Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions On Star Trek (Film Studies) [Hardcover]

Taylor Harrison (Author), Sarah Projansky (Author), Kent Ono (Author), Elyce Rae Helford (Author), EDITOR * (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0813328985 | ISBN-13: 978-0813328980 | Publication Date: August 8, 1996 | Edition: 1ST

Can you imagine a world without Star Trek—without warp drive, phasers, photon torpedoes, tricorders, communicators, and transporters? After six Hollywood movies and twenty-five years of nonstop television presence, Star Trek is, indeed, a pervasive cultural phenomenon! This is the first critical, scholarly look at the mysteries, hidden meanings, and complex issues of the text known as Star Trek.Looking at the original Spock-Kirk Star Trek, the contributors ask and answer questions such as: What are the cultural conditions surrounding the homoerotic relationship between Kirk and Spock? How does the show depict gender relations while simultaneously recreating the cultural conditions under which women continue to experience sexual aggression and violence? They also explore Star Trek: The Next Generation, raising issues such as: Was Data a battlefield on which the struggle for human rights was waged? Did militarism and warring versions of masculinity intersect at Worf?Readers will discover the unique charges of cultural studies scholarship and how it enables us to designate a powerful pop-cultural phenomenon such as Star Trek into a legitimate site of study. The thirteen essayists address the very real and necessary topics of hegemony, utopias, militarism, colonialism, gender, violence, race, class, sexuality, and liminality, analyzing individual episodes and overarching themes of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Their insights on how Star Trek affects what we understand our culture to be, how it represents the social and political order, and how it reproduces pleasure and pain in its televisual texts, will fascinate scholars, students, and Trekkers alike.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you've always thought that Star Trek and Star Trek: the Next Generation deserved the kind of close, political analysis that first-year English classes currently lavish on The Odyssey and To The Lighthouse, then Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek is the volume you have been waiting for. But, then, how could anyone fail to enjoy articles entitled "Worf as Metonymic Signifier of Racial, Cultural and National Differences," and "General Chang as Homoerotic Enablement in Star Trek VI: the Undiscovered Country"? The twin charms of this book lie in the writers' ability to quote dialog from dozens of episodes as though they were great works of the Western Canon, and in their frequent failure to distinguish the fictional Federation from a real political entity crying out for critical reappraisal. A delight on many levels. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Thirteen scholars contributed to this volume, the first of its kind to address Star TrekR critically. Where Camille Bacon-Smith's Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth (Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1992) focused on audiences, Enterprise Zones dissects the episodes and films. The contributors challenge Star Trek's avowed utopian vision and liberal humanism, demonstrating the concerns of recent cultural studies in academe. Essays explore such topics as Captain Kirk's masculinity, Lt. Commander Data's cyborg nature, and Counselor Troi's costumes. Emphasis is given to the politics of the original series and The Next Generation, and both are discussed in terms of militarism and neocolonialism. The contributors write with suspicion, insight, and respect for their subject matter, making this a sterling addition for any academic library. General readers might well be alienated by the scholarly jargon, however.?Neal Baker, Dickinson Coll. Lib., Carlisle, Pa.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press; 1ST edition (August 8, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813328985
• ISBN-13: 978-0813328980
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,133,736 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An academic look at the Enterprise, January 21, 1998

By 

Peter Clark (Walsall, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions (Film Studies (Boulder, Colo.).) (Paperback)

This is a book written by fans of the phenomena that is Star trek who also happen to be academics - or is it the other way round? Either way, what is offered here is a critical but affectionate study of some of the issues that many viewers and fans believe Star Trek to address most successfully - racism, sexism, colonialism and so on. What becomes apparent, however, on reading this book, is that basing one's critical approval of the series on an assumption that Gene Roddenbery's creation has got it right on each and every occasion is a position that is far from safe. The authors show that in more than one instance the Federation behaves in a manner as questionable as that of its purported enemies. This is especially the case with Star Trek's most powerful villains to date, the Borg (featured in the latest of the Star Trek movies "First Contact") whose aim to "raise the quality of life" is really no different from the Federation's aims, even if the methods employed are quite unalike. In other words, the Borg want everyone to be Borg and Federation Starfleet wants everyone to be (at least in attitude and outlook) human. To take another example, the Klingon Worf is praised by Captain Picard on a number of occasions, but only when his behaviour imitates that of this human crewmates; when Worf behaves like a Klingon (for example when he kills someone in a Klingon "rite of vengeance", an acceptable act in Klingon culture), he is reprimanded. These are valid observations, but sometimes the essays make connections which are more tenuous, such as the one which identifies the android Data with African-Americans in the present century. As a fan and an academic, I can appreciate what the authors of this collection are attempting to do. Whether the essays as a whole would be appreciated (in both senses of the word!) by those fans who are not accustomed to the language of the lecture theatre or text book is another matter, but I have no hesitation in saying that I found it rewarding, often fun and, despite the reservations I have already stated, it is a book to which I find myself turning again and again as I watch - perhaps too frequently - reruns of my favourite show.