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laurashapiro 's post linking to an SF Chronicle piece celebrating not the slashiness but rather the bromance of Kirk and Spock, and it got me thinking.Here's my question:
Did the new movie's Kirk and Spock simply inherit the original series' slashiness as part of Star Trek's DNA, so that they don't even need to generate their own subtext or UST and can just live off of the legacy of the original characters' aura, like the slash pairing version of a trust fund kid?
Or did Chris Pine's Kirk and Zachary Quinto's Spock go out and earn their slashiness the old-fashioned way, refusing to ride on the slashy coattails of Shatner & Nimoy?
Maybe a little of each? Or do you see the slashiness of Pine!Kirk and Quinto!Spock as different than that of Shatner!Kirk and Nimoy!Spock -- a K/S 2.0, maybe?
I'm asking because I can't tell -- I don't actually remember whether there was any dialogue, any moments, any lingering glances or "weird about each other"-ness between Kirk and Spock that an ST:TOS-naive baby slasher or proto-slasher would pick up on if they were discovering slash for the first time.
Though hey, who knows what goes on with kids these days! Maybe slashiness itself is just different now than it was 40 years ago?
Comments
i see the slash in trek new and old as subtext -- as a possible cloud of interpretation that is not really the main focus of the show. but that may be my approach to trek, which is not primarily as a slasher the way I am about TS or SG-1. there are so many legitimate approaches to canon.
i am soooo in "default to slash goggles mode", but I didn't see the K/S UST in the new movie. I saw it as POTENTIAL, that it could so develop the more they got to know each other.
but i agree with henry jenkins' post that this movie probably made a misstep when it neatly packaged spock's character straight up for us and destroyed all his mystery. but maybe we were ready for that; maybe after 40 years of spock we've plumbed his mystery, so having that all "cut to the chase" for us in the reboot was a foregone conclusion.
my main issue with the new movie is that pine's kirk verges on OMG TEEN SPEAK; he's not shatner's kirk and that is a GOOD THING, but he's so young, and young not in 1964 young but young in 2009 young (transmogrified to the 23rd century, of course.... the movie does NOT have a future vibe. it has a TODAY vibe. which is kind of a shame, but unavoidable, i think.)
pine almost made me wince once or twice but he backed off from the edge with the Young Guy vibe.
But his essential purity, his driven-ness, his arrogance, was all there. his fearlessness was what abrams focused on, which I think is so canon.
but i didn't immediately leap to slashing them.
i am fine with spock/uhura and want to know more about the possible canonical underpinnings of that choice.
but the spock/kirk in the reboot is going to have to be earned, for me.
but again: I'm not a true fan of this fandom. I've been on the edges of it all my life, but this movie made me not want to slash or write fanfic for it, but to explore the TOS fanfic back list. which is gimongous. I want to write classic trek today, myself. THAT Kirk/Spock, today.
thanks for the post.
I did end up completely sold on Pine as Kirk by the end; I thought Quinto was good as Spock, but I'm less convinced that he owned the role in the way that Pine did. Then again, I'm not sure that would have been possible for any actor, with Nimoy in the movie.
It'll be interesting to see where they go from here with the characters and their relationship dynamic -- I can see Jenkins' point, which means that the new version of Spock can't have the same character arc or inner conflicts as the original. But what will he have instead, and will it be as compelling? Do they plan on further developing the Spock/Uhura relationship -- fleshing out the backstory and/or going forward? I guess only time -- and the fic! -- will tell. *g*
Pine was not Shatner, but there were tons of shoutouts to Shatner.
It was a patchwork of difference with the characterizations of the team -- held together by the production design. an amazing achievement.
but i'm still all OMG NO about them choosing to destroy Vulcan. That was, pardon the expression, overkill IMHO.
love your posts.
One thing that bugged me about destroying Vulcan was what it means for the whole Hollywood law of escalating sequels. You've not only destroyed a planet, you've destroyed Spock's planet -- so what's the next movie's big threat going to be? A solar system, a galaxy, the entire time-space continuum?
*cheers to you*