The 9/11 Imagination
by Giampaolo Bianconi
(The recent DVD release of this summer’s Star Trek film deserves some consideration and–ta-da!–here it is.)
Star Trek, dir. J.J. Abrams (2009)
“Each epoch,” said Jules Michelet, “Dreams the one to follow.” That dream rests on our conception of ourselves, now. As a genre, science fiction has always rested upon our vision of ourselves in the future. This is a responsibility from which the Star Trek franchise—consisting of television shows both live-action and animated, many films, and various incarnations—has decidedly never shirked: Star Trek in the 1960s was suave, sexy, and cool—just like us. Pavel Checkov, the Russian aboard the Enterprise, let us know that in the future the Cold War had ended and (don’t worry) we won. Later tales, which featured Patrick Stewart’s Shakespearean pomp, were more self-important though decidedly less political: it was the late 80s/early 90s, late Reagan and the fall of the Berlin Wall. It signaled the arrival of the comfortable Clinton years.
Its most recent imagining is no different. (more…)