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So would an ermine violin, Doctor, but I see no advantage in having one
1. In The Making of Star Trek (1968), which I am currently re-reading for the first time since high school, Gene Roddenberry says a singularly boneheaded thing about Spock:
Which is one of the reasons why Spock is an interesting character: the turmoil and conflict within. As half-human and half-Vulcan, he is continually at war within himself. For some reason this makes him particularly delightful to our female viewers, and of all ages. I guess they know that somewhere inside him there is a strong, emotional Earth man trying to come out. And they would love to help.
I don't argue with the character's status as a sex symbol. Leonard Nimoy is a very good-looking person, a sharp intellect and a deadpan raised eyebrow are always in demand, and besides the fanfic speaks for itself. But the reasons I imprinted on Spock as a young viewer (and reader; because of the way television worked versus books in my childhood, I read most of the scripts as short stories before I saw the original episodes) had nothing to do with his humanity, romantically stifled or not. It was his alienness that spoke to me. Or his half-alienness, which Roddenberry is correct gave him an intriguing, liminal quality.* It was very valuable to me, as a child, to have a sympathetic main character who was defined by his difference from the mainstream of human interaction, not existing in isolation, but not assimilated, either, nonplussed by so many of the common behaviors around him: just because he shares the genetics doesn't mean the mindset makes sense. In hindsight, I think it was equally valuable that he is not punished for this attitude by the narrative he's in. Especially in light of later Star Trek, I find it striking and welcome that Spock's emotional arc, such as he has one, does not revolve around him becoming more human or more conventionally expressive; he doesn't deny his mother's heritage or his emotions when they come into play, but his comfortable balance will always be on the Vulcan side, however offputting that may be for the non-Vulcans around him. Zachary Quinto's alt-Spock doesn't work for me precisely because of the greater emphasis on his emotions. It's not a stupid characterization—and possibly it's more in line with Roddenberry's reading—but it seems to erase much of what made the original character distinctive in the first place.
Anyway, leaving aside the assumption that female viewers automatically invest in the romance angle of a character before anything else, I disagree with Roddenberry that Spock's appeal lies in the idea that secretly he's as passionate as any human; that the Vulcan coolness is somehow just a front. (If nothing else, canonically, Vulcans are passionate, too.) If you want a strong, emotional, Earth-type partner, it's not like the Enterprise is exactly lacking in options. The First Officer is different and that's the point. I cannot imagine that I was the only person of whatever gender to feel this way about Spock.
* Growing up, my brother and I were "both-ways children"—a term my mother invented to answer the people who wanted to know what my brother and I were, with a Jewish mother and an atheist-from-a-mixed-Christian-family father. Spock being half-Vulcan, but also Vulcan by choice, was important. I was married by a rabbi and my brother baptized his daughter.
2. How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens, in which my poem "Di Vayse Pave" (די ווײַסע פּאַווע, "The White Peacock") is reprinted, is now available for preorder in all digital formats, three of which landed in my inbox night before last. It's an amazing collection of fiction and poetry from writers like Ken Liu, Bogi Takács, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Rose Lemberg, Zen Cho, Daniel José Older, Bryan Thao Worra, Indrapramit Das, Alex Dally MacFarlane, and many, many more. As editor Joanne Merriam notes: "Despite the natural comparison of alien to alien, I'm not aware of any other speculative fiction anthology which has gathered together stories focusing exclusively on the immigrant experience." Print copies are forthcoming as well. I think most people I know are going to want one.
3. This is a gif of Leslie Howard eating a banana. Someone has won the internet.
I must take this lemon meringue pie out of the oven.
Which is one of the reasons why Spock is an interesting character: the turmoil and conflict within. As half-human and half-Vulcan, he is continually at war within himself. For some reason this makes him particularly delightful to our female viewers, and of all ages. I guess they know that somewhere inside him there is a strong, emotional Earth man trying to come out. And they would love to help.
