In Star Trek: The Original Series, the computer aboard the Starship Enterprise (voiced by Gene Roddenberry's then-wife Majel Barret) serves multiple functions. Within the narrative, she performs whatever computations the crew verbally asks of her, then she reports aloud her computations.
On a psychoanalytic level, the computer's female voice also, quite evidently, serves as a maternal voice, reenacting a womb-like situation for the ship's crew. The computer speaks to them from a disembodied, though omnipresent, position—she is the ship, inside which the crew is enclosed, much like a mother whose child is enclosed in her womb. Furthermore, the crew treats the ship as a beloved woman, describing her as “she,” and often saying how beautiful she is. In particular, both Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the ship's chief engineer, Montgomery “Scotty” Scott (James Doohan), all but worship her as as a thing of beloved beauty. In one episode, Scotty goes so far as to start a fight with a crew of Klingons because they “insulted the Enterprise.”
Thus, the computer serves for them both linguistically and emotionally as a maternal figure; however, this primarily auditory role of the computer disrupts the typical alignment of speech with male subjectivity, as Kaja Silverman describes it in The Acoustic Mirror. According to her, “Male subjectivity is...defined in relation to that seemingly transcendental auditory position, and so aligned with the apparatus” (57). Silverman applies this solely to classic cinema, though I argue that it is equally applicable to television. The computer is aligned with the apparatus—she serves simultaneously within the narrative as the literal apparatus that enables the voyage of the crew and externally to the narrative through the mechanism of literal voice-over in order to suture over the indicators of production. Yet the fact that the computer is gendered as a maternal woman disrupts male subjectivity by re-inscribing auditory characteristics typically gendered as male through cinematic voice-overs. Furthermore, I posit that this tension between the female-gendered computer voice and the male subjectivity of the crew is most evident when the lines between maternal voice and sexualized female voice combine, as is evident in the episode “Yesterday is Tomorrow,” when the computer has been reprogrammed to address the Captain as “Dear.” By analyzing this episode, I will show the ways in which the disembodied female voice not only threatens and disrupts male subjectivity, but also is seen in media situations other than classic cinema, thereby revealing the ubiquitousness of the tension between male and female subjectivity.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Liz: a good topic. I remember well that computer on the original series.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree that the computer encloses, contains. It is almost liquid. It enables and creates the personality of the male characters. It is a kind of technological exteriority. It absorbs into the apparatus: exteriority as machine. Focus on the one episode and how the computer allows the construction of the male personalities. How is Kirk positioned by the computer?
Liz,
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a fabulous paper (no surprise there, since this is so very up your alley). I went and found the episode you are planning to discuss online, and watched a good chunk of it, and I agree with you that the sexualized computer voice is a particularly powerful example of the displacement you are talking about. I also think that using the Silverman, but taking it beyond cinema, will work well to illustrate your point.
This is a great topic. I don't have too much to suggest, except that exploring the position of males with the displacement of the female might make an interesting twist. Seems like you have good ideas here, go with it!
ReplyDelete