Kirk Drift

Just a while ago I finished reading “Freshly Remember’d: Kirk Drift”, an essay whose basic premise is that the womanizing callous “manly man” vision of Captain Kirk of Star Trek is an ahistorical toxic revisionist view. “There is no other way to put this: essentially everything about Popular Consciousness Kirk is bullshit. Kirk, as received through mass culture memory and reflected in its productive imaginary (and subsequent franchise output, including the reboot movies), has little or no basis in Shatner’s performance and the television show as aired. Macho, brash Kirk is a mass hallucination.” It’s a very good essay. What’s fascinating and horrifying too is the way in which this essay, written 10 years ago almost, has its finger on culture pulses that continue to echo today. “ Heterosexuality has been through the fucking ringer in cultural productions in the last decades due to backlashes against feminism and queer visibility that have transformed portrayals and interpretations…