I don't argue with the character's status as a sex symbol. Leonard Nimoy is a very good-looking person, a sharp intellect and a deadpan raised eyebrow are always in demand, and besides the fanfic speaks for itself. But the reasons I imprinted on Spock as a young viewer (and reader; because of the way television worked versus books in my childhood, I read most of the scripts as short stories before I saw the original episodes) had nothing to do with his humanity, romantically stifled or not. It was his alienness that spoke to me. Or his half-alienness, which Roddenberry is correct gave him an intriguing, liminal quality.* It was very valuable to me, as a child, to have a sympathetic main character who was defined by his difference from the mainstream of human interaction, not existing in isolation, but not assimilated, either, nonplussed by so many of the common behaviors around him: just because he shares the genetics doesn't mean the mindset makes sense. In hindsight, I think it was equally valuable that he is not punished for this attitude by the narrative he's in. Especially in light of later Star Trek, I find it striking and welcome that Spock's emotional arc, such as he has one, does not revolve around him becoming more human or more conventionally expressive; he doesn't deny his mother's heritage or his emotions when they come into play, but his comfortable balance will always be on the Vulcan side, however offputting that may be for the non-Vulcans around him. Zachary Quinto's alt-Spock doesn't work for me precisely because of the greater emphasis on his emotions. It's not a stupid characterization—and possibly it's more in line with Roddenberry's reading—but it seems to erase much of what made the original character distinctive in the first place.
Anyway, leaving aside the assumption that female viewers automatically invest in the romance angle of a character before anything else, I disagree with Roddenberry that Spock's appeal lies in the idea that secretly he's as passionate as any human; that the Vulcan coolness is somehow just a front. (If nothing else, canonically, Vulcans are passionate, too.) If you want a strong, emotional, Earth-type partner, it's not like the Enterprise is exactly lacking in options. The First Officer is different and that's the point. I cannot imagine that I was the only person of whatever gender to feel this way about Spock.
* Growing up, my brother and I were "both-ways children"—a term my mother invented to answer the people who wanted to know what my brother and I were, with a Jewish mother and an atheist-from-a-mixed-Christian-family father. Spock being half-Vulcan, but also Vulcan by choice, was important. I was married by a rabbi and my brother baptized his daughter.
2. How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens, in which my poem "Di Vayse Pave" (די ווײַסע פּאַווע, "The White Peacock") is reprinted, is now available for preorder in all digital formats, three of which landed in my inbox night before last. It's an amazing collection of fiction and poetry from writers like Ken Liu, Bogi Takács, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Rose Lemberg, Zen Cho, Daniel José Older, Bryan Thao Worra, Indrapramit Das, Alex Dally MacFarlane, and many, many more. As editor Joanne Merriam notes: "Despite the natural comparison of alien to alien, I'm not aware of any other speculative fiction anthology which has gathered together stories focusing exclusively on the immigrant experience." Print copies are forthcoming as well. I think most people I know are going to want one.
3. This is a gif of Leslie Howard eating a banana. Someone has won the internet.
I must take this lemon meringue pie out of the oven.
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I think it was equally valuable that he is not punished for this attitude by the narrative he's in.
Yes yes yes. I sure was.
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I'm guessing it's because Roddenberry was never between anything but jobs in his life. Leonard Nimoy being the Yiddish-speaking child of Russian Jewish immigrants makes a lot of Spock's development make sense to me in ways that Roddenberry talking about the character doesn't.
(I was eleven or twelve when I read that book.)
I read it very young, conceivably before I'd seen any Star Trek—I really didn't watch much television as a child—and then again later in adolescence, with the result that I remembered the book as being interesting and retained almost no memory of the content except for the story about painting the Orion girl greener every day because she kept showing up non-green in the test footage and it finally turned out a technician in the film lab was hand-correcting the color because he thought it was a mistake. (I still think that's brilliant.) I'm finding it a fascinating mix of production stories and practical (for the time) TV advice, backstory and worldbuilding that may or may not have made it into the finished series, and wait, what?
It made me think about gaze long years before having to read relevant bits of theory
That makes a lot of sense. It is kind of amazingly Othering, even from an apparently sympathetic position.
With the timing of coincidence, iTunes (because I'm listening to the soundtrack of Urgh! A Music War) just presented me with Joan Jett singing "Bad Reputation": "Never been afraid of any deviation / And I really don't care if you think I'm strange, I ain't going to change." Which I think is a healthy attitude.
Yes yes yes. I sure was.
