omg!

[cimorene]

How did I not realize before now that Amok Time^[1] = Tam Lin!

DISCUSS.



1. Wikipedia, K'Sal's A Logical Look at Amok Time: An Essay

Comments

[laughingrat]

That is *really* interesting.

I need a fairy tale icon for here.

[walkingshadow]

The Amok Time essay totally blew my mind. Everything makes so much sense!

I'm so intrigued by the parallel to Tam Lin. I couldn't parse it at first, but after reading through the essay and then reading through the wikipedia entry again, it makes more and more senes. All of the elements are there. There's the seven-year cycle (which always throws up fairy-tale flags); the question of identity and capture and living with a people you don't (fully) belong to; the element of sacrifice; the need for rescue; the bodily transformation; even the use of ritual and trickery to effect the escape, and the acknowledgement of release from the (female) authority.

Did the episode writers draw on Tam Lin deliberately? I mean, now it seems incredibly obvious, but it does feel like it was pretty well disguised; a cursory google search turns up exactly one page (i.e. this page) that makes the connection. Partly because the shape-shifting is the most readily identifiable element of the Tam Lin story, and that's subtle and obscured here; and maybe also because the rescue plan was left as a mystery to develop over the course of the episode, because the narrative of television requires the element of suspense. The story goes, he warned her that, when she caught him, the fairies would attempt to make her drop him by turning him into all manner of beasts, but that he would do her no harm; but neither Kirk nor Spock (nor the viewer) know the whole story, until the very end.

WARNING: lengthy semi-digression ahead. I hope you *really* are into meta!

[cimorene]

We have no information about whether the writer (almost universally singular in terms of original Star Trek, which was not a very large operation, and mostly consisted of Roddenberry and occasional solicitated and un- contributions, plus scripts ordered by him from his right-hand woman DC Fontana) drew on Tam Lin or not, but I don't think it's necessary that the parallel be intentional. Folklore motifs are universal, and Tam Lin is far from the only one to make use of its central elements.

The episode is by science fiction great Theodore Sturgeon, and it seems clear that he was at least drawing deliberately on erotic asphyxiation and death as synonym for orgasm. There was a great essay about this posted to ASCEM-L in response to K'Sal's essay which I will go dig up.

OK, here is the link at yahoogroups but I think you have to join the group to see it: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCEML/message/112150 - I'll just quote bits more than half of it:

(From "Thoughts about Amok Time" by Hypatia Kosh)

Okay, the episode is written by Ted Sturgeon, who gained notoriety in the 1950's for his short story "The World Well Lost" which ventured to portray homosexuality in a positive light (http://spacedoutinc.org/DU-16/WorldWellLost.html). The story was almost immediately banned and he had some professional troubles as a result.


Sturgeon is also the author of the critically-acclaimed (and still in print) novel "More Than Human", as well as numerous other novels and collections of short stories. As any fan of his work can tell you, Sturgeon was fascinated by human psychology and human sexuality, which he depicts as both alluring, dangerous, and powerful. A frequent theme is the linking of sexuality and violence. In fact, much of the violence in his stories has a direct psycho-sexual basis. Still, sexuality can also be a positive force, especially in that happy circumstance where two honest, earnest adults form a loving partnership.


In 1947 (almost twenty years before Star Trek), Sturgeon wrote a story titled "Bianca's Hands" in which a man marries a woman with severe mental limitations because he is obsessed with her hands. On their wedding night, she strangles him to death. The story is about erotic asphyxiation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoerotic_asphyxiation), from the point of view of the victim, since the perpetrator is non compos mentis. The fact that in this story the act is "completed" by an act of murder suggests to me that Sturgeon was aware of this practice through criminology, rather than the study of human sexuality per se. (There would have been relatively little such material at any rate in the 1940's--Kinsey's seminal work had not yet been published, while prior work in "sexology" had mostly focused on trying to prove that sexual "perverts" had abnormal bodies, a sort of sexual phrenology.)

[...]

Before "Amok Time," Sturgeon sold one other script: "Shore Leave." In this episode (which, in my opinion, makes for lousy television), the human crew of the Enterprise land on a planet where their imagination and fantasies are made manifest--the last part being particularly dangerous. One by one, the various individuals find themselves physically threatened by fantasies which they had intended to give them pleasure. (With the exception of Kirk, who actually seems to *enjoy* having the crap kicked out of him by a much larger man for ten shirt-ripping minutes. Wait, seems to? In fact, the highly amused Spock asks him point blank if he enjoyed himself, and the answer is in the affirmative. Which probably tells you everything you need to know about Kirk.)

[...]

