I'm reposting this, one of my favorite posts, because it got a new comment this morning from a fan who proposes Janice Lester was mentally ill all along [her post here].
I don't see that, but it does occur to me instead that Janice Lester is a forerunner of Khan in Wrath of Khan--another fiendishly clever villain, perhaps mentally unstable to begin with?, driven over the edge by injustice [why didn't Kirk send someone to check on Khan's people?], out for revenge on Kirk.
That view makes this episode even less sexist--and Kirk, again, a flawed hero. Human, all too human.
"Turning "Turnabout" Around" Originally posted Sunday, April 25, 2010
Many people hate "Turnabout Intruder"--Star Trek's final episode--because it seems to justify sexism.
I like it because it sets a philosophical puzzle--how could Star Trek possibly condone injustice?--and because the solution is not in the usual place: it's Spock who is the moral compass here, not Kirk.
The episode opens with Jim Kirk meeting his former lover Janice Lester again for their first time since they were students in Starfleet. They had shared the same desire: to be starship captains;
but as Janice reminds Jim, Starfleet doesn't admit women captains.
He agrees it is not fair, but he still resents that she used that against him.
To get her revenge and a captaincy, Janice switches bodies with Jim.
This is one of the few episodes where the captain's moral sense is badly askew. "A Private Little War" is maybe another, but there, Jim knows it. Here he is relentlessly sure of himself.
His self-righteous pigheadedness is the classic posture of an otherwise decent person who's in the tricky position of having benefitted from injustice.
Instead, it is Spock who is the moral fulcrum of "Turnabout Intruder."
As the objective, rational non-human, he sees right past emotive, cultural gender constructs to accept Jim, in Janice's body, as the captain.
By the end, the body transfer has fallen apart and Janice is led off, weeping in impotent rage, by the man who loves her, while Jim looks on, sad but smug, and declares she could have been happy as any woman, if only...
The episode is not sexist, it shows Kirk as sexist and invites the viewer to identify with Spock instead.
When I tried to write about this, it turned into a tedious philosophy paper, so I made a macro instead.
Anyway, it's Macro Sunday, per Margaret.
________________
______________________________
SOME QUOTES I DREW ON TO MAKE THIS MACRO
"There's a place for women in SNCC: on their backs!"
~ Stokely Carmichael (1968)
JANICE: Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women. It isn't fair.
JIM: No, it isn't.
Dialogue from "Turnabout Intruder" (1969), Transcript here
''If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.''
Clayton Williams, Texan gubernatorial candidate comparing bad weather to rape
"The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves."
~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
"So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state."
~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
“Her life could have been as rich as any woman's. If only... If only...”
~Final lines, spoken by Captain Kirk, "Turnabout Intruder" (1969), Transcript here
"Commanding a starship is your first, best destiny; anything else is a waste of material."
~Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Spock to Kirk
"And he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he had determined to use to the utmost himself...."
+
"I simply state that I'm a product of a versatile mind in a restless generation — with every reason to throw my mind and pen in with the radicals. Even if, deep in my heart, I thought we were all blind atoms in a world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I and my sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones."
~This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920), not the Star Trek episode of the same name)
"The future is something to be constructed through trial and error rather than an inexorable vice that determines all our actions."
~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedoms
I don't see that, but it does occur to me instead that Janice Lester is a forerunner of Khan in Wrath of Khan--another fiendishly clever villain, perhaps mentally unstable to begin with?, driven over the edge by injustice [why didn't Kirk send someone to check on Khan's people?], out for revenge on Kirk.
That view makes this episode even less sexist--and Kirk, again, a flawed hero. Human, all too human.
"Turning "Turnabout" Around" Originally posted Sunday, April 25, 2010
Many people hate "Turnabout Intruder"--Star Trek's final episode--because it seems to justify sexism.
I like it because it sets a philosophical puzzle--how could Star Trek possibly condone injustice?--and because the solution is not in the usual place: it's Spock who is the moral compass here, not Kirk.
The episode opens with Jim Kirk meeting his former lover Janice Lester again for their first time since they were students in Starfleet. They had shared the same desire: to be starship captains;
but as Janice reminds Jim, Starfleet doesn't admit women captains.
He agrees it is not fair, but he still resents that she used that against him.
To get her revenge and a captaincy, Janice switches bodies with Jim.
This is one of the few episodes where the captain's moral sense is badly askew. "A Private Little War" is maybe another, but there, Jim knows it. Here he is relentlessly sure of himself.
His self-righteous pigheadedness is the classic posture of an otherwise decent person who's in the tricky position of having benefitted from injustice.
Instead, it is Spock who is the moral fulcrum of "Turnabout Intruder."
As the objective, rational non-human, he sees right past emotive, cultural gender constructs to accept Jim, in Janice's body, as the captain.
By the end, the body transfer has fallen apart and Janice is led off, weeping in impotent rage, by the man who loves her, while Jim looks on, sad but smug, and declares she could have been happy as any woman, if only...
The episode is not sexist, it shows Kirk as sexist and invites the viewer to identify with Spock instead.
When I tried to write about this, it turned into a tedious philosophy paper, so I made a macro instead.
Anyway, it's Macro Sunday, per Margaret.
________________
______________________________
SOME QUOTES I DREW ON TO MAKE THIS MACRO
"There's a place for women in SNCC: on their backs!"
~ Stokely Carmichael (1968)
JANICE: Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women. It isn't fair.
JIM: No, it isn't.
Dialogue from "Turnabout Intruder" (1969), Transcript here
''If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.''
Clayton Williams, Texan gubernatorial candidate comparing bad weather to rape
"The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves."
~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
"So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state."
~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
“Her life could have been as rich as any woman's. If only... If only...”
~Final lines, spoken by Captain Kirk, "Turnabout Intruder" (1969), Transcript here
"Commanding a starship is your first, best destiny; anything else is a waste of material."
~Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982), Spock to Kirk
"And he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he had determined to use to the utmost himself...."
+
"I simply state that I'm a product of a versatile mind in a restless generation — with every reason to throw my mind and pen in with the radicals. Even if, deep in my heart, I thought we were all blind atoms in a world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I and my sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones."
~This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920), not the Star Trek episode of the same name)
"The future is something to be constructed through trial and error rather than an inexorable vice that determines all our actions."
~Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedoms