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 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.