Star Trek’s Lost Legacy of Literary Pretension

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[22 May 2009]

What's a Kirk without Earth-poet Shakespeare? Has the awkward Star Trek quotation spat its last breath? Trek's lost legacy of literary pretension.

By Kit MacFarlane

“As the Earth-poet Shakespeare wrote, ‘That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’.” So says Earth-ham William Shatner, wooing an alien beauty with some olde-worlde charm in the original series Star Trek episode ‘By Any Other Name’. And J. J. Abrams’ new Star Trek might have geeks around the globe discovering that Earth-poet Shakespeare was right all along! If the reviews are to be believed, Star Trek fans are finding the new film to be mighty sweet, indeed.

But, realistically, we’ll probably have to wait until the somewhat fanboyish hysteria that now seems to make up most current blockbuster film criticism dies down a little to see where Abrams’ new Star Trek really fits into in film and Star Trek history. Clearly there’s plenty to like: it moves along quickly enough, supporting players Karl Urban and Simon Pegg bring most of their scenes to life instantly, and that fact that Abrams manages to maintain the original Star Trek‘s look and colour scheme is no mean feat in the drab emo cinematic world we’re usually immersed in.

There’s also plenty to be less than impressed with. Abrams’ reliance on a continuous flow of hyperbolic and fairly predictable melodrama, punctuated by cutesy character shtick, tends to make the whole thing a little twee. The action sequences don’t exactly flow especially naturally, so we’re left with a series of loosely-linked vignettes rather than any consistent narrative, generally validating some flimsy teen-style rebellion with the usual goal of conservative institutional validation (‘Kids rule, OK!’).

Critics and theorists like Roland Barthes and Slavoj Zizek have some pretty solid commentary on how a few concessions to minor rebellion really just help cement the overall authority of a conservative institution and, in this light, Abrams’ Star Trek certainly carries on the simplistic military ideology of its predecessors without too much variation. Still, most of those criticisms can be aimed at just about any modern blockbuster right now (and, let’s face it, most ‘team made up of conservative, pretty young things with unique personal attributes but not properly appreciated by a world that is mean and nasty to them’ movies are really only differentiated by the costumes the young models-cum-actors wear).

But one Star Trek-specific trope that I was on the lookout for in the new film is certainly one of the Star Trek franchise’s most enduring: its dogged literary pretensions and quotations. Eagerly I waited for Kirk to dissolve some ham-fisted allegory with a dramatic recital, or engage in a battle of quotations with some scaly-faced alien freak, or even woo some alien babe with an old naval sea shanty. But, not surprisingly, Abrams’ pouty pretty-boy rebel Kirk doesn’t have much time for fancy book-talk, unlike William Shatner’s tough but frequently faux-philosophical Kirk. Could it be? Have Star Trek‘s literary pretensions finally spat their last breath?

To be honest, I’m not sure if I’m disappointed or relieved that Abrams has left the literary connections and/or aspirations by the door (save for a brief Sherlock Holmes reference by Spock, which simply repeats without much panache an amusingly logical connection between Holmes and Spock from an earlier Trek adventure). After all, while the literary quotations and allusions scattered through the original Star Trek could make for fun viewing and even occasional authentic dramatic engagement, they’d completely lapsed into dull and passionless literary name-dropping by the time The Next Generation rolled around.

In fact, thanks to lingering memories of The Next Generation, there’s a certain kind of quotation or allusion in general non-Star Trek movies and TV that I tend to call the ‘Star Trek quotation’: a quote that seems to have been thrown in by a writer for no other reason than to fabricate a sense of class and intelligence within the proceedings and, by extension, to validate their own intellect (and presumably that of the viewer).

