Taxonomies: /society/unrest and war (0.459366) /religion and spirituality/christianity (0.424735) /art and entertainment/visual art and design/design (0.399734) Each of these main characters (Kirk, Spock, V'Ger and Decker) are intricately involved with the story's main conceit: the mating of man and machine of "cold" knowledge and "warm" human emotions.įolksonomies: metaphor technology cybernetics symbolism Even Decker finds his "peace" with a machine that replicates (down to the last detail) the memory patterns of his lost beloved. ![]() Spock finds his answer from a machine, and that answer is an acceptance of humanity. Kirk finds his peace with a machine (The Enterprise). V'Ger (a machine) finds "God" and evolves with the help of a human (Decker). It's interesting to tally the scoreboard here. Decker and Ilia (V'ger's surrogate) are mated in a light show that some Paramount studio executives allegedly termed a "40 million dollar fuck." And even the journey of the Enterprise (essentially the male "sperm") through the fallopian tube-type interior of V'Ger - carrying its creative material (the human spirit in this case) to the V'ger complex (ovum) - reflects the overriding theme of mating/joining/symbiosis. Spock penetrates the V'Ger "orifice," to mentally join with a living machine. The central images in the film all symbolize the reproductive, joining process. They're talking about sex, about the union of two-life forms creating a third, unique life form. "Well, it's been a long time since I delivered a baby," McCoy notes happily in the film's epilogue, and Kirk remarks on "the birth" of a new life-form. And make no mistake, that final act is equated with physical reproduction explicitly in the film's text. This terminology sounds very biological, doesn't it? Consider that Spock next mentally-joins with V'Ger, utilizing a Vulcan mind-meld, yet another form of symbiosis.Īnd finally, we see Decker and Ilia physically join with the V'ger Entity during the film's climax. We see Spock, in a thruster suit, "penetrate" - in his words, "the orifice" leading to the next interior "chamber" of V'Ger. We watch Kirk's shuttle pod "dock" with Enterprise after a long, lingering examination of the ship. ![]() Consider for a moment just how many times Star Trek: The Motion Picture lingers upon the important act of a man entering - or connecting to - a machine.
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