Now that the original discussion has been linked on metafandom I've gone over and read that and I think the disconnect is twofold.
Expending considerable energy on reconstructing something that already exists in canon is, to me, the entire point of writing an AU. I think that when you swap Terran ethnicities for alien you ARE othering, on purpose, and the point is to find a place and a time where that othering is built into the culture. As Meg implies, of course the original writing of the alien is to explore the othering that happens in our own culture in a supposedly safe way (although that never actually works). So yes, the idea that Spock is half-Native American in the wild west story I read is a moment of othering, but one that is inherent to the time and place.
But at the same time I reject, fundamentally, that one's culture and experiences ARE who one is rather than SHAPE who one is. I do feel there is a me, inside, that reacts to what is going on but there is a kernel of self that remains. Heck, ST:XI itself plays with that idea rather freely, showing that even if Kirk grew up without a dad and very rebellious, he still inherently has qualities that make him a good leader, a good captain.
And I say that othering of the alien as nonoffensive never actually works because when you go back and watch or read SFF from the past you can see how completely soaked in the problems and attitudes of its time it is, has to be. One reason the AU I wrote works is that it picks up on things inherent to TOS—the mixed optimism and pessimism of the mid-cold war, and the transparent, unproblematic enthusiasm for the American imperial project. I expect the Reboot to have rather a different attitude about the ultimate benevolence of Starfleet, but we'll see. At the same time you can't extricate LotR, with all of its gender and race problems, from the British imperial project and the attitudes that fell out of that.
I find Spock's story ultimately to be one about assimilation, and how much one can or should resist it. In a way, and I don't mean to demean by the comparison because I think it's a great show, it's very like Samantha Stevens in Bewitched, which is also a tale of assimilation as well as passing.
In the end I think what I want to do is take the simplification that often happens in SFF—there is an unambiguous evil, all people from X planet are like Y—and recomplicate it into human terms.
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Date: 2009-11-19 01:30 pm (UTC)Expending considerable energy on reconstructing something that already exists in canon is, to me, the entire point of writing an AU. I think that when you swap Terran ethnicities for alien you ARE othering, on purpose, and the point is to find a place and a time where that othering is built into the culture. As Meg implies, of course the original writing of the alien is to explore the othering that happens in our own culture in a supposedly safe way (although that never actually works). So yes, the idea that Spock is half-Native American in the wild west story I read is a moment of othering, but one that is inherent to the time and place.
But at the same time I reject, fundamentally, that one's culture and experiences ARE who one is rather than SHAPE who one is. I do feel there is a me, inside, that reacts to what is going on but there is a kernel of self that remains. Heck, ST:XI itself plays with that idea rather freely, showing that even if Kirk grew up without a dad and very rebellious, he still inherently has qualities that make him a good leader, a good captain.
And I say that othering of the alien as nonoffensive never actually works because when you go back and watch or read SFF from the past you can see how completely soaked in the problems and attitudes of its time it is, has to be. One reason the AU I wrote works is that it picks up on things inherent to TOS—the mixed optimism and pessimism of the mid-cold war, and the transparent, unproblematic enthusiasm for the American imperial project. I expect the Reboot to have rather a different attitude about the ultimate benevolence of Starfleet, but we'll see. At the same time you can't extricate LotR, with all of its gender and race problems, from the British imperial project and the attitudes that fell out of that.
I find Spock's story ultimately to be one about assimilation, and how much one can or should resist it. In a way, and I don't mean to demean by the comparison because I think it's a great show, it's very like Samantha Stevens in Bewitched, which is also a tale of assimilation as well as passing.
In the end I think what I want to do is take the simplification that often happens in SFF—there is an unambiguous evil, all people from X planet are like Y—and recomplicate it into human terms.