:41 am
In other words, I don’t know no Stranzinsky.
Actually, he’s not a comic artist/writer. He wrote/created “Babylon 5″…
As other people have pointed out, he’s written a number of comics; if anything would make me fellate a man, it’s the great work Strazynski (sp?) has been doing with Spider-Man. Maybe the single best run I’ve seen, made even more remarkable because the character has at times been one of the most clichéd, one-hit-wonders of them all.
I watched the first few episodes of “Babylon 5″, but they didn’t do much for me. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t really absorbing either. I don’t know, maybe I just downloaded the wrong ones, or maybe comics are a better format for Strazynski or something. Which episodes/storylines/season should I have started out with?
But, speaking of Spider-Man:
now, to the comics. yes, women get shortchanged. alot. Alsis, you mentioned the “Heroine is killed or depowered or coma-ed� thing. there’s a term for that. “Woman in Freezer syndrome.� named, sort of, for Kyle Rainer (Green Lantern III)’s girlfriend, who was killed and stuffed in a freezer shortly after being introduced. it’s typically done to establish a villian as EEEVIL. and to make the fight personal for the main hero of the story.
I’ve never heard that name used for the syndrome, and I hope it’s not usual, because “Gwen Stacy Syndrome” is so much more appropriate. Spider-Man’s first serious girlfriend who was thrown off a bridge by the Green Goblin. For all the non-geeks here, remember the scene in the “Spider-Man” movie where Willem Defoe has a cable car in one hand, Kirsten Dunst in the other, and drops them both? In the comics, it was Gwen Stacy who was dropped instead of Mary Jane, and Spider-Man didn’t make it in time.
Cyrus - I found the first few episodes (most of the first season, really, but that could just be me) of Babylon 5 to be rather dodgy as well. But if you can manage to stick with it, I think it’s worth it. All the characters are impressive in their own ways (my favourite, after lots of consideration, is Delenn, but none of the others are very far behind), and even the one who turns out to be the villain is rather sympathetic, I think.
I think he was previously arrogant, selfish, and blind, but generally good-hearted. He was, of course, raised Cardassian and thus possessed their worldview, and was rather enamored of the power and prestiege that worldview said he was entitled to. By the same token, questioning his and Cardassia’s tactics and viewpoints would require him to accept the damage he’d done and the fact that he’d been wrong all that time. So he chose to avoid that. I don’t think that’s evil, I think that’s all too human.
Julian: He wasn’t pure evil. He self-rationalized because he had trouble accepting the horrible things he’d done. He was paternalistic: He saw the Bajorans as simple-minded children who needed his guidance, but even beneath all of that there was a man who loved his family, loved his people, and didn’t want to be the bad guy.
Exactly. It would make sense for Cardassia to perpetuate the idea that they were doing the Bajorans a huge favor by helping to “civilize” them—it’s been done here on Earth for thousands of years to help things like missionaries, crusades, colonizations, and the like go down better for the large majority of people who are not cold-heartedly sadistic. A vice is a virtue stretched out of proportion, and he liked the idea of playing father-figure to the Bajorans, not realizing the contradictions: children grow up, for example, and move beyond their parents’ control. And the idea that he didn’t want to be the bad guy—spot on. He didn’t want to be the bad guy, to the extent that he chose to be the bad guy simply because he could convince himself that he wasn’t, while to cease being the bad guy, he had to realize it and make a few changes.
By all means call him uninteresting, you’re entitled to your opinion. Personally, I thought he was significantly more interesting than Garak (and a lot hotter). And do you know you’re quoting Weyoun (who is without a doubt the most annoying character on the series) with the second half of your paragraph? Seems to me that that at least partially makes my point for me (Weyoun’s description, not the fact that you’re quoting him). A truly evil person wouldn’t let family get in the way of universal domination; Dukat, despite being tempted by the prospect of ruling over the Alpha Quadrant (or possibly just protecting his office from Sisko), ultimately considered his daughter more important to him. Anyway, he seems to associate happiness with power, or to assume that power is the means to happiness, judging by a few things he says in Indiscretion and Return to Grace.
Yes, definitely. I hate Waltz, I can’t even watch it. Or listen to “Boulevard of Broken Dreams, since it reminds me of it and makes me depressed.
Ohhh, please please PLEASE?!??! I thought of making a movie or two, in which Dukat becomes a good guy and Ziyal returns from the dead or something. That only happens to main characters like Spock, and it would be a nice change of pace to apply it to a guest character.
