Insurrection fails political test, and is boring

   Star Trek: Insurrection
   Directed by Jonathan Frakes
   1998 
   
   Review by MIM
   
   Film number nine from the Star Trek dynasty is about the modern
   miracle of a highly advanced, supposedly idyllic 24th century society
   that somehow has not managed to eliminate the patriarchal concept of
   gender. The Baku have reached great technological advance, but
   rejected technology for the sake of happiness and isolation on their
   own planet. The Star Trek crew stages its Insurrection to defend this
   idyllic society from forced relocation. In doing so, the crew briefly
   rebels against its own government and army.
   
   The guiding principle of the insurrection is that "every forced
   relocation in history has been disastrous for its victims," and its
   premise is that this forced relocation is being made to steal natural
   resources from its victims. It is true for example that Europeans
   forcibly relocated millions of Africans to steal their labor; and that
   settlers throughout the Americas, Pacific islands, parts of Asia,
   Africa, etc. have forcibly relocated Indigenous people to steal land,
   labor and other natural resources from them. And MIM generally
   supports even bourgeois renditions of struggles to defend people from
   these forms of colonization.
   
   But MIM rejects the universal moralizing of Insurrection. Forced
   relocations can be to the benefit of the people being moved, as when
   Stalin internally deported Jews in the Soviet Union to move them away
   from the advancing German troops. MIM would rather see Jews moved to
   undesirable locations within the USSR than worked into disease in
   concentration camps and then gassed or shot. We also generally oppose
   the fiction that liberation will come from a segment of the conquering
   army.
   
   While it is true that occupying troops are often won over by the
   strength and correctness of an Indigenous liberation struggle, the
   officers of an occupying force tend not to be the leaders of any
   liberation struggle. In truth, the strength of the people's will can
   win over segments of the opposition, but this will must originate with
   the people who liberate themselves.
   
   Even though the Baku society in Insurrection has been living in
   tranquility for 300 years, it retains such stone age constructs as
   marriage, ownership of children, and feminization of wimmin. In Star
   Trek style that hasn't changed since the Cold War episodes of the
   1960s, part of the attraction of this ideal society is beautiful
   wimmin who never age and wear revealing clothing.
   
   The neat thing about science fiction is that it can play with modern
   social constructs by stripping away all their structural baggage.
   Ursula Le Guin's book The Left Hand of Darkness for instance gets rid
   of gender by taking the premise that men and wimmin work the same
   jobs, have the same level of importance in government and social life,
   and have all differences in appearance eliminated by living in a very
   cold climate that requires wearing so much clothing that one's body
   shape is hidden. She winds up with people who have no biological sex
   for most of their lives, but occasionally mate with whomever they
   happen to be around when the time comes.
   
   MIM likes books like Le Guin's because we also think of gender and
   other superstructural divisions among people in terms of what will
   come of them once we have completely replaced the capitalist
   substructure. This is the only correct way to approach thinking about
   futuristic social relations because it understands that human nature
   and relations are not fixed or static. In failing this test -- in
   terms of how it sees relations between oppressors and the oppressed --
   Star Trek: Insurrection is a pretty boring movie.