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Yes, I am stretching by pointing out that Walt Disney, always the perfectionist, almost delayed the opening of his first Disneyland in Orange County, California, because the construction of the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse fell behind schedule. But consider what that first Disneyland represented. Once again one white man's vision "redeveloped" underutilized orange groves into a real estate treasure. Walt Disney is the classic entrepreneur, the classic real estate developer.
His creation The Walt Disney Company has created for itself over the years a reputation for ruthless business practices that seem to leave those it bulldozes pissed at the Mouse.
Walt Disney
with Matterhorn
A few years ago the Walt Disney Company had to abandon its plans for Disney's America, a theme park it had planned for Haymarket, Virginia. Let's sympathize with Disney for a moment. A global corporation has its own set of values and priorities, and thus would be forced to rewrite history to suit its vendors and dealers. Corporate sentimentality would overrule the harsh realities of battlefield slaughter. Corporate perspectives on history are and would be a selected history. Imagine the Lewis and Clark Raft Ride.
But Disney lost at Haymarket. It will continue its search for a new site, and it will rewrite its own version of American history. After all, this revisionism could be rewritten anywhere. It need not be exclusively in Virginia, nor does it need to be near a civil war battlefield. It could be rewritten in Iowa, for instance. Arkansas needs the money.
Location, location, location.
Rob Crusoe is always flexible when it comes to real estate.
* * *
If you were a real estate developer, where do you go when you run out of land?
If you can’t go horizontal, you go vertical.
Star Trek is a phenomenon that has resulted in four TV series, a cartoon series, nine feature films that earned over $1 billion, a tenth feature film in the works for next year, over 160 novels, 100 fan conventions a year, a half-dozen theme parks (still in the works), almost $2 billion worth of merchandising, and easily more than $1 billion worth of revenue to Paramount Communications Inc. over the last third of a century.
In Hollywood parlance, Star Trek is an evergreen asset. It never gets old and will always generate revenues. If all its sequels and spin-offs ran continuously on a single channel, it would play for over a month.
The mid-sixties were the time of the first Star Trek, where Captain James T. Kirk orated, "Space, the Final Frontier. These are the continuing voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its mission: to seek out new worlds. To boldly go where no man has gone before."
You go vertical, remember.
The "mythos" of Star Trek must never be underestimated. In our postmodern semi-illiterate society, Star Trek IS our Utopian myth. While classical literature tells us that utopias never evolve and therefore are inherently stagnant, for the last 35 years Star Trek is Utopia whooshing through the galaxy at Warp Speed.
The Writers'/Directors' Guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation tells prospective storytellers that "Our continuing characters are a kind of people that the STAR TREK audience would like to be themselves. They are not perfect, but their flaws do not include falsehood, petty jealousies and the banal hypocrisies in the Twentieth Century."
The Guide repeats this later: "They do have human faults and weaknesses, but not as many or as severe as in our time. They have been selected for this mission because of their ability to transcend (its emphasis) their human failings. We should see in them the kind of people we aspire to be ourselves."
Star Trek is a curiously American Utopia. One quite fitted for the 4 percent of the world's population that calls itself the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Hungry? Hit the replicator. No money needed. Cold? Hey, the cast and crew are dressed always for room temperature. Stressed out? Go to Sick Bay. You'll be okay. And the other 96 percent of the planet Earth?
The Writers'/Directors' Guide states, "If you are in doubt about a scene, you can apply this simple test: 'Would I believe this if it were occurring today on the Bridge of the Battleship Missouri?'" Star Trek is sort of like the military, but not battleship gray. The uniforms are always snug. No need to salute. No need to drop down and "give me fifty, sailor." The Starship Enterprise is a good place to hang out, if you don't mind hanging out in a hotel lobby. If it had more plants, you could be traveling on the Airport Hilton.
Research the etymology of the word "Enterprise." It is less a military or political word than a corporate word. Its roots are Calvinistic. Chauvinistic. And white. Free Enterprise: that's where the government doesn't intervene in the free market. One of those truths we hold so dear. One of those truths Robinson Crusoe held so dear.
The Starship Enterprise is Capitalism in Space. Maybe it is true that in Space no one may hear you scream, but Crusoe's legacy echoes everywhere.
Captain Kirk, the white man hero on the original Star Trek, still has his ethnic sidekick. Mister Spock is a part Terran and part Vulcan. In one episode of Star Trek, Chief Engineer Scotty, under the influence of an alien intelligence, calls Mister Spock a "green-blooded half-breed." The importance of the alien influence on poor Scotty's mind, of course, is that Scotty speaks without the civilizing superego regulating his words. It's a Freudian slip, an unconscious truth.
The remainder of the crew were also cast in subordinate postures to the dominant white male Kirk. Sulu was a frustrated samurai (America's old enemy), while Chekov was another defeated enemy, a Russian leftover of the Cold War. But how was the Third World represented?
