ANALISE DE INFORMACAO EM FILMES

Star Trek and Political Archetypes by Michael Karounos, Ph.D.

When viewers go to the theater to see a movie like Star Trek, the last thing they ask themselves is, "I wonder if this is a liberal or a conservative action movie?" That such categories exist will come as a surprise to most people, but action movies, like everything else in life, have a worldview.Star Trek, for example, is a classically archetypal movie in its psychology, characters, and conflict; it is also intentionally conservative. One word on terms: I use "Left" or "Leftist" to denote a perspective that demonizes conservatives. "Liberal" is a term which expresses a point of view absent demonization. If you are pro-abortion, you may be liberal; but if you are pro-abortion and portray pro-life people as "right wing extremists," you are Leftist. In that illustration I grant both perspectives the positive prefix "pro" rather than follow the Left’s usage of reserving "pro" for my perspective and assigning "anti" to those who don’t agree with me.
Anyway, for starters, the movie’s marketing wizzes framed the conflict of the film as follows:
The fate of the galaxy rests in the hands of bitter rivals. One, James Kirk, is a delinquent, thrill-seeking Iowa farm boy. The other, Spock, was raised in a logic-based society that rejects all emotion. As fiery instinct clashes with calm reason, their unlikely but powerful partnership is the only thing capable of leading their crew through unimaginable danger, boldly going where no one has gone before.
One character is urban, the other is rural; one is logical, the other is emotional; one is Vulcan, the other is human. These kinds of characterizations are archetypal and portray the psychology of the characters as a struggle between extremes. The Vulcans are rational, the Romulans are irrational, and the human race is a synthesis of the two. Spock has to learn to tap into his feelings, Kirk has to learn to control his, and the Romulans, well, the Romulans are doomed because they are trapped in the emotional abyss of revenge, a trap which Spock and Kirk must avoid in order to make decisions for the benefit of their crew and the human race.
The Star Trek characters are and have been archetypal from the start. Sulu, Scotty, Chekov, and Uhura, represent Asian, Caucasian, political, and African archetypes. The film further promotes the next stage of cultural miscegenation by its archetypal pairings of physical types: Spock and Uhura, Kirk and the Green Girl, Spock’s father and his human wife. The movie excels on this point because it addresses the issue of race through the marriage of Spock’s father to a human wife. When Spock sees the bias among the Vulcan elders against humans, he turns his back on Vulcan culture and joins Star Fleet.
Well-Balanced Multi-CulturalismThis is an excellent example of multi-culturalism in pop movies because it doesn’t come with a lecture directed at a white character by a minority character. The movie has refreshingly advanced beyond a perspective that has become stale with over-usage. Whatever conflict there may exist emotionally on the Enterprise, there is none racially, and that is a pleasant surprise. The idea of a ship is often used as a metaphor for the United States as a “ship of state.” The Enterprise has always reflected the classic "melting pot" attitude of our country: everyone is different; everyone is equal. This counters the traditional Leftist critique that because race relations aren’t perfect, the country (i.e., the South) is evil, Southerners and Christians must be portrayed as evil, and reform must take place via drastic measures.
Lastly, the move is archetypal in its conflict and is, I will argue, a conservative movie. This will require some explanation so please bear with me. If Star Trek were a liberal movie, it would have the following elements: 1) The threat is from within; 2) The threat is a white male; 3) Different beliefs/types unite, but in a liberal movie, the protagonist is the one good white male who is redeemed by a "Magic Negro" or by a woman; 4) Unity against authority is the ideal; and 5) Resolution is through destruction of the internal threat.
Elements of Leftist MoviesThreat from WithinIn Leftist movies, the threat is always from within, and it's always an identifiable conservative institution: corporation, government agency like the CIA, FBI, or the military. Classical liberal movies like The Manchurian Candidate and Three Days of the Condor, or more contemporary films like The Bourne Conspiracy or Mission Impossible III, try to advance the myth that the real threat to America is from conservative Americans. These movies are legion.
Threat from White MalesSpecifically, the threat is from white males who represent a conservative constituency, such as businessmen, the military, any Christian group, or an archetype, as in A History of Violence, which portrays people in the heartland as psychotic killers. These profiles are neither surprising nor fictional since Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security released a report targeting identical demographic groups. The formula in A History of Violence is a revisioning of the territory blazed by The Manchurian Candidate (1962). That film portrayed American soldiers returning from captivity in a Communist country as ticking conservative bombs only to have the propaganda blow up in the producers’ faces when John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a former American soldier: Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald declared himself a Communist, renounced his American citizenship, defected to the Soviet Union, and then later he returned to the United States to kill the President. Oops.
