Hollywood, Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, and the better angels of our nature. What do these things all have in common you may ask? Let’s start by reviewing some words we have heard often. White privilege. White power. The Confederacy. Altright. Racism, each of these words has something to do with the issue of race in America. That’s right I said America, the land of the free the home of the brave, where all men are created equal.
The issue of race has never been an easy one in the United States, going back all the way to our founding fathers in the American Revolution, and then stretching all the way across our history. Sadly, the United States has a dark stain upon its canvas, that being the enforced servitude of an entire race of people. Thankfully that time is now past, and it’s safe to say that in the last 100 years there have been major strides in race relations in the United States. Despite all of these amazing victories of civil rights, it seems that America is more divided now than it has been since the Civil Rights Movement.
This is especially true in the entertainment industry, being someone connected to this industry, I appreciate entertainment very much, I love celebrity’s, TV, and motion pictures, and I like millions of Americans enjoy binge-watching the newest episodes of our favorite show on streaming services of our choice. However, I have come to a disturbing realization over these past few years, it seems in the entertainment world we are more divided than we have ever been before.
It seems that TV and movies seek to divide us rather than unite us as a people. A good example of this is the current trend in Hollywood over the last few years of stoking the fires of racism with the type of films it is releasing, designed to spark anger in the populace.
We have seen the release of pictures such as “The hate U give”, “Dear white people”, “BlackKklansman” and “Get Out”, and all of these films go to the extreme of showing the worst kind of racism and break down of relations between black and white (Please keep in mind I am not saying all these are bad pictures objectively). Now many have said these films are necessary to show the evils of racism, yet I ask do we really need to keep being shown how bad racism is? Is this really a subject that we don’t know already? We live in the 21st century and it’s pretty much taught in every school and university about the evil of racist thinking.
I see these films and the push of Hollywood for pictures of this type as simply inflaming those who are already angry about race relations in America. Whether this is militant wings of the
It seems to be a cheap ploy in order to grab ratings even at the sake of dividing the American people instead of unifying them on race relations. Everywhere I look, whether it’s in the media or entertainment world it seems that studios are race-baiting, and trying to sell us how bad we are as a people. How filled with hate we are and how racist we all really are, and this is not specifically limited to one race but all races.
I can’t help but think back to another time when we as a nation we’re divided, back in the 1960s, JFK was president, the war in Vietnam was raging, peaceful students were being gunned down, and blacks were being hunted and lynched across the South. To say it plainly this was a bad time in America.
However, in the entertainment World there was one man who tried to make a difference, Gene Roddenberry pitched a TV show called Star Trek, this show sought to focus on the unity of mankind and what we had in common not what divided us. Gene Roddenberry could have easily capitalized on the division in the nation to create something salacious to get ratings. However, Gene Roddenberry chose to create a show where mankind was united, where we had put aside all of our racial and cultural differences and lived in unity.
This was a show that was at the height of the Cold War and segregation, however, Gene Roddenberry in the show had a character who was Russian and another who was African American, it even featured the first interracial kiss on TV. Gene Roddenberry saw the best in humanity, and even though he knew that at this point we were nowhere near the unification he showed in Star Trek, he wanted to show people what they could become. To give hope that we like Gene Roddenberry could embrace the so-called better angels of our nature. The philosophy of Gene Roddenberry can be summed up well in the following quote
“I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We’re still just a child creature, we’re still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We’re growing up, we’re moving into adolescence now. When we grow up – man, we’re going to be something!”
Gene Roddenberry
I can’t help but feel that we have lost our way in modern entertainment, that instead of focusing on what unifies us as a people, the fact that we are all human the media and entertainment worlds simply focus on what divides us, such as the above-mentioned films that are being made.
When I see the entertainment and media World using issues like race relations to bait us and profit from it, I see Studios executives who don’t care about race relations but simply want to make a profit. These news personalities love to point out the immense moral failings and primordial evil that fills us and promotes the differences in our skin tone. However, I can’t help but feel that without these pressures and race-baiting for-profit we would have a lot fewer problems than we do have.
I am I’m reminded of a movie that came out a few years ago The Lone Ranger. In the film, an evil industrialist kills the Native American character Tonto’s family, Tonto has told himself that it is a primordial evil known as a wendigo that has slaughtered his family. however, when he catches up to the man and confronts him, he realizes that the man was not a supernatural creature just evil and absolutely greedy, and he would do anything including promoting evil and division in order to get his way and make a profit.
Upon realizing this Tonto says “I used to think you were a wendigo, but now I see you for what you are just a greedy white man” and I can’t help but feel the same way, that these media and studio bosses will do anything including fan the fires of racism and race-baiting in order to make a profit no matter who is hurt.
We can be better than this, let us appeal to the better angels of our nature,. let us teach our children and each other to be better.
We need more media and entertainment that shows people what they can become, that shows them that there is hope to be a better person and a better country. I am not saying to not talk about the past and not face the problem that we clearly have, but to show that we can be better people and that even though we do have these problems we can overcome them because we are all one people we are all human it doesn’t matter the color of our skin. To quote the great emancipator Abraham Lincoln
“With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”