Comments on: Retro Review: Civil Defense

By: Guest

Guest — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 01:42:00 +0000

“Here’s why your position, and everyone else who comes on here to
lambaste claims that Garak is a queer (or queer-coded) character, is
homophobic: it is telling other people how they should engage with an
open text. It is obviously the case that some fans, gay or otherwise,
have gotten pleasure from interpreting Garak is queer. Where do you get
off telling them that they’re wrong? This comes off as defense and,
literally, phobic… there is fear involved, fear that a character you
know and love might be anything other than what you have always felt.
It’s closed-minded and intolerant.”

So when the show portrays him as heterosexual and some fans get pleasure from that, where do you get off telling them that they’re wrong? That comes off as defense and literally heterophobic. How dare you tell people how they should engage with an open text?

lol…seriously, you have no idea what “open text” means.

By: John

John — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 15:32:00 +0000

Except RIker, is not gay so it would not have made any sense.

By: Nobody

Nobody — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 02:46:00 +0000

No, it has a foundation. That foundation resides me people’s interpretative abilities. And that is as real as anything else in fiction.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 23:20:00 +0000

So, if gay coding is an interpretive thing done after the fact by the community, what you’re actually saying is that it has no real foundation and is just willy nilly regarding whatever character they choose to glom onto… In this case, the more interesting Garak and Q, and not the oafish Mudd or petulant Trelane… Yeah, I can agree with that. A complete farse.

By: Nobody

Nobody — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 22:30:00 +0000

Flamboyance and camp are not synonymous (and to answer a dangling thread, people do tend to call TOS campy but this means something different than “gay camp” — actually some scholars would content that the endearingly cheap and outdated elements of TOS are more usefully tagged as kitsch than camp). Camp can actually be done rather subtly (John Waters would never be mistaken for a heterosexual man, but he’s no flamer either). Gay-coding is not an intrinsic property of any character, but part of the interpretative procedures of a community. It may simply be the case that Mudd and Trelane, comic villains defined at least in part by being pathetic, are not inviting characters to embrace. Q and Garak, both charismatic and ambiguous anti-heroes (however differently), are.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 21:51:00 +0000

Funny… I thought that anyone that acted like that was “gay coded”… I mean, to the point where you accused me of never having been around a flamboyantly gay man… So, I’m just asking… Are Harry Mudd and Trelane both gay coded characters in your book? I don’t think it’s a hard thing to determine nor answer from how you previously laid things out… I just find it curious that some characters you glom onto and others, not so much… But between Garak and Q and Trelane and Harry Mudd, I’d contend that the latter are far more flamboyant than either of the previous two.

By: Nobody

Nobody — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 16:04:00 +0000

Not that I’ve noticed, but I’m no expert. But Q? Definitely.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 14:39:00 +0000

So, is the same eagerness there to claim Harry Mudd or Trelane? Both of which are undeniably flamboyant, but neither, particularly homosexual…

By: Nobody

Nobody — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 18:30:00 +0000

Also, try this on for size: for a long time gay, lesbian and bisexual people were starved for representations of their own kind and for queer love in the media. Under those circumstances (and given many times finding another gay person was a matter of “reading past the surface,” anyway), is surprising that they would often look past the superficial straightness of certain fictional characters to try to “claim” them as queer?

By: seventhbeacon

seventhbeacon — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 18:30:00 +0000

Good review, yeah, a lot of fun to watch but not much to take away from it. Like a JJ Abrams film!

As for the Garak gay/gay-coded debate (which I’ve said my piece on before, I’m in the camp that he wasn’t barring lack of evidence and relationship with Ziyal later), it may be best to simply not debate, but embrace these immortal words from the Tailor/Spy himself:

Dr. Julian Bashir: Out of all the stories you told me, which ones were true and which ones weren’t?
Elim Garak: My dear Doctor, they’re all true.
Dr. Julian Bashir: Even the lies?
Elim Garak: Especially the lies.

There may be a benefit in not ever having a definitive answer (even though I have mine).
I don’t know if this is a misquote, but I also seem to recall: “The truth are the lies you choose to believe.” I couldn’t find it on a google search, so I may be remembering it incorrectly.