Normie Kwong Gets a Heritage Minute

 

I was fortunate enough to meet Norman Kwong when he took over from Lois Hole as Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, and I wrote speeches for him for a couple of years. He was a very congenial fellow, and he certainly deserves this accolade! 

Enjoying "Despite Yourself" Despite Myself

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK: DISCOVERY'S

"DESPITE YOURSELF" 

Star Trek: Discovery returned this week by paying off two of the worst-kept secrets about the show: Ash Tyler's reveal as a Klingon Manchurian Candidate, and the appearance of the infamous Mirror Universe. One of these developments was handled with great panache; the other presents viewers with some troublesome subtext. 

First, the good. Following the events of "Into the Forest We Go," the Discovery finds herself lost in space, jumping not to Starbase 46 as intended, but into a field of starship debris. Captain Lorca orders Ash Tyler to retrieve a data core from one of the stricken ships, and the intelligence in the core reveals that they've jumped to a parallel universe, specifically one longtime viewers are familiar with: the dreaded Mirror Universe, home to the fascistic Terran Empire. Realizing their peril, Lorca and company react with commendable logic, reskinning the ship and manufacturing uniforms to make themselves indistinguishable from the I.S.S. Discovery they have inadvertently displaced (into the prime Star Trek universe, they theorize; who knows what mischief that crew will perpetrate in "our" universe?) 

My highest commendation goes to the costuming department this time around - the Mirror Universe uniforms are amazing, with a corruptive allure that it's difficult (but necessary) to resist. It's also fun to see Sylvia Tilly being forced to act against her nature by playing the Discovery's captain, as she apparently is in this universe, having backstabbed her way up the chain of command. The dreaded agony booths of the original "Mirror, Mirror" also appear in this episode, and they are genuinely terrifying. 

I was surprised and delighted most, though, by the reference to the U.S.S. Defiant, which as Star Trek: Enterprise viewers will remember, was captured by the evil versions of Jonathan Archer and Hoshi Sato in that series' fourth (and best) season. Naturally the ship's appearance confuses Lorca, Burnham, and company, since from their perspective the Defiant is currently still on normal duty back in their home universe. They don't know what the audience knows, namely that the Defiant was thrown back in time and into the Mirror Universe some dozen years in the future (from their perspective). These are the kind of wacky hijinks that are only possible in science fiction, and only then in long-form storytelling like this. At this point, Star Trek has become a period piece, in a sense, a setting with a reasonably consistent history, look, and feel. Continuity callbacks are important because they acknowledge the established reality of the setting, and respecting continuity gives writers the obstacles and complications that are often necessary to create good material. Yes, it's also shameless fan service, but it works for me here. 

As for Ash Tyler's story, I'm somewhat disappointed because the reveal does, in my mind, undercut the PTSD storyline that was so essential to his character. Now, given that we still don't know the exact nature of Tyler/Voq's...existence...perhaps this reveal can still remain thematically satisfying. It really depends on how the writers develop the character from this point forward. It appears as though Tyler/Voq's body is Klingon, surgically altered to appear human, with Ash Tyler's memory engrams/personality/soul overlaid on top of the original Voq personality. Depending on your spiritual point of view, you could argue that this person is really the Klingon Voq, with a ghost imprinted on his brain; or, you could argue that Tyler is, in a sense, still alive, only living in Voq's altered body. 

If Voq is written as the real person, then Tyler's story becomes even more tragic, since we never really met him. On the other hand, if Tyler's engrams/personality/soul/whatever are presented as "real," then Tyler's story...becomes even more tragic, since he suffered all that torture and was also ripped from his physical body and stuck in a Klingon. 

I imagine the two personalities will fight over who gets to keep the physical meatspace, but philosophically this is a hugely complicated mess, to put it mildly. But again, this is the sort of story that science fiction was designed to handle. 

Sadly, when Dr. Culber realizes something is up, Tyler promptly snaps his neck - a surprising shock moment, to be sure, but one that brings to an abrupt end the notion of whether or not his relationship with Stamets can be sensitively handled in a satisfying way. 