Also thought about Dukat getting ahold of the Orb of Time and going back and redoing the whole series with what he knows at the end (after some sort of epiphany in which he realizes his mistakes, of course), thus saving the Alpha Quadrant from the Dominion, doing various other good things, and somehow getting the girl (Kira).
I really really love this thread!
*thinks about Dukat and goes all melty inside*
Sheesh dosen’t anyone stick to their gentres anymore?
I had a feeling I’d get dinged on that. I don’t know much comics either, outside Usagi Yojimbo and Bone.
Yeah, to my mind, the first season of Babylon 5 is either on par with, or a little worse than the first seasons of Star Trek DS9 and TNG, when they were both trying to get their legs and set the stage. It really does start to get much better in the second season, with the cast changes and an increasingly coherent and linear storyline. The problem is that this show uses every part of the buffalo, so to speak. There’s plenty that happens in later episodes that was laid out initially in the first season, showing some pretty impressive craftsmanship.
Honestly, I think the only Science fiction series that had me from episode 1 was Farscape. I’d like to add the new Battlestar Galactica to that, but I lost cable access just as the series started. =/
Kyra, I know power is an aphrodesiac and all, but really. He’s a petulant tyrant, nothing more.
Don’t go trying to give him a break “well, hes cardassian, they don’t know no better.” Garak undertook operations to save millions of lives, and he was Obsidian Order. Damar was just like Dukat during the occupation of Bajor, and did the whole “civilizing genocide” thing. and later actually realized how wrong that was (though, granted, not until after the Dominion had his family executed).
Ohhh, please please PLEASE?!??! I thought of making a movie or two, in which Dukat becomes a good guy and Ziyal returns from the dead or something. That only happens to main characters like Spock, and it would be a nice change of pace to apply it to a guest character.
yeesh. take it down a notch, fangirl. I’ll agree that Dukat’s treatment in the last season was poorly chosen (and not just because the whole Pa Wraith magic demon thing sounds a bit too much like Star Trek 5 for my taste) but all in all, Dukat got what was coming to him. Actually, what was coming to him was a bullet to the head immediately after the occupation. He should have wound up in front of a Tribunal on Hague 7.
Why can’t you obsess over a nice boy. someone who hasn’t ever perpetrated a war crime. how about Harry Kim? he seems like such a good guy
I liked him best when he didn’t have power, actually. In Indiscretion he was under Major Kira’s command, and in Return to Grace he was demoted and disgraced.
I did not say “they don’t know any better,” I said “they aren’t taught any better. Dukat was starting along the same path that Garak and Damar traveled, and then the writers went and fucked everything up. Your analysis of Garak and Damar is what I’ve been trying to say about Dukat. They started out as normal Cardassians and managed to grow a better conscience. You argue my point for me—people are capable of being more than their past.
Somebody’s raised in a culture that values domination and brutality, they might get over it or they might not, but they generally believe in it for awhile. They also generally possess the ability to go beyond that. I see that ability in Dukat, and you can argue with me all you want, I’m not budging on it. Nobody’s making you waste your time on him, and it’s hardly my fault the writers didn’t bother. In any case, he’s a fictional character, so as long as I don’t make any money from it I can make him anything I like. (Another “in any case,” to dismiss anyone as pure evil permanantly is vastly against my religious beliefs. Some people won’t be reached by anything in this lifetime, certainly, but you’re not going to to convince me that about Dukat anytime before Damar shoots Ziyal in Sacrifice of Angels. And as I elect to blame the writers rather than Dukat for By Inferno’s Light and everything afterwards, the point is moot. No matter how fucked up everything is in the fifth, sixth, & seventh seasons, all I have to do is put in a first, second, third, or fourth season DVD, and there he is, on the road to being one of the Good Guys.)
In other words, I reject your reality and substitute my own, and in such subjective matters as my fantasy life, that’s my right.
As for Harry Kim, he’s not Dukat, and that’s the end of it. Love (even the mildly embarrassing crush-on-a-fictional-character sort) is not something where you can just substitute one person for another like you’re changing outfits to go out to dinner. Harry Kim has no spark to him, none of the allure of something dangerous that’s almost, but not quite, tame. Harry Kim is a labrador retriever, Dukat is a leopard. And I love that about him.
I am far more concerned with preventing new atrocities than avenging old ones. Peace is worth far more than vengeance. And a living person, who’s rejected past mistakes, understands what’s wrong with them, and lives accordingly, is worth far more than the corpse of an evil one.
