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Speaker 7: Hello and welcome to listeners of both the Superhero Ethics
Speaker 7: and Star Wars Generations podcast. This is Matthew your host
Speaker 7: for both of those. I'm sorry to say that this
Speaker 7: has been a really crazy week, and just this morning
Speaker 7: we found out that my grandfather had passed away, my
Speaker 7: spouse's grandfather, but he'd been a grandfather to me as well.
Speaker 7: As you can imagine, there's a lot going on, a
Speaker 7: lot of arrangements, we made, a lot of family stuff happening,
Speaker 7: and so I'm not going to be able to record
Speaker 7: episodes for either of these podcasts this week, and so
Speaker 7: I'm putting this out as my apology. I think we're
Speaker 7: going to have a older episode attached at the end
Speaker 7: of this as a rebroadcast, hopefully something you haven't heard before,
Speaker 7: because for those of you who are new listeners, or
Speaker 7: something that maybe you had heard quite a while ago
Speaker 7: but forgotten and maybe think about differently today. So please enjoy,
Speaker 7: and again my apologies, thank you also very much. We
Speaker 7: have spoken today on Superhero Ethics. We go where no
Speaker 7: podcast has gone before, into a land where two of
Speaker 7: the people on this podcast have blue or purple streaks
Speaker 7: in their hair, but not mister Hoppy. More importantly, we're
Speaker 7: talking about star Trek and the nature of the Frontier
Speaker 7: with Professor Matthew Capel and Paul Hoppy and myself all
Speaker 7: that more after a commercial break we have no control over.
Speaker 7: Welcome back to Matthew, your host these day then pronouns.
Speaker 7: I'm joined, as fairly often by my still stuck in
Speaker 7: the twenty first century with no foreign color in his hair,
Speaker 7: co host of Dujure Paul, Happy, Paul, how you doing today?
Speaker 8: I'm good. Yeah, that's all I got. I'm good, yeah, okay,
Speaker 8: and very propose.
Speaker 7: Also joining me is another guest who I've recorded a
Speaker 7: podcast with already. We had audio problems. They may get rescued,
Speaker 7: but I'm really glad to have back again. Professor Matthew Cappell.
Speaker 7: Matthew is a professor of American Studies in Anthropology at
Speaker 7: Pace University in New York City. I got a great
Speaker 7: email a while ago now saying that he was a
Speaker 7: fan of the podcast, that he had some ideas about,
Speaker 7: you know, looking at a lot of the stuff we
Speaker 7: talk about through the lens of mythology and storytelling, and
Speaker 7: how these themes play into larger themes that are just apart.
Speaker 7: It just made my academic heart get so happy and
Speaker 7: made me realize I wanted Matthew on the podcast.
Speaker 9: For as many episodes as we could. We have a
Speaker 9: lot of.
Speaker 7: Star Wars contact coming out now, so I said, hey,
Speaker 7: what can we do other than Star Wars? And he
Speaker 7: mentioned the Star Wars Star Trek because we can do
Speaker 7: both of them, Star Trek and the Frontier. And I
Speaker 7: thought this would be a fantastic topic. So Matthew, so
Speaker 7: good have you with us? Say hello, Hello?
Speaker 10: Just to be clear, it was a it was a
Speaker 10: fan letter, and I was not giving you suggestion.
Speaker 7: I think you mentioned something like this is a cool
Speaker 7: like somehow we got into the conversation. I will say
Speaker 7: that a lot of people have sent me fan letters
Speaker 7: and they've turned into unknown solicitations to be on the podcast.
Speaker 7: But I'm very glad that you've done. I'm joining all
Speaker 7: of our conversations. I think this is gonna be a
Speaker 7: great one. So let me just kind of start by
Speaker 7: letting people hear a little bit more about you. Talk
Speaker 7: a little about your background in terms of the kind
Speaker 7: of stuff you teach about, and how Star Wars and
Speaker 7: superheroes and the epic stories that we love and talk
Speaker 7: about on these podcasts kind of fit into the work
Speaker 7: you do.
Speaker 10: Sure, so, I'm a historian and anthropologist, though my doctorate's
Speaker 10: in American studies, and I've done a lot of books
Speaker 10: in my career on science fiction film.
Speaker 4: And the reason I.
Speaker 10: Like science fiction film is because it's basically myth. It's
Speaker 10: the way we tell myth today. If you want to
Speaker 10: talk about any kind of myth, you have to start
Speaker 10: with Batman. You can't start with SEUs, right, And in
Speaker 10: that context, my PhD thesis had an entire chapter on
Speaker 10: the frontier in Star Trek, and that's why I brought
Speaker 10: it up with you. And it's very much a topic
Speaker 10: that has got ethical issues all around it, but as
Speaker 10: most of Star Trek does so generally, I'm kind of
Speaker 10: semi retired at this point. I basically just teach regular
Speaker 10: old fashioned anthropology, things like urban thnography and American studies.
Speaker 10: I think I'm teaching a class in the Fall on
Speaker 10: science and technology after World War Two, so nothing special,
Speaker 10: very mythological, but all of my writing is in myth.
Speaker 10: So that's why I like you.
Speaker 9: Nice, Nice, Well, I'm glad it's such a great topic.
Speaker 7: I think I mentioned the other time we try to
Speaker 7: record a podcast that the first time I thought seriously
Speaker 7: about Star Wars beyond just you know, being I love
Speaker 7: the laser sort of fights and things like that. Was
Speaker 7: watching the Peter Campbell, you know, and George Lucas talking
Speaker 7: about the power the power of myth and Star Wars,
Speaker 7: and since then I've come to understand that there's a
Speaker 7: lot more to those ideas than what those two gentlemen
Speaker 7: had to say. Uh, for those of you not watching
Speaker 7: on the stream, you didn't get to see Matthew kind
Speaker 7: of roll his eyes a bit when I mentioned that,
Speaker 7: because it's just one perspective of many, but it's it's
Speaker 7: such a rich field for discussing these things. And so
Speaker 7: let me just start by asking, so when we say
Speaker 7: the frontier, like that's you know, start every Star Trek
Speaker 7: episode for a long time always opened with you know,
Speaker 7: space the final Frontier or some version of it. The
Speaker 7: frontier was something I remember being taught about in American history,
Speaker 7: especially nineteenth century that you know, it was always to
Speaker 7: find the next frontier.
Speaker 9: American acceptionism and all that talk about.
Speaker 7: What what does the frontier mean as a concept in
Speaker 7: American mythology.
Speaker 10: Well, I think the easy place to start is to
Speaker 10: point out that for three or four generations, historians thought
Speaker 10: the frontier was a real thing that they were talking
Speaker 10: about as a historical artifact. But when the nineteen sixties
Speaker 10: were older around and people stopped thinking about history as
Speaker 10: the history of white men only, we came to the
Speaker 10: conclusion pretty quickly that our notion of the frontier was
Speaker 10: highly flawed. Not in terms of the frontier is bad,
Speaker 10: in terms of that's bad history, that's bad history of writing. So,
Speaker 10: because I'm an academic, I have come with quotes. Here's
Speaker 10: the quote you need. There was a So America history
Speaker 10: as a nation doesn't really have universities with history professors
Speaker 10: and so like the eighteen eighties. But most of the
Speaker 10: disciplines we think of our eighteen eighties to nineteen ten.
Speaker 10: My field of anthropology is basically nineteen ten history. The
Speaker 10: first American Historical Association meeting is like eighteen eighty four,
Speaker 10: maybe so before the American Historical Association is even ten
Speaker 10: years old. A historian from Wisconsin named p. Jackson Turner.
Speaker 10: There's this stunningly important paper that we have been reading
Speaker 10: over and over and over again, even though we know
Speaker 10: he's wrong. And here it's called the Significance of the
Speaker 10: Frontier in American History, And the famous quote which I
Speaker 10: can almost do from memory, but I'm going to read
Speaker 10: just to be safe. Is up until our own day,
Speaker 10: American history has been in a large degree the history
Speaker 10: of the colonization of.
Speaker 4: The Great West.
Speaker 8: Year.
Speaker 10: It is the existence of an area of free land.
Speaker 10: It's continuous recession and the advance of American settlement westward.
Speaker 10: Explain American development. That's eighteen ninety three in Chicago. We
Speaker 10: can take it apart right at free Land. There was
Speaker 10: nobody there free land. It's this continuing colonization of this
Speaker 10: free land from the time of the Mayflower to eighteen
Speaker 10: ninety three. And one of the things that Frederick Jackson
Speaker 10: Turner says in this eighteen ninety three talk is but
Speaker 10: the frontier's gone now, and we've got to figure out
Speaker 10: something else, because according to the Census Bureau, the frontier
Speaker 10: is done. Within six years of that we're having the
Speaker 10: Spanish American War looking for the next frontier. So this
Speaker 10: Frederick Acksonfroner was really good at doing something that academics
Speaker 10: like to do, used to like to do, and that
Speaker 10: was sending out reprints. So he did this talk, he
Speaker 10: published it, and he sent out hundreds of copies of
Speaker 10: it to important people throughout the United States, and people
Speaker 10: got excited to get shitped like that in the mail.
Speaker 10: Excuse me, stuff like that in the mail. You know,
Speaker 10: Oh my god, a historian form Wisconsin really has an
Speaker 10: idea and he sent it to me. And if there's
Speaker 10: there's maybe one or two people that invent the idea
Speaker 10: of professional historians in the United States, and this is
Speaker 10: one of the guys. He's the guy who gets paid
Speaker 10: to be a historian by a university where he only
Speaker 10: teaches history. He was trained to be a historian, and
Speaker 10: that's what he does. And at the time he sounds
Speaker 10: like a social scientist. Today he sounds like a method grapher.
Speaker 10: At the time he sounded like a political historian. Today
Speaker 10: he sounds like somebody who's explaining how the myth and
Speaker 10: the Frontier worked. And he did a really great job
Speaker 10: at that. And the Frontier has been with us ever since.
Speaker 10: Between his talk and the New Deal, we're worried about
Speaker 10: the next frontier. By the time we get to the
Speaker 10: nineteen sixties with Kennedy, we have the new Frontier. Alaska's
Speaker 10: made a state and its its slogan is the Last Frontier.
Speaker 10: And I think star Trek has some kind of frontier
Speaker 10: as well, and there's stuff after and there's stuff after
Speaker 10: that too, So the frontier has been this thing that
Speaker 10: we cannot get away from.
