howl at your beauty like a dog in heat
May. 19th, 2013 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseI am not going to be seeing Star Trek Into Darkness, because racefail and also just my Trek is the one with the philosophy in it, sorry. I do want to link to greywash's post on the issues with the way that the movie's racefail issues were concealed prior to its release,, because I do think the whole thing has been unfortunate; we needed to be having these conversations months ago, so that it didn't have to feel so much like squee-harshing now. Being grumpy at nu!Trek only ever comes out of being in love with old Trek, anyhow - so I wanna talk about Voyager!
I am IN LURVE with Kathryn Janeway, in that way that you love great queens: with reverence, in abjection, with wonder and vicarious triumphal catharsis. She's a goddamn lioness. And her enthusiasm is gorgeous; she's all in, all the time, and loving it. Space exploration? Engineering babble? Finding her spirit guide? Janeway's into it, not just game but lit up with the joy of discovery and the fun of finding out, the thrill of not knowing what comes next. And I'm really grooving on the way the show is doing the "Queen and Her Dogs" trope; it's like Cordelia Vorkosigan gone all the way into the kind of operatic fantasy that Bujold's realpolitik cannot quite permit. Janeway claims Tom Paris, and so he is hers; she plays with B'Elanna, and so she is hers; she empowers the Doctor, and so he is hers; she looks after Harry, and he's willing to surrender his life to get back to her. 1.07 shows that she's the kind of lady who always comes for her liegepeople. (I went looking for Tuvok/Janeway servicekink, and didn't turn up any at all and had to sulk about it. Tuvok is ridiculously hot, and I find his passionless dedication extremely attractive.) A lot of this is why I've always wanted a girl!Kirk so badly, because Kirk is an even more total iteration of that fantasy, without much restraint at all. Kirk is not, ultimately, driven by rational ethics. He's the epitome of persons before principles. And I want to see that fantasy with a lady more than I want, like, anything. Janeway comes close, but is still torn by the persons v. principles debate; I can understand why they went for that beautifully played bitter complex scene at the end of 1.09, but at the same time part of me still wants the wilder version.
I feel like the whole concept of the Prime Directive is in massive need of a postcolonialist overhaul. For one thing, it conceptualizes inaction as directly equivalent to nonaction, which it is not: to chose not to help is as much an action as choosing to help is. Once you're present, you have an impact on what happens. I find it specious to argue that by acting as if you're not present you can become effectively absent; the only way to not be there is to really not be there, to not boldly go in the first place. Exploration has consequences, inevitably, and it seems to me important to own up to that. But also the Prime Directive conceptualizes the Federation as active and the natives as passive, recapitulating the tendency of white explorers to perceive other cultures as childlike, primitive, or "developing." The whole thing works off of this timeline model of advancement, the Whig Narrative of Progress written in the stars, and I don't trust the terms of that model. The debate over "to intervene or not to intervene" erases the agency of indigenous peoples to make their own choices; it centers questions of the morality of cross-cultural encounter on white-analogues. These are not things that I am comfortable with, and their presence I think indicates a radical problem with the debate.
Anyway, Harry Kim is fucking adorable; I grok Tom Paris, especially when Janeway cradles his unconscious body; B'Elanna Torres' rage made me happy and I hope it isn't gone forever now that she's "integrated" back into Starfleet; Neelix is that thing that science fiction shows in the 90s seems to have thought was a good idea with the character who's a funny funky sexless weirdo guy and is maybe an alien and always wears really ugly clothes that he clearly thinks are naff and somehow it's comic relief. Why did so many shows think this was a good idea? I don't think it was ever a good idea. The one that I did not see coming, that I didn't know to expect, is the Doctor. Oh my god, he's amazing. The way he shows the linked nature of assertion, recognition, and identity, for one thing. The contrast of his brusque medical persona (his programming has to be patterned in some way on McCoy, has to be) with his childlike vulnerability, for another. Asking for a name = me blubbering. God I love self-aware robots becoming real, I love it so good. And I love the verse's rhythms and patterns: the silly zoom-in reaction shots right before commercial, the classic ridiculous scenes of actors throwing themselves wildly around a room to simulate space disturbances, the touching awareness of the value of creativity and wonder. Fucking Star Trek, man, how does it even. (although I want more exploration stuff, more voyage of discovery, creation of new knowledge business, because that ish is primo.)
