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。」
True. Though on the other hand, if my thesis is "Star Trek is racist American exceptionalism in space", I'm hardly going to be inclined to skip past the episodes which most prove my point.
He's also not totally wrong. I'm a huge huge huge Trekkie and he does make a good point. It's also one that has been addressed to a decent degree in the show, Deep Space 9 could have covered it better but it's there. I'd like to see more of that and have it handled well. The thing is with Star Trek, even though it for sure has super racist and sexist episodes, on the whole they were always at least trying.
Personally, I think that Star Trek (except Nu-Trek) consistently tries to put out a good message, which makes it better than most shows, especially other shows of its era.
However, even though it tries it sometimes misses, sends mixed messages, ends up hamfisted, or accidentally says the opposite of what was intended. Thats fine, the writers are human and humans make mistakes.
My personal stance is that we should critique the bad and embrace the good, not let the bad taint the entirety.