A TV critic for The Nation believes that the latest Star Trek series (Enterprise) is significantly more right wing than its predecessors. The analysis is a little shrill and over-wrought, but I think there is a germ of truth in there and I fear it may demonstrate a slide to the right in mainstream American thought over the last few years. As she points out:
The newest offering is a frank vehicle for white male suprematism and resentment.
Let’s start with white. The titles, set to a hymn that combines the first Christian references ever heard on Star Trek with some boasts about resisting alien domination, show drawings of the ships of fifteenth-century European colonial powers and European maps and globes from the same period.
On one is scripted “HMS Enterprise.” This jibes neatly with the plot, the first ever on Star Trek in which racism is applauded. The normal, virile, white spacemen of Earth are being held back by the ridiculous sensitivities of the Vulcans, pushy, geeky aliens who want them to respect the cultural differences of all the alien races.”
