B.B.'s Amayra-Variante - T'hy'la
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March 9th, 2010
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http://community.livejournal.com/kirksp ______ ___ _ T'hy'la... ... it's from the TMP Novelization (the novelization of the first movie, written by Gene Roddenberry), so while it's not technically canon, it's not fan-invented - it was a beautiful slashy gift straight from the creator himself! I have the exact quotation here: "Until this very morning, Spock had been certain that he had finally and fully exorcised his human half and its shameful emotional legacies. An hour before the rising of the Vulcan suns, Spock had made his way to the high promontory he had chosen as his own and there he had greeted the red dawn of this important day with mind-cleansing meditation. He had known that today he would face T'sai herself and that the High Master would invite him to enter with her into mindmeld so that she might place around his neck the old symbol which proclaimed his mastery of Kolinahr. In searching his consciousness this morning, Spock had been especially alert for any trace of pride in his accomplishments here in Gol. Kaiidth! What was, was! He had done only what he had been meant to do and had the good fortune to be able to do. With this thought, Spock had looked up at the red dawn sky in the direction where he knew Sol and Earth to be and had begun a respectful, but brief, farewell to his mother's planet and the part of his life that it had represented. He had long ago decided that he would neither return to that place nor move among its people ever again. Jim! Good-bye my . . . my t'hy'la.[2] This is the last time I will permit myself to think of you or even your name again." 2 Editor's note: The human concept of friend is most nearly duplicated in Vulcan thought by the term t'hy'la, which can also mean brother and lover. Spock's recollection (from which this chapter is drawn) is that it was a most difficult moment for him since he did indeed consider Kirk to have become his brother. However, because t'hy'la can be used to mean lover, and since Kirk's and Spock's friendship was unusually close, this has led to some speculation over whether they had actually indeed become lovers. At our request, Admiral Kirk supplied the following comment on this subject: "I was never aware of this lovers rumor, although I have been told that Spock encountered it several times. Apparently he had always dismissed it with his characteristic lifting of his right eyebrow which usually connoted some combination of surprise, disbelief, and/or annoyance. As for myself, although I have no moral or other objections to physical love in any of its many Earthly, alien, and mixed forms, I have always found my best gratification in that creature woman. Also, I would dislike being thought of as so foolish that I would select a love partner who came into sexual heat only once every seven years." And the second quotation: There was much to be put out of his mind. Why was it difficult to forget Chekov's astonished delight which greeted him at the command airlock when he boarded? And on the bridge - Kirk! The mere name made Spock groan inwardly as he remembered what it had cost him to turn away from that welcome. T'hy'la! And there had been McCoy, so humanly human - and, yes, of course, Chapel with her bizarre and impossible fantasies of one day pleasuring him. Sulu the romanticist, Uhura of the lovely star songs . . . Make of that what you will. http://community.livejournal.com/kirksp ______ ___ _ "The Footnote," by Judith Gran (judygran@aol.com). Originally posted to alt.startrek.creative, 12/04/1997 Well, I wasn't going to do this, but Robert Francis O'Reilly wrote, "There's no evidence to suggest that he was attracted to Spock in a physical sense. That in and of itself suggests that Kirk was not physically attracted to Spock. There's also a footnote of sorts in the novelization of the first Trek novel in which Kirk essentially denies that he was ever attracted to Spock." When someone takes the name of the Great Bird in vain and misinterprets Sacred Text (in this case, The Footnote, that is, GR's "editor's note" on page 22 of the novelization of ST:TMP), I have no choice but to respond. Before I begin, though, I need to point out the logical fallacy (um, I almost wrote "phallusy") in Mr. O'Brien's first two sentences. In essence, he argues that "nothing for which we have not yet seen evidence can be true." Oops, there goes a few thousand years of scientific method. But hey, what good is logic compared to dogma? But here it is. A line by line analysis of The Footnote. THE FOOTNOTE: AN EXPLICATION DE TEXTE by Judith Gran In his "editor's note" on page 22 of the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Gene Roddenberry finally addressed the question whether Kirk and Spock are lovers. The note apparently struck some fans, who read it superficially, as a gentle but explicit denial of the possibility of K/S. Yet a deeper reading completely undermines that reading. The footnote is constructed with deliberate ambiguity that leads the average reader into the hasty but unjustified conclusion that Kirk and Spock have *not* been lovers, while providing the more careful reader with cues that suggest the exact opposite. Readers who are familiar with Leo Strauss' *Persecution and the Art of Writing* and other