Speaker 7: And to hear you say that, I can see what
Speaker 7: to mean about how it is such a dangerous part
Speaker 7: of the American kind of mythology. You know, it's up
Speaker 7: there with the like pulled up by your own bootstraps
Speaker 7: of you know, as Americans, it's our job not only
Speaker 7: to continually conquer the new frontier, to bring the American
Speaker 7: goodness to the West, and then going to the Spanish
Speaker 7: lands and then going you know, you can see how
Speaker 7: it's just again and again been a thing. Paul Is
Speaker 7: just you mentioned the Turner episode the essay, and I
Speaker 7: was going to hopefully.
Speaker 9: Show off by mentioning it.
Speaker 7: I remember reading that in history class, so it's one
Speaker 7: of the only things I can remember from American history.
Speaker 4: And the fact that.
Speaker 10: The fact that you've read it is problematic because we
Speaker 10: stopped making students read it in a like nineteen sixty.
Speaker 4: So so I want to go.
Speaker 10: I want to go find your guy and tell her
Speaker 10: and that this was this.
Speaker 4: Was a mistake.
Speaker 8: But anyway, unlus it was read within a context that
Speaker 8: was like aware of yes, which is possible.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, there was a.
Speaker 7: Kind of historiography aspect to it. But yeah, Jeffrey Gunn,
Speaker 7: if you're listening, I have some questions. Have been an
Speaker 7: essay I wrote on a mid term and now another
Speaker 7: professor is backing me up. So yeah, Paul, what for you, like,
Speaker 7: do you have memories this kind of idea of the
Speaker 7: frontier just kind of think something you've thought about in
Speaker 7: general and your many praises of America that I know
Speaker 7: you're so fond of.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, I would say that, you know, for all
Speaker 11: the failings of the education system that.
Speaker 8: You know, I was incarcerated in for my youth, I
Speaker 8: think that actually the first school that I went to
Speaker 8: Bank Street from like age five until thirteen or fourteen,
Speaker 8: I think did a good job of being like, no,
Speaker 8: there were native people here, and first you're going to
Speaker 8: learn about that, and then you're going to learn about
Speaker 8: you know, people showing up from the Netherlands and then
Speaker 8: people showing up from England and et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 8: et cetera. And I do feel like I was not
Speaker 8: taught this like idea of the frontier being this like
Speaker 8: great thing and like America can progress and all that,
Speaker 8: I do you know, the complaints that I have or
Speaker 8: that I think a lot of the way all this
Speaker 8: was taught was like and that's what happened in the past,
Speaker 8: and now everything's much much better. You know, we've we've
Speaker 8: totally solved all these problems. And you know, like the
Speaker 8: idea like racism is in the past or the South,
Speaker 8: like you know that that I'd say, like they let
Speaker 8: us down on you know, But but I did feel
Speaker 8: like there was there was some idea of you know,
Speaker 8: the frontier being an idea and not like sort of
Speaker 8: like this great thing that happened and was conquered, you know,
Speaker 8: like how how the West was won, like that this
Speaker 8: was like some victory, right. I think it was like
Speaker 8: even from a young age, I feel like I was
Speaker 8: you know, told that it's like that this wasn't a
Speaker 8: great thing that you know that America did and and
Speaker 8: I appreciate that, you know, and I you know, obviously
Speaker 8: I think we can probably still do better.
Speaker 4: But that's it's interesting.
Speaker 8: You know, you're talking about space and you know space,
Speaker 8: the final Frontier and all that, like space actually there
Speaker 8: you know, the word kind of says a lot of it,
Speaker 8: like there there actually is space out there, right, there
Speaker 8: are many, many, many uninhabited planets. Earth is inhabited, It
Speaker 8: has been inhabited.
Speaker 4: All over for a very long time.
Speaker 8: And so the idea of this frontier, it's like there
Speaker 8: were people there, right, There's animals there, like there were
Speaker 8: trees like and all of which you know, many got
Speaker 8: got killed, right, Whereas the idea of something like colonizing Mars,
Speaker 8: for instance, it's like, well, maybe just everyone should move
Speaker 8: to Mars.
Speaker 4: Like it's like there's there's I mean, as far as.
Speaker 8: We know, there's not life there, right, So if you
Speaker 8: were to go to that frontier, you know, into space,
Speaker 8: granted at some point I think you probably would run
Speaker 8: into some form of life, and probably some form of
Speaker 8: intelligent life that maybe wouldn't regard humans as particularly intelligent life.
Speaker 8: I don't know, but like space is more of a
Speaker 8: it fits that mythology more than the reality fit that mythology,
Speaker 8: I think, perhaps not within the context of Star Trek,
Speaker 8: where there's all these different you know, species and everything,
Speaker 8: and tons of planets are inhabited as far as we know,
Speaker 8: it's like there's you know, there is actual space in
Speaker 8: space and like you could go there and not be
Speaker 8: stepping on people who live there already.
Speaker 10: The meme I keep getting is the how you know,
Speaker 10: Star Trek was written by white guys and it's going
Speaker 10: where no one was going before, and there's always people there.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think that that's kind of what I was
Speaker 7: going to say, is that, Yeah, you're right, like actual
Speaker 7: space would make sense for this frontier mythology. One of
Speaker 7: the things I think is that I think we define
Speaker 7: can talk about is it in Star Trek it feels
Speaker 7: very much that same idea of the undiscovered Country, which
Speaker 7: is the name of actually one of the better Star
Speaker 7: Trek movies. But still is it always refers to the
Speaker 7: thing that hasn't been discovered by us, right right, you know,
Speaker 7: And in the same way, it feels like for the Frontier,
Speaker 7: it's that we the white man, have not gone there yet.
Speaker 7: And I'm I think he's a lot of truth to that,
Speaker 7: and so that's probably a good way to jump into
Speaker 7: the Star Trek part of it. And actually I'll start
Speaker 7: here with you, Paul, because I think you have not
Speaker 7: watched much Star Trek.
Speaker 9: Correct.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I've seen maybe like five to eight of the
Speaker 8: movies of different eras, and then I've seen some episodes
Speaker 8: here and there of various different shows and like halves
Speaker 8: of a bunch of episodes, but I haven't like sat
Speaker 8: down and watched a whole series of the television or
Speaker 8: like all the movies in.
Speaker 9: Order, right, So, which is good.
Speaker 7: I always like having someone who doesn't necessarily know the
Speaker 7: source material we're talking about it as much just to
Speaker 7: kind of bring in that perspective in the conversation. So
Speaker 7: for you, when I when I mentioned that the idea
Speaker 7: that we're talking about of like Star Trek and the Frontier,
Speaker 7: what comes to mind to you about like that, what
Speaker 7: that entails and what Star Trek and Frontiers have to
Speaker 7: do with each other?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean it seems to me like it is
Speaker 8: kind of an allegory for the mythology of the West,
Speaker 8: and it is about you know, as far as I
Speaker 8: can tell, it's about the enterprise going out and stumbling
Speaker 8: upon different cultures that are already there and then not interfering,
Speaker 8: but interfering but like I don't know, they have some
Speaker 8: directives and it seems to me like, yeah, it's not
Speaker 8: a bunch of just like open space really right, It's
Speaker 8: like there's a lot out there, and then you know,
Speaker 8: there's wars, or there's arguments and various different things. And
Speaker 8: I do feel like it probably is a show.
Speaker 4: And movies or whatever however you want to describe it.
Speaker 8: A universe that would probably appeal to a lot of
Speaker 8: my sensibilities, perhaps more than like Star Wars does. But
Speaker 8: it doesn't have laser swords, so you know, it just
Speaker 8: I don't know, I never super grabbed onto it. But
Speaker 8: the idea of I mean, the idea of frontiers, like
Speaker 8: it's perspective.
Speaker 4: Right, like it's it's it doesn't have to be just
Speaker 4: like white men.
Speaker 8: It could be like the Klingons could have what they
Speaker 8: regarded as a frontier. And I mean, I think is
Speaker 8: there something in the Star Wars, I mean the Star
Speaker 8: Trek like I don't know if you call it mythology,
Speaker 8: but of like that a bunch of other species were
Speaker 8: aware of humanity but was sort of like, no, we'll
Speaker 8: just leave them alone because like they're not quite like
Speaker 8: ready to interact with other like other cultures and species.
Speaker 8: Yet is that a thing in one of them? Somewhere?
Speaker 10: There are a couple of episodes that play with that,
Speaker 10: but they never really folded into the overarching story very much,
Speaker 10: but like, here's a massively superior alien intelligence who's like,
Speaker 10: maybe when you're ready, we'll talk to you.
Speaker 7: Right, Yeah, there's a small version of it in that
Speaker 7: the Vulcans. The Vulcans have an idea of they don't
Speaker 7: want to contact anybody until they become warp capable, and
Speaker 7: so that's why one of the movies is all about
Speaker 7: them becoming warp capable in a way that the Vulcans
Speaker 7: will notice, and then once the Federation is around, that's
Speaker 7: kind of their their bar of until you become capable
Speaker 7: of warp speed, you're not on our level, and so
Speaker 7: we're going to see you as like and it's framed
Speaker 7: in a very like we're going to protect you kind
Speaker 7: of a way, but it's very much a kind of
Speaker 7: like noble savage, you're the primitive, You're not worthy of
Speaker 7: our attention. But therefore also like, oh that media is
Speaker 7: going to crash into your planet, well, prime directive, we
Speaker 7: shouldn't interfere, so things like that. So so Matthew talks
Speaker 7: about what you like when I hear Frontier, Like, there's
Speaker 7: a lot of thoughts I come up with, but for you,
Speaker 7: what does it mean?
Speaker 9: I kind of look at these two things together.
Speaker 10: Okay, so I'm going to say like two things because
Speaker 10: Paul had this really good point. Maybe the Klingons have
Speaker 10: a frontier. Right before Americans talk about the frontier, frontier
Speaker 10: was a different kind of word. There was a frontier
Speaker 10: between France and Germany, and what they meant was this
Speaker 10: area that's not quite French and not quite German, and
Speaker 10: there's a cultural competition going on to see what it's
Speaker 10: going to be.
Speaker 4: The tyrannies rane or the parodies. My ancestors were from there,
Speaker 4: so you.
Speaker 10: Could have grown up speaking French, you could have grown
Speaker 10: up speaking German.
Speaker 4: And that's what frontiers were.
Speaker 10: Actually, the Doctors without Borders was founded in Paris. Their
Speaker 10: actual name is French, and it's not Doctors without Borders,
Speaker 10: it's Medicine frontier. And that kind of frontier is a
Speaker 10: different kind of frontier than we mean. The kind of
Speaker 10: frontier Americans talk about is the kind of frontier where
Speaker 10: we go and we we discover an economic opportunity and
Speaker 10: finally buy a farm. Right there's a wonderful British scholar
Speaker 10: who talks about people's lawns in law and care as
Speaker 10: the last gasp of frontiers for Americans.
