Forewarned: this is culture war stuff. So, if you trigger easily: don’t read this. Then again, you’ll be missing out on some excellent counterintuitive culture war rabble-rousing.
I guess I ought to declare right here and now before I get trounced for being an out of touch GenXer neobigot. So, say it with me, loud and clear: I’m for every human on this planet being treated with the innate dignity they possess and deserve and that they not be denied the rights their ancestors fought so hard for. Rights are not entitlements, they are earned. And much of humanity has, in the past, earned them and passed them down. They should not be denied to anyone.
Now that my virtue signaling is out of the way I can move on to some cultural war criticism.
First, why must a gay man be portrayed as simpering and overly sensitive? Why does this portrayal as queens persist in pretty much all visual media? And FFS, folks, don’t get all sensitive, I’m going somewhere awesome with this.
Why not portray a gay man very much in touch with his masculinity? Need a few historical examples of powerful, masculine gay men that changed the world?
Easy-peasy. First, Alexander the Great and his lover Hephastion. If you disagree, because Iskander has to be a man’s man, well, fuck off. It’s historically inaccurate to believe otherwise. Seriously, the Greeks buggered each other left and right and all were married. Then there is the Prussian King, Frederick the Great, who out maneuvered the armies of Maria “Always Weeping, always Annexing” Theresa of Austria at almost every turn? Both men were as gay as Freddy Mercury, and both were indomitable warriors and strategic geniuses par excellence.
So, when Starfleet Academy wrote in a gay Klingon, I confess, my interest was piqued. The Kurtzman era franchise had a chance to change in a new powerfully positive way. But, the show-runners took the easier, softer way.
For real, they just turned down the wrong alleyway.
See, fiction has rules. You create species or characters and portray them a certain ways; they have to obey their own rules of internal logic. That way the reader or viewer knows what to expect. When a character or species acts contrary to canon, the reader and the viewer are not only confused but lose interest. So, what happened with the gay Klingon?
Let’s discuss Klingons in general first, okay?
Klingons, in case you don’t know, are fierce warriors, poets, singers and deeply, deeply romantic. Klingons are the antithesis of brooding self-actualized pansies, looking for closure or healing. They love killing almost as much as they love dying. “It is a good day to die,” is their constant refrain. And bloodwine? They make the Russians look like pikers when it comes to imbibing alcohol. So, would it not make sense that a gay Klingon ought to have been written in character? To write a gay Klingon any other way than as an awesome bad-ass killing, drinking and fucking machine is to fundamentally misunderstand Klingons and their crucial role in the Star Trek canon.
Let’s take Worf, from TNG and Deep Space 9, as an example. If Worf wanted to fuck another male Klingon, Worf’s idea of foreplay would have been sparring with bat’leths, followed by bending his paramour over a barrel of blood wine, blowing his load, screaming a blood-curdling Klingon scream and then a blood-wine toast, ending with a little spooning and a love poem.
You know I am right.
A gay Klingon could have been immortal. A gay Klingon had the potential to be Star Trek’s equivalent of a honey badger: he don’t give a fuck. A gay Klingon Dahar master? Dip me in a vat of melted cellophane!
Kurtzman and crew had the chance to create an immortal, utterly amazing Klingon in the mold of Alexander the Great or Frederick of Prussia. Instead they opted to tick off the wokester checklist with an absolutely pathetic, weepy, whingy, sniveling crybaby of a Klingon
What a waste.
The Kurtzman iteration of Star Trek has been nothing but failure after failure to understand what Star Trek was. It was never, ever true to Gene Roddenberry’s vision.
The franchise needs a fifteen year rest.
I’ll be ready for a do over in my late sixties. Get it fucking right next time.
Stephen Howe
Scratch the surface of woke and one often finds bigotry. In this, gay men are ‘accepted’ as long as they act a certain way and are easily identifiable.
Sean Paul Kelley
@Stephen Howe: well said. Thank you.
Jan Wiklund
I know absolutely nothing about Star Trek – but a few things about film. A film is too short to explain complicated things. It has to follow very a strict scheme, laid forth in classicism. Every action in the film has to have something to do with this scheme, otherwise it becomes to complicated, the spectator can’t remember it, and the film gets too longwinded. Drama documentaries even have to lie sometimes because the truth will be impossible to understand, given the short timepan you have to work with.
But of course the theme could be that homosexuals are just like other people except that they are homosexual. This would be a good theme – but then there is some other aspects that have to be twisted.
bruce wilder
cowboys and sailors
jmkiru
I’m… a little baffled at this? Writers write the character they wish to tell a story with. This is a little more complex in a network or modern writers room, but the maxim holds. I’ll confess I haven’t watched any of Starfleet Academy, but the complaint sounds like they chose to tell a story using one character when you would’ve preferred another… who would’ve told a very different story.
Then there’s the rest of this.
So let’s talk about Worf. At least half of Worf’s stories interacting with other Klingons center the fact that he was *raised by humans.* His story is of an outsider loving an ideal of what he believes his people to be, and living that ideal in his heart. Time and again Worf is told he doesn’t really get Klingons and / or maybe he should tone it down a bit (General Martok trying to convince Worf to concede, when Worf is literally going to die after fighting Gem H’dar for weeks: “Worf… Honor has been satisfied.”).
