Illustrations from The Halloween Tree, we have framed versions of all 3 in our hourse.
(Source: glitterfilm)
Tumbling over the past year and a half has made me see the problems of gender roles that exist in media, but sometimes it gets to the point where I over analyze every single piece of television or film that I come across. (However this in no way means that I think feminist media criticism is wrong, or should be avoided!) Mostly I just over think everything.
gopy, some days.
and if cyberpunk has taught us anything, the future belongs to megacorporations, so sex robots would probably pause mid-coitus and start howling about consolidating your student loans or, like, playing a MIDI version of the Folgers jingle
sound familiar?
“It was always too philosophical for me”
“I want to make a movie for movie fans”
“It’s not for Star Trek fans, it’s for people like me”
“Khan can’t be brown, he’ll be seen as a terrorist and nothing will change that”
“Who cares if he’s white. It’s about the acting, nobody’s gonna pay for someone who isn’t as famous as benedict”
“Star Trek has a large male fanbase so we have to appeal to them (by always having women in their underwear)
“Carol Marcus was a talented scientist but now she’s in her underwear, same as Uhura - I guess the public is not ready for educated women with equal positions”
“It’s 2013! and we’re still putting up with racism!”
“Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek always promoted equality and paid wave for coloured actors, and this is still happening?”
“It’s done, why do you still care, things can’t be different”
All I know is that I’ve been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with my sister lately. It’s a show that has a blind, black man as the head of engineering, a black actor (admittedly decked out in prosthetics, but still a black actor) as the head of security. A woman is the head of medical and another woman is a well-respected ship’s counselor. Whoopi Goldberg is the brassy, worldly bartender with a complex nature and magnificently complicated personal history, a character like the Doctor from Doctor Who - i.e. a character most black women never get to play .
The costumes for the female characters are based on what each individual character would wear, from the svelte catsuits Deanna Troy sports to the very functional full-body uniforms of Dr. Crusher. There are even men in skirts visible on the ship. No one is shamed for their personal choice in this OR overtly objectified.
All of the characters are shown as valuable members of the crew, mutual co-stars in an ensemble cast. All of them are given meaty parts, with episodes that feature them, and well-written character arcs.
And it only went on from there, onto to female captains and black commanders of space stations and so on and so forth. Gene Roddenbery was even pushing for LGBT characters when he died and one of the only things stopping them was the kicking, screaming fight they knew Paramount would put up. Always, they were pushing, though, trying to make things better.
And now we’ve moved backwards.
I really enjoy JJ’s conception of the characters, the writing, the casting, but the Khan thing is a sour note, something that jars the reboot away from the grand tune of the franchise. Because this was the franchise that made Whoopi Goldberg think she could go into acting because there was a black woman on TV that wasn’t a maid. From there, from the original series, it only kept pushing forward, boldly going where very few stories had ever gone before.
If it’s not going to keep pushing forward and presenting a future where all people are equal - and in the real world, support the inherent truth that actors can be equal because there are excellent POC actors out there just as talented or even more talented than Cumberbatch - what is the point of having a reboot at all?
The people that don’t realize how much the whitewashing of Khan goes against the grain of what Star Trek really is aren’t real fans of Trek. The reboot maybe wasn’t made for fans of Trek but that means it wasn’t made for people who believe in true equality and a better future. And if it wasn’t made for those people, it isn’t Trek at all.
(Source: catbushandludicrous)
Giant Pink Slugs on the Rampage
According to park rangers in New South Wales, Australia, dozens of giant, fluorescent pink slugs have been popping up on a mountaintop there. Hundreds of these eight-inch creatures have been spotted only on Mount Kaputar, a 5,000-foot peak in the Nandewar Range in northern New South Wales. Scientists believe the eye-catching organisms are survivors from an era when Australia was home to rainforests.
