Sonnet-Spotting in Space

Just watched the Star Trek (OS) episode "Plato's Stepchildren" (3,10) for the first time, which, although decidedly not a highlight of the series, is famous for featuring the first inter-racial kiss shown on American TV (1968). Context, however, is everything: Kirk and Uhura are under the Imperius Curse being mind-controlled by sadistic, seemingly all-powerful voyeurs at that moment, i.e. they are forced to kiss each other. The plot in a nutshell: The Enterprise visits a planet of emotionally jaded pseudo-Athenians who use their mind-controlling powers to publicly humiliate and hurt Kirk & co in order to force McCoy to stay behind since they find themselves in need of a doctor for the first time in their history. As part of their 'revels', Spock is not only manipulated into displays of wild emotion (Spock having a laughing fit - that's what I call disturbing) but also into singing a romantic song and kissing Nurse Chapel (oh, the irony), ditto Kirk/Uhura. The humiliation scenarios sorta squicked me (not that you were supposed to like them, but I found them to be unnecessarily drawn out and a bit uncomfortable to watch, although part of it might have been due to the bad acting), but there was one scene where I almost choked on my chocolate cookie: Kirk is forced to recite the beginning of Shakespeare's Sonnet 57 while writhing on the floor before his tormentor. References to the Sonnets really turn up in the most unexpected places, ha! Some critic somewhere voices the opinion that this particular sonnet was not included in the Norton Anthology (or was it the Oxford Anthology? too lazy to check) because it's too kinky... But see, for all the self-abasement, the speaker manages to sneak in a little criticism directed at the young man in the couplet.

Sonnet 57

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require;
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But like a sad slave stay and think of naught,
Save where you are, how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love, that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

One more thing: If I remember correctly, someone on the Scalzi blog discussion compared fan fic writers to the Platonians of this episode, a.k.a. the 'you're raping someone else's characters for your own sick pleasure' line of argument.

'The Curse Is Come Upon Me!'

I won a bet - and I wish I hadn't.
My most recent hobby: following the US presidential primaries. I find it absolutely fascinating, if infuriating at times. A few days ago I talked to my mum about the exaggerated media coverage of Hillary Clinton's 'emotional meltdown', i.e. the fact that although she didn't actually cry but only sounded a little husky for about 10 seconds in a Q&A session, most headlines used the words 'tears' or 'crying' to portray her as cracking under pressure and being all weak and mushy. (This is true for European newspapers as well.) And I predicted that now that the former frigid Snow Queen (damned if you do, damned if you don't) has been outed as being 'feminine' after all (i.e. overly sensitive, prone to public displays of emotions), the old 'women menstruate = they can't be leaders because hormones make them go crazy once a month' argument would be popping up again soon, never mind that it's a) bullshit and b) highly probable that Clinton is menopausal by now (but that's just me trying to be rational - I know, silly). Soooo, check out this cartoon published in the Washington Post (via Pandagon). She cries, she bleeds - even though she didn't and she doesn't. (Or is she just a stand-in for all women?) This is the kind of wildly irrational sexist thinking which really drives me up the wall. And what is it with the obsession about bodily fluids (in this case, blood and tears) when it comes to  denigrating women? Argh!