Yeah, we’ve talked about the subject before, but never this particular clip (I hope). Saw Gene Rodenberry on the college-lecture circuit in 1973 or ’74, when we all could still thrill to the naughtiness of “After the pilot, the network suits told me I had to get rid of either the female second-in-command or the alien. So I kept Mr. Spock and married Majel Barrett, because in California it’s illegal to do it the other way around!”
Also, Cher — always a delight, per Rebecca Nicholson in the Guardian:
… This, for instance, is her current Twitter biography:
Stand & B Counted or Sit & B Nothing. Don’t Litter,Chew Gum,Walk Past Homeless PPL w/out Smile.DOESNT MATTER in 5 yrs IT DOESNT MATTER THERE’S ONLY LOVE&FEAR.
Her tweets are a riot of politics, bemusement, CAPS LOCK and emoji symbols… Our chat today involves advice for Miley Cyrus, the perils of Grand Theft Auto and a lengthy story involving Salvador Dalí, an orgy and chocolate clocks…
…[B]ack in 1989, when Cher was straddling a cannon in the Turn Back Time video (“so tame in comparison to now”), the concept of a tween fanbase didn’t exist. Should Miley and Rihanna, for example, care that their 10-year-old fans are watching them perform half-naked? “I don’t think the naked part is the problem,” she insists. “Unfortunately, what happens now is that kids are exposed to everything that’s too old for them. You know, since the internet, since horrible PlayStation, you know, what’s the name of it? Hijack car … that car hijack thing? I think maybe that is worse than seeing Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball. Also, she’s trying to break the Disney stuff. When you make such an image, you have to hit it with a hammer. Or a sledgehammer!”
At the time of Miley’s MTV performance, Cher was drily scathing: “I don’t think it was her best effort.” But she says now that she’d been doing interviews all day, “then somehow, I started liking the sound of my own voice pontificating. And finally I thought, this is shit, you know? Get off this kid. It was one performance. It turned out to be the greatest stunt of all time ‘cos people are still talking about it. She doesn’t give a shit what I think, anyhow.”…
Cher is at her most angry when talking politics. She thinks what is happening to women in the US is “terrible … we’ve lost all of our rights. They couldn’t do it federally, so they’re taking it away state by state. I don’t recognise my country,” she says, sadly. “That’s not funny to me at all. I don’t know what the fuck happened. These people [the Tea Party, whom she regularly refers to on Twitter as “t-hadists”] hijacked it, and they’re bringing down the prestige, and the dollar, for whatever it’s worth.”…
And speaking of standing up to the Teahadists: Next year Wendy Davis will have a book to sell:
… Ms. Davis, a candidate for governor in Texas, has signed with Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House, to write a book about her personal life and career, the publisher said on Thursday.
“Everyone deserves to have a say in their future,” Ms. Davis said in a statement. “I hope telling the story of how I went from being a single mom to serving in the Texas State Senate to running for governor will remind others that with the right leadership in government, where you start has nothing to do with how far you go.”
***********
Keeping that idea firmly in mind, what’s on the agenda for the start of the weekend?
Baud
Cole should get her to guest blog here.
NotMax
Gene Roddenberry stalked me throughout the first Star Trek convention – yea, even unto the bar in the hotel lobby, endlessly intoning how much nicer my hair was than his wife’s (and more than once attempting to run his fingers through it).
Not that there’s anything wrong with that….
PurpleGirl
@NotMax: LOL. Did you know that one of the first things Roddenberry and Barrett did when they got to the hotel was to go to Relaxation Plus? Even before checking in at the hotel… (I attended the first ST con, by the second ST con I was a gofer and largely experienced the cons behind the scenes.)
We shouldn’t forget a certain black teenager who watched Star Trek — Karen Johnson, later to become famous as Whoopi Goldberg, who has talked about how important it was to her to see Nichelle Nicols on the TV.
OzarkHillbilly
Just to point out, the leadership she had in gov’t? It was Texas sink or swim “leadership”. Not sure she is making the point she wants to.
Schlemizel
Heading up to St. Cloud where, if things go as expected, the Gopher Womens hockey team should bag numbers 60 and 61 in their unbroken string of wins. Nobody expected this as the team has 7 freshmen and 5 sophomores this year, lost the best goalie in the world and one of the top blue liners in the country to graduation and the top goal scorer in the nation to the US national team.
