Again, we've come to associate a "diverse" cast with it becoming the main topic of the movie. It's sad that this is the case, but sadly it is. Personally I love the idea of having a space ship full of interesting, rich characters with diverse backgrounds, intricate background stories that offer many exciting plot hooks, old friends, old enemies, character flaws that they have to overcome and so on. Because what makes a character interesting is not his strengths but his weaknesses.
The problem is now that in the more recent past, certain character groups are not allowed to have weaknesses anymore. And that makes them formulaic and boring.
And far too often did this happen in the recent past with movies where diversity was a corner stone element. Which would be great, but it has become absolute anathema to give a "minority" character any flaws. Dare to and be prepared for the backlash. We had a slew of formulaic 50s TV-show heroes who could do no wrong, who could never make a mistake and who in turn cannot develop anywhere because, well, how do you improve perfection?
On the other side, we have had a stream of twirling-moustache villains that were evil for evil's sake. No motivation other than spitting in our great hero's soup. Complete with the bumbling fool sidekick. Whose side he's on doesn't really matter.
And the more "diverse" a movie presented itself, the more this held true.
I'd like to have a diverse crew with interesting background stories to explore. What bothers me is that they're mostly a stream of differently colored Wesley Crushers with varying gender.
Yes, all the Star Trek series had its "odd man out" character. TOS had Spock, TNG had Data, DS9 had Odo and Voyager had the Doctor (along with Torres, 7of9 and the rest of the aliens).
None of them had an alien captain.
The exploration angle could be just that: How do you deal with someone who is in command who does NOT share your particular point of view, your moral code, your history and your beliefs? In our time where we more and more clash with others over petty things, the solution to this problem, i.e. how to cooperate and even more accept the leadership of someone who does NOT share your point of view totally, would definitely be an interesting concept.
But I guess accepting other points of view, allowing diverging ideals and morals and even letting them get away with being in command with all these "wrong" ideas, that's not really progressive...
Maybe because we had to sit through a few too many movies where "diversity" became the main theme with everything else, from franchise to plot, had to take a back seat, and we fear that this may be just the next one in a line of stinkers that had zero plot, zero idea, zero investment in the characters, zero character developments, all sacrificed on the altar of the all important diversity?
I somehow doubt that many of them care that a black woman got the lead role. Else they would have been up in arms about Sisko and Janeway, too.
My guess is that they fear that this becomes the main topic of the show. Look, we are so cool, hip and progressive, we have a black captain, look at her, she is so great, she is so awesome, she is so black and she is so female!
Yes. We got it. We don't give a shit. Can we now have, you know, A PLOT?
Hammering it home would have meant that they used every other episode to showcase how they're not as backwards as they "used to be" (read: as they are in the 1960s) and making a point about Uhura being black. Actually, I don't even remember a single occasion where her skin color became an issue in the show.
You can't really say that about the more recent past, even in TNG we had to be lectured about how backwards humans were (read: are in the reality) and how lucky they are that they overcame it.
Take a hint. People don't like being lectured. It creates resistance.
Actually I was hoping to see the first purple nonbinary alien captain. But I guess Star Trek isn't ready for that yet.
The problem I have with the more recent development of Star Trek isn't that we have a more and more diverse crew. Far from it. What bothers me is that it becomes the focus of the show. We're not exploring exciting new worlds, we're exploring our feelings and how others hurt them.
With the difference maybe being that the average 1967 audience was a bit more racist (or at the very least way more tolerant to racism) than people are today...
In the end, movies are a business. If people like to watch it, it will be made. If audiences fail to show up, they will turn to different stories. It actually IS that simple.
Hollywood makes movies not to "push agendas" but first and foremost to make money. Yes, certain filmmakers may have their pet agendas, but at the end of the day, the studio wants a ROI. If your agenda sells, great, make more of it. If it doesn't, not great, get lost.
Yes, and it obviously worked, as 200something episodes will tell.
What Star Trek did right back then, and what it utterly fails at here, is that diversity is a good thing, but beating it into people with a sledgehammer is not. You see, people don't like that. Uhura was a black female as the communications officer. Back then that was an "impossibility". Not only a woman, not only a black person, but a black woman as an officer!
The real impact of it all was, though, that it was treated as a non-issue. They didn't parade her and try to "make a point" out of it, "look we are so progressive, we have a black female officer!". No, it was treated as normal. Which made in my opinion the even stronger point. The message was simply that in the future, black female officers are so normal that we needn't even talk about it anymore. It's a given. Nobody questioned her ability. Hell, if there was a mobbing victim on the ship, it probably was Chekov.
