Heroes like James Bond, Batman, Remo Williams & Superman- are they Left or Right politically?

Murdock

chrisisall wrote:

timmer wrote:

Kate Mulgrew was rather meh. This movie could have been a whole lot better, without being as crazy as the books.

Don't dis Janeway! X(
But yeah, a bit more dough would have made it better, but then the investors were backing essentially a pulp series translated to silver screen...

Uh oh...nobody dis's Kathrine Janeway! ;)

chrisisall

Murdock wrote:

Uh oh...nobody dis's Kathrine Janeway! ;)

Murdock! You love her too!!
=D>

Murdock

chrisisall wrote:

Murdock wrote:

Uh oh...nobody dis's Kathrine Janeway! ;)

Murdock! You love her too!!
=D>

She is just as B@%&$$ as Kirk. :D

chrisisall

Murdock wrote:

She is just as B@%&$$ as Kirk. :D

YES!! ^:)^

Murdock

chrisisall wrote:

Murdock wrote:

She is just as B@%&$$ as Kirk. :D

YES!! ^:)^

I also believe there's a novel where they get together but we should leave that for the Star Trek thread. :))

chrisisall

Murdock wrote:

I also believe there's a novel where they get together but we should leave that for the Star Trek thread. :))

To make it relevant here, are Kirk and/or Janeway 'left' or 'right'?
Again, I see these characters as 'doing what works' as opposed to following an agenda.
Even in STVI they made the point that reality is probably somewhere in between extremes....
:)>-

Murdock

chrisisall wrote:

Murdock wrote:

I also believe there's a novel where they get together but we should leave that for the Star Trek thread. :))

To make it relevant here, are Kirk and/or Janeway 'left' or 'right'?
Again, I see these characters as 'doing what works' as opposed to following an agenda.
Even in STVI they made the point that reality is probably somewhere in between extremes....
:)>-

Oh I can tell you Kirk is left. He does what he pleases. Janeway...half and half. She does what she needs to to survive, but when it comes to the prime directive, she follows the rules.

chrisisall

Murdock wrote:

Oh I can tell you Kirk is left.

OH, please tell me you remember the TOS episode "A Private Little War"....
;)

Murdock

chrisisall wrote:

Murdock wrote:

Oh I can tell you Kirk is left.

OH, please tell me you remember the TOS episode "A Private Little War"....
;)

I kinda remember it, but it's been a long time since I've seen it. I DO remember "The Apple" though. That was another stab at the Prime Directive. ;)

chrisisall

Murdock wrote:

chrisisall wrote:

Murdock wrote:

Oh I can tell you Kirk is left.

OH, please tell me you remember the TOS episode "A Private Little War"....
;)

I kinda remember it

"A balance of power. The trickiest, most difficult, dirtiest game of them all, but the only one that preserves both sides."
Not so 'left' IMO.
Maybe centre.....

Murdock

chrisisall wrote:

Murdock wrote:

chrisisall wrote:

Murdock wrote:

Oh I can tell you Kirk is left.

OH, please tell me you remember the TOS episode "A Private Little War"....
;)

I kinda remember it

"A balance of power. The trickiest, most difficult, dirtiest game of them all, but the only one that preserves both sides."
Not so 'left' IMO.
Maybe centre.....

True.

chrisisall

"Well, war isn't a good life, but it's... life." - Kirk
Hard for me to accept as a kid.
8-|

Ludovico

I think in Star Trek the Federation of Planets and the heroes of the series are overall left leaning. It is a liberal utopia. Which became of its flaws as a series: when you have an utopia, it is more difficult to create tensions and plots and you end up with all the stories set in the holodeck.

chrisisall

Ludovico wrote:

It is a liberal utopia.

Heh heh, when I showed my Son the Trek series for the first time he commented that in every other episode it seemed thousands or millions of people got killed.
:))
Utopia?

Jarrod

Couldn't Blofeld's plot in OHMSS be seen as a kind of evil Monsanto's GMO food take-over in a way? If so, we know that rescuing Tracy was a higher priority then squashing that plan, but still, I think Bond likes his food untampered with.

chrisisall

Jarrod wrote:

Couldn't Blofeld's plot in OHMSS be seen as a kind of evil Monsanto's GMO food take-over in a way?

Where do you think Monsanto got the idea in the first place? /:)

Ludovico

chrisisall wrote:

Ludovico wrote:

It is a liberal utopia.

Heh heh, when I showed my Son the Trek series for the first time he commented that in every other episode it seemed thousands or millions of people got killed.
:))
Utopia?

Still an utopia. The Federation is the perfect government and society, there is no more greed, hunger and poverty and science and technology has improved the condition of living radically. Racism exists, but inside the federation it has been seriously reduced, heck by contemporary human standards it is non existent.

