Live Your Life Be Free!

I was pretty excited to see the new Star Trek come out. As a kid, I used to watch the show in syndicate after school. I enjoyed watching them discover new worlds and cultures, reflecting my own interest in different cultures and places. I liked the way that in the Star Trek world, Kirk was rewarded for not following the rules – very different from the suburban, Canadian, rule-following, governmental environment I grew up in.

At the time, I don’t remember thinking much about the female characters, other than some of the “weird” female aliens Kirk had romantic entanglements with. I also had a sense of feeling “left out” somehow of the game, but I didn’t quite reason why.

As an adult, I realize that that feeling was due to the fact that the rebel characters that I related to the most were almost always male, and when there was a female character, she would simply be someone sexy, someone to love, or someone to give birth to the guys. All of these roles are simply showing the women as revolving around the guys. And, unfortunately, so many movies still follow the exact same formula.

Take the new Star Trek movie for example, recently released by J. J. Abrams. Lt. Uhura, the leading woman, certainly has some cred. She is a linguistics specialist and is said to be one of the smartest in her class. And, she even uses her skills during a brief scene in the movie (I am trying not to give spoilers here). Unfortunatly, her prime role is to be in the middle of a love triangle. Her actual skills fade into the background, and her “someone to love” role is central to the movie. Actually, you probably see more footage of her in her underwear than her actually using her skills.

Although there are many other characters who have skills that contribute to the mission, there are no other women. The guys get to have character development, where they evolve and change, but Uhura only reflects her development by which guy she chooses. There is the character of Spock’s Mom as well played by Winona Rider, but of course she is in the role of “someone to give birth to the guys”. Again, showing the women as just being little moons revolving around the important planets of men.

The pilot of the original Star Trek is said to have had more strong female roles, but the network would only accept the show if they marginalized the females. At the same time, the show was rather groundbreaking for the time, with Lt. Uhura as an officer, and it also showed TV’s first interracial kiss (between Uhura and Kirk). The annoying part is that movies have fallen so short of evolving with the time. They are just following the same formula as the 60s, with a few minor twists but amounting to the same thing (Uhura having skills for example, but still being marginalized.)

I was also surprised at the quote in the Trivia section of IMDB:

To develop the female characters, the wives of J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman were consulted. In fact it was Katie Abrams’s approval of the strong female characters that convinced her husband J.J. to sign on to direct.

What happened, similar to the original, did the “strong female characters” get cut?

So – I still watched the movie, and went back to my child-habit of relating to my habit of relating to the male characters instead of the female. You would just think a movie made so recently would be a bit more refreshing. J.J. Abrams is known for his “Mystery Box”. I just wish that for the sake of the young girls watching this that there was something more suprising.