Speaker 4: Right, And but it's true.
Speaker 10: So yes, so there has to be like this idea
Speaker 10: of a frontier that's between us, the Federation and Klingons,
Speaker 10: as well as the frontier of empty space. I wish
Speaker 10: there was more empty space. Then again, I wish there
Speaker 10: was warp.
Speaker 4: Still.
Speaker 10: Okay, here's here's another quote I brought because here's the
Speaker 10: Star Trek doesn't want to do this thing, but they
Speaker 10: were do it. There's this great book from the eighteen
Speaker 10: thirties called Westward ho and it is by a guy
Speaker 10: whose name is James Kirk Pauling.
Speaker 9: That name has some significance in a Star Trek kind
Speaker 9: of way.
Speaker 10: It kind of does. And here's what he says about
Speaker 10: traveling west.
Speaker 4: He says, no.
Speaker 10: Matter where he goes, you know, Eastern European males, no
Speaker 10: matter where he goes to whatever region, he carries within
Speaker 10: his destiny, which is to civilize the world and to
Speaker 10: rule it afterwards. That is American frontier racism in a nutshell.
Speaker 10: Righty is perfect and it's James Kirk.
Speaker 4: There is falling. Yeah, and yes, please go.
Speaker 7: Well, it's funny because I know that like when Geene
Speaker 7: Roddenberry was marketing the show and trying to get people
Speaker 7: to buy into it. Like the phrase that he used
Speaker 7: is now quite famous. He is, it's wagon trained to
Speaker 7: the stars, and so it's meant to be like a
Speaker 7: Western exploring show. But I hadn't really put together until
Speaker 7: you said that, Like just how deep the like that
Speaker 7: it's not just about the idea of going to explore
Speaker 7: new things, but it's about this idea of carrying the
Speaker 7: Federation exceptionalism now instead of American exceptilation.
Speaker 9: But it's the same idea carrying that out to everyone.
Speaker 7: And it's funny because in that way, and as a
Speaker 7: historian you can tell me if I'm wrong here, it
Speaker 7: does feel like in that extent America is exceptional in
Speaker 7: that it's the exception. It's different, not that it's better,
Speaker 7: but that like you know, like the French wanted an empire,
Speaker 7: but there was a sense of like the borders of
Speaker 7: France with some like you know, joshing around with the
Speaker 7: lines between Germany or Spain or Italy, but like the
Speaker 7: lines of what is France have been established for hundreds
Speaker 7: of not thousands of years, same with all these other countries.
Speaker 7: The idea of like that America is a thing that
Speaker 7: has to be continually expanded, and you know, our divine
Speaker 7: providence to manifest destiny and all that. That is a
Speaker 7: thing that is exceptional to the United States. Am I
Speaker 7: correct on that or at least somewhat somewhat?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean the French for a while thought Lgiers
Speaker 10: was part of France, right, But yeah, go back to
Speaker 10: the Northwest Ordinance. But the United States did shortly after
Speaker 10: the beginning of the constitutional period, was say, here's this
Speaker 10: new area that goes all the way to where you're
Speaker 10: at Matthew, Minnesota, north of the Ohio, and here's how
Speaker 10: they can create new states, and those states, when they're
Speaker 10: admitted to the Union, will be entirely and completely equal
Speaker 10: to the existing states.
Speaker 4: That was the new thing.
Speaker 10: So it was a mistake with Ohio, but every place
Speaker 10: else they're like, okay, Indiana, you are just as good
Speaker 10: as Massachusetts, right, And that was that was relatively unique.
Speaker 10: The other thing that was really unique about it was
Speaker 10: they said, when you create townships, you have to sell
Speaker 10: part of it to create schools. And that was also
Speaker 10: very unique for the time period, to say, Okay, every
Speaker 10: township is going to be thirty six square miles, and
Speaker 10: right in the middle, you're going to have a chunk
Speaker 10: that is going to be sold exclusively to finance schools
Speaker 10: public schools for the population of this new township that
Speaker 10: was also really new the idea of both of those things.
Speaker 10: So yeah, I mean every nation is exceptional, though, right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's this specific thing about America's exceptionally Yeah, and
Speaker 7: that last part. When I lived in Wisconsin, they like
Speaker 7: to point out the land grant thing because the main
Speaker 7: historical result of that, at least according to people in Wisconsin,
Speaker 7: where this is very important, is Big ten college football.
Speaker 9: You know, another thing, but let's pull it back to
Speaker 9: go ahead.
Speaker 8: I just want to respond, as a trivia enthusiast, do
Speaker 8: you know what country actually has the most time zones?
Speaker 4: Of Russia? France?
Speaker 8: France has something like thirteen time zones because actually all
Speaker 8: of those places are regarded as part of France.
Speaker 9: French shamoa like that.
Speaker 8: So they might not actually be, you know, conceptualized that way,
Speaker 8: but certainly in a legal sense, they are actually France,
Speaker 8: and thus it has like thirteen time zones or something
Speaker 8: absurd compared to like China's one, which which is a.
Speaker 7: Kind of like with a British empire, for example, Like
Speaker 7: they were always very clear like this is all British territory,
Speaker 7: but it is not great breakin right, right exactly.
Speaker 8: It's different that way Russia is the largest contiguous number
Speaker 8: of time zones or something like that, right, that makes
Speaker 8: sense on France actually thirteen.
Speaker 4: So all right.
Speaker 7: Pulling it back to Star Trek though, Yeah, it's interesting though,
Speaker 7: especially because and I think in many ways Star Trek
Speaker 7: is I think, for good reason, often regarded as being
Speaker 7: a fairly progressive show for its time always, but like
Speaker 7: you know, today, there's a lot of stuff on the
Speaker 7: more modern Star Trek shows have characters of color, and
Speaker 7: women characters and transgender characters all in very important roles.
Speaker 7: It's really pushing the boundaries of a lot of kind
Speaker 7: of interesting social issues that's talking about, and so I
Speaker 7: often think about it that, like you know, and even
Speaker 7: the show from the sixties, it's clearly being very critical
Speaker 7: of you know, Jim Crow and the anti civil rights culture,
Speaker 7: the Vietnam War, and so I think of it as
Speaker 7: being a show that is very critical in progressive liberal
Speaker 7: ways of the existing culture of America in the sixties.
Speaker 7: But to me, This is such a great example of
Speaker 7: just the bias that always happens there that even from
Speaker 7: that perspective, we weren't challenging the idea of the frontier
Speaker 7: as the great liberal, you know, as that there's something
Speaker 7: wrong or racist about it because it's baked in a
Speaker 7: Star Trek, Like you said from the very beginning.
Speaker 4: It's baked into America.
Speaker 9: Well, yeah too.
Speaker 10: Maybe maybe the strength of Star Trek is not that
Speaker 10: they just wholeheartedly accepted the idea of the frontier, but
Speaker 10: that they tried to take it and twist it to
Speaker 10: the own ends. That was a much more woke version
Speaker 10: of the frontier. Right, you can't get rid of pick
Speaker 10: a world's religion, but you can change the way we
Speaker 10: think about that religion as a believer. We're not going
Speaker 10: to get Americans to stop thinking the frontiers where America
Speaker 10: became great, but maybe if we talk about that greatness
Speaker 10: in a different way we'll get something.
Speaker 9: So, what do you think of how start is kind
Speaker 9: of very broad question.
Speaker 7: We get more specifics, but kind of taken overall, how
Speaker 7: do you feel like Star Trek has wrestled with the
Speaker 7: concept of the frontier?
Speaker 4: Okay, so.
Speaker 10: Poorly fair, but increasingly, not so initially. The original Star Trek,
Speaker 10: which I watched when I was writing my PhD but
Speaker 10: just because I had to, is very is very liberal
Speaker 10: in many wonderful ways, but it also still has many skirts, right.
Speaker 10: It's a product of its time. Nobody says Napoleon was
Speaker 10: a bad general because he didn't have an air force.
Speaker 10: But when they went places, quite often they were just
Speaker 10: meeting people that were inferior to them and fixing them,
Speaker 10: and that is a notion of American frontier ideology straight up.
Speaker 10: Since that moment, they've stepped further and further away from
Speaker 10: the frontier every chance they get. I was just thinking
Speaker 10: about the most recent JJ Abrams one where they go
Speaker 10: out to the frontier and they find the bad guy
Speaker 10: and it turns out he was a human the all time,
Speaker 10: because the bad guy can't be the other, so instead
Speaker 10: we're just ignoring the fact that there's a frontier. And
Speaker 10: I think that's the general trend of Star Trek, which
Speaker 10: was to keep saying final frontier but become more and
Speaker 10: more about globalization than anything. So by the time you
Speaker 10: g it's the next generation, it's great powers talking to
Speaker 10: each other.
Speaker 3: And now I don't even know what to call it now.
Speaker 10: It's very much not about a historical narrative. They try
Speaker 10: to avoid it in any way they can. I guess
Speaker 10: the New One Strange New Worlds is less like that.
Speaker 10: But they are fully aware now that if they talk
Speaker 10: about the frontier too much, they're going to come off bad.
Speaker 10: So instead they try to avoid talking about the frontier,
Speaker 10: except for the voiceover at the beginning. We've got these
Speaker 10: new people, and aren't they great. It's like middle school
Speaker 10: diversity day. These people are different. Yeah, that's great. The end,
Speaker 10: And that's Star Trek now, which is a critique, but
Speaker 10: not a critique that I hold in my heart very well.
Speaker 8: I think there's room for basically like confronting it more
Speaker 8: head on within the sort of mythology of Star Trek
Speaker 8: of having more more nuance.
Speaker 10: Yes, I think there is. I don't think they're going
Speaker 10: to do so. I don't think. I don't think it's
Speaker 10: a salable script, right all right. I totally think that
Speaker 10: the current group of creators are would.
Speaker 4: Be very capable of doing it.
Speaker 10: I don't but they but they are totally professionals who
Speaker 10: would like to get renewed.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Well it's interesting because I do think that in
Speaker 7: some ways, especially some of the newer stuff. And we're
Speaker 7: gonna have spoilers here for all the seasons of Discovery.
Speaker 7: I have not watched straight New Worlds yet, but if
Speaker 7: you need to spoil that, go right ahead. You know,
Speaker 7: there is more and more of the we have met
Speaker 7: someone else and realized that they are superior to us
Speaker 7: and we have to learn from them. And it's interesting
Speaker 7: because I feel like that is it's a story that's fundamental,
Speaker 7: that is a critique of frontierism, that's now about how
Speaker 7: do we explore to learn about our failings and to
Speaker 7: learn what do others out there know that we don't yet,
Speaker 7: And that is I feel like in some ways it
Speaker 7: kind of fundamentally it is the critique you're talking about.
