Kirk Your Enthusiasm (25)

By: Annalee Newitz
August 31, 2012

Twenty-fifth in a series of posts, each one analyzing a single Captain Kirk scene from the Star Trek canon.

***

How Spock wins | Star Trek | 2009

About halfway through the 2009 Star Trek movie, Kirk and Spock have a fight. We as the audience already know that Spock is capable of emotion — we’ve seen him making out with Uhura — but this is the first time anybody on the bridge has seen it. Kirk is an unambiguous douchebag. He lashes out with the futuristic equivalent of racist name-calling, sneering at Spock’s Vulcan habit of repressing emotion, insulting him for not feeling “the need to avenge the death of the woman who gave birth to you.” When Spock deflects this anti-Vulcan smear, Kirk continues: “You feel nothing! You never loved her!”

Apparently this is too much. In response, Spock nearly kills Kirk, punching him down onto a control panel, seizing his throat with the hand we know can deal the Vulcan death grip. The screen is flooded with light; JJ Abrams’ now-infamous lens flare effects strobe white, blinding us, turning Spock into someone we can barely see, but whose true character has emerged crisply for the first time.

Spock is only brought back from his murderous rage by the shocked voice of his father. Ashamed, Spock pulls away from Kirk, whose chest-heaving response has already made this snippet of the film a favorite among fans. On YouTube, their fight has been recut as a love scene, a sex scene, and a romantic music video.

But Spock is not in love. He is repulsed — by himself, and by Kirk. He turns to McCoy and says, “Doctor I am no longer fit for duty. I relinquish my command based on the fact that I have been emotionally compromised.” Perhaps we are supposed to believe that Kirk has won. He psyched out Spock! He’s gotten control of the ship by exposing Spock’s weakness!

I think there is an oppositional way to read this scene. In this glowing space of strangulation and “emotional compromise” we find a new interpretation of Kirk and Spock. Unlike the brave, righteous Kirks of the original television series and the movies, this new Kirk is manipulative and morally vacant. He’s a bigot — or he’s pretending to be one to get a rise out of Spock. Either way, he is no hero. And the emotion he suggests that Spock should be feeling — a lust for
revenge — is what we later discover motivates the movie’s Big Bad, the angry Romulan Nero.

When Spock at last becomes the man Kirk wants him to be, full of rage, he declares himself no longer fit for duty. Spock is the only person on the bridge who seems to realize that good leadership is about rationality, not power games and emotional outbursts. This makes him a true leader. And indeed, his story arc in this film is far richer and more heroic than Kirk’s. In this version of the Star Trek universe, Spock has eclipsed Kirk. By relinquishing his captaincy, he shows us who the captain really is.

***

***

Kirk Your Enthusiasm (25)

Categories

Tags