By David Futrelle
It’s not exactly news that former space show actor William Shatner can be something of a dick. And in the year of our dark lord 2017 all dicks end up on Twitter, so it really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Shatner has been acting like a dick on Twitter.
But I have to say I was a little bit taken aback to see Capt. Kirk adopting not only some of the opinions but the lingo of the terrible people who congregate in or around the Alt Right. In a series of recent tweets, Shatner has railed against so-called SJWs and castigated his opponents as “snowflakes,” a term that seems to have almost replaced what seems to have been his previous favorite patronizing putdown, “sunshine.”
He’s also picked up one of the favorite terms of the Men’s Rights movement: “misandry.” He started using it earlier this year, slipping it into his disquisitions on the evils of political correctness and feminism and whatnot.
Needless to say, his thoughts on the subject are not particularly enlightening, consisting mostly of assertions that “misandry exists.”
Misandry is real. Sorry. https://t.co/HzNcwWhbhV
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) February 20, 2017
You can say that about misandry all you want but it exists. 🤷🏼♂️ https://t.co/fKhNpEt6h1
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) May 1, 2017
Misogyny exists. Problem is that she didn't want to accept misandry does, too. https://t.co/f1mlk7wKek
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) May 1, 2017
Misandry does exist & toxic masculinity is a skewed definition. So boohoo that I used a word you don't believe exists & 🙄 on a phrase. https://t.co/kAaBVj4lXn
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) June 2, 2017
He is also keen for his Twitter followers to know that, yes, he in fact sometimes uses the word.
All of that is true. I also use words like snowflake and misandry. What's your point sunshine? https://t.co/3Z0Zj1USIX
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) July 31, 2017
And this is your failure of logic. SJWs stand for inequality, where they are superior to any one else hence my use of Misandry and Snowflake https://t.co/8uBGuFFM7a
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) July 31, 2017
Tweets reiterating these two points pretty much make up the entirety of his commentary on the evils of misandry.
I look forward to his further contributions to misandry theory.
Bill – put down the scotch, baby.
My observation was that Shatner’s Captain Kirk was an American cowboy type — jump into a situation, “fix” whatever was the apparent problem, and jump out. Stewart’s Captain Picard was more of a European figure, aware of the nuances and complications and unintended consequences of things and much less susceptible to black and white analysis and oversimplified responses. (This is an oversimplification, of course, but I think it has some validity.) I would expect progressives in general to be much more sympathetic to Picard, because we’ve all seen the negative consequences of American cowboyism.
By the way, Bina, I’ll gladly take the kitties (we have six, but you never have enough) but I have to admit the Shatner line is not really mine. I read a novel many years ago — can’t remember the title or much else, but one character is a young woman whose last name is Shatsky, and she complains that “everybody knows that’s just the past tense of Shitsky.”
But it fit the Shatner situation fairly neatly, if I do say so myself.
Best space show is Red Dwarf. My dad start to watch this one when he live in UK. He like it and there two black actors too which i think is good, because i mention before my dad is saying racist things but he never speak bad about red dwarf so i think this improved him. He asked me to watch with him. So i looked for old episodes and i didn’t know but it from 1982 or something and they still make episodes now in 2016. I have all on my hard drive. ))) This is much better than star trek. Cat is my favourite character – he’s like human but evolve from cats not apes.
I think he’s been hanging around with the wrong internet-dudes. I dimly recall him being pretty fun on Twitter a few years ago and making a comment about not being on Reddite because he doesn’t hate women and being all around OK.
I guess he found he got more attention by being an arsehole.
On the other hand, Mark Hamill still seems lovely so I think I’ll just head-canon Luke Skywalker being the captain of the Enterprise.
@Valya
The early series are much better, after about series 10 it starts to get pretty meh. Great stuff though.
Shatner may be an ass, but these tweets don’t necessarily prove it. According to Anne Wheaton he has hired social media people handling his Twitter account.
Certainly explains Star Trek V. (Viewers of SFDebris may remember Chuck pointing out the barely-contained looks of contempt from Walter Koenig whenever Shatner was talking.)
And yes, folks, as arguably McGill’s most famous alum, his name is actually, albeit unofficially, attached to the Student Services building.
Ladies, ambies, gents… the William Shatner University Center: http://ssmu.mcgill.ca/about-us/building/
Yes, that is a thing. Now let us weep together.
On the whole, I’d agree. Kirk certainly didn’t shy away from fisticuffs (although the writers seemed to put him in a lot of situations where fisticuffs became necessary) and he would be the one to lead away teams whereas Riker or Worf typically did that on TNG. But beyond the Kirk tropes of overacting, losing fistfights and alien-bedding, there was always an understated intuitiveness to Kirk. He understood motivations (even if he didn’t agree) and thought things through from all angles. While he was a man of action and took risks, you never got the sense that Kirk was a reckless man.
On the flip side, Picard was very much the scholar-poet contemplative. The Picard Speech was his weapon of choice versus the Kirk flying sidekick. It gave one the sense that a Starfleet captain of the 24th century was as much diplomat as explorer. This was pressed practically to a fault in the hilariously bad “Code of Honor” episode (how TNG survived its first season I will have no idea).