Speaker 9: But you're right, it's not connected to it at all.
Speaker 7: Then no one ever says that that, you know, no
Speaker 7: one ever uses that language of exploring to find where
Speaker 7: we're different or to find something else. It's just that
Speaker 7: language of the frontier has gone away entirely.
Speaker 4: Yes, very much. I think that's okay.
Speaker 10: So it's best not to be overly explicit. You're not
Speaker 10: going to make a show that is so very American
Speaker 10: as Star Trek without being American. To me, the concern
Speaker 10: is the more popular Star Trek becomes internationally, I think
Speaker 10: it's the more americanized the planet. And that's problematic. Right
Speaker 10: when when people in Bali are really excited for the
Speaker 10: new Star Trek, I'm.
Speaker 7: Terrified because you think it's another way of sort of
Speaker 7: spreading frontier propaganda.
Speaker 10: Yeah, you know, we might as well be selling them
Speaker 10: Genes and.
Speaker 8: Elvis Presley, which is already happening, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 8: Any other element in that right, But it's but I
Speaker 8: do think there's there's something to be said for like
Speaker 8: selling the mythology as opposed to just like the goods
Speaker 8: kind of right, like and I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 8: do you think that's something that comes with the like
Speaker 8: the material things as well, Like when a McDonald's goes
Speaker 8: somewhere or a Walmart open somewhere, that that kind of
Speaker 8: brings some of the sort of like American mythology as
Speaker 8: much as just like you know, the deforestation based hamburgers
Speaker 8: or whatever.
Speaker 4: You know, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 10: I mean there's a reason one of the biggest employers
Speaker 10: of anthropologists in the world is Target Corporation.
Speaker 4: Wow, really yeah. Interesting.
Speaker 10: They do everything from figuring out what to put on
Speaker 10: end caps by watching people behave in stores to figuring
Speaker 10: out I guess there's like three target layouts, figuring out
Speaker 10: how those target layouts work for areas, for specific subcultures.
Speaker 10: So yeah, that's that's what anthropology has become.
Speaker 8: So then can you learn about a place by looking
Speaker 8: at its target I know, I'm like way off the
Speaker 8: you know it.
Speaker 4: Yes you can.
Speaker 10: I my doctorate overseas, and so there were there were
Speaker 10: no targets, and I got there shortly after I guess
Speaker 10: Woolworths had gone out of business, so there was not
Speaker 10: a warl Worths, not that I'd never been to one.
Speaker 10: So they had their local stores, and I learned more
Speaker 10: about the city I lived in from the stores I
Speaker 10: had to go buy sheets at, and a very like
Speaker 10: in the in my guts kind of way, right.
Speaker 7: I don't know if this is still true, but I
Speaker 7: know for a while the Wall Street Journal had as
Speaker 7: one of the things that considered a leading like sign
Speaker 7: of foreign economic activity was based on the price of
Speaker 7: a big mac in the capital city of every country
Speaker 7: in the world, Because there is MacDonald's in the capital
Speaker 7: city of almost every country in the world. Yeah, we're
Speaker 7: exploring the frontier of this topic, which is why it's
Speaker 7: okay they're kind of wandering off on tangents.
Speaker 9: Tangents are now the frontier.
Speaker 7: And Yeah, I think it's such anangining question because it's
Speaker 7: it's something like Star Trek.
Speaker 9: I think there is this like.
Speaker 7: One of the things that comes up a lot in
Speaker 7: the kind of media criticism that we do on this
Speaker 7: podcast is this idea of how do you wrestle with
Speaker 7: you know, know, stuff that is, you know, where there's
Speaker 7: you feel there's a lot of good things in a
Speaker 7: story or an actor or whatever, but that parts that
Speaker 7: are also problematic, and what do you do with you know,
Speaker 7: all the feelings about this.
Speaker 9: I feel like Star Trek is.
Speaker 7: It creates sort of a new version of this problem
Speaker 7: because what Star Trek is doing is trying to keep
Speaker 7: alive the story of something that was originally told now
Speaker 7: I'm bad at math sixty years ago, and it continues
Speaker 7: and like the writers are clearly aware of the problem
Speaker 7: of it originally. Like I think if you started a
Speaker 7: new Star Trek today, like without using the word Star Trek,
Speaker 7: a new version of it, you'd maybe want to like
Speaker 7: disconnect from the frontier idea entirely. But it seems like
Speaker 7: part of what Star Trek has been doing is like, how, how, okay,
Speaker 7: we recognize that in the sixties we told this kind
Speaker 7: of story and the women were all in these kind
Speaker 7: of roles and that's bad.
Speaker 9: So how do we change that?
Speaker 7: How do we maybe not have to be all white
Speaker 7: people who are in command and all this stuff? But
Speaker 7: you're still beholden to the past. And as you said that,
Speaker 7: the Frontier is so integral to Star Trek. So I
Speaker 7: think it's just really interesting there about how the show
Speaker 7: has tried to kind of like be aware of that,
Speaker 7: will also not entirely cutting itself off from its past.
Speaker 4: I would agree with that.
Speaker 10: I think it's important to defend Star Trek from the
Speaker 10: simple perspective that you can't avoid the frontier if you
Speaker 10: want to talk about something that's americanly cultural. Right. Another anthropologist,
Speaker 10: a guy named Conrad Kotek, used to write in his
Speaker 10: intro textbook that Star Trek was a retelling of the
Speaker 10: Thanksgiving Men. It was a multicultural get together in one
Speaker 10: place where people figured out how to live together. And
Speaker 10: he thought that was a significantly important thing about the
Speaker 10: idea of Thanksgiving and Star Treking put them right together.
Speaker 10: And I think that's kind of true. So the fact
Speaker 10: that we all had that same history growing up where
Speaker 10: they used to be racist and they're not, and they
Speaker 10: used to be sexist and they're not. Well, Star Trek
Speaker 10: used to be a little racist and a little sexist
Speaker 10: and they're trying not to be. They're still giving us
Speaker 10: that same kind of history we had in like sixth grade,
Speaker 10: but at least they're trying this iss not like they're
Speaker 10: saying you can't teach the bluest eye in your high
Speaker 10: school mid class.
Speaker 8: Like when people look back at stories that are told
Speaker 8: today that people think of as like some of the
Speaker 8: more enlightened stories, you know, or things that are certainly
Speaker 8: trying hard to be to like understand the world as
Speaker 8: it is and to be considerate of all different sorts
Speaker 8: of people and you know, maybe animals usually not like
Speaker 8: I think people will look back and be like, oh, well,
Speaker 8: you know, they tried, you know, and they did better
Speaker 8: than other people were doing at that time. And there is,
Speaker 8: I mean there's an extent to which like we're all
Speaker 8: you know, trapped by our own perspective where we can
Speaker 8: always try to expand our perspective. We can always try
Speaker 8: to learn more and understand more and not not make
Speaker 8: judgment judgments based on you know, a lack of information,
Speaker 8: but like still we only know what we know, right,
Speaker 8: And and so I think there always is going to
Speaker 8: be some reflection later that looks back and is like, oh, well,
Speaker 8: we probably could have done better, you know, but of
Speaker 8: even the stuff that's ahead of its time, right, Like,
Speaker 8: I mean, I think Star Trek of the sixties could
Speaker 8: be described as ahead of its time. Maybe not ahead
Speaker 8: of our time, but a lot of things now are
Speaker 8: still behind whatever the times will be at some point hopefully,
Speaker 8: you know, if there is something that we'd like to
Speaker 8: consider progress, right, And and it sounds like sometimes like
Speaker 8: when you make something, it's like, I don't know. One
Speaker 8: of my concerns about having like so many Batman stories
Speaker 8: and so many Stars War stories and like Marvel stories
Speaker 8: and Star Trek stories is like there is an extent
Speaker 8: to which it's like these things were created when they
Speaker 8: were created, there are things about when they were created
Speaker 8: that are integral to the story, to the mythology, right,
Speaker 8: and like, like you're not going to just like make Batman,
Speaker 8: not a billionaire, like you could, you could, and I
Speaker 8: think there's a story that does that. And my understanding
Speaker 8: is it's a very interesting, fairly interesting tale. But he
Speaker 8: probably was a billionaire and then lost his money and whatever,
Speaker 8: you know, and like that happens, that'll happen. But like
Speaker 8: there's so many stories now, like everything, especially like these
Speaker 8: big like tent pole films, they always want to be
Speaker 8: based on some ip that's already been proven to be
Speaker 8: successful in some lower risk format like prints, right, or
Speaker 8: or it's like oh, well they already made it, so
Speaker 8: like now we can spin that off into something successful.
Speaker 8: And I think it just it makes it very difficult
Speaker 8: to two Like what you end up getting is this
Speaker 8: like either you keep doing what you were doing or
Speaker 8: you like change things. But then in a way that
Speaker 8: sometimes is like frustrating to people who liked the original thing.
Speaker 4: And it's not saying you shouldn't do that, but it's.
Speaker 8: Like, I don't know, I'd just like to see more
Speaker 8: like new media that's like, oh, I had an idea,
Speaker 8: let's make this story, you know, and then maybe not
Speaker 8: have a thousand piece expanded universe, you know. I say
Speaker 8: this while podcasting on like Star Wars Universe podcast, and
Speaker 8: I you know, commenting on things like that, but I
Speaker 8: think it's something that is hard to get away from
Speaker 8: when like there are roots in some story. It's like
Speaker 8: it's you know, it's in there, and I don't know.
Speaker 10: I think with Star Wars Star Trek, now, though I'm
Speaker 10: saying we shouldn't have more Star Trek or more Batman,
Speaker 10: is the same thing as saying we shouldn't have another
Speaker 10: Lawyer show me right, It's a genre to itself.
Speaker 4: At this point. There.
Speaker 10: You know, let's be clear, much of Star Trek sucks,
Speaker 10: much of Batman suck, most of bat Man stuck.
Speaker 4: Sorry.
Speaker 10: But also another point to make is you can tell
Speaker 10: me this is an inappropriate way of putting it, but
Speaker 10: we're essentially three mostly white, mostly American, mostly inculturated male guys.
Speaker 4: Talking about Starkrek.
Speaker 10: But I noticed with a bunch of my friends when
Speaker 10: Michelle Nichols died, they all showed the same image from
Speaker 10: an episode of the original series on their feeds, And
Speaker 10: it had never occurred to me that this was an
Speaker 10: important moment.
Speaker 4: There's a moment in one.
