Jim Kirk, Cheater
Or, Why the Kobayashi Maru Did No One Any Favors
I was reading this excellent Star Trek (Reboot) fic, about Kirk and Vulcan and the crappy (and good, and imaginary) stuff in his past, and it got me thinking about the movie in general. It’s something that we come to with a complete set of preconceived notions, achieved through cultural osmosis if not through watching the show ourselves (Next Generation is my Star Trek, for example, inasmuch as I HAVE a Star Trek, which, unlike Doctor Who, I don’t really, but I still know quite a bit about the original series). And a lot of those preconceived notions have to do with Kirk, thanks largely to a performance that made William Shatner simultaneously a legend and a joke. The challenge for the screenwriters was to create a version of Kirk that stood up to the scrutiny of those preconceived notions, but that also stood apart from them. (They did a fine job. Chris Pine did an EXCELLENT job.)
One of the ways in which you do this is - and introduce non-fans to the basics - is by showing a few clips characterizing the main players before the story begins. With Kirk, we get the smart rebellious kid who grows up into a drunken jackass too smart to be actually content with that, and what we learn is this: he doesn’t care for rules, he DOES care that people are impressed by him, and he’s willing to use the first to make the second happen.
Which brings me to what really concerns me: the Kobayashi Maru, the test on which he “cheats”. The audience is clearly intended to be impressed by his ingenuity, his tenacity, and his not-giving-a-shit-ity. We’re supposed to look at him there and go, “What a badass.” Which I did, because, again, Chris Pine was great. (Also hot.) But it bothered me still, and when it came time for the hearing, I found Spock’s argument resonating with me more than my initial impression of Kirk, whose argument was basically, “But it was AWESOME!”. And here’s why: fixing that test didn’t make him a badass, it made him a cheater.
In ARTEMIS FOWL (no, I'm not above silly references like this), there’s a scene which discusses Holly Short’s time at the LEP Training Academy. They mention that she passed one test because, when faced with insurmountable enemies, she shot the projector, effectively destroying them by destroying the test. This is immediately what the Kobayashi Maru in Star Trek reminded me of, and I think that’s what it was supposed to be. It wasn’t. What Holly’s test says about her was that she was able to, in seconds, analyze the situation, assess all possible courses of action, reject them all, and come up with something completely unprecedented. This is creative (and quick) thinking in a way that makes her excellent at her job and is far better proof of her abilities than actually completing the test would have been. By contrast, what Kirk did was lose, miss the point of the test, obsess over it long enough to try multiple times, and finally go into the program ahead of time in order to reprogram it so that he could just avoid the whole situation. This shows pretty impressive tenacity, to be sure, but it doesn’t show anything that would indicate he’d be a good captain. In fact, it makes him seem weak, childish, and petty. Worse, it doesn’t even show anything that we see from Kirk in the rest of the movie.
Kirk’s greatest talent is the ability to hold on by his fingertips, both literally (seriously, like half a dozen times) and figuratively. He is pretty constantly riding on the edge of destruction, but what makes him a good captain is that he’s always able to figure out a way to come back from that edge fighting, and drag his ship with him. He flies by instinct, by last-second decisions which turn out to be the right ones because he’s smart enough to process the relevant information subconsciously (as we saw with the “lightning storm in space”). Sometimes this makes him seem crazy, sometimes it’s what drags him into danger in the first place, but often it’s his saving grace. And the ultimate failure of the Kobayashi Maru is not that it made Kirk look bad - let’s face it, he does that enough for himself - but that something which is meant to give us a glimpse of the kind of captain Kirk will be ultimately shows us only his weaknesses and none of his strengths. Now, maybe it was supposed to do that, giving us a base against which to judge his personal growth over the course of the movie, and he did learn that he can’t just avoid difficult things or his father’s legacy, but was our initial impression of Jim Kirk, Starfleet Officer, really supposed to be that he was a cheater? We'd already seen him be a jackass. LET him be a jackass. Just give us something that shows how him being a jackass will translate into that irreverent, brilliant captain with good instincts that we already know and love.
