The Point

Friday, May 23, 2008

The stars

Stuart Mclean, that wonderful wordsmith who hosts the Vinyl Café on CBC, had a story once about, as he so eloquently put it, 'the people you meet when you're small and without much gravity of your own.' People who, by the force of their personality or their actions, change who you want to be and your understanding of yourself. George Takei, mysteriously, was one of those people for me.

I'd imagine I'm among one of a very small number of people who's actually read his autobiography (the website I found this picture on was selling a copy of the hardcover for ten bucks). If I hadn't been as big of a Star Trek geek as I was when I was younger, I probably wouldn't have picked it up either. But back when I was watching Deep Space Nine and Voyager religiously, I read any Star Trek crap I could get my hands on. Naturally, this book found its way into my reading. But I got a lot more than I was expecting.

Aside from the excitement of the Paramount Lot in the 60's and the crackle in the air being on a show that was breaking ground in many ways - the inter-racial kiss between Kirk and Uhura, the chintzy sci-fi fantasy soap opera narrative, the post-commie, post-capitalist Americans and Russians sharing a bridge together - aside from all that, and the story I'd heard a thousand times about how Trek was brought back from the brink by a fan letter campaign, Takei wrote about his childhood. And about a period of American history I'd never heard about before.

Being a Japanese-American during the Second World War, you can imagine a bit of what his family went through. Sent to an internment camp. Treated like criminals. Hard stuff for a family trying to raise a kid with dignity, conviction, pride. It interrupted my narrative of what the war had been like for people living on this side of the world. Hadn't I been taught that the Americans were with the good guys?

Anyway. I finished the book with a feeling that with all he'd been through, Takei had worked hard and built solid, respectful relationships through some seriously tough times with the people around him. I admired him for it. When I found out not too long ago that he'd come out, I wondered: Why didn't he write about that too? Why not include that little extra bit of himself in that book too? As a wide-eyed Trekker who didn't even know what I was looking for, I know it would have given me pause for thought to see that someone who wasn't straight could be courageous, a role model, a ground-breaker.

I don't have a satisfying answer but I do have some good news. He's getting married. The same week some friends of ours flew up from Houston to get married on the Canadian side of the Rockies where they could get a friggin' marriage license, California announced it too was going the holy homo union way. And among the first in line are George Takei and his partner Brad Altman. He was quoted this week as saying: 'I would like to think that Californians have changed and now know that we are not the stereotypes, but we are everybody we are your neighbors, your family, your co-workers.' Incidentally he came out in 2005 in part to oppose Governor Schwarzenneger's attempts to veto a law allowing same-sex marriages. I'll probably never get a satisfying answer about that biography. But how could I not be happy for someone whose life story meant so much to me?

Thanks to TrekMovie.com for the link. For all your geeky news about the new movie and other stuff from the 23rd century and beyond.

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posted by Christopher at 11:58 p.m.

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