Speaker 10: Of the episodes where somebody gets called away from the
Speaker 10: bridge and Michelle Nichols character is told to like sit
Speaker 10: down at the navigator's pose, and to this day, Black
Speaker 10: American nerds freak out about that one moment because it's
Speaker 10: so inconsequentially normal when it happened, and I don't think
Speaker 10: we would have noticed it that way. So, yeah, it's
Speaker 10: important to remember that perhaps our perspective is.
Speaker 4: Narrow in that content, right.
Speaker 10: But it's also the thing Paul said that's really key
Speaker 10: is maybe we're not We were not in a place
Speaker 10: to look back at Star Trek and Go. They're not
Speaker 10: as good as they could have been if it hadn't
Speaker 10: been for Star Trek pushing us in the Red director.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, I've recently been reading Jane Austen and
Speaker 7: what are to say, what I sound more culture than
Speaker 7: I am. I've been watching a lot of adaptations of
Speaker 7: Jane Austen stuff and they're wonderful. And clearly she was
Speaker 7: for her time or even for today, making incredibly needed
Speaker 7: feminist critiques of the culture that ring you today. She
Speaker 7: was also talking about the utter tragedy that would befall
Speaker 7: a young woman if she had to go from being
Speaker 7: upper class to being upper middle class, and the deprivations
Speaker 7: that occur when you move into a house of only
Speaker 7: two servants.
Speaker 9: So you know, there's some there's always that.
Speaker 7: But I think the point about perspective that you make
Speaker 7: is also so important, and it is one where I
Speaker 7: do think Star Trek is also really pushing things forward.
Speaker 7: Is that.
Speaker 9: And some of the other things we're doing this is too.
Speaker 7: Certainly Marvel, I think is getting better at this, and
Speaker 7: I want DC to get better at as well. He
Speaker 7: is trying to say, Okay, well, let's take that same
Speaker 7: story of the Frontier, or let's take the same story
Speaker 7: of the billionaire or wherever it is, but let's tell
Speaker 7: it from a new not only tell it, tell it
Speaker 7: about new people, but have new people tell the story.
Speaker 9: You know, and I know the I don't.
Speaker 7: My understanding is that the writer's room for discovery has
Speaker 7: been much more diverse than it has been in the past.
Speaker 7: Certainly a lot of the kind of Marvel stuff and
Speaker 7: the getting women writers, women writers of color, queer writers,
Speaker 7: things like that. And I don't know if this is
Speaker 7: like a complete bashelization of the term, but I wonder
Speaker 7: if is there some room for the idea that that
Speaker 7: is or am I being a horrible American here that
Speaker 7: that's the next frontier we could talk that we could
Speaker 7: talk about with this kind of stuff is the frontier
Speaker 7: of not pushing in a new space, but pushing into
Speaker 7: new ideas and pushing into well, I mean, if I
Speaker 7: started to say pushing into more people having the ideas
Speaker 7: or sharing the ideas, then yes, it is the exact
Speaker 7: frontiersm But now it's like, let's go out and colonialize
Speaker 7: their ideas. That's so maybe I've just talked to myself
Speaker 7: out of it. Someone should jump in and rescue me
Speaker 7: from this idea pretty quickly.
Speaker 4: But I think the idea of a frontier is.
Speaker 10: This is a metaphorical way of talking about opportunity, and
Speaker 10: the new frontier is to extend opportunities of broader classes
Speaker 10: for people.
Speaker 4: I think that's a.
Speaker 10: Part of it was supposed to be doing.
Speaker 7: What I more mean is the thing is like The Orville,
Speaker 7: which I was ible to my dying day to fend
Speaker 7: the idea that The Orville is a Star Trek show.
Speaker 7: It is not officially licensed by Star Trek, but it
Speaker 7: is moree hundred percent a love letter to it. For
Speaker 7: those who don't like sethm falland humor. There's a lot
Speaker 7: less of that after the first season. But that show
Speaker 7: is one thing I think that that show is doing
Speaker 7: so well. That's that Star Trek did so well for
Speaker 7: so long and still is doing in some ways. Is
Speaker 7: the idea of, Okay, well we're used to this kind
Speaker 7: of racism, let's go to a world where there's a
Speaker 7: whole new idea of what race could look like. Or
Speaker 7: like in the Orville, there's a planet that is all
Speaker 7: male theoretically, but there's some questions about that, or like
Speaker 7: Star Trek has done a lot more with uh not ambidexterrous.
Speaker 7: My brain is being dumb but envy about gender androgynoust
Speaker 7: cultures you know where, or cultures where genders can shift.
Speaker 9: I guess that was more.
Speaker 7: What I meant is the idea of saying, like, can
Speaker 7: we push new ideas in new ways and like ask
Speaker 7: us to think about the concepts in our own world
Speaker 7: differently by showing us the possibility of something that that's
Speaker 7: fundamentally different. But of those some questions and maybe that's
Speaker 7: not a frontier at all, Maybe that's something entirely different.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, I have like three
Speaker 8: or four things lodged in my brain that I'm trying
Speaker 8: to like be like, Okay, I wanted to say this
Speaker 8: and this and.
Speaker 4: This to to this point.
Speaker 8: I think, you know, I mean like knowledge is a frontier, right,
Speaker 8: but it's also like it's a frontier from a perspective
Speaker 8: because like that information theoretically maybe exists, or like somebody
Speaker 8: knows something, you know, but like maybe you don't. So
Speaker 8: that's like your own sort of frontier of discovery. But
Speaker 8: but yeah, I mean it does seem like it's kind
Speaker 8: of just a metaphor you know, it's like the undiscovered
Speaker 8: or the unknown. But it's like, you know, people have
Speaker 8: been having a lot of ideas for a long time,
Speaker 8: just it's more a lot about like who gets the
Speaker 8: opportunity to tell those ideas in the two hundred million
Speaker 8: dollar budget, you know, or like or even just a
Speaker 8: published novel, you know. And I do think that there
Speaker 8: is certainly more opportunity for more people.
Speaker 4: Now than there used to be.
Speaker 8: You know. Also, I wanted to clarify I wasn't saying
Speaker 8: like I don't think there should be any more Batman stories.
Speaker 8: I don't think there should be any more Star Trek stories.
Speaker 8: I think there should be a lower percentage of stories
Speaker 8: that are based on previously existing media.
Speaker 4: I think there still.
Speaker 8: Should be some You make a great character, fine, keep
Speaker 8: making new stories with that character.
Speaker 4: Cool, no problem, But.
Speaker 8: Like also makes some more new characters more frequently, you know,
Speaker 8: and invest in those characters as well.
Speaker 4: You know. It's not like it doesn't happen.
Speaker 8: It just happens less than I think would be you know, ideal,
Speaker 8: And I think when you do, like then you have
Speaker 8: more people have the opportunity to create their own characters
Speaker 8: as opposed to trying to adapt some other character.
Speaker 4: To their sort of view.
Speaker 8: I also wanted to mention what Buffy Bot said in
Speaker 8: the chat, which was kind of similar to what you're
Speaker 8: talking about. The Michelle Nichols, who played Huro in the
Speaker 8: original Star Trek and recently died, was apparently she was
Speaker 8: thinking of leaving after the first season, and she was
Speaker 8: like talking to Martin Luther King, who was like, look,
Speaker 8: you know, this role might not seem like a huge
Speaker 8: deal to you, but like it's a big deal to
Speaker 8: a lot of people. You know that, Like, you know,
Speaker 8: your character isn't the captain, right, but like she is
Speaker 8: in a position of authority and a position that you know,
Speaker 8: people didn't see black women in TV and in media
Speaker 8: in those positions at that time, and like, obviously still
Speaker 8: we could do better, right, and hopefully that is going
Speaker 8: in that direction, but it's like, yeah, that probably helped
Speaker 8: us get to where we are now to some extent.
Speaker 7: I Woibie Goldberg has talked off in about how the
Speaker 7: first time she thought of becoming an actress was when
Speaker 7: she was a young child and saw the show and
Speaker 7: she talked to her mother because was the first time
Speaker 7: she had ever seen a black woman on TV or
Speaker 7: on screen who wasn't a maid, and that really meant
Speaker 7: a lot to her. But yeah, but at the same time,
Speaker 7: there's some great creators I was reading recently Black Black
Speaker 7: Women creators talking about how the character was.
Speaker 9: It was fantastic to see a black woman in that role.
Speaker 7: But in terms of like it was a woman surrounded
Speaker 7: by men basically as the secretary, the glorified secretary, you know,
Speaker 7: and so raising some mentioning points there. Will you say though,
Speaker 7: also lets me first of all, I'll say, I appreciate
Speaker 7: what you're saying about the kind of like the different perspectives,
Speaker 7: because even as I was saying it, I was realizing
Speaker 7: pushing the idea of pushing into other new planets or
Speaker 7: ideas that have different ideas about race or gender, like
Speaker 7: the binary system of gender is very much a sort
Speaker 7: of Western conception. So even there's a great example of
Speaker 7: that and part of what gets me thinking. And I
Speaker 7: don't know about this much, but wonder, Matthew, if you
Speaker 7: do start track. I know is very definitional to sort
Speaker 7: of on screen science fiction, so as Star Wars or
Speaker 7: the Star Wars is not science fiction, but that's you know,
Speaker 7: in terms of the exactly. But I feel like, if
Speaker 7: I think about it, I see this frontier idea so
Speaker 7: often in science fiction in media, especially on TV and
Speaker 7: the like. I don't know much about science fiction that's
Speaker 7: being created outside of American or even kind of like
Speaker 7: Western concepts. I've read a good deal about afrofuturism, for example,
Speaker 7: I've not had a chance to read much of it.
Speaker 7: I'm curious if you have much experience of sort of
Speaker 7: the science fiction that's being written outside of particularly like
Speaker 7: Western you know, colonizer mythologies, and if we're seeing like
Speaker 7: science fiction without a frontier idea being created in spaces
Speaker 7: where the frontier isn't a part of their mythology, isn't
Speaker 7: a part of their sort of national thinking.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 4: Well, so here's the thing.
Speaker 10: When we talk about science fiction, we're really just talking
Speaker 10: about American science fiction, because everything we think of is
Speaker 10: science fiction is really just an American science fiction. Even
Speaker 10: Jules Hearn was not particularly frontier. So more and more
Speaker 10: science fiction creators are working to ignore the traditions of
Speaker 10: American science fiction. But there's others that just never got
Speaker 10: exposed to it. Really, there's a huge wealth of stuff
Speaker 10: coming out of China finally getting translated. Now I'm thinking
Speaker 10: of the novel The Three Body Problem, which is an
Speaker 10: amazing science fiction novel that starts in during the Cultural
Speaker 10: Revolution in China in the nineteen sixties and deals with
Speaker 10: first contact. And it's just beautiful and at no point
Speaker 10: is there a frontier.
