No Matter What the Future Brings ...

"You must remember this / A kiss is just a kiss ..." [1]

 

 

I. 

 

The kiss between Kirk (played by William Shatner) and Uhura (played by Nichelle Nichols) in an episode of Star Trek entitled 'Plato's Stepchildren' [2] - which was first broadcast 55 years ago this month - is often cited - incorrectly - as the first example of an interracial kiss on television [3].

 

Even if not actually true - and even if their lips do not actually touch [4] - it was a nice moment and (in a time of heightened racial tension) a significant one. Indeed, it is often ranked as one of the greatest romantic moments in Star Trek and one of the most culturally impactful. 

 

For me, however, as the author of a series of papers on zoophilia [5], there is another on-screen kiss in 1968 which interests more; and that is the kiss shared between Taylor (played by Charlton Heston) and Zira (played by Kim Hunter) in the movie Planet of the Apes (dir. Franklin J. Shaffner) ...

 

 

II.

 

The original - and the best - Planet of the Apes movie (written by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, loosely based on the 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle), is fondly remembered by many people for many scenes and many lines of dialogue. 

 

That includes, obviously, the still-shocking end scene when Taylor realises where he is and what has happened: 'Oh, my God. I'm back. I'm home. All the time ... We finally, really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to hell!' [Click here.]

But my favourite scene comes shortly before this, when Taylor is about to ride off, accompanied by Nova, in search of what Dr Zaius terms his destiny. 

 

Wishing to express his gratitude to Cornelius and Zira for the help they have given him, he informs the latter he'd like to give her a kiss. She gives her consent and seems to enjoy the touch of his lips on hers, even if she finds Taylor so damned ugly. [Click here.]

Again, it's  a very touching scene and, arguably, far more transgressive than the kiss in Star Trek, hinting as it does at the possibility of interspecies romantic relations - particularly human-chimp sexuality, something that I have previously discussed on Torpedo the Ark: click here.   

 

 

III.

 

Amusingly, in her 1994 autobiography Beyond Uhura Nichelle Nichols recalls that one person describing himself as a proud white Southerner wrote the following in a letter to the studio after her kiss with Shatner was broadcast: 

 

"'I am totally opposed to the mixing of the races. However, any time a red-blooded American boy like Captain Kirk gets a beautiful dame in his arms that looks like Uhura, he ain't gonna fight it.'" [6]

 

One can't help wondering if a similar letter was received by the producers of Planet of the Apes, that might possibly have read:

 

I am totally opposed to the mixing of species. However, any time an all-American hero like George Taylor gets rescued by a beautiful chimp scientist like Zira, he may as well take advantage of the fact. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] These lines (and the line used in the title of this post) are from the jazz song "As Time Goes By" written by Herman Hupfeld in 1931. It became famous when it featured in the 1942 film Casablanca, performed by Dooley Wilson as the piano player Sam. Click here.

 

[2] Star Trek, 'Plato's Stepchildren' [S3/E10], directed by David Alexander, written by Gene Roddenberry, Meyer Dolinsky, and Arthur H. Singer, was first broadcast on 22 November 1968. The scene in which Kirk kisses Uhura can be viewed on YouTube by clicking here. 

 

[3] Although widely believed to be the first interracial kiss on TV, there are, in fact, several earlier incidents of such. For example, Shatner himself exchanged a kiss with France Nuyen - a French-American actress of Asian heritage - on an episode of The Ed Sullivan Show back in 1958 (they were performing a scene from the Broadway production of The World of Suzie Wong in which they starred).

      Shatner, in his role as Captain Kirk, also kissed Lt. Marlena Moreau, played by BarBara Luna, an actress of Filipino-European ancestry, on the lips in the second season episode of Star Trek entitled 'Mirrror, Mirror' (1967).

 

[4] Shatner would later reveal that concerned NBC executives had insisted their lips never touch, using the technique of turning their heads away from the camera to conceal what was (or was not) going on. However, writing in her 1994 autobiography, Beyond Uhura, Nichols insists that in the take of the scene that was eventually broadcast the kiss was genuine. Despite the concerns expressed, the episode received no complaints - in fact the response from fans of the show was hugely positive. 

 

[5] See The Treadwell's Papers, Vol. III, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). The six papers in the Zoophilia series (also known as the Bodil Joensen Memorial Lectures) were first presented at Treadwell's Bookshop in Feb-March 2007. 

 

[6] Nichelle Nichols, Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories, (G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1994), pp. 196-197. 

Three Cases of Brain Theft

I. The Case of Mr. Spock

As fans of Star Trek will know, 'Spock's Brain' was the opening episode of the third and final season of the original TV series.

Written by Gene L. Coon and directed by Marc Daniels, the episode was first broadcast on 20 September, 1968, and tells the amusing story of how an alien beauty beams aboard the Enterprise in order to surgically remove and steal Spock's brain. Capt. Kirk and his crew have just 24 hours to locate said organ and pop it back into Spock's empty skull before his brainless body dies.

Personally, I quite like the episode for its B-movie charm, although it's widely regarded as the worst of the entire series; even Leonard Nimoy admitted to feeling embarrassed during the shooting of the episode. Claims, however, that it strains credibility seem ridiculous to me. For even at its most plausible, Star Trek is hardly gritty social realism and I'm pretty sure that the Enterprise doesn't even have a kitchen sink.

Long story short, Dr. McCoy - with the assistance of Spock himself - successfully returns the brain to its rightful location and all's well that ends well. 