Unfortunately, when Spock arrives on Vulcan, with Kirk and McCoy whom he has invited to stand at his side, T'Pring challenges the marriage. In the production it is strongly hinted that T'Pring is pregnant, and that she has been carrying on with a man named Stonn. Stonn furthermore believes, or has been led to believe, that he will be T'Pring's champion. (Stonn speaks out of turn to T'Pau, the matriarch, stating "The woman is--" before he is cut off; this could mean "the woman is mine". I'm not certain of authorial intent here, but Artell Stewart has indicated in interviews that she believed T'Pring was pregnant.)

[...]

McCoy interrupts and fakes giving Kirk an oxygen shot, but it's actually a mickey. At this point, Kirk quickly succumbs and Spock strangles him with the ligature, seemingly to death.


At this point, Spock returns to a normal state of consciousness. He is sober, and understands the consequences of his actions. He explains later that "all desire for the girl had vanished." But what was it that satisfied the pon farr?


This is my thesis: that Spock is the perpetrator of an act of erotic asphyxiation. The completion (in death, or in this case, simulated death) of this act satisfies the mating urge. This is where Farfalla and I disagree, because she claims this is a *figurative* act of asphyxiation and death, as a metaphor for sexual release. I disagree. What we see on screen is a LITERAL act of asphyxiation, and a LITERAL sexual completion (the completion of pon farr), but an ABSTRACTED sexual release. In other words, Spock is not having an orgasm on screen (and may I just add: eww). However, this act does satisfy the pon farr.

[...]

T'Pring fully expects that the pon farr will be over after the combat. ...she states that if Kirk had won, he would not want her, but if Spock had won, *he would reject her for challenging*, and she would still have Stonn. ... T'Pring does NOT envision a situation in which Spock completes the combat, having killed Kirk, and is still in the throes of pon farr. If she can envision Spock--or any male--walking away from her after the combat, she *clearly* expects that to be the end of it.


Marriage-or-challenge is thus, not, as K'Sal would have it (and it was a nice theory, if I say so myself) a way to provide the MALE an outlet if the arrangement goes wrong. It is rather a last ditch escape for the FEMALE to get rid of a male she is not prepared to mate with. The male will either mate with her legally, or kill someone, or die.

[Let me just interject that I don't think this analysis actually does invalidate K'Sal's theory since, in her theory, the male's backups were supposed to step forward and bond with him before any combat could occur and prevent the fighting completely. They aren't meant to be the female's champion, who actually is expected to kill the intended groom in combat if necessary in K'Sal's theory; she subscribes to the notion that the pon farr was turned off because Spock's telepathic bond transferred to Kirk *in a freak accident* and was turned off when the mickey kicked in and blocked the telepathic link as if in death.]

But murder here is an oversimplification. Sturgeon did not choose strangulation as the form of death haphazardly. (Nor is this some choreographic accident: T'Pau orders the use of the ligatures. It *is*, therefore, in the script.) He has a chosen a form where the achievement of sexual gratification and the act of murder are one and the same. In other words, what we are watching is an act of rape. Which brings us back to the purpose of pon farr--it is a mating drive. In this case, a drive which, by the actions of a cruel and heartless woman, is turned to the ends of rape, mutilation, and death.


(Sturgeon wrote another story, "The Silken-Swift," which, by coincidence, appears in the same collection, E Pluribus Unicorn, with "Bianca's Hands" and "The World Well Lost". In this story, a cruel woman torments a man until he attempts to rape her in revenge but instead rapes an innocent girl.)


So, this would be my summary of authorial intent: that Spock must mate or die, and, frustrated in his attempt to gain access to his pre-selected mate, attempts to kill, then overpowers and rapes another male, which satisfies his mating drive (and pleases the authorities). Since you can show violence and not sex on TV[1], the act of rape is coded: a literal on-screen strangulation which Sturgeon projects to those in the know as, of course, an act of both sex and violence. Through plot machinations, Kirk survives this encounter, and everything is returned to normal.

[1]-Sturgeon is much franker about sex in his stories than in his TV scripts; it is also a fact that network censors were not only alive and well during the 1960's but that they attempted to take an active role in the shooting of certain episodes, notably "Plato's Stepchildren".

PS: It also occurs to me that the typical interpretation of pon farr as being an inevitably violent episode may be somewhat overblown. Yes, Spock draws out a lot of drama over how his logic is going to be ripped from him, blah blah blah. But the text of the ritual, which Spock and T'Pring recite, and Spock's attempts (implied) to reawaken the telepathic bond between him and T'Pring (there is a scene in which he has a childhood photo of her open on his terminal), seems to imply something a bit more normal, loving, and less disruptive to the social order. In other words, the actions of "Amok Time" are not normal, but rather a process gone horribly wrong. Sturgeon is saying that underneath the genteel veneer of romantic love can lurk the aphasic beast of sexual violence (awakened, in this case, by a rejection). ...Spock may be extremely horny, ... but he isn't necessarily a danger to anyone unless the mating drive is frustrated.