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

[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.