{"id":7459,"date":"2013-04-25T11:54:41","date_gmt":"2013-04-25T18:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=7459"},"modified":"2015-11-22T20:47:30","modified_gmt":"2015-11-23T04:47:30","slug":"james-t-kirk-and-the-mind-body-spirit-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2013\/04\/james-t-kirk-and-the-mind-body-spirit-relationship.html","title":{"rendered":"James T. Kirk and the mind-body-spirit relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><div style=\"float: right; padding-left: 10px;\"><object width=\"300\" height=\"172\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/ibeBUzMrWxw&amp;color1=0xb1b1b1&amp;color2=0xcfcfcf&amp;hl=en&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;fs=1\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"300\" height=\"172\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ibeBUzMrWxw\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/object><\/div>\n<p>\u201cKirk is a man of passion and emotion and follows his gut.\u201d So says Chris Pine in a new <i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/tag\/star-trek-into-darkness\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Star Trek into Darkness<\/a><\/i> featurette.<\/p>\n<p>To a certain extent, Pine is correct: Kirk does indeed have these characteristics. But on another level, Pine\u2019s statement reflects one of the subtle but significant changes that the new films have made to the original <i>Star Trek<\/i> characters.<\/p>\n<p>The way Pine speaks of Kirk\u2019s \u201cpassion\u201d and his \u201cgut\u201d reminds me of a point that John Granger made in his book <i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/tag\/hidden-key-to-harry-potter\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">The Hidden Key to Harry Potter<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->In that book, Granger noted that a franchise often revolves around three characters who represent the classic division of the human being into body, mind and spirit. As Granger put it, the body and the mind \u2014 or the stomach and the head \u2014 are like horses that need to be guided by a charioteer between them, which is the spirit, or the heart. And Granger saw this division of roles in the relationship between Harry Potter (the heart), Hermione Granger (the head) and Ron Weasley (the stomach) \u2014 but also in famous triumvirates like Kirk (the heart), Spock (the head) and McCoy (the stomach).<\/p>\n<p>So it seems to me that the J.J. Abrams films have conflated Kirk and McCoy to a certain degree \u2014 if not displaced McCoy altogether \u2014 and have thus divided the central roles between two people instead of the classic three. Or perhaps it is the original <i>Kirk<\/i> who has been displaced, inasmuch as he no longer represents the heart or spirit of the franchise\u2019s central relationship, but is now its gut or passion.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/227\/2013\/04\/startrek-kirkspockuhura.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/227\/2013\/04\/startrek-kirkspockuhura-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"startrek-kirkspockuhura\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7470\"><\/a>And speaking of displacing McCoy\u2026 We could actually go one step further and argue that the original triumvirate of Kirk-Spock-McCoy has been replaced by a new one, in the last film at least, of Kirk-Spock-Uhura. I forget who it was, but one critic noted four years ago that the first J.J. Abrams film made a point of tracing Kirk\u2019s character arc through Uhura\u2019s eyes: she dismisses him as a skirt-chasing layabout when we first meet him, and then gradually, by the end of the film, she comes to trust him as a leader and as captain of her ship.<\/p>\n<p>Karina Longworth also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2009\/05\/star-trek-the-reviews-up.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">noted<\/a> at the time that Abrams basically recycled the central character dynamic of his TV show <i>Felicity<\/i>, by positioning Uhura as a woman caught between a \u201ccute brainiac\u201d and a \u201cbrooding blonde hunk\u201d. She added:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Eventually Keri Russell\u2019s Felicity had to choose one male polarity over the other, and live a life deprived of the charms of the second place candidate. But being that the boys of <i>Star Trek<\/i> will ultimately choose each other \u2014 er, their common mission \u2014 over womankind, space can benefit from both, while the question as to what type is more desirable can remain infinitely unresolved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It remains to be seen whether Uhura will continue to play a central role in the new film; at least <a href=\"http:\/\/ca.ign.com\/articles\/2013\/04\/23\/star-trek-into-darkness-igns-review\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\" rel=\"nofollow\">one early review<\/a> has already complained that she is \u201cdemoted to whining comic-relief.\u201d But in the previous film, at least, one could argue that it was she, if anyone, who played the \u201cheart\u201d to Spock\u2019s \u201chead\u201d and Kirk\u2019s \u201cstomach\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>And as for Kirk?<\/p>\n<p>So far, it seems, he is still the hothead that he was in the previous film. The original Kirk often went with his \u201cgut\u201d in the sense of following his instincts, but in the new films, his \u201cgut\u201d seems more reminiscent of the rash emotionalism that was once personified by Doctor McCoy. Whether Kirk can grow past this stage to become the \u201cheart\u201d of the series \u2014 the person who can balance the logic and emotion of his crewmates in service of both higher ideals and common humanity \u2014 remains to be seen. But I do hope that he, and the movies as a whole, get there in the end.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chris Pine says James T. Kirk is &#8220;a man of passion and emotion and follows his gut.&#8221; But was he always this way? And how have the new <i>Star Trek<\/i> movies altered the central character dynamics of this franchise?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[978,1062,918,1060,1059,976,83,1058,1056,1061,975,78,79,481,1057],"class_list":["post-7459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-chris-pine","tag-felicity","tag-harry-potter","tag-hermione-granger","tag-hidden-key-to-harry-potter","tag-james-t-kirk","tag-jj-abrams","tag-john-granger","tag-mccoy","tag-ron-weasley","tag-spock","tag-star-trek","tag-star-trek-2009","tag-star-trek-into-darkness","tag-uhura"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>James T. Kirk and the mind-body-spirit relationship<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Chris Pine says James T. Kirk is &quot;a man of passion and emotion and follows his gut.&quot; But was he always this way? And how have the new Star Trek movies altered the central character dynamics of this franchise?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2013\/04\/james-t-kirk-and-the-mind-body-spirit-relationship.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"James T. Kirk and the mind-body-spirit relationship\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Chris Pine says James T. Kirk is &quot;a man of passion and emotion and follows his gut.&quot; But was he always this way? 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