Lights, Camera, Action!

Trek Needs Exploration

In the recent Star Trek movie by director J.J. Abrams, when Captain Pike listens to James Kirk about an upcoming disaster, a contrast naturally is drawn to the conflict Captain Pike faced in the pilot of the original Trek. A glaring difference strikes the viewer between the original series and the new movie, daring us to ask why the writers missed opportunities in dealing with the conflicts. The conflict in the 2009 movie focuses on the action of destroying Nero’s threat, while the conflict of the past centered on how Pike defined the quality of life. We all know that fiction needs conflict, but that word can define more than action paced movement. Conflict means a confrontation between a character and an obstacle. That obstacle can be how he copes with his world or himself.

The core of the world of Star Trek always sought to look at science fiction as a way to use philosophy to understand others and the forces within the world. Pike’s disabled body in the Menagerie episodes of the original series allowed creator Gene Roddenberry to focus on how Pike could accept a world of his imagination rather than reality. The conflict showed Pike’s struggle with living in a type of wheelchair with a lover who was equally disabled. His conflict led him to view imagination as a vehicle to surpass his limitations.
Roddenberry always asked questions about, what is sentience, how does a person know he is alive, how should a person interfere with others, and how does the definition of slavery take on new meanings as technology increases.

Any version of the world of Trek can play with various conflicts, expand alternative universes, it can even change facts that are part of the characters’ background. All of that can be achieved as long as an internal consistency exists. But to carry the name of Trek, the story should retain the core focus of Roddenberry — the philosophical exploration of life.

The 2009 movie could have explored those issues by looking at how Kirk transformed himself from a rebellious youth into a leader, or at how Spock toiled with having emotion and at how displaced Vulcans coped with the loss of their home world. Instead, the movie focused on the active conflict of a space opera through a series of quick moving events to find and destroy Nero.

How does a rebellious youth become a leader? The movie introduces us to the young character of Kirk who defies authority and only joins Star Fleet because of a prodding from Pike. Yet he quickly becomes a concerned leader who cares about others. He grows to analyze key details and decides how to save others, a characteristic of selflessness. How did he transform himself? What inner anguish did he experience? How did he accomplish those changes? All we needed was a scene or two to show reasons for that transformation. Yet that scene did not emerge in the most recent Trek movie.

How does Spock use his emotion with his logic during a crisis? We saw Spock being alienated as a child on Vulcan, reluctantly giving a kiss to Uhura and swaying one way then another in making a decision on how to counter Nero. But the ultimate emotional breakdown, that forces him to relinquish command, happens because he is compromised as a Vulcan when his homeland is destroyed. The exploration of how to deal with the emotion is missing. The questions the Doctor from Voyager or Data from The Next Generation asked about how to use emotions does not take place with Spock. There was a chance to explore meanings in life. But the movie missed the opportunity.

How does a Vulcan society face the devastation of their world? Does a group that prides itself on logic set the tone of systematically reconstructing their culture? Do they resort to a type of super patriotism that questions all those not of their group as potential enemies? Do they build a rage that could change their commitment to logic? None of these issues were explored.

The 2009 movie excels in a fast paced series of action that shows conflict between Kirk and Spock, Kirk and Nero and Kirk and Bones. The audience is treated to a whirlwind of activity from evading a giant ship, a singularity, giant insects and a black hole. But the conflicts that occur within people are as valid a story as the movement through space. Those elements could have been included without taking away from the tone of the new action, and with little added footage. Tackling the legacy of Star Trek requires more than just making a space opera. It means going where few movie philosophers dare to go.

"Star Trek" image courtesy of movies.yahoo.com

Behind The Mask

Weird, or Not Weird, - That Is The Question.

Characters such as Superman, Batman and Spiderman have been around for decades and have become a part of our collective consciousness, but what about characters such as Super Shamou, Badman or La Donna Ragna? Unless you lived and grew up in Canada, Mexico or Italy, you probably wouldn’t know that these are all imitations of the above icons. If someone gave you a comic book called Hansi, the Girl Who Loved the Swatiska or The Two Faces of Communism or even Chaplains at War, would you be offended or intrigued? These are just some of the questions raised in the book Holy Sh*t, The World’s Weirdest Comic Books by Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury. Unusual or “different” comics have been around for decades, but were these books simply weird, or were they trying to say something more?

From their inception, comics and comic book characters have been a reflection of society and the cultural and political mores of generation upon generation. Characters such as Captain America and The Invaders were created as propaganda tools to help garner support for the United States during World War II. The Incredible Hulk was a response to the Cold War as well as the military buildup going on between the United States and the Soviet Union. It goes to reason that writers and artists from other countries would create their own heroes or heroines to speak out against the happenings and injustices that they were seeing around them.

