Actors’ Sacrifices; Two Views on Forgiveness

I have two thoughts for today:

1.  Yesterday, I watched an excellent documentary called The Captains, in which William Shatner of Star Trek fame interviewed other actors who played captains on a Star Trek show or movie (Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Bakula, and Chris Pine), as well as shared his own reflections about Star Trek.

What particularly stood out to me in the documentary were comments by Scott Bakula and Kate Mulgrew, both of whom I love as actors.  Scott Bakula was saying that working on Quantum Leap essentially cost him his marriage, since he was working 12-hour days (at least), with rarely a day off.  Because he was a fairly new actor and thus did not have the leverage to negotiate his hours, he showed up when he was needed.  Kate Mulgrew of Star Trek: Voyager said that she was a single mother during the Voyager days, and she did not get to see her kids that much on account of her long workdays.  To this day, she said, her kids are not interested in the show—-they do not want to watch it—-for they resent how it took their mother away from them.  I can’t imagine not wanting to watch Star Trek: Voyager, but, of course, I enjoy it from a distance, without being exposed to all that it took to make it, or how that affected other people.

2.  Rachel Held Evans has a post, Ask a Seventh-Day Adventist.  As I discuss the issues of forgiveness and salvation in the comments section with Delina Pryce McPhaull and Nicholas, I am seeing more clearly the type of Christianity that I had growing up, and how that contrasts with the sort of Christianity that I encountered among evangelicals.

The type of Christianity that I had growing up (in Armstrongism) went like this: I accept Christ as my personal savior and my past sins are forgiven.  But I need to continue to ask God for forgiveness to keep my slate clean, and God forgives me continually on the basis of what Christ did on the cross.  But asking God for forgiveness is not enough for me to be forgiven on a continual basis, for I also need to repent (i.e., try not to do the sin anymore) and forgive others.

The sort of Christianity that I encountered among evangelicals went like this: I accept Christ as my personal savior and God then regards me as righteous and as a child of God, even though I still have imperfections.  I confess my sins to God, ask God for forgiveness, repent, and forgive others, not to keep my slate clean, for it’s already clean in God’s sight after I accept Christ.  Rather, I do these things to enrich my relationship with God and perhaps even to make myself feel better.

These are my impressions.  I can’t be absolute here, for I think that there were some elements of the second view in my religious upbringing.  But there was enough of the first view swimming around in my mind that, when I was in an evangelical small group and heard the leader say that one did not have to repent of every sin to be saved, I was shocked.

The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships 28

For my write-up today on The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships, I’ll highlight something on page 363.  It’s talking about Jennifer McIlwee Myers, who wrote a section of the book:

“Jennifer has been married to Gary Myers for eleven years.  They met at a science fiction/fantasy book discussion group, where he wowed her with his encyclopedic knowledge of horror films and early 20th C. fantasy literature.”

I liked that.  As a matter of fact, I also liked how my latest reading of the book was about how Aspies can be interested in certain topics and draw from their interests as they attempt to cope with life.  For example, Jennifer holds on to a Harry Potter or Disneyland item in her pocket if she needs to calm down.  I’m not interested in Harry Potter so much (at least not yet), but I like, say, Star Trek: Voyager.  And wouldn’t it be nice if I could wow a lady with my eccentric interests (i.e., the life of Richard Nixon, which I will read and blog about in 2013). 

Susan Faludi, Backlash 8

In my latest reading of Susan Faludi’s 1991 book, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, Faludi critiques sexism in television shows, which persists notwithstanding the decline in women watching television.  According to Faludi, television shows present the mother as absent (Full House), give women a salient domestic role while not emphasizing their independence (Family Ties, Cosby Show), objectify women, or focus on women who have non-threatening roles “in a strictly all-female world” (Golden Girls, Designing Women).  Shows with strong autonomous women, such as Kate and Alley and Roseanne, have to fight to survive or (in the case of Roseanne) are lambasted.  According to Faludi, television shows and movies also stigmatize abortion and female sexuality outside of marriage, even as they champion men sleeping with a number of women.