Sometimes we can spot a clear warning sign (‘A wise man once said…’), sometimes there’s a furrowed brow and a dreamy gaze into the distance as the character prepares to drag a quote from their culturally-overflowing memories. But usually the quotes simply spring forth unfettered from the mouths of characters we’ve never before seen read, hold, or acknowledge a book. More often than not, the surrounding characters instantly understand the reference: the partial quote completed by another character (or having a character instantly recite the quote’s source) is perhaps the most annoyingly persistent attempt to make vacant-stare actors appear to be walking in a realm of intelligence and culture.

Usually the quote implies instant truth and wisdom. If it doesn’t, it because it’s been countered with another quote, or completed in a way that contradicts the initial partial reading. Actual discussion is unlikely, it’s more a game of one-upmanship. (With too-cool-for-school back in vogue, the ‘response quote’ is now sometimes overturned by some dopey example of self-satisfied anti-intellectualism, like ‘A wise man once said: eat this, suckah!’)

One of my favourite, completely pointless, and contrived literary references popped up in the always hilarious Law & Order: Criminal Intent: a suspect in the interrogation room emphatically declares his situation to be ‘Ka-a-a-a-fkaesque!’. The show’s female sidekick snappily replies with what must be a contender for the most convoluted ‘I understand your reference’ responses of all time: ‘That would make you the bug. And my partner, he likes to crush bugs’. I’m sure the writers were proud of themselves for that, as were those viewers who vaguely remembered Kafka’s Metamorphosis from high school. But the reference is not only pointless, but the tangled mess of dialogue is really just an awkward segueway for the sidekick to appear smart for a moment but defer, as always, to her partner’s superior intellect and stature.

I suppose modern television is one of the worst offenders because over-educated writers are so keen to demonstrate that their knowledge extends beyond cops and lawyers, and perhaps because the audiences like to think so, too. There’s often a sense of reaching for a higher medium when cramming in a literary reference, as though this will somehow validate the sullied arena of the small-screen.

Calling these throwaway moments of literary pretension ‘Star Trek quotes’ may be a little unfair to Star Trek, but Star Trek: The Next Generation was so often guilty of filling its cardboard characters’ mouths with references to Shakespeare or some other definitively-cultured piece of literature to show just what knowledgeable and insightful individuals they all are. The actors, and presumably the writers and audiences, would nod seriously and sternly at such serious and pithy references, just to make sure we all knew how pithy and serious they were.

The quotes are always reverent but simplistic, sincere but uninvolved, emphasised but irrelevant: perfect for the 1987 rebooted Star Trek universe’s bland and passionless characters. Whenever we see the Star Trek crew sitting-in on an on-ship theatre or music performance they always look like a bunch of posing second-year Drama students, straight-backed and carefully nodding at the right times to indicate how much intellectual stimulation they’re receiving. Literary presence denotes culture, but is witnessed only as an unexamined and uninvolving husk.

In other instances, it’s not only self-satisfied but also just too cutesy for words—like just about anything dealing with historical or fictional characters on the ship’s Holodeck (a big V.R. computer game that most ­Star Trek ­fans surely dream of merrily abusing) or, in one particularly nausea-inducing scene, Captain Picard sorting out a problem with a suddenly-destructive Data (the Spock-like robot guy) by singing Gilbert & Sullivan in one of the Next Generation movies, Star Trek: Insurrection (1998):

Picard: We’ve seen how he responds to threats. I wonder how he’d respond to ... Do you know Gilbert & Sullivan?

Disaster averted by the inherent cultural superiority of a Gilbert & Sullivan duet. Sigh.

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Kit MacFarlane has a PhD in English Literature, Film and Popular Culture, and teaches English as a freelance academic. He writes cultural criticism, commentary and relentless tirades, and has published regular cultural and higher education commentary in Australian media. Off-the-clock, he shouts at the TV incessantly.

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Comments

The thing I missed most in the new Star Trek movie is the deception tactics, actually.

The Corbomite Maneuver, that romulan episode I don’t know the name of, that episode where everyone aged rapidly.  Kirk always overcame superior force by tricking them or otherwise outsmarting them.  In the new Star Trek he just sort of beamed into the middle of a crowd and shot everyone.

