I know I need to get off of FB but I got this in a Star Wars EU group I'm in and I simply asked the guy who posted it if he thinks he is saying something important? I definitely noticed a big change within the past years in certain fandoms so that isn't just my imagination. But anyways, how would y'all respond and since this is a common thing about current woke "fans" is there anything to rebut this? I know Eric July did a video a while back in regards to comic books.
Forever taking risks since TOS. FOR THE UNEDUCATED. • X-Men is about civil rights. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get X-Men. • Black Panther is about civil rights. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Black Panther. • Captain America literally fought nazis. He is the embodiment of fighting the alt-right. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Captain America. • The Empire in Star Wars is fascist. The Rebel alliance are Anti-Fascist. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Star Wars. • Doctor Who was about an alien fighting for all of humanity in spite of totalitarian regimes. If you don't get that, you don't get Doctor Who. • The Punisher isn’t meant to be a role model for police or armed forces. So much so that the writers of The Punisher made him actively speak out against it in a comic. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get The Punisher. • Deadpool is queer. He’s pansexual. Fact. If you didn’t get that you didn’t get Deadpool. • Star Trek is about equality for all genders, races and sexualities. As early as the mid-60s it was taking a pro-choice stance and defending women’s right to choose. One of its clearest themes is accepting different cultures and appearances and working together for peace. (It’s also anti-capitalist and pro-vegan). If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Star Trek. • Superman and Wonder Woman (and a whole host of other superheroes) are immigrants. The stance of those comics is pro-immigration and pro-equality and acceptance. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Superman or Wonder Woman. • Stan Lee said, “Racism and bigotry are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today.” If you’re bigoted or racist, you didn’t get any of the characters Stan Lee created. • The stories we grew up with all taught us to value other people and cultures and to treasure the differences between us. Only villains were xenophobic, or sexist, or racist, or totalitarian. I can’t understand how anyone can have missed that. • If you’re upset that there’s a black Spider-Man, or a black Captain America, or a female Thor, or that Ms. Marvel is Muslim, or that Captain Marvel was pro-feminism or any of the other things right-wing “fans” say is “stealing their childhood” - you never got it in the first place. The things you claim are now “pandering to the lefties” were never on your side, to begin with. If you consider yourself a fan of these things, but you still think the LGBTQ+ community is too “in your face”, or have a problem with Black Lives Matter, or want to “take the country back from immigrants”, then you’re not really a fan at all. Geek culture isn’t suddenly left-wing... it always was. You just grew up to be intolerant. You became the villain in the stories you used to love.
First off, woke as it's understood today is far different than whatever they are claiming as woke back in the 60s or 90s. As far as Star Trek goes, I can probably count the so-called woke episodes on one hand (Kirk kisses Uhura (RIP) while being mind controlled, Riker dates a non-binary but clearly female looking alien, Dax makes out with another woman who was a man in a past life, Sisko complains and has visions about racism in the 50s).
Most of these episodes are completely forgettable and were forgotten until they started being incessantly brought up by woketards to prove the franchises they started watching 5 minutes ago have "always been woke". The reason people actually watched these shows back in the day was cause of the cool sci-fi stories and cool characters. I guarantee you nerds in the 90s weren't watching TNG for racial and gender politics.
Yes there was a bit of an anti-capitalist streak but it was actually limited in scope a lot more than people remember. The Federation not using money was only first mentioned offhand in Star Trek IV, before that money and pay and buying things was still talked about by the TOS crew, though it was never a significant aspect of the show.
The first season of TNG (the one most universally reviled) is where most of the socialist no-money vegan utopia lectures by Picard happened and it was always viewed as eye-rolling to insufferable.
By the time DS9 rolled around these concepts were routinely mocked and subverted even by Federation characters. Either way Earth being a perfect utopia was always stated a priori as fact, with any explanation, justification, or details being left to the fans.
Point is it was never that deep, fans just liked the idea of a future where people were not forced to work soul crushing jobs to survive but still were productive, responsible, rational, competent members of society. The biggest misfit ever portrayed on the show was Barclay and he was still a brilliant eminently useful person.
Honestly if society as a whole was as competent and amiable as the crews portrayed on Star Trek, just financial compensation would never be an issue to begin with.