Well, feel free to enjoy your Romeo and Juliet scenario, then. your father (played by “That guy on the internets”) has warned you that Dukat is bad news, and that the prince of Venice (played by Scott Bakula) will not doubt exile the rapskallion. Dukat kills Tybalt (Dax) and then gets exiled, you get your little fake love suicide thing, except Weyoun tricks him, he thinks you really are dead, he dies, you die, and then a goblin with a chaingun pops up and mows down everyone.
Shakespeare is fantastic in the original Klingonese.
I’d be more inclined to think that Dukat was just Joe Typical Cardassian, no better or worse than any other Cardassian or his times, if he were, say, the equivalent of an ensign, or a petty officer. He wasn’t, though. He didn’t merely participate in the system: he was a major player in it. It’s the difference between being an American sargeant in Iraq and being Paul Bremer or John Negroponte. I can say that whatever crimes a typical American sargeant commits in Iraq might be a result of his circumstances — although they might be a result of his personal sadism, etc, as well — but I can’t just say, “well, Negroponte grew up as an American: what do you expect? Maybe someday he’ll become a better person.”
Hey now, don’t be hatin’ on Wesley Crusher. When I was eight years old and watching TNG with my father, I had such a little-girl crush on him.
I think fans always create the best works — that’s why Russel T. Davies’ new Doctor Who show is fantastic. (Although, Old School Fans, YMMV.) And that’s why Neil Gaiman’s few issues on Hellblazer was great — and even why Warren Ellis did such a good job with Transmetropolitan, if you stretch it a bit. (He is /such/ a HST fanboy, I’m certain.)
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. He goes for power, partially from a desire to do good things with it and partly because I think he assumes power leads to happiness (get power, and you can make everything else fall into place), then he runs into the reality that you don’t play a system like that, the system plays you. It stands to reason that if Cardassia’s government thought he was being too lenient on the resistance or was cutting into Cardassia’s profits by coddling the Bajoran populace, they’d replace him with someone who they’re relatively certain they won’t have such problems with. He says, at some point, that he didn’t make policy on Bajor, he just carried it out. He has to do so in order to keep his job, and to keep his job out of the hands of someone worse. In any case, doing things like abolishing child labor (which is credited to Dukat at some point, I forget where) seems to back this up.
Hmm. I don’t know why I’m arguing this. My whole point previously was that people can become better than they are. People make mistakes and bad decisions, sometimes awful ones. But they can also learn and change.
Karpad, Dax is killed at the end of Season Six. After the point where writers screw up Dukat’s character to the point that I wash my hands of the storyline. Also, Dax has the decency to not interfere with other people’s relationships and perpetuate fights the way Tybalt does.
PS: I don’t like Shakespeare. Even in Klingon. I’ll feel free to enjoy my tragedy-free fantasy, and disregard your very Evangelical insistance that beliefs different from yours automatically lead to failure or tragedy. You’re entitled to your opinion of Dukat, and I’m entitled to mine. Quit attacking mine, and I’ll quit writing these mammoth posts defending it.
Oh, Julian? Some of your Joe Typical Cardassians manage to be quite sadistic. One Gul Darhe’el, for example?
I think fans always create the best works � that’s why Russel T. Davies’ new Doctor Who show is fantastic. (Although, Old School Fans, YMMV.)
FINALLY someone mentions Doctor Who. Nice to know geekdom ain’t all a Star Trek wankfest.
And yeah, whimsy, I totally agree. Stephen Moffat (Empty Child, The Doctor Dances) and Mark Gatiss (Unquiet Dead) are old skool fans, and their episodes kicked nine kinds of ass five ways from sideways. Not to mention Paul Cornell and RTD, also fans. Bad Wolf and Parting of the Ways made me run around the apartment screaming like an idiot.
I just want to say right now, I think the Cardassians were among the most brilliant creations of the Trek series. Bad guys, great bad guys–but in typical Trek fashion, you come to see all their worst evils as just mirror images of our own. You see that the most wicked deeds can be done by people whose motives really make a lot of sense. I loved the way the audience’s perception of them evolved from their being big hardasses with guns (I came to think of people in traffic with SUVs as “Cardassians” during the early 90s) to being cultured, thoughtful, sometimes morally courageous people. And Cardie women–wow, talk about strong types.