Star Trek
Lieutenant Uhura was an African-American woman. (No black males needed to apply in those days of Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam.) Her name in Swahili meant "freedom," for the Robinson Crusoe "mythos" could only view blacks as slaves or ex-slaves. Still, for all her freedoms, she was only a receptionist answering the phone for the Main Office. (In truth, Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played Uhura, was the only regular cast member that first season without a contract. In fact, for the duration of the first Star Trek, she was also consistently paid less than any other cast member. But then she was a Girl Friday!)
Mister Spock dies in the second Star Trek movie The Wrath of Khan. In a more altruistic rendering of yet another of Man Friday's necessary demises, Spock gives up his life to save his friends and his fellow officers. "Of all the souls I have known, his was the most human," Kirk says at Spock's wake. (This may be a slam. Ask Rudyard Kipling’s Gunga Din.)
Spock lives again in the sequel, The Search for Spock, which should have had audiences booing throughout the known universe . . . except for the fact that the audience is a vampire thirsty for its favorite characters. But then Death is not Too Proud to work a deal in Hollywood . . . if the money's right.
For the Western mind, Space is now the Final Frontier, and now the Robinson Crusoe mystique urges us "to boldly go where no one has gone before." By implication, the Starship Enterprise is a real estate office in outer space.
To boldly go vertical: It's our Manifest Destiny.
Too bad the sidekick always gets screwed along the way.
* * *
Ah, the Starship Enterprise …
According to The Writers'/Directors' Guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Starship Enterprise and her mission is the only continuing character in the Star Trek television and film series.
The Writers'/Directors' Guide is insistent that the two are one: "Please remember that a major character in STAR TREK has always been the Starship Enterprise and its mission. The ship is not just a vehicle — she is the touchstone by which all of our characters demonstrate who they are and what they're up to in the universe."
Obviously, the Enterprise and her mission is the American Master Story, which is always a subtle variation on America’s own sense of Manifest Destiny.
Not so obviously, that American Master Story has taken Robinson Crusoe and his Ethnic Sidekick as Captain and Crew.
The first spin-off from the classic Trek was Star Trek: The Next Generation, and with 178 episodes it ran for seven years. Captain Picard was an Englishman with a French name and a Royal Shakespearean accent, and his second-in-command Commander Riker was not called "Number Two," but "Number One." The rest of the crew all qualified as Ethnic Sidekicks.
In 1993 Star Trek had a second major spin-off called Deep Space Nine. Its two-hour premiere was the highest-rated show in syndication television history, eclipsing the previous record held by the two-hour premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a previous spin-off.
 Avery Brooks  |
Second billing belonged to Rene Auberjonois, who played "the shapeshifter Odo," an alien being of unknown origins. Visually, Odo was a spin-off of the "morphing" techniques used in the hit movie Terminator II: Judgment Day, and his "special effects" were probably why he was created for the series. Not only was Odo a "shapeshifter," an archetype worth studying all by itself, but any critter that could shape its shape at will certainly qualifies as the ultimate ethnic sidekick.
But Commander Sisko's position in the Star Trek mythology was critically important. Because he wasn't a Captain, he didn't have a Captain's Chair. Without that, he was just an Ethnic Sidekick. Not until 1995 did Commander Sisko finally become Captain; he was also given command of the Defiant, a prototype warship.
The Captain's Chair goes back to the earliest days of our Western culture. We must remember that "Jesus SITS at the right hand of the Father" and the Throne of Saint Peter is the center of the Vatican's universe. In the Middle Ages, the Bishop's throne was called the "cathedra," and the church that encloses it was named after the fact. Because the first universities were seminaries, the Professorships were "Chairs," a term which still is used in much of academe.
In the 1994 Star Trek movie Generations, the seventh full-length feature film in the franchise, the final scene featured Captain Picard and his Number One Commander Riker standing amid the ruins of the Federation Starship Enterprise. Between them is the Captain's Chair. Their reverence is noticeable.
Star Trek had a new incarnation in 1995: Star Trek: Voyager. It premiered January 16th. The Captain this time was a woman, Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew. As the first major role for a woman in the Star Trek saga, Captain Janeway was a sort of breakthrough character . . . if we can forget that she was not the Captain of an Enterprise-class Starship and that she and her crew got lost on their first mission. They were so lost that returning home would take 75 years!
She has a very ethnic crew. Her first officer was Chakotay, a Native American (played by Robert Beltran). Her security officer was Tuvok, a sort of African-Vulcan (played by Tim Russ). Her Chief Engineer was described as a half-human and half-Klingon (played by Roxann Biggs-Dawson). They were all Ethnic Sidekicks.
Voyager is scheduled to end in the Spring of 2001, and a new Star Trek series is rumored to begin, perhaps featuring Starfleet Academy and (dare we hope!) the new Enterprise.
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