an ineffable quality to memory
May. 12th, 2014 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenSo if you have the misfortune of following me on Twitter you may know I am having a Star Trek renaissance. This happens every couple of years and mostly goes like this: show! Feelings! Oh my show! Oh my feelings! This time around I am having love for TNG, which is odd - I've never liked it as much as DS9 - but interesting, and having thoroughly abused the 140-character format I think I would like to be verbose as to why.
So I am for the most part not really interested in generalised discussions of race on Star Trek? I mean, spoilers, Trek isn’t very good on race! Most of the time - but what it is great at is ideas. And nothing mainstream, for me, has ever done anything like it on cultural assimilation. There’s this one episode of Voyager that gets this really well and I’ve always thought is underrated. In "Lineage", pretty late on in the run, B’Elanna finds out she’s pregnant and it’s basically adorable. Gossip travels at warp ten, everyone on the crew wants to be the baby’s godparent and/or namesake, and Tom realizes the only person on the entire ship he knows who’s a father is Tuvok (!!) and they have this sweet and genuinely poignant awkward conversation in a Jefferies tube. (Every time Star Trek does this conversation it’s amazing. Dax advising Sisko on fatherhood! O’Brien advising Worf on marriage! ….anyway.) So B’Elanna finds out that her baby, who will be one quarter Klingon to three quarters human, will nevertheless look Klingon (“Klingon traits are dominant!"). And through a series of fights with Tom, fights with Janeway, and, eventually, an incredibly unethical application of her engineering ability to the Doctor’s programming, B'Elanna persuades him to alter the baby’s genetic make-up in utero so she’ll look human. Roxann Dawson, who plays B’Elanna, is Latina; Robert Duncan McNeill is white. A baby who looks more like him will look… oh, you get it. And I just cry and cry and cry at it, because whether or not you agree with her choice, she’s making what she thinks is the best choice for her baby. Tom tries telling her that there are Vulcans on board, Talaxians, Bajorans - and B'Elanna turns around and snaps, "And one hundred and forty humans!"
And of course he tries to argue and she tells him he doesn't understand: "When the people around you are all one way and you're not, you can't help feeling like there's something wrong with you" - and I cry.
And it's not just about race, of course, but culture; not just how you look, though of course that matters, but what you are. (B'Elanna's Klingon fighting instincts! How hard her human father found her to live with!) Oh, I cry so much, because how can you articulate that? That feeling of being four or sixteen or twenty-seven, and you're in someone's house or at a party or at your desk surrounded by your colleagues, and someone says something and you're just - at the precipice of your lack of understanding. When the people around you are all one way, and you're not.
And it's kind of odd and counter-intuitive, but this time around I’ve realised the application of this same narrative to, of all people, Data. Not all the time: I think the show sometimes misfires on this, and sometimes does it really well – it seems to depend on the particular episode and set of writers? But, okay, Data. (He's an android and, because this is Star Trek, operations officer on the Enterprise.) I adore Data and always have – I was saying to someone recently that my Star Trek feelings are getting on for twenty years’ standing, owwww – and I’ve always mostly thought that I love Data and Spock for the same reasons. In different ways, they both serve as a moral compass for their respective captains. I mean, with Spock it’s usually an outright, Jim, don't do this, this is a terrible no-good idea, and with Data it’s more often from the mouths of babes, truth - but I love that. (And, the other side of the trope which I also love: the few occasions when it’s reversed. When it’s Kirk reining in Spock from murdering Stonn, or from complicity in horrors in “Mirror, Mirror”; when Picard tries to pull Data back from the brink with Lore - I love that narrative arc.)
But… okay, with Data. In “The Measure of a Man”, which by the way is my favourite courtroom drama ever and probably one of my favourite episodes of anything, some dude shows up and gives Data transfer orders: he’s being sent to the lab to be dismantled so they can figure out how to make more of him. Data’s answer is, huh, what if you can’t put me back together again? Rather than do this, I will resign – and then they tell him, you can’t resign, you’re property of Starfleet. And Picard is forced to argue in court for the position that Data has rights over his own body. It's a story about humanity, and sentience, and life. It's a story about transformation. And it's a story that allows Guinan to say this to Picard, when no one else will (for those playing along at home: Guinan is the Enterprise’s venerable bartender, played by Whoopi Goldberg): "Consider that in the history of many worlds there have always been disposable creatures."
