It’s much lower than that, but that’s beside the point. There’s no indication of what Sulu’s orientation was. It could just as easily be gay as straight. It’s not as likely to be gay, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be gay.
True, but also totally irrelevant.
For forty years, he hasn’t been straight, either. We don’t know what his orientation is, which is the entire point of this thread.
As has been pointed out repeatedly, lots and lots of gay folks have children in the 21st century. I can only imagine how much easier it will be for gays to have kids in the 24th. Having kids is not an indicator of sexuality. Gays are no more or less driven by the maternal/paternal instinct than straights. They just have to work at it harder.
What an odd question. What purpose does making him straight serve?
As I understand it, the falling out was over Gerrold taking some unpaid moneys (royalties, I think) to arbitration; Roddenberry never trusted him after that.
Nothing in anything I’ve ever read about Roddenberry suggests he had any sort of homophobia, or any of the mindsets that can lead to unconscious homophobia – just a hypertrophied sense of exactly how far he could go in doing social commentary under the guise of exploring alien lifeforms.
I’m pretty sure that Hikaru Sulu was always meant to be straight. I remember reading that an early script of one of the eps gave him a love story, but it was reassigned to Kirk as the “star” or one of the two “co-stars” because Sulu was just a supporting character & 1960’s US TV had that star system where the lead was always the lead.
Anyway, why would Takei’s sexuality affect Sulu’s? Is Connor MacLeod French?
Apparently, a lot of Gerrold’s ideas got incorporated into TNG (a Klingon officer, a ship’s counselor, etc.) Roddenberry wouldn’t give him a co-creator credit or the bonuses that came with same, so it went to arbitration, where Gerrold got money but no co-creator credit.
“It shouldn’t be an issue” doesn’t imply that there shouldn’t be a gay character, nor any reference to homosexuality. For comparison, on Babylon 5, it wasn’t an issue… But two of the characters were apparently bisexual, and a honeymoon was considered an inconspicuous cover story for two guys on a secret mission to Mars. The closest Trek’s ever come to the issue was that Next Generation episode with the asexual alien Riker falls in love with.
Unless Roddenbery meant that it wouldn’t be an issue, because there wouldn’t be any gays in the 23rd century? From what I know of Roddenbery, that seems unlikely, but then, I’ve known some folks who had some apparently-unlikely views concerning sexuality…
Dax and Kahn get smoochy while both are inhabiting female hosts in the Deep Space Nine episode, “Rejoined”, and the only uproar is that they’re reassociating (resuming a romantic relationship between two joined Trill by their subsequent hosts), which is strictly prohibited and very taboo. No one so much as quirks an eyebrow at them both being women.
This is the crux of the issue. The “Sulu is gay” crowd is reading George Takei’s real-life sexuality into his character. Jean-Luc Picard is played by an English actor, but he is not supposed to be English. (Picard’s accent and love of Earl Grey tea are a bit problematic, but that’s beside the point.) We have minor evidence that suggests that Sulu was probably straight, or at most bisexual: he started a family, which we know includes a daughter; he displayed chivalrous behavior towards Uhuru; and there was the aborted love interest story that foolsguinea mentioned, which was originally intended for Sulu. It’s not convincing, but there’s more evidence for heterosexuality than there is for homosexuality. Making Sulu gay wouldn’t be a retcon, but it would be something that comes out of left field.
Besides, at the “present time” in the Trek franchise, Sulu is something like 130 years old, and almost certainly does not have any sexuality worth speaking of. I hope not, at least. (“Come here, and give Great-Great-Grandpa some sugar.”) Thus, any series that explored this issue would necessarily have to be a prequel. And I say ABSOLUTELY NO MORE MOTHERFUCKING PREQUELS !!! Whatever happened to moving forward, you formula-writing hacks?! Wasn’t Enterprise bad enough? Do you really have to make a movie about Kirk’s time in Starfleet Academy, like some demented cross between Tiny Toons and Beverly Hills 90210… err… Sorry. Got a bit carried away there. Anyway, Star Trek desperately needs to move forward again, and trying to retoactively make Sulu gay will only hurt. If you want to, introduce a new character who is gay, but don’t stick an asterisk next to Sulu saying “P.S.: he’s gay.”
I’m not sure how much further forward they could go. Going backwards met with limited success.
Maybe it’s time for a re-imagining a la Battlestar Galactica. Then they could make a gay Sulu or a gay whoever they want. Probably won’t happen in my lifetime though.
Hey, how could the humans end up beijng hairy apes? Or the Cardassians scaly… muscular-neck… guy… people? They just evolved that way. The sidestep to Crustaciaman may have been due to the seeded DNA being mixed with local DNA for the best chances of survival on the planet. Who knows?
The cardinal rule of storytelling: show, don’t tell.
