The Enduring Appeal of Star Trek: An Aesthetic Reception Perspective
Cinema thrives on audience engagement, and the theory of aesthetic reception underscores the vital role of the viewer’s subjective consciousness and active participation in artistic creation.
Star Trek, a cornerstone of American science fiction, has captivated audiences since its inception, enriching their imaginations and sparking creativity. Simultaneously, audience desires and aesthetic preferences have significantly shaped the evolution of the Star Trek film franchise.
Examining the Star Trek film series through the lens of aesthetic reception offers fresh insights into understanding its enduring legacy.
Nostalgia and the Horizon of Expectations
One of the central concepts in reception aesthetics is the “horizon of expectations,” developed by Jauss, building upon the work of Heidegger and others. Initially applied to literary criticism, this concept is equally relevant to film reception.
Heidegger
As viewers watch a film, they bring their own experiences and memories to the process, whether derived from the film itself or their personal lives. These elements combine to create a unique emotional state and shape their expectations.
The Star Trek franchise began with the original series (1966-1969). Initially, Star Trek emerged as a byproduct of the Cold War. However, half a century later, the Cold War has ended, and contemporary ideological conflicts have gradually faded. Popular culture trends have shifted towards magic and fantasy. While the science fiction market has shrunk, science fiction films remain active on the big screen.
Against this backdrop, the Star Trek film series faces two challenges. The first is the shift in hard science fiction towards cutting-edge scientific developments, such as biology and IT. The second involves changes in U.S. domestic policy and public opinion, which have negatively impacted the image of NASA. However, despite these challenges, the Star Trek film series has achieved considerable box office success, which can be explained from the perspective of reception aesthetics as maximizing audience needs.
The creators of the new Star Trek films understand that when classifying a film as nostalgic, it is crucial to evoke the qualities that allow viewers to rediscover lost memories and long-lost excitement. Before expanding market influence, they first attract potential viewers, especially loyal fans (known as “Trekkies”), through emotional connections. This catering is reflected in two aspects. First, the consistent theme: exploration is the eternal core theme of Star Trek, and the Starship Enterprise represents the desire for exploration and adventure.
The film deliberately makes the Enterprise’s full name, USS Enterprise (United Star Ship), the same as the United States’ first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and space shuttle, emphasizing great power chauvinism and national pride. This sense of motivation to explore the unknown is evident. Second, homages to the old version in various details and plots are also an important part of the audience’s emotional connection. By repeating some classic lines and plots, such as the lines in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the reproduction of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the new generation of Star Trek films pays tribute to past works.
By examining the Star Trek film series through the lens of reception aesthetics, we can understand this series of works in a new way. The audience’s horizon of expectations, personal experiences and memories, and the catering to nostalgia and tribute, together shape the interaction between the audience and the film, making the Star Trek film series lasting and influencing the audience’s inner world.
Character Archetypes and the Structure of Evocation
In “The Structure of Evocation in the Text,” Iser proposes the concept of the structure of evocation. He believes that the meaning of a work is uncertain, and there are gaps in the work that need to be filled by the recipient, which is a kind of evocation to the recipient. In the process of acceptance, different recipients fill the work according to their different experiences. Therefore, a limited text has infinite possibilities in terms of meaning generation and aesthetic value realization.
This concept can also be applied to the Star Trek worldview. For example, the trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy is often interpreted as representing will, reason, and sensibility. Kirk, as the captain, has the power to make decisions, Spock is responsible for the team’s logical thinking and information analysis, and McCoy cares about others and shows compassion and care. The close cooperation of these three people represents the most powerful side of human beings, but from the plot of Spock being disturbed by human emotions, this interpretation is not entirely accurate.
Another example is the “Big Four”. Scott is considered to represent the British (Europeans allied with the United States), Uhura represents Africans, Sulu represents Asians, Chekhov represents Russians (Europeans hostile to the United States), and Kirk and McCoy represent the northern and southern Americans, respectively. For American audiences, the common existence of these characters on the Enterprise represents the multicultural integration in the minds of Americans. However, for Chinese audiences, this layer of social significance in the film may not be easily understood.
Similarly, viewers who have watched the British drama Sherlock or the American drama The Big Bang Theory may have new associations to imagine the characters in Star Trek Into Darkness. For example, they may regard Spock as “Sheldon” in another time and space, while the villain John Harrison is the dark side of “Sherlock”. In this way, the characters’ coldness and unsociability and other characteristics have gained new aesthetic significance. However, viewers who have not watched the above dramas may not be inspired to such an understanding.
Therefore, the concept of the structure of evocation can be explained as the audience filling in the blank parts of the work according to their own experience and cultural background, thus giving the work infinite meaning and aesthetic possibilities. The Star Trek film series can therefore generate different understandings and resonances among different audiences.