I have been sick to the teeth of politics as I watch my country swirling around the drain and the loudest voices call for more flushing. Hockey has been a great diversion and hopefully will recharge me because next fall I have to be ready to bust my ass for many hours doing what I can to turn back the apocalypse.
raven
Has anyone used a bailess surtfcasting reel?
Matt McIrvin
The guy who kept the government shut down for two weeks and brought us up to the brink of default is questioning the sincerity of Obama’s apology for saying something inaccurate about the ACA. Which is now worse than the shutdown, the sequester and the Iraq War combined.
TriassicSands
If Roddenberry was aware of social issues concerning the status of women, why did he open the show with “where no man has gone before” instead of “no one” as in The Next Generation? Was the language so deeply ingrained in our society that he didn’t even notice the inherent sexism of the opening? It wasn’t a big thing, but after The Next Generation aired, the first time I ever saw one of its episodes I instantly noticed the change in language. (I was never a Trekkie, nor did I watch TV, so it was sometime after its debut before I saw my first episode at a friend’s house.) To this day, whenever I see the beginning of TNG, which is very, very rarely, I notice the language of the intro, because I think it matters. That is the first show I can think of that made an overt language change to recognize the equality of sexes, but then I’ve never been much of a TV watcher, so my knowledge is far from complete.
Patricia Kayden
@Matt McIrvin: And much of the media is playing along that somehow President Obama is a lying liar. Good on Obama for apologizing though since he inadvertently made an incorrect comment. I don’t recall Shrub ever apologizing for any of his many mishaps (including ones which resulted in DEATHS).
MikeJ
@TriassicSands:
Yes.
Baud
@TriassicSands:
Don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
So was the IRS “scandal” and Benghazi. This too shall pass.
OzarkHillbilly
@TriassicSands:
“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Matt McIrvin
@TriassicSands: Star Trek Classic made some effort not to be racist (and while there’s stuff that was questionable, like the way the original Klingons were kind of Fu Manchu types, for the 1960s it actually did pretty well).
But the sexism on that show was laid on incredibly thick. It’s hard to ignore in just about every episode, and it probably dates the show harder than anything else in it. Sure, there were female Starfleet officers–and everyone assumed they’d quit when they got married. And women were considered more inscrutable than male beings from other planets.
JPL
CBS is apologizing for the Benghazi Investigation that was on 60 minutes. Good for them but they should have investigated the liar before hand. They will again correct the record Sunday night. Maybe CBS this morning will apologize for all their misleading health care examples, also.
Mustang Bobby
This weekend is the start of the Miami International Auto Show, and I have my antique Pontiac station wagon in the Memory Lane exhibit.
Also too, today is the 10th anniversary of my little blog Bark Bark Woof Woof. Stop by for some cake.
NotMax
@PurpleGirl
Coolness plus.
We must have seen one another, as it wasn’t jam-packed to the rafters at that first con. IIRC, it was held at that leaning-to-sleazy hotel across from Penn Station. Still have the manila envelope of goodies handed out to all the attendees.
Close friend and myself were in what passed then for a costume event – decked out in our homemade uniforms, we hold the dubious distinction of being the first to ever point a tricorder at the judges, make the appropriate sound effect and announce “No sign of intelligent life there, Captain.”
It did get a good laugh from the audience.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL:
Dreamer
raven
@Mustang Bobby: Is it dumb to ask how come you are not Poncho Bobby?
fuddmain
@JPL:
Might have had something to do with the fact that the publisher of the liar’s book is Simon & Shuster, a subsidiary of, wait for it, CBS. (from Josh Marshall)
EDIT: Not to mention FOX f-ing News didn’t want to touch this dude.
gnomedad
Some weapon-grade trolling here. Right-wingers regularly cite these articles as fact, and on FB there’s a steady stream of comments from people who Just Don’t Get It.
IowaOldLady
Talk about a blast from the past, we went to hear Angela Davis speak last night.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin:
It sure was. I remember seeing an interview with the actor who played Nurse Chapel, and she was still incredibly bitter about that. I don’t blame her. Still love to watch the original Star Trek, but it’s definitely a period piece. It was fun watching it with my teenager and laughing about / discussing those issues.
Linda Featheringill
OT:
I’m having difficulty getting up to date news on Yolanda. I understand that communications locally have been pretty well wiped out but thought that somebody could get through.
I’ve tried BJ, dkos, nyt, guardian, weather dot com, and wunder dot com. Nothing new seems to be available.
