Leonard Nimoy's Advice to a Biracial Girl in 1968

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2015/02/27/389589676/leonard-nimoys-advice-to-a-biracial-girl-in-1968

by chepin • 11 years ago

168 41 11 years ago

npr.org

mcguire• 11 years ago

Am I alone in finding the irony in...

Be IN

start a fad

...the ad next to the article?

omegaham• 11 years ago

Nope, and you'll see this everywhere that you see the intersection of pop culture and the advice to "be yourself."

This isn't a dig at Nimoy's advice - it's damn good advice. But it doesn't sell compared to You're worthless unless you buy our stuff. The only reason why they can print Nimoy's advice is that the "Be a FAD" ad is right next to it. And not only that, the earnest advice itself is often packaged and cynically sold, right alongside the "OBEY CONFORM CONSUME" message!

One of the most recent examples of this is a song I keep hearing on the radio - "Try," by Colbie Caillat.[1] The message of the song is pretty simple - it's that people work their asses off to be liked, but they're still not happy because they're straying from being true to themselves.

But it's a manufactured product explicitly created to appeal to people who are feeling lost, confused, and frustrated with being popular. And they have a beautiful woman, who is already an enormous success, singing this song that's specifically saying, "Stop worrying about what other people think about you" when her entire career is based on what other people think of her.

I'm a much bigger fan of Tool's Hooker With a Penis.[2] At least Keenan is frank about it.

All you read and wear or see and hear on TV is a product

Begging for your fatass dirty dollar

So shut up and buy, buy, buy, my new record

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXoZLPSw8U8

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R890wISHwG4

buckbova• 11 years ago

Tool! I dig aenema. Flush it all away.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uCEeAn6_QJo

This is the kind of music I work to.

WalterBright• 11 years ago

I always enjoyed the irony in the 1970's Dr Pepper ads that exhorted people to join the non-conformists.

pserwylo• 11 years ago

Although being off topic, I think this is still a good observation to make.

About five years ago, I was looking up something related to bulimia. Low and behold, I ended up on a site that had advice for young people with this disorder, and the keyword ads on the right of the page included a bunch of "Lose weight fast using this pill" type ads. I was quite horrified (and reported the ads to the ad network).

TeMPOraL3• 11 years ago

While the case you describe might have been an accident, the big problem with the marketing-surveillance state Internet is becoming is that someone somewhen may - or maybe already did - decide to run such ads on purpose. After all, what's a better market for diet pills than people suffering from bulimia or anorexia? What's a better market for anti-depressants than people with suicidal thoughts?

dredmorbius2• 11 years ago

For further reading / enlightenment:

Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

Niel Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly.

Gill Scott-Heron: "The Revolution Will Not be Televised"

tempestn• 11 years ago

I'm not sure what your downvotes are for. While it doesn't lessen the value of the Nimoy article, I also found the juxtaposition a bit ironic.

msie4• 11 years ago

This is amazing. Especially in a time that wasn't so obsessed with social-media and celebrity. Why was there no black bar again?

dalke2• 11 years ago

"wasn't so obsessed with ... celebrity"? Quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_magazine:

This genre of magazine flourished in North America in the 1950s and early 1960s. The title Confidential alone boasted a monthly circulation in excess of ten million, and it had many competitors, with names like Whisper, Dare, Suppressed, The Lowdown, Hush-Hush, and Uncensored. These magazines included more lurid and explicit content than did the popular newspaper gossip columnists of the time, including tales of celebrity homosexuality and illegal drug use.

Newspapers were full of celebrity stories, starting with the Hollywood gossip columnists of the 30s and 40s, like Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. Jackie Kennedy's hair style, pillbox hat, and oversize sunglasses influenced a generation of women.

msie4• 11 years ago

Things are different now. 24-hour news cycle, realtime reporting of celebrity activities, celebrity images managed by a team of experts...

vacri3• 11 years ago

It's weird that you deride celebrity culture with 'obsessed', then immediately ask for a celebrity-acknowledgement device.

msie4• 11 years ago

No, not really. To call it that would be disrespectful to Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie.

xacaxulu• 11 years ago

Ah yes, the mythical utopian past, where none of the bad things happening today existed.

serge2k• 11 years ago

especially good in a thread where is topic is a response to a young biracial girl who was feeling left out and actively disliked because of her race.

msie4• 11 years ago

No, i didn't mean that. It's worse now.

ahuth• 11 years ago

The fact that he wrote this in 1968 is really amazing. How many people in 1968 would not have felt compelled to respond to the girl in a compassionate way?

saraid216• 11 years ago

I'm less impressed by Mr. Nimoy here, considering that his colleagues would perform the first interracial kiss on-screen later that year, and more bothered that substituting "1968" with "today" in your question doesn't make the answer obvious either.

aaron695• 11 years ago

Do you seriously think people in 1968 were different to people today?

People have always been people, they are and always have been intrinsically nice to others at a personal level. Most people then and now would have responded in a compassionate way.

It's in groups and at higher levels they can be more uncaring.

chris_wot2• 11 years ago

Not necessarily. The unpopular point of view is that some are just prejudiced, regardless of the group that surrounds them.

bane• 11 years ago

If you want something to really blow your mind, in my state, just 1 year prior to this article, it was illegal for white and black people to get married and have sex. She would have literally been the product of an illegal act.

That's a pretty fucked up burden to grow up with and only hints at the kind of twisted cultural thinking that would vote such a law into existence.

pixelglow• 11 years ago

Interesting that "Spock" uses a lot of emotional language -- "prejudice", "lonely", "happiness", "frightening", "feel best about himself" -- contrary to the popular conception of Vulcans as an emotionless, logic-above-all race.

Certainly, modern conceptions of Vulcans are a lot more nuanced e.g. they are privately strongly emotional or otherwise have to strongly suppress their emotions. See for example Star Trek (2009) which deals with Spock as a young boy in Vulcan culture, which is eerily reminiscent of this article. Wonder whether Orci, Kurtzman or Abrams read this article before conceiving the 2009 incarnation of Spock?

sliverstorm• 11 years ago

Remember that Spock is half-human, and tends to be at his most compelling as a character when he is struggling with his two halves.

DLWormwood• 11 years ago

Actually, the fact that young Spock was an outcast was already established by the early '70's thanks to the animated series’ episode “Yesteryear”, written by D. C. Fontana. For the most part, this was only episode of that series that was considered canon until ST: Enterprise incorporated more of that series into official lore.

kstenerud• 11 years ago

It was actually established in 1967 in "Journey to Babel", when his mother said "When you were five years old and came home stiff-lipped, anguished, because the other boys tormented you saying that you weren't really Vulcan. I watched you, knowing that inside that the human part of you was crying and I cried, too."

ant6n• 11 years ago

Ever since late Ds9, vulcans have become more and more angry and racist. ST:Enterprise was full of angry vulcans.

jasonzemos• 11 years ago

Star Trek was originally a show to address racism and not just science fiction! It might take a reminder from a baby-boomer to realize what it meant for a black woman, Russian, Japanese, Scottish characters to all share the same bridge in close quarters in 1968! Then we can't forget all of the aliens, strange encounters with other cultures, etc...

chris_wot2• 11 years ago

A lot of science fiction had that goal as well - through looking into the future they often held a lens up to the present.

rmc• 11 years ago

Unfortunately they forgot all that by the 90s/2000s. Ever notice how there's basically no gay people in Star Trek?

Leonard Nimoy's Advice to a Biracial Girl in 1968

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