It was challenging to read Faludi talk about entertainment because she was criticizing many of the shows and movies that I happen to like.  Why do I like them?  Is it because I’m a sexist?  I don’t think that I am against watching women succeed in the professional world.  One of my favorite shows is Star Trek: Voyager, and that has a female captain.  C.J. Cregg on The West Wing is independent, and I admire her.

I do admit that I have liked for shows to stigmatize abortion, for that has confirmed my own pro-life stance (in my own mind): I can say that even the liberal entertainment industry thinks that there’s something wrong about abortion, so abortion must be wrong!  I also confess that there are shows that focus on independent women that I do not like—-such as the Mary Tyler Moore show.  While I enjoyed watching Murphy Brown, I wouldn’t be comfortable dating Murphy Brown.  I’d be more comfortable dating Corky Sherwood.  When it comes to shows depicting single independent women, what that usually brings to my mind is how hard the dating scene is.  But, for some reason, I’m comfortable watching family sitcoms, even though I’m not married.  I think a big part of that is because I was a kid when those sitcoms were on, and so I could identify with them at the time, and I experience nostalgia whenever I watch them. Did my childhood match what was on the sitcoms?  In a sense, yes.  My Mom stayed at home for a significant part of my childhood.  Even when she owned a health food store and went back to school, she was still around for us kids.

Personally, I don’t think that it’s wrong for shows to depict women in the domestic sphere, as long as they acknowledge that women also may have needs outside of the home—-needs for self-fulfillment, for expression of their creativity, etc.  Faludi acknowledges in places of her book that women can work outside of the home while still maintaining their family lives.  But she also appears to criticize movies and shows that depict women within the domestic sphere.  She would probably say that these shows emphasize the women within their domestic sphere, and that this is part of the backlash of encouraging women to stay at home rather than being independent.  Perhaps her critique is valid.  I still enjoy the shows that I watch, though.  And yet, I also like shows that acknowledge women’s search for self-fulfillment, for that adds depths to characters.  But I usually like to see men and women working something out to make everyone in the family happy, rather than for the woman to ditch her family.  According to Faludi, there was a time when movies focused on men and women working things out, without belittling women’s aspirations.

Is It Orson? Star Trek: Voyager Anniversary

I have two entertainment items for today:

1.  On Desperate Housewives, who is the one who is leaving Bree notes and ran over Officer Chuck with a car?  We know that it’s a man, for, last night, we saw his hands on the steering wheel of his car as he was watching Bree.  Here’s my guess: it’s Orson Hodge!  He ran over someone before—-Mike Delfino.  He was married to Bree for a while.  But the question is this: How, if it is him, did he find out that Bree and her friends buried the body of Gaby’s abusive stepfather?  Of course, the way that these ladies have been blabbing, it’s a wonder if anyone does NOT know by now!  But the person who left the note knew early on, when it was supposedly a tightly-kept secret.

2.  Today is the seventeenth anniversary of Star Trek: Voyager!  I love this series, probably more than other Star Trek series that I have seen.  I like the one where Harry debunked a group’s beliefs about its afterlife, and yet learned from Captain Janeway at the end that perhaps the people’s souls go somewhere after death.  I like the one where the Doctor (or, actually, a copy of the holographic doctor) awakens in the future and sees a misrepresentation of Voyager and its crew—-as part of a people-group’s history.  There are so many awesome episodes!  I watched Voyager when it first came on, but I fell in love with it when it was in syndication, probably because I was older at that point and could identify with things on it more.

Star Trek Voyager: Living Witness

This is one of my favorite Star Trek Voyager episodes. It’s entitled “Living Witness”, and it’s about how history can function as an ideological narrative that impacts the present. I may show this to students if I ever become a professor.

Enjoy!

Lost and Star Trek: Voyager

So far, what I like about Lost is the same thing that I like about Star Trek: Voyager: most of the episodes concentrate on one specific character at a time, and that allows me to get to know each one of them.