That was a textbook case of Leftist projection gone bad. The movie was reportedly pulled from theaters out of deference to the Kennedy family and not because it reflected badly on American Communists. Whatever. In any case, these kinds of Leftist movies are released every week and one can hardly watch a Hollywood movie these days without seeing similar demonization in action. The recent State of Play with Russell Crowe hits the Leftist trifecta by portraying villains who are simultaneously corporate, Christian, and ex-military. It’s a perfect storm of paranoia/projection. It is a pathological impulse, encoded in the Left’s DNA, to attack these groups reflexively and whenever possible.
Good White Male RedeemedDifferent beliefs/types unite, but in a liberal movie, the protagonist is the one good white male who unites with/is redeemed by a "Magic Negro" or a woman. In State of Play, Crowe’s character is mentored by an English woman and greatly assisted by a black man and a black woman. It is clear that he is a flawed person and could not succeed without their help. The Left beat this paradigm to death in the 1990s with white women/black men buddy films: Geena Davis and Samuel Jackson (The Long Kiss Goodnight in 1996); Meg Ryan and Denzel Washington (Courage Under Fire in 1996); Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman (Kiss the Girls in 1997); and Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix in 1999). In all of these, the villain is a white man. Will Smith is the only one who can still maintain this tired vehicle as the more recent I, Robot (2004) and I Am Legend (2007) films indicate, both of which ally him with a white woman against white men.
In The Matrix, the only good white man is Neo who is mentored by a black man, a white woman, and assisted by a Hispanic. Just for good measure, Cypher, the other white man, is a traitor, and the Matrix sequels implement the race theories of Cornell West by showing the architect as a white-haired, white man in a white room. Get it? Throw in the albino twins and the army of white Mr. Smiths and the message is identical with the content that Whiteness Studies programs in our best universities teach: whiteness is evil. Look up the journal, Race Traitor, for an early and sterling example. For good measure, in MI3 it is two black men, two English guys, and an Asian woman who assist Tom Cruise, the noble Race Traitor, to defeat the rogue white male elements in his country. Foreign is the new American. Liberals are dying to be English because the accent sounds, you know, smart, and the English aren’t "white"; they’re socialist. Sorry, I don’t have the space to explain that one.
Unity Against AuthorityUnity against authority is the ideal, i.e., the tired cliché of "speaking truth to power." This is the easiest one to perceive as it portrays the unification of disparate societal elements. It is a common Leftist theme that is at least 75 years old, figuring prominently in scenes of some of our most famous movies, such as42nd Street, It’s A Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, etc. The myth is that the common man must unite with other common men to "overthrow" some decision or state of affairs ordained by the ruling powers. It’s in nearly every Hollywood movie and represents the Marxist theme of "perpetual revolution." One must never tire of being angry, of being rebellious, of being vigilant against the evil capitalist overlords. This is what is behind the cult of victimization that the Left is addicted to: they are always aggrieved, always injured, always downtrodden. But don’t take it personally; it’s just their belief.
Resolution Through Destruction of Internal ThreatResolution is through destruction of the internal threat. Threats from the outside only appear to be threats. In MI3, the Chinese are not really our enemy; conservative, war-mongering Americans are. As I noted briefly elsewhere, the determinate space of MI3 portrays the United States as the source of weapons of mass destruction and the Vatican as the distribution point. There again you have the perfect liberal formulation of the military-industrial-Christian complex which is at the root of all evil in the world today. Conversely, the movie concludes happily in peaceful, bucolic China where people cheerfully ride bicycles and treat each other with a narcotic respect. The happy couple walks blissfully over a bridge, enlightened and, archetypally, un-American.
That is how liberal/Leftist action movies look. Star Trek inverts this template and is a conservative movie because it contains the following elements: 1) The threat is from without; 2) The threat is from an identifiable Other (albeit, bleached Romulans); 3) The different types of characters are equal, with no false moral superiority ascribed to the minority characters, e.g., a "Magic Negro"; 4) Liberty is the pre-eminent value; and 5) The resolution is through violence.
Conservative Movie ElementsThreat from WithoutThe threat is from without. In mainstream Hollywood releases, you will never find a conservative movie. However, Hollywood has occasionally allowed genre movies to express conservative values because, in their conceit, they believe that intelligent people can’t possibly take comic book movies seriously. Hence, in movies like The Transformers, The Fantastic Four, The Lord of the Rings, and Star Trek, the threat is not only permitted to be from without, but the threats sometimes shockingly look like minorities. LotR was criticized as being racist, as was Star Wars, although the latter is clearly an exception to the template and represents a liberal sensibility. The racist charges are silly because Hollywood has traditionally been on the cutting edge of portraying African-Americans positively (even as it portrayed race relations negatively). What Hollywood is guilty of is the unconscious racism of condescension toward African-Americans and of the demonization of conservative whites.