greywash's post on the issues with the way that the movie's racefail issues were concealed prior to its release,, because I do think the whole thing has been unfortunate; we needed to be having these conversations months ago, so that it didn't have to feel so much like squee-harshing now. Being grumpy at nu!Trek only ever comes out of being in love with old Trek, anyhow - so I wanna talk about Voyager! I am IN LURVE with Kathryn Janeway, in that way that you love great queens: with reverence, in abjection, with wonder and vicarious triumphal catharsis. She's a goddamn lioness. And her enthusiasm is gorgeous; she's all in, all the time, and loving it. Space exploration? Engineering babble? Finding her spirit guide? Janeway's into it, not just game but lit up with the joy of discovery and the fun of finding out, the thrill of not knowing what comes next. And I'm really grooving on the way the show is doing the "Queen and Her Dogs" trope; it's like Cordelia Vorkosigan gone all the way into the kind of operatic fantasy that Bujold's realpolitik cannot quite permit. Janeway claims Tom Paris, and so he is hers; she plays with B'Elanna, and so she is hers; she empowers the Doctor, and so he is hers; she looks after Harry, and he's willing to surrender his life to get back to her. 1.07 shows that she's the kind of lady who always comes for her liegepeople. (I went looking for Tuvok/Janeway servicekink, and didn't turn up any at all and had to sulk about it. Tuvok is ridiculously hot, and I find his passionless dedication extremely attractive.) A lot of this is why I've always wanted a girl!Kirk so badly, because Kirk is an even more total iteration of that fantasy, without much restraint at all. Kirk is not, ultimately, driven by rational ethics. He's the epitome of persons before principles. And I want to see that fantasy with a lady more than I want, like, anything. Janeway comes close, but is still torn by the persons v. principles debate; I can understand why they went for that beautifully played bitter complex scene at the end of 1.09, but at the same time part of me still wants the wilder version.
I feel like the whole concept of the Prime Directive is in massive need of a postcolonialist overhaul. For one thing, it conceptualizes inaction as directly equivalent to nonaction, which it is not: to chose not to help is as much an action as choosing to help is. Once you're present, you have an impact on what happens. I find it specious to argue that by acting as if you're not present you can become effectively absent; the only way to not be there is to really not be there, to not boldly go in the first place. Exploration has consequences, inevitably, and it seems to me important to own up to that. But also the Prime Directive conceptualizes the Federation as active and the natives as passive, recapitulating the tendency of white explorers to perceive other cultures as childlike, primitive, or "developing." The whole thing works off of this timeline model of advancement, the Whig Narrative of Progress written in the stars, and I don't trust the terms of that model. The debate over "to intervene or not to intervene" erases the agency of indigenous peoples to make their own choices; it centers questions of the morality of cross-cultural encounter on white-analogues. These are not things that I am comfortable with, and their presence I think indicates a radical problem with the debate.
Anyway, Harry Kim is fucking adorable; I grok Tom Paris, especially when Janeway cradles his unconscious body; B'Elanna Torres' rage made me happy and I hope it isn't gone forever now that she's "integrated" back into Starfleet; Neelix is that thing that science fiction shows in the 90s seems to have thought was a good idea with the character who's a funny funky sexless weirdo guy and is maybe an alien and always wears really ugly clothes that he clearly thinks are naff and somehow it's comic relief. Why did so many shows think this was a good idea? I don't think it was ever a good idea. The one that I did not see coming, that I didn't know to expect, is the Doctor. Oh my god, he's amazing. The way he shows the linked nature of assertion, recognition, and identity, for one thing. The contrast of his brusque medical persona (his programming has to be patterned in some way on McCoy, has to be) with his childlike vulnerability, for another. Asking for a name = me blubbering. God I love self-aware robots becoming real, I love it so good. And I love the verse's rhythms and patterns: the silly zoom-in reaction shots right before commercial, the classic ridiculous scenes of actors throwing themselves wildly around a room to simulate space disturbances, the touching awareness of the value of creativity and wonder. Fucking Star Trek, man, how does it even. (although I want more exploration stuff, more voyage of discovery, creation of new knowledge business, because that ish is primo.)
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Date: 2013-05-20 02:52 am (UTC)Voyager is one of those rare shows with a big cast where everybody gets a fairly coherent arc (it helps that they get seven full seasons--though, as giandujakiss mentions above, we shan't speak of the last few episodes), so while characters change (OMG the Chakotay/B'Elanna stuff in season one I did not even REMEMBER and it weirded me out SO MUCH on the rewatch, because they are obviously meant to be siblings and BFFs), they don't become unrecognizable. Plus, as has been mentioned, the main cast includes three women, three characters of color, a grab-bag of aliens and an artificial life form that was never supposed to become an independent being.
As for the Prime Directive needing a postcolonialist overhaul, I do agree with you, and I feel like Voyager walks right up to that line and sort of side-eyes it. Not sure it goes over it, or if it does, does it with any consistency. Because of the nature of their situation, Janeway HAS to violate the Prime Directive, and often her persons-first conscience drives her to it even in cases where her people aren't directly involved. Not to mention there's the entire half of the crew who aren't technically Federation but Maquis.
ANYWAY. Voyager FTW. Hope you keep enjoying!