@Kupo
LOL! That video just made my day. I have never been a trekkie but to think Brannigan was inspired by Shatner… I now have to rewatch the entire series with that in mind.
@Reimalebario
Yeah let’s not give Hamill a pass given that he’s been shitting on Episode VII and Rei as a character. According to him it’s stupid that she was able to force pull the lightsaber without having been to Dagobah to train.
I guess he forgets how Luke did the exact same when he was caught in the Wampa’s cave. Somehow it makes sense for his character to do it but it’s always stupid and Mary Sueing when a woman does it.
Yeah… for all the “Obi-Wan has taught you well” that Vader said… Luke only trained with Kenobi for all of ten minutes before they were nabbed by the Death Star.
Episode VII had its flaws, but when it comes to the character of Rey, I think a lot of people forget the title of that film. “The Force Awakens.” I got the sense that Rey and Kylo Ren were avatars for the Light side and Dark side of the Force respectively, almost like conduits for the yin and yang of the balanced whole, so in duelling, they each tapped into that latent power unique to the two of them and in doing so, Rey unleashed powers she didn’t know she possessed. Would explain the force wave that knocked Ren back across the fissure as they were fighting on the Starkiller’s surface.
I’m sure we’ll get a better sense of it once her mysterious parentage is revealed, but that was my interpretation of her abilities.
AliBoBali:
Glad you liked it. I try to keep it in mind when discussing these issues, because it’s so freaking tempting for my privileged ass to just respond to a critique with, “Well, I’ve always been an ally, so I must not be too bad this time.” (Another thing I remind myself: It’s better to think of “ally” as a verb–it’s an active thing you’re doing. When you aren’t doing it, you can’t claim the title.)
Also, going to chime in: Cisco is best Captain. I actually liked Janeway, for the most part (I feel she grew into the role over time), but Voyager had too many plots that made me want to throw something through the screen.
@Gussie Jives
Pretty much. Considering Rey has been living in a state of near-total isolation her whole life it would make sense for her to become attuned to the Force on her own. After all that requires focus and meditation.
Other than that Episode VII had flaws related to the plot, not Rey and Finn’s characters. Mostly because it tried too hard to emulate Episode IV instead of trying to stand on its own. It also went too much for fanservice and nostalgia with the whole Millennium Falcom bit.
Kylo Ren I found to be a better and more engaging and believable character than Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker. Overall I liked the characters but disliked the plot.
@Freemage:
Good, that’s two of us (although it’s Sisko with an S).
He was complicated. He had moral dilemmas and occasionally came down on the bad side. There was an episode where he did something rather bad which included the murder (by someone else) of a dubious character. He eventually decided that despite how much he hated his actions they were for the best and that he’d probably done the right thing given the circumstances of the war. Then he lied about the whole thing to Starfleet.
Then there was his objection to the fiction of the holodeck program which portrayed people of colour as being happily integrated in 60s Las Vegas. There’s his passion for baseball which made him act like a dick for a while in another episode. There’s the business about his love interest being a bit of a traitor to the federation and the complicated way he dealt with it. There’s the rather fascist way he initially set up Star Fleet’s response on Earth to the Dominion’s attack and the way he was persuaded to change his mind.
No other lead character has displayed anything approaching that complexity.
If you have bad or meh memories of DS9, watch it again. Skip the episodes where Sisko wasn’t bald if you like, that’s where it starts to get good.
I like the characters on Voyager for the most part, but I feel like the writers frequently ran out of ideas and the result was too many filler episodes set in the holodeck. Voyager would’ve been a much better show if the seasons were 12 or 13 episodes long. That’s a problem with American TV shows in general. Or at least those on broadcast networks. There’s 20-25 episodes or so a season and that’s too many to have a well written story arc. So there’s tons of filler. The absolute worst are clip shows and dream sequence episodes. Almost all the American TV shows I watch these days are on cable networks or Netflix originals as those have 10-13 episodes and that improves the pacing and plots so much.
Has it been announced how many episodes Discovery will have in its first season? I would so love it if they would embrace the shorter season trend.
@weirwoodtreehugger:
Really? There was a single character on Voyager that was likable?
I’m not seeing it. They were all insufferable with the possible exception of Seven who had a certain amount of Spock/Data immunity.
The best characters in Voyager were the Gel Packs and they were barely mentioned after episode 1.
@Freemage: I always wonder what things I’ve done in my life, that seemed pretty ordinary at the time, will be regarded as heinous 50-100 years from now.
When I was young, it was not legally possible to rape your wife. It was assumed that she had consented to have sex with you whenever you wanted to, whether she wanted to or not. I never overtly forced her to have sex, but I’m sure there were times when she really would rather have not but felt compelled to consent. I think the direction in which we are moving is such that a person conducting himself as I did then will be regarded as a serial rapist, but by the standard of the times, my behavior was quite ordinary and even expected.