Speaker 4: In fact that there is a frontier.
Speaker 10: It's really dangerous, and we have to do everything we
Speaker 10: can to make sure nobody notices us, as they will
Speaker 10: come into dry us. And that's the final summation of the.
Speaker 4: Story that they give.
Speaker 10: The aliens find us, they will come and kill us.
Speaker 10: That's why we never hear people when we're searching for
Speaker 10: extradress intelligence, because no actual integral interstellar intelligence is going
Speaker 10: to let us survive because they know it's a threat
Speaker 10: to them that they do.
Speaker 4: So everybody gets killed.
Speaker 10: And that is so not American science fiction. It's kind
Speaker 10: of ridiculous, right, because American science fiction is so tied
Speaker 10: up in the frontier and it always has been. I
Speaker 10: don't know, the John Carter movie was pretty not.
Speaker 4: As bad as people said that.
Speaker 10: The books it was based on from the early twentieth century,
Speaker 10: of these great little Edgar Rice Burroughs books. You know,
Speaker 10: they're like Tarzan on Mars, and they're just fantastic, and
Speaker 10: they have red people and they have green people and
Speaker 10: they talk about them in completely racist and sexist ways
Speaker 10: because it's, you know, nineteen twenty, but it's very American.
Speaker 10: It's very much the Virginian goes to Mars. No Chinese
Speaker 10: science fiction is like that. No afro futurist science fiction is.
Speaker 4: Really like that. And we have American.
Speaker 10: Science fiction writers who refuse to deal with frontier ideology
Speaker 10: based reviews, and.
Speaker 4: They're writing much better stuff.
Speaker 10: And Kay Jennison three years in a row for writing
Speaker 10: essentially books about African myth put in a science fiction copy.
Speaker 9: It's fine there. I'm embarrassed.
Speaker 7: I can't remember that of the person who traditionally Otavia
Speaker 7: Butler wrote Parable of the Sewer, Right, Okay, so I
Speaker 7: did remember. Yeah, I mean those books are some of
Speaker 7: my favorite science fiction, and yeah, I didn't even thought
Speaker 7: on the track. They're very much about turning inward to
Speaker 7: community and community building and what that looks like instead
Speaker 7: of this idea of sort of pushing outward into a
Speaker 7: frontier mythology.
Speaker 1: I feel like, oh.
Speaker 8: I was just gonna say, like, I feel like what
Speaker 8: I know of like Japanese science fiction from animation is
Speaker 8: doesn't seem particularly frontier related, Like even Cowboy Bebop, which is,
Speaker 8: you know, it's not all it's not on Earth. It's
Speaker 8: like it's you know, it's in the Solar System, and
Speaker 8: it's not about encountering new races of people or new
Speaker 8: species or new cultures. It's about you know, I mean,
Speaker 8: they are literally colonizing the various different planets in the
Speaker 8: Solar System. But you know, again, there weren't people there before,
Speaker 8: so it's different than like American frontier and the stories
Speaker 8: aren't really about that, right, They're like much more inwardly
Speaker 8: focused and kind of like, you know, kind of noir
Speaker 8: ish and and so I do feel I kind of
Speaker 8: hear what you mean about like American science fiction and
Speaker 8: having this kind of theme that seems to be to
Speaker 8: be very pervasive, but that that doesn't seem.
Speaker 7: Like it's everywhere definitely right, Yeah, how would be bought
Speaker 7: science fiction that that seems like it's very much just
Speaker 7: about the same kind of stories we're telling now, except
Speaker 7: now instead of getaway cars, we've got getaway spaceships and
Speaker 7: some laser guns every now and then. But it's very
Speaker 7: similar kind of storytelling.
Speaker 10: But it does something that is also really cool, which
Speaker 10: is it decides which things from American sci fi it
Speaker 10: wants to use, and it uses them no way it
Speaker 10: wants to, and it just takes them and uses them.
Speaker 10: It doesn't take them and you use them without thinking
Speaker 10: about them. It examines them carefully and definitely system.
Speaker 7: Do you have any specific example we talked about general terms,
Speaker 7: any specific examples of Star Trek movies or TV episodes
Speaker 7: that you think are kind of a particular illustration of
Speaker 7: either positive or negative uses of or negative positive or
Speaker 7: negative interactions with his frontier idea.
Speaker 10: Well, if you, in a general context, think about how
Speaker 10: many times people in Star Trek.
Speaker 4: Have to deal with the nineteenth century somehow.
Speaker 10: There's an episode of the original series where they after
Speaker 10: we fight the Okay Corral by there there's an episode
Speaker 10: with Abraham Lincoln. There's a number of episodes of Next
Speaker 10: Generation that take place in the nineteenth century. They go
Speaker 10: meet Mark Dwayne at one point.
Speaker 4: Is played by the guy who played Data, and he
Speaker 4: does a much better It does a good jobs as
Speaker 4: a pretty good actor.
Speaker 10: Yes, cetera goes to other times, you know, they say
Speaker 10: Wales and whatnot, but they go to the nineteenth century
Speaker 10: a lot because the nineteenth century is where the frontier
Speaker 10: is and it just it fits. So when I think
Speaker 10: about refighting the Okay Corral or going to Mark Twain
Speaker 10: in the Next Generation, I think that's very Star Trek.
Speaker 10: They also get, though, they get the other problem that
Speaker 10: you Matthew talked about earlier, which is when they do
Speaker 10: go elsewhere, sometimes they need something that cannot be understood,
Speaker 10: and if there's a trend in Star Trek, it's to
Speaker 10: then figure out how to fix that problem. So when
Speaker 10: you first meet the Boorg in the Next Generation, they're
Speaker 10: the example of completely incomprehensible other and since then they
Speaker 10: become more and more comprehensible and understandable.
Speaker 4: Because they become more human.
Speaker 10: The New Serious Strange and Wilves is doing the same
Speaker 10: thing with the porn the lizard people.
Speaker 4: That Kirk fights.
Speaker 10: They're completely incomprehensible and that's why they're interested. But at
Speaker 10: least I think the New Serious Strange and the Rules
Speaker 10: understands what it's doing. Paul, you're going to say something.
Speaker 8: Is that a problem that you feel the writers are
Speaker 8: attempting to solve, or that the characters are attempting to
Speaker 8: solve within the context of the story, or not really
Speaker 8: a problem, but something that the writers are then kind
Speaker 8: of going away from after doing this interesting thing to
Speaker 8: try to make it easier for the viewers.
Speaker 4: I don't think.
Speaker 10: I think we have to put it in capitalistic terms again. Right,
Speaker 10: So you invent this great villain, and this villain is great,
Speaker 10: and everybody loves this villain, so you got to write
Speaker 10: another story with this villain, but you've got to have
Speaker 10: more of the villain for the viewer to get.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 10: So the Borg and the first time you meet them
Speaker 10: is like for four minutes and they're just like automatons.
Speaker 10: And now when we talk.
Speaker 4: About the Borg, were like they're led by a queen.
Speaker 10: It's a hierarchical society because every new episode that teach
Speaker 10: of them had to make them more understandable. Otherwise there
Speaker 10: was no story to tell. And in the telling of Storage, you're.
Speaker 4: Always going to make them more understandable.
Speaker 7: But it's the frontier is really about cannot be understood
Speaker 7: org originally, but it's hard to tell a story about
Speaker 7: something that is out of your context. And so yeah,
Speaker 7: they give it the Borg queen and by the way,
Speaker 7: she's sexy and seductive and like that. It's fun watcher
Speaker 7: flirt with data. But to me it took away a
Speaker 7: lot of the mystery of the Borg and a similar
Speaker 7: thing I was thinking about this way back. But like
Speaker 7: to me, one of the fundamental problems Star Wars has
Speaker 7: always had.
Speaker 9: In some ways, it's a.
Speaker 7: Star I'm going to mix up Star Wars and Star Trek.
Speaker 7: I do what I'm talking about Star Wars, so it
Speaker 7: goes both ways at least, you know. Star Trek in
Speaker 7: theory is about this completely moneyless society. But the writers
Speaker 7: keep realizing how much of the conflict in our own world,
Speaker 7: in our media, in our narratives, is about money. If
Speaker 7: you take money completely off the table. It's really hard
Speaker 7: to find stories to tell. So now there's stories about, well,
Speaker 7: you need credits to use the replicator. It's not money,
Speaker 7: but still I can offer you my replicator credits to
Speaker 7: ask you to do this thing, or I can bet
Speaker 7: this thing. And in some ways I feel like Star
Speaker 7: Wars got a lot better when it introduced the Frangi,
Speaker 7: who are the Frankie had a lot of problems. Originally
Speaker 7: they were not great villains by any means, but by
Speaker 7: the time of DS of Deep Space nine, through the Frangi,
Speaker 7: you've brought capitalism and monetary exchange back into the Star
Speaker 7: Trek universe. And I was always sort of torn because
Speaker 7: I think it made for very good storytelling, or the
Speaker 7: storytelling I could relate to a lot more. But also
Speaker 7: now you'd like, I want storytelling in a world that
Speaker 7: has no money, But I also know it's hard for
Speaker 7: me to comprehend, and so it's very hard for someone
Speaker 7: to write for me.
Speaker 9: And that's kind of the tension I think that you
Speaker 9: get there a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, well, hm, that's why they have to break
Speaker 3: their prime directive so much.
Speaker 10: You've got to have conflicts somehow, and if it's not
Speaker 10: going to be money, it's going to be something else.
Speaker 10: And all of all of our narratives are about money.
Speaker 10: Although that's why Bruslayne is a billion.
Speaker 9: I went back and did some check.
Speaker 7: He's not a billionaire in the original cons a millionaire,
Speaker 7: so inflation, that's right.
Speaker 4: Go on, yeah he's a millionaire.
Speaker 10: Yeah, a million dollars.
Speaker 4: He'll have to be a trillionaire in Batman Beyond.
Speaker 10: Then, in much the same way that Star Trek can
Speaker 10: escape the Frontier stories from Star Trek or all science
Speaker 10: fiction can escape capitalism. It's the same thing. It's the
Speaker 10: same idea. The Frontier was about opportunity to make money,
Speaker 10: and Star Trek has never been able.
Speaker 4: To avoid that problem. Right.
Speaker 10: So Kayla Gwinn has that famous quote. She was at
Speaker 10: the National Book Awards in a room full of like
Speaker 10: amazonic sects getting an award, and she said about capitalism,
Speaker 10: she said, you can't imagine a world about capitalism. Remember
Speaker 10: two centuries ago, nobody could remember imagine a world without
Speaker 10: the divine right of kings. And but Star Trek still
Speaker 10: has not imagined the world about capitalism because they can't.