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
At the time, the show was pretty near groundbreaking in having an African-American and an oriental character in prominent recurring roles on the side of the heroes, and not as window dressing. In the case of Mr. Sulu, it was barely 25 years since Pearl Harbor, and I’m hard pressed to come up with another similar contemporaneous example; orientals on TV were still villains, inscrutable sages, laundry workers or houseboys.
Yes, classic Trek wears its age heavily and is dated in so many ways, but the “where no man has gone before” was a de rigeur generic at the time. (The split infinitive of “to boldy go” did, however, stand out like a sore thumb.)
In all honesty, that’s the first time have ever heard anyone give that interpretation. There was even an episode with a wedding on board, and never was so much as a whisper of a hint given of any expectation that the female would resign.
hartly
There is some controversy over whether the network suits actually told Roddenberry he couldn’t have both a female first officer and Mr. Spock. According to some sources the suits just didn’t like Majel Barrett’s acting. I’m more inclined to believe the suits in this case because Roddenberry was infamous amongst people who knew him for making up stories that contrasted his vision to someone else’s narrow-mindedness. Basically, while there was a lot to be admired in his philosophy, as an individual he was a liar, a back-stabber, and a shameless appropriater of other writers’ ideas.
hartly
@Betty Cracker: Regarding the sexism, this was largely Roddenberry’s fault. His private attitude toward women was remarkably primitive.
hartly
A lot of comments by the way about@OzarkHillbilly: Maybe I’d feel differently if I weren’t a 35 year old white guy, but I think people who detest Star Trek for its sexism (not to mention classic Dr. Who or tons of other sci-fi prior to Next Generation) are missing the forrest for the sake of the trees. Ignore the short skirts and screaming, people – they’re a very small part of the show and there are actual STORIES being presented that you might like if you actually paid attention.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
That was the future wife of Roddenberry (they married after the final episode had aired).
hartly
@hartly: Oops – accidentally left in a some stuff I meant to delete in the comment above above before replying to OzarkHillbilly; that’s why there’s a sentence fragment right before @OzarkHillbilly. Sorry about that.
tybee
@raven:
yes.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: I didn’t know that! Wow!
Ben Cisco
Star Trek was definitely part of what drove me to science in general and computer science in particular, and I shared Whoopi’s wonderment at seeing Nichelle Nichols in such a positive role. Definitely a seminal moment in my childhood.
Sondra
Cher was on the Graham Norton show last weekend (on the BBC ) and she was amazing. Her new song was really good and her vocal range has improved to include some higher notes I’ve never heard her sing before. BTW, it was a live performance.
She looked good, her conversation was funny and she didn’t care that she’s 67 years old.
TriassicSands
@Matt McIrvin:
And of course there was the problem of having James T. (they said it was Tiberius, but I always knew it was testosterone) as captain and chief lady killer of the galaxy. It’s hard to play up the virility of a male lead without offsetting it with the submissive femininity of the women.
But my comment was in response to the videos claim that Roddenberry saw Star Trek as a vehicle for social change, most notably racism and women’s rights. I find it ironic that if that was true of Roddenberry, his own perceptions were still so constrained that he couldn’t see the problem with the show’s opening commentary. My questions were really rhetorical, because personally I find it easy to believe that in the sixties a middle-aged American male would have countless blind spots when it came to language and symbolism. I’d be interested to know exactly how the rewrite for TNG came about. Who suggested or demanded the change? Was there any disagreement?
I think the original Star Trek, for all its faults, actually did make some progress in both dealing with racism and sexism. Not giant strides or earthshaking changes, but some progress, and that, after all, is generally the way those kinds of changes happen…until one day the whole rotten facade comes crumbling down — even with the GOP decades later spending every waking hour trying to patch the holes and reinforce the cracks.
The Other Bob
@Patricia Kayden:
What is up with this ” I am sorry” bullshit?
Insurers could have grandfathered certain plans and chose not to. Congress could have appropriated money to educate the public and chose not to. People had three years to figure out their shit plan was shit and chose not to. Insurance companies are trying to scam people into more expensive plans. How is any of this the fault of the ACA?
Obama should have taken a page out of the Bush handbook and doubled down instead of apologizing for doing the right thing. Man he pisses me off.
kc
@NotMax:
To very few people, I’ll bet.
debbie
No one will ever top Christopher Walken’s tweets.
debbie
@NotMax:
Didn’t she also appear in each of the Trek series?
hartly
@TriassicSands: Putting aside the relatively small progress the series made in how America dealt with sexism and racism, what are your thoughts about the merit of the actual stories? Do you think they well-written with interesting sci-fi ideas, or did you even notice them?
