Comments

1
there's absolutely no reason for her to be stripping... I honestly don't know why she has to strip down in this moment during this conversation.
Wut?

Think about Star Trek's core fan base. That should answer the question.
2
remove the women from the film altogether then, and let's just look at the shirtless dudes, shall we?
3
So gratuitous non-nudity is now some kind of crime? This from the purveyors of "Hump" film festival.
4
@ 3 FTW
5
@2, so Star Wars shirtless is what you want?
6
@3 Look! Way up in the sky, way up where the airplanes go- look real hard, you may see the point. Sailing way, way over your head. See it up there?

P.s. the nudity in Hump is hardly gratuitous. Most submissions' plots would be absolutely ruined if the actors kept their clothes on.
7
How come I don't see FTL (for the loss) more? Seems like it there would be a greater need for it...

8
Much as I liked a lot of Star Trek Into Darkness, Abrams's treatment of women in the movie is appalling in 2013. Shamefully so.

Still, if that deleted shower scene of Cumberbatch had made it onto the big screen, I would have fainted in my seat in the theater last weekend.

*drool*
9
@3: It's a celebration of sex-positive culture when done by a ragtag bunch of counter-culture iconoclasts. It's sexism when it's done in the mainstream. Duh.
10
...meanwhile your paycheck is financed by fucking escort ads!!!!!!
11
Cutting the scene out of the movie doesn't make it equal opportunity. Abrams is a lying hack.
12
I think one of the problems is how this movie, and many like it, are marketed (which of course in on Abrams). Despite the sophisticated-looking trailer, these movies are the same high camp as the original TV show.

Even Chris Pine's performance was goddamn Shatneresque.

13
I understand what you're saying... but jesus fucking christ, I do not want to have forced sexual equality in every single piece of art or film or TV or whatever on the planet.
14
This is the most asinine bitching that I've ever seen on slog. And that includes Charles' library bullshit.
15
"Like all blockbusters, Star Trek is a movie stuffed with dudes—dudes who are funny, dudes who are friends, dudes who talk a lot and fight and who convey complex emotions"

Wait. There were funny, complex dudes in there? How did I miss them?

At the end of the day, ST:ITD was just a bad movie. Its callbacks to ST: TOS were gimmicky, at best. It's no surprise that, like your average beer commercial production team, the movie's creators used sexy women as just another gimmick. It's what they do. It's all they know.
16
I know I'm oversensitive on these kinds of things, but I feel like there is a trend developing of people misusing "cognitive dissonance".

Misuse happens sometimes, and we end up with a colloquial understanding of a term which is really incorrect.

Literally is kind of the example du jour, but I think "per se" is a better example in this case. People use "per se" to mean "as a manner of speaking" when it really means something else entirely ("in and of itself").

I feel like Cienna's use of "cognitive dissonance" here is meant to construe something between "hypocrisy" and "false equivalancy".

"Cognitive dissonance" is the discomfort one feels when trying to hold two mutually exclusive, competing ideas in your head at the same time. I don't think that's what Cienna's getting at here.

I've seen people misuse cognitive dissonance in other places, and it's starting to alarm me. Because I think it's a really cool, really important concept, and I don't want people to misunderstand it.

Am I totally off base here?
17
"I'm so GOSH DARN TIRED of you POLITICAL CORRECT ISLAMONAZIS gettin' in the way of my TITTY SHOTS. Some of you even HAVE breasts, and even attend HUMP showings! You're SO HIPPOCRTICAL!"
18
Fuck Abrams and his shitty Trek movies.

Beverly Crusher didn't just randomly strip down. She and the Captain had coffee and croissants and enjoyed each other's company. That's because they had class.

(I can't really speak in defense of Troi's space-leotards, though.)
19
@15 - Exactly. Of course there needs to be more, better, and more realistic portrayals of women in film, but one of the problems is there isn't many writers showing much complexity in men, either. And giving a female character a gun doesn't make her a "strong female character", not even if she's wearing a tank top you guys!
20
This is a really interesting discussion, but all I really have to add is that I refuse to believe or accept that a person is named "Benedict Cumberbatch". I don't care how many times you Cumberbitches repeat it, it's not real. It's worse than "Katniss Everdeen", for chrissakes.
21
Both shots of Pine in bed and the dude in the shower were entirely COY. Where the fuck is their bulge in skimpy undies? That's the equality I want to see.
22
@1 But thinking about Star Trek's core fan base exclusively as horny, heterosexual teenage boys is exactly the problem. Female Trek fans are just supposed to suck it up, I guess? Accept our designated fate as second-class Trek citizens? "Oh, it doesn't matter if you don't like it -- it's not for you, anyway!"

I haven't seen the movie yet, so I have no idea what I'll think about the underwear scene in context. But a deleted scene can't possibly balance anything that was in the actual released movie. If anything, it proves the point -- we'll FILM a hot dude, naked, sure, but it won't be in the movie -- because, hey, we have to respect our fans, who we all know are exclusively horny, heterosexual teenage boys.
23
@22,
Yeah, but I'm a fan of sappy, so-called "chick flicks" and yet I don't expect them to give equal time to big-guns-big-tits-bloodbaths.

