ENTRY
[ESC]What J.J. Abrams' Star Trek and Star Wars tells us about neo-liberalism, Part I
DOC TAYROC'S [UNSOLICITED] ECONOMICS HOT THOUGHT
What J.J. Abrams' Star Trek and Star Wars tells us about neo-liberalism, Part I: What the hell is a Ferengi?
NOTE: I've been extremely busy these last couple of weeks, and so for the next few weeks I'm going to do this lighter faire whilst I get everything back on schedule. Marx and the Death of the Author will return soon.
I am a child of the 1990s and early 2000s, and as such, it should be of no surprise that a huge part of shaping me as a nerd were the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises. Like many children of the 1990s and early 2000s, as I was growing into adulthood, I watched a single man ruin both franchises by wildly missing the point of them in a way that only a complete tool of the corporations could.
Of course, I know that neither George Lucas nor Gene Roddenberry are entirely saints, nor were they above indulging in capitalism, Lucas of course, being the inventor of modern franchising, which brought us all the Star Wars toys and video games that had also helped shaped me into a nerd. (Yes, I've recently been playing the Star Wars: Dark Forces remaster, and yes I turned off the modern upscaling to make it look more like I remember it on the ol' 486 I played it on originally, albeit this time without the MS-DOS fiddling, although my modern computer has a much better sound system, in that it has one and not just the default monotone speaker). Meanwhile, Gene Roddenberry's astute 'business sense' brought us the infamous Spock helmet... But for the purposes of this essay, they were from a slightly more innocent period of capitalism, one from which it was being well contained by the minimal viable amount of socialism in the UK and US, and also when capitalists felt the need to play benign because the USSR was there to give people a chance to daydream about potentially better alternatives...
Anyway, for the point of today's entry, let's start by assuming you've been living under a science-fiction proof rock since the 1950s, let's catch you up on arguably the two biggest science-fiction stories of the 20th century. Our first contender is Star Trek, which was first aired by the American National Broadcasting Company (NBC) in 1966. The 1960s was a period of optimism, a thing we used to have in the 1990s and early 2000s, before the final death of hope came in 2016. In the 1960s, a series of socialist reforms in the UK and US had led to the unironically named 'golden age of capitalism', culturally there was an increased emphasis on science and human progress. Yes, the US and the USSR were locked in a stupid game of nuclear brinkmanship, but they were both letting off a little steam by focusing on who could put a man on the moon first, leading to a rapid series of increasing feats of science, with the Soviets putting the first artificial satellite into orbit (Sputnik I), the first person in space (Yuri Gagarin of Vostok I), took the first image of the far side of the moon, took the first image of the surface of Venus, built the first modular space station (Mir), and built the first robotic space plane, meanwhile the Americans put the first man on the moon (Neil Armstrong, Apollo VIII) and claimed 'victory' in the space race, despite the Soviets dominating every other step of the 'race'. (Don't worry, the Soviet Union collapsed, so the US could stop pretending to give a shit, and cut funding for sciences and space travel, and the death of hope began).
Anyway, this space optimism of the 1960s was also the 'golden age of science fiction'. Much of it was based on the science fiction short stories that had been populating pulp-fiction magazines (which is also where a great deal of the horniness of 1960s, 70s, and 80s sci-fi came from). One consumer of the 'golden age of science fiction' was Gene Roddenberry, who enjoyed many of the stories of optimism, which imagined a human race that, through the advances of science, had moved beyond nation-statism, beyond race, beyond superstition, and beyond greed. Where the new enlightened humanity shed the bonds of earth and explored the stars, not for personal gain, but for the betterment and survival of the species. Fantastic stories of explorers encountering the strange foreign cultures of foreign planets, cultures shaped by the different atmospheres of the foreign planets, shaped by different, and as yet undiscovered cosmic forces beyond the grasp of 20th century humanity. Many science-fiction writers were socialists, and imagined what post-capitalist humanity would look like, what could be achieved when every person, regardless of background, was given an equal chance and dignity, and free to pursue their dreams and interests, unencumbered by the menial demands of the capitalist class.