When I first saw Star Trek: Voyager, my initial thought was, “Who are these people? And how many Star Treks do we need?” But I soon started to warm up to all of the characters. A lot of the episodes concentrated on one specific character at a time, in the sense that they focused on his or her struggles with a particular issue. But there were some episodes that were more flashback-oriented: we got to see things from Chakotay’s or Tuvok’s or Torres’ past. And that really bonded me to the characters. I was no longer watching a bunch of weirdos on just another Star Trek. I was sharing the experiences of friends.

That seems to be how Lost is: there are a lot of flashbacks. Wikipedia actually specifies whom each episode is about (see List of Lost episodes – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). I can tell that Sawyer is a jerk, but his flashbacks allow me to see how he became a jerk. And that’s the way it is with a lot of the characters. So far, I’ve watched the first eight episodes, so I’ve seen some of the background of Kate, Jack, Sawyer, Locke, and the Korean couple.

I hope to check out some more Season 1 DVDs tomorrow, if I can make it to the library. Sayid’s story is coming up, and I’m interesting in learning about this Iraqi torturer with a calm demeanor. I mean, he looks like someone I’d be friends with, and I dislike Saddam Hussein. Also, I see from wikipedia that Season 1 has an episode about the really big guy, and I’d like to get to know him better.

Barge of the Dead

I just watched “Barge of the Dead,” which is an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. You know, there are some episodes of shows that I like to watch more than once, since they speak to something within me. This is one such episode.

In “Barge of the Dead,” B’Elanna Torres goes to Klingon hell. As Star Trek: Voyager viewers know, B’Elanna is an interesting character. Her mother was a Klingon (and an obsessive one at that), while her father was a human. She dropped out of the Star Fleet Academy and joined the Maquis, a renegade group that resisted Cardassian tyranny. When the Maquis encountered Voyager in the far-out Delta Quadrant, the two groups teamed up to find their way home. On Voyager, B’Elanna is a Star Fleet engineer.

She is often very moody, yet she displays a lovable, vulnerable side every now and then. On this particular episode, we get to know her a little better. Essentially, B’Elanna has problems fitting in anywhere. She doesn’t care for her Klingon heritage, for her mother tried to shove it down her and her dad’s throats. In the process, she drove B’Elanna’s father away. B’Elanna also doesn’t like humans because she sees them as weak, and her Klingon heritage leads her to admire tough warriors. Yet, ironically, she is engaged to Tom Paris, a human on Voyager.

In Klingon hell, she decides to take the place of her mother, yet (for some reason) that is not enough. In despair, she cries out to her mother, “What do you want from me?” Her mother tells her that she must decide that for herself, yet B’Elanna continues to plead for guidance.

She encounters images of her Voyager crewmates, which means that she views her service on the ship as hell. They say that her anger has dragged them down along with herself. The vulcan, Tuvok, tells her to defend herself, as he throws her a Klingon weapon. B’Elanna then complains that she has tried to fulfill all of these roles: Star Fleet officer, Maquis, lover, and daughter. She asks what all of them want from her. Neelix, the cook, responds that they only want her. B’Elanna’s mother tells her to embrace life, and B’Elanna finally reaches a point of resignation. “I’m just tired of fighting,” she says, as she tosses her weapon into the air.

One reason I identify with B’Elanna is that she lacks inner peace. She is always fighting with someone because her main fight is with herself. She doesn’t know who she is and where she is going. She is lost. I feel that way a lot of times.

Yet, she seeks answers. She wants someone to tell her what to do. I cried during this part of the show because I was thinking about that very thing this morning, before I even saw the episode. I thought about how I stumble through this life feeling lost. I don’t know what people want from me, or even if I can give them what they want. And virtually everyone has advice. “You need to be the life of the party–a super extrovert. People aren’t attracted to those who are reclusive!” “You need to be yourself–be at peace, then people will be attracted to you.” “You need to speak out more at events.” “No, just listen, then you can hear something that can help you out.” “Do this, do that!” “No, do them when you’re truly ready!”

