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beccaelizabethI've been thinking on structure and theme, and how the beginning could connect to the rest of the movie better.
They start out by breaking the Prime Directive, showing themselves to a people with a much lower tech level, who respond by abandoning their own writings and bowing down in worship to the new image.
Then they meet a man who is, personally, as far ahead of any of them as they are ahead of the spear throwers.
How do they react?
He is technologically superior, designing all those advanced weapons for Admiral Marcus. And Marcus abandons his / Starfleet's ideology and rule book for what he sees as the shiny bits of the new guy.
It would look like a validation of the Prime Directive, except Khan is from Earth's own past, and is more 'advanced' in ways that humanity abandoned. That wasn't outside interference, it was Earth's own memory. So it doesn't quite track.
The trouble with the Prime Directive is I hate it with a fiery passion. It leaves people ignorant and dying because of some fairy tale about how development works. Humanity didn't suddenly become ready for first contact because they developed a new engine, they simply became able to go knocking. What is required for successful first contact is the basic idea that other beings can be different from us but just as much a person. If a society has a rigid religious system that has only the options humans, angels, and demons, the new sort of people are going to interact with that poorly. The older ideas of a hierarchy of being had humans balanced right in the middle with beasts to serve them; that's not going to make good neighbours, even if they don't decide the new guys are devils. So first contact with people who lack a certain flexibility of thought is just going to go some kind of nasty. But such societies are certainly capable of continuing to advance technologically, and warp drive is no indicator of that kind of development. If a society has room for the idea of meeting new and different people, why not meet them? To talk about how it crashes their culture is insulting. Also ridiculous: why preserve a culture that can't deal with truth? And if it's development of science they are tracking, why leave them to take centuries to learn? In the here and now it takes about a quarter century to go from not knowing which was is up or what this light and dark thing is about to knowing enough to push back the frontiers of human understanding. We go from utter ignorance to as much knowledge as there is available through study, not some vague idea of culture. The Prime Directive is like closing all the universities and saying everyone has to figure it out themselves from experience. Utterly mad.
But then you get the people with the technological development but without the ability to see other beings as people. The genetically modified eugenicists Earth created in the Star Trek timeline are, by the time of Khan in TOS, those people. They can see a whole lot of beings, but they can see they're superior to them in every measurable way. Why not rule? Or just wipe out the useless ones. Makes perfect logical sense, right? If you don't believe other beings have a right to live well in their own way.
So again, Khan loops back to questioning the Prime Directive, because he's judging the worth of others and intervening in their lives. Fatally. The exact flip side of Kirk being all screw the rules to make sure the less technologically developed culture gets to live.
Nothing in the movie really brings this stuff up though, let alone ties it together. The breaking the rules sequence makes no sense on a scientific/technical level and exists on a narrative level only to set up Kirk's depowering/repowering and Spock's emotional arc. It's not there to explore the basic questions.
There are no questions explored in Into Darkness. It's too much of a mess, and it ends with some pontificating about how we mustn't be violent to fight violence, yet tries to draw the line somewhere that makes everything the Enterprise did okay. Big heap of rubbish.
I want to pull it apart and use the bits to write something better, but feel this is not the most productive use of my time, because the bits fall into smaller bits the closer I look at them.
They start out by breaking the Prime Directive, showing themselves to a people with a much lower tech level, who respond by abandoning their own writings and bowing down in worship to the new image.
Then they meet a man who is, personally, as far ahead of any of them as they are ahead of the spear throwers.
How do they react?
He is technologically superior, designing all those advanced weapons for Admiral Marcus. And Marcus abandons his / Starfleet's ideology and rule book for what he sees as the shiny bits of the new guy.
It would look like a validation of the Prime Directive, except Khan is from Earth's own past, and is more 'advanced' in ways that humanity abandoned. That wasn't outside interference, it was Earth's own memory. So it doesn't quite track.
