@ValueSubtracted Thanks for the reminder. Yeah, I would never link because eww, but a screenshot for general pointing-and-laughing was just too tempting.

Yeah it's a profoundly stupid take.

There's the famous Whoopi Goldberg quote about how as a little kid she saw it with a black woman not beimg a maid and running around the house screaming about it in celebration

There's the famous story about Nichelle Nichols wanting to quit to do plays until MLK jr told her that she needed to stay for black people everywhere to be represented as an equal member of the crew, and it was the only show he'd let his kids stay up late to watch.

From its inception it's been "woke" by daring to put both a black woman and an asian man in roles where they were to be treated as equals and valued members of the group.

I'd like to add more examples, but it's been so long since I've watched any star trek.

EDIT: I just remembered the not at all subtile jab at racism with the two guys that had half black half white faces.

Conservatives do not understand subtext, satire, or allegory. They don't assign what they like or don't based on any meaningful understanding of the message it conveys. They get told what to like and believe by authority and follow it, constantly dismissing or dissonancing any message from what they consume that doesn't align with their instilled beliefs.

@Zephorah And all of this is pretty obvious to anyone with their brain turned on. But even that seems a bridge too far for some.

They entertained TVs first interracial kiss

This is not true, in several ways.

Firstly, it needs the modifier “American” in there. The UK’s first interracial kiss on TV, for example, was in 1962.

Secondly, if we’re defining “interracial” as specifically between someone Black and someone white, then Nancy Sinatra & Sammy Davis Jr. preceded Star Trek by a year.

Thirdly, perceptions of race change. The studio which made I Love Lucy was extremely hesitant to allow Ball & Arnaz to portray themselves as a married couple, precisely because the fact that Arnaz was Cuban meant that the marriage was “interracial”. The kiss they shared in the first episode - in 1951 - would have been seen at the time as an interracial kiss.

Fourthly, even without a changing definition of race there had been previous interracial kisses on the lips on US television - William Shatner himself had previously twice shared a romantic on-screen kiss with someone of Asian descent, once actually in Star Trek.

None of this is to diminish the importance, impact, or progressiveness of the Uhura/Kirk kiss, but it is often overstated. It doesn’t need to be the first ever interracial kiss on TV to be significant. If it really does have to be the first ever something, then it’s the first ever kiss on the lips on US television between a Black person and a white person.

a hopeful future. dystopian futures have plenty of republicans.

Let us boldly go there

Yeah conveniently the photo they chose left uhura out...

Probably just a coincidence

@Kirk Gotta appreciate the thinly veiled "great fan replacement" theory. How very subtle. I'm sure the author (whoever that is) felt ever so witty.

Well the reasoning in the article has nothing to do with the audience being conservative. It's: Star Trek has a mainly male audience. Males are conservative. Then they show some picture how males went more conservative some 50 years(!) after it aired... I'm speechless. Maybe AI "reasoning". Or just very, very stupid.

I do, they just think it's an unrealistic world, not a bad one. Something that could never happen here.

Republican levels, so checks out?

Remember not so long ago when people noticed that Rise Against makes political songs? A lot of people are blind to stuff like this until you point it out.

Bold of you to assume they know it's space communism. If the boys is of any indication Star Trek needs to explicitly say "we're space communism" for there to be a 50/50 chance of Republicans getting it.

I agree with all you said, I just can't believe it is possible for conservative viewers of the show to be blindered to the numerous, numerous ways where the show morals, both implied and very much stated, are antithetical to the entire value structure of the modern right-wing of the USA.

But then again, when I think of the Trek fans I know in real life, it is surprising how many of them are Republicans. Not a majority, but enough. So they might just be overlooking the things they don't agree with.

Part of the reason the show works is that we never really see Federation life outside of Starfleet. Mostly this is for practical budget reasons; what does a post-scarcity egalitarian society actually look like? That's difficult to depict in a show designed to recycle the same set every episode and only very occasionally go outside to film.

So what little we see of the civilian federation looks... a lot like the US. There's a president. Member ~~states~~ planets. Constant references to US history. A military that operates how Americans like to think their military works, rather than what it actually historically has done.

Newer shows take this even further. Section 31, as it was first introduced, was supposed to be a highly illegal, unsanctioned conspiracy acting in the shadow of the proper Federation. Now they're presented as the ultra official, coolest badasses who are the only reason any of the egalitarian principals are able to survive.

Bring back the DS9 writers if they are willing, also fuck Rick Berman.