I'm realizing that some of my strong early childhood imprints—not all, but I think a statistically significant number—were, in hindsight, a kind of reassurance; I don't know if they told me that things were going to get better, but they told me that things were possible. Now I'm dealing with the feeling that this makes all of my favorite characters really obvious and embarrassing, but I'm pretty sure that's Tiny Wittgenstein.
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I am so glad the character didn't work out that way in practice.
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Now I'm dealing with the feeling that this makes all of my favorite characters really obvious and embarrassing, but I'm pretty sure that's Tiny Wittgenstein.
I think it is TW.
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Yay Leslie Howard eating a banana.
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Have an incredibly blurry picture! My phone was not built for food porn and neither were the fluorescent lights over that corner of the counter.
(It was delicious.)
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Really recommended. I feel very lucky in my contributor's copies.
Yay Leslie Howard eating a banana.
It's from a movie I haven't seen. I was delighted.
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YES. Allowed to be with others, and be different.
I agree with you. Why have the endgame be that in the end, everyone is on one main pattern. "He may seem buttoned down, but really he's torridly passionate!"
No. Maybe he's precisely as he seems. Maybe he is *never* going to be Sulu with a sword or Kirk whispering sweet nothings. Maybe, unlike Data in TNG, he doesn't want to be a Real Boy. Maybe his culture and practice aren't completely valueless things that he'll eventually put aside.
And yay! How to Live on Other Planets! And pie always deserves cheers.
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That's one of the later Trek I was thinking about, yes. Depending on the episode (and how I'm feeling that day), I find that storyline either folklorically poignant or unbelievably condescending. Not everything has to be the human way.
Maybe his culture and practice aren't completely valueless things that he'll eventually put aside.
Yes. That.
Commenters over on Dreamwidth have pointed out that Roddenberry's conception of Spock is pretty much a Tragic Mulatto, torn between two cultures with neither to call his own; I think I am very grateful to Nimoy for not playing him that way. That's not to say that Spock doesn't have problems, but as regards his identity, from what I can remember of the series—his father's rejection when he joined Starfleet, even his friends' insistence that he lighten up on the logic sometimes—they're a lot more other people's with him.
And yay! How to Live on Other Planets! And pie always deserves cheers.
There's a picture above! It came out great!
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Yay!
To me, he is just as liminal, but it's only that he expresses it differently; I feel like his fury is itself shown to be a thing that sets him apart in the context of both his cultures, and it's shown to underlie his coolness in ways to which I can relate, but again are clearly not entirely comfortable for the people around him.
Okay; that's not an interpretation that suggested itself to me, but I understand the argument. I didn't see Star Trek: Into Darkness—how is he there?
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I have two dearly beloved episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation that I have not seen in years—that I hope are as good as I remember them—and neither of them is human-centric. "The Defector" begins with the arrival of a Romulan refugee, a low-level clerk who has fled across the Neutral Zone with classified blueprints for a military base recently constructed within the Zone itself; it shortly transpires that he is not a clerk at all, but a high-ranking admiral wanted for war crimes against the Federation, an infamously bloody massacre included. He has dedicated his life to this endless cold war and he is tired of it; he fears for his family and his homeworld. His daughter will grow up hearing him reviled as a traitor, he says, but at least she will grow up. The obvious question is whether he's telling the truth; the secondary question is, even if he is, will it make a difference? "Tin Man" follows a first-contact specialist who is a former mental patient: where most Betazoids develop their telepathy with adolescence, he was born telepathic, unshielded, never adequately able to learn to screen others' thoughts out of his mind, and as a result he's been in and out of psychiatric hospitals all his life. (Whoever scripted this episode must have read Ursula K. Le Guin's "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow." I don't hold it against them. It's a great story.) He's been seconded to the Enterprise in order to make contact with what appears to be a derelict living ship in orbit around an imminent supernova; he doesn't get along very well with anyone in the close quarters of a thousand minds on the same starship and his reliability is in question anyway, given his involvement in a disastrous first contact of which he was one of the few survivors. It's a story of symbiosis.
but I guess that's not so much about wanting to be like a human; it's more about wanting to be able to give someone what they desperately crave, and yet not being able to.
It's not presented as uniquely human, or as though the natural default of this impulse is humanity. That would make a difference.