{"id":7640,"date":"2017-11-07T15:04:05","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T21:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=7640"},"modified":"2017-11-08T08:49:43","modified_gmt":"2017-11-08T14:49:43","slug":"the-orville-about-a-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/11\/the-orville-about-a-girl.html","title":{"rendered":"The Orville, “About a Girl”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"from<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ve been watching The Orville<\/em> lately.<\/p>\n

Actually, that\u2019s not entirely correct.\u00a0 I have watched three episodes, on demand, while using the exercise bike in the morning, after I got bored with This Is Us<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s a curious mix of a show, trying to be serious and yet add in humor at the same time, with lots of references to current day popular culture that you have to just take with some suspension of disbelief, and consider these references as placeholders for whatever the 24th century equivalents would be.\u00a0 (Actually, suspension of disbelief is pretty key to watching the whole show.)\u00a0 And, so far at least, it\u2019s episodic, so that you don\u2019t have to pay attention in the same way as with a serial-type show.<\/p>\n

But I continue to ask myself the question, is The Orville<\/em> trying to take itself seriously, or just entertain its audience?<\/p>\n

In the third episode, Bortus, a member of the all-male Moclan species, and his mate, Klyden, have just had a baby (they lay and hatch eggs).\u00a0 Because the baby is unexpectedly a female, they ask the ship\u2019s doctor to perform a sex change operation, and when she refuses, they go to their home planet.\u00a0 In the meantime, by means of watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the goofball pilots convince Bortus not to go through with it, but Klyden insists, and reveals he was born a girl and knows that the baby would be mocked and ostracized if she remains a female.\u00a0 There is a Moclan tribunal at which, despite a last-minute visit from a Moclan female who was not converted and has lived as a hermit and proclaims \u201cI am happy to be a female,\u201d the determination is made that Klyden\u2019s decision is correct, the baby receives the operation, and they return to the ship.<\/p>\n

Vox presumes<\/a> that\u00a0this episode is a pitch in favor of transgender rights, and proceeds to insist that they\u2019ve done a terrible job at it.<\/p>\n

If this episode had come out 10 years ago, it might have looked a bit more progressive. But in 2017, as thinking on gender continues to evolve, the episode comes off for what it is: a repetition of flat talking points that are too basic even for the \u201ctransgender\u201d Wikipedia entry (which, as I\u2019ve now realized, is obviously flawed but surprisingly thorough!). Hell, it\u2019s not even clear if MacFarlane is trying to have a conversation about what it means to be trans versus what it means to be intersex \u2014 which are, of course, two completely different things. That\u2019s how haphazard his terminology is throughout this episode.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It doesn\u2019t seem that way to me.<\/p>\n

You could read the episode as anti-male.\u00a0 The planet, composed of only men, is polluted.\u00a0 Their economy is based on weapons manufacture and sale to other planets, and they test those weapons without regard for safety.\u00a0 Their recreation is a visit to a shooting range.\u00a0 They view females as disabled because they are weaker, and, since they aren\u2019t needed for reproduction, they medically convert them into males at birth.\u00a0 (We are told early on that a female birth is a rare event, but within the confines of the story,\u00a0perhaps the viewer is meant to conclude that it\u2019s\u00a0more common and just a matter of female births being hidden.)\u00a0 A male-only world is a terrible place \u2014 except that they love literature, and the male couple is loving and even when Bortus opposes the decision that his mate makes, he stands by his commitment:\u00a0 \u201che is my mate.\u201d<\/p>\n

You could read it as pro-gay, in its call for acceptance of undesirable babies just as they are, without changing them.\u00a0 Or maybe pro-intersex-babies, though that gets a bit obscure.\u00a0 There\u2019s a pro-life element to it, though, of course, they weren\u2019t trying to kill babies they thought were deformed, as our society does with Down syndrome babies, just\u00a0\u201cfix\u201d them.<\/p>\n

Star Trek, by comparison, had an episode in which the Enterprise was at a plant of \u201cnongendered\u201d people, but one of them, who \u201cfelt\u201d female inside, fell in love with Riker; her secret feeling of femaleness being discovered, she was administered a treatment that made her conform and took away those feelings.\u00a0 That was clearly a ham-handed pro-gay rights script.\u00a0 But, on the other hand, in Deep Space Nine, the character of Julian Bashir was revealed to have been genetically enhanced, because his parents were ashamed when he was developmentally delayed, and that was portrayed in a more complex manner.<\/p>\n

But just because the operation in question was to change the baby\u2019s sex from male to female, does not seem to warrant the literalist reading that this is about transgender people.\u00a0 After all, transgender rights are based on the notion that it\u2019s good and proper, not objectionable, to surgically change people\u2019s bodies and infuse them with hormones.\u00a0 (Unless we\u2019re meant to cheer Klyden and object to the crew\u2019s attempt to prevent the operation?)<\/p>\n

Either the writers intended for it to be a transgender-rights pitch and screwed up, or the writers actually intended to say, \u201cit\u2019s complicated.\u201d\u00a0 Or maybe they didn\u2019t have any grand intention at all except to tell what they thought was an interesting story, and let the viewers interpret it how they wished.\u00a0 Perhaps if I dug a little further I\u2019d find some quote from the producers of the show saying, \u201cthis episode will demonstrate to everyone that we thirst for Social Justice for all marginalized peoples so you should watch our show,\u201d but I\u2019ll refrain from doing so, because I really hope that\u2019s not the case, and I\u2019d really prefer they stick to trying to tell engaging stories.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0from http:\/\/collider.com\/the-orville-new-trailer\/#images; fair use\/commentary<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I\u2019ve been watching The Orville lately. Actually, that\u2019s not entirely correct.\u00a0 I have watched three episodes, on demand, while using the exercise bike in the morning, after I got bored with This Is Us.\u00a0 It\u2019s a curious mix of a show, trying to be serious and yet add in humor at the same time, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":7646,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[778,779],"class_list":["post-7640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-the-orville","tag-tv"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Orville, "About a Girl"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So I've been watching The Orville lately. 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