Thank you! Very well said. I enjoyed Star truck up to the new stuff. Also making a commentary on race in the 50s and 60s is different than today. Young ppl today think they are being brave by condemning racism
"Far Beyond the Stars" (Sisko lives out a vision of himself as a writer in the 50s experiencing racial discrimination) was a good episode in spite of it's woke/progressive plot, not because of it. The connection to the actual story line of the show was extremely thin, but seeing all the regulars without makeup but still portraying similar-in-spirit characters was really neat. And as usual the show was extremely well written, produced, and acted (with possible exception to Avery Brooks magnum opus performance at the end "IT'S REEEEAL". I liked it cause I like over-the-top).
Despite Sisko being widely touted in the press as Star Trek's "first black captain" (before the second first black captain dropped in Discovery), the character's race was never mentioned previously on the show, nor did the show feature any plot lines or stories that could be construed as relating to contemporary racial politics (minor xenophobia towards aliens portrayed as literal space nazis was about as far as it went).
Because of that the "commentary" contained in the episode was pretty much "racism happened in the 50s, and it was bad". No allusion or allegory whatsoever to any present tense issue. Really the only reason the episode was made is because Avery Brooks wanted to make it (and direct it).
Of course nowadays with NuTrek it's even worse as contemporary woke politics is inserted for similarly zero reasons with regard to plot, but also with the assumption that those politics still exist in the exact same way 400 or 1000 years from now. And instead of being shoehorned into one or two episodes they are endemic. And the writing and acting suck.
And remember when they went to save that hologram? At first he didn’t want to then he changed his mind. It was cool seeing those actors without makeup. Trying to figure out who was who was part of the fun. Avery Brooks has also said playing the best captain was his goal.
You mean "Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang", the one where Vic's lounge is taken over by mobsters? Sisko's outburst about the racial realities of a period holodeck program was pretty random, and even more clearly driven by the actor. It was also dropped as quick as it came.
My takeaway from that scene is that black people must still be bitter about how their people were treated 500 years ago. I seriously doubt anyone now besides medieval/early modern historians could recall much less relate to social politics of the 1500's.
If anything the takeaway should be how far progressive politics had degenerated even from the 60s to the 90s, as when Uhura was called a "negress" by time traveling Abe Lincoln, she didn't even bat an eye, and when the unprompted apology came, she just said "why would I take offense? I don't fear words".
Really this scene is the ultimate counter to "Star Trek was always woke": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BBOWsWODX4
Since wokeness is the opposite of not fearing words, and not being bitter about a distant past (and being "delighted with who you are", as Kirk states, is anathema to the trans agenda).
There's so much straight of uppity leftist racism in trek it's insane... Definitely insane to act like it isn't.
Aside from that, even if I agree with anti-racist messaging, there's a difference. The white-black vs black-white episode of trek is good. Dr Seuss 's star bellied sneetches are good. The heavy-handed unsubtlety of Sisko's pro-black episode it's terrible. I only made it through the first episode of Lovecraft country. Sci-fi can do it right. Hell, the point of sci-fi is that you can make allegory to show principles without beating the audience over the head with black=good, white=bad.
Good points. I guess the Sisco thing is odd because I’m puzzled by young black ppl today being bitter over slavery so hundreds of years later he is still bitter over something that ended a number of centuries before he was born? I didn’t bother with lovecraft country as soon as I heard it would be about race. I went and bought some of his books. In regards to Lovecraft it’s amazing that these woke companies bash him for the views he had but make money off him.
Sci Fi done right lets you reach your own conclusion. The Orville has a race of all men (who can naturally reproduce together) that forces all females to be turned to male (like, for real, not the fake, pseudo transition our science tries to do) and they make a whole big thing about transitioning a child born female (but changed male as a baby) back to female, because she feels that way innately. I think they're going for a pro-trans thing, but my takeaway is it's proof we shouldn't have trans kids at all. Good sci Fi lets you think, even if the authors are woke.
Yeah TOS and TNG just weren't focused on Earth. Enterprise is essentially a military vessel, though supposedly an exploration one, despite the fact that it seems to be the most capable warship in the fleet and get into a ton of fights. So money is only important when you get into port. Otherwise your privileges are determined by rank.
It was more hippy than woke -- utopian. They didn't really spend a lot of time on planetary politics.
NuTrek is even worse because of the season-long plots. Every Trek always had a few bad episodes but they were self-contained and you could ignore them.