CLASS: "Blog Post #8 - The Dreamer and the Dream"

Let's see. Looking at it simply, Deep Space 9 is itself a Afrofuturistic entity, especially by 1950s terms – I can't remember the exact wording, and it isn't posted in full on YouTube, but the necessity of turning the story into a dream, and Sisko's pleas near the end, drive this point home very nicely. It's his “THERE! ARE! FOUR! LIGHTS!” moment, I think. I am also reminded of the line from Eshun's essay: “Science fiction might better be understood, in Samuel R. Delany's statement, as offering “a significant distortion of the present” (Last Angel of History 1995)” - in this light (har har I made a funny) it's all the more amusing to see the crew of DS9 take on the roles of various denizens of Benny Russell's New York. Because, see, there are two ways of looking at the episode: 1) the “proper” way, which assumes that it's all in Sisko's mind (a dream?), and is a “significant distortion of the present” in the opposite of its intended sense, or 2) the “St. Elsewhere” way in which Benny Russell is the real and Benjamin Sisko is the imagined, also as a “significant distortion of the present” but in its intended (although virtually dissimilar, even inappropriate, in context – Delany wasn't thinking of 1950s NYC) meaning. According to the Wiki page for the episode this might have at one point been the ending for DS9... But nah, that would've made it all too easy (although it would have explained the painful train wreck of a series that was Enterprise...). This brings up an important question, though – especially if considering that it worked retrospectively, back to the original Star Trek – in that, if the entire series was a dream or a fictional work on paper, would the impact of it change? Would it be better to have the whole series represented as a work of fiction rather than a possible future, or would the need for hope (and a brighter future with a captain whose shirt falls apart with a cough – thank god Shatner doesn't feel the need to “recreate” that part of the show at conventions) outweigh it? This is along my usual lines of rhetoric, and is generally similar to what I start thinking whenever I hear/see/sense someone over-analyzing a work of “art” in the broad sense (“Can't we just enjoy it?” “No. We English Majors do not enjoy art – that is reserved for the Math Majors.”).

I had something witty to say, but I can't remember it – so this is the post.