So, about these space messiahs...
Jan. 21st, 2010 08:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakDue to James Cameron's Avatar - which btw I have not watched, and thus do not feel qualified to discuss -, there was a lot of talk about the "White Messiah" motif in both online and newspaper reviews recently. Which among other things made me realise something: DS9 really lucked out with the fact that Sisko is played by a black actor and the Bajorans by white actors, didn't it? (Apologies if I forgot Bajorans played by black or Asian actors, but without checking old episodes, I don't think there were any. As opposed to the Klingons, who were mainly played by black actors, and of course post-TOS we got black Vulcans as well.) Because otherwise, hm. Let's check.
Sisko, a Starfleet officer (i.e . product of a society which is highly technological, and pointedly avoids discussion of religion unless one of them get mistaken for a god somewhere, in which case it's a bad thing), comes a planet in distress with deep spiritual values. He becomes the first person this planet's gods, the Prophets - who are mere wormhole aliens to him at first - talk to in centuries, and becomes a religious icon, the Emissary, to the Bajorans. Initially, he is very much at unease with this role, and only accepts it because his job is to bring Bajor to the Federation one day. However, in the course of years, he not only eases into the role but starts to accept the Bajoran religious way of looking at things as well. His last hooray in the "I don't want to be the Emissary, I'm a Starfleet officer" capacity is when another Bajoran candidate for the Emissary role shows up, and Sisko initially gladly relinques it to him. Then it turns out this man, though well-intentioned, is a disaster for Bajor because of his backwards views (he wants to reintroduce the caste system, among others), so Sisko chooses to be come the (better) Emissary again. In a critical episode in season 5, Rapture, he then follows a vision the Prophets give him which goes directly against the stated Federation goal of getting Bajor to become a member. By the time the show ends, Sisko has not only decided to make Bajor his permanent home but has been revealed as the product of a Prophet possession of his biological mother, i.e. of divine origin as the Bajorans understand it; he ends up literally becoming a Prophet.
Now of course things are more complicated than this simplification of a summary. Bajor isn't some paradise (though Sisko at one point describes it that way), it's a planet which has just gone through a few decades of brutal occupation and is in the process of recovery from this. Sisko does not became the planet's ruler or war leader, and the Bajorans aren't an idealized species great with the spiritual and lousy with the tech; Bajoran politics are a complicated affair, there is a lot of scheming going on, and you could even make the case that if DS9 is any individual's story, it's (Bajoran) Kira's, not Sisko's. Plus Sisko isn't just a Starfleet commander, later captain, who happens to be black; DS9 does a lot with Sisko and racism, both in episodes focused on Earth's past in this regard, and in episodes that turn the table, as the s2 finale in which Quark stuns Sisko by calling him a racist. It's probably the most racism-conscious of all the Trek shows.
But. If Sisko HAD been a white character, and the Bajorans been cast with pocs.... ouch. Triple ouch.
Sisko, a Starfleet officer (i.e . product of a society which is highly technological, and pointedly avoids discussion of religion unless one of them get mistaken for a god somewhere, in which case it's a bad thing), comes a planet in distress with deep spiritual values. He becomes the first person this planet's gods, the Prophets - who are mere wormhole aliens to him at first - talk to in centuries, and becomes a religious icon, the Emissary, to the Bajorans. Initially, he is very much at unease with this role, and only accepts it because his job is to bring Bajor to the Federation one day. However, in the course of years, he not only eases into the role but starts to accept the Bajoran religious way of looking at things as well. His last hooray in the "I don't want to be the Emissary, I'm a Starfleet officer" capacity is when another Bajoran candidate for the Emissary role shows up, and Sisko initially gladly relinques it to him. Then it turns out this man, though well-intentioned, is a disaster for Bajor because of his backwards views (he wants to reintroduce the caste system, among others), so Sisko chooses to be come the (better) Emissary again. In a critical episode in season 5, Rapture, he then follows a vision the Prophets give him which goes directly against the stated Federation goal of getting Bajor to become a member. By the time the show ends, Sisko has not only decided to make Bajor his permanent home but has been revealed as the product of a Prophet possession of his biological mother, i.e. of divine origin as the Bajorans understand it; he ends up literally becoming a Prophet.
Now of course things are more complicated than this simplification of a summary. Bajor isn't some paradise (though Sisko at one point describes it that way), it's a planet which has just gone through a few decades of brutal occupation and is in the process of recovery from this. Sisko does not became the planet's ruler or war leader, and the Bajorans aren't an idealized species great with the spiritual and lousy with the tech; Bajoran politics are a complicated affair, there is a lot of scheming going on, and you could even make the case that if DS9 is any individual's story, it's (Bajoran) Kira's, not Sisko's. Plus Sisko isn't just a Starfleet commander, later captain, who happens to be black; DS9 does a lot with Sisko and racism, both in episodes focused on Earth's past in this regard, and in episodes that turn the table, as the s2 finale in which Quark stuns Sisko by calling him a racist. It's probably the most racism-conscious of all the Trek shows.
But. If Sisko HAD been a white character, and the Bajorans been cast with pocs.... ouch. Triple ouch.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 08:02 am (UTC)Also, Vedek Yarka was played by Eric Avari. But you're right, almost all Bajorans were white.
DS9 being race-conscious is one more reason I love it so much. Sisko's journey could have so easily been another white guy as saviour to the "natives", complete with cultural appropriation, but it's overturned by Sisko being black, and Avery Brooks pushing the writers to deal with issues of race.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 08:11 am (UTC)