Special Effects in the Age of Consumption
Since the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture directed by Robert Wise in 1979, the Star Trek film series has been accompanied by the rapid development of film special effects technology for nearly 40 years. Although it is generally believed that Star Wars directed by George Lucas created the era of visual spectacle, the importance of the first Star Trek film cannot be ignored.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and Best Art Direction. It followed the trend of spectacle, tried its best to eliminate the boundary between the real world and the virtual world, and always maintained advanced special effects technology.
From the perspective of reception aesthetics, the use of special effects is also one of the reasons why the Star Trek film series can stand firm in the consumer era. First of all, when the audience accepts a film, visual effects (including auditory effects) have become an important consideration. Film itself is a plastic art, and pure visual effects can stimulate strong emotions in the audience. Especially in today’s era of rich and diverse entertainment methods, the advantage of the big screen lies in creating an immersive environment for the audience and attracting the audience’s attention through visual stimulation. This is one of the key factors for the audience to decide whether to go to the cinema to watch a movie.
In science fiction films, it is very important to present novel, strange, and different scenes from the real world to the audience. Without visual spectacle, the audience cannot obtain a special pleasant experience. Communication and acceptance are mutually influential. The audience forms and improves the demand for spectacle, and film creators will also decide on the communication method according to the audience’s aesthetic preferences.
Secondly, in the process of acceptance, the spectacular pictures brought by special effects directly break the audience’s horizon of expectations and negate the audience’s familiar experience. Throughout the acceptance process, spectacular and innovative pictures play an important role in the audience’s aesthetic evaluation. For example, in Star Trek Into Darkness, the film begins with amazing pictures that bring the audience into a strange world. Spock risked falling into the volcanic lava to prevent the volcano from erupting, and Kirk went to rescue Spock.
In order to divert the attention of the natives of the planet Nibiru, Kirk stole their sacred scrolls, angered the natives and triggered a crazy chase. Kirk and Dr. McCoy fled in the redwood forest, a scene that combines live-action shooting with post-production.
The live-action scene was taken from the forests of Hawaii, and post-production made the branches red and chaotic, with disgusting tentacle creatures on the branches and blood-red bushes. The Nibiru natives were jointly completed by actors and digital doubles, creating a visual sense of disparity in numbers. Kirk and McCoy finally jumped into the sea to escape, and this scene was also realized through animation. This passage uses various digital technologies to create a picture that has a dual effect.
The film must ensure that the audience is emotionally mobilized at the beginning and quickly immersed in the atmosphere of the adventure story, creating a viewing rhythm that alternates between tension and relaxation. Secondly, spectacle does not only mean stunning pictures, this scene also paves the way for subsequent plots. It was because of this “boldness” that Kirk was temporarily relieved of his command. After he regained his position, his relationship with the crew was overshadowed, which was largely related to his past experience of almost causing the entire fleet to lose their lives.
The theory of reception aesthetics born in the 1960s and 1970s can be regarded as the same age as the Star Trek film series. Although these theories were originally aimed at literary criticism, we can borrow and introduce them into the analysis of films. From the analysis of the Star Trek film series, it can be seen that the audience’s viewing and the audience’s feedback assumptions are extremely important for creating a film. Reception aesthetics is not only a perspective to help us understand how the theme of Star Trek can maintain its vitality for a long time, but also a theoretical framework to help filmmakers create more dynamic science fiction films and improve outdated film creation methods.
Conclusion
By examining the Star Trek film series from the perspective of reception aesthetics, we can see that the audience’s horizon of expectations, personal experiences and memories, and the creation of nostalgia are crucial to the success of the film. The audience’s participation and active investment make the work have multiple interpretations and possibilities for meaning generation, so that the audience can find resonance in the film and stimulate the audience’s creativity and imagination.
The creation of nostalgia plays an important role in the Star Trek film series. By repeating classic lines and plots, and through the continuous presentation of the Starship Enterprise, the film creates an emotional connection between the audience and past works, and presents the audience with a fascinating science fiction world. The audience’s nostalgia for classic elements and their response to tribute enable the Star Trek film series to maintain a lasting influence in the hearts of the audience.
The use of special effects is also one of the key factors for the Star Trek film series to gain a foothold in the consumer era. Visual spectacle and innovative special effects scenes can break the audience’s expectations, attract their attention, and bring strong emotional experiences. Special effects are not only for creating shocking pictures, but also to promote the development of the plot and the evolution of character relationships, bringing a deeper experience to the audience. The combination of special effects and the creation of nostalgia enables the audience to experience a novel and innovative science fiction world in the film.