Just, you have to recognize that the source material had its flaws. Like, this:
A contract is a contract is a contract… but only between Ferengi.
That's just kind of... bleh? Especially when, yes, you consider the ethnic stereotypes "culture of sneering traders who will cheat you" evokes. But even without those stereotypes, it's just kind of childish.
So this line is a warning about outsiders.
With such people how could contract be contract?
The punishment? death.
Which episode were you thinking of?
I'm assuming TNG's "Justice"? In ToS "Wolf in the Fold", Scott did not commit the crime but was subject to the local authorities; In DS9 "Hard Time" O'Brien did not commit the crime but was subject to and punished by the local authorities; In ToS "A Taste of Armageddon" the entire crew violate local law by not reporting to the disintegration chambers; In ToS "City on the Edge of Forever" Kirk and Spock steal clothing, and Spock steals tools (that one concerned the human race); In "Patterns of Force" Kirk and Spock are arrested and interrogated after stealing clothing and attempting to infiltrate a government building; In VOY "The Chute" Paris and Kim are imprisoned after a false conviction; In VOY "Ex Post Facto" Paris is imprisoned after a false conviction.
(Also, Nog attacked an army captain while under detention in New Mexico in DS9 "Little Green Men", and escaped without punishment by the local authorities.)
If you are talking about "Justice", I don't think your characterization is quite accurate. In fact, I think you've flipped things? Quoting Memory Alpha at https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Justice_(episode):
> Liato feels that Picard is suggesting some kind of a superiority. He suggests that the Enterprise just use their superior powers to rescue the boy, stating that they would just record him as a convicted criminal out of their reach, an advanced person who luckily escaped the barbarism of their "backward little world". But Picard tells them that he wants to honor and respect the Edo's rules and law, referencing the Prime Directive.
and
> Rivan is amazed at "the city" in the sky, and is surprised that with all this power, they do not just take Wesley. ...
> Finally, Picard asks how the Edo God aliens would react if they were to violate the Prime Directive and Data answers that they would consider the Enterprise crew to be "deceitful and untrustworthy" and subsequently reminds Picard that the Edo God aliens warned them to not to interfere with their children below.
Picard, before the sundown deadline when Wesley's execution was supposed to take place, instead appeals to the Edo god / high-tech "parent" and receives leniency. Its/their authority is above that of the Mediators, and recognized as such by the Edo.
If you go to different country and break laws, ýou should be fully expected to accept any punishment. Especially when you are specially selected for such missions. And this should extend to anyone you take with you. Just leave the kids and families home if you can not lose risking them when they do evil things.
> did not accept absolutely reasonable and just punishment for the heinous crime
The Edo "Gods" are recognized by the Edo as being above the power of the Edo. The Edo Gods granted clemency, which was within their power and thus within the Edo legal system.
You used the word "heinous". Does the story show the Edo consider it a heinous crime? I suspect that's your personal characterization.
At the very least, the Edo youth with Crusher attempted to argue that the crime was done without understanding, which suggests they might consider other crimes (perhaps one carried out with forethought and malice) as more heinous.
(If the violation of any law which requires corporal punishment is "heinous" by definition, then the entire crew of the Enterprise in "A Taste of Armageddon" commit a heinous crime by not reporting to the disintegration chambers after the simulated attack on their ship.)
> Likely they used something threat of genocide to attain their goals.
That makes me think you are talking about another episode?
There is no threat of genocide in "Justice", or anything like that. At best the threat was to run away - something even the local authorities pointed out as an option.
Further, the Edo Gods' abilities were far superior to that of the Enterprise, eg, almost invisible to sensors, able to shut down the Enterprise transporter remotely, and able to detect the new colony in the nearby star system. There was no conceivable threat of genocide or use of force against the population.
> ýou should be fully expected to accept any punishment
That's ... just wrong. I mean, in the human system we don't "accept any punishment". We can appeal a punishment to a higher court, or to someone who is empowered to grant a pardon for some or all of that punishment. (Carter pardoned draft dodgers who hadn't even been punished.)
Picard figured out that the local legal system did recognize a higher court, as it were, and figured out a successful strategy to appeal to that authority, in a way everyone agreed was justice.
Thankfully, punishment was stayed by the supreme local authority. We don't know what would have happened had that not occurred.
> Especially when you are specially selected for such missions.
I agree. Thing is, they did prepare. Early on Yar reported "the inhabitants' laws and customs are pretty straightforward and nothing out of the ordinary" (quoting Memory Alpha). It was only later, after arrival and further research into the legal system, that they learned they themselves were subject to capital punishment for any violation of the law. Quoting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfqa596xxbc :
Yar: Careful Commander. They've got some strange laws here.
Riker: I thought you reviewed their laws.
Yar: They listed nothing about punishment.
(IMO they should have requested an emergency beam-out of the entire team at that moment, which would have saved Crusher, but given this is a fictional story, the writers would have made the crime occur just before Yar learned the legal situation they were in.)
You characterized this away team's presence on the planet as following a contract. I think it's a valid viewpoint.
How valid is a contract where the penalty clauses aren't included in the contract and aren't made aware to one of the signatories?
(Still, that doesn't explain why Yar didn't notice that punishment was missing, when it should be part of any similar contract.)
> when they do evil things
The show only establishes the Edo consider what Crusher did was a crime. We do not know enough about the Edo sense of morality to establish what they consider "evil".
In human morality, we do not regard as "evil" every person who commits a crime.
Why then do you characterize what Crusher did as an "evil thing"? Or are you speaking abstractly about some hypothetical "evil thing"?