That gives me chills. That if Data is property, then property obscures sin. In the history of many worlds, there have been those whose bodies were marked. I'm sorry, Riker whispers into Data's ear, and reaches in to remove his hand.
And then, the ruling, when it comes, is very narrow. It is not that Data is human, or even sentient, or that he has a soul; it is that he might, as we all might, and that while he occupies his own body, he has the right to discover that in his own time. I think that not only is it excellent TV, it's excellent jurisprudence. Picard notes that the fact Data was created doesn't mean he's not a person; children are all created by their parents - and what is established here is that he is, at least, a potential person. It doesn't say anything about humanity.
But then, they do lots of episodes where Data wants to be human? Which I've been thinking, misses the point that that episode makes so succinctly. Sometimes it’s understandable – at one point Data tells Geordi that he’s afraid of outliving everyone he’s ever known – and sometimes less so. Spock, of all people, tells him: “There are Vulcans who aspire all their lives to achieve what you've been given by design." And Data can't defend why he would rather be human, though he does point out that it's a choice - like Spock's choice to be Vulcan through and through, despite his human mother.
So I've found myself thinking, isn't that kind of... colonialist, if that's even the word? Data wanting to be a person is a very different thing from his wanting to be human, especially if the narrative embraces the latter as though it were unproblematic. And the show gestures at this distinction quite a lot without ever quite making it: Picard comments at one stage that Data might be a culture of one, but it's no less valid than a culture of billions; when he's dying, Noonien Soong tells Data that he will grieve, "in your own way"; and there's also the spot-on sweetness of the way the show never questions Data's right to refer to his two human creators as his parents. His mother describes him as "the child of two people who loved him and each other" - which is lovely, but they never take the additional leap and say, Data's is a form of human life. If that has value, then why should he aspire to a different kind?
But then - here it is. Data, who is different from everyone else around him, even more so than half-human half-Klingon B'Elanna and half-human half-Vulcan Spock – and there's nothing wrong with him, but, well. Well, darling, wouldn't you wish to be white? You would lose what you were, but without your soul in doubt. What it is, is this: Data doesn't want to be human, he wants to be normal, unmarked. Like B'Elanna wants for her daughter; like Sarek wanted for Spock. What gives me the feelings is that the show for all its failings, engages with that desire so closely and gives it to these characters who are gifted and loved and flawed, and gives them the consequences of that desire, Data's loss and B'Elanna's desperation and Sarek and Spock not talking to each other for thirty years, because, by god, it sucks to be different. It's okay to want to assimilate into the majority culture; to not just be yourself. It's okay to wish for whiteness; it's saying, sometimes, not all the time, we all do.
So I am for the most part not really interested in generalised discussions of race on Star Trek? I mean, spoilers, Trek isn’t very good on race! Most of the time - but what it is great at is ideas. And nothing mainstream, for me, has ever done anything like it on cultural assimilation. There’s this one episode of Voyager that gets this really well and I’ve always thought is underrated. In "Lineage", pretty late on in the run, B’Elanna finds out she’s pregnant and it’s basically adorable. Gossip travels at warp ten, everyone on the crew wants to be the baby’s godparent and/or namesake, and Tom realizes the only person on the entire ship he knows who’s a father is Tuvok (!!) and they have this sweet and genuinely poignant awkward conversation in a Jefferies tube. (Every time Star Trek does this conversation it’s amazing. Dax advising Sisko on fatherhood! O’Brien advising Worf on marriage! ….anyway.) So B’Elanna finds out that her baby, who will be one quarter Klingon to three quarters human, will nevertheless look Klingon (“Klingon traits are dominant!"). And through a series of fights with Tom, fights with Janeway, and, eventually, an incredibly unethical application of her engineering ability to the Doctor’s programming, B'Elanna persuades him to alter the baby’s genetic make-up in utero so she’ll look human. Roxann Dawson, who plays B’Elanna, is Latina; Robert Duncan McNeill is white. A baby who looks more like him will look… oh, you get it. And I just cry and cry and cry at it, because whether or not you agree with her choice, she’s making what she thinks is the best choice for her baby. Tom tries telling her that there are Vulcans on board, Talaxians, Bajorans - and B'Elanna turns around and snaps, "And one hundred and forty humans!"