Soonergrunt
@JPL: I read only that they were considering the possibility that they may have been somewhat possibly maybe not quite right. Nothing about an apology.
My plans this three-day weekend are to do the following: not a fucking thing.
hartly
@debbie: No. I would estimate she was only in about half of them.
raven
@tybee: Come on now, give me some info. I’m looking at the Penn SSV6500BLS Spinfisher V. Bail-less. I don’t get to fish as much as I would like but we’re headed to the gulf for 9 days later this month and, while I’ll go out to the blue water once or twice, the bulk of my time will be surf fishing.
Betty Cracker
@kc: Star Trek had the courage to boldly split that infinitive, which is further evidence of the series’ tendency to bravely fly in the face of stuffy conventionality. Yet another reason to enthusiastically salute them!
NotMax
@debbie
Yes, but more often in later series as the voice of the computer.
Rekster
Anti-Abortion shenanigans in Oklahoma lead to heartbreak. Irin Carmon wrote a truly heartbreaking story on MSNBC.com last week that really touched my heart. Here is the link if you haven’t read it:
The reason I’m highlighting this story is that the family is in really sad straits right not. An “Angel” in Oklahoma City has set up a fund to help them at this time. Here is a link to that page:
http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/mercy-for-jessica-and-erick-davis/101949
I’m hoping the Balloon Juice community can help this family out.
Also, the Facebook page is here:
https://www.facebook.com/HelpOKMama
handsmile
Re sexism and popular culture
Yet one more reason why I love Sweden:
“Cinemas in Sweden have instituted a classification system for films, based not on the violence or sexual content they contain, but on how sexist they are.
To be awarded the highest A rating for gender equality, a film must pass the so-called Bechdel test: the movie must contain at least two named women characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.
The test – whose origins are in a 1985 storyline in Alison Bechdel’s comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For – may sound like an incredibly low bar. But an alarming number of films showing in cinemas fail to reach it. “The entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, all Star Wars movies, The Social Network, Pulp Fiction and all but one of the Harry Potter movies fail this test,” said Ellen Tejle, who runs Stockholm’s Bio Rio, one of a number of independent cinemas that has instituted the classification.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/sexism-swedish-cinemas-films-women
Egalitarianism: what it looks like.
debbie
@NotMax:
Her stint as Troi’s meddling mother in TNG was my favorite.
NotMax
@handsmile
Pot, kettle, black.
I Am Curious (Blue)
I Am Curious (Yellow)
Betty Cracker
@handsmile: I’m a fan of egalitarianism too, but that rating system seems awfully arbitrary. One can envision a film that focuses exclusively on two female leads engaged in taking down misogynist villains, and if the dialog consisted of strategy discussions on how to subdue the sexist pigs, it would fail that rating system.
NotMax
@debbie
A wonderful role for an actor, and served to highlight what a crappy character Troi was.
“The person with whom you were negotiating may be holding something back, Captain.”
hartly
@handsmile: How many people in the viewing public – male or female – actually give a damn about whether or not a movie passes the Bechdel test? People watch Star Wars and Lord of the Rings for the effects and the action; to expect the producers of these films to worry about the Bechdel test when folks are going to see them for orcs and X-Wing fights is a little ridiculous.
Look folks, most movies are not seeking to impart a message, nor should they be expected to. The idea that you can have too few (or too many, for that matter) films that pass the Bechdel test is ludicrous. The only place we should worry about gender and racial inequality is in real life; let the movies do what they want.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Come to think of it, The Women wouldn’t pass muster.
Matt McIrvin
@hartly: I don’t detest the show for the sexism; it is something I have to watch around. I greatly admire Star Trek TOS for occasionally (in its dozen or so best episodes) committing TV science fiction of the quality level of decent print stuff, which is something that rarely happened then and still isn’t so common.
handsmile
@NotMax:
And the dates of those films are? But for that matter, I can imagine certain Bergman films would not pass muster if God is male.