This being 1960s America, and the anti-Communist black list only having recently been retired, but much of the anti-Communist propaganda and censorship still in full swing, as indeed it is to this day, it would've been impossible to sell Star Trek to the privately owned, and mostly funded by the uber-capitalist Edison founded General Electric and similarly uber-capitalistic and anti-union General Motors, NBC, or the similarly privately held Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), or the also private American Broadcasting System (ABC). The American nationally owned broadcaster, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) had not yet been established, and would not receive nearly the same level of national and fiscal support that similar organisations like the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) would receive elsewhere. As such, it was a given that neither the United Earth nor the United Federation of Planets would be explicitly socialist. After all, the main starship in the story was the USS Enterprise, and with a naval prefix like that, it's obviously a given that the UFP is a stand-in for the US, and the US could never be so un-American as to be dirty Communists, we don't even have a publicly owned broadcaster!
Indeed, for Star Trek that wouldn't be the final stumbling block. There was a Russian on deck, far-out aliens that executives weren't sure the public would like, and worst of all, a Black woman not in a position of subservience. (And worse, other Black characters in positions of authority over the white protagonists). This is NBC, we don't make money by upsetting the racists of the deep south! We're still both-sidesing this debate about whether or not Black people are in fact people!
Even with the concessions Roddenberry made to get Star Trek on the air, it was still initially unsellable, a little too radical for the capitalist class of America (and of course, as well established, never underestimate the power of racism to derail progress and push everyone back into oppression, plenty of people will indeed cut off their own nose to spite people they've decided to hate on the basis of race, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity, and since this is beneficial to the capitalist class, they will encourage it in order to continue their capacity to divide and rule, and encourage us to give the bigots the 'both sides' treatment and the 'benefit of the doubt'). Fortunately, for the fans of reasonably good science-fiction (and lets face it, plenty of not-great episodes), a known socialist and open opponent of the aforementioned anti-Communist black-list stepped in to give Roddenberry the money necessary to get Star Trek off the ground and give some assurance to NBC executives, many of whom she had worked with previously. I'm speaking, of course, of the late-great Lucille Ball, whose famous red hair wasn't the only thing red about her.
DesiLu productions, Mrs Bell's production company, would be the entity to step in and get Star Trek off the ground, and with the protection of someone as established in the industry as Lucille Ball, Roddenberry and the writers of Star Trek were given a little more breathing room to bring their optimistic vision of humanity's future to the masses, Uhura got to stay. Famously, Nichelle Nichols nearly quit, for a variety of reasons, amongst them being the racism she was facing from Star Trek 'fans' (some things never change) until she was talked into staying by none other than Martin Luther King, Jr. himself. Her on-screen kiss with Captain Kirk, as played by the always controversial William Shatner also caused outcry in the racially segregated, South African apartheid supporting US South, where several NBC affiliates refused to even air the episode. Nichelle Nicole's only regret of the whole affair would be the fact that the first inter-racial on-screen kiss had to be shared with the immensely difficult to like William Shatner. (Kind of like how Britain wasted the 'first woman Prime Minister' honour on the outright evil Margaret Thatcher, and 'first Asian Prime Minister' on the greedy, evil, and stupid Rishi Sunak).
Point is, 'Star Trek' has been woke from the start, and thusly has had a difficult relationship with corporate media from the start as well. Famously being cancelled by NBC after only five seasons, a relatively short run for a programme of its calibre. It continued briefly as an animated series, but with a significantly reduced budget. By the late 1970s, it felt like a given that Star Trek was dead. Arguably a show out of time, with political ideology too progressive for the audience of the era, and with a premise that might've served better in the 'golden age of science fiction' over a decade earlier. Unfortunately, going 'woke' did indeed make Star Trek go broke, which is, unfortunately what happens to proper 'wokeness' in capitalism, since the truest sign of being woke is being anti-capital, which of course leads to capital punishing anything and everyone who imagines a better world without it.