And of course he tries to argue and she tells him he doesn't understand: "When the people around you are all one way and you're not, you can't help feeling like there's something wrong with you" - and I cry.
And it's not just about race, of course, but culture; not just how you look, though of course that matters, but what you are. (B'Elanna's Klingon fighting instincts! How hard her human father found her to live with!) Oh, I cry so much, because how can you articulate that? That feeling of being four or sixteen or twenty-seven, and you're in someone's house or at a party or at your desk surrounded by your colleagues, and someone says something and you're just - at the precipice of your lack of understanding. When the people around you are all one way, and you're not.
And it's kind of odd and counter-intuitive, but this time around I’ve realised the application of this same narrative to, of all people, Data. Not all the time: I think the show sometimes misfires on this, and sometimes does it really well – it seems to depend on the particular episode and set of writers? But, okay, Data. (He's an android and, because this is Star Trek, operations officer on the Enterprise.) I adore Data and always have – I was saying to someone recently that my Star Trek feelings are getting on for twenty years’ standing, owwww – and I’ve always mostly thought that I love Data and Spock for the same reasons. In different ways, they both serve as a moral compass for their respective captains. I mean, with Spock it’s usually an outright, Jim, don't do this, this is a terrible no-good idea, and with Data it’s more often from the mouths of babes, truth - but I love that. (And, the other side of the trope which I also love: the few occasions when it’s reversed. When it’s Kirk reining in Spock from murdering Stonn, or from complicity in horrors in “Mirror, Mirror”; when Picard tries to pull Data back from the brink with Lore - I love that narrative arc.)
But… okay, with Data. In “The Measure of a Man”, which by the way is my favourite courtroom drama ever and probably one of my favourite episodes of anything, some dude shows up and gives Data transfer orders: he’s being sent to the lab to be dismantled so they can figure out how to make more of him. Data’s answer is, huh, what if you can’t put me back together again? Rather than do this, I will resign – and then they tell him, you can’t resign, you’re property of Starfleet. And Picard is forced to argue in court for the position that Data has rights over his own body. It's a story about humanity, and sentience, and life. It's a story about transformation. And it's a story that allows Guinan to say this to Picard, when no one else will (for those playing along at home: Guinan is the Enterprise’s venerable bartender, played by Whoopi Goldberg): "Consider that in the history of many worlds there have always been disposable creatures."
That gives me chills. That if Data is property, then property obscures sin. In the history of many worlds, there have been those whose bodies were marked. I'm sorry, Riker whispers into Data's ear, and reaches in to remove his hand.
And then, the ruling, when it comes, is very narrow. It is not that Data is human, or even sentient, or that he has a soul; it is that he might, as we all might, and that while he occupies his own body, he has the right to discover that in his own time. I think that not only is it excellent TV, it's excellent jurisprudence. Picard notes that the fact Data was created doesn't mean he's not a person; children are all created by their parents - and what is established here is that he is, at least, a potential person. It doesn't say anything about humanity.
But then, they do lots of episodes where Data wants to be human? Which I've been thinking, misses the point that that episode makes so succinctly. Sometimes it’s understandable – at one point Data tells Geordi that he’s afraid of outliving everyone he’s ever known – and sometimes less so. Spock, of all people, tells him: “There are Vulcans who aspire all their lives to achieve what you've been given by design." And Data can't defend why he would rather be human, though he does point out that it's a choice - like Spock's choice to be Vulcan through and through, despite his human mother.
So I've found myself thinking, isn't that kind of... colonialist, if that's even the word? Data wanting to be a person is a very different thing from his wanting to be human, especially if the narrative embraces the latter as though it were unproblematic. And the show gestures at this distinction quite a lot without ever quite making it: Picard comments at one stage that Data might be a culture of one, but it's no less valid than a culture of billions; when he's dying, Noonien Soong tells Data that he will grieve, "in your own way"; and there's also the spot-on sweetness of the way the show never questions Data's right to refer to his two human creators as his parents. His mother describes him as "the child of two people who loved him and each other" - which is lovely, but they never take the additional leap and say, Data's is a form of human life. If that has value, then why should he aspire to a different kind?
