Posted on 12/11/2002 5:53:44 PM PST by chance33_98
Star Trek Continues to Satisfy America's Quest for Moral Clarity, Says Kellogg School of Management Consumer Anthropologist
Good Versus Evil With a Technological-Spin Suited for Complex, Uncertain Times
EVANSTON, Ill., Dec. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Star Trek as mythology for the post-September 11 world? A consumer anthropologist at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management believes it is so.
"Star Trek is an ideal bellwether of our times," said Robert Kozinets, an assistant professor of marketing at the Kellogg School who has been studying Star Trek consumer behavior since 1995. "Right now, it is expressing American society's hunger for a sense of direction, of right and wrong, good and evil.
Star Trek has always been good at telling us that we can use powerful technology to do good, to prevail over evil by waging war."
It is for this reason that Kozinets believes that the December 13 release of Star Trek Nemesis, the tenth feature film in the science-fiction series, will probably resonate with American audiences. The movie, one of the most dark and violent in the series, comes at a time when the American public is seeking the reassurance that comes with clear moral guidance, and also anticipates the outbreak of a war based on moral differences.
Just as Star Trek's code of non-interference has often been thrown aside by two of its characters, Captains Kirk and Picard, Americans are currently dealing with a threatening new world in which tolerance must be tempered by pre-emptive action. In fact, Star Trek Nemesis is being released at a tense time similar to when the television series was first launched.
"The population today is very divided about what to do in the world," said Kozinets. "In uncertain times such as the present, fiction is favored because it can provide Americans with a reassuring sense of certainty, and it can offer a sense of past and tradition."
Examples are fables like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and, of course, Star Trek.
"Star Trek actually portrays a very violent, warlike future, but, rooted in the 'flower power' sixties, it is also ultimately utopian and optimistic. It tells us that we have to fight for our utopia," added Kozinets.
It is this utopian vision and optimism that Kozinets believes provides Star Trek with much of its resilience and marketability. "To say the future is going to be better than now is a very powerful message, and in the Star Trek world it sells lots of book, mugs, and T-shirts," he said. "Consumers are eating up the world of fantasy right now, and I don't think that's mere coincidence."
Haven't any of these dumb butts heard of the Bible?
It isn't that they lack direction, it is that they reject the directions provided them.
Tuor
They did, but only in the old 'classic' Star Trek. Too bad the old Trek didn't have the tech to produce the sort of FX that ST:NG did.
Tuor
Probably because that's the most they could do without offending anyone. How would you inject Christian tradition into Star Trek? Also, how would you do it to include the various flavors of Christianity? (These are serious questions, I cannot think of anything off the top of my head that wouldn't send ratings into the tank).
That is EXACTLY why I lost interest in "Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine".
My trekkie spirit wasn't reinvigorated until 7-of-9 showed up on Voyager.
And now, the new (2nd season) Enterprise series has a Vulcan babe who's HOT!
I would lean more towards supporting independent films which display my beliefs, even when not in 100% agreeance on interpretation. The left behind series, et al would be such examples (although I have not read those books I have read others from Christian authors which I would be interested in seeing in movie form).
Besides, by the time Star Trek would have occured the world would have ended anyway :)
A big point is made in the original series, with Scotty and Chekov, that ethnic identities, even ethnic accents, survive into the future.
Roddenberry did that as a deliberate attack on the racism that existed in Hollywood at the time, culminating in the first televised interracial kiss between Uhura and Kirk. You cannot look at Star Trek in a social vacuum and you also have to remember that the soul (first Roddenbery, then Berman and I've lost track of the newer Star Trek variants) of Star Trek has changed over its lifetime.
The later incarnations of Star Trek do adopt a tone of, shall we say, religious neutrality (to their detriment, in my opinion), but there were some very powerful religious statements in the original series if you care to look for them.
Not necessarily, but ...
I don't need TV shows to help me along with my beliefs
That's really the point, isn't it?
The most positive aspect (to me) of the original Star Trek was the Mr. Scott character. He was the supreme Engineer. No matter how desperate the circumstances, how little resources he had, he always managed to come up with a solution for the problem at hand. The answer to a technological problem is not to throw away the technology, the answer is to fix the technology or develop new technology. That's a message that needs to be a lot more widespread.
We used to teach that in schools, but not for a long time. The rejection of science and technology has had as devastating effect as liberalism on American society. We have twaddle (Global Warming, second hand smoke, etc.) enshrined as fact when it is nothing more than someone's overactive imagination. If Global Warming were real, the solution to it would be the colonization of space, not killing a billion or two people and going back to the stone age a la the Kyoto Protocol.
Agree there. I have told liberals I know before who start spouting off about the environment this:
Someday the sun will burn out/explode. The earth and all life on it will be gone. All our resources, the furry animals, etc. No amount of conservation will stop it. What we need to concentrate on is using those resources, wisely, to get off this rock and get a firm foothold in space. The efforts of the enviros will lead to naught, the efforts of intelligent use for escape (which means mining the resources of the earth, etc) is the only way for the entire race, including the little animals, to survive.
Just my 2 cents.
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