That was a pretty big statement for the 1960s, a decade when the civil rights movement still had to fight to at least get equal treatment of black and white people by law. And as we know, it still didn't really arrive in all heads.
What bothers me about the "new" Star Trek is that this message is now delivered by sledgehammer. Look, we're progressive, we have an asian female nonbinary transgender captain. If it was at least an alien... but for some odd reason, alien captains are still a nono.
Why not?
Why not have a nonhuman captain and a crew of humans and aliens that has to deal with it?
What really amazes me is that they broadcast it worldwide on public TV. No pay-per-view, not even cable. There's even an internet tie-in, with tweets and other social media activities that break the fourth wall.
I can see how this needs a load of a budget, but it sure is worth it. It almost feels real. If they'd just tone it down a bit, it really gets more and more incredible with every week, I think they feel like they have to outdo themselves to keep the ratings up. Personally, I think that's not even necessary, just keep the steam on the social media and you have that all-important 14-49 demographics securely locked in.
Ok, then we snuff it out and install one that is more sympathetic. The war is already running, it's not like we're the bad guy for putting in some "humanitarian effort". Whoopsie, looks like that bomb went astray. Oh well, such things happen in a war.
Then you obviously didn't deal a lot with international diplomacy. Arming some group that harasses some group we don't like has been the staple of diplomacy in the past century.
Don't forget that the "man" in the MITM can as well be some kind of trojan sitting inside your computer, proxying the connection.
It boils down to the problem of determining whether the certificate presented to you is actually one issued by the server you are connecting to. This can of course also be solved with self-signed certificates. Actually, in all really important cases, I do solve it with self signed certificates, but it means that you somehow have to solve the problem of verifying authenticity. This is acceptable when you are dealing with a handful of critical servers that MUST be verifiably genuine, where you do not want to rely on the trust to a certain CA.
It is completely unfeasible for the masses of encrypted servers out there. If I first had to verify the signature of every single https server I connect to, I wouldn't do much else with my time.
Slashdot Mirror
How about the mother of all these movies, the last year's attempt at Ghostbusters.
It ain't the year 2200 yet. Give it time.
Let's see how long shareholders are willing to play along. CEOs are easily replaced when they don't perform.
Again, we've come to associate a "diverse" cast with it becoming the main topic of the movie. It's sad that this is the case, but sadly it is. Personally I love the idea of having a space ship full of interesting, rich characters with diverse backgrounds, intricate background stories that offer many exciting plot hooks, old friends, old enemies, character flaws that they have to overcome and so on. Because what makes a character interesting is not his strengths but his weaknesses.
The problem is now that in the more recent past, certain character groups are not allowed to have weaknesses anymore. And that makes them formulaic and boring.
And far too often did this happen in the recent past with movies where diversity was a corner stone element. Which would be great, but it has become absolute anathema to give a "minority" character any flaws. Dare to and be prepared for the backlash. We had a slew of formulaic 50s TV-show heroes who could do no wrong, who could never make a mistake and who in turn cannot develop anywhere because, well, how do you improve perfection?
On the other side, we have had a stream of twirling-moustache villains that were evil for evil's sake. No motivation other than spitting in our great hero's soup. Complete with the bumbling fool sidekick. Whose side he's on doesn't really matter.
And the more "diverse" a movie presented itself, the more this held true.
I'd like to have a diverse crew with interesting background stories to explore. What bothers me is that they're mostly a stream of differently colored Wesley Crushers with varying gender.
Yes, all the Star Trek series had its "odd man out" character. TOS had Spock, TNG had Data, DS9 had Odo and Voyager had the Doctor (along with Torres, 7of9 and the rest of the aliens).
None of them had an alien captain.
The exploration angle could be just that: How do you deal with someone who is in command who does NOT share your particular point of view, your moral code, your history and your beliefs? In our time where we more and more clash with others over petty things, the solution to this problem, i.e. how to cooperate and even more accept the leadership of someone who does NOT share your point of view totally, would definitely be an interesting concept.
But I guess accepting other points of view, allowing diverging ideals and morals and even letting them get away with being in command with all these "wrong" ideas, that's not really progressive...
2 words: Babylon 5.
Maybe because we had to sit through a few too many movies where "diversity" became the main theme with everything else, from franchise to plot, had to take a back seat, and we fear that this may be just the next one in a line of stinkers that had zero plot, zero idea, zero investment in the characters, zero character developments, all sacrificed on the altar of the all important diversity?
I somehow doubt that many of them care that a black woman got the lead role. Else they would have been up in arms about Sisko and Janeway, too.
My guess is that they fear that this becomes the main topic of the show. Look, we are so cool, hip and progressive, we have a black captain, look at her, she is so great, she is so awesome, she is so black and she is so female!