But then - here it is. Data, who is different from everyone else around him, even more so than half-human half-Klingon B'Elanna and half-human half-Vulcan Spock – and there's nothing wrong with him, but, well. Well, darling, wouldn't you wish to be white? You would lose what you were, but without your soul in doubt. What it is, is this: Data doesn't want to be human, he wants to be normal, unmarked. Like B'Elanna wants for her daughter; like Sarek wanted for Spock. What gives me the feelings is that the show for all its failings, engages with that desire so closely and gives it to these characters who are gifted and loved and flawed, and gives them the consequences of that desire, Data's loss and B'Elanna's desperation and Sarek and Spock not talking to each other for thirty years, because, by god, it sucks to be different. It's okay to want to assimilate into the majority culture; to not just be yourself. It's okay to wish for whiteness; it's saying, sometimes, not all the time, we all do.
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no subject
on 2014-05-12 08:31 pm (UTC)(also I love you that you write things like this; I say this a lot, but it is true that things like this are what makes the world worthwhile)
Specifically about Data wanting to be human: I always felt like that was one of the great tragedies of TNG, that he equates human with person so much that he can't tell they're not the same thing. He has knowledge, but he picks up stories like everyone else, and the stories he's learned are that his ways of being a person are not the "right" ways of being a person. I think the show does try to say he's wrong about that, at least sort of... but it's also caught in its own trap, because just like Data is comparing himself to the human characters all the time, so is the audience. And they never dealt with that in quite the way they did with B'Elanna. (oh god B'Elanna, that whole storyline is a sign of just how great Voyager really could have been I think.)
And I am rewatching DS9 right now (as-you-probably-know-Bob) and I think they do a really interesting things with that. Worf, Quark, and Garak are all people who have been expelled from their home cultures, who have been specifically rejected by their home cultures, and the different ways they deal with that are just gorgeous. They all blend denial and sadness and frustration and anger in their own ways and my heaart.
And um a lot of that is basically just me resaying what you said, but I got caught up in feelings and that sort of happened... hi?
no subject
on 2014-05-12 08:47 pm (UTC)But it's funny you should mention DS9! Because I was thinking, Odo is a great example of someone who doesn't equate personhood with human (or Bajoran, I guess in Odo's case!). Now I come to think of it, Odo and Data have functionally the same backstory - not-quite-person found by team of scientists - but it's so interesting to me that Odo hardly ever thinks his form of personhood is illegitimate. Even when the Founders come to light, even when he realises where he gets his liking for order and rigidity - he never rejects what he really is. (Possibly Lwaxana helps with that? I love their friendship. It makes me wonder what would have happened if Lwaxana and Data had hung out like that!)
Caught up in feelings. Hi. <3
no subject
on 2014-05-12 08:58 pm (UTC)I don't want Data to lose his kindness and his optimism and his fundamental belief that humans are awesome, but I think if he was capable of an Odo "humph. HUMANS." moment he might be more self-accepting in some ways.
no subject
on 2014-05-12 09:19 pm (UTC)I am sure you are unsurprised to learn that I would watch six seasons and a movie of the Lwaxana and Data Show. They would be such perfect BFF, I can't even. They would have adventures! Casually save planets! She would introduce him to pink cocktails and dressing up! He would listen to her and never slut-shame her and wait up for her! And if they tried to declare him a non-person she would glare and if anyone was a dick to her he would remove their head for science. It would the BEST.
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on 2014-05-12 09:27 pm (UTC)Oh god also Data is kind of reallyreallyreally lucky in a lot of ways he ended up on the Enterprise but in others, he is criminally wasted. (He can run the whole ship! By himself!) And also I really desperately want the Data And Lwxana Show because it would be JOY. They could discover the ethics of telepathy together! They could pick out amazing dresses for hours, and Lwxana would find Data a jaunty hat!
no subject
on 2014-05-12 10:05 pm (UTC)Lwaxana smashes those doors down - yes! I feel like Odo just doesn't understand why Lwaxana wants to spend time with him, because why would anyone? But then they become such genuine friends that my heart hurts. It's via Lwaxana that Odo gets to Kira, that's so right.