Maybe, Kyra, your lack of desire for Garack was a perception on your part that Garack was supposed to be one of Trek’s fabled closeted gay people? Say what you will about Dukat, he was a he who liked shes. As a woman who likes men, you gotta go with the one who is responding to you, don’t you. Of course, it helps to be able to choose among those for the ones who are both attractive and nice, and not into genocide and other domineering tricks. Cardassia was _definitely_ what I’d call a dominator society. Though a rather equal-opportunity one in gender terms, it seemed.
While I ramble on this subject I want to say I thought a lot of Bajoran women were hot too. And women had important roles in Bajoran society. For that matter, even in The Original Series, there was a tendency to show something akin to equal opportunity for women in the Romulan and Klingon empires too, maybe moreso than on Enterprise at the time! This may have been a function of their Otherness and Bad-Guy role, as well as just a vehicle for Kirk to bed yet another exotic alien babe of the week. But take the impact of it all together and I think one has to admit, Trek is always a progressive force relative to its time and place.
That’s true, Mark; the OS boasted T’Pau, a Vulcan matriarch in Amok Time. She’s no babe; she’s the only person to refuse a seat in the Federation. She’s so respected that the Feds allow the Enterprise to change course at her request. Even the self-centered Kirk is nervous in her presence; he doesn’t want to back down from a fight in front of her. So, even in 60’s America, Roddenberry foresaw women with considerable clout.
By the by, I mistook “Plato’s Stepchildren” for “Children of Plato”. Sorry about that, Plate.
Actually, he IS now a comic book writer … after Babylon 5, he became a pretty regular comic book writer with some of his own stuff and now a regular writing gig on one of the Spiderman books.
My god, you guys are NERDS.
You know, I watched Deep Space 9 for years and I barely even remember who Dukat was. Time well spent.
Anyway, getting back to the original article, I think you’re underselling Kirby a little bit; in my opinion, his sheer inventiveness puts him above Lee and most of the other creators of the 60s; His work was clearly more then just adolescent power fantasies.
In some ways, this was true of Lee as well, who went beyond the Sidekicks of the 30s and 40s and attempted to look at how having super-powers would actually affect kids.
Full agreement.
Possibly. Also there’s there’s the simple fact that people tend to form their own unique standards of attractiveness, and gravitate towards those who suit that—one “goes for” some people and not others, and Dukat simply does it for me and Garak doesn’t. There’s also the fact that while watching the series I never really trusted Garak much. Don’t know whether I subconsciously associated him with someone else, or what, but part of what turns me on about Dukat is that he’s got the allure of danger without the risk, whereas Garak always seemed to have the risk of danger but not the allure. Garak played the plain-and-simple-tailor too well, whereas with Dukat you never forgot he was Cardassian.
True. I just find TOS a bit boring without Uhura being more of a force in the story. And the not-Klingon Klingons, and the retro designs of everything, and the grating sound effects . . . I’d have watched it in the sixties, and probably enjoyed it. Now, I really wish they’d make a new version of it, without the time it was made in being so damn obvious. Eh. Enough of me pontificating (I’m reminding myself of Dukat now). TOS = good, but doesn’t float my boat. Ditto Garak. Y’all are welcome to both of them, of course; I’ll be busy with Deep Space Nine, Dukat, the Klingon language (as applied towards something other than Shakespeare), and the Enterprise-D’s warp core (I love the sound it makes).
Anyway, getting back to the original article, I think you’re underselling Kirby a little bit; in my opinion, his sheer inventiveness puts him above Lee and most of the other creators of the 60s; His work was clearly more then just adolescent power fantasies.
In some ways, this was true of Lee as well, who went beyond the Sidekicks of the 30s and 40s and attempted to look at how having super-powers would actually affect kids.
Hey, I love all this nerd stuff.
I don’t mean to undersell Kirby or Lee, whom I admire. I think their brilliance has been mentioned many times by many people. I wanted to bring the fantasy back into the mix. Especially the nakedness, the rawness of it. Like I said, it’s like going around with your fly open. It’s incredibly brave to do that, and I think it deserves credit.
And I think Lee was looking at the real affect of super-powers in part because he wanted to relate more, he wanted to fantasize more. And it struck such a nerve because fans related on the same level. If we had super-powers, by God our parents would still make us do our homework.
tIqDaq HoSna’ tu’lu’.
[…] (Note: This is an original post I wrote for a guest gig at Pandagon. It never appeared here. I have some new thoughts on the topic that I’ll be getting to over the next few days, so I thought I’d start by posting this.) […]