Thankfully capital also has an obsession with short term gain, which is part of its tendency towards self-destruction which is also why Marx figured it was a question of when not if capitalism would be superseded by whatever comes next.
In 1977 the star of next week's entry debuted, Star Wars, later renamed Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope would take its creator's obsessions with Second World War aerial combat, oversimplified Western views on Eastern religion, Japanese Samurai films that reinforced a commodified version of bushido code, and the old Flash Gordon serials from the same 'golden age of science-fiction' that had inspired Gene Roddenberry, and show Hollywood executives that there was still considerable appetite for science-fiction films. The immense success of Star Wars was a cash cow that could not be ignored. 20th Century Fox, which had previously been struggling to compete with larger studios like Warner Brothers, Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn Meyer, and the Walt Disney Company (ominous foreshadowing music) was now sitting pretty. Because capitalism breeds innovation, everyone wanted their own quick, and preferably cheap Star Wars rip offs. Thankfully for Paramount, they had a franchise that had the word 'star' in it, and the Paramount studio heads didn't have the time to actually sit down and watch Star Trek between cocaine binges, and so assumed it was 'basically the same' as Star Wars and green lit Star Trek films, complete with special effects by the same Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) team that had brought us the destruction of the Death Star.
I'm not going to get into the Star Trek films (sans the 'Kelvinverse' ones, those are coming in the third entry in this mini-series) here, some are good, some are bad, and some have William Shatner riding a horse because that was his obsession at the time, the important thing is they all have Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley in them. (DeForest Kelley looks a bit like my dad, you see).
What is important is the (commercial) success of the Star Trek films led to the creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), which introduced us to the two most important characters in Star Trek, Worf and Miles O'Brien. Unfortunately, neither were conceived as a main character on board the USS Enterprise-D, an error which would soon be rectified. TNG would be Gene Roddenberry's last Star Trek project, as he would pass away in 1991, whilst TNG was still on the air. Infamously, some of TNG's initial... difficulties for the first few seasons would be because Roddenberry, as he was facing his own mortality had some... strong ideas about what should be in TNG, and riding high off of the films had more creative freedom than previously. With many creative types, 'no' is somewhat important, especially creative types who liked the extreme horniness of the pulp magazines many early sci-fi stories were found in.
Some important things to note about TNG, however, is that the increased freedom experienced by both Roddenberry and the writers and show runners that would take over after his health declined allowed TNG to pull of many things that The Original Series (TOS) wouldn't have been able to. One of those things, for better and for worse, was the Ferengi (who weren't great in TNG, but got good in DS9, don't at me). The Ferengi were a parody of everything wrong with Reagan America. Further, now that the Cold War was winding down, the Federation had more leeway to be more socialist and post-capitalist, especially as TNG and DS9 continued on past the fall of the Berlin wall, with the Ferengi becoming more and more clearly a harsh critique on the corporate raiders of the Reagan and Thatcher era.
TOS, TNG, DS9, and the good films were Star Trek at its best, not only pew-pew starships and lasers (although the Battle for Cardassia is still one of my favourite sequences) but also all about deep exploration of the human condition. What motivates people after capitalism? What drives human betterment when we're amongst the stars? What happens when humanity puts aside nation-statism, racism, and other artificial divisions and builds a human culture and history together? What happens when that culture meets other cultures with other histories? What happens when you give some of the horniest people to ever live a holodeck? What happens when holodeck programmes become self aware? Why are the sexbots never the ones to gain said self awareness?
The Star Trek fans are notoriously heady and fond of these deeper questions and explorations of human nature and post-capitalism, and have often preferred that to shallower interpretations that like the aesthetic and the 'oh cool space ship and computers' interpretations of science-fiction that other fandoms were infamous for. What could possibly go wrong handing over a franchise known more for substance than flash to a man who preferred the spectacle?
Join the conversation