When I was a school kid, I used to watch SF dramas on TV. Some of them were foreign ones including Star Trek. I loved Star Trek and another British-made UFO story. These two programs seem to have been popular among the kids and they were re-broadcast over and over. I remember myself running home from the school to sit in front of the TV in the right time. (There wasn’t any video player sold for home-use back then yet.)
When I was small, I was impressed with series of fantastic stories of Star Trek. I loved it and memorized all the story settings like underground silicon-based live-forms attacking immigrants (human beings) to protect their eggs, which were valuable pure silicon ore to the immigrants. Many of the story settings were products of creativity. But the attraction was only the setting.
I grew up. First, the FX started to appear unbearably obsolete. The light beams and spacecraft looked cheap after we, the Japanese children, watched Japanese SF TV programs like Ultra-Seven or Masked Riders.
I gradually walked away from the fascinating world of Star Trek not only because of the obsolete FX but also because of the stories. As I repeatedly watched the programs, I became to dislike the pushy attitude of Captain Kirk and the Star Fleet. Once The Enterprise was on the orbital course of a planet where a tyrant ruled the world with vandalism. Most citizens were under siege. They were living like chain gangs. Captain Kirk first for a short while observed it and soon decided to intercept the tyranny. This kind of stereotyped stories appeared again and again. On some planets Captain Kirk supported coup de tarts. On other planets, he interfered local negotiations simply because he “felt” that they were not right according to his own moral standard.
When I was in the United States, a few Star Trek movies were already at the video stores and the new ones were released one by one. Now that FX was refined but the stories remained the same. Typical stereotyped stories where the good beat out the bad after some struggles. And the bad have no right to be protected. The protagonists eventually doom the villains. And, of course, the Americans are always right and justified. They, with no basis, believe that their moral always overrules others’ when some conflicts occur between the two. In a sense, Star Trek stories are like propaganda movie of countries at war in which the enemy only deserve to die.
I named the “Americans are always right” attitude “Star Trek Syndrome.” And it was such an extremely rampant mannerism that many of Americans seemed to have acquired. I realized it when a movie came to the small town.
The movie, “Not Without My Daughter,” came to Pelican Cinema in Klamath Falls. Sally Field is the naïve main character who ignorantly married to an Iranian guy. She was invited to her husband’s home country with her daughter. She learned that she must follow the local rules based on the Islam lessons. She absolutely could not stand it. She found that her husband had intended to live in his home country. So she determined to leave her husband and his country. Her parents-in-law prevented her from doing so. American Embassy found it as an abduction and gave her support to escape by herself. Then this stupid woman says the title of the movie. I may be wrong in the detail, for I did not see the movie. I just read the review and felt fed up with by another “Star Trek Syndrome” story.
This woman, if I understand the story right, was naïve, indeed. I said so to Mrs. Armstrong. She said, “I see your points.” “But Masato, the story is based on a true story. There are many women who were cheated and taken away to South West Asian countries. Those Asian men maliciously get married to American women to have babies.”
I did not know the exact purposes of Iranians to marry American women. Actually there were a couple of Iranian guys at OIT who were desperately attempting to get American, particularly Caucasian, girlfriends. Rumor said that it was because they wanted to stay in the United States without the students visas by the marriage with them. The two Iranians were indeed arrogant. They were too proud of where they were from. I suspect that their very first reason of having American girlfriends might be just being conspicuous. Well, it’s just a different story. I have no proof that Iranian guys are scheming to invade United States. Even if it were so, it would not matter to me.
Even though Mrs. Armstrong is right, my view to this Sally Field’s character does not change. Americans would say that the Sally Field’s character was deceived. She was not kidnapped. She fell in love with an alien. How come she did not learn something about the man and his home country? Didn’t she know anything about the man’s religion? Hadn’t she heard of any bad rumor about other men from the country? Didn’t being married with an alien and having a child require any decision?
Americans generally don’t like the idea of arranged marriages. Those who asked me about it or tried to argue over it always expressed their idealistic views that true love can not be found through arrangements by others and that they could find “the” partners by themselves. The stupid girl did find her true love from Iran. But she didn’t care his point of view and the world according to him. She followed him to his own country and refused to live with him when he asked her to live there together. She might have been deceived for sure. But couldn’t she be blamed for her ignorance in the first place?
Furthermore, she thought she needed to take her child back with her. Why? Because she loved the child very much? The Iranian man must love the child as much as she did. Because she thought that the daughter would not be happy in Iran? Was that because Iran is an underdeveloped country? Or because Iran is a Moslem-oriented nation? If what she believed were right, all the non-Americans in the world would have been unhappy.
I know a woman who asked me about Halloween in Japan. I told her that there wasn’t any Halloween in Japan. She said, “Oh, it’s boring. Kids there must be bored. You must have it there.” Sally Field character is fiction, though the story is based on the true one. This Halloween woman is real. “Star Trek Syndrome” is also real.