I get on one level that the Bajorans were much like the historical Jewish peoples, conquered and then freed.
But.... I always thought that the Ferenghi were the eponymous Jew stereotype. Short stature, crooked teeth, would cheat you at a drop of a hat, overly large ears, code of conduct to only deal with their race. It feels like they were created in the antisemitic light of "Happy Merchant" ( https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/happy-merchant ).
Obviously, those are antisemitic tropes for starting to dehumanize Jews. But damn, when I saw them in ST:TNG, that's exactly what I thought Rodenberry was trying to portray.
They're kind of like the Star Trek counterpart to Jar Jar Binks.
In TNG they might be one dimensional like Jar Jar, but I think the Ferengi get a lot of nuanced characters in DS9 that blow Jar Jar Binks out of the water in depth. Rom's evolution is particularly great.
Correct. But there is a whole lotta similarity between the Ferengi and real life antisemetic caricatures, as is easily seen by any internet search for "antisemitic caricatures".
Thus I maintain that claiming that the characteristics exhibited by the Ferengi are an exaggeration of Jewish traits is itself racist.
It's also why I chose to link to the ADL in this description, rather than other meme sites. It provides the much needed context that the initial linked picture was done in the 1990s, by "A. Whytt Mann".
Naturally, the Ferenghis were made as a personification of the worst that capitalism has to offer. However, the caricature itself of the Ferenghi turned into something quite terrible indeed.
And as some have said here and claimed of me, this isn't my antisemitism showing. In fact, scholars have mirrored my own thoughts:
> In his 2007 critique of The Next Generation for the National Review, the commentator Jonah Goldberg described the Ferengi as "runaway capitalists with bullwhips who looked like a mix between Nazi caricatures of Jews and the original Nosferatu."[28] The scholar of religion Ross S. Kraemer wrote that "Ferengi religion seems almost a parody, perhaps of traditional Judaism."[25] He wrote that the 285 Rules of Acquisition bore similarities with the 613 Commandments of Judaism and that the Ferengi social restrictions on women mirrored Orthodox Judaism's restrictions on women studying the Torah.[25] Historian Paul Sturtevant wrote in 2018 that not only are the Ferengi "extremely legalistic" and "defined by their greed", echoing common stereotypes of Jews, but the major Ferengi characters on Deep Space Nine were all played by Jewish actors.[29]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi
And the 285 rules of acquisition vs 613 commandments ties back to the main article, since I like to keep tying back in.
That just seems to be way too many "coincidences" for me to be comfortable with.
Ahmed Best, Jar Jar's voice and mo-cap actor person of color, finds the racial commentary about the character offensive and nearly committed suicide over the negativity and harassment.
Just because you have prejudices you apply to the work does not mean the creators did, which is where any factuality of racism or caricature could come to be.
Your prejudices and experiences aren't shared by everyone else, which means that they may create material that has zero negative features but for which You Perceive negative features due exclusively to Your Prejudices.
> The Original Series had come from hostility between the US and the USSR during the Cold War, Wright sought an equivalent relevant to the US of the era he was living in, the 1980s. There was meanwhile a palpable feeling that the nation's financial sector was essentially full of greedy barbarians, a notion Wright transplanted into the futuristic science-fiction setting of The Next Generation. (Star Trek: The Next Generation 365, p. 36) Rob Bowman offered, "The Ferengi sprung from the stereotype of agents and lawyers being cutthroat, greedy and wanting only money." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 21, No. 2, p. 35) Wright thus conceived the Ferengi as a species of profit-obsessed, ruthless aliens. He was especially fond of the contrast between them and the crew of the Enterprise-D, who had no desire or need for money. (Star Trek: The Next Generation 365, p. 36)
* https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi#Origins
Things got tweaked over time of course.
For people born toward the end of last century, the stereotypes you mention barely register at all. I only know them for having studied Weimar at undergrad level, but tbh the only stereotype of Jewishness, for me and my peers, is of well-dressed New Yorker professionals and LA executives using funny words.
Without comments as yours, I honestly would never have thought of late-1800s caricatures of Jews when looking at a Ferengi. You are effectively re-popularizing something that is utterly dead in the mainstream.
It’s a viewpoint, but I’m very skeptical.
IMO it is perfectly reasonable to contextualize a fictional race by the creators and the time it was created. Intentional ignorance and choosing to ignore reality never sit well with me. I’m more in the “those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it” camp myself.
A Character Type is different than a Caricature, which is Specifically when one is representing a Specific Person or Peoples.
When there is no such intent and is not based explicitly in such prior art, such characters are just that purely imaginary characters with zero bearing on real world racism.
Enough with the bs.
There's the creator's intent which can't really be known. Then there's the observer's interpretation which is equally valid.
You're Presuming based on your Prejudices aka Pre-Judging.
"Eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind", and all that. Surely there is a better way.
I guess some stereotypes are really archetypes and people fit them as needed ... or as feared about one's self.
Right now people are saying Indians/Pakistanis/Punjabs/etc are greedy because they are the vast majority of used car salesmen where I am, and I'm certain that they'd feel similarly about the representation of ferengi.
Ferengi are compilations of some of the least pleasant parts human nature. All people are manifest therein, because We're All Horrible.
In contrast with another one: "Peace is good for business"
A contract is a contract, provided all parties are in and beholden to the same jurisdiction.
Theres plenty of examples of bad actors who violated contracts without recourse due to living where no action could be taken or the wronged party simply not having "standing" as a non-citizen....