(AMAZING DRESSES. Yes! And we already know Data likes dressing up, I love that
no subject
on 2014-05-13 08:55 pm (UTC)Also, that clicked a whole bunch of things together for me: Data gets that kind of abusive relationship because Data is, in a lot of ways, coded female. He has a baby. He has a cat, who he loves and writes poetry to. He likes dressing up.
I just want him to be happy foreverrrrr, omg.
no subject
on 2014-05-13 10:27 pm (UTC)Speaking of, I meant to link you to this fic yesterday!
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on 2014-05-14 07:42 pm (UTC)And I think that the Odo gender identification thing is supposed to be a bit like the way he based his appearance on Dr Mora - that's what he "imprinted" on, sort of thing - and of course being a grumpy misanthropic policeman is a very male-coded character in the wider context. But they totally don't explain that well, and there really is NO reason why Odo would believe in being a single gender at all, especially once he's not being experimented on and has room to make his own choices. I wonder what pronouns Odo would like? I don't think "it" would be appropriate, given being experimented on... I suspect the Changelings generally would use "they". :)
no subject
on 2014-05-15 09:18 am (UTC)I feel like there is a story here somewhere about gender and... well, consent, I guess? So you know that story I wrote the other day where Data becomes human, and I was thinking that one day I'll write a serious story about that but right now let's just go for the lulz, but I was thinking even for that one about the idea of Geordi, or someone, but probably Geordi, carefully having to teach Data about consent? I mean, I think he's got it figured out in terms of other people, but Geordi teaching him that despite Lore and the whole automony-up-for-grabs thing, he can say no, that that's part of having a body. (Even an android one!) And there's another story somewhere in my brain about Janeway, a little while down the line, suddenly having the penny drop about Seven, but deliberately not pursuing a relationship with her, because, well, Janeway made Seven what she is, so can Seven meaningfully consent to anything involving Janeway? In the same way, can Data consent to anything in a world where he's an android and everyone else around him is human? I'm not even sure if these are the same story or two different ones! But it's so interesting to me.
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on 2014-05-15 10:26 pm (UTC)I would love to see Data and Seven talk and share learning experiences so much. I hope you do write that story one day - or both, if it's two different ones! - because it would break my heart in the best way. And I really desperately want someone to teach Data that his own autonomy has meaning and importance too and it's okay to just make a rule about your own body because you want to and it's yours and other people's opinions come second at best. *flail*
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on 2014-05-21 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-05-12 09:43 pm (UTC)And, god, speaking of Guinan's line that
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on 2014-05-13 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
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on 2014-05-13 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-05-13 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-05-12 09:37 pm (UTC)My best icon of B'Elanna praying a Klingon prayer for this post.
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on 2014-05-13 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
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on 2014-05-13 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-05-13 02:49 pm (UTC)I watched a lot of Trek when I was younger and it was ubiquitous (that is one of the things I miss about syndicated TV being a thing in the United States), but it's only going back to it that I realize there's so much I didn't catch. And that Abrams's influence is going to taint people's perceptions of Star Trek forever. Urgh.
This was such a lovely post; thank you for writing it (and making me cry before work <3)
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on 2014-05-13 10:29 pm (UTC)I hope Abrams' influence can't quite outweigh so many years of Trek in other shapes? But I suspect you may be right. :(
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on 2014-05-19 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
on 2014-05-20 08:25 am (UTC)(In all honestly, I live a 24/7 Star Trek feels lifestyle, it's nice to have people to share them with! ;D)
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on 2014-05-21 10:45 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-05-12 08:51 pm (UTC)You make me very excited about the prospect of watching TNG.
(Nothing else valuable or intelligent to say, just that you are really excellent and I hate that things are ever hard.)
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on 2014-05-13 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-05-26 05:08 am (UTC)Also, Measure of a Man is by far one of my favorite hours of television ever. I'm fairly sure I have most of the courtroom part memorized.
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on 2014-05-26 12:57 pm (UTC)