Comments | my_daroga: Some thoughts and questions about why we like what we like. Oh, and Kirk.

my_daroga

Some thoughts and questions about why we like what we like. Oh, and Kirk.

Jun 21, 2010 12:03

I have things I should probably talk about, that might be interesting, but I keep falling into that cycle of "I'm too tired/busy/braindead to do it justice right now" which is what leads to not posting for months (and it also why I fail at emailing/calling/socializing back ( Read more... )

television: star trek: tos, william shatner

Comments 26

nostalgia_lj June 21 2010, 19:15:08 UTC

So he was captain before Sisko, yeah?

my_daroga June 21 2010, 19:16:34 UTC

I LOL'd.

Sisko's the one who has a hot doctor working for him, right?

onceupon June 21 2010, 19:20:20 UTC

Isn't Sisko the one with the Klingon who was on the show with the Borg? Not that show, the other show with the Borg.

my_daroga June 21 2010, 19:23:36 UTC

Wait. Aren't we fighting the Klingons?

inlaterdays June 21 2010, 19:25:24 UTC

I think another reason TOS seems a bit camp today is that a lot of people look at it out of context. In its era, it was ground-breaking television! I mean, the other shows on at the time were things like I Dream of Jeannie and Gilligan's Island. TOS was SRS SCIENCE FICTION; just look at the names of the episode writers.

For me, the person who probably fills that silly-but-there's-an-archetype-in-it space is Barnabas Collins.

my_daroga June 21 2010, 19:44:46 UTC

That's a good point. I think I've probably mentioned that when I was a kid, I probably saw ten minutes of each show (TOS and Batman--I even remember it was "A Piece of the Action") and decided people in the 60s were actually really dumb and didn't realize how stupid their comedy was. I just totally missed the point. And now I'm a little less contextless. Or I have multiple contexts? I'm not sure.

You know, I've never seen more than a few minutes of Dark Shadows, but one of my best friends is/was devoted.

inlaterdays June 21 2010, 20:00:44 UTC

Well, if you look at Laugh-In...people in the 60s were really dumb and didn't realize how stupid their comedy was, lol. D:

TOS also had about zero budget for production values, and they did pretty well with what they had! Aside from the bouncing rocks and the "everyone lean left and fall over" on the bridge...but I'm kind of fond of that, too.

YAY FOR DS FANS! They show up in the most unexpected places. I was just having a Quentin-or-Barnabas? conversation with someone from phandom the other day.

my_daroga June 21 2010, 20:45:05 UTC

OH SNAP.

That's true, they did. I mean, some of it you just can't get around if you also want people to be dressed. Sometimes they didn't, obviously, but still. And the budget shrank every year.

Yeah, I had to take him to the mansion they used as the outside when we were in Rhode Island together.

Thread 14

onceupon June 21 2010, 19:31:33 UTC

My more serious answer:

I think Kirk via Shatner is kind of unique in tv. Shatner is self-aware in his performance in ways I'm not sure a lot of other actors are - it's like he's watching himself perform even as he's performing.

And it gives Kirk some reflected depth on top of the writing - which is where that devotion to duty comes in.

I don't even really mind Kirk in the movies because he's aging as he doesn't HAVE that duty as a regular constant any more - he's kind of rudderless in ways that emphasize his ridiculousness and his, in many ways, out-datedness as a cultural construct in this past couple of decades focused on the anti-hero.

Kirk is NOT an anti-hero.

So I don't have that for any other character (not that I ever had it for Kirk, either, I've loved him since childhood) but I'm not sure I COULD have it for other characters.

my_daroga June 21 2010, 19:42:53 UTC

It's interesting that you say that--I was trying to make this not-another-post-about-that-guy because I realize how tiring it is but maybe it really is. Also because I don't think Shatner self-reflects a lot, or knows why he makes the choices he does--he strikes me as a very instinctive actor, and unless he's lying about it I don't think he watches himself. Which isn't to say you're wrong, at all--I definitely get that sense of being watched from him even as he's overdoing it.

Maybe part of my "problem" too, in thinking about this, is that I'm not used to responding to the hero. It just feels off to me, like finding him attractive does.

And part of my problem with the films is most certainly the writing--it's hard to determine what my feelings about his acting would be if I felt they'd really written what I think of as Kirk growing old.

So are you saying that it's the the serious/ridiculous divide that is unique to Shatner/Kirk?

rahirah June 22 2010, 02:32:36 UTC

Huh. I never felt that Kirk-the-character-in-his-own-milieu was in any way ridiculous, though if you stand outside the story and critique it from a modern perspective, of course there are ridiculous elements to it. But I don't think that those elements are unique to Kirk or even to TOS; I think they're inherent in any TV series of time. (And I'm sure that thirty or forty years from now, people will look back and analyze today's media and see the characters and stories in ridiculous lights that we can't imagine.) You're correct, they don't write heroes like that these days, but once upon a time that conflation of larger-than-life bravura and implacable sensaduty was a fairly popular heroic trope. That's it's withered away in the intervening years is something I'm not sure to be pleased or saddened by. It incorporates a lot of poisonous societal dichotomies, IMO, but on the other hand, much though I enjoyed the reboot movie, the Kirk in that story is just... not Kirk to me. He's an interesting character in his own right, but he ( ... )

my_daroga June 22 2010, 15:42:45 UTC

See, I agree with you. I think that within the world of TOS, Kirk's behavior and Shatner's acting is on the whole totally appropriate. He's a little "big" sometimes but it totally works for me, considering who he is. The weirdness, for me, comes from having heard something different from popular culture (along with the brawn bit and the womanizing bit--the show has problems of gender, but statistically they're not about Kirk chasing girls) and learning I actually really love the guy.

That's it's withered away in the intervening years is something I'm not sure to be pleased or saddened by. It incorporates a lot of poisonous societal dichotomies, IMO...This. It's not easy to parse. I think one thing that attracts me so strongly to TOS now is its optimism, and the fact a bunch of guys who had been through war decided that this was the story they wanted to tell. That it's imperialist and quasi-military and falls down hard on gender are issues. But there's a spirit there that I respond to, I think because I lack it in other (more cynical ( ... )

feanna June 26 2010, 17:34:04 UTC

"he felt more like a pretty good summation of everything I feel pop culture has decided Kirk is ( ... )

my_daroga June 30 2010, 15:09:59 UTC

It's not all spelled out and therefore reclaimable, but his scenes with Uhura and Gaila and some others do create a very different picture as a whole.It really does--I feel the character, as a whole, could become something I can get behind. But he's not, yet, which is where good fic comes in! (And by "good" I, in my biased way, means "fic which posits that this really is the same guy as in TOS, under different circumstances.") But because it's in line with the popular opinion of Kirk, I am skeptical that that's what's meant to come through. I feel it's more likely that this *is* how they see TOS Kirk, and how they think the public wants to see him ( ... )

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