I've been somewhat absent lately, yes. BUT! I've been reading and commenting, just not posting, so it's way better than normal. I'm going to try to make more of a habit of posting regularly, even just little things, so that I can be more present. ♥
I was reading this excellent Star Trek (Reboot) fic, about Kirk and Vulcan and the crappy (and good, and imaginary) stuff in his past, and it got me thinking about the movie in general. It’s something that we come to with a complete set of preconceived notions, achieved through cultural osmosis if not through watching the show ourselves (Next Generation is my Star Trek, for example, inasmuch as I HAVE a Star Trek, which, unlike Doctor Who, I don’t really, but I still know quite a bit about the original series). And a lot of those preconceived notions have to do with Kirk, thanks largely to a performance that made William Shatner simultaneously a legend and a joke. The challenge for the screenwriters was to create a version of Kirk that stood up to the scrutiny of those preconceived notions, but that also stood apart from them. (They did a fine job. Chris Pine did an EXCELLENT job.)
One of the ways in which you do this is - and introduce non-fans to the basics - is by showing a few clips characterizing the main players before the story begins. With Kirk, we get the smart rebellious kid who grows up into a drunken jackass too smart to be actually content with that, and what we learn is this: he doesn’t care for rules, he DOES care that people are impressed by him, and he’s willing to use the first to make the second happen.
Which brings me to what really concerns me: the Kobayashi Maru, the test on which he “cheats”. The audience is clearly intended to be impressed by his ingenuity, his tenacity, and his not-giving-a-shit-ity. We’re supposed to look at him there and go, “What a badass.” Which I did, because, again, Chris Pine was great. (Also hot.) But it bothered me still, and when it came time for the hearing, I found Spock’s argument resonating with me more than my initial impression of Kirk, whose argument was basically, “But it was AWESOME!”. And here’s why: fixing that test didn’t make him a badass, it made him a cheater.
In ARTEMIS FOWL (no, I'm not above silly references like this), there’s a scene which discusses Holly Short’s time at the LEP Training Academy. They mention that she passed one test because, when faced with insurmountable enemies, she shot the projector, effectively destroying them by destroying the test. This is immediately what the Kobayashi Maru in Star Trek reminded me of, and I think that’s what it was supposed to be. It wasn’t. What Holly’s test says about her was that she was able to, in seconds, analyze the situation, assess all possible courses of action, reject them all, and come up with something completely unprecedented. This is creative (and quick) thinking in a way that makes her excellent at her job and is far better proof of her abilities than actually completing the test would have been. By contrast, what Kirk did was lose, miss the point of the test, obsess over it long enough to try multiple times, and finally go into the program ahead of time in order to reprogram it so that he could just avoid the whole situation. This shows pretty impressive tenacity, to be sure, but it doesn’t show anything that would indicate he’d be a good captain. In fact, it makes him seem weak, childish, and petty. Worse, it doesn’t even show anything that we see from Kirk in the rest of the movie.
Kirk’s greatest talent is the ability to hold on by his fingertips, both literally (seriously, like half a dozen times) and figuratively. He is pretty constantly riding on the edge of destruction, but what makes him a good captain is that he’s always able to figure out a way to come back from that edge fighting, and drag his ship with him. He flies by instinct, by last-second decisions which turn out to be the right ones because he’s smart enough to process the relevant information subconsciously (as we saw with the “lightning storm in space”). Sometimes this makes him seem crazy, sometimes it’s what drags him into danger in the first place, but often it’s his saving grace. And the ultimate failure of the Kobayashi Maru is not that it made Kirk look bad - let’s face it, he does that enough for himself - but that something which is meant to give us a glimpse of the kind of captain Kirk will be ultimately shows us only his weaknesses and none of his strengths. Now, maybe it was supposed to do that, giving us a base against which to judge his personal growth over the course of the movie, and he did learn that he can’t just avoid difficult things or his father’s legacy, but was our initial impression of Jim Kirk, Starfleet Officer, really supposed to be that he was a cheater? We'd already seen him be a jackass. LET him be a jackass. Just give us something that shows how him being a jackass will translate into that irreverent, brilliant captain with good instincts that we already know and love.
I've been somewhat absent lately, yes. BUT! I've been reading and commenting, just not posting, so it's way better than normal. I'm going to try to make more of a habit of posting regularly, even just little things, so that I can be more present. ♥