After all, it is only in the past few centuries that slavery has come to be regarded as immoral by “civilized” people. The problem with judging people from past generations by current standards is that even the most social warrior-y of us will probably seem grossly insensitive to obvious immorality to future generations. And that’s a good thing.
@GrumpyOld SocialJusticeMangina
On a similar note, I have had (some decades ago) sex with people who I now recognise were too drunk to consent. I was drunk too and I didn’t try to force or manipulate anyone through booze or incapacity but if the same sort of situation came up now I definitely wouldn’t do it. This is because I’ve learned something over the last decade or so that I should have already known.
I’ve learned it because of sites like this, frankly.
I really hope I never hurt anyone but I can’t ever rule out that possibility.
(I love Janeway. I have no idea about Kate Mulgrew but have a hard time imagining her as a terrible person. Im’a go check her twitter actually!
… okay, as far as I can see she’s not terrible! Whew!)
Agreed. All the newcomers to the franchise were the highlights of the film for me (with the exception of Domnhall Gleeson, who just couldn’t sell me as an evil General the same way a Julian Glover or Ken Colley could). It was the goofy Millennium Falcon stuff that felt tedious and the story itself did feel rehashed.
And what the hell was Max Von Sydow doing there? He’s the first character we really see talk and given his age, it feels like we’re supposed to know who he is from the previous films, but we’ve never seen him before. It was like he wandered onto the set from another Sci-Fi franchise and they just kept him in the movie. “Wait, this isn’t ‘Dune 2: The Legend of Gurney’s Gold’? Okay, I’ll pretend to be Alec Guinness for the day.”
Fun fact: Max was paid in ham sandwiches for his cameo.*
*Alternative fact, should not be taken as truth
Gonna get people mad at me but…Actually, to a point I have to agree with Hamil, as Rey not only pulled a lightsaber but also just instinctively knew Jedi mind control (even if the scene was funny as hell). And no being put on a desert planet, struggling and scavenging to survive probably wouldn’t put you in a meditative state to learn on your own. It didn’t run the movie on its own, but combined with some fairly big plot issues it made for probably the most overrated star wars movie.
But the plot was a bigger issue, most notably the decision to star killer the republic government which essentially caused a reset to zero of the plucky republic loving rebels vs the empire (oops, excuse me, First Order). All because apparently the hardcore fans “didn’t like the politics” in the prequel trilogy.
Then again, I liked Rogue One more so what do I know.
I had a soft spot for Tom Paris. The guy had issues (most of them daddy-related), but at least he actually had a character arc, as did the Doctor and Seven (although her arc kept getting stalled repeatedly).
I think we can all agree that Neelix was just insufferable. He was the most bafflingly superfluous element of the show and just grating whenever he opened his mouth. He shouldn’t have lasted past The Caretaker, but for some reason the writers wanted to inflict him on us for seven years.
@Gussie:
I don’t buy that. Tom Paris was a 1D character, really. He didn’t have issues, stories occasionally *said* he had issues but they were never really evident in the character.
I hope so. Neelix traded on his rescuing of Kes for sexual favours until she finally saw sense and he racially abused Tuvok in virtually every episode. “Mr Vulcan” indeed, talk about de-vulcanising.
I loooooved Rogue One, probably my favourite in the franchise. The Force Awakened had some excellent characters, but I wasn’t really in love with the way they had taken the story. Perhaps that will be clarified in upcoming movies, but for now I find the Resistance and the New Order to be too contrived.
As for Rey not being able to learn Jedi Mind Magic because she’s scrambling to survive on a desert planet… speaking from the experience of surviving in general, quite a bit of survival involves sitting your ass down and conserving what you have. Up here it generally involves staying around the fire between checking traps; in a desert it would involve conserving water and energy during the hottest parts of the day. She’d have ample time to meditate, be thoughtful, or do small low-energy things. I find the fact that she grew up mostly alone in an austere environment to be an excellent background for her Force powers. “Going to the desert to get closer to God” is a trope so old it was trope’y when the Old Testament was written. If anyone’s going to have a spiritual awakening in a story, it’s probably going to be while they’re lost in a harsh, barren wilderness.
My Alt-right-inclining friend (I still call him friend, sigh) loved the original trilogy, disliked the prequels but gave them a pass, and hated TFA so much he’s now written off the entire franchise. Refuses to even see Rogue One, though I know he’d love it, because of what they did to the story. Knowing what I know now, I have to wonder whether his issue is that there’s a woman as a protagonist with a black sidekick. SJWs have taken over his stur wurs! End of world.
Sigh.
Rogue One is great though, guys, really. Loved it. Was like an inverse sci-fi Seven Samurai. Fantastic. They did it right, I’m excited for more.
Which is a shame because, based on actor Ethan Phillips resume, he could have done a sound job if they had given him a competently constructed character to play.
As for Tom Paris, the character in the pilot was set up as having potential…potential that wasn’t followed up on in any of the episodes I saw in season 1 (which was the only one I saw with regularity, though none of the later episodes I saw ever appeared to give him that 2nd dimension either).