Each genre is what it is. I feel blatant sexism like this (as well as sappy romance in chick flicks) are aspects worth embracing.
24
@20, deny it all you want but he was born "Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch"
26
You're correct Fnarf. His REAL name is Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch.

Seriously though, he's British, of course he's going to have a crazy name, just like you expect politicians from the South to have bat-shit crazy names like Saxby Chambliss, or Estes Kefauver.
27
@24, that's not true. It can't be true. I don't care what his mother or his birth certificate says. It's a lie. THE WHOLE THING IS A LIE. It's a false flag operation, Kenya infowars weather machine Tsaraev cocaine hatchet fertilizer Blackwater backpack.
28
Calm the fuck down...go home, log into Netflix or Amazon and watch some episodes from Season 4 of ST:TNG and all of this will just seem like the total bullshit it all is.

In five years JJ Abrams movies won't be considered canon and just a strange period...kinda like the animated series in the early 70's.

So bath yourself in Picard's voice and Data's perfect humanity. It'll all be better
29
@24, in that case I really think we should all call him Carlton.
30
@29, can't do that. That is what his acting father goes by.
31
"That is not equality, it's just fucked up—the kind of fucked up a whole porn's worth of Cumberbatch's pecs wouldn't fix."

While that may be correct, I think they should try. We won't really know until they try.
32
@21 - it's brief, but in the beginning, when they're on the bridge in their wetsuits, there is a distinct bulge in Kirk's britches. Wish I could have seen Bones a bit clearer...
33
Ugh...I grew up having to watch Star Trek with my dad, who loved the original as a kid. I get the nostalgia, but the women on that show existed strictly to be sexually harrassed or make silly mistaks that the men would have to correct.

If your looking for feminism in sci-fi, your barking up the wrong franchise.

JJ Abrams can suck it, regardless.
34
Star Trek without sex is just Star Wars.
35
@26, you have a point. Aside from Estes and Saxby, I found these fellows just in the 20th century US Senate:

Thaddeus Caraway
Park Trammell
Millard Tydings
Theodore Bilbo
Furnifold Simmons
Coleman Blease
William Spong
Burnet Maybank
Strom Thurmond
Thruston Morton (not a typo, "Thruston")
Spessard Holland
Lawton Chiles
Dale Bumpers
Howell Heflin

My favorite, though, isn't from the South: Tasker Oddie (R-NV, 1921-33).

Styles Bridges (R-NH, 1937-61), Zales Ecton (R-MT, 1947-52) Orrin Hatch (R-UT, 1977-present) and Reed Smoot (R-UT, 1903-33) aren't bad, either. Washington has a couple of worthwhile entries, too: Homer T. Bone (D-WA, 1934-44) and Monrad Wallgren (D-WA, 1941-44). Monrad Wallgren?

The funniest name in the history of the senate, though, of course, is and always will be "Rick Santorum".
36
I have no interest in seeing this movie, much less seeing Mr. Cumberbatch bathe. But I will look up that Alice Eve clip at some point. Thanks for the heads-up!
37
@35 - Spawn of inbred carpet-baggers, every last one of'em. While I can't prove the carpet-bagger thing, I think those names speak for themselves.

Also, Dutch Ruppersberger III (D-MD). Captain of your la cross team, perhaps; but Congressman?
38
The opposite of nakedness is overdressing.
39
I am naming my next child Furnifold, regardless of gender.
40
I have never seen such a fabulous collection of names for cats in all my life. Thank you Fnarf!
41
"well, Star Trek Into Darkness did not appeal to women (according to exit surveys), who did not come see the movie in large numbers. Maybe selling a buff Benedict showering would have sold some tickets to women? "

Did the author of this piece not go see STID with actual women? Did he not poll them himself?
42
"the nudity in Hump is hardly gratuitous."

Hump is itself gratuitous. This thread is gratuitous. We are all gratuitous.
43
Auragasm: for 1966 Star Trek did pretty well for network TV.....although I really rather wish the last episode never happened; there was a degredation over time in the original series on several fronts.

'For 1966' and 'network tv' being important qualifiers. If you don't agree I have 3 words:

Lost in Space

44
JJ Abrams killed off Vulcans for fuck's sake, who cares about some gratuitous underwear scene?

He wears it as a mark of pride that he never enjoyed Star Trek until he was making his own version of it.

Fuck him and his Star Warsy Star Trek action films.
45
It's a minor form of false equivalence. Women don't react to visual sexual stimuli the way men do. Showing a woman in a state of undress is a sexual thing for men. Showing a man in a state of undress is rarely on the same level.

But as for the "underwear scene," it took some doing for me to remember it, so maybe this isn't Star Trek's biggest problem. Maybe it's the general dearth of female characters. Uhura and Marcus both advocate coming in and talking to dispel the fight, but neither time is it shown to work, both times for completely random, message-free reasons.

Star Trek needs a River Song!
46
Everyone please go google "Bechdel Test" and apply it to future movies that you write/direct/watch. Thanks.

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