Threat from Unidentifiable OtherFor the Left, the Other must be demystified, so you get movies like Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay or Flightplan, which garnered three feel-good awards. In that movie, unbelievably, it is the flight attendants who are evil and the Muslim passengers who are good. The obvious travesty of the storyline caused the flight attendant’s union to call for a boycott of a movie which criminalizes them and sanctifies their murderers. However, when the Other is a Transformer, a Galactus (Fantastic Four), an Orc (LotR), or a Klingon, you're in conservative territory.
A liberal version of this template is the Star Wars series. As in The Matrix, The Empire’s army is "white" men; the rebels are multi-cultural. The threat is the government and established authority (the Empire). In fact, George Lucas is on record as saying that the Star Wars prequels are a response to Bush and the Iraq War. Similarly, the War of the Worlds remake is a liberal revision of a conservative movie. The screenwriter, David Koepp, is on record as saying that the Martians are the (white) American military and the civilians are Iraqis. Similar to the Star Wars Empire armies, the evil "armies" in I, Robot and I Am Legend, are "white": robots and zombies, both collectives without intelligence. Meanwhile, the "good" robots are multi-colored and the "good" humanoids in I Am Legend are a black man and a white woman.
Different Types are EqualDifferent beliefs/types unite, but in a conservative movie, the protagonist is not the only good white male and he unites with a minority figure on equal, moral terms. Similar to the archetypal buddy film that has been around for 80 years, the archetypes have now morphed from representing character (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) to representing ideology. Conservative ideological pairs can be identified by age (Live Free or Die Hard), by race (The Island), by gender (Taken), or by status, as in civilian/military (The Transformers). In Taken, Liam Neeson has to fight the French as well as Muslims, and he allies himself with an Eastern bloc woman (Rumsfeld’s "New European"!). Layers of meaning are in that movie, a review of which I have published here. It is also important to remember that the characters unite to fight an external threat.
Liberty a Pre-Eminent ValueThe issue is freedom. Leftist films figure conflict as a "choice" rather than a fait accompli. For instance, I recently caught part of a movie called Men Must Die, a surprising 1933 anti-war offering from the Hollywood Left. The party line in the 1930s was that the United States must be kept out of the brewing European war. These kinds of propagandistic films intensified with the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact of 1939, putting American Communists in the logical position of being apologists for Hitler. For the Left, the big issues are "peace" or the elimination of "corruption" in the government, which they frame to mean that any alternative to peace is naked aggression, or that government corruption is distinctly a conservative thing. When freedom from terror or defense against invasion is the subject of the movie, then it’s almost certainly conservative. One prominent example from the 1980s is Red Dawn.
Resolution Through ViolenceResolution is through violence rather than persuasion. Although the Left loves to portray drug use and every variety of sex in movies, it hates guns and violence. The Right hates the portrayal of drugs and sex, but it loves violence which defeats an enemy. Heroism is a value in Western culture; in Leftist culture, the "hero" is a cowboy, an "individualist," an "exceptionalist" who is dangerous to the public order and must be contained. In Europe, children can watch pornography on the television on Saturday morning, but they can’t watch a violent movie. The reason for this is both simple and alarming: the Left doesn’t want an armed populace, hence, the incessant attempts to ban weapons. Totalitarian countries disarm their people; republics arm their people. Hitler, a socialist of another stripe, reportedly said: "The most serious mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms." Explicit anti-gun messages are the focus of entire scenes in many films, even in action movies such as Burton’s Planet of the Apes or Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. So Hollywood represents lawful gun ownership as transgressive, while representing transgressive sexual behavior as “lawful.”
In this regard, Star Trek is liberally skittish in its use of any kind of personal weapons. Sulu and a Romulan fly at warp speed and, improbably, fight with a sword and a battle axe. Meanwhile, clumsy captain Kirk can’t seem to keep his grip on his blaster and throws 1950s style roundhouse punches. Apparently, the megabudget didn’t allow for either a martial arts instructor or a weapons expert. The movie action is far below the standard of the genre and does not measure up to movies ten years older, like The Matrix, or even the first Die Hard which is twenty years older.
Curiously, Alex Kurtzman and J.J. Abrams also teamed up on MI3 which I suggested above ascribes flawed foreign policy to Christian special interests. What that film has in common with Star Trek is that both appear to be critiquing religion from a neo-conservative perspective: it may be useful for internal management of a nation’s morals, but it is corrosive when it interferes with policy. In Star Trek, one can’t help but wonder if Kurtzman and Abrams are not formulating the archetype of a contemporary religious conflict: the nomadic Romulans drill the earth for wealth and commit genocide against the ancient culture of the intellectual, priest-like Vulcans. I’ll let you draw your own conclusion about that.
Michael Karounos is an assistant professor of English at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville. He has a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Victorian literature and has published papers in "Studies in English Literature," the "Age of Johnson," "The Robert Frost Review," and in "Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries."

from Vanderbilt University in Victorian literature and has published papers in "Studies in English Literature," the "Age of Johnson," "The Robert Frost Review," and in "Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries."