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I have to come to terms with the fact that
the bairns don't like the original Star
Trek. In fact, scrub that: they hate it.
They find all the standing around talking
boring. They find the lack of shoot-first-ask-questions-later alien
encounters boring. They find the
lack of whizzy CGI boring. And when the obligatory science officer or
ensign with a waist smaller than her hat size but a centre of gravity just
below her neck appears, they practically hide behind the cushions in the
expectation of Captain Kirk's impending sexual harassment.
I try to tell them that Star Trek is pure
science-fiction: the fiction of ideas.
Each episode is like a science experiment, where you change one variable
and see what effect that has on the world. Except the variable isn’t pressure or temperature: it’s
being able to implant ideas with a machine or what if the Athenian Gods were
real.
I try to tell them that Star Trek has been
the inspiration for more of the current generation of scientists than anything
else (I may have embroidered a throwaway piece of anecdotal evidence I picked
up somewhere).
But they just find it boring.
I find this odd. Yes, it’s a bit static
and talky and much more 1960s than twenty-third (or whatever) century. But, they're nine and eleven, and
bright, the sort of combination that should be intrigued by the ideas - and the
best sci-fi is always about ideas, not robots hitting each other.
Thinking about this has led me to ponder two
trends, but I’m struggling to decide whether they contradict or complement.
The first, let me illustrate by way of anecdote. The Film Program on BBC Radio 4
recently ran a series of reminiscences over first film memories. One man fell in love with cinema in 1950
at the age of nine by being taken to see The
Third Man. Chris Nolan watched
2001, mesmerized, at a similar age.
My point is this. Fifty, sixty – even twenty - years ago there was a limited
diet of what a young mind could be presented with. Whatever Walt and Looney Tunes could provide was quickly
consumed. Get past a few cowboy
B-movies, that week’s Children’s Film Foundation output, and very quickly kids
were left with ‘adult’ movies (by which I mean The Third Man, I mean, not Shaving
Ryan’s Privates). Kids got to
glimpse a more adult world, and in so doing had to get used to thinking.
Nowadays a child need not have their minds
stretched unless they want to. I’d
like to show the kids The Third Man
(we tried 2001, with disastrous
consequences). Instead, recent
cinema trips have been for Big Hero 6,
Paddington, Shaun the Sheep. And
when it’s not the cinema, there are DVDs, 24-hour kids’ TV, Minecraft,
Fifa15. There’s been an infantilisation
of, not just cinema, but popular culture.
But, at the same time, we’ve got bloody good
at it. Compare those three movies
I mentioned - Big Hero 6, Paddington, Shaun the Sheep – to, say, Doctor
Doolittle, Mary Poppins, and Swiss Family Robinson – and I know which
I’d prefer. I even have a soft
spot for Frozen, that cinematic
equivalent to Slush Puppy.
Even so, it’s like we’ve taken baby food to a new
level. It’s haute cuisine baby
food, two Michelin star baby food.
But it’s still baby food.
You have your teeth: use them.
And that, I think, is why Star Trek falls on deaf (non-pointy) ears. Yes, its static and talky and badly
acted and full of sexual harassment of the most jaw-dropping sort. But its also full of ideas, challenging,
stretching ideas. But we don’t do
ideas much any more when there’s so much plain vanilla available letting us get
away with being superbly entertained whilst being barely challenged.
Bread and circuses and robots hitting each other. Progress of a sort, I suppose.
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