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anghraineI was actually slightly on edge about getting into a frankly notorious fandom without encountering this kind of thing sooner. After getting a somewhat clearer sense of trends and fun conversations and persistent annoyances (at least on Tumblr), and after monologuing my TOS feelings, I still hadn't received any particular unpleasantnesses on a personal level, and was like ... well, maybe people are nicer now, even to someone like me. But mostly I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop, especially given that I'd found TOS in particular very different from what I'd expected via fandom and pop culture osmosis on many, many levels.
But it would have never occurred to me that my controversial TOS hot take would be "Spock's co-workers are racist to him a lot and this is the main vehicle for TOS's exploration of racism as a thing." But yup, I got anon hate about how "funny" it is that I'd been complaining about bad Kirk takes (specifically, I'd recently seen a conversation about how "TOS Kirk actually doesn't experience angst over anything but challenges to his authority" when I'd been very surprised to discover that a) TOS persistently returns to how lonely and fearful of being left alone he is, and b) TOS Kirk is a genocide survivor struggling with his options of "doing nothing" or "ruthless vengeance", and he was bullied in the Academy for being "grim" (no shit?), and that's not even the only massacre he survived, and a lot of his infamous romances are blatantly coercive towards him). See, it's funny because I'm so biased towards Spock that I don't even realize it and have said people are just always being mean to him.
(I don't think I said "mean." I said racist.)
Anyway, I was so utterly baffled by that of all things being my big controversial ST opinion that I read it to my housemates for shits and giggles, though normally I keep fandom drama away from RL. Since my BFF J is a massive Trekkie and Ash has watched a few TOS episodes with us, they got the context and J was just laughing his head off while a very confused Ash was like, "Has this person seen it?"
On the bright side, we had a whole conversation about the various desperate flailing attempts I've seen to defend the general racism against Spock within the show, or at least to suggest that it's no different from Spock's or Kirk's own behavior, and that ended up being actually interesting, so at least something deeper came of it! But I'm still baffled at how you watch something like "Balance of Terror" and come away thinking the point of Spock's experiences and Kirk's outrage is "Spock gives as good as he gets, though, so it's not REALLY racism."
On top of that, J and I had actually been talking days earlier about how there seems this strange fandom embargo on engaging with, particularly, McCoy's racism in interpreting his character, its function, and especially his relationships with Spock and Kirk. Not only "I prefer to headcanon something different" but indignation over anyone anywhere even acknowledging it's part of the show. J and I are actually really interested in the ways that TOS sets up this Spock vs McCoy tension in which Kirk is either the mediator or battlefield—or the tension rises because he's not there—but this is never really a balanced tension because both Kirk and the narrative itself so obviously favor Spock over McCoy. And Kirk himself is even more favored. There's a reason that Spock gets twice McCoy's share of the overall dialogue even though McCoy is chattier. J actually has a theory that a more balanced version of the triad might have been more effective in a lot of different ways (thematically, their relationships with each other and how those reflect on their individual characters, etc), which I do find interesting to consider, but there's so much defensive dogma about how they're all totally balanced and equally important and favored that it can be difficult to figure out where these interpretations are even coming from. Just about every conversation I've seen about McCoy in any capacity, or about the bigotry directed at Spock, becomes a very strange game of Telephone very fast.
But it would have never occurred to me that my controversial TOS hot take would be "Spock's co-workers are racist to him a lot and this is the main vehicle for TOS's exploration of racism as a thing." But yup, I got anon hate about how "funny" it is that I'd been complaining about bad Kirk takes (specifically, I'd recently seen a conversation about how "TOS Kirk actually doesn't experience angst over anything but challenges to his authority" when I'd been very surprised to discover that a) TOS persistently returns to how lonely and fearful of being left alone he is, and b) TOS Kirk is a genocide survivor struggling with his options of "doing nothing" or "ruthless vengeance", and he was bullied in the Academy for being "grim" (no shit?), and that's not even the only massacre he survived, and a lot of his infamous romances are blatantly coercive towards him). See, it's funny because I'm so biased towards Spock that I don't even realize it and have said people are just always being mean to him.
(I don't think I said "mean." I said racist.)
Anyway, I was so utterly baffled by that of all things being my big controversial ST opinion that I read it to my housemates for shits and giggles, though normally I keep fandom drama away from RL. Since my BFF J is a massive Trekkie and Ash has watched a few TOS episodes with us, they got the context and J was just laughing his head off while a very confused Ash was like, "Has this person seen it?"
On the bright side, we had a whole conversation about the various desperate flailing attempts I've seen to defend the general racism against Spock within the show, or at least to suggest that it's no different from Spock's or Kirk's own behavior, and that ended up being actually interesting, so at least something deeper came of it! But I'm still baffled at how you watch something like "Balance of Terror" and come away thinking the point of Spock's experiences and Kirk's outrage is "Spock gives as good as he gets, though, so it's not REALLY racism."
On top of that, J and I had actually been talking days earlier about how there seems this strange fandom embargo on engaging with, particularly, McCoy's racism in interpreting his character, its function, and especially his relationships with Spock and Kirk. Not only "I prefer to headcanon something different" but indignation over anyone anywhere even acknowledging it's part of the show. J and I are actually really interested in the ways that TOS sets up this Spock vs McCoy tension in which Kirk is either the mediator or battlefield—or the tension rises because he's not there—but this is never really a balanced tension because both Kirk and the narrative itself so obviously favor Spock over McCoy. And Kirk himself is even more favored. There's a reason that Spock gets twice McCoy's share of the overall dialogue even though McCoy is chattier. J actually has a theory that a more balanced version of the triad might have been more effective in a lot of different ways (thematically, their relationships with each other and how those reflect on their individual characters, etc), which I do find interesting to consider, but there's so much defensive dogma about how they're all totally balanced and equally important and favored that it can be difficult to figure out where these interpretations are even coming from. Just about every conversation I've seen about McCoy in any capacity, or about the bigotry directed at Spock, becomes a very strange game of Telephone very fast.