If they had shown us that Sulu was gay, or if they show us in some future show… fine. I can buy that. I would rather see it — whether it has a point or not — in an official movie or episode.
Spare me the pompous P.C. announcement and asterisk-adding, though. Saying “he’s gay, y’know” doesn’t do anything for any story.
On a totally unrelated note, after someone in here said they need an obviously gay Star Trek character, I now keep imagining Jack from Will and Grace in a Starfleet Uniform.
“Sir, course set for the Bajor System.” Jack waving hand towards viewscreen “EnGAAAAGE!”
Sorry Otto, that’s how I see it. Paramount executives have no more power to make proclamations and announce character backstories by fiat than does any other fan. If someone were to simply announce “Sulu was gay” in a press conference, inclusion for inclusion’s sake, that’s just silly and stupid. The real way to “boldly go where no man has gone before” is to put it in an episode and show us.
It’s insulting to Takei as an actor to think he doesn’t have the ability to play straight; it’s insulting to the audience to think they couldn’t buy a known gay man in a straight role (though this happens a lot more than the audience thinks, they just don’t know it happens).
The Star Trek people aren’t a great and noble cause of humanity; they’re storytellers. If they’ve got character development to reveal to us, let them say it in a story, not from behind a podium.
Can you point out to me where anyone was suggesting that Paramount do a press release on the topic? Because that doesn’t seem to me to be what’s under discussion here. I was under the impression that the thread was about the idea of doing new stories with Sulu, in which he is brought out, or in doing new stories with new characters one or more of whom is gay.
However, it seems to me that Paramount executives do have significantly more power to declare backstories or what have you than does the average Joe on the street. They declared an entire series non-canon, they could fiat Sulu queer.
Who is suggesting that Takei can’t play a straight role? Are you reading the same thread I am?
Otto, we could go around and around all day with speculation, unofficially, about what characters “really” are. Fans do that, and I don’t mind it, but none if it is part of the official canon. You could say he is, and I could say it doesn’t matter, and someone else could say he isn’t, and at the end of the day, nothing is changed. Nothing is official, not even if Takei says so.
The only way for Sulu to be gay, officially, is if Paramount decided either to make an episode or movie or book revealing this, or to announce it in some fashion.
I leapt through these intermediate steps because I felt that’s the only way it would really be true. Therefore, I presented only my conclusions: that the proper way for Paramount to do it is to make a story about it, or including it. I would accept that. In fact, I would applaud it if they did it that way — tackle it head-on, as Trek is wont to do. For Paramount to announce it ex post facto would just be cowardly.
From what I can see anything directly stating Sulu’s sexual orientation (or that of any character for which it has not allready been established) is reasonable but somewhat pointless.
What does concern me is. Why do people only consider Sulu to be a gay character and not other characters, I mean wtf has the actor’s orientation got to do with the orientation of any character they play?
I susspect in the future everyone will be bi-ish. Also with technology suitable to allow any couple to have offspring via genetic science (so allowing for conversion of an X to a Y chromosome so Lesbians can have both male and female offspring) and through surrogate motherhood or artificial wombs. That would greatly reduce the genetic effect of selecting against homosexual behaviour, so quite possibly homosexuality could find itself as common as hetrosexuality in a sufficiently advanced civilisation after a reasonable number of generations are born. With sexuality becoming a social none-issue the number of people who experiment outside their normal sexual range will likely increase and so many will seem like what today we would call bisexual, like upper class Romans and Ancient Greeks,.
I assume that all the “but it’s fine the way it is, not knowing, this is unnecessary” folks would be just as annoyed if he suddenly had a wife? Except Oakminster, of course.
I think the question should be “Why shouldn’t Sulu be gay?” Apparently, there is no canonical reason he can’t be, so there’s no reason he shouldn’t be. The OP seems more to want to know if Sulu should be gay because Takei is gay; of course not. The relationship there is that straight male actors are traditionally reluctant to play gay roles, and openly gay men have a very hard time finding work in straight roles of any prominence. It’s now finally starting to change a little bit, but the reason gay guys play gay guys is not that they feel compelled to stick to what they know or adhere to an agenda, as some seem to be implying.
I also think some people should try to feel a little empathy for those of us who never see our own lives reflected on the TV screen. Imagine a show where every character was gay – would you watch it? There are shows growing in popularity now with mostly queer characters, but I can count them on my shark-feeding hand.
What if every character on every show ever was gay? Would you be fine with that? Every character in every movie, book, song, play – okay, not theatre. But you get the idea. You know this reality exists, but because it includes rather than excludes you, I think some of you aren’t really empathizing with how it feels. Because to look at the suggestion that a minor character in a no-longer-relevant franchise might, contrary to no known information, be revealed as gay and cry ‘Tokenism! Boring! Agenda! Pointless!’ suggests a serious disconnect with reality and/or empathy, somewhere.