Speaker 10: Because then there's the problem with Star Trek has always
Speaker 10: been how do you have tension between characters? So instead,
Speaker 10: I feel like, sorry, go, Paul, I was just going
Speaker 10: to say no and set instead in said they have
Speaker 10: the tension about political ideologies. Can we interfere with this culture?
Speaker 10: Is the only tension they can have, Paul go.
Speaker 8: I do feel like there are so many conflicts that
Speaker 8: people find a way to have though with one another.
Speaker 8: You know, it's but that is challenge of especially like
Speaker 8: a TV show, right, a movie You're like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 8: going to make this one movie. I'm going to come
Speaker 8: up with a conflict. We're going to build the whole
Speaker 8: story around it. Boom, We're good. Right, But like a
Speaker 8: TV series like oh man, they used to do like
Speaker 8: twenty some episodes a season, right, Like, there's a lot
Speaker 8: of conflicts to come up with, and like you need
Speaker 8: your A plot, your B plot, like it's it's a
Speaker 8: lot of stuff, and I mean, I do think there's
Speaker 8: plenty of things. I mean also, I'll just I'll just
Speaker 8: throw in a little like writing thought is like I
Speaker 8: think the idea that like all writing stems from conflict
Speaker 8: or all drama, or like that all good stories have
Speaker 8: to be firmly rooted in conflict. I think it's absolutely
Speaker 8: not true. And I think there are other modes of storytelling,
Speaker 8: and you know they might not be as you know,
Speaker 8: capitalistically successful as easily, but like you can tell stories
Speaker 8: that don't have that much conflict.
Speaker 4: It's it's doable, you know.
Speaker 8: But I do think Hollywood and a lot of storytelling
Speaker 8: is addicted to conflict and just money is what people know, right,
Speaker 8: And and it's like, I think writers and viewers and
Speaker 8: executives have such a hard time being like, okay, let's
Speaker 8: let go of just totally put away this one sort
Speaker 8: of like vector of conflict, and then then we have
Speaker 8: to think about what's left right, and and it's if
Speaker 8: you're trying to do twenty some episodes a year, it's
Speaker 8: like that's it's pretty hard.
Speaker 4: But like, I don't know, I feel like you could
Speaker 4: do it. But maybe maybe if they did.
Speaker 9: Like globalization or media gives me something to do it
Speaker 9: a little.
Speaker 7: I think you're right right now, Hollywood is not going
Speaker 7: to take some you know, Ugandan or Paraguayan you know
Speaker 7: author and give them five hundred million dollars to make
Speaker 7: a story about a science fiction story written that outside
Speaker 7: of the American context. But we're seeing more and more
Speaker 7: TV shows strut Tour really explore those things.
Speaker 9: One of my partner, Mary, has.
Speaker 7: Really gotten into a TV show I believe it's called Untamed,
Speaker 7: but it's basically is an epic fantasy story with you know,
Speaker 7: like different warring houses and sword fighting and magic set
Speaker 7: in China, and it's told by you know, it's made
Speaker 7: by Chinese creators, and it's you know about China. The
Speaker 7: way like Lord of the Rings is kind of very
Speaker 7: much like, you know, drawn out of Western you know,
Speaker 7: German and English mythology. This is very much drawn out
Speaker 7: of Jenny's mythology in various ways. It also has an
Speaker 7: awful lot of wonderful gay content, which is a great
Speaker 7: thing about that show in particular that I recommend. But like,
Speaker 7: there's a number of these shows being made now and
Speaker 7: and so it does give me some hope that I
Speaker 7: would love to see some like you know, Netflix Africa.
Speaker 7: Hopefully not Netflix at all, but like some you know,
Speaker 7: TV company start to to know, let's see afro Futurism
Speaker 7: on on you know, as a TV show made in
Speaker 7: Nigeria or somewhere else like that, because I love that
Speaker 7: it's happening in print. But I do think that the
Speaker 7: mass media is still always going to be on screen, and.
Speaker 9: It's not that I think.
Speaker 7: I think at the end point, I'm never going to
Speaker 7: end up saying, Okay, this is better because it doesn't
Speaker 7: have the Frontier. But I think the more we get
Speaker 7: to watch TV science fiction that doesn't have the frontier,
Speaker 7: it allows us to see how much the frontier is
Speaker 7: a part of Star Trek and that's necessarily bad. Like
Speaker 7: I love Star Trek and I think Star Trek has
Speaker 7: great ethical content. But yeah, I think you're really doing
Speaker 7: a good job of highlighting how much the frontier is
Speaker 7: baked in, and I feel like getting to see other
Speaker 7: things outside of that context really helped highlight that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think like Netflix actually has done a good
Speaker 8: job of broadening their sort of sourcing of of shows
Speaker 8: right at least and maybe movies as well, where they're
Speaker 8: I mean, I watch most of what I watch is
Speaker 8: from Spain or Mexico, you know, and like because I
Speaker 8: like to watch my fiction in Spanish because then I
Speaker 8: feel like I'm studying or something. But like it's you know,
Speaker 8: it is interesting seeing different shows made in different places
Speaker 8: that you know, have sensibilities that are somewhat different than
Speaker 8: most of the shows you'll see that are made in
Speaker 8: the United States or or in I mean for that matter,
Speaker 8: like if you just watch English shows or movies compared
Speaker 8: to like American ones, there's there's a difference or Canadian
Speaker 8: like Canadian comedies. It's like like I mean, I think
Speaker 8: like Kim's Convenience and like Shit's Creek, Like they they
Speaker 8: play with that sort of not having conflict exactly the
Speaker 8: same way you would have in most American sitcoms, right,
Speaker 8: Like some things will just end up not being a
Speaker 8: big deal that you're like, this would be definitely be
Speaker 8: the big embarrassing conflict at the end.
Speaker 7: One of an Americans. One of the things that you
Speaker 7: never know. It's funny because it's the apps. You hardly
Speaker 7: noticed at the times, but the writers have said they
Speaker 7: were very explicit about this. You know, the main one
Speaker 7: of the main characters is gay, and gay romance is
Speaker 7: a big part of the show. Homophobia never occurs in
Speaker 7: the show, like there's never that, it is never a
Speaker 7: source of conflict there and even like there's a problem
Speaker 7: with the parents, but it's much to do with like
Speaker 7: just the cultural like the parent I think I think
Speaker 7: the parents of one or more kind of small town
Speaker 7: and have some issues with like the big sitty noess
Speaker 7: of the other partner. But like they made a very
Speaker 7: conscious decision of we wanted to tell stories about a
Speaker 7: queer character for whom homophobia was never going to be
Speaker 7: a source of drama. And it's amazing to say that
Speaker 7: that's revolutionary, but it was revolutionary, you know. And in
Speaker 7: the same way people are saying, like, you know, for
Speaker 7: a while, if you had a woman action hero or superhero,
Speaker 7: so often her story was built out of you know,
Speaker 7: sexual violence happening to her or someone in her life
Speaker 7: and thus acquiring power to fight back about that, and
Speaker 7: people being like, no, stop, let's stop having that story, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: And it's not even that you can like never tell
Speaker 8: the story. It's just like, don't always tell the story.
Speaker 8: Whatever the story is, like tell different stories. And like
Speaker 8: when there's something that's such a low hanging source of conflict,
Speaker 8: it's like, you know, it's like, oh, should we do
Speaker 8: that one?
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's do that one.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 8: I mean there's a reason that there's like websites about
Speaker 8: like TV tropes, right, and it's like, oh, it's this trope. Oh,
Speaker 8: it's that trope, like there's just like you know, a
Speaker 8: list to say, oh, we'll do one of those episodes
Speaker 8: that like, you know, we'll do one of the episodes
Speaker 8: where somebody gets like one volume of the encyclopedia and
Speaker 8: then then all the words that start with a V
Speaker 8: or a P or whatever, like you know. I mean,
Speaker 8: there's a lot of ideas, there's a lot of sources
Speaker 8: of conflict.
Speaker 4: You don't always have to.
Speaker 8: Go to the like really low hanging ones, particularly when
Speaker 8: they're ones that like you know, echo traumatic events that
Speaker 8: many people have experienced, right, like maybe back away from
Speaker 8: those completely for a while, and then you can sprinkle
Speaker 8: them in occasionally if you want, but doing it in
Speaker 8: a conscious way, but like just not not always the thing.
Speaker 8: Whatever the thing is, whether the thing's the frontier definitely,
Speaker 8: or you know, homophobia or violence or anything like that,
Speaker 8: or criminal law.
Speaker 4: Or criminal law exactly exactly.
Speaker 10: I mean, if there's a American shows tendathy or you
Speaker 10: can do forty two minutes in any of them show
Speaker 10: about two people not communicating effectively of the first time.
Speaker 7: I mean, if you if you hang out how you
Speaker 7: say so and then talk about media.
Speaker 9: One of the first things that will come out of
Speaker 9: the show.
Speaker 7: I think a lot of people monogamous or anything can
Speaker 7: be sick of the love trying a trope, but hang
Speaker 7: out with polyamorous people and talk about love triangles and
Speaker 7: the like, why doesn't she just date both of them?
Speaker 7: Is a concept you're going to hear a lot, you know,
Speaker 7: because Yeah, I think I think especially when you're those
Speaker 7: tropes feel all the worse when you're you're sort of
Speaker 7: living out that, Like, it doesn't have to be this way.
Speaker 9: What's been a fantastic conversation.
Speaker 7: I want to kind of give both everyone a chance
Speaker 7: to kind of say last words and start to wrap up. Matthews,
Speaker 7: any kind of big parts of this we haven't covered,
Speaker 7: or any kind of quotes or other points you wanted
Speaker 7: to make before we start to wrap up.
Speaker 10: Hey, you know what, I actually do have a quote.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 10: So nineteen sixty Kennedy gets elected and he's going to
Speaker 10: send people to the new He doesn't know he's going
Speaker 10: to do it. He's going to be inaugurated in the
Speaker 10: end of January sixty one. He gets a science advisor.
Speaker 10: He's the first president to get a science advisor. A
Speaker 10: guy named Jerome Weisner, who's the president of that night,
Speaker 10: the engineer, I get an entire committee report on what
Speaker 10: we should do in the space program, and one of
Speaker 10: the things he said was, you know, probably, no matter what,
Speaker 10: we're going to go. So the question is how are
Speaker 10: we going to go? And the quote from that report
Speaker 10: given to Kennedy before he's even slum in as president,
Speaker 10: in this about humans and space, given his enormous curiosity
Speaker 10: about the universe, which he and his compelling words to
Speaker 10: go where no one has ever been before. This will
Speaker 10: be done nineteen sixty one. We're talking guys. And the
Speaker 10: fact that and the fact that Star Trek interrogates that.
