My favorite thing is to have them define “woke.” When they can’t because it’s only a buzzword to them, I explain it means “waking up” to the idea that you’re not the only human being with a purpose-filled life, that there are others for whom the system is built to deal a bad hand, and that the most ironic part is that 9 times out of 10 the individual I’m speaking to is not on the list of the “system’s chosen.”
To me, woke is when identity politics issues are intentionally inserted into a piece of media not to improve the quality of the story, but to push the creators political opinions. Even when I agree with them it annoys me, because it takes me out of the story and makes me feel like I’m being preached too or I’m consuming propaganda.
Disclaimer, I don’t watch star trek. I found this post browsing c/all
So gay characters should only be in media to tell stories about gay people problems? Is that how you think the real world works, like a gay person never accomplished anything other than progressing the gay agenda. Why can’t there just be a story of a man who does a thing and then goes home to his husband. You know, like how real life works lol.
I watched season 1 of Picard and discovery and they just didn’t feel like Star Trek to me. The people complaining about how “woke” it is just distract from legitimate criticism. A lot of it for me was the sets. Their design was dark, gloomy and had an air of oppression that, while present in various forms across trek, wasn’t previously baked into the design of the federation. It was all moody lighting and permenantly frowning actors. That temperament translated into the writing as well but you’ve already addressed part of that. And I’ve got a bone to pick in general with season 1 of Picard but that’s a whole other rant lol
TNG was close to having a transgender episode, “The Outcast”, but they were stuck in their time and didn’t really make any kind of statement.
TOS made several comments on religion and running into powerful beings. In particular “Who Mourns for Adonais?”, which would’ve been a great take if not for Kirk saying “Mankind has no need for gods. We find the one quite adequate”.
That’s the problem with woke as a term. No one can agree on what woke actually means, a bit like fascism.
Does it mean hyper left politics shoved in existing IPs? Sure, a lot would agree with that. How about overly corporate content that has as much soul as a lug nut? What about just generally bad content, or overdone content like the current round of superheo movies? I wouldn’t call them woke, but many would.
The problem with Star Trek and wokeness is that TNG/DS9/Voy was filled with 80s/90s era wokeness. Most people can get behind that. But 2020s era wokeness is a different beast, and it doesn’t seem to fit with the older content.
Both terms are clearly defined and people choose to use them wrong, like you did with your examples.
People where always upset with the level of “wokeness” in Star Trek. The difference being that less where aware of it and if you wanted to complain you had to physically write a letter, go down to the post office, buy some stamps, and mail it in. Today you can just tweet some bullshit from your couch.
The point I was making there is no set definition for woke. And I probably shouldn’t have brought up fascism as a term, because while it’s a similar issue, it’s just not an argument to make. (For the record, fascism does not refer to 1930s Italy anymore, it’s evolved overtime)
No one can agree on what woke actually means
Truth. Word trends take some time to spread around the world, and by the time it reached me it was used mostly as a derogatory term. I could not figure out what it meant from context. Initially I thought it was related to red-pillers because it was used by the same kind of angry people.
I had to look up the definition eventually.
Kirk made out with Uhura on prime time network television. Proportional to that time, it was probably the wokest thing ever.
Or just having a black woman on the bridge as a senior officer next to the captain
Or a Russian as a helmsman
Or a Japanese asian man next them
Or a freaking Scotsman yelling nonsense from the boiler room
And then in the 1980s they made a series where the main theme was that the status quo was perfect and should never be questioned, and they didn’t allow a gay character to exist in the entire franchise until 2017. Star Trek’s been coasting on the progressiveness of the 1960s series for a long time, and it should be no surprise that a substantial portion of its modern audience has different politics.
Uh, they live in a post-scarcity society that has no money. People in the Federation ostensibly exist to better themselves, not accumulate wealth. They routinely shit on our current time period as backwards and primitive.
Also, they have several alien races with masculine women, feminine men, and asexual / agender people. Riker, being enlightened, sleeps with all of them.
I’m not sure how you got “the status quo is perfect” from that.
I will always defend Star Trek as progressive, but it has always been only as progressive as TV would allow at the time. 1980s TV executives would never have allowed a positive gay character on Star Trek in the 80s and 90s. Ellen didn’t even come out of the closet until 1997. I would have loved, at the very least, the androgynous alien Riker falls in love with to have been played by a man, and Frakes wanted that, but it was nixed. Because it was the 80s and TV executives were from the 60s. It would never have happened.
And new Star Trek has done a lot to be LGBT±supportive, which is great.
Ah found the Clueless Trekkie!
TOS was progressive for the 60s
TNG was progressive for the 80s
they didn’t allow a gay character to exist in the entire franchise until 2017
Oh yea not until 2017, when the first new show aired since 2005’s STE went off the air. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact there weren’t any new shows for 12 years.
It was the first televised interracial kiss.
At least in the USA if not the world.
People being free to do as they see fit is great. People being constrained from hurting others’ feelings not so much.
I haven’t seen the new star trek so I don’t know what kind of wokeness is being referred to, but if it were a matter of an interracial relationship I doubt people would be calling it woke.