JJ Abrams did a great job directing but the script was a problem for me.  I would have rather seen a Star Trek movie that held onto it’s brainy idealistic roots than a popcorn action flick.  I want to see Ron Moore write the next one.

Comment by Chris — May 23, 2009 @ 2:13 pm

Forget the review. This article is ostentatiously written and too twee. How can I appreciate any of your points when they are dressed up to impress beyond any real need?

Comment by Brian from cooperstown, ny — May 24, 2009 @ 11:55 am

Brief preface: the analysis of the pretentious literary reference in general unfolds beautifully here—the following should in no way detract from the force of this acclaim.

But Dr. MacFarlane has nonetheless unfairly grouped The Next Generation together with the original Shatner Star Trek, and I say so because Patrick Stewart not only has many pithy, sensible, and wholly unpretentious literary allusions throughout his series, HE IS HIMSELF A GREAT ACTOR AND INTELLECT (Shatner…not so much).  The article makes no mention of the fact that Stewart is himself a Shakespearean actor (both brilliantly and actively—his performance in Rupert Goold’s 2008 mounting of Macbeth was not only critically acclaimed, but the whole production was heralded as the best mounting of Macbeth to date) and brings all of his stage talent to the television screen. And the plots of several Next Generation inspired Star Trek films reflect this.  First Contact borrows Ahab from Melville’s Moby Dick to elaborate Picard’s past relationship with the Borg, a particularly pointed comparison given how easily we might analogize the loss of a leg to the biomechanical intervention into Picard’s psyche, and how fluidly Picard quotes the text of Moby Dick following his confrontation with Lily in the war room.  Moreover, the quotation doesn’t look like an insecurely erudite writer’s intervention into a character’s mediocre intellect (and MacFarlane is quite right to criticize Shatner on that one), but rather elegantly attests to Picard’s wholly secure erudition, a trait that flourishes throughout the show (again, wholly unlike Shatner/Kirk) because Stewart is himself a highly accomplished and extraordinarily well read Shakespearean actor!!  Watch one episode—any episode—of Next Generation; now watch any episode of Shatner’s Star Trek.  It may be that Next Generation beats out the original in the frequency of its allusions, or that it more often distributes them to undeserving members of the crew.  But as soon as one compares the captains—easily the most enthusiastic alluders of the bunch—its clear that Picard has read everything he quotes, and that Kirk has not.

Which makes paragraphs like the following one seem, well, wrong as hell:

Calling these throwaway moments of literary pretension ‘Star Trek quotes’ may be a little unfair to Star Trek, but Star Trek: The Next Generation was so often guilty of filling its cardboard characters’ mouths with references to Shakespeare or some other definitively-cultured piece of literature to show just what knowledgeable and insightful individuals they all are. The actors, and presumably the writers and audiences, would nod seriously and sternly at such serious and pithy references, just to make sure we all knew how pithy and serious they were.

Again, no one “fills characters’ mouths” when they choose one of the most accomplished Shakespearean actors working on the cutting edge of contemporary interpretations of Shakespeare’s texts to play the ship’s captain.  That’s just an improvement in the literary character of a television show in its second instantiation. 

Now find me a single character in any episode of Law and Order or the original Star Trek that competes with Patrick Stewart, and I’ll concede Dr. MacFarlane’s oversimplification.  But no matter how hard you try to fit The Next Generation and Picard into this admittedly palpable television trope, you will never make it so.

Comment by James Murphy — May 25, 2009 @ 12:39 am

This article leaves me confused—should we be surprised that J.J. Abrams’ new take on Star Trek is full of a “continuous flow of hyperbolic and fairly predictable melodrama, punctuated by cutesy character shtick”?  I’m pretty sure that’s why I went to see the movie in the first place.  But pointless indictments of action movies for being action movies aside, I’d like to address the real mistake of this article: analyzing television and popular film so seriously as to appear surprised by their banality.