I have no doubt Worf as a gay man would be just as epic as he is straight or anything else, but that’s because he’s Worf. Worf is not all Klingons, just as Alexander the great was not all men.
Let’s consider instead General Martok, who’s an older, tired Klingon, who still has fire in his belly, but has maybe seen enough to temper his sense of honor.
Or Gowron, ever the politician, who fits the Klingon you’ve described not at all. He’s the Supreme Chancellor, the highest of the high among the Klingons, and… he’s a bit of a coward, isn’t he? Not the tactician he wants to pretend he is, and not the warrior either. Gowron is really just… a politician?
Or the Durass family, who are all far more impressed with themselves than they deserve to be. Scheming and selling out the empire and everyone else to the ancient enemies of the Klingons, for a little bit of power, and never quite able to see the bigger picture, causing them to fail, time and again.
Or Ambassador Dak’Rah, “The Butcher of J’Gal.” ‘Under the Cloak of War’ From Strange New Worlds Season 2 is one of my favorite Trek stories – SNW had some really fun, lighthearted and enjoyable episodes in Seasons 1 and 2, but to me Under the Cloak of War (which is none of those) is that shows ‘pale of the moonlight.’
The point to all of these, is each of them are very different Klingons, who would tell very different stories. If the tale is about a gay Klingon, any of the Durass family would tell a different story than Dak’Rah, who would be a different story from Gowron… Gowron and Martok would be very different stories as well, even as they’re in the same episodes and one serves the other.
No matter the subject, the story of a paragon or ideal character is going to be very different from the story of a less certain, more average person. This isn’t a feature of “woke” – it’s a feature of story telling. This isn’t an -ism, it’s a writer or writers room opting to tell one story instead of another. It sounds like this isn’t what you wanted / expected, and you’re disappointed.
… Which I can understand. When I watched the first episode of Picard, I was absolutely riveted by the interview he gives early on. I thought Picard was going to be Trek writing a show to rebuke post 9/11 local and foreign policy in the United States. I thought I was going to get an anti-jingoism story about the bravery inherent in trust and the rewards it brings, as Star Trek is the perfect setting to tell it in. A show about how all of this security-hype nonsense only makes us less safe, and the people selling us the need to give them the power to break our laws and do bad things are the true villains who are making things worse, not some nebulous ‘other’ they are telling me to fear. I was 100% in, absolutely hyped for that show.
I stopped watching it after season 1, when I was certain that was not the show they were going to write. I could say the writers room were all cowards, or they’re probably young and don’t have grown memories of a life before the security state… or I can accept that the story I wanted was not the story they wanted to tell.
I can sympathize with the sense of disappointment. Blaming it on “woke” or saying it’s bigotry though… come on.
KT Chong
“Wokeness is Democrat weapon against Republicans and the Internet… ”
“… and in 2024… they (Democrats) lost.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK_QTCOScwY&t=2010s
P.S. Balaji Srinivasan is an American serial entrepreneur, (i.e., co-founder of Myriad Genetics, CTO of Coinbase, and former general partner of venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz.) He received BS, MS, and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University and a MS in chemical engineering, also from Stanford.
More P.S. I disagree with most of his opinions, but his analyses offer unique perspectives and wisdoms.
spud
the federation is the U.N. after 1945. based on international law, but international law is voluntary, its why the rules based order took over in 1993. its why the klingons which really represents russia, and the romulans which represent china, will win.
Joan
I was pleasantly surprised when studying Japanese culture in college to find two different genres of manga regarding gay love: Boys Love (BL) or Yaoi, which featured beautiful men and lots of flowers, often with love scenes censored at least a little bit, and Bara, which featured ripped hairy men doing erotica with little to no censoring.
I was further surprised to find that gay men were viewed as super masculine, too masculine for ladies. At least in 2009-10 when I lived in Japan, my Japanese friends explained to me that the gorgeous samurai characters were straight, and the hyper masculine ones were gay. “Of course!”
For Japanese historical gay couples, look no further than Oda Nobunaga and Mori Ranmaru. And before anyone claims the younger lover has to be submissive in bed and therefore the weaker one, I’ll note that Mori Ranmaru was such a vicious fighter he is believed to have become a demon after death.
I read somewhere that Alexander and Hephastion visited a monument for Achilles and Patroclus. They would have of course known the stories of Apollo and Hyacinthos, as well as Zeus and Ganymede. And let’s never forget the Sacred Band of Thebes, an all-gay army in 4th century BC.
different clue
. . . ” co-founder of Myriad Genetics, CTO of Coinbase, and former general partner of venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz.) ” . . .
