Blog Association
I’ve never been a Trekkie, but I’ve seen enough of the franchise over the years to make me think I could talk about it with some familiarity, hence this post from a while ago. It started out as an outgrowth of something about the Cybermen and the Borg that I’m still tinkering with. I stand by a lot of what I wrote, but I’m preparing to have to revise some of my views because of the arrival of a truly excellent new blog called Vaka Rangi, written by my online friend (and frequent Shabgraff commenter) Josh Marsfelder. He describes the blog as
an attempt at a critical history of utopian futurism in televised science fiction, particularly science fiction involving voyaging starships, from a specific perspective and using the Star Trek franchise as a “guiding text”
I’m posting this not simply to get you to check out this blog (which you should utterly do, if the subject interests you) but also to address a remark I made in my own essay on Trek. This remark:
it’s astounding that apparently intelligent people can tout Star Trek as a great example of progressivism in popular culture
Well, there you go. My tendency to slip into that ghastly denunciatory tone so common on the left. Yeurch. As I say, there’s now a blog by a demonstrably intelligent person (as if I’m an arbiter of that!) who will, I think, argue that Trek is (or at least becomes) an example of progressivism in popular culture. He’s currently working his way through the original series and is frequently taking it to task for all sorts of horrible attitudes… but a journey of a billion miles would probably have to begin with a few missteps.
Josh Marsfelder
June 9, 2013 @ 6:35 pm
Thanks very much for the kind words and plug!
I've always felt Star Trek had the makings of a special, nuanced breed of leftist utopianism. I grant this comes about frequently in spite of itself, but I do believe this is something a not-insignificant number of creative figures throughout the history of the franchise have had a vested interest in.
The trick for me, at least for the first part of the blog, is going to be trying to tease out exactly what about the series lends itself to this interpretation and how we should read it to best facilitate the impact it has the potential to leave (and indeed the impact it has demonstrably had on people already).
After years of thinking about this, and with some help from some other areas of interest of mine, I think I might have finally come upon something that makes Star Trek unique in this regard. But, of course, that's also for my readers to decide…