U.S.S Enterprise LGBT-1701 (or) GAYS IN SPACE!

I love both Star Wars and Star Trek for very different reasons. I love the sense of epic struggle against totalitarianism in Star Wars, as well as the fact that it has what amounts to Awesome Zen Space Wizards. I love Star Trek for it's utopian future where mankind has united and poverty and need have been eliminated on Earth. As I've grown up, though, I've noticed that the things I love seem to be missing something that is pretty present in my own life.

Specifically, gay people.

Nope, no gays in space.

I am not the first person to notice that there seem to be no gays in space. I know that the LGBT fandom of Star Trek issued a boycott back in the late nineties surrounding Star Trek: Insurrection after 20 years of pushing for there to be even one gay character in the ship that represented a pluralistic and multicultural society. I'm going to end up focusing on Star Trek here, because let's face it, the sexuality in Star Wars amounts to “boy meets girl, saves girl, kisses girl, surprise incest.” Star Wars isn't really Sci-Fi, it's Fantasy in Space. There, I SAID IT. So, what is it that made it so difficult for a franchise as huge and utopian as Star Trek to incorporate gay characters?

My theory? It would have been weird to make it normal. By that, I specifically mean that, while having a gay character is no stranger than having a Japanese character on the Enterprise, including them would have been threatening to the producers. Consider, for a moment, that Star Trek: TNG had a openly gay character and it was never remarked upon and completely naturalized for the viewership. A world where it didn't matter existed. Could audiences of prime time TV at the time have handled this cognitive burst? Could they only have handled or processed gay characters in story lines that had to be specifically about sexuality? Would it have been so hard to portray them in the words of Leonard Nimoy, as “ neither objects of pity nor melodramatic attention?” This has to be what the producers were thinking, right?

About the time that Star Trek was ignoring gay characters, Babylon 5 incorporated a bisexual female character into their show, Susan Ivanova, who had a relationship with another telepathic woman. Babylon 5 also had a male/male marriage. Babylon 5, while a terrific show, was ultimately less popular than TNG and it begs a question- did mainstream audiences want a hetereonormative future?

The answer to why Star Trek did not have gay characters is vague. Brannon Braga, an executive producer for TNG. spoke in 2011 about the push and pull developing the show and the consideration of a normative gay culture on the Enterprise.

“[There was a]...constant back and forth about well how do we portray the spectrum of sexuality. There were people who felt very strongly that we should be showing casually, you know, just two guys together in the background in Ten Forward. At the time the decision was made not to do that and I think those same people would make a different decision now because I think, you know, that was 1989, well yeah about 89, 90, 91. I have no doubt that those same creative players wouldn’t feel so hesitant to have, you know, have been squeamish about a decision like that.”

No gays in space at all.

A quote like this sounds nice, like an “oops, we fucked up, but we're all allies now” but it doesn't explain the why very well. Why, when you have stars like Whoopi Goldberg rewriting their lines from heterosexual to sexuality-neutral commentary right there on set, could no one writing or producing the show wrap their heads around the idea that GAYS WILL EXIST IN THE FUTURE?

Suggesting that Next Generation was under pressure from affiliates to be a family friendly show, Braga described the decision to exclude LGBT characters as "not a forward thinking decision."

Let's jump from Sci-Fi to more fantastic television shows of the same approximate time period. Shows like Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer both featured either queer subtext or openly gay characters. It's strange to note that these shows were both wildly popular with hetero and queer audiences, so what was Star Trek afraid of? It's especially strange because the world of speculative fiction as long been tolerant of LGBT people in Sci-Fi fandom, even if it wasn't openly talked about for many decades.

NONE AT ALL

Even a casual analysis of geek/nerd sexual culture will show you a vast acceptance or at least tolerance of most sexual identities. Is this a response to the static, heteronormative sci-fi of the previous generation? I present this theory to the producers of Star Trek; you should have normative gay characters in space because that's THE WAY THE FUCKING WORLD ACTUALLY IS DIPSHITS.

 I believe that this shortcoming has real negative long term effects for the Star Trek franchise.  You cannot claim that you exist in a future that is without class or categorization and then ignore a massive real world group that has been marginalized for centuries.  Would it have killed someone to have two women holding hands in Ten Forward?  It's primitive. Up your game, Star Trek franchise.