The trouble with the Prime Directive is I hate it with a fiery passion. It leaves people ignorant and dying because of some fairy tale about how development works. Humanity didn't suddenly become ready for first contact because they developed a new engine, they simply became able to go knocking. What is required for successful first contact is the basic idea that other beings can be different from us but just as much a person. If a society has a rigid religious system that has only the options humans, angels, and demons, the new sort of people are going to interact with that poorly. The older ideas of a hierarchy of being had humans balanced right in the middle with beasts to serve them; that's not going to make good neighbours, even if they don't decide the new guys are devils. So first contact with people who lack a certain flexibility of thought is just going to go some kind of nasty. But such societies are certainly capable of continuing to advance technologically, and warp drive is no indicator of that kind of development. If a society has room for the idea of meeting new and different people, why not meet them? To talk about how it crashes their culture is insulting. Also ridiculous: why preserve a culture that can't deal with truth? And if it's development of science they are tracking, why leave them to take centuries to learn? In the here and now it takes about a quarter century to go from not knowing which was is up or what this light and dark thing is about to knowing enough to push back the frontiers of human understanding. We go from utter ignorance to as much knowledge as there is available through study, not some vague idea of culture. The Prime Directive is like closing all the universities and saying everyone has to figure it out themselves from experience. Utterly mad.
But then you get the people with the technological development but without the ability to see other beings as people. The genetically modified eugenicists Earth created in the Star Trek timeline are, by the time of Khan in TOS, those people. They can see a whole lot of beings, but they can see they're superior to them in every measurable way. Why not rule? Or just wipe out the useless ones. Makes perfect logical sense, right? If you don't believe other beings have a right to live well in their own way.
So again, Khan loops back to questioning the Prime Directive, because he's judging the worth of others and intervening in their lives. Fatally. The exact flip side of Kirk being all screw the rules to make sure the less technologically developed culture gets to live.
Nothing in the movie really brings this stuff up though, let alone ties it together. The breaking the rules sequence makes no sense on a scientific/technical level and exists on a narrative level only to set up Kirk's depowering/repowering and Spock's emotional arc. It's not there to explore the basic questions.
There are no questions explored in Into Darkness. It's too much of a mess, and it ends with some pontificating about how we mustn't be violent to fight violence, yet tries to draw the line somewhere that makes everything the Enterprise did okay. Big heap of rubbish.
I want to pull it apart and use the bits to write something better, but feel this is not the most productive use of my time, because the bits fall into smaller bits the closer I look at them.
and more quotes from others
Date: 2013-06-26 11:29 am (UTC)If you're going to use the “worst stupid, lazy, racist fanon cliché” of the spearchuckers (this is [personal profile] liviapenn’s description of them, which I find apt), let us at least discuss the moral dilemma involved. TOS would have been racist and offensive in regards to the spearchuckers (and was, often), but it would have also earnestly been trying to have a discussion about cultural interference and moral relativism. In STID it was played for laughs.
And this is the absolute crux of why this movie upsets me so much: for me, Star Trek is about ethics, morality, optimism, cultural understanding and acceptance. It’s an earnest wish for a better future. It’s about the joy of exploring new places and learning new things and meeting new people. Star Trek is not actually about Tribbles. Star Trek is not actually about Klingons; Klingons are about how to deal with a culture that is vastly different and people who may want to kill you. Star Trek isn’t about Khan; Khan is about the evils of racism and racial superiority; Khan is about the ethical treatment of criminals; Khan is about the mistakes of our past—both the distant past and the immediate past; Khan is about loyalty and friendship and revenge. Star Trek isn’t a piece of glass; that piece of glass is about years of friendship and trust and overcoming difference and learning to understand each other; it’s about sacrifice and loss and love.
You can’t just throw these objects into a blender and call it Star Trek because it has some of the trappings. That’s just so disrespectful to what Star Trek is, to what it means to me, to what I hope it can mean for others. Star Trek is a symbol; it’s not a bunch of names and props and costumes.
on writing craft
Date: 2013-06-27 03:17 am (UTC)http://sineala.dreamwidth.org/1350749.html?format=light