Yes. We got it. We don't give a shit. Can we now have, you know, A PLOT?
Hammering it home would have meant that they used every other episode to showcase how they're not as backwards as they "used to be" (read: as they are in the 1960s) and making a point about Uhura being black. Actually, I don't even remember a single occasion where her skin color became an issue in the show.
You can't really say that about the more recent past, even in TNG we had to be lectured about how backwards humans were (read: are in the reality) and how lucky they are that they overcame it.
Take a hint. People don't like being lectured. It creates resistance.
Actually I was hoping to see the first purple nonbinary alien captain. But I guess Star Trek isn't ready for that yet.
The problem I have with the more recent development of Star Trek isn't that we have a more and more diverse crew. Far from it. What bothers me is that it becomes the focus of the show. We're not exploring exciting new worlds, we're exploring our feelings and how others hurt them.
I don't really need science fiction for that.
With the difference maybe being that the average 1967 audience was a bit more racist (or at the very least way more tolerant to racism) than people are today...
Melodrama much?
In the end, movies are a business. If people like to watch it, it will be made. If audiences fail to show up, they will turn to different stories. It actually IS that simple.
Hollywood makes movies not to "push agendas" but first and foremost to make money. Yes, certain filmmakers may have their pet agendas, but at the end of the day, the studio wants a ROI. If your agenda sells, great, make more of it. If it doesn't, not great, get lost.
Yes, and it obviously worked, as 200something episodes will tell.
What Star Trek did right back then, and what it utterly fails at here, is that diversity is a good thing, but beating it into people with a sledgehammer is not. You see, people don't like that. Uhura was a black female as the communications officer. Back then that was an "impossibility". Not only a woman, not only a black person, but a black woman as an officer!
The real impact of it all was, though, that it was treated as a non-issue. They didn't parade her and try to "make a point" out of it, "look we are so progressive, we have a black female officer!". No, it was treated as normal. Which made in my opinion the even stronger point. The message was simply that in the future, black female officers are so normal that we needn't even talk about it anymore. It's a given. Nobody questioned her ability. Hell, if there was a mobbing victim on the ship, it probably was Chekov.
That was a pretty big statement for the 1960s, a decade when the civil rights movement still had to fight to at least get equal treatment of black and white people by law. And as we know, it still didn't really arrive in all heads.
What bothers me about the "new" Star Trek is that this message is now delivered by sledgehammer. Look, we're progressive, we have an asian female nonbinary transgender captain. If it was at least an alien... but for some odd reason, alien captains are still a nono.
Why not?
Why not have a nonhuman captain and a crew of humans and aliens that has to deal with it?
What really amazes me is that they broadcast it worldwide on public TV. No pay-per-view, not even cable. There's even an internet tie-in, with tweets and other social media activities that break the fourth wall.
I can see how this needs a load of a budget, but it sure is worth it. It almost feels real. If they'd just tone it down a bit, it really gets more and more incredible with every week, I think they feel like they have to outdo themselves to keep the ratings up. Personally, I think that's not even necessary, just keep the steam on the social media and you have that all-important 14-49 demographics securely locked in.
And what good did it do them? It's still friggin hot in the area.
Climate change, my ass.
Name a recent prez that wasn't.
What I'd do? Grab my gun, evict the neighbor and use his. Duh.
Ok, then we snuff it out and install one that is more sympathetic. The war is already running, it's not like we're the bad guy for putting in some "humanitarian effort". Whoopsie, looks like that bomb went astray. Oh well, such things happen in a war.
Then you obviously didn't deal a lot with international diplomacy. Arming some group that harasses some group we don't like has been the staple of diplomacy in the past century.
Wait, in that parallel universe a people is automatically equal to a drug cartel?
A caricature says more than words could: http://www.tomz.ch/wp/wp-conte...
(the soldier says "both target got hit").
But it worked so well in Afghanistan, why not repeat it?
Then engage them. They, too, get their money from the loser.
Well, it helps to have a legal system where the outcome of the case isn't determined by whoever can throw more money at it.
Don't forget that the "man" in the MITM can as well be some kind of trojan sitting inside your computer, proxying the connection.
It boils down to the problem of determining whether the certificate presented to you is actually one issued by the server you are connecting to. This can of course also be solved with self-signed certificates. Actually, in all really important cases, I do solve it with self signed certificates, but it means that you somehow have to solve the problem of verifying authenticity. This is acceptable when you are dealing with a handful of critical servers that MUST be verifiably genuine, where you do not want to rely on the trust to a certain CA.
It is completely unfeasible for the masses of encrypted servers out there. If I first had to verify the signature of every single https server I connect to, I wouldn't do much else with my time.