One such example was Octobriana by Czech writer Petr Sadecky. The character Octobriana, was essentially, a Mongol version of Wonder Woman. Sadecky created this Amazon as a tool to criticize the Soviet Union and create anti-Soviet propaganda. In The Great Society comic book, created by D.J. Arneson and Tony Tallarico, President Lyndon Johnson becomes Super LBJ and fights supervillains such Gaullefinger (based on France’s Charles DeGaulle) and Dr. Nyet (based on the Soviet Union’s Nikita Kruschev). Fighting alongside Super LBJ were Colonel America (Barry Goldwater) and Captain Marvelous (Hubert Humphrey).

Yes, some of the ideas and concepts from the comics listed in The World’s Weirdest Comic Books are definitely weird, but the reason why many of these comics received the label of being “out there”, was the fact that the writers of these comics were addressing ideas and subject matter that was thought of as “taboo” or being a part of the counter-culture at the time. Ideas such as, animal cruelty, the dangers of smoking, bondage or other alternative sexual lifestyles, racial stereotyping and even global warming were tackled back in eras where the general population was either not ready, or not mature enough, to embrace them.

While many of the above comics where quite shocking back in the days when they first came out, some of these same comics seem strange if looked at from a more “modern” perspective. One comic in particular, Just Married that came out in 1973, dealt with the dicey subject of inter-faith relationships. Oh, the horror!

Ultimately, what’s "weird" to one person, group or country may be commonplace to another. The World’s Weirdest Comic Books shows us that although — in some cases — we as a people and a society have evolved politically, sociologically, emotionally, and spiritually, there’s still more work to be done. And because of that, there will never be an absence of comics that shock, scare and jolt our collective psyches.

"Holy Sh*t! The World's Weirdest Comic Books" image courtesy of BarnesandNoble.com

Worlds Meet

Jericho's Terrorist

An episode of the Jericho television series called “One Man’s Terrorist” brings us into the mind of an average person who becomes a terrorist. The scenes in the episode also offer ideas on how we can deal with a potential terrorist threat. Often we’ve heard about the strong man approach about defeating the enemy, or the language from Republicans that we can’t appear weak to the terrorist. Too often we hear that solutions of social methods fail to understand the terrorist. We are told that supplying food and shelter or jobs have nothing to do with decreasing the ranks of the terrorist community. Maybe the real question is why a person becomes so violent.

A realistic scenario of society breaking down occurs in Jericho. The series shows how a Kansas town copes with the aftermath of such a breakdown. A series of nuclear strikes has wiped out key US cities, and isolated towns are left to fend for law and order, food and power. The show viewed the ways resources are managed to help the community. Key characters such as the mayor, medical professionals, a farmer and a store owner were focused on to show how decisions about resources could affect the entire society.

In the terrorist episode, the mayor believes he can not lead his town through the winter because the numbers on the blackboard of food rationing show the people will starve. His solution is to send a group of refugees, the town recently saved, back out on the road. The refugees were staying in a makeshift shelter. The road meant certain death because of roving outlaws, the lack of animals to hunt or existence of shelter from the cold. But the mayor could not save everyone, so at least he tried to save his town.

The terrorist point of view was shown through the eyes of the refugees. Maybe they react to unusual pressure. An incident arose when one refugee tried pleading with the mayor to reconsider the forced eviction. When the mayor pulled out a gun to show his authority, a scuffle broke out that resulted in the mayor being accidentally wounded. The police then treated the refugee as a terrorist.

But we lost the real cause of why one becomes a terrorist, as the argument shifted away from the withholding of resources to one of respect for authority. The change took away key items of fact. The refugees were not just taking from the town. They were gathering wood for fire. One was even serving as a doctor in the town clinic. The refugees were quartered in a shelter even though the town housed many empty homes of people who left before the nuclear strike, probably never to return. But that was private property so it could not be shared with the refugees. The ideas of sharing and the value of property over lives presents a special philosophical view on why terrorists face unusual pressure.

The incident also addresses how to defuse a terrorist in the making. In one particular scene, a town character cries out to a group of people to share their homes with the refugees. She prods and cajoles until many in the crowd agree. This takes place after she is threatened in her home by a refugee who waves a knife at her. When she sees how he wanted glue to close a worn-out pair of shoes rather than take a pair from her son, she sees that this is an average person who desires self respect. She realizes this person has been thrown into a desperate situation, almost as desperate as the mayor who wielded the gun.

Not all terrorists are as easily placated as those in the episode, but we were seeing the images of people in the start of the process of becoming the hardened killers who strike around the world. These were glimpses of a Palestinian, a poppy farmer in Afghanistan or a Sunni…maybe a Shi'ite whose home lies in rubble.

Maybe the difference between the terrorist and victim is who is in authority. Maybe the way to defeat the terrorist is to strike at the causes of the process. Supply food, shelter and hope and the ranks of the terrorist community shrink.

"Jericho" image courtesy of Sidereel.com