Culture Television
Darren Franich
We have ample grounds to consider whether the first Star Trek, rather than any of its derivatives, is actually the worst. The original series is a reliable if eccentric workhorse of cultural critique. But it’s also filled with incredible awkwardness: the redshirt phenomenon; the repetitive “The shields are failing!” battle scenes; Shatner’s incessant prettyboy preening; the indiscriminate one-dimensionality of everyone who isn’t Kirk, Spock, or McCoy. One could argue that such unrealistic silliness is just a result of the primitive nature of science-fiction in general and television in particular in the sixties. But most of these awkward characteristics, though looked back on with nostalgia, are forgivable to the extent that they showed future science-fiction TV, including future Star Trek series, what not to do.
Politics
Elliott Callahan
Same sex marriage is not the cause of marriage redefinition, but rather its fitting result.
Politics
Kevin Hilke
Repugnance, however fiercely or communally felt, does not constitute grounds for separating parents from their children.
Culture
Lauren Caldwell
Thomas Babington Macaulay: “Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness.” Unsoundness, indeed. Pleasure—but for whom?
Culture
Lauren Caldwell
The true work of criticism does not lie in the direction of theory, capital-T or otherwise. Theory is itself the direction, marks out the path. It illuminates. It helps us make sense of data by highlighting relationships and key data points; it does so at the expense of the total and complex picture, which is a necessary sacrifice: theory is not the solution, but a powerful tool.
