Forget Subtext - People Don't Even Get Surtext
By @edent
· media · 4 comments · 250 words · read ~332 times.
Once in a while, you'll see some blowhard railing about the modern world. I recently saw someone decrying the fact that Star Trek had "gone woke".
This Star Trek?
OK, you can argue about whether Kirk and Uhura were forced to kiss in that episode. But how does anyone look at Star Trek - with its women on the command bridge, anti-colonial stance, and mixed-race crew - and not think it was a bastion of progressive causes? Star Trek is explicitly political. It isn't hidden in the subtext. You don't have to search for clues as to what the writers were trying to say.
Star Trek isn't complicated.
But some people only see the laser guns and exploding space ships. They're not looking at the text, they're barely even comprehending the narrative journey; they only see the flashing lights and gaudy costumes.
After digging through a lot of copypasta, I finally found Kenny Boyle's brilliant thoughts on the subject:
Kenny isn't wrong. But I am disturbed by the sheer number of people who don't have even a surface level of understanding of the media they're consuming. I know that lots of people don't get satire, but most TV isn't trying to bamboozle its audience.
I think there is a fundamental disconnect between people who consume and people who understand.
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The Kirk Drift essay is well worth it on how the folk memory of Star Trek is askew from the original strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/...
Apart from subtext and surtext there is also structural context: the proportion between the quantity of woke/leftist/political metaphors (put there willingly or subconsciously by screewriters), and the quality of narration as such. I can easily enjoy a good movie with, say, homosexual characters given that the plot is interesting and the characters credible. But if the statements become too blatant at the expense of everything else that makes a movie memorable, well, then I will be the first to complain.
I agree fully with what you say about the sheer number of people who do not understand what they are watching. It is sad. I agree also with Kenny Boyle's post. But let us not forget that "X-Men", "Star Wars", original "Star Trek" and "Superman" were innovative, interesting, excellent productions. It does not work the other way, however: Putting a political message into a movie won't automatically make it a good one. I will even argue that it will turn a bad movie into even worse – first, because of annoyance factor, second, because the limited creative energy was spend on crafting the message, not on improving the plot.
Do you notice when a blatantly heterosexual couple are placed in a movie? Or is it only the existence of non-straight people which is political?
Similarly, do you complain when a ham-fisted attempt is made to put a right-wing political message into a story? Or are you content to ignore the money and energy spent on, for example, pro-military interjections?
In a bad movie? Sure. These movies are usually to be categorized as "mediocre rom-coms" and are just as uninteresting for me as lazy scripts with non-straight couples. You are welcome to argue that the latter deserve more attention because they at least attempt to normalize homosexuality – but then I will reply again that the brazen normalization attempt in tandem with bad plot and uncredible characters makes the movie even worse.
Unsure which movies specifically you have in mind. But yes, it might be that Rambo & Commando-kind of movies provide me with a lot of fun – more than they should, really – even though their cinematographic value is pretty, pretty low.
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