@Betty Cracker:
When that film gets made, yes, the system’s arbitrariness will have been exposed.
mai naem
Anybody following the CBS Benghazi story? Maybe I missed it here but I have not seen a front pager do it. I didn’t watch the 60 mins piece but apparently the main source lied to Lara Logan. His book was published by Mary Matalin’s imprint at Simon and Schuster. I just wonder why this doesn’t have the same response as Dan Rather’s Bush AWOL story did.
Ash Can
@Linda Featheringill: I was just reading an update on Yolanda on the Chicago Tribune ‘s website.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax:
I was thinking of the banter around the beginning of “Who Mourns for Adonais?” concerning whether or not Kirk was “losing an officer”. I suppose it’s possible to interpret the dialogue as referring jokingly to a social convention that is no longer actually in operation.
And, of course, there’s Janet Lester’s complaints about what seems to be some sort of Starfleet glass ceiling in “Turnabout Intruder,” though given her mental state it’s hard to tell how much that reflects reality.
NotMax
@handsmile
Just a scant few years before Star Wars, which was cited in the snippet.
Betty Cracker
@hartly:
That’s only true if you accept the premise that movies don’t have cultural influence. Which I don’t. I’m not saying films should necessarily be rated for meeting possibly arbitrary standards, and I’m all for enjoying period films and TV shows that don’t live up to today’s standards, but hell yeah we should worry about gender and racial inequality in cultural products, at least in the sense that they should be subject to critical scrutiny on those standards.
scav
@Betty Cracker: Any rating system has arbitrary elements and breaks down at certain points. But focusing on how women’s lives do not necessarily revolve around their interactions with men (either positively or negatively) seems a valid point. (Reminds me of the TWiB discussion of how some would like movies (etc) about AAs that didn’t necessarily involve slavery.) Insisting that feminism is all about man-hating can be understood as an attempt to re-gain the spotlight by the poor ignored former masters of the universe.
rikyrah
Nerdy Wonka @NerdyWonka
HUGE NEWS: October Jobs Numbers: 204,000 jobs added. 7.3% unemployment rate. Economists predicted 120K. Jobs numbers beat expectations.
7:34 AM – 8 Nov 2013
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
Turnabout Intruder
Them’s fightin’ words.
The Highlander 2 of Trekisodes.
Trivia: also the only episode never shown in first-run rotation. It was bumped off the air when scheduled to air by the death of Ike, and dropped into the early part of the rerun cycle in June.
Matt McIrvin
@hartly:
I think this is incorrect. Look at the fanfic community, and what gets written in response to a perceived lack in what gets on screen: there are a heck of a lot of women out there who clearly think something is missing in the movies when they see so few in which they exist as something other than a prize or MacGuffin for a man (or when they do, it’s a romance that is all about catching a man).
The weird thing is, a few of the biggest SF/action blockbusters out there had female heroes: the whole Alien series, the first two Terminator movies too. But these things get dismissed as anomalies, and the B-grade knockoffs and the stuff that comes out every summer usually revert to form with guys front and center. I do think things are changing, but it’s slow.
Betty Cracker
@scav: I certainly didn’t mean to insist that feminism is all about man-hating. Jesus. And I get that it’s valuable to emphasize that women’s lives don’t necessarily revolve around men. I’m just not sure a rating system like that is the way to go. I’m not a fan of rating systems in general.
hartly
@Matt McIrvin: I didn’t watch all of the Alien movies but I did see the first two Terminators and if they passed the Bechdel test I missed it. And given that the Alien movies had mostly male casts I’m thinking they didn’t either.
scav
@Betty Cracker: I wasn’t saying you were, it was about the larger point of why they might focus on that arbitrary measure.
handsmile
@NotMax:
About a decade, in fact. And I’m happy to concede that pornographic films, even ones as anodyne as I Am Curious, would likely fail the Bechdel classification. But I expect those who developed that ratings system were not considering pron as the usual fare at the local cineplex.
