Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

In my previous post I spoke about how I like Star Trek: Starfleet Academy while others didn’t because reasons. After I posted it I was thinking about how people who don’t like something feel it is their duty to dump on anyone who dares like it instead and that prompted this post. It is ok to not like something, but just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean you get to harass people who like it.

Over the weekend I was at this flea market with my cousin and we were talking about books and movies. Somehow the topic of Lord of the Rings came up and I told her that I absolutely dislike the books because the author spends 10 pages telling you what was there for breakfast. Her reaction was to the affect of “what is wrong with you? How can you not like it???”. I shared why I don’t like it and she shared that she likes the books especially because of the world building. I could have dumped on her to make her feel bad but why do that? People are allowed to have different tastes and likings.

Jani and me are polar opposites in the movies and books we both like and that is ok. I don’t care for Christmas movies or romcoms while she doesn’t like scifi/fantasy movies. Should I make her feel bad about liking such movies? Of course not. I do however make fun of them sometimes but not to the point where you put down the person liking the movie.

So, long story short. If you don’t like a movie or a book or whatever and someone else does. You don’t get to crap on their happiness in enjoying it. It is ok to disagree and discuss the reason why you don’t like it (up to a point) but you shouldn’t put them down (as a person) for liking it.

– Suramya

As some of you might know already I am a huge Star Trek fan. I have watched every iteration of the franchise multiple times and have loved all of them except Deep Space 9, which I found to be one of the most boring TV shows I had watched. Was not a huge fan of Enterprise either but it was still watchable and I managed to finish watching all of it. Star Trek is a show with a 60 year history which makes adding a new show in the canon a potentially dicey affair because of how it would affect other shows and potentially create continuity errors. Which is why I find the ~1000 year jump in Discovery and the setting of Star Trek Academy in the 32nd century interesting. It allows the creators to start off with a clean slate and not worry about paradoxes and continuity issues.

The latest show in the series is called ‘Star Trek: Academy’ which is set about a hundred years after the ‘Burn’ which had brought down the Federation. It follows the first class of Star Fleet Cadets in a hundred years as they work towards becoming officers and rebuilding the Federation. I watched the show and so far quite like it, it still has the message of hope and how people need to work together to rebuild while retaining the core ethos of Star Trek, which is: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.

Once the show launched we had the standard backlash from the usual suspects who think that any show that shows people other than straight white males in the story are destroying the franchise. One of the funnier complaints against the show was about how Nahla Ake played by Holly Hunter who is the half-Lanthanite captain of the USS Athena and the chancellor of Starfleet Academy sits in the show. I will admit it was a bit disconcerting to see a captain sit with her feet folded up into the captain’s chair but after the initial surprise it didn’t detract from her authority and was just a humorous sideline.

But to listen to the detractors, that quirk is destroying the core foundation of the show and it highlights how straight white men are being hounded out of their spaces because of politics. They keep talking about how the new show is making things political whereas the original didn’t do politics/social commentary at all.

Listening to their complaints I started wondering if we were watching the same show or not. Star Trek has always been political and covered important topics such as authoritarianism, imperialism, class warfare, economics, racism, religion, human rights, sexism, feminism, and the role of technology. In fact Gene Roddenberry himself stated: “[By creating] a new world with new rules, I could make statements about sex, religion, Vietnam, politics, and intercontinental missiles. If you talked about purple people on a far off planet, they (the television network) never really caught on.”

I do admit that I don’t like all the characters in the show and especially dislike the character Sam (Series Acclimation Mil) because of her extra-exuberant behavior and portrayal which is something that I find annoying in real life as well, because my personality is a polar opposite of that behavior. This is not to say that the actor is bad, just that I don’t like the character. The other characters in the show are all ok and show a surprising range of behavior where the show & the characters are not pure black and white portrayals and that makes the show very interesting.

The other major reason I like it is because of the underlying portrayal of hope in the show. The universe is a mess because of the Burn but it is not a grim retelling of Star Trek which is awesome. It is good to have shows that have a positive/light hearted take on things. (I am def not a fan of the Grim re-imagining of various franchises that has been popular over the last few years)

All in all, the show is a fun watch and I look forward to seeing where the story takes us.

– Suramya

The following showed up in my feed and I thought it was important that I share it as this post highlights a good point about why it is important to call out people during arguments/discussions about human rights. I never thought about it this way but after reading it, this makes perfect sense and I am going to use this going forward.

Why it is important to call out people about human rights

@sepuichritude

one thing I don’t think people realize is that in arguments about human rights, it’s not about trying
to persuade the other party. its not about them at all. they’ve already made up their mind.

it’s about persuading the audience.

if I call out my teacher on being homophobic I’m not trying to change his opinion. I’m trying to convince
any closeted kids in the room that they’re not the monsters he’s made them out to be.

if I argue with my aunt about how racist she’s being it’s not because I expect to change her mind. its
because I’m hoping to god my cousin’s kids hear and learn that maybe skin color doesn’t mean what she says it means.

people will try to hush you and say “they’re not going to change their minds, don’t bother” but its not about them. it was never about them

You see the thing is that if someone puts down a person because of stereotyping and no one objects to it then it normalizes that statement and that way of thinking. Over time that particular school of thought becomes accepted/normalized as the truth. The more people don’t object/call it out the more it gets mainlined and normalized. I have seen this with jokes about women in Tech, Indians being bad at English, Gay’s being evil and so on and so forth.

The other major issue is that if a person is being made fun of or being put down and no one objects, they will think that everyone there agrees with the statement. Which might or might not be true, but it will become true in the long run. As the saying goes, if there is one Nazi at a bar and is not immediately kicked out then it is a Nazi bar. The same is true for sexist or racist behavior/homophobia etc etc. Which is why we have communities enforcing Code of Conduct’s, companies having POSH and similar rules.

You might not be able to change a person’s mind but you can definitely show the person being picked at that they are not alone and not what the person picking on them is accusing them of being.

Thoughts?

– Suramya