Sometimes, people leave it all behind. But sometimes, the people involved in the creation of fictitious worlds remain in the spotlight, supporting the fans, supplying energy to the act of storytelling, and bringing attention to real events, real people, and real life that often gets disregarded by folks who might spend a bit too much time enjoying escapism and not dealing with reality.
William Shatner, the man who established the iconic character of Captain James T. Kirk on the original “Star Trek” and its subsequent cartoon series and films, has done that dual-lifting work for years. Just last week, I wrote about how Mr. Shatner decorously, but judiciously, called out parent corporation Paramount for seeming to erase the Alpha Male Kirk from coming Trek projects and promotions, and now, Mr. Shatner is taking on a bigger antagonist: the European Union.
😳👇🏻Presentism at work yet again. Why start at Trek? 🤨Isn’t it better to start at the beginning and redo foundation material such as the Magna Carta, religious writings, works of Shakespeare before worrying about a silly TV show opening that reflects social commentary of the… pic.twitter.com/P0okn5rYca
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) January 29, 2024
On January 29, the 92-year-old Shatner sounded off regarding a woke EU “guide” that would banish words used in the early-days opening of the television series – a “guide” that suggests “phasering-out” lines such as, “To boldly go where no man has gone before!”
Supplying screen-shots on X from the original Sun.co.uk article that tells readers about this EU language “tool kit,” Mr. Shatner took a low-key, sincere approach to the information he had read.
And it’s information that easily could cause many sensible people a lot of vexation.
Notes the Sun:
“The phrase, made famous by Captain Kirk (William Shatner), has a red cross next to it in a 61-page toolkit on gender-sensitive communication.
EU agency the European Institute for Gender Equality calls it an example of ‘where women may be subject to invisibility or omission.’”
Adding some colorful emojis, William Shatner offered these wise, spot-on, words, in response:
“Presentism at work yet again. Why start at Trek? 🤨Isn’t it better to start at the beginning and redo foundation material such as the Magna Carta, religious writings, works of Shakespeare before worrying about a silly TV show opening that reflects social commentary of the time? If people are offended by 6 seconds of dialogue recorded in 1966 without a modicum of understanding of the social issues at the time there’s bigger issues that they need to deal with first - like educating themselves.🙄”
Well said.
In a world peppered with malcontents and Cultural Marxists who incessantly seem to push resentment and asinine “equity” motifs that must have some kind of “policy” answer, rather than letting people voluntarily make connections and change minds and build or remove cultural morays as they see fit (a calm, reasoned approach to what might or might not offend, to what might show the morays of a particular time and inform people)… well, in a world of chattering and complaining termagants, that kind of calm and caring approach shows a lot of wisdom.
Related: William Shatner Claims Paramount Is Trying to Erase Captain Kirk (mrctv.org)
And, curiously, the EU policy “guide” doesn’t even note something important about the “evolution” of Star Trek.
Not only was the show “path-breaking” for its mix of characters and concepts, subsequent versions of the “Trek Intro” that originally was made famous on the original series were changed.
Grammatically, “where no man has gone before” is fine, because it stands for mankind, i.e. humans, i.e. homo sapiens. But even “Trek” adjusted to the clamor of feminist forces and to fans who noted that the “United Federation of Planets” also contained aliens. Thus, in 1987 the Trek producers changed the motto for “The Next Generation,” to “…where no one has gone before,” and it’s been that way ever since.
At a time when woke leftists try to undercut the cemented, final versions of fiction by talented writers such as Roald Dahl, a man who is not here to defend what he created, but who warned people not to change his work, it is excellent to see William Shatner stand up for reason and natural societal give and take.
And the nervous, antiseptic, anti-reality mindset of EU bureaucrats stands on the opposite end of the peace spectrum. It is an excellent example of how the censorious, central-plan, authoritarian mindset of politics leads to a gray world, a world that doesn’t inform us or develop naturally.
The politicians want people to CONFORM.
But, isn’t life more enjoyable if we take William Shatner’s approach, and stop trying to homogenize everything and whitewash everything and stifle our intellectual exploration?
Isn’t exploration part of what makes life great?
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