YouTube: Also: Hear the powerful story behind how Mister Sulu got his name.
Actor, activist, prolific meme-generator, and cultural icon George Takei graces Big Think with his presence today in this powerful 5-minute clip. Takei explores Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's ambitious and progressive vision for the future: "Roddenberry felt that the Enterprise was a metaphor for starship earth and the strength of this starship lay in its diversity."
We also learn that Takei's character, Sulu, represented a united Asia free of the many strifes Roddenberry witnessed during the 20th century. Takei tells us how the name "Sulu" came about; it's an incredibly inspirational story.
Finally, Takei explains the now-glaring omission of gay and lesbian characters from Roddenberry's progressive Enterprise. In short, it was the 1960's and the biracial kiss between Uhura and Kirk nearly sank the show. Roddenberry knew there were limits to what the public would tolerate and he couldn't risk losing his platform for social commentary by testing them. Thankfully, as Takei notes, times have changed quite a bit since then in so many ways. And Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry are partly responsible.
1 Comment
poolcleanerAck, I want to hear more! One of those videos that you look at and go, cool it's an entire 5 minutes of Trekkie AND civil rights goodness -- then it's over in a blink. Should have been 15 minutes. Damn.
We really need to hear more about Tack-eh's "liberal" conversations with Roddenberry... My wife is a TNG fanatic (and Asian), so this might be the selling point I've been looking for to get her to watch the OG with me, which she doesn't consider serious enough scifi.
Also, on the subject of the "South" -- my family is from Florida/SC and I remember my mom freaking out because she worked in a building (circa 1988) with a colored's only bathroom. She had no idea that there were still relics of segregation in public places. I don't know how it survived THAT long, but when you live an hour away from the nearest grocery store, yet the manatee "preserve" (they didn't look very preserved, the majority of them covered from head to tail in propeller scars...) is less than five minutes away, you're bound to find things that escaped the flow of time. Trailers on blocks of cement, just resting on top of the white sand in a hurricane fuckland... How smart my ancestors were.
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