Or does it? I immediately thought of the "kill your gays" trope when Culber died, but according to actor Wilson Cruz and writer Aaroc Harberts, there's more to Culber's death than meets the eye, and Harberts and Cruz, both gay men themselves, were quick to say that this isn't what's happening, and furthermore, that Cruz will return. They're not going to replace Culber with a Mirror Culber, so maybe he's not dead and his neck is just broken? Hmmm. 

This is the first episode of Discovery to be directed by Jonathan Frakes, AKA Will Riker, who started directing episodes way back during the days of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Frakes has a reputation for adding a dark sort of flair to his episodes, and he was clearly well-suited to "Despite Yourself." The episode manages to be campy fun and loomingly creepy at the same time - no mean feat. 

So, despite my reservations, I feel like this was another surprisingly solid outing for Star Trek: Discovery. If the Empress of the Terran Empire turns out to be a descendant of evil Hoshi Sato, well, I'll be pretty darn impressed. 

A Tale of Two Sulus

With all the terrible things happening in the world today, it's often hard to forget how far we've come (while of course recognizing how far we have yet to go). This thought was on my mind when the mini-kerfuffle over Star Trek character Hikaru Sulu's sexual orientation hit the news.

In case you haven't heard, in the next Star Trek film we'll find out that Mr. Sulu, played in the new films by John Cho, has a same sex partner. Somewhat surprisingly, George Takei, who played Mr. Sulu in the original television show upon which this rebooted series of films is based, doesn't approve, even though he himself is gay.

According to Takei, he played Sulu as a straight man back in the 60s (and in the first six Star Trek films in which he appeared, presumably). This is because according to Takei, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry envisioned Sulu as heterosexual (although considering the time one wonders if even the famously progressive Roddenberry ever gave a passing thought that any of his characters would be anything but hetero).

This has led to some polite but firm chatter through the media between Takei, Cho, and various other actors involved in the franchise.

Frankly, I don't see the problem; it's easy enough to imagine that the Sulu played by Takei is/was heterosexual, while the one played by Cho is gay; after all, Cho's Sulu is from an alternate timeline, so this can read as merely one of many differences between the original crew and their alternate counterparts.

But even if you don't accept this hair-splitting, how nice is it that we can have this discussion and it's about the show and the characters, and not about whether or not homosexuality is okay? Clearly it's okay, and we're reaching a point where sexual orientation is growing less and less controversial among more and more people.

I'm also encouraged by how the reveal will apparently be handled: in passing and as a matter of course, because by the 23rd century sexual orientation won't be a big deal at all, to anyone. Oh my! 

Secret of the Super-Sons

Chances are that if you're reading these panels in 2012, you're probably chuckling a little at the unintentional double entendre: to modern eyes, it seems as though World's Finest writer Bob Haney is suggesting that his creations, Clark Kent Jr. and Bruce Wayne Jr., might have an even closer relationship than their famous fathers - insert requisite "wink wink, nudge nudge" here.

But unless Bob Haney is even more clever than he's already given credit for, readers should probably assume that these 1970s tales were not intended as underground endorsement of alternative lifestyles. Indeed, most of the stories of the Super-Sons revolved around the then-current Generation Gap, with Clark Jr. and Bruce Jr. often agonizing about how they could never measure up to their dads and how their square fathers just didn't understand what it meant to be a teen in the swinging 70s. Taken at face value, as these stories probably should be, what we see here is simply close friendship between two young men, men who aren't afraid to express how much they need each other as they lean on one another for emotional support.

In chuckling at this scene and others like it, I have to ask myself if the laughter isn't simply some kind of strange defensive reaction. Intimacy between men, even in these relatively enlightened times, is still seen as somewhat effeminate (another moral land mine - assuming that femininity is somehow "weaker" or a bad thing) or at best, overly expressive. Or at least this seems to be true among WASPs; members of other cultures are often less inhibited.