works will recognize the approach I use here. Strauss found that the writings of al -Farabi, Spinoza, Machiavelli and other thinkers who expressed unpopular ideas on topics that were controversial in their times, such as the existence of God and the relation between religion and philosophy, required a minute textual exegesis. These controversial figures tended to express their ideas on both an "exoteric" and an "esoteric" level of meaning: the first aimed at the average reader, the second at the more careful reader, who would be alerted to search for the meaning beneath the surface by certain deliberate ambiguities in the text. As a challenge to prevailing orthodoxy, homosexuality is as controversial as the denial of religion in the age of Machiavelli. It is understandable that the producer of a mass audience TV show and film might be reluctant to state too directly that his most popular characters have had such a relationship. Does Roddenberry's footnote contain different levels of meaning? Let us analyze it and see. The text tells us that Spock thought of Kirk as his "t'hy'la," a Vulcan word that, the editor's note tells us, can mean "friend," "brother" or "lover." The editor then quotes verbatim a comment supplied to him by Kirk on "some speculation over whether they had actually indeed become lovers." It is this comment of Kirk that is riddled with ambiguity and that requires analysis in detail. "I WAS NEVER AWARE OF THIS LOVERS RUMOR." Literally, all Kirk is saying here is that he was unaware of the *existence" of the rumor. Even if the facts referred to in the rumor were true, Kirk might simply have failed to *encounter* the rumor and thus might have been unaware that it was circulating. The sentence has the ring of ambiguity, however, an ambiguity that is compounded by Kirk's use of several differnt verb tenses in this sentence and the next, a use of words that succeeds in totally confusing the reader and leaving her in doubt as to *when* Kirk was unaware of the rumor. He cannot have been unaware of the rumor at the time the editor asked him to comment on it, for he goes on to say, "ALTHOUGH I HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT SPOCK ENCOUNTERED IT SEVERAL TIMES." Kirk could not have remained unaware of the rumor after having been told that Spock encountered it several times. The linking of these two clauses, therefore, and the parallel construction of the sentence (Kirk's experience with the rumor vs. Spock's experience with it) supports the conclusion that Kirk is discussing here only his own failure to *encounter* the rumor, rather than the truth or falsity of the rumor itself. Apparently, for some unspecified but definite period of time, Kirk remained unaware that the rumor was in circulation. This does not tell us, however, whether the rumor was true or false. "APPARENTLY HE HAD ALWAYS DISMISSED IT WITH HIS CHARACTERISTIC LIFTING OF HIS RIGHT EYEBROW WHICH USUALLY CONNOTED SOME COMBINATION OF SURPRISE, DISBELIEF, AND/OR ANNOYANCE." Spock did not, apparently, deny the rumor when he encountered it. Neither did he confirm it, but simply remained silent and raised one eyebrow. Did he perhaps remain silent to avoid self-incrimination? We must not fall into such a hasty conclusion, for Kirk has supplied us with the tools to decode Spock's raised eyebrow. Let us see what we can conclude from Kirk's "code." According to Kirk, Spock could have meant: (a) surprise and disbelief; (b) surprise and annoyance; (c) surprise, disbelief and annoyance; (d) annoyance only; or (e) none of the above. Alternatives (a) and (c), since they include "disbelief" as an element of Spock's reaction, suggest the untruth of the rumor, though not conclusively; alternatives (b), (d), and (e) are consistent with either a true or a false rumor. "Surprise" may mean no more than surprise at the existence of the rumor; "annoyance" may mean annoyance at a violation of Kirk's and Spock's privacy. Nor do these meanings exhaust the universe of possible meanings of Spock's raised eyebrow ("usually"). Not only are we still in the dark about the truth of the rumor, but we do not even know how Spock felt when he encountered it. "AS FOR MYSELF, ALTHOUGH I HAVE NO MORAL OR OTHER OBJECTIONS TO PHYSICAL LOVE IN ANY OF ITS MANY EARTHLY, ALIEN AND MIXED FORMS, I HAVE ALWAYS FOUND MY BEST GRATIFICATION IN THAT CREATURE *WOMAN.*" This is the key sentence in Kirk's comment, for it is here that Kirk defines his own sexual tastes and habits. At first glance, one can understand how the casual reader could interpret this sentence as a simple affirmation that Kirk makes love only with women. But this is *not* what the sentence says. The key to the meaning of the sentence is the phase "best gratification." Each word is highly significant. "BEST" is a comparative term (technically, it is a superlative adjective, which requires at least three different items for comparison). For there to be a "best," other items must be available for comparison. Kirk does not say that he receives his *only* gratification from women, merely that women are for him the *most* gratifying sexual partners. Therefore, we can conclude that he has taken sexual partners who are *not* women and received at least some "gratification" from those encounters. The obvious implication is that Kirk has tried at least one, and probably more, of the other forms of "physical love" that he enumerates