Writer's Block: The Final Frontier

[fajrdrako]

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Hmm.

Truth is, I don't currently care about Star Trek in the least. My interest flagged after Star Trek: The Next Generation because Sisko was a bore, the lovely Kira merely brought us into Bajoran religous politics, I couldn't stand the Ferengi, and Chakotay was the disappointment of the century - the rebel who was more meekly conformist than Starfleet itself. Where were the Picards of yesteryear?

But I discovered slash through Star Trek, back when K/S was all there was, and I loved it. Anyone else remember Cheap Thrills? Thrust? But that was years and several fandoms ago, and slash has come a long way, and you can't (quite) go home again.

And... time for a confession... though I thought I couldn't care less about Star Trek, when I saw a picture of the new young Kirk and Spock on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, I felt a bit of a thrill.

My recipe for a good Star Trek:

1. Two, maybe three at most, strong central viewpoint characters.
   
2. Put in sense of real science fiction - a sense of wonder, innovation, discovery, exploration. A sense of newness. Not just a future that feels like the past.
   
3. Be socially progressive rather than conservative.
   
4. Be imaginative, but keep the characters' psychology realistic.
   

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

"Be socially progressive rather than conservative. "

On prime time US tv? Not gonna happen.

Why not? Is US culture so far gone you have no hope? The original Star Trek was socially progressive - at least in a mild way - and the later versions never moved beyond that, which means they became retrograde.

But things change all the time. The odds are against it, I agree, but if advertisers suddenly got the idea that a socially progressive show would earn them money and get high ratings, they'd be falling all over each other do it.

I see strong statements in other forms of American popular entertainment. It can happen in TV too, and I'd applaude.

A society that has become very conservative can change in the other direction. Cycles. It happens all the time - more often than the contrary. Nothing stays the same for long.

[bright-lilim.livejournal.com]

"Is US culture so far gone you have no hope?"

I should have said prime time TV in any country. But the vast majority of what I watch comes from US.

"but if advertisers suddenly got the idea"

Erm. Relying on advertisers to wise up is a really bad idea. It just isn't going to happen. Same with the TV and movie exces. After all, on TV they are canceling shows which have "too many" female viewers (because apparently women don't have money or aren't allowed to decide what to do with their money??) and on the movie front they don't advertise or give good scripts to movies which are thought to gather a lot of female viewers.

Only way for things to change is for a lot of these people to lose their influence at the same time.

You're clearly more optimistic than I am.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

We seem to be at a time when culturally the US producers are on an anti-woman path: no movies featuring women, or for women, or about women, and TV is slanted elsewhere, too. Driving us back to reading and writing, are they?

You are probably right that the people who are currently making the decisions are entrenched. But they will go - everyone does - and in Hollywood, what wins is what makes money. If they see something progressive or controversial making money, they'll jump on it till it's a fad. Then pass on to the next.

I'm partly optimistic, partly simply learning from what I've seen, partly believing in the power of greed. The things that look the most unchangeable are sometimes the things that come and go most quickly.

I don't find Canadian TV very conservative, at least, not in the way US TV is. Our 'mainstream' is things like "Little Mosque on the Prairie", an inoffensive sitcom about Canadian Muslims, and I don't think that's the kind of thing as mainstream US TV producers would want or care about. But I heard they were doing - or thinking of doing - an American TV version of the same thing. Because they saw how successful it was in Canada - in other words, they thought it would make money.

[bright-lilim.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you read the feminist site Hathor Legacy but I read it and find the articles both fascinating and depressing. Here are a couple of articles that might show why I'm highly skeptical about greed overcoming, well, egotism and principles (this time the principle that women don't matter):

http://thehathorlegacy.com/nobody-knows-anything-but-dont-tell-the-financiers/
http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-women-cant-vote-with-their-dollars-in-film-and-tv/
http://thehathorlegacy.com/women-dont-go-see-movies/
http://thehathorlegacy.com/but-we-know-you-dont-exist-we-have-demographics-to-prove-it/

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Thanks - interesting links!

I kind of resent the notion that the reasoning of the blogger that if I don't like Star Wars it's because I'm too fluffy to understand it. I don't like (most of) Star Wars and it isn't because it was over my head.

Moreover, I like love stories - a lot - it's just not all that I like. Male characters get romances and still have lives and adventures and good stories. In many movies, women just get romances. If that. But on the whole I don't care what gender the characters are in the movies I see - I do like interesting plots and interesting characters.

And I would be the first to agree that there aren't a lot of interesting characters in movies, though I would argue that Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman was one of them.

This is maybe because I'm going to fewer movies than I used to. Fewer of them appeal.

But of course the problems are with bad scripts, they are with the sexist attitudes on the part of the movie-makers.

The 'non-recurring phenomenon' was an interesting assessment. Not surprising, but frustrating. A phenomenon can't recur if it isn't given a chance. And they don't call, say, The Matrix I or Lord of the Rings a non-recurring phenomenon.

This may look entrenched and it may be. (I could say something about politics here, but I won't.) But things change all the time, and resignation and acceptance are not the answers.

Is it that studios assume a female-led movie won’t make it, or that they don’t want them to succeed?

They have admitted to the former; the latter is probably the case. Why should they look for competition? Or a change their way of thinking to change a status quo that suits them fine? Unless they have incentive to reconsider their prejudices, they won't.

But a prejudice is only as strong as the individual who holds it, and Hollywood is like a square-dance with people changing around.

This all reminds me of the recurring subject of "why more women don't read comic books". Some of the reasoning is the same, though women have been, IMHO, on the whole, much better used in comics than in movies.