I realize that I’ve probably confused my readers, but I hear all of this advice, and I don’t know who’s right. I recognize that certain approaches work for me better than others. For example, beating myself up because I’m not the life of the party has never produced good fruit in my life. So should I only follow advice that I like? The problem there is that I don’t fully trust myself, for I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past.

When The Passion of the Christ was coming out, Mel Gibson gave an interview to Diane Sawyer. Mel was telling the story of his commitment to Christ. He said that he once stood out on a ledge, and he found himself in a dilemma: he didn’t want to live, and he didn’t want to die. He realized that someone higher than him had to have the answers for life.

I need guidance, yet I also should do what works for me. I can only be me, not someone else. I want to be attractive, yet that will be hard if it requires me to have something witty to say on every occasion. Maybe, like B’Elanna, I’ll eventually reach the point where I’m just plain tired of fighting, as I embrace all of the good things that life has to offer.

Is TV Getting More Liberal?

I suppose that television has always been rather liberal. Dallas, for example, presented rich capitalists as a conniving bunch of people. On Thursday night, however, I felt that the liberalism got more blatant.

I watch Eli Stone on Thursday nights. It is about a lawyer with a brain aneurysm who sees visions, which guide him on what to do. He believes that those visions are from God because they equip him to help people. Over the course of the show, he has changed from a self-centered jerk to someone who actually cares for others.

But last Thursday night, I had a difficult time cheering him on. On that particular episode, a teenage girl is suspended from school because she disrupted an abstinence education program. Basically, she played some sexually explicit lyrics over the loudspeaker. She decided to contest her suspension in court, and the foreign singer who wrote those lyrics graciously testified on her behalf. She was restored to school, and she asked for better sex education, the “pass out condoms” kind. The principal said that the school only received money for abstinence education, and so the singer held a concert to raise funds for the pro-condom brand of sex ed. Eli Stone was smiling at the concert, and I suppose that we were all supposed to applaud his heroism.

The liberalism was so blatant. On the stand, the singer excoriated Ronald Reagan for not speaking out against AIDS until it was too late. He also expressed admiration for the American principle of separation of church and state, and fear that it was being undermined. Hmm, I wonder if he was criticizing a certain President when he made that point, one who actually takes his faith seriously. Just a hunch I have.

First of all, most of the federal AIDS programs that exist today go back to the Reagan Administration. But even if Reagan didn’t do as much as he should have, was AIDS his fault? It spread as rapidly as it did because of promiscuous people, many of them homosexual and bisexual. Over time, it entered the heterosexual community.

Second, what is wrong with America respecting Jewish and Christian principles like abstinence? I’d say that we could use more of that value, not less. If more people saw sex as a gift from God for a husband and his wife, then AIDS and other STD’s would not be so rampant. Sex has become cheapened over the years. In one of the sub-plots on that episode of Eli Stone, one of the female lawyers sleeps with a male lawyer because he tells her his father died. When she finds out that his father is still alive, she gets upset. Well, perhaps she should have gotten more acquainted with him before she entered his bed.

At the same time, I think that Eli Stone is longing for better values, on some level. The female lawyer tells the male lawyer, for example, that he has been afraid of truly caring for a woman because he fears that she might leave him. When they are in bed, the male lawyer is disappointed when the female lawyer tries to get up before he does to avoid a deeper commitment. The singer on the witness stand said that he did not view his song as smut because he wrote it when he was in love. In the entertainment industry, there is a hunger for love, caring, and commitment, but a reluctance to embrace the Christian ideas that safeguard those values. Such ideas include the concept that sex is to be reserved for marriage, and that a man and his wife are to love each other until death do them part.

So why do I say that television has become more liberal? When I grew up, I watched L.A. Law. At some point in the course of its run, it brought on board a new character: a lawyer with conservative Christian convictions. She held off the advances of one of the male lawyers, as she upheld the value of chastity before marriage. She also bravely defended the right of a schoolteacher to tell his students about creationism. And the show did not present her as a nut job.