Speaker 9: My mother was very much a sixties hippie.
Speaker 4: I wanted to say that it makes it the.
Speaker 7: Best way to understand the fundamental hopefulness of the nineteen
Speaker 7: sixties is to watch Star Trek, because especially she would
Speaker 7: say this as we were watching the next generation the nineties,
Speaker 7: which is very positive and I think has hope in it,
Speaker 7: but it doesn't have that fundamental the sense of like
Speaker 7: science is going to make everything better that it does.
Speaker 9: And I think you.
Speaker 7: Could like probably do an interesting sociology class in America
Speaker 7: in the sixties versus America in the nineties just by
Speaker 7: excoose me looking at those two shows.
Speaker 9: So yeah, yeah, that's.
Speaker 4: Very true living through chemistry.
Speaker 9: We're going to do the sports ethics one. We'll get
Speaker 9: to that promise. You can have. Barry Bonds is your
Speaker 9: hero moment.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 9: There you go, there you go. He took a super serum,
Speaker 9: that's for sure.
Speaker 8: I didn't say he's by heros he there's a difference.
Speaker 4: He did.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So I've really enjoyed this. I don't know a
Speaker 8: ton about Star Trek. I hadn't really thought about the
Speaker 8: frontier in this exact manner, and I enjoyed getting to
Speaker 8: explore that with the two of you and and the
Speaker 8: perspective you're bringing.
Speaker 4: I did see the Borg movie.
Speaker 8: H there was there's a movie right where they're like,
Speaker 8: the main antagonist is the Borg, and.
Speaker 4: I enjoyed it.
Speaker 8: It felt kind of more like a horror movie than
Speaker 8: like what I expect out of Star Trek a little
Speaker 8: bit because they're like a little bit of the.
Speaker 4: Z will be assimilated.
Speaker 8: And I just I've always wanted to make well for
Speaker 8: the last five or six years. A teacher that says
Speaker 8: resistance is futile, the only solution is revolution. That's all
Speaker 8: I got, like a nont like a quiet revolution.
Speaker 9: It is a common play on the that's not like
Speaker 9: it's never me.
Speaker 7: There does money that Star Wars has, and probably the
Speaker 7: two most successful I think the two most successful movie
Speaker 7: is Our Next Our First Contact, which, like you're right,
Speaker 7: is very much it has a lot of Star Trek
Speaker 7: themes but still as many as a horror movie, and
Speaker 7: Wrath of Khan, which has very little to do with
Speaker 7: the normal Star Trek themes of like exploration and encountering
Speaker 7: the new and ethical challenges. It's basically just a submarine movie,
Speaker 7: like if you watch a World War two submarine movie
Speaker 7: and there's some conflict between the captains. That's Wrath of Khan.
Speaker 7: Ratha Cohn is very much not Star Trek. I think
Speaker 7: it's one of the best science fiction movies ever made.
Speaker 7: I love it, and it's hugely successful, but it's not
Speaker 7: it's kind of different from Star Trek. I'll just close
Speaker 7: by also adding Buffy Bot further chimed in when we're
Speaker 7: talking about a Hora that yes, she wasn't the captain
Speaker 7: and was also the Star Trek Smurfett, but glorified Secretary
Speaker 7: is a few steps up from the maid, especially the sixties.
Speaker 7: And I just I love the term the Star Trek
Speaker 7: smurfet and unfortunately that is so perfect for Aura. And
Speaker 7: in terms of what I appreciate is that Star Trek
Speaker 7: has always tried to find ways to sort of recognize
Speaker 7: the critiques and go with it. And so, for example,
Speaker 7: you brought up the fact, Matthew that in the nineteen
Speaker 7: sixties they were trying to push some things about gender equality,
Speaker 7: but all the women were in these miniskirts.
Speaker 9: So the first season of.
Speaker 7: Next Generation, all of the like lower ranked officers are
Speaker 7: in miniskirts, including the men.
Speaker 9: It's just like sure, yeah, just.
Speaker 7: Yeah, never a new character have a fun little like
Speaker 7: why not like this is just this how the people dress.
Speaker 8: I feel like the phrase like you know, who wears
Speaker 8: the pants on this spaceship or something.
Speaker 7: I don't think you can exactly know when ratings week
Speaker 7: was loading. I'm not sure for Next Generation by looking
Speaker 7: at when they go to the planet where the people
Speaker 7: have some very cultural anthropological reason for not wearing clothing,
Speaker 7: but it.
Speaker 9: Was almost always during ratings week.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 9: Matthew had a last comment to make.
Speaker 4: M hmm, Well, you know, say what you want.
Speaker 7: The other things when we say to her, like we
Speaker 7: think about like her kissing Kirk shouldn't be a big deal,
Speaker 7: and whatever else you say about her character. Numerous TV
Speaker 7: stations in the South wouldn't play that episode, so clearly
Speaker 7: it was a like real groundbreaker, and I love the
Speaker 7: way that, Like I don't love the J J Airams
Speaker 7: star Trek very much, but I think one thing he
Speaker 7: did was he said, Okay, let's take over his character
Speaker 7: and make her much more badass, and he gives her
Speaker 7: much more power and responsibility. So it's a way you
Speaker 7: can take that kind of thing and have it grow.
Speaker 4: To an extent.
Speaker 10: This is the people recently have been saying bad things
Speaker 10: about the News Star Trek, and they're saying, you know,
Speaker 10: it was never so political and it was never so woke.
Speaker 10: And the reason they're saying that is because the stuff
Speaker 10: that they were being political and woke about.
Speaker 4: Is just normal enough. So they won. They won.
Speaker 7: The fact that I kind of would love to see that, Like,
Speaker 7: you know, if you could ever talk to forced ghost
Speaker 7: jack ugg about and have him deal with the fact
Speaker 7: that Marvel is all of a sudden woke, you know,
Speaker 7: this night the Jew in nineteen forty one, before we're
Speaker 7: in World War Two, writing a story about literally Jews
Speaker 7: creating a golam to go and punch Hitler. You know,
Speaker 7: you could tell him that we want. I think he'd
Speaker 7: still want to punch everybody who thinks Marvel is now
Speaker 7: woke and wasn't. But I still like that image, so well,
Speaker 7: thank you both. It's been a fantastic conversation.
Speaker 9: Matthew.
Speaker 7: We're definite going to have you back on. But in
Speaker 7: the meantime, for people who are really intrigued they want
Speaker 7: to read some stuff you've written or find other stuff
Speaker 7: you're doing, where can they look.
Speaker 4: I try to avoid being online. You know, I have
Speaker 4: a Facebook that is about it.
Speaker 10: But if you just go to my web page, which
Speaker 10: is Matthew Kapell dot com, you can see the stuff
Speaker 10: I've done, which you know, there's a couple of books
Speaker 10: on Star Trek that I'd rather have that are listen there.
Speaker 9: I so appreciate professor saying that, but.
Speaker 10: You can also always get used, right, and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have to.
Speaker 10: I have to assign one of my own books this
Speaker 10: coming semester.
Speaker 4: I'm the class.
Speaker 7: I had a professor who would because the books are
Speaker 7: in grad school. They were reprinted every year, and they
Speaker 7: would like change the pit pit pagination a bit so
Speaker 7: that it would hard to figure out. And so she
Speaker 7: would say, like, I want you to read pages twenty
Speaker 7: through twenty seven in the twenty fifteen version, but that
Speaker 7: would be pages twenty two through twenty nine and the
Speaker 7: tooth like she just would do that to like help out.
Speaker 7: So and Paul, we've been doing all this on the
Speaker 7: Zen Madman twitch stream, which one of these days we're
Speaker 7: going to get around to advertising for five minutes before
Speaker 7: an episode goes up.
Speaker 9: But what is the z mad Man up to? Yeah,
Speaker 9: like a lot.
Speaker 8: Of chess lately, like and which you know, I've been
Speaker 8: looking at chess books and they're they're you know, they're
Speaker 8: actually somewhat reasonably priced.
Speaker 4: I was I was.
Speaker 8: Looking at like the Mi T Open coursewear a lot
Speaker 8: of times because I think, oh, maybe i'll study this,
Speaker 8: maybe I'll study that, And it's like it's great that
Speaker 8: all these things are free online. But at the same time,
Speaker 8: then you look at the books you're supposed to get
Speaker 8: and you're like, oh, my goodness, Like you know, but yeah,
Speaker 8: so I think it's great to promote your own used
Speaker 8: books as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm I don't know.
Speaker 8: I'm tweeting, I'm playing chess, I'm playing poker, I'm doing
Speaker 8: things on various I haven't.
Speaker 4: Been making well.
Speaker 7: Thank you about so much, I say to a listener
Speaker 7: wrote ins and great feedback Thor movie. I am going
Speaker 7: to read your feedback, Paul, as I understand has not
Speaker 7: yet seen the Thorn movie, so I just want to
Speaker 7: wait until that happens. But it should be going to
Speaker 7: the Disney Plus fairly soon September eighth. Okay, cool, So
Speaker 7: we will get this because we did a great episode
Speaker 7: on Thor and the Odyssey with a rabbi that I.
Speaker 9: Really am the November eight. Oh thank you.
Speaker 7: I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and I give him
Speaker 7: a plug again pop culture Rabbi on Great check Out.
Speaker 7: But of course, so we will get to that listener
Speaker 7: content and we love more. So let us know what
Speaker 7: you think. What do you think of this whole concept
Speaker 7: that we're talked about. Are you a Star Trek fan?
Speaker 7: Do you hate Star Trek? Is this new ideas of
Speaker 7: this stuff you've been thinking about before?
Speaker 9: Let us know.
Speaker 7: You can find all the ways to contact us by
Speaker 7: going to the Ethical Panda dot Com. There, of course,
Speaker 7: you'll also find all the other podcasts that I do,
Speaker 7: including Star Wars Universe podcast, which Paul is a frequent
Speaker 7: guest on. We're going to get Matthew on there as well.
Speaker 7: We're going to Right now, we're doing some stuff with
Speaker 7: the books and continuing our coverage of the TV show.
Speaker 7: So Rebels were getting really excited for and Or. And
Speaker 7: Or was supposed to be my birthday present. It was
Speaker 7: going to go live on August thirty first, my birthday.
Speaker 7: It's been pushed back a few weeks. Just gives us
Speaker 7: more time to get excited. I'm reading every book that
Speaker 7: has some relevance to it to try and get psyched
Speaker 7: up for it.
Speaker 9: So check out that, check out this.
Speaker 7: If you haven't, please subscribed to both of these podcasts,
Speaker 7: and most importantly, as fans, be good to each other.