I suppose the point I'm clumsily trying to raise is this: when we take a work of popular culture out of context and laugh at it, are we saying something about the artifact's failure to transition to our era, or are we saying something about our own inability to work past our own deeply ingrained attitudes and prejudices?

According to Rule 34, someone out there has already answered some of these questions by writing Super-Sons slash fiction. I'm not quite brave enough to look there for answers.

Super Adjective Theatre

Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane ran for several decades. Always a strange comic, it got even weirder in the swinging sixties and seventies when its writers started portraying Superman as a sexist dope just so he could be an effective foil for Lois' revitalized feminism. Superman sure looks like a stuck-up member of the establishment here, a far cry from his origins as a populist radical.

I find their final exchange hilarious, but on reflection if Superman were a real person I suppose it would be only natural to pepper your language with super-this and super-that, especially ironically. If I had super-powers, I'd constantly say things like "I'm super-writing this press release!" or "Oh oh, I've got to super-unplug the toilet again!"

Meanwhile, Sylvia would probably say "I'm getting super-tired of this routine. Please find some  new material."

White Man in Peril

There's no reason at all for Captain America to refer to the race of the guy losing his hat, and yet he does. In fact, it seems to add greater urgency to his desire to intervene.

Rick Jones' epiphany doesn't help. "If you speak English, we must be getting near civilization!" It's fascinating how subtext so very often says so much more than text...

Green Lantern, Reactionary

After reading a few of these 1960s Green Lantern stories, I'm beginning to understand Denny O'Neill's 1970s take on the character, when he paired Green Lantern up with Green Arrow, painting the Lantern a stiff law-and-order, tough-on-crime Republican type and Green Arrow as the streetwise bleeding-heart liberal. When I first read those stories as a child, I thought O'Neill was being a little tough on the Lantern, who usually looked cold-hearted and inflexible compared to the more compassionate Green Arrow. But now I see there was some basis in the text for O'Neill's portrayal of the character, and in fact Green Lantern grew a little more liberal over time, his partner's views and their more morally complex adventures rubbing off.

Still, look how ticked off GL looks in this panel. Lousy constitution, protecting criminals..!

Who Listens to the Listeners?

Whether you're ordering a pizza, fending off a telemarketer, or talking to your bank, odds are you've heard some variation of the following:

"This call may be recorded for training purposes or customer service."

My bank called last week - twice in one day, actually. I told the first caller that I wasn't interested in any product offered over the phone, and asked him to mail me the details. A different representative called a few hours later about the very same product, so I was already annoyed when she said the call was being recorded.

"I'm sorry, but I have a bit of a problem with that," I said. "Aside from concerns about my own privacy, I don't want to live in a world where my fellow citizens are monitored every minute of their working day. I don't think you should have to put up with that."

"Fine, sir, thank you very much," she said, and hung up.

I suppose I sounded like a bit of a crackpot, but my words were sincere. I can easily imagine corporate motives for recording calls; they want to have records in case of some kind of dispute, they want to have a record of employee misbehaviour, perhaps they really do use the recordings for training purposes.

As far as I know, the only reason companies even inform you that they're recording the call is because the law requires it. And so they dutifully follow the law, but if you indicate that you don't want to be recorded - poof! - the call's over.

So the citizen is trapped. You can order your pizza, and accept the invasion of your privacy, and accept the dehumanization of the employee whose every moment at work is being monitored. Or you can refuse on ethical and humanitarian grounds and go hungry, because apparently there's no option to use the service without being recorded.

Wonderful.

Monitoring workers in call centres is just the tip of the iceberg. Many jobs require drug testing, even when your use or non-use of drugs has no impact on your ability to do the work. Others require invasive personality profiling. Other workplaces use monitoring software to log every keystroke and mouse movement. Forget about checking your bank balance on your coffee break, or taking a few minutes to compose a personal email. Forget the very human, very natural impulse to goof off from time to time.

We are building a world of diminishing trust.

The next time you're told that your call is being recorded, try asking this question:

"Will you still serve me if I refuse to be recorded?"

I'd like to know what they tell you.

Anybody listening?