We are
the only sentient species we know about at present, in a universe
where the possibilities are nearly infinite.
It is
thus disappointing, if unsurprising, that we can only see things
through our own tediously heterosexual and missionary position eyes.
Our imaginations, when they should be alive to every possibility, are
thinking only of England.
We are
so boring. This young child playing with his Star Wars figures, could
see all manner of fun and games involving Squid Head and a Gammorean
Guard, while EV9D9 the Smash Martian torture-bot of Jabba's Palace
looked on approvingly. But no, long long ago in a galaxy far far
away, there was only rubbish old male to female, humanoid snogging
going on. The brilliantly realised array of species that frequented
the Mos Eisley cantina or Jabba's Sail Barge were about as sexual as
a packet of crisps, save for the constantly ejaculating phallus that
was Jabba himself, his scenes with Leia a blatant earth bound bukkake
signifier.
As the
Holiday Special showed us, Wookies like pornography featuring humans,
rather than other Wookies, and how disturbing is it that Han Solo
gets the white girl, but Chewbacca's father has a black woman served
up to him as his fantasy?
Contemporaneously,
H2G2's Zaphod Beeblebrox may have been sporting an extra head and
three arms, but there was nothing to show that his dealings with
Trillian were anything past Page 32 of the Joy of Sex.
We all
know that Kirk may have been canoodling with all manner of green
skinned – or more shockingly for 1968, black skinned – women in
the traditional manner, but leap forward into the Next Generation,
and the excitement of the final frontier was sharing screen time with
Nescafe advert style sexual tension with Doctor Crusher and Captain
Picard, and with Riker and Councillor Troi – another example of a
mixed species relationship being portrayed in typically heterosexual
penis to vagina coupling.
The
First Contact movie presented us with the spectacle (cringing!) of
Data getting it on with the Borg Queen, but for all his announcement
that he was “Fully functional, programmed in multiple techniques”
it was clear that this android to cyborg corpse coupling was going to
be of a very standard format. Indeed, any alt-sex activities of the
Star Trek Universe were always of the cloning, or assimilating
variety.
It
wasn't until Star Trek Voyager, that anything different to these
standards were offered up to the viewer – Harry Kim had some form
of bizarre intercourse with the ever stunning Musetta “Mansquito”
Vander - “I'm not sure that was even legal” - and Kes and
Neelix's long term interspecies relationship revealed some
interesting little tit-bits about Ocampa sexual physiology that were
very different from ours.
Still
all het though. Even the radically inhuman creations of Species and
Splice engaged in fairly conventional heterosexual intercourse.
The
world of sci-fi literature, however, had been a bit more open to
alternatives. Arthur C. Clarke's universe was hard-sci and asexual a
lot of the time, aside to joky references to shipboard relationships
with genetically engineered apes called Simps in “Rendezvous with
Rama”. However, by the 80s, there were open references to
homosexuality in the relationship between an American and Russian
astronaut aboard the Leonov in 2010, the “Feys” of 2061, and
butch surfing spacedudes recalibrating their sexuality in “The
Songs of Distant Earth.”
Going
back to the 1930s, Olav Stapledon, in “Last and First Men”
actually envisaged fully realised, highly complex and rather
incomprehensible successor species of man, with sub-sexes and full
intercourse involving a large group of individuals, but these were a
later species of man, albeit barely recognisable to us, rather than
aliens.
I think
it is David Bowie, who else, who actually through the vision of
Nicholas Roeg, gives us an idea of what a realistic form of alien sex
could be...messy, genital-less, and with no-need for penetration at
all.
And
indeed, for all the stress and violence it causes, higher forms of
life in the universe will probably have abandoned sex. And who can
blame them?
Copyright Bloody Mulberry
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