in the first clause of the sentence. Kirk's choice of the term "GRATIFICATION" to describe his preference for women is also highly significant. In the course of this sentence, Kirk slips inexplicably from the term "physical love" to the considerably narrower term "gratification." While "physical love" is a broad expression connoting the sexual expression of love for another being, "gratitifcation" generally means, in the sexual context, the brue satisfaction of sexual needs. All Kirk has told us is that he finds sex with women more "gratifying," i.e. more effective for achieving physical satiation, than sex with other creatures. He is silent on the other dimensions of "physical love": joy, tenderness, giving, sharing and all the emotional and spiritual dimensions of physical intimacy with a partner for whom one cares deeply. Kirk's abandonment of the concept of "physical love" for the narrower concept of "gratification" when he compares women to other sexual partners suggests that Kirk has deliberately narrowed the issue. By specifying "gratification" as the area in which women are, for him, the "best" partners, Kirk has told us, implicitly, that women are *not* always "best" in all the other dimensions of "physical love" that he has excluded from the arena of comparison. *Expressio unius est exclusio alterius.* By narrowing his focus to this single issue, Kirk has managed to distract us from the *real* question at hand, whether he has had a relationship of physical love with a particular person who is not a woman. If the editor had asked Kirk whether he had had a love affair with Edith Keeler, a skinny brunette, and Kirk had replied obliquely, "I have always found my best gratification in voluptuous blondes," we surely would appreciate the inadequacy of a statement of general erotic preference as an answer to a question about a particular love relationship. Furthermore, we know that Kirk ranks "love" far above "technique" (presumably the source of "gratification") in sexual matters. On page 185 of the novel, Kirk considers the possibility that because of his superior sexual experience, he could seduce the Ilia-probe more effectively than Decker, that is, provide Ilia with a more *gratifying* sexual experience. He rejects that possibility because he knows that Ilia *loves* Decker, and "sexual technique always [comes] out a poor runner-up in any race with love." Given Kirk's own views on the relative unimportance of gratification compared to love, his evasion of a question about "physical love" with an answer to a non-existent question about "gratification" becomes all the more significant. "ALSO, I WOULD DISLIKE BEING THOUGHT OF AS SO FOOLISH THAT I WOULD SELECT A LOVE PARTNER WHO CAME INTO SEXUAL HEAT ONLY ONCE EVERY SEVEN YEARS." Kirk argues that persons who hold this view of Vulcan sexuality would consider him "foolish" if they knew he had a Vulcan sexual partner; he does not tell us whether Vulcans actually *are* functional every seven years, nor whether anyone actually holds this opinion or not. Of course, if Vulcans do happen to be sexually functional at all times and not only once every seven years, there is nothing foolish at all about having a Vulcan lover, and Kirk has merely executed another clever evasive maneuver for our benefit. Kirk does not tell us whether he thinks it would *be* foolish to take Vulcan mate, only that he would prefer not to *look* foolish in the eyes of others. It is highly unlikely that Kirk would refuse to take a Vulcan lover merely because of a false stereotype held by outsiders. He has used a popular (and quote non-canonical) stereotype about Vulcans to conceal his unwillingness to answer the simple question put to him. Indeed, perhaps the most significant fact of all about the footnote is that when the "editor" asked Kirk a simple, straightforward question, he was rewarded, not with a simple, straightforward "yes" or "no," but with a complicated 106-word statement that, when deciphered, manages completely to avoid a straight answer. Has Gene Roddenberry favored us with another example of James Kirk's famous gift of the blarney? But although Kirk has refused directly to answer Roddenberry's question, he has supplied us with some definite statements nonetheless. Let us summarize the information provided in Kirk's comment, the rest of the note, and the text. (1) Spock encountered rumors that he and Kirk were lovers. (2) Spock neither confirmed nor denied these rumors. (3) Kirk has no moral or other objections of physical love in any form. (4) Kirk's most "gratifying" sexual encounters have been with women. (5) Kirk has had sexual relations with someone who is *not* a woman. (6) Kirk considers that woman sexual partners have the advantage over other sexual partners in the area of "gratification," but not in other aspects of "physical love." (7) Kirk considers "love" much more important than "technique" in a sexual relationship. (8) Spock calls Kirk by a Vulcan term that means "friend," "brother," or lover." I leave it to each individual reader to decide whether the weight of the evidence tends to support or deny the possibility of a K/S relationship. Judith Gran Dean, TSU Law School Ausserdem: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/H | ||||||||
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B.B.'s Amayra-Variante - T'hy'la
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