Matt007

Put it this way, I can't imagine Bond turning up at the trade union conference or marching in support of the miners.

timmer

Were there Star Trek TV series beyond the original!? :P
I love the original series, due to it's iconic nature and the very interesting times in which it was presented. What a vibe that show had. Alas I very much tuned out everything that followed, except for the feature films, which are really my only experience of the Professor X, captain.
==
Ahh yes, the elusive liberal Utopia. Great concept though with Star Trek. With the utopia impossible to create in real-life, let's pretend we got it done, way off in the future. Brilliant. :)

Ludovico

timmer wrote:

Were there Star Trek TV series beyond the original!? :P
I love the original series, due to it's iconic nature and the very interesting times in which it was presented. What a vibe that show had. Alas I very much tuned out everything that followed, except for the feature films, which are really my only experience of the Professor X, captain.
==
Ahh yes, the elusive liberal Utopia. Great concept though with Star Trek. With the utopia impossible to create in real-life, let's pretend we got it done, way off in the future. Brilliant. :)

The problem is, it ends up putting the drama in a gridlock. If everybody is happy, there is no conflict, if there is no conflict, there is no story. I know Roddenberry wanted to write an idealistic vision of the future, where science used for good had allowed mankind to create this perfect society. But where to go from there? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Star Trek, they obviously managed to be creative with the universe, but I do find it sometimes very frustrating as a dramatic standpoint.

chrisisall

timmer wrote:

Ahh yes, the elusive liberal Utopia. Great concept though with Star Trek. With the utopia impossible to create in real-life, let's pretend we got it done, way off in the future. Brilliant. :)

We will either make it as Roddenberry predicted in Star Trek, or destroy ourselves as he feared in his TV movie "Planet Earth".

timmer

chrisisall wrote:

We will either make it as Roddenberry predicted in Star Trek, or destroy ourselves as he feared in his TV movie "Planet Earth".

I am more inclined to believe we shall continue to muddle on indefinitely. We may at some point have to weather a nuclear war, but nothing is likely to wipe out all life on earth, other than possibly some space-baced act of nature, rendering the earth uninhabitable.
But I am quite sure, we shall never create utopia. It's a "fun" idea (nigthmare idea might be closer) for futurists to play with, but as @Ludovico says, the utopian world doesn't make for much in the way of good drama.
Still the federation type utopia as presented in Star Trek did not take away from dramatic tension. The crew of the Enterprise faced all sorts of challenges and drama in their explorations.
Kirk and company basically had nothing to do with earth.

Ludovico

timmer wrote:

chrisisall wrote:

We will either make it as Roddenberry predicted in Star Trek, or destroy ourselves as he feared in his TV movie "Planet Earth".

I am more inclined to believe we shall continue to muddle on indefinitely. We may at some point have to weather a nuclear war, but nothing is likely to wipe out all life on earth, other than possibly some space-baced act of nature, rendering the earth uninhabitable.
But I am quite sure, we shall never create utopia. It's a "fun" idea (nigthmare idea might be closer) for futurists to play with, but as @Ludovico says, the utopian world doesn't make for much in the way of good drama.
Still the federation type utopia as presented in Star Trek did not take away from dramatic tension. The crew of the Enterprise faced all sorts of challenges and drama in their explorations.
Kirk and company basically had nothing to do with earth.

Oh, they did manage to make drama, and even really good drama, sometimes even great drama, but the utopian nature of the show made it challenging by the time of The Next Generation, when at some point more and more episodes were set in the holodeck.

chrisisall

timmer wrote:

I am more inclined to believe we shall continue to muddle on indefinitely. We may at some point have to weather a nuclear war, but nothing is likely to wipe out all life on earth, other than possibly some space-baced act of nature, rendering the earth uninhabitable.

Oh yeah? The climate is changing, and it's being largely ignored by those not actively dying from it yet, water for irrigation is getting sent to areas that don't need any more, and all we need is a small tip a little bit farther, and we're facing a world-wide food shortage. Add in even a small, limited nuclear war, and that's really all she wrote for this planet.

timmer

But this is really nothing new. We've been fretting about the planet forever. Never mind all the alarmist wrong predictions from the '70s, but there was this guy worrying about the earth, food shortages and over-population a way back in the day.
"Our teeming population is the strongest evidence our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly support us from its natural elements. Our wants grow more and more keen and our complaints more bitter in all mouths, while nature fails in affording us our usual sustenance. In every deed, pestilence and famine and wars have to be regarded as a remedy for nations as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race."
That was Tertullian, a Carthaginian priest in 210 AD when the world population was 250 million. It's now over 6.5 billion.

We haven't been swamped yet. We findnew ways to deal with challenges, discover new ways to protect the environment, and who knows, maybe in centuries to come, even colonize space. We muddle on.

In the meantime, we should make every effort to protect the environment. We should be vigilant. That only makes sense, but the planet does seem to have a way of sustaining and sustaining us.
btw, I recycle like a fiend and never ever litter.

forgotmyusername

Interesting question, I reckon Bond dresses to the right.

chrisisall

timmer wrote:

btw, I recycle like a fiend and never ever litter.

Amen, brother!
=D>

timmer

chrisisall wrote:

timmer wrote:

btw, I recycle like a fiend and never ever litter.

Amen, brother!
=D>

:)) I even picked up a stray beer can today, after I finished my jog. I relocated it so that the scavengers that collect cash-returnables, would find it. I like to help stimulate the economy too.

chrisisall

timmer wrote:

I like to help stimulate the economy too.

LOL of the day, thanks! :))

Ludovico

I think the problem with Star Trek, at least after the original series, has been the omnipotence of technology, probably more than the utopian nature of the show, but it goes hand in hand. Quite telling that in First Contact Picard says that there is no more money in the future. As if technological progress could eventually make economic concerns obsolete.