Matt McIrvin
@hartly: Terminator, probably not, given that there was basically one woman. Alien was actually the original example of a movie that passes the test, and I think that the second and fourth ones do as well (though #4 wasn’t very good).
hartly
@Matt McIrvin: Regarding fanfic, I don’t think most of it would be all that interesting to the public at large. The Uhura/Spock relationship in the new Star Trek movies is very fanfic, but if this were the main selling point of the movies instead of the action and effects I don’t think they would get much of an audience. True, the dull and lifeless Star Trek the Motion Picture made a ton of money simply because so many die-hard fans went to see it, but this isn’t the 1970’s anymore, and Trek nostalgia isn’t going to get the general public into the theaters like it used to.
schrodinger's cat
@handsmile: That’s why I love the TV show Gilmore Girls, yes the girls had their romantic entanglements but they had lives outside of that and goals.
hartly
@Betty Cracker: I think the cultural impact of film and television is highly oversold. Directors and writers like to think it makes a difference, and they talk it up, but I can’t think of any opinion that I hold because of a TV show or movie I saw. I know a lot has been made about Whoopi Goldberg getting into Trek because of Lieutenant Uhura, for example, but I’m going out on a limb here and saying her life and worldview probably wouldn’t have been all that different if she’d never seen an episode of Trek. That’s a counterfactual of course, so I con’t prove it, but it seems pretty likely to me.
scav
@hartly: Oversold influence is different than completely nonexistent. And if the stories we tell about ourselves and our culture don’t matter at all, then why worry about racist or homophobic or mysogynist speach on film, tape or live from our neighbors mouths? It’s all just words.
ETA, And again, I agree to a point, but
i’m just arguing for a middle ground
schrodinger's cat
@debbie: She was OK in TNG but highly annoying in DS9.
Anya
@The Other Bob: If you actually listen to what he said, it sounds more like, I am sorry people are hurt by this. He never said I am sorry I made those assurances. I am not sure if they edited his other points but I don’t trust Chuck Todd to show the president’s explanation in its entirety. He just wanted to say that the president apologized and that to be the story.
hartly
@schrodinger’s cat: Re DS9 – If it was a Jem Hadar/Klingon/Defiant episode you were in for a good time. If it was an episode about Ben and Jake Cisco bonding or Odo’s unrequited love for Kira it was best to change the channel. As I recall, Majel Barratt’s character somehow fitted into the Odo/Kira thing, but I can’t remember exactly how. Wasn’t she crushing on Odo, or something?
gbear
Nice to know that behind that frozen face and bland entertainment output that Cher still has a mind that’s firing on most of it’s cylinders.
@hartly: When I look back on the early 60’s, the cultural impact of television was in advertising. There weren’t many shows (other than The Beatle’s first appearance on Ed Sullivan and All In The Family) that changed how I viewed life, but as kids we were constantly demanding that mom buy stuff that we saw advertised on TV (breakfast cereals and, oddly, shampoo being the worst offenders). TV taught us that there were products that we needed to make our lives complete, and we’re bombarded with that constantly now on our computers, phones, and television.
Anya
@mai naem: Because the Obama admin didn’t make a stink about it but the Bushies made a huge stink about the national guard story. Except Media Matters, the liberal media (blogers, columnists, etc) largely ignored it.
Mustang Bobby
@raven: No, that’s not a dumb question. My blogonym comes from a character in an as-yet-unfinished novel of mine who is nicknamed Mustang Bobby. And my daily driver is an ’07 Mustang convertible.
danielx
Morning rant…never ever fail to stop or yield at a stop sign in Deming, New Mexico, or you too might end up getting three enemas and a colonoscopy…without your consent.
Why is it that whenever police officers commit some action that results in death, injury or gross civil rights violations to an unarmed or completely innocent person the official response is – always – that the officer(s) followed departmental policies and procedures in every respect and his (or her) actions were justified…or word to that effect? Why is there never a response from the public that says ‘then your policies and procedures need some serious revision’?
I’m becoming more and more convinced these days that one should avoid encounters with the police at all costs, since it seems that more and more often even the most casual encounter can result in arrest, injury or death at the hands of some cop determined to show why you should respect his authority…
Anya
@The Other Bob: Here’s the full interview not the edited parts they showed. It does not sound like an apology to me.
handsmile
@schrodinger’s cat:
Freddie deBoer (in those long-ago days when he was a FPer here) once posted on the contemporary cultural relevance and acuity of Lena Dunham’s television series, Girls. A lengthy, heated, and scornful “discussion” ensued (as was so often the case with FdB’s posts). I’m disinclined to search for that thread from the archives, but do you have a comparative opinion on Girls in relation to the Gilmore Girls?
IDEK
Or Mickey Rooney. Ugh.
Not to mention having a prominent character who was not only unapologetically Russian and a good guy, but also meant to be the “teenager appeal” character. That was still kind of a big deal in the 60s.
