An Observation...
Jun. 22nd, 2014 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccastareyesSo, Mark Oshiro is starting a multi-year watch of every live-action Star Trek thing produced, one per weekday (I don't know how he's handling the movies) in chronological order. With commentary. And trying his best to remained unspoiled, though he notes that pop-culture means he knows things about Star Trek just from all the references and parodies.
One of his comments was observing how many extras the first episode had doing Ship Duties in the Enterprise's corridors. And that some of them weren't white: that it wasn't just Uhura and Sulu and Rand as obvious non-white-males, but some of the nameless crew. You also had a Commander Dominguez mentioned by Kirk as someone who was wondering why the Enterprise was taking so long at the planet.
Which is an important thing to point to. Someone (Roddenberry?) felt it was important not only to have non-European-Americans* in the supporting cast, and the minor roles, but also just as the extras that give you the feeling that the Enterprise was a working ship of hundreds recruited from all parts of Earth (and wherever else humans have ended up). Granted, I'd expect the proportions to be different (consider how many people live in India and China and Southeast Asia), but I'm willing to grant that in the 1960s, getting a multi-racial extra group is pretty good.
Which is a subtle thing, but is an excellent example of 'show, don't tell'; don't tell us that racism and nationalism are over, but show a ship where Sulu and Uhura are the only non-white people.
* IIRC, Sulu was American of East Asian descent (based on a dropped storyline from movie 4), but Uhura was from some part of Africa. Presumably somewhere in the southeast, since she spoke Swahili and her name is derived from Swahili.
One of his comments was observing how many extras the first episode had doing Ship Duties in the Enterprise's corridors. And that some of them weren't white: that it wasn't just Uhura and Sulu and Rand as obvious non-white-males, but some of the nameless crew. You also had a Commander Dominguez mentioned by Kirk as someone who was wondering why the Enterprise was taking so long at the planet.
Which is an important thing to point to. Someone (Roddenberry?) felt it was important not only to have non-European-Americans* in the supporting cast, and the minor roles, but also just as the extras that give you the feeling that the Enterprise was a working ship of hundreds recruited from all parts of Earth (and wherever else humans have ended up). Granted, I'd expect the proportions to be different (consider how many people live in India and China and Southeast Asia), but I'm willing to grant that in the 1960s, getting a multi-racial extra group is pretty good.
Which is a subtle thing, but is an excellent example of 'show, don't tell'; don't tell us that racism and nationalism are over, but show a ship where Sulu and Uhura are the only non-white people.
* IIRC, Sulu was American of East Asian descent (based on a dropped storyline from movie 4), but Uhura was from some part of Africa. Presumably somewhere in the southeast, since she spoke Swahili and her name is derived from Swahili.
