Anno: "I don't hate Star Trek, but I'm not impressed by it. You can see the arrogance of America in it. It's a story of influencing or enlightening native peoples of destination planets, that features romance with their most admirable woman in a front-line way. I feel like this is American imperialism itself.
It's like Marxists are portrayed as being primitives. I can't get used to that kind of American worldview. I think the Enterprise is cool, but that's all."
庵野: 『スタートレック』は嫌いじゃないですけど、そんなにはまってはいないんです。なんかアメリカ人の傲慢さが見えててね。行く先の星々の原住民を感化していくというか啓蒙していく話や、最前線の基地では、そこの一番偉い女性とロマンスがある。もう、アメリカの帝国主義そのものという気がしてね。なんかこうマルクス主義の人たちが、原始的なものとして描かれてますよね。ああいうアメリカ的な世界観というのには、どうもなじめなくて。エンタープライズ号は、カッコいいと思うんですけどね。」
I've been thinking along the same lines about Ian Banks' Culture novels. It's seems like Anglo progressives have trouble imaging their utopian future civilization that is not hegemonic, far ahead in development from everyone else and so powerful that their only concern is finding ways of enlightening savages that minimise collateral damage.
Look to Windward is considered to be one of the best Culture novels. The story goes like this:
spoiler
Culture's CIA tries to bring democracy to the planet of cat-people by bribing and manipulating their politicians. They misjudge how rigid the cat cast society is and precipitate a planet-wide civil war that kills a good proportion of the population.
Cat people are pissed. According to their religion (which is actually true, lmao) the dead must be avenged for them to go to heaven. The cat-military somehow procures an insanely high tech bomb and sends a grieving cat-soldier to 9/11 an enormous Culture habitat. Culture's tech is too advanced so they knew what he was trying to do all along, lol.
Culture sends a sort of ultratech combat cyborg to gruesomely torture and murder the key architects of the plan.
The novel was published in 2000 AD.
On the other hand, now that I think about it, Strugatsky's Noon universe is basically the same thing as Culture but with communism instead of godlike AIs.
Tbh I'm not really convinced by all these influencing other societies = imperialism takes. Shows a very superficial and liberal understanding of imperialism, totally deprived of its economic basis.
In a way it's affirming one of the central myths of colonialism: that's it's done for the sake of the colonized. Like, that's not actually why the AmeriKKKans went around exterminating indigenous people. Like, we weren't going around murdering people and stealing their land to enlighten them.
Also seems to imply the "bumbling empire" trope. I've seen it invoked a few times with comparisons between both The Culture and the Federation and the Iraq War, the idea being that the Iraq War is what you get when you try to intervene in other cultures' affairs, as if it was so awful because it was "interference" and not because it was literally just fucking invading and looting a country for profit.
Like, if you run across a genocidal fascist space empire (like in The Culture and Star Trek), obviously you kick the shit out of them. That's not imperialism in any remotely Marxist sense.
The point about Noon having a really similar approach to utopian space communist intervention is a good one, I think; it shows that the desire to influence other societies in a sci-fi setting isn't necessarily rooted in colonial attitudes.
I don't actually think that Star Trek, Culture or Noon people are imperialist. I just find it interesting that in some of the most influential utopian sci-fi settings the utopian good guys are by far the biggest dogs on the block and mostly deal with people much less powerful than them. Maybe I'm reading too much into it...
No, that makes sense. I guess it might have something to do with what kinds of conflicts you can have in utopias, since they kind of have to be externally driven since everything's so great inside, but at the same time it's interesting that the stories tend to be about powerful utopias deciding what to do with their power. Might reflect the countries the authors came from, being hegemonic in different ways.
Anyway, I wasn't really responding to you directly, more the general idea that I think is annoying, which your post reminded me of, and I tend to get ranty when I'm caffeinated.
That was my first thought as well.
The spoiler you wrote sounds kind of like Banks is trying to do a scathing critique of interfering with other peoples' societies. That said, I haven't read that particular book yet.
Also, thr Culture isn't necessarily far ahead of everyone else, they're just far enough away from most powers that haven't chosen to ascend beyond the material plane yet.
IIRC, the whole point of Excession is what happens when the smug Culture encounters a phenomenon so advanced and exotic that they have no idea how to engage with it.
I wouldn't call it a scathing critique. I'd say it's portraited as a honest mistake by well-meaning people.
Both Culture and Noon have those spies that are tasked with meddling with affairs of other less advanced civilizations, always for those civilizations' sake. Their work is considered shady, dirty, occasionally soul-destroying, but in the end probably something that has to be done. In most novels Culture's machinations end up being for the best.
Not claiming that Banks had bad politics, but it's fascinating how the foreign policy of his utopian society mirrors the way neolibs and neocons rationalise US foreign policy.
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