Southern Beale
It’s Good News Friday, folks!
tybee
@raven:
i’ve used a couple of large, bail-less reels. an ancient mitchell about the size of a coffee can and a penn ss850.
the penn had its bail simply removed. worked ok. a loose line would jump off the roller and getting it back on if you didn’t notice it before something large had the other end could be a circus complete with burned/scored fingers.
if you kept the line taut, no worries at all.
that penn now has it’s bail back on it but that was due to the gift of the mitchell from someone who used it with the bail on it. when the bail spring got a bit less springy, it had a tendency to snap shut a second or so after a cast when flinging 8 ounces of lead and cut bait which led to having to dodge said weight when it came back at the speed of light.
3rd or 4th time that happened in one day, the owner of the mitchell gave it to me. i had someone from north carolina take the bail off and he had some weird little piece of bent wire that attached to the roller side of the rotor and that never had an issue with the line jumping off.
i still have the mitchell somewhere….
the only place i find a bail-less reel to be of use is doing what you’ll be doing: flinging a big weight several hundred feet. never a worry about a bail malfunction in that configuration.
other than that, i’d just as soon have the bail on it and close the bail by hand – which is what i normally do on all my reels.
and, as an aside, the trout and reds are on fire around here…
handsmile
@gbear:
That’s a precise example of the manifold messages – explicit and implicit, conscious and unconscious – embedded in every single television show or movie. Every product of popular (or elite) culture in fact.
The merchandising industries associated with the LotR and Star Wars movies, the flourishing success of ComicCon, demonstrate that those messages of desire, aspiration, identity have less none of their potency.
handsmile
Dammit, the FYWP gremlins won’t let me edit…..
Last sentence above should read “…have lost none of their potency.”
Splitting Image
I have always understood the Bechdel test as a response to one specific problem in Hollywood films: the tendency to use a female character to establish which of the male characters is the “alpha”. The basic idea is that alpha males get laid, betas don’t, so if the cast is made up of four or five men and a woman, whichever man the woman is having a relationship with is the Top Dog in the group. Alternatively, if there are two women in the cast, both of them will end up fighting over the same man, which doubly makes him the alpha.
I understood Bechdel as being annoyed by this since it makes many female characters interchangeable, and because the romantic storyline serves no purpose but to establish the men’s relationship to each other, it makes the screen time allotted to it seem superfluous.
In Star Trek, Uhura is a step in the right direction, since her relationship with the other men in the crew stays more or less professional, but the “guest-stars of the week” who keep falling for Kirk the alpha-stud fail the test rather miserably.
The Bechdel test may be an interesting way to weed out some of the worse movies that have been done over the years, and open a discussion about why they are problematic, but by itself it isn’t really sufficient to establish whether a movie is sexist or not.
schrodinger's cat
@handsmile: I have never seen Girls, I don’t get cable.
cain
@PurpleGirl:
Sadly, there were no Indians on star trek. Not even on next generation. In fact most sci-fi shows left us out. They must have genocided our assessment in the future.
Ender’s Game is the only recent movie I can recall where an Indian actually had a speaking part. Well, maybe the recent star trek movie as well.
Our revenge is that bollywood is more watched than Hollywood! :-)
Theobald Smith
@handsmile:
So, the Shawshank Redemption does not qualify as a quality movie now?
NotMax
@cain
Persis Khambatta (Indian) in the first movie and Faran Tahir (Pakistani) in the 2009 reboot movie come to mind right away.
handsmile
@schrodinger’s cat:
Smart woman. (Not that I didn’t know that already). Though it does keep you from participating fully in the lamentations/denunciations of CNN and MSNBC programs, which is one of the most popular forms of entertainment on this blog.
handsmile
@Theobald Smith:
Good god. In what way does “quality” (and you’ll define that, right?) enter into this debate?
The Bechdel ratings system is one measure to address/illuminate a specific issue (the purported prevalence of sexism in popular film entertainment). The potential lacunae in that system are referred to in the Guardian article.
Matt McIrvin
@Splitting Image: Yeah, the fact that any one movie doesn’t pass the test isn’t necessarily concerning, but the difficulty of finding any movies that do is a problem.
(And, to be technically correct, the creator of “The Rule” was Bechdel’s friend Liz Wallace, who Bechdel acknowledged in the famous cartoon introducing it to the world.)
schrodinger's cat
@cain: When it comes to sexism, Indian cinema is far more retrograde than anything Hollywood dishes out.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: Though Persis Khambatta wasn’t playing an Indian; she was a nonhuman from the super-sexy planet. Who got killed and replaced by a robot duplicate.