Is this supposed to be some kind of recommendation? This reads like the rap sheet of an evil Black Hat Perpetrator to me. If I click on the offered link, it will be so that I can “know the enemy”.
elkern
Background: I’m old enough but not cool enough to have watched TOS in the 1960s (parents made sure I rarely watched TV). Liked TNG & VOY, but dropped both for DS9, which is still my favorite series overall. Was put off by excessive cheesecake in ENT, but it has since moved up to be my #2 fave series (I’m less prudish now). Watched and enjoyed DIS for a while, but lost interest because they let the writers invent too much stuff which shattered too many/much canon. Absolutely loved PIC S1 (even though I think the Romulans are right about Synths); mixed feelings about S2 (time travel is a cheap trick for writers commenting on current issues; OTOH, the deep psych eval of Picard was decades overdue); hated S3 (hasty attempt to placate Reaganite TNG fans who went all Rush Limbaugh on PIC). Really liked SNW S1 (though the ship should have looked more like the NX-01 than a modern lux hotel), but lost interest in later seasons.
I def enjoyed watching the first episode of SA, but I kinda agree in general with the complaint that it’s “too woke” (though I generally hate the way that phrase has been weaponized). I refuse to give money to the Ellisons, so I haven’t watched any further episodes.
I say it was “too woke” not because I’m bothered by the not-so-subtle propaganda, but because IMO it was stupid of them to stay locked into the marketing strategy chosen by DIS: focusing on non-white characters (and their non-whiteness?) so much that it seems like they don’t care whether white kids learn to love Star Trek.
(aside, re KT Chong’s slash at wokeness & Democrats: IMO, the Democratic Party has made the same strategic [marketing] mistake, by imagining that woke virtue-signaling will guarantee electoral success; ‘wokeness’ is for (and by) college kids, who will never be a majority…)
OK, finally, to SPK’s complaint about the Gay Klingon not being Klingon enough. My head-canon for that is the time-scale; SA takes place 1,100 years from now. It’s not unreasonable to imagine changes in Klingon society having even biological repercussions across that time frame.
A millennium ago, Scandinavians (Vikings) were Klingons; now they are stereotyped as mellow, brooding, gorgeous people, clearly among the most civilized humans ever, anywhere. Mongols were Klingons, rampaging across the Steppe; now they are mellow Buddhist pastoralists, known mostly for throat-singing. Successive empires in Central America were Klingon; their descendants are famous for the least violent of rituals: the siesta. (OK, maybe I’m stretching that one a bit).
And just two centuries ago, the French were the Klingons of Europe, until they decided that good food is more fun than war (after the Krauts beat them up a few times; and even Germans are now viewed as more Vulcan than Klingon).
In all these cases, I’d bet that part of the evolution of those societies is related to sending their most violent males away to kill, rape… and die.
So, I admit that the history of the 2nd half of the current millennium isn’t my strong point, but it seems plausible that the Klingons may have exported enough excess rogue males to have become more Scandinavian than Viking.
StewartM
First, why must a gay man be portrayed as simpering and overly sensitive? Why does this portrayal as queens persist in pretty much all visual media? And FFS, folks, don’t get all sensitive, I’m going somewhere awesome with this.
Because of our culture. To quote Marvin Harris, my favorite cultural anthropologist:
“The most common stereotype of the gay male in most cultures is that of the warrior, not the interior decorator.”
Once again, we assume (as we often do) that what our culture decrees is true about humans is some integral part of ‘human nature’.
Paddy Corry
Thanks for this thoughtful post. As a gay man who came out in my thirties, I identify a lack of gay men like me in the media as a factor that caused me a lot of confusion. (I’m what they used to call ‘straight-acting’)
English TV had either very funny gay men like Kenny Everett, or very effete effeminate gay men… like Kenny Everett. Or John Inman from are you being served. You know they are gay because it’s obvious. That’s the palatable media-friendly version. I chose trying to be funny, but I actually believed that to be gay was to be effeminate too, and that really stunted my growth.
Then there was some evolution, and there were gay storylines. Characters who had tragedy or sad events in their lives… because they were gay. The one-dimensional gay man, defined by being gay was another thing I wanted to avoid. I thought it would make me one-dimensional too, and that stunted my growth.
I loved Star Trek growing up. This misuse of something I love in service of those outdated ideas of characterisation of gay men in media is just disappointing. The fact that it might contribute to stunting the growth of young gay men is worse. It’s sticking in my craw, and I don’t care if that’s woke or culture war influenced. This kind of character hurts people like me, it’s lazy writing and I agree, take a break now.
Warvigilent
What , no love for the mocklans fr the Orville ?
Still seems like that show did the things Star Trek should have been doing . Ahh well at least we had lower decks.
Anthony Noel
I’d argue that the regression into gay men presenting as “queens” and “effeminate”, was inevitable. Once gay became majority accepted and they became normalized, well now they’re just men. And that means you lose your oppressed identity, and you are now the font of all evil in many of the eyes of the people who were your allies a few years back.
So now you’re “just” an evil aspect of the patriarchy, with your male privilege. What do you do, well you lean into the culture war and become “queers”. We’re not like those men you hate, no we’re the good kind of men, the kind that act like stereotypical women.
It was just a way to get gay men back onto the oppression olympics card. I saw a similar thing with many of my late Gen X, early Millennials male contacts on social media suddenly “discover” they were bi-sexaul. Of course none of them had ever sex with a man before or since, but no we are most definitely NOT Cis Hetero Normative men. Nope they’re bad. But we’re not that. Really.