That’s what bothers me for a long time now and I’m glad I’m not alone: I like the stories but a black woman on the bridge? Really? But it’s ok, she was born in Africa so she’s not necessarily a former slave. What bothers me more is a later development: A Russian on a supposedly American ship! Even if it’s not explicitly American, there are Americans on the bridge and they sure as hell won’t serve with a Russian! What do they think? The cold war is over? But I have great hope in the planned new series. I hope the Next Generation won’t be that woke.
Go back even further! The cage almost canceled the entire show because a woman was merely implied to be captaining the ship for a quick while 😰😰
My favorite TOS episode was the one where they showed the clear superiority of the aliens with the white/black faces over the aliens with the black/white faces. The genocide part went a bit far, but in the end those black/white face guys had it coming.
You almost make it seem ridiculous by calling it black/white faces. It was the whole body! They wear gloves so you didn’t see it but it wasn’t just the face. That in mind, the white/black skinned were totally in their right. The genocide didn’t even happen, it’s just made up like most genocides are. The black/white people just prevented worse from happening.
I’m all for the idea of wokeness, but there are those that take it to an extreme. Those that would silence a black man making a honest case for color-blindness, calling him racist. Those that won’t put in any thought before declaring anyone who disagrees with them a racist/transphobe/xenophobe etc etc etc.
There is room for honest discussion and critical thinking, but there is this mob mentality ultraleft (and yea this exists in the right too) that seems incapable of critical thought and only capable of hating anything that opposes the groupthink.
Can you give us a good example that is exclusive to the ultra left, which doesn’t involve bigotry or “just asking questions” talking points?
Otherwise, the whole groupthink problem is a much wider issue, and why the two party system in the US is a problem.
you can always tell when someone has said something terrible and got called a fascist/nazi for it because they say stuff like this
It couldn’t be that I watched a talk like this:
https://youtu.be/QxB3b7fxMEA?si=_HLVoBr0moJg6Mkb
And liked the ideas, but then see that it’s being used to call the speaker racist and attempts at silencing him. Plus the unwillingness to even have a conversation.
https://youtu.be/KKZlb-MdzKo?si=bohTJwhwMD9QehI-
You vilify the idea of “just asking questions” to the point that no one can ask questions. That leaves me standing here, not understanding your position, but unwilling to blindly accept everything I’m told to think.
Sure, there are people who weaponize “just asking questions”, but is the solution really just to call every person with a contrary opinion a fucking nazi?
Edit: is anyone willing to tell me how the ideas in the first video are racist and worthy of silencing the person who speaks them?
You know, it’s possible to be a leftist and still not agree 100% with the everything.
The response to my comment is precisely what I hate about the left. And yet, I’m still so much more aligned with the left that I could ever be with the right.
So because the right is a bunch of fucking retarded donkeys, the left is infallible. Got it.
Sounds like they were never a Trekkie to begin with.
They rarely are. They’re usually just someone who watched Star Trek and thought it looked cool. When it comes to the actual ideas and equality and giving people chances? Nah. The amount of “Trekkies” I’ve met who are aggressively for the death penalty for people who they politically disagree with or who are disgustingly racist? Phenomenally high.
Speaking only for my own experience, my exposure was with TNG as a kid before streaming and everything. It was always on in syndication daytime and late night and it was more interesting to me than other choices.
I didn’t know or understand anything about the message of the series. The more recent movies didn’t really highlight it for me at all either.
Now, however, we watched all of Strange New Worlds, we’re halfway through Discovery and just finished Picard and in retrospect it’s obvious that it’s always been a core part of the show.
Without the prior exposure and context? It might seem a little heavy handed but anybody who would consider it “woke” or too PC is likely a hard-right conservative, not a Trekkie.
My only thing is I disagree with the whole “complete dictatorial police state, but it’s cool because at least they’re a benevolent dictatorial police state” thing. Like yes every government other than the federation is worse, but just you try to have your own laws and customs contrary to Federation wishes. Better hope they can show up in time to save your ass from threats foreign or federation because no planets or people on them are allowed to have weapons, for instance.
I’ll bet (without knowing for sure) Roddenberry’s idea of the Federation didnt start out as a police state. But like with currency, it is hard for many writers to imagine humanity evolving past the need for policing our own and enforcing laws.
The amount of “Trekkies” I’ve met who are aggressively for the death penalty
Voyager fans… Never 4get tuvix.
Vastly different situation between “execution for a crime” and “undoing a transporter error when the error itself already openly agreed that it needed to be corrected”
OG startrek was probably the “wokest” thing on TV in the sixties. And a bunch of grouchy old men that no one cared about bitched about it back then too.
They had a black woman in a respected, professional position with an officer’s rank. The same with an Asian man.
They tackled race relations (in an admittedly very silly way) when no one else would touch it.
They had one of the first onscreen kisses between a white person and a black person.
Starfleet was created as a military force, but dedicated to peaceful exploration and science at the height of the Vietnam war.
Can you even imagine what today’s Republicans would say about it back then? There would be a boycott of the network the first time Uhura was onscreen and it wouldn’t have finished the season because there were only three networks.