First, one gets a sense that MacFarlane betrays his own critical insight (“a few concessions to minor rebellion really just help cement the overall authority of a conservative institution”) when he decides to devote so many words to decrying the forced, faux intellectualism of popular television—must we even take the time to respond to the literary missteps of TV shows, and in doing so, don’t we just affirm its cultural hegemony?  Go read a book instead. 

Second, MacFarlane misses a perfectly good opportunity analyze the Star Trek franchise more seriously, taking into account its real cultural significance.  Several decades ago now, Frederic Jameson provided a penetrating reading of Star Wars in which he laid bare its now characteristic post-modern strategy of allusion and pastiche.  Abrams resurrection of Star Trek is essentially a tale of origins, and if, as MacFarlane contends, it appears to be a series of unconnected vignettes, it is because the emphasis was never really supposed to be on the plot; rather, it was intended to bring us back to 1960s, to connect us once more with the characters who first boldly took us where no one had gone before.  In this sense, it is an homage, and THAT is where we ought to begin invoking people like Barthes and Zizek in a conversation about Star Trek.  If the film is so successful, what accounts for that success?  What is the state of culture and of our collective historical memory if the lost objects we are seeking are popular 1960s television shows? And, perhaps most importantly in light of Roddenberry’s original vision, should we not think twice about a movie whose affect is nostalgic when its beginnings were in the imagination of a socially and technologically liberated future?  I am seriously disappointed MacFarlane does not address any of these themes and instead decides to play a game of literary one-upmanship with movies and TV.

Comment by Ben Schacht from Nowhere — May 25, 2009 @ 9:16 am

STAR TREK also enjoys making fun of itself, and its pretensions. From STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER:

KIRK (looking lovingly at the ENTERPRISE, as they approach in a travel pod): “All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by.”

McCOY: Melville.

SPOCK: John Masefield.

McCOY: Are you sure?

SPOCK: I am well-versed in the classics.

McCOY: Then how come you don’t know “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”?

:)

Robert J. Sawyer, co-editor (with David Gerrold) of BOARDING THE ENTERPRISE

Comment by Robert J. Sawyer from Toronto — May 29, 2009 @ 4:14 pm

I agree with James that the criticism of the Next Generation seems a bit unfair. I have always loved Star Trek’s pseudo-intellectualism in all its forms, because it strived to not only be great entertainment, but also (like all great science fiction does) to place simple truths about our society and the human condition in a context removed from our own in which they could resonate more clearly. I see no harm in trying to accomplish these goals by incorporating (if occassionally with heavy hands) meaningful quotes from our literary history.

Speaking specifically to the contrast pulled out by the author, between Khan’s words of anguish in Star Trek II and Picard’s references to Moby Dick in First Contact, I don’t think it’s clear to me that the Star Trek II approach was the better one. Khan’s lines and delivery are (intentionally) hammy, and I don’t know that they give the same sort of weight to their source material than Patrick Stewart does when seriously (and, for fans of the show familiar with Picard’s even keel, shockingly) considering sacrificing everything and everyone close to him for the sake of personal revenge.

Additionally, as pointed out above by Robert, these references can be self-conscious and still successful. The author mocks the Moby Dick reference without pointing out the most illustrative passages in this scene. Picard gazes out of his ship, and in his moment of realization that he has let himself become consumed, recites to himself:
“And he piled upon the whale’s white hump, the sum of all the rage and hatred felt by his whole race, if his chest had been a cannon he would have shot his heart upon it.” When Lilly looks confused, he explains “Moby Dick,” to which she sheepishly replies “Actually, I never read it”.

I think it’s unfair to pile upon the Next Generation for being over-serious about this stuff. They made a conscious decision to have a very different and much more cerebral type of captain from Kirk, and along with that is bound to come more intellectualizing and less wise-cracking.

Comment by Aman G. from Virginia — July 13, 2009 @ 2:55 pm

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