II. The Case of Adolf Hitler

Unlike Mr. Spock, Adolf Hitler is not a fictional character. However, it's important to stress that the 1968 film They Saved Hitler's Brain, directed by David Bradley, is not a documentary detailing real events.*

Adapted (and extended) for TV from a 1963 feature film entitled Madmen of Mandoras, it tells the tale of how Nazi officials removed Hitler's still-living head at the end of the Second World War and transported it to a (fictional) South American hideaway, in the hope that they might one day be able to bring the Führer back to full consciousness and thence resurrect the Third Reich.      

From 1945, the movie leaps forward into the 1960s and the surviving Nazis, having decided the time is right, kidnap a leading scientist in the field of neurosurgery in order to help fulfil their evil scheme. Unfortunately, however, Western intelligence agencies are aware of what's going on and determined to foil the plan. I'll not reveal the ending, just in case any readers are interested in watching the film for themselves: click here. 

Amusingly, They Saved Hitler's Brain is referenced in several episodes of The Simpsons (and at least one episode of Futurama), suggesting Matt Groening either has something of a fan's penchant for the film, or an obsession with Hitler's brain.

And note also - according to the Dead Kennedys - if you want to make a Tricky Dickie Screwdriver, you'll need to mix "one part Jack Daniels, two parts purple Kool-Aid, and a jigger of formaldehyde from the jar with Hitler's brain in it".** 

III. The Case of Albert Einstein

Finally, we come to the case of Albert Einstein; a case involving a real man, a real brain, and a real theft committed just hours after his death in April 1955.

Even whilst he was still alive, people were fascinated with Einstein's brain. Such an organ, belonging to one of the greatest of all scientific geniuses, just had to have special properties, or be significantly larger in size than the standard model. No surprise, therefore, that before his body had even chance to cool, his cranium was being removed and brain dissected - though what is surprising is that this was done without his prior consent or the permission of his family.***

Einstein's autopsy was conducted by the pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey. Having removed and weighed the brain, Harvey then popped it in a jar of formalin and smuggled it to a lab at the University of Pennsylvania, where he photographed it from numerous angles, before then cutting it into around 240 slices, encasing these segments in a plastic-like material called collodion.

Harvey kept some of these for himself; others, he distributed amongst fellow pathologists, all of whom were eager to have a piece of Einstein's brain. One lucky fellow, Einstein's ophthalmologist, received the great man's eyes that Harvey had also taken time to remove and carefully preserve.   

In 1978, what remained of Einstein's brain in Harvey's possession was rediscovered by a journalist interested in the story (preserved in alcohol in two large jars and hidden in a box). Eventually, in 2010, Harvey's heirs transferred all of his holdings - including the remains of Einstein's brain and fourteen never-seen-before photographs of the organ prior to dissection - to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, in Silver Spring, Maryland.    

Notes

* Hitler committed suicide along with his wife, Eva, on April 30, 1945, and their bodies were burned according to his instructions. The Red Army, who captured Berlin just a few days later, discovered the charred remains and shipped them back to Russia, where a piece of jaw bone and a fragment of skull were secretly kept in the Soviet State Archives.

** I'm referring to (and quoting from) the Dead Kennedys track 'We've Got a Bigger Problem Now', from the EP In God We Trust, Inc. (Alternative Tentacles, 1981): click here to play. 

*** Einstein's eldest son endorsed the removal of his father's brain, but only after the event and only on the condition that it should be used for serious research to be published in respected scientific journals.


For a related post to this one on brains in jars, click here.

Why Loving the Alien Doesn't Quite Do It For Captain James T. Kirk

Kirk points out to Shahna where his one true love lies ...

It's often said that many perverts are fans of Star Trek and, having just watched several episodes from the original series, I can well imagine that to be the case. For one thing, female crew members aboard the Enterprise dress in a provocative manner designed to excite fetishists and inspire thoughts of lust in space.

And, for another, in the figure of Captain James T. Kirk as played by William Shatner, perverts surely recognise one of their own; a polyamorous exophile who behaves like an intergalactic sex fiend, cruising from planet to planet and playing with the affections of an assortment of nubile lovelies, before beaming up and flying off at warp speed, permanent smirk on face. 

Kirk's inability or refusal to form meaningful, long-term relationships with women is seen by some as a sure sign of misogyny, or, indeed, psychopathology. But it could just be that his heart lies elsewhere; not with Mr. Spock - as fantasised in often explicit homoerotic fan fiction - but to his beloved starship.

It's the Enterprise that is the real object of his desire and his single great obsession, providing what Ellen Ladowsky laughably describes as "a non-human, inanimate detour for evading anxieties belonging to genuine intimacy".

Nothing and no one can come between Jim and NCC-1701: Deela, Queen of the Scalosians, Marta, the green-skinned Orion seductress, and Shahna, the Triskelion slave girl with her big hair and silver bondage outfit, each provide a very pleasant distraction.

But loving the alien just doesn't quite do it for Kirk; a man who needs to feel the throb of powerful engines and experience the thrill of firing photon torpedoes; whose greatest joy lies in commanding a spacecraft and exploring strange new worlds of desire, seeking out new and unusual ways of loving, and boldly going where no man has gone before ...

See: Ellen Ladowsky, 'Pedophilia and Star Trek', HuffPost, (Aug 18, 2005 - updated May 25, 2011).

Note: Deela, played by Kathie Browne, appears in season 3, episode 11, entitled 'Wink of an Eye'; Marta, played by Yvonne Craig (better known as Batgirl), appears in season 3, episode 14, entitled 'Whom Gods Destroy'; and Shahna, played by Angelique Pettyjohn, appears in season 2, episode 16, entitled 'The Gamesters of Triskelion'.

Added punk bonus: Spizzenergi - Where's Captain Kirk?

Rough Trade, (1979)