But that was before the Republicans took over Congress and, eventually, the Presidency. In those days, we were an interesting bunch with out-of-the-mainstream ideas (well, not really, but the entertainment industry saw us as such). When conservatives got power and started enacting their ideas into public policy, however, the other side viewed them as more of a threat. And that is why I think that Eli Stone attacked them so.

I liked the episode for one reason, though: the person who played the principal was Ethan Philips, who was Neelix on Star Trek: Voyager. I always wondered how he looks without his make-up!

A Distant Origin

There are some episodes of shows that I can watch over and over again. One of them is “A Distant Origin,” which is an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. In “A Distant Origin,” there are intelligent descendants of the dinosaurs in the Delta Quadrant, a far off region of space in which the the Federation vessel Voyager happens to be stranded. These creatures are called “Saurians.” According to their doctrine, they were the first race to emerge in their particular area, which gives them the right of dominance. But a Saurian scientist named Gegan holds a different view. According to him, the Saurians are not natives to their region at all but were descended from beings of another planet, namely, Earth. For him, the Saurians were originally intelligent dinosaurs who fled from Earth in a space ship in order to escape catastrophe.

Gegan discovers human bones that have an almost identical DNA makeup to that of the Saurians. In Star Trek: Voyager science, humans and dinosaurs are related because they both came from a common ancestor, so that explains the similarity. Gegan learns that there are other humans on a nearby ship, Voyager, so he kidnaps Chakotay, a scientist and the ship’s first officer. Although Chakotay doesn’t like being kidnapped, he agrees to help Gegan in his goal: to convince the doctrinal council of the distant origin theory.

Gegan has to stand before the council because of his heretical beliefs, and the hearing turns out to be a sham. The council is not interested in the truth but rather in enforcing the prevalent doctrine. Chakotay tells the council that it has revised doctrine before in light of new scientific findings, but the chair is not convinced. She says that the distant origin theory disgusts her, for it presents her race as a bunch of weak creatures crawling out of their planet in a struggle to escape. Chakotay responds that he looks at it differently. For him, the Saurians were the first intelligent life on Earth, and they survived in the midst of terrifying creatures. They managed to discover space travel, and they boldly and courageously set out into space not knowing what they would encounter. Chakotay admonishes the chair not to turn her back on her race’s true heritage of bravery and exploration.

Well, the chair is not convinced, and Gegan is forced to retract his beliefs. But Chakotay gives Gegan a globe and expresses the hope that he will one day visit Earth.

This episode makes me think about creation and evolution. For me, creation grants more dignity to humanity, whereas evolution presents a picture that (quite frankly) troubles me. In my view, the idea that God created people in his own image is a doctrine that ennobles human beings. By contrast, the notion that we are descended from pond-scum and had to fight to survive promotes meaninglessness and a “dog-eat dog” contempt for the weak. I am aware that scientists point to evidence for evolution, and what they say deserves a lot of thought and consideration. Still, even if evolution is true, I don’t know how to construct a meaningful existence on the basis of it.

But I can picture Chakotay telling me that I’m looking at it all wrong. Actually, evolution ennobles humanity. We have learned to survive, and that tells us something about our strength. And, in our struggle for survival, we have learned to embrace certain concepts that can help us on our journey. Morality ensures that a community can thrive, and a dependence on the supernatural helps us get through the problems of life. Morality and religion give us meaning in life, and that assists us in our continuing survival. Consequently, evolution can co-exist with a regard for the weak and a belief in God.

Still, even if evolution can coincide with a noble view of humanity, the picture appears to idolize human beings. It emphasizes what we have learned and accomplished, but it doesn’t necessarily glorify anyone above and beyond ourselves. Can morality be solid if it comes solely from ourselves rather than an external authority? But, then again, perhaps we can say that God has allowed us to learn, grow, and make mistakes in our pursuit of survival.