Kirk and Spock: a bromance made in the heavens
Despite all their star wattage and evident extravagance, some blockbuster films seem teensy on the big screen. A movie like Pearl Harbor was gigantic but so lacking in interest that I recall, at one point, staring at the cinema's exit sign because there was more going on over there. This is certainly not the case with the new Star Trek film (US opening weekend gross $79m). About a third of the way through, beyond the shimmer of special effects, you start to glimpse other things happening—themes, myths and echoes with genuine cinematic force.
One thing going on that most of the press has clocked is something called "bromance" which, where I come from, is friendship. In the original Star Trek television series (1966-69) and the six films that featured the same characters (1979-91), we got so used to Kirk and Spock being there for each other when they beamed down to alien planets that it didn't occur to us—or to me, at least—to ask how they became such best buds. The screenwriters of the new film did ask, and their answer is a creation myth. Kirk was an Iowan boy racer and priapic twentysomething. Spock was a bullied Vulcan brainiac. Kirk is defined by what's between his legs, Spock by what's between his famous ears. Spock devised a simulator that teaches Starfleet trainees to face death. Kirk tampered with it so that he didn't have to. The writers set up a sci-fi encounter that guaranteed enmity—and, in Hollywood, enmity breeds amity every time.
So the fact that the bond between the new Spock and Kirk, once it forms, seems to be stable in the mid range (no fighting, no snogging) is pleasing and mature, like the kind of lifelong friendships my dad had. It's an interesting fact in itself; and it becomes still more so if we look at it through a political lens. Is there something a bit Democrat about such committed friendships? Or do Republicans think they own cordiality and chumminess—what are manners and two guys in a fishing boat about, after all? Camaraderie, like patriotism, is too big a thing simply to be blue or red—but it seems to me to have a hint of pigmentation in this new Star Trek.
As we know, the series' originator, Gene Roddenberry, was an atheistic Kennedy Democrat, and the new film's future world is multiracial yet entirely without racism, in keeping with the spirit of Roddenberry's original. But one intriguing thing in it has not been commented upon. Every time Spock's Vulcan heritage is mentioned or shown, a musical instrument that sounds very like a traditional erhu (Chinese two-stringed violin) is heard. In a turbulent western score, this leitmotif is clear, consistent and deliberate. Moreover, the scenes of Vulcan philosophy feel Buddhist, and when Spock rescues his parents from a cave of worship, its design was surely influenced by Buddhist statuary. And Spock's face, of course, is somewhat Asian.
This, I think, gives Star Trek a contemporary thrum. The blue-eyed Wasp Kirk stretches out the open hand of friendship to Spock, and we glimpse America doing the same to China. To say this is not, I hope, to read too much into a popular entertainment. As I've argued here before, Hollywood is a weathervane. Recently, the prevailing American winds have had about them the smell of fear of the middle east and Islam: the movie 300 certainly did. Fewer big movies, too, have been aware of east Asia or, if they were, they pissed all over it, such as the culturally clumsy Memoirs of a Geisha (2005). But the liberal thrust of the new Star Trek movie, while hardly warp speed, perhaps positions it ahead of 21st-century America's learning curve about Asia. And it has resulted in a film that has gentle metaphorics as well as explosive action. Long may they go hand-in-hand. Metaphor and action, that is.
Despite all their star wattage and evident extravagance, some blockbuster films seem teensy on the big screen. A movie like Pearl Harbor was gigantic but so lacking in interest that I recall, at one point, staring at the cinema's exit sign because there was more going on over there. This is certainly not the case with the new Star Trek film (US opening weekend gross $79m). About a third of the way through, beyond the shimmer of special effects, you start to glimpse other things happening—themes, myths and echoes with genuine cinematic force.
One thing going on that most of the press has clocked is something called "bromance" which, where I come from, is friendship. In the original Star Trek television series (1966-69) and the six films that featured the same characters (1979-91), we got so used to Kirk and Spock being there for each other when they beamed down to alien planets that it didn't occur to us—or to me, at least—to ask how they became such best buds. The screenwriters of the new film did ask, and their answer is a creation myth. Kirk was an Iowan boy racer and priapic twentysomething. Spock was a bullied Vulcan brainiac. Kirk is defined by what's between his legs, Spock by what's between his famous ears. Spock devised a simulator that teaches Starfleet trainees to face death. Kirk tampered with it so that he didn't have to. The writers set up a sci-fi encounter that guaranteed enmity—and, in Hollywood, enmity breeds amity every time.
So the fact that the bond between the new Spock and Kirk, once it forms, seems to be stable in the mid range (no fighting, no snogging) is pleasing and mature, like the kind of lifelong friendships my dad had. It's an interesting fact in itself; and it becomes still more so if we look at it through a political lens. Is there something a bit Democrat about such committed friendships? Or do Republicans think they own cordiality and chumminess—what are manners and two guys in a fishing boat about, after all? Camaraderie, like patriotism, is too big a thing simply to be blue or red—but it seems to me to have a hint of pigmentation in this new Star Trek.
As we know, the series' originator, Gene Roddenberry, was an atheistic Kennedy Democrat, and the new film's future world is multiracial yet entirely without racism, in keeping with the spirit of Roddenberry's original. But one intriguing thing in it has not been commented upon. Every time Spock's Vulcan heritage is mentioned or shown, a musical instrument that sounds very like a traditional erhu (Chinese two-stringed violin) is heard. In a turbulent western score, this leitmotif is clear, consistent and deliberate. Moreover, the scenes of Vulcan philosophy feel Buddhist, and when Spock rescues his parents from a cave of worship, its design was surely influenced by Buddhist statuary. And Spock's face, of course, is somewhat Asian.
This, I think, gives Star Trek a contemporary thrum. The blue-eyed Wasp Kirk stretches out the open hand of friendship to Spock, and we glimpse America doing the same to China. To say this is not, I hope, to read too much into a popular entertainment. As I've argued here before, Hollywood is a weathervane. Recently, the prevailing American winds have had about them the smell of fear of the middle east and Islam: the movie 300 certainly did. Fewer big movies, too, have been aware of east Asia or, if they were, they pissed all over it, such as the culturally clumsy Memoirs of a Geisha (2005). But the liberal thrust of the new Star Trek movie, while hardly warp speed, perhaps positions it ahead of 21st-century America's learning curve about Asia. And it has resulted in a film that has gentle metaphorics as well as explosive action. Long may they go hand-in-hand. Metaphor and action, that is.
