Women in Literature: Star Trek: "I would like to first say that I HATE Star Trek!! So Data, what is his role? I know that he saved the captain and then the captain went back..."
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I am writing a response to the blog post that I linked above. Ignoring the "I hate Star Trek" part, as that's not important, but talking about women's roles in star trek, as well as the important of Data.
To clarify, Data began to have human feelings to an emotional implantation (I believe.) This is important because it is emotions that really make us human. By him having emotion, he can really understand what it means to be human and why the Borg need to be fought -- as well as why his other crew members are important. Without these emotions, to be honest, he would work off of what is logical. And sometimes, saving everyone on board a ship isn't logical.
As to why Lily is always running from the battle, what reason does she have not to? She's not trained in combat, at all. If you came acrossed a battle happening, and you had no training, wouldn't your natural response be to scream and run? I'm pretty sure mine would. I think it's important to think about these things before we immediately declare gender as the reason for something, because there are other factors as well. I hate to say this, but sometimes, it feels as if the gender card is thrown around way too often, and the same with racism. If we really want to promote health gender in society, then we need to stop declaring it so freely without reason.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Lily and StarTrek
I had the opportunity to finish the movie last night, and it again brought me back to something that the speaker had said in our class. She spoke about how they didn't mention Lily to the historians when they got back, thus keeping the women in their society to a lower post and not correcting one of the social problems of the past. However, I have to question if this is truely their motivation.
The Borg go back into the past to stop an event that has happened once already -- first contact. And they do this to disrupt the future and beat them in a fight without (theoretically) having to fight them at all -- until the Enterprise follows. Now, theoretically, the Borg can do this again sometime in the future -- as the Borg still exist in the future Star Trek episodes (I think. I haven't seen very many. I know. Shame on me.)
If the Borg have done this once, why wouldn't they do it again? If the Enterprise had Lily written down in history books, instead of the Borg focusing on stopping the doctor from launching his space ship, instead, all they'd need to do is kill Lily. And, from watching some of the scenes in the movie, such as the ballroom (?) one, it seems as if they were pretty close -- if they had noticed them.
Hell, if you've seen the new Star Trek movie, time is played with there as well. Although in that movie it creates a seperate dimension, it's very similar to what the Borg did.
Lily's role is too large in the future of the Earth, and I believe that by not having historians correct what happened, they are working to protect her, instead of it being an issue of social and gender issues.
The Borg go back into the past to stop an event that has happened once already -- first contact. And they do this to disrupt the future and beat them in a fight without (theoretically) having to fight them at all -- until the Enterprise follows. Now, theoretically, the Borg can do this again sometime in the future -- as the Borg still exist in the future Star Trek episodes (I think. I haven't seen very many. I know. Shame on me.)
If the Borg have done this once, why wouldn't they do it again? If the Enterprise had Lily written down in history books, instead of the Borg focusing on stopping the doctor from launching his space ship, instead, all they'd need to do is kill Lily. And, from watching some of the scenes in the movie, such as the ballroom (?) one, it seems as if they were pretty close -- if they had noticed them.
Hell, if you've seen the new Star Trek movie, time is played with there as well. Although in that movie it creates a seperate dimension, it's very similar to what the Borg did.
Lily's role is too large in the future of the Earth, and I believe that by not having historians correct what happened, they are working to protect her, instead of it being an issue of social and gender issues.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
What Makes Something Human?
After taking a look at Star Trek, and reflecting back on the speaker from last week, I had started to think about what really makes us human. Is it the way that we act? How we look? The way our body is put together?
When I first started thinking about it, I had focused on that maybe it was the fact that we were living and that machines are dead. However, when it came to looking at cyborgs, this argument was incredibly null. Due to the cyborg nature of being half organic and half construction, it doesn't work to say something is half human -- at least for this argument.
I then decided that maybe it is how we look. If something has the appearance of being human, is it human? Think about it. We instantly recognize another human by the way that we look, and this is also how we perceive cyborgs as being human for this reason. However, if someone becomes disfigured and starts to look less human, does that make them any less human?
This led me finally to one more belief. What if it is our emotional responses that make us human? Both humans and cyborgs have emotion. And without emotion, we consider them something less than human. But, even if a machine starts to show emotion -- we think of them as human. Think of the child from AI as an example. I firmly believe that it is emotion that makes us feel like something is :Human". Even the emotion of the Queen from Predator make us feel for her.
Something that is important to think about as we move further into the course...
When I first started thinking about it, I had focused on that maybe it was the fact that we were living and that machines are dead. However, when it came to looking at cyborgs, this argument was incredibly null. Due to the cyborg nature of being half organic and half construction, it doesn't work to say something is half human -- at least for this argument.
I then decided that maybe it is how we look. If something has the appearance of being human, is it human? Think about it. We instantly recognize another human by the way that we look, and this is also how we perceive cyborgs as being human for this reason. However, if someone becomes disfigured and starts to look less human, does that make them any less human?
This led me finally to one more belief. What if it is our emotional responses that make us human? Both humans and cyborgs have emotion. And without emotion, we consider them something less than human. But, even if a machine starts to show emotion -- we think of them as human. Think of the child from AI as an example. I firmly believe that it is emotion that makes us feel like something is :Human". Even the emotion of the Queen from Predator make us feel for her.
Something that is important to think about as we move further into the course...
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