It's on you, J.J. Abrams.

I AM BECOMING LIKE GOD (or) "How I am getting slightly better at Donkey Kong"

Look upon my works and DESPAIR.

Well, not despair, really.  Truth be told, these aren't particularly impressive Donkey Kong Scores by any stretch of the imagination.  The Current DK High Score is at 1.1 Million, so I'm still just an ant before gods, but that isn't the point.

I started volunteering at Bodega 420, a small general store in the Roosevelt Row in Phoenix, a couple of months ago.  I worked with the owner, Adrien, on getting a 48-in-1 arcade machine at a scorching good price and cleaned that bad boy up and put it in the Bodega about the same time I started closing the store on Monday nights.  In the last few months, I've watched my score steadily increase on a budget of about a dollar or two a week.

This is to be expected, of course, as anything you practice at, you will get better at.  What's come to my attention playing Donkey Kong is that, when I get better, I am instantly aware of it.

If you've ever played Donkey Kong, you know what an unforgiving mistress it can be.  There's just enough pattern to lull you into a false sense of security, and just enough randomness to dash a perfect run to dust when an unexpected barrel comes at a 45 degree angle and ends your futile climb.  There is no relaxing, no losing focus.  It's like being a fighter pilot, but with more barrels and quarters.  Every small progression is a grueling process of trial and error, instinct, and calculated risk.  A 6000 point advancement is an epiphany.

I've played a lot of video games, it's true, but if you've ever entered "the zone" as someone putting on neon green shades in the eighties might say to you before skateboarding away, you might be familiar with part of what I'm getting at.

"Have you ever entered the zone?"

At risk of sounding like a serial killer, when playing an FPS, you might go on a kill-streak.  You become a focused murder-android of destruction, barely thinking as you put round after round into anyone who appears near you.  Screaming voices over your headset fade away, and for what might seem like an eternity, you are unstoppable.  Okay, that did sound like a serial killer, but allow this particular simile.  There is a part of our mind that can focus on complex tasks with tremendous accuracy and finesse.  When it perceives these tasks as "life and death" it can seem to distort time.  An experiment by David Eagleman dropped participants into a freefall over a net to mimic a frightening event, then asked how long they thought they were experiencing it for. All participants over-estimated their freefall time.  Maybe this is because memory is distorted by adrenaline, but the imitation of danger is enough to provoke this heightened state.

By engaging in the "life or death" struggle to survive against robot-kill machines or pixelated gorillas, one can experience this phenomenon as well- though probably not as heightened as a fighter pilot.  Furthermore, because of the relatively codified worlds of video games (as opposed to the REAL world, where there are trillions of factors to constantly consider), skills or knowledge is incredibly specific and focused.

A particular example of this kind of epiphany:  On the "Elevators" level of Donkey Kong, one has to actually step towards the springs at the top and double back to climb the ladder to save Pauline.  This particular moment stands out to me because I realized it like it was a bolt from the blue.  I understood it as I did it.  It goes against the basic premise of the game (avoid objects) but it's the easiest way to beat a level most people will get stuck on.  (If everything I just said makes no sense, I'm sorry.)  Regardless, it was a burst of insight.  This sort of thing happens somewhat regularly while pushing against the brick wall of Donkey Kong perfection.

What am I getting at?  Zen.  I felt a brush with something like Zen. Maybe awareness of Kong is an awareness of Kōng, to some degree- there is an emptiness in the moment of moving forward, something transient, a moment where I understand "This is not real, it is a game" with perfect knowledge.  A fleeting instant where I am aware of the both real-ness and void-ness of all things.
Or, I just like Donkey Kong.  With any luck, I will break 100,000 points this summer, and look forward to the time I can say "LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE I'M A FIGHTER PILOT" as someone tries to interact with me as I reach some new stage of being.

READER BONUS POINTS:  You get 10,000 "Totally Rad" points for noticing I said "fighter pilot" three times in this post.

ULTRA BONUS POINTS:   You get 1,000,000 points for noticing "zone dude" has a fighter jet model hanging from the ceiling.