14.6.2009
Yesterday deep into the night, I watched the new Star Trek movie.
I liked the fresh and occasionally nonchalantly creative approach
to the old story universe, and there were some quite enjoyable action
sequences.
The ethical message of the film, however, I found questionable. The main
theme seemed to be the rehabilitation of emotional depth in the lead
character Spock (who was much more radical in his denial of overt
emotionality in his actions during the old series). This is a pity, because
the contrast with the Kirk and McCoy characters always had an interesting
dialectic (for a TV series, anyway) at its day, which is now sadly lost.
More regrettable is that the main drive of the changes is also in the
direction of incoherence. The movie confuses the idea that emotions are an
important and indispensable part of a fully lived human life (which is
correct) with the idea that it is sometimes right to switch off reason as
the governing part of your psyche, and let yourself be carried away by
the command of a feeling like anger (which is wrong).
When the young Spock, distressed by the destruction of his home planet
and the death of his mother in that event, tells his father that he feels
"an anger [he] cannot control", the reply is "Then don't". In this key
scene, then, there seems to be a paternal permission to sometimes act
out of a feeling, and out of that feeling alone. How unsound this is
becomes clear subsequently; very obviously, Spock doesn't act as if
controlled by anger in the showdown sequences: he seems strongly motivated
by it, but he is not blindly driven by rage or fury. He still is highly
disciplined and acts cleverly and responsibly. (If nothing else, this
impossibility to show its characters living the attempted new view should
have demonstrated how unsound it is.)