Matt McIrvin
@Anya: Also, the timing is different. The Bush AWOL/Dan Rather story went through the entire cycle of revelation to retraction in the late stages of Bush’s reelection campaign. Benghazi happened and became a talking point late in the Obama reelection campaign, didn’t keep Obama from winning (in fact it mostly backfired on Romney), but then became an increasingly obsessive right-wing fixation afterward.
Redshirt
I recall reading a story about the first black US astronaut who was deeply inspired by the original Trek.
Good stories can make a difference in people’s lives. It’s not the norm, however.
Matt McIrvin
…I’ve started thinking about Bechdel-like yardsticks for children’s books, since I have a daughter. One thing I’ve noticed is that, for all their faults, L. Frank Baum’s Oz books blew the Bechdel test out of the water from square one over a hundred years ago.
(Probably the least-good in this regard is the second book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, which has a rare boy protagonist and a subplot involving a sort of mockery of first-wave feminism. But even in that one… well, I don’t want to spoil the profoundly weird ending.)
canuckistani
WRT the uniforms women were wearing in the orginal Star Trek, they look laughably dated and sexist now, but in 1966, short skirts and go-go boots were shorthand for “modern, independant woman who has turned her back on being June Cleaver”.
Which is not to say that the women didn’t get short-changed for quality screen time, but one factor wasn’t as horrible as it looks now.
Ruckus
@gbear:
That ceaseless advertising is what I miss the least about TV. Most of the crap I don’t want, don’t need and don’t want to have my senses assaulted about. I want to be entertained, not have a crow bar and a hand with sticky fingers stuffed in my wallet. The few times I’ve watched TV in the last 10 yrs has only reenforced my desire not to allow myself to be victim to sales pitches.
Mnemosyne
The new Disney animated musical passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. Just sayin’ (and making a shameless plug).
TriassicSands
@hartly:
I may be a bad person to ask about the quality of the shows, because I never saw any of them when they initially aired. I was in Europe for a few years and then didn’t own a TV from 1971 to 1990. In the eighties I saw some of the early Star Treks at a friend’s house (who has seen every episode many times) and by then, initially led by the ground-breaking special effects in 2001, special effects standards in general had been raised considerably. That means that my initial viewings were probably tainted by my expectations.
As for my own opinions of the show, I’ve always been a little mystified by its appeal. I think there were some interesting ideas raised and considered and there are some shows that might have been truly excellent with better production values. As in TNG there are some nuts and bolts that go unexplained. For example, money seems to have become obsolete — everything apparently grows on trees in public parks. (Along with money, the Republican Party also must have disappeared, which is why things are so much better in the galaxy.) Once, laid up for an extended period of time, I discovered that all of the original shows episodes were available free on the Internet. So, at this time, I’ve seen every one of Star Trek’s original episodes. There are a handful that I think are quite good. Yet, for some reason, despite my laughing out loud at the absurdity of what appeared on the screen, I found the overall series to be endearing. I couldn’t stand Bones, but waited each episode with great anticipation for his newest formulation of “I’m a doctor, Jim, not a (fill in the blank — the best of those was probably “bricklayer,” when the doc was called on to treat a silicon-based life form.)
The acting wasn’t great and, as I’ve said, the production values were pretty meager, but when I compare it to the shows that thrive today, I’m quite surprised that Star Trek didn’t last several seasons longer.
As for the question of whether or not Star Trek influenced people’s beliefs, standards, mores, and perceptions, I guess I’d say I doubt if any one show has much effect, but that there is a cumulative effect if there is a preponderant vision expressed widely across many shows. Showing a woman in a particular role may not mean much alone, but if all (or most) women are shown to be stupid, conniving, subservient, or conversely empowered, competent, and accomplished, I think that could be quite telling and have an impact on society. Today, more and more people are coming to accept homosexuality as acceptable and not abnormal. The fact that there have been so many gay and lesbian characters portrayed not just positively or negatively, but as human beings with both flaws and assets that are typical of the species (homo sapiens) probably has helped change people’s perceptions and opinions. When I was a kid, it was common for people to say they didn’t know anyone who was a homosexual. But today, that’s mostly true only of Republican politicians; everyone else knows someone, and I’d bet that even if they don’t personally know a homosexual, they feel like they do